Dawn

My girls and Nelson threw me a surprise party for my 50th birthday. It was really fun. Thanks everyone for coming. I couldn't believe that they actually kept it a total surprise. I guess there's no use trying to lie about my age now.

And guess what?? we're going camping again this weekend. Closer to home than the last time we camped. We're coming home on Saturday evening to watch the WSU game, and then we'll go back out after it's over. We love our kind of camping, lol.

My surprise party.

We played cards until really late.

Really cute picture of Steph and one of her (and my) really good friends, Amber and her daughter McKenzie.

My good friend's that I've worked with for 20 years, Bonnie and Lou.

Of course my Bubby was there.

Cute of Craig and Steph and Brooke

Craig, my ex husband, was the bartender and he brought all of the Tequilla! Thanks Craig!

Nelson and our good friend Gary.

My good friend Jeannette... sorry, it was too much work to put it onto photshop to turn it.

Finally a picture of the famous commentor, my sister in law Joan and my brother Rick.

Mom in law Judie and good friend Karen.

My Krispy Kreme cake...yum yum!

Lisa. We've been friends since we were 15...and now we're 50! AAAHHHH!!!!

My favoritest people. Nelson, Steph and Brooke

The 3 Ellis girls, Heather, Melissa and Jennifer

Wes and Emma

Project pride

This weekend we accomplished one of our long-term summer project ideas, which means that it was a project we'd had on our list of things to do all summer (along with plant arborvitae, spread barkdust, refinish the deck, and paint all of the house's exterior trim white).

We'd already checked off the arborvitae and the barkdust, but hadn't yet tackled the biggest (and most expensive) project, building a cover over the back porch so we'd stay dry while getting our keys out and unlocking the back door (the one we always use) during the rainy season.

So my dad came down from Seattle to help out with his expertise and his hard work, and we did a "damn fine job, if I do say so my damn self" (to borrow a line from "Fletch"). Pictures are attached.

It was fun working with my dad on this project, and we're both very proud of the end result. Dawn is very happy with it, too. It was her idea to put this covered area in, so we both really wanted to do a good job on it, so she'd love it. The hard work, and resisting the urge to say "ahh...that's good enough" a couple of times really paid off.

When all was said and done, it took us about 10 hours to finish up. Best part was: we came in under budget on the job.

This morning, Dawn, dad and I had breakfast with my sister and her two kids, which was fun. I know dad loved seeing Nancy, Trenton and Taylor. Michael (my brother in law) had to work this morning, so he couldn't join us. We were bummed about that.

At first, Molly didn't really know if my dad was someone she was supposed to protect us from, or befriend. But she soon figured out that he was a good guy, and before he left tonight, she snuggled up to him on the couch.

Tonight, after dinner at the Spaghetti Factory in East Vancouver, Dawn and I enjoyed a Sunday drive, where we saw a lot of the "new Clark County" out on 192nd Ave. WOW. We knew Clark County was growing fast, but we had no idea there was so much new development that far out. We both can easily remember when there was nothing but undisturbed farmland everywhere out that far. We also drove down the Old Evergreen Highway past a lot of the beautiful old homes by the Columbia River and shared some memories from the days before we met. The highlight of our little drive was when we passed (and stopped at) McLoughlin Middle School, where I first talked to Dawn when I met her in 1999 while coaching Stephanie's spring and summer basketball team. That was pretty neat, especially because our four year wedding anniversary is coming up this Wednesday.

I guess that's about it for now. It was a really busy, but really fun, weekend, capped by a very fun Sunday night with my wife.

Dawn

Friday after work we met Nelson's dad at Who song and Larry's. He took the train to town to spend the weekend with us. Steph was our waitress...(I love it when she has to wait on me).

All day Saturday Nelson and Fred built us a new patio cover for over our back door. It looks really nice! Thanks guys!

While the guys were working , I went "garage sale..ing (?) with Steph. We had a great time. Maybe I've found something in common that Steph and I can do together these days. She hasn't been hanging out with ole' mom too much lately. We went to lunch and we ended up in Brooke's "movie room" watching a music video of hers. We had a really nice day.

Sunday we met Nelson's sister and her kids at Elmers for breakfast. After we took Fred to the train station we went on a nice Sunday drive.

Didn't have much to say, but I blogged.

Bella (on the couch) and Bubba with their new chew bones from Grandma Dawn for Bella's 3rd birthday on Saturday. I also took them a package of ham slices...HAPPY BIRTHDAY BELLA!

Project photos

This is as close as you're going to get to a "Before" picture. I forgot to take a picture until the break we took after putting the poles into concrete.

Doesn't look a lot different than the first photo, but if you look closely above the door, you can see the joist hanger is installed now.


OK...Now it's starting to resemble something that covers a deck...

