Triple Bogey!!!

Desirae and Tim had to take Joslyn to Children’s hospital for some tests, so Kevin and I are watching Caelum overnight.

We are having a lot of fun playing with him. We played all the games in Wii, and with the tractor, and ate some fruit snacks, had a great dinner…but we did have one question for Uncle Steve. We were playing Wii Golf and were wondering if a Triple Bogey was good? Every time Caelum got one we all had to cheer! It was quite funny. Maybe it is only good if you are 3 years old? Or if your name is Jody…she isn’t too good either ;)

Tattoos

So right before Pauline went home, she bought some temporary tattoos. She put some on to go home with (I hope her parents didn't think they were real). And she left us some to put on later.

So here are the pictures for Pauline so she can see our tattoos....

Kevin put on the baseball glove

and I went for the traditional ankle tattoo.

This is probably as close to a real tattoo I will get as I am very very very very very very afraid of needles....just thinking about it makes me want to cry.

Pauline's Last Colorado Weekend

So this last weekend was Pauline's last weekend with us. She left here on Monday, and arrived home on Tuesday night, and by Wednesday she was back in school.

For her last weekend we wanted to go to the Mountains again, so we decided to take a trip on the Georgetown Loop Railroad., and then do the mine tour.

While we were waiting for the train to get going, we snapped this picture. I call it "Pouty Pauline" I am sure this is just her being sad she had to go home.

When we got ready to go on the tour of the mine we had to have our hardhats on...notice our gorgeous necklaces, mine is a gift from Pauline.

Here is the three of us at the mine tour.

On Pauline's last day on Sunday, we wanted to make sure she got a chance to do some of her favorite things. She had never driven before, but loved to drive our workhorse cart...she would take it to go get the mail. On Sunday, she helped Kevin by dumping the grass he had from mowing the lawn. This was the first time she drove the cart alone.

Then she had to try out the new lawn mower (I haven't even driven it yet....Kevin says it is because I break them)

After the yard work was done, we went to the park to play basketball

And softball....Pauline loved our trip to the Rockies Game...I think she is a lifelong baseball fan now.

And what trip to isn't complete with out this picture to remember :)

We had a great time with Pauline this summer. We hope she is able to come back sometime, and that we can get a chance to go visit her as well.

Is it really? It is.......

Jim and Carol made it to Colorado!

No I am not kidding...here they are in Downtown Boulder!

We have really been having a good time visiting and showing them around the area a little bit. This last weekend we saw the sites in Boulder, Longmont and Estes Park. We are so glad they were able to make the trip and come to visit. We hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Summer Fun

We have been having fun with Pauline our exchange student from Germany. She have gone to the Wild Animal Sanctuary, the Morgan County Fair, and Boulder and Estes Park.

Pauline speaks great English and has a wonderful personality. We have really enjoyed getting to know her....

She also has a talent taking pictures. Check out this picture she took of Stormy. I love it.

This weekend we went to Boulder, Longmont and Estes Park. Pauline, Kevin and I went into Rocky Mountain National Park for a short hike around Bear Lake...

The Colorado Mountain air really makes Pauline strong....check this out :)

Wild Animal Sanctuary

So Pauline has been here about a week now and so we thought we would do some site seeing. Since Jody and I had never been to the Wild Animal Sanctuary we thought it would be a good place to take Pauline. They are know for having several big cats like lions and tigers and I have to say that I have never seen so many tigers in one spot. I think they have about 25 of them.

This is one of the 40 acre parcels where they keep the animals. This one should have a lion in it, but I think they are inside at the moment.

This is one of the jaguars that lives there.

One of the sections of where they keep the tigers. They put them in small groups so that they can get used to one another and then they move them to larger pens as they become socialized.


The walkway to view the animals is above them, so you can look right down to them. Here are two LARGE tigers just sleeping the day away...

They had some lions too, but they were sleeping...


I didn't get any pictures of the bears because they were in a far away area that you could not get real close to. They also had some wolves, but by the time I got closer to them, they had went back into their den.


So hope you enjoyed learning about the Wild Animal Sanctuary.

Chicago adventures

We had a good time in Chicago and while I was there for work, I did get out a little bit. Kevin showed you the Sears tower outing...those glass boxes are cool...but what a strange feeling to be standing over "nothing".

While at the work meetings, I received a nice surprise in that I was given the Vice President's award from our VP of our Vertical. (a vertical at our university is several schools together). What an honor to be recognized for my hard work. Though at times my job is stressful, so on Thursday evening, Kevin and I am some of my faculty went down to Navy Pier for a walk. My faculty thought I needed to spend some time with Bob Newhart....so here I am telling him my troubles. LOL

Here is Kevin and I as we entered into the Navy Pier area

We also got to go the the Harry Potter exhibit....this is outside the museum.

Before we went into the exhibit we saw the flying car that Harry and Ron took to Hogwarts.....sooo cool, I wanted to sit inside....

Once inside the exhibit you are not allowed to take pictures...but the movie memorabilia was AMAZING. They put such detail into the witches and wizard robes, the school robes, the quidditch uniforms...and it was really neat to pull a mandrake up and hear it scream, play quidditch and throw the quaffle, and sitting in Hagrid's giant chair. For me one of the highlights was seeing Snape's things....He is my absolute favorite character!

