I had a really great Memorial Day weekend. Friday after work I headed down to Sheridan. Cousin Shawn graduated from high school on Friday, so we had a party for him on Saturday. It was such a fun time, as usual. We played Balderdash for a while, and had a blast! I didn't get a picture of everyone, but here's some of the fam being their crazy selves.




Saturday evening I left for Round Rock to go to Carl's birthday bash at his mom's house. I didn't get a picture of it, but they made the best crab and shrimp boil ever! I mean, it was awesome, and so beautiful. We poured all the contents out onto a table and ate outside. It was really nice.
Carl and his niece Kayla actually share the same birthday (May 25). One of her presents was a tent just her size. Carl, Kayla, and I all climbed in. It got kinda squishy so Carl got out and played the big bad wolf.

This morning we got up and drove to Inks Lake to check out some camp sites with Carl's parents and Kayla. It was a super cool place. We're planning on all going camping out there in July, and we're stoked. They have everything from fishing to volleyball to cliff diving. woo-hoo!

i don't know why this picture came out sideways, but i'm not really sure how to fix it,nor do i care to try. but, if you turn your head a little, you'll see a beautiful picture of the cake carl got me for my birthday. it was supposed to be a tres leches cake, but they messed up and just gave us a regular birthday cake. it was still good though.

we all went to medina lake for my birthday evening. kirsten reeled in this catfish while i chatted with my mema.

then we swam about halfway across the lake. it was quite a distance. this is a picture of kirsten and brian out in the lake with river.

and the most exciting part, the next day i got to pick up my new ride! its my aunt's 4runner. she just got a new acura mdx, so she gave me her car. i love it so much! its so awesome to have wheels again.

carl, river, and i went fishing on padre island last weekend. we had a blast! the first spot we picked, we caught a whole lot of seaweed, and that's about it. so we decided to head up a couple of miles, and within five minutes our poles were going off. carl caught this huge sting ray.

and at the same time, i reeled in my line to find that i had not one, but two fish! i caught this baby hard-head and a keeper red.

but my favorite catch of all was this jack fish. i just fell in love with it. i think its so beautiful.

river was exhausted, and she made herself comfortable in the back of the truck in quite a weird position.
we've never tried that spot before. usually we drive all the way to south padre island, which takes a lot longer. we're definitely going to be trying this spot again.

okay. problem resolved.
so, we've done a lot of stuff since the last post. i'll start from the beginning.
april 10 was carl' mom's birthday, so we went and hung out with the family in round rock for the weekend. we had a great time. dan fried some fish and shrimp, we played some disc golf, did a lot of swimming, and got in our game of spades. here is carl with his niece kayla, his mom, and brother brian.

and everyone enjoying the hot tub.

river really enjoys herself when we go to round rock. she will fetch from the pool for hours and hours.


and i have a lot of fun too. kayla and i get along pretty good, and we have a lot of fun.

okay. that's all for now. thanks for bearing with us. now that the problem is resolved, i promise to keep up with posting.

hello everyone. my goodness, its been a month since we've written! there's a really good excuse though- my computer's been out-of-service for a while, and carl's was down for about three weeks. but he re-booted it and we're back in business. except for one thing- i lost the cd with the software for my digital camera, so i can't get any pictures as of right now. hopefully i can find it or i'll be able to download it from the canon website. but don't give up on us, we'll return shortly. bye bye for now.

Well, its official- we love Medina Lake. Today was our third trip in 4 days. This was the last for me for a while though, because I go back to work for the next five days. Maybe I'll survive.

We had a lot of fun. I didn't catch anything, but I really wasn't trying too hard. I met a real cool girl out there that actually is friends with a girl I went to high school with, so I chatted with her for quite a while. Carl caught a couple of fish though.

Today I reached a milestone in my fishing career- I learned how to set up my pole all by myself!! I'm really excited about this because I always have to have Carl do it for me. But today, I learned how to tie on anything I want and start fishing away. Carl also taught me a couple of important knots to know for practical purposes, like the bowline and the half-hitch. I must say, I feel like a new woman. Here I am with my first ever done on my own fishing pole.