Finished! Well...almost. Sunday afternoon, we replaced the top rail around the deck. If you look closely, you can see why we felt like it needed to be replaced.

Another view of the finished product. This is what everyone who goes by our place would see, if they cared to look.

Dinner at Ron's in Tri-Cities

OK, so I'm a week late on this post...but we did have a great dinner that Ron and Cheryl made for us, and Mick and Ligaya at Ron's mom's house in Tri-Cities while we were there a week ago. The steaks were huge and delicious. Thanks again Ron and Cheryl!!

Ron puts his "secret homemade steak sauce" on the meat as he cooks it for us, while Mick tries to coax the secret out of Ron. (Yes Chet, that IS my Bud Light on the side of the grill). :)

This is part of the RCU gang that always hangs out together during the big boat races in the Tri-Cities. As Dawn said, there are a bunch of us every year. This year, the chairs under each of these 10 by 10 tents were 4 rows deep. It's always a lot of fun to watch the races with these guys. Thanks to Bob and Judy for laying claim to our space on Thursday night!

The new boat I'm building

Here are a few pictures of the new boat I'm building...a 1/10 scale model of the 1978 Miss Madison. I'll update more as the construction goes along. Last night, while working on it, I pulled a "klutz" move, nearly slicing off the end of my left index finger with a utility knife. But I felt better today, when I told Mick about it, and he admitted that he's been using a lot of Neosporin and Band Aids himself the last week or so, for the cuts he's had while working on his own boats.

Camping

Hey everyone!
As you all know, and have seen, by now, we had a great time camping this past weekend. It was definitely the right thing to do, rather than go to another hydroplane race. We had a lot of fun playing Uno on Saturday night...spending Saturday afternoon at the Recycled Art Festival in downtown Vancouver (how cool is it that you can go camping so close to home that you can still do stuff you would've done if you'd stayed home for the weekend?)...and just hanging out together.

As Dawn said, I love to do all the planning, putting together a menu and receipes, and cooking for our camping trips. That's half the fun for me. The time together is the rest of the fun. I spent probably three nights last week getting us ready, and doing the grocery shopping for the trip. As always, though, the best laid plans don't always work out perfectly. I forgot to pack silverware, which made eating stew an interesting challenge on Friday night.

But the stew was really good! We had the leftovers last night for dinner.

Yesterday afternoon, when we got home, there was a lot of work to do around here. We're selling the little Saturn we towed behind our motorhome, so I needed to wash that and get it all cleaned up, including getting all of our stuff out of it. We put the ad on Craigslist today.

A few of my buddies have let me know (including Ron) how good the championship heat was at the Seafair race this weekend -- the race we chose not to go to. But other buddies of mine (like Troy and the Lepinskis) have told me how much things have changed at Seafair, and how disappointed they all were. That's part of the reason I chose not to go. I can't stand the changes they've made at Seafair. It's all about the mighty buck...and the airshow.

Really sad, actually, because hydroplanes were the first pro sport in Seattle, 56 years ago. What's funny is the people who run Seafair, for the most part, aren't even from Seattle -- or the Northwest -- originally, so they have no feeling for the history and legacy of the hydroplanes in Seattle. Us fans don't like the fact that the organizers think that rock concerts, air shows and party barges that pay big bucks (and block the view of the race course for about 1/3 of the fans on shore). There was more time on the event schedule dedicated to the airshow than there was boat racing...but it was boat racing that put Seattle on the sports map back in 1950. People, my dad and I included, have been going to the hydroplane races at Seafair for most of our lives.

I'm feeling like the first weekend in August is better spent camping.

Dawn

Ok Joan and Ron, we are definitely wimpy campers. We always camp within 15 minutes from our house and we always go home for things. I know it's not "real" camping, but this is how we like it and you guys probably would too. The following is a very typical camping trip for us...

Nelson likes to do all of the planning for our camping trips. He spent two days working his little butt off planning the meals and packing everything. There was only one thing he forgot... silverware. We improvised using big serving spoons for our homemade stew. Nelson's even had slots in it. The next morning we use our fingers for pancakes and bacon and sliced potatoes. It was very rustic and primitive.

Most of the time we spend sitting on our butts not doing anything. Or reading a good book or magazine.

We do half of the cooking over the fire and half on our combination gas grill/cooler.

Nothing like bacon cooked over the campfire.

After breakfast, we load our dirty dishes up to take home with us to put them in the dishwasher. We'll take showers while we're home. And bring the clean dishes back to the campsite with us for dinner.

While we were in town we met Judie and Gus at the recycling art show in downtown Vancouver. After that we stopped at Burgerville for lunch...

At the recycling art show.

When we got back to the campsite, we took a nap and then it was time for TEQUILA...Now THIS is what camping is all about

Lucy and Molly's favorite place is in the tent on the blankets on the air mattress, looking out the door at us.

