where to begin? its been entirely too long.
well, one of the most exciting things for july was that i got to make a last minute trip to oregon to see my family and friends. i had so much fun. it was just absolutely wonderful, and i feel like i really needed it. even though portland's not where i grew up, it still feels like i'm going back home when i go there. and it was such a blast to hang out with kennedy. she's at the best age. she's so much more interactive than she was the last time i saw her (march). we had so much fun together. if you ask her what sound different animals make, she imitates them for you. my favorites are the owl, elephant, and pig.

on saturday night we went out to dinner with susan's parents, joe and rene. we had a great time, and kennedy was the center of attention, of course.

robin and shelly were in seattle for a week, so robin jumped on the train and came to portland for a couple of days. here are kennedy and i waiting to pick her up.

and this is a picture of mom and robin before we went to go pick berries. we had such a great time doing that. i'll put up some pictures of that next time.

on saturday night, robin and i met up with some of my friends that i haven't seen in ages. here we are before we met up with them, having girl talk. we had a lot of fun, but the night ended not so great because robin's purse was stolen. it seemed horrible at first, but everything has worked out.

somehow i left town without any pictures of susan. i don't know how that happened, but i'm pretty bummed out about it. sorry suz.
until next time......

Kirsten and I finally got to do something together on Thursday. Our work schedules just never mesh, so we hardly ever get to have time together. So on Thursday, I picked her up from work at 2:30, and we headed to Mountain Breeze. Its on the Guadalupe River, and we try to make it there at least once a year. We had hoped to be able to float the river, but the water is not moving- at all. They ended up giving us some tubes so we could at least sit in the water, and we never had to paddle. We stayed in one place the whole time. It was still super fun though.
After the water, we went back to camp to set everything up, and we realized that I had forgotten to bring the tent. I brought the poles, but no tent. Kirsten almost peed in her pants. Luckily I brough a blow-up mattress, so we just blew it up and slept in the open air. And it actually turned out to be quite nice like that. Except that I got bit by something bad, and I have a huge, red welp on my back that won't stop itching.


Here's a picture of the little fire we made. We cooked hot dogs over the fire, and they were so good.

Then we just played some cards. That's pretty much a tradition now. We had a really great time. Hopefully we'll be able to go back again before the summer's over.

Well, I caught a little bit of heat for what I said about the whole shark fishing thing. Apparently I sounded a little bitter. No, he was just playing, but I did get in trouble for not putting up the picture. So here it is.... Carl's 5 foot black tip. He released it after the photos.

I had the day off today, so we went out to Medina. It was a little bit cooler this time because we had the kayak, so we weren't so limited as to where we could fish.


I actually didn't do any fishing today. I was in the mood to just sit, relax, throw the ball for River, enjoy the sun, and read. And that's exactly what I did. We had a really great time.

And so did River of course. Every time Carl brings his fishing poles downstairs, she knows something's up and gets super excited. She sure loves the water.

Wow- long time, huh?! So sorry. This month hasn't held too much excitement for me. I got a new job, and I've just been working quite a bit. Its paid off, though, because I already got a promotion. I'm working at a new steak house as a bartender, and I just got moved up to bar supervisor. It hasn't gotten super busy yet, but once it does, I'll be the bar manager. Pretty cool. Oh, and the most exciting news I have, I got accepted into the Academy of Oriental Medicine. I'm sooooo stoked! I start in July, and I absolutely cannot wait! Its a four-year program, so I'll be there a very long time.
Other than that, Carl's in summer school right now, but he has his weekends off. So he's been hitting up the fishing pretty hard. He got some new shark poles and reels, and shark fishing is all he thinks about, talks about, and dreams about. He even did a speech on it in his speech class. So far he's only caught one shark worth talking about. It was a 5 foot black tip. Don't have a picture of it right now.
I did get to go with him one time this month, and we had a lot of fun. We were joined by his brother Brian, Jamie, and Matt, and River of course.

This is Brian wading out in the water to cast his bait. I used to do that with no hesitation, but with all the sharks I hear of being caught, I'm a little more nervous to do so.

Carl bought a kayak with his birthday money. He loves it so much. Now he can paddle out his shark bait super far.

Here he is paddling out to sea.

And here I am with my first-ever Spanish Mackerel.

Alrighty- thanks for being so patient. I'll write again soon- hopefully.

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.