I know these are a little old, but I still want to put them up for ya. This picture was taken in the car on the way to Timberline Lodge. Its on Mount Hood, and its where "The Shining" was filmed. We arrived at our snowboarding destination a little too early, so we decided to head up to the lodge and have some hot chocolate while we waited for Ski Bowl to open.

And here we are having our hot chocolate by the fire.

While walking through the parking lot on our way to the lodge, we witnessed a man fall next to his car. We went over to make sure he was alright, and discovered that he had knocked his shoulder out of socket. We tried to help him pull it back into place but were unsuccessful, so we escorted him to the First Aid area. Here's Carl's imitation of what he looked like trying to walk through the snow with a messed up shoulder.

And this is a picture of us after the wedding we attended when we got home.

And here we are with Anna, one of Carl's best friends and the one who's wedding we attended.

Yesterday Stace and i went to a new spot called Medina Lake. Its only about thirty minutes from the house, so i'm sure we'll be going back more often. Of course River loved it, as she does any place with water.

We fished all afternoon, mainly for catfish, and had little luck. I caught one small largemouth bass when we first got there, and we had a few bites. Fishing was a little slow.

We stopped at a place on the way out called Jim's for some advice on the area, and he talked about catfish as big as eighty pounds caught on live perch. We set out one of our heavier poles with a perch as bait just for that chance at a big catfish. To our surprise, this largemouth bass ate a live perch about as big as River's head (just kidding, maybe a little smaller), and we landed it.

We had a lot of fun experiencing this new place, and we will be back. On the way home we stopped at a little hole in the wall called Adolph's and had some food. One order of nachos, a burger and fries, a chicken fried steak and baked potato, and 16 dollars later we were on the road back to the house. I hope you enjoy the photos. They seem a little dark on my screen, so let me know if thats how they come on the blog. i hope not! c-ya.

Okay, this is my first entry. I hope its all you've been waiting for. Not much to say, but i have a few pictures i thought you might like to see.


This is Brian's dog Lily in the front of the photo. We try to take her and River somewhere they can swim at least once a week. We have three or four places that we like to go to, and this one is one of the favorites, Guadalupe State Park.

The water temperature right now is about 60 degrees, so its a little cold. River couldn't care less, to her it almost seems warm. Lily doesn't quite have the insulation that River does, so she usually lets River fetch the ball.

After Brian and I braved the chilly water, we set up the grill and got ready to cook some dinner. Brian is a professional hamburger cooker, and he brought all the secret ingredients.

It may look like Brian is seriously burning the hamburger patties right here, but he knows what he is doing (at least i hoped). We stayed till about 9 pm, and we all, including the dogs, enjoyed the hamburgers. I hope you enjoyed this, and i will keep putting up new pictures of us for you to see. bye, Carl.

Our second day in Portland we went to the beach, or the Coast as they say in Oregon. The coast there is absolutely beautiful. We tried to make it out early so we could catch low tide and be able to see the starfish and sea anemones on the rocks, but we didn't make it in time. It was still beautiful though. Carl loves anything and everything to do with marine life, so he had a blast.

We took one detour on our way to get a glimpse of the largest Sitka Spruce in the United States. Here's Carl standing next to it.




I don't have any pictures ot if, but we finished off our day at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Carl took an aptitude test a few months ago, and the results showed that he's destined to be a cheese maker. So I had to show him the factory. I had no idea he'd be so enthralled. We had to stay forever. I've been there many times and taken lots of people, but never anyone as interested as Carl. It was quite entertaining. What's even more funny is that we drove by the Bluebell factory the other day on the way to Anna's wedding, and Carl wanted to stop. Then we were eating some M&Ms and he mentioned that he'd love to see where they make them. I may begin to wish I had never taken him to Tillamook because I am not one for tours, and it appears that we may have to take a few some time in the future.