This is not a marshmallow. Nelson found a new recipe. You wrap a refrigerator biscuit around the stick and roast it. Then you spray it with butter and roll it in cinnamon sugar...num, num! Before this we played UNO for quite awhile on the picnic table with the lantern. It was very funny, every time Nelson had to draw like 500 cards, instead of being frustrated or upset, he'd start laughing so hard. It was really cute.

It's FRIDAY

Hey everyone! It's Friday, and I just realized that I haven't written anything to the blog since Saturday. Man, I'm not very good at staying up on this.

We're going camping this weekend, which is going to be a lot of fun. We both love to go camping, but it seems like there's really never enough time for it. At least to go for more than one night at a time anyway. But after last weekend, being out of town for the hydroplane races, it just sounded good to be in the outdoors, sitting around a campfire and relaxing all weekend. We're both looking forward to just spending the time together.

I've spent the last couple of days getting all of the arrangements taken care of. Grocery shopping, planning meals, checking all of our gear to make still it's all still where it's supposed to be, etc. It's been fun!!

Work has been going great! Today I'll likely finish up a PR Plan for the agency that I work at. We've "hired ourselves" to do some PR for the agency. That's been a fun project, and I should be able to present the plan to the bosses next week sometime. The agency, obviously, is one of my clients, so that'll be a fun project to work on. One of my clients, the winery, just got another really good media hit for its wine (with a mucho positive review) in yesterday's Salem newspaper, so that's great news . . . and another of my clients will likely be featured on the Channel 8 (our local NBC affiliate) news one night next week. So I've been busy!

As is the usual practice for our summers, Mick and I have been getting together once a week, almost every week for a "boat night", where we hang out, have a couple beers and work on our model race boats together. We're both building new boats right now (Mick actually has THREE new boat construction projects currently going on). My new one is coming right along. The frame is done, and once the stringers are in place (next week probably), I'll be able to start putting the decking and bottom on . . . already. Seems as if I just started working on it! Weird.

I still have to download pictures from my camera, so I'll do that soon. Some of those include the work in progress on my new boat. It's been fun.

Dawn

Hey hey everyone. Well let's see. We left home about 5:30 am on Friday morning for Tri-cities for the Unlimited Hydroplane races. It's always a great weekend. This year was especially fun because we saw lots of friends that we hadn't seen all year. Nelson is in a different boat club this year so we never get to see these guys anymore. It was really nice to see everyone. On Friday night we went out to dinner at Azteca with Mick and Ligaya and Rick Lentz. Rick's architectural firm actually designed the Azteca we went to. That was cool. They also do all of the designing of the Tommy Bahama stores.

The weather was so awesome this year , like in the 80's. Every single year it is over 100 degrees, so this year was great. On Saturday night, our good friends Ron and Cheryl invited us and Mick and Ligaya over to his moms' house to BBQ the biggest steaks I've ever had. The six of us always hung out together when we were in that club, so it was really nice. Actually we never new from week to week if Ron was going to show up with Cheryl or Cindy. He kind of went back and forth alot. We used to make bets on who Ron would be with that week. But needless to say we were very happy that he was still with Cheryl.

This is Brooke's 2nd day on the job. She really thinks she's going to like it there. They are having their annual campout this weekend. I guess one of the partners has cabins at Cougar and all of the employees and their spouses and dogs go up for the weekend. They seem to have lots of little extras like that. I am so happy for her.

I guess I've decided that the video/espresso business is not a very good business decision for me. I am quite disappointed this evening since I just made my final decision earlier today. I was looking forward to the cute little shop in the cute little town. But when I look at the bottom line, income vs. expenses I shouldn't be buying it. I would have to put in more time than I want and too much money to "maybe" make it more successful. I feel let down this evening, but am sure I've made the correct business decison. Well, with all of my research on this, I have definitely learned alot. I'll just keep looking.

Judie is going to give me 2 bags of novels that were given to her. Let me know if anyone wants them after me and Brooke are through with them.

We've decided to go camping this weekend. Nelson is a little perturbed with the way Seafair in Seattle is handling the boat races there this weekend, so for the first time since I've known him, he is protesting by not attending. So Lucy and Molly and me and Nelson are "getting away from it" all by going camping. Sounds good to me.

I'm going to recover my kitchen chairs tomorrow. I'm using 2 different fabrics. Eclectic, huh?
I guess it's back to decorating my house now that my video store visions are over. Poor me.

Molly and Lucy say ta ta.

This is Ron and Ligaya at Ron's mother's house on Saturday night.

Nelson always walks down by the river to watch when the races start. He is definitely a hard core fan.

There's probably about 20-25 of us that all sit together every year at the races. Very fun.

At the races.