Saturday morning before we heading home, we attended graduation. America Ferrera (Ugly Betty star) was one of the graduation speakers.

Graduation was also at Navy Pier...This is my assistant chair Heather and I outside after the ceremony. Heather is new so last week was the first time we had met in person.

After graduation we headed home, and we were even lucky enough to catch and earlier flight, we were at DIA, before our original scheduled departure from O'Hare...awesome!

Willis Tower

So we went to visit the Sears Willis Tower since Jody had never been there. So we had to try out the new skyboxes.

Here is a view from the one we are in to the other.


But before you step into it, taking that first step takes a little nerve, but once you get over it, it is really cool.


So that was our excitement for the evening.

Chicago....

Well we are on our way to Chicago....

I have to go for work, we have graduation on Saturday morning and then we will be home. I will be in meetings most days and evenings, and Kevin will be working from the hotel room. Not a vacation trip, but we do hope for a couple of fun things.

1. tonight we hope to get in in time to go to the Willis (aka Sears) Tower
2. Friday we are going to see the Harry Potter Exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry That should be very cool!

Hope you all have a great week!

New Garden Tractor...

As you all know we have a large area to mow now and Jody keeps breaking the tractors. We decided that we might need a new one and had been kinda looking, but I was hoping to wait until next year and hobble thru this season. It was not to be so, as our tractor would not start. We decided that we had, had enough of broken garden tractors. So we went down to Sears and picked out a 26HP tractor with a 48" mowing deck.

Eventually, we'll get a snow thrower for this tractor so we can remove the snow just by driving around. But we need to get a shed to put it in first.



Mert decided that even in the 95+ degree heat that he needed to get out there and use the new tractor to mow everything down to where we want it to be. Jean thinks he just wanted to run around with the new toy, but it is good for him to get out an do stuff like this.

Central Coast of California

Kevin had his 20th high school reunion last month in California, and so here are some of the pictures from the trip. So before the big BBQ, we decided to have a couple of days relaxing. San Antonio was fun, but since you can never have enough vacation we spent a couple more days in Solvang, CA. Now when Kevin was growing up all this area was, was a Dutch themed vacation spot. However, with the growth of the wine industry in CA, the Santa Ynez valley is now becoming a world renown area for wine.

We flew into Santa Barbara and then drove to Solvang, but before we got there we had to stop and have dinner at Pea Soup Anderson's.

Just stopping for some cheese and bread is enough for me, but the soup is good too. Normally I don't even bother to look at the menu as I just order the "Traveler's Special". But this time we decided to the soup in bread bowls, which was also very good.

The next day we roamed around Solvang doing quality control for the bakeries around town. It was a hard job, but someone has to do it. We did determine that Mortenson's was our favorite bakery, and they are welcome to send me some cream cheese danish anytime they choose (hopefully, very soon).

While were were there we stayed at the Wine Valley Inn, which is in the old Tivoli Inn building. The accommodations were great. If you stay there over the weekend, they even have a complimentary wine tasting, in the evening.

The room we stayed in was up on the 3rd floor, and there was no elevator! But it had a nice view and was very quiet.

San Antonio.... the Alamo

You can't go to San Antonio and not go to the Alamo. Kevin and I actually went to the Imax movie about the Alamo first, and then we walked over (yes it is literally across the street) and went for a walk through the Alamo. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside so there are only a few outdoor pictures....

San Antonio....the River Walk

We spent a lot of time walking along the river walk. The evenings were great and there were a lot of people there. Here is a view of the city skyline from our hotel balcony

Looking down to the river from our hotel balcony

This is Marriage Island. This is a very small island on the river. They say there are over 200 weddings a year here. There wasn't a wedding today, but it really is a nice place.

It is supposed to be good luck to get married on this island. So for sure it is good luck to have your picture taken on your 10th wedding anniversary....

This is from the boat ride on the river. The colorful umbrellas is the restaurant Casa Rio where we had a great dinner.

Another picture from the boat...the umbrellas here are from the "Republic of Texas" where we had lunch.

Isn't it serene here?

San Antonio.... the Food

What trip is complete without good food and drink? San Antonio was no different.

We had dinner at Casa Rio on Friday night....this is the oldest restaurant on the river walk. And it was packed....the food was great....

I had cheese enchiladas....


Kevin had green chicken enchiladas.... notice the margaritas.....when in San Antonio.....

Homemade chips and salsa

For one afternoon we had lunch at the Republic of Texas....no pictures...why? Well we were sitting outside by the river....we said "lets take a picture..." the food came...and we dug in...no pictures :) There are pictures on the website...you can check it out there. LOL

We also decided we wanted to have a really good dinner out. A romantic dinner if you will....we needed to celebrate our 10 years of wonderful marital bliss.... so we decided to go to The Little Rhein Steak House....again no pictures...but you know there are some places taking out your camera to take a picture just does not seem appropriate. :)

Kevin had a cesear salad, the petit filet, and Chocolate Cake

I had the Beef steak tomatoes with red onion and blue cheese, the filet with gulf shrimp and finished up with Creme Brulee.

We also shared a bottle of Texas Wine. what a great dinner, and the company was even better.