Carl and I returned home today from a super long and really fun week. We left last weekend for Portland, Oregon, returned on Friday, and left again on Saturday for his friend's wedding in College Station. We did a lot in the last couple of days. I'll spread out all the pictures over the next couple of days to drag it out a little longer.
The one thing we did the most of was driving. Here we are in the car on the way to Multnomah Falls, a really beautiful natural waterfall about 25 miles outside of Portland.

And here we are with my sister Kennedy. We had such a good time with my family. We got to pick up Kennedy from day care one afternoon, and I had a lot of fun doing it. Carl thought she would be scared of us and possibly cry, but she loved it too. We put on her favorite CD and sang songs on the way home.

Here's Carl at one of the falls that's on the way to the big one. Its called Latourrell Falls, and its my favorite. I like it because only a fraction of the people that go to Multnomah Falls go there, so you can hike up and feel totally secluded from the world. Carl's not much of a hiker, so we opted to just enjoy the beautiful scenery from the bottom. But its definitely worth the hike if anyone ever gets out there.

This is a picture of the Hotel St Martin in Carson, Washington (I think that's the name of the town). Susan and I drove out there on Saturday to enjoy the mineral bath. I've never done that before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I definitely imagined something totally different. It was very outdated, but cool at the same time. We each had our own bath filled with hot spring mineral water. We soaked for about twenty minutes.

Then we got out, lied down on the cots seen below, and were wrapped in a thick blanket. When I heard we were going to be a wrap, I imagined seaweed, mud, or something of the sorts, but it was just what you see here- a blanket on a cot. It was relaxing though, and the scenery was gorgeous. Susan and I laughed as we left because we felt that the place left much to be desired, but my mother on the other hand, had she been there, would have thought it was the greatest place. She does think so, actually, from the pictures and description we gave her.

Wow- its been a super long time since I've written. Sorry, no excuses- just haven't written, but I promise to get better. Not much has changed. The most exciting thing in my life right now is my new yoga class. I'm taking Bikram yoga classes at a yoga studio here, and its so wonderful. You do yoga poses in a 105 degree room with 60% humidity. Its so relaxing and wonderful- I can't even explain just how much so. My friend Brandi and I have been going to the 9:30 class every morning, and its such a great way to start your day. I leave feeling so relaxed and ready for anything.
I'm also working on opening a smoothie and juice bar. I originally wanted to be a street vendor and have a permanent cart somewhere, but I can't find anyone willing to let me rent a space of their parking lot. So, now I'm looking into getting a loan to start my own place. I have wonderful visions of what it could be, so hopefully everything will fall into place.
Kirsten left us at the Hilton. Its sad not having her there, but she's in a better place now. Brandi had a going away party for her the other night. It was really fun. I was the ping-pong master. I played 11 people and beat all of them (I counted so I could tell Carl because he thinks he's the ping-pong master). I love playing anything that involves rackets, so I had a blast. The highlight of the night, however, was the breaking of the pinata. We have a manager at the Hilton that no one gets along with very well. She just died her hair this awful red/purple color, so Brandi found a girl pinata with purple hair and wrote Alex(our manager's name) on it. We all took turns knocking her out. Here's Kirsten before we got going.

I had a really great time with all my family at Jason's wedding. It was definitely one of the best weddings I've ever attended. The crying started for me at the dress rehearsal. I just couldn't believe my oldest cousin was getting married! He was the closest thing I had to a brother growing up, so I feel extra close to him. He and Darlys are blissfully happy, and they're such wonderful people.
On Friday night, me and three of my cousins hit the workout room. Here we are on the treadmill and what not.

And here I am with my beautiful cousins Robin and Heather.

This is my wonderful Aunt Shelly and her daughter Rob dog.

And finallyl, Robin and I with our fantastic beyond words grandparents.

Isn't my mema just drop-dead gorgeous?! And my Papa's a looker himself.
Okay- ta-ta.