Weekend with Dad

Look at what greeting us upon walking into my parent's (new!) home on Saturday morning:

Mr. Grumpy (Samson)

And Ms. Sunshine (Cricket)

The puppies were visiting! My parents' neighbors Cheryl and Gary (they lived across the street - now up the road) let their dogs visit Cricket during the day while they're gone. Such a tough life those puppies have. But I love them. And even though Samson growled at me for half the day on Saturday, after I gave him some cheese he started loving me. And even licked my hand.

Okay, on with things.

My Mom had make a fantastic dinner for us: salmon and mahi on the grill. With a very tasty cranberry salad. I can't believe the four of us at so much food. It was a little embarrassing actually. But man was it good! She even made these chocolate cake things with chocolate and raspberry topping. Drool. Didn't do too much. Watched tv and read our books.

***

Sunday was Father's Day! I don't remember the last time I was with my Dad on Father's Day. Either I'm up with Bob in SC or we celebrate with Darin's Dad. But June was a strange month to visit - so it was normally just a phone call.

This year we made him dinner.

(He specified what he wanted. It was very cute actually.)

He got pork steaks, grilled with bbq sauce. Green beans. Mac and cheese. And strawberry shortcake cake.

I was in charge of dessert:

Dinner was great. Dessert was a little too sweet. We decided it needed a little less cream cheese icing - though I have to say when I got up the next day it was all gone (Mother).

After dinner we went for a walk around down the new path and near the water. Behind their house in a new neighborhood (without houses) and a road down to the water. From there, there was a new bike path and another path that took you right down to the water.

Their new driveway!
(It was COLD. Like 65. Yikes.)

Slug. Yak.
We counted over 30 on the way back up (smaller ones though).

Beautiful wildflowers!

Spanish Bluebells

Down by the water - like a 5 minute walk from the house.
Cricket, Dad, Samson, Dru, Sydney, and Mom

So sweet.

Tootles - love that Sydney

The walk was quite nice. The neighborhood over from theirs had this incredible outside seating area - made with stone and greens. Almost for something like a wedding ceremony - it was beautiful. Don't know why I didn't take pictures. Also went in one of the housed they're building. Nice.

Ended up going to look (at a near by mountain 'top') for the sunset, but it was pretty cloudy. Pretty colors though as usual!

It was a great day - and even though we didn't play softball or go bowling, we all had a wonderful time together.

Friday Night: Lauren's Birthday

On my way from Sacramento, we fly basically North. Across Oregon. Very near Mt. Rainier. So majestic and beautiful. Went by other mountains too. Not 100% sure which ones they were but they were awesome.

Mt. Rainier

We landed in Seattle at 9:30 pm on Friday night.

And I was picked up from the airport by my sister and Lauren. In going-out clothes. Ready to hit the town.

Now what Lauren didn't know was that we were meeting other people out to celebrate her 30th birthday. And she was super surprised.

Got her.

We were in the Ballard area of Seattle. All we really wanted to do was go dancing, but there wasn't really much dancing around. So we celebrated and talked to random strangers. It was exciting.

Before Birthday Shot.
Dru, Lauren, Biz

Yo.

Long shot of Biz.

And then she insisted we had Rainier beers.
Fantastic.

Actually ended a great night out - where we stayed up until 2:30 pm. Ben climbed up a tree. Most people ended up in a hot tub. We ended up sleeping until 9 am or so and getting some Top Pot donuts for breakfast. It was a win-win situation.

Keeping Busy - Del in California

Basically, we've been busy.

And by we, I meant me. Though Darin was busy in his own way as well.

I had my first (and probably only) work trip to California two weeks ago. Was super excited because I got to learn a new piece of equipment (though we've had it for about 8 months, but alas) and be the 'expert' in my company. It made me feel appreciated in many ways - great feeling.

Headed out to Sacramento, CA on Monday after a nice normal flight from Denver. Got to the hotel and was floored by how nice it was!

I didn't really know what to do with myself.

But I noticed one of my all time favorite restaurants Chevy's was super close to the hotel so I ended up walking there for dinner. (Chevy's was (and still is I presume) a restaurant near the giant mall outside of Chicago that I would make people go to whenever we went shopping because they make their own tortillas).

*sigh*

After dinner, I went to the hotel and crashed.

My Mini-Vacation

Wow! A couch too. And I had two queens too.

***

The next week was super crazy hectic. I had to get up early (to get the free breakfast - waffles - and watch the World Cup game that was on that particular morning), get in a limo/town car, and drive to the place where I was taking my training - Auburn, CA. And then learn/work all day. Go back and exercise. And sleep. And repeat.

On Thursday (the last full day), we went to downtown Auburn and took a walking tour of the city. It was pretty fantastic!

The Courthouse

A Plaque.

Swallow nests.
Pretty awesome actually.

The Group at dinner:
Rodger, Rebecca, Me, Frank, and Keith

My dinner. There was foam. Foam.

Beets. Gorgeous (though I didn't eat it).

And there was wine. Oh, was their wine.

Friday afternoon, I decided that instead of flying back to Orlando, I'd head up (only like 2 hours by plane) to Seattle to see my family.

What a great idea! Dru and Lauren picked me up from the airport at 9:20 pm and the adventure began.

Lightning Strikes

Been meaning to blog - and actually have a few in line to go.

But, we don't have any internet at home because the house was struck twice by lightning while I was away.

Yes. Lightning.

Yes. Twice.

(Our neighbor saw it!)

The first strike (we think) hit the lightning-propellant system that the house has (basically the house is grounded) and no damage was done. Unfortunately it's only good for one strike. Oops.

The second strike came in through the cable and got the DVD players and the modem/cable.

The cable guy came out to fix the cable (right away. must. have. cable.), but the wireless was fried and we didn't know the modem was also fried until we got a new router... which didn't work last night.

So no pictures.

Sad really.

Will work hard this weekend go get everything set so I can share my trip.

And Jake/Maggie.

And the veggies!

Good thing is the garage door opener wasn't broken. Phew. Lots of the circuits in the house might still be fried - have to get an electrician in to double check.

Then we will be as good as new!

News to the Phone

Nothing super exciting is happening here.

This is a good thing.

Decided to share some old phone pictures with you.

Gotta put something on the good ole blog...

Last Magic Home Game (before finals)
Second row from the top.



Jake.
So exhausted from playing with Jesse, he just fell asleep.



First trip to the beach.
I sent this to my sister to make her jealous.



Our squash blossoms!
(From last week.)
And that's basil on the left side. Not broccoli.



Dolphins sayin' hi at Sea World!

And that's all I had. I'm off to California next week for a work trip and then a quick visit up to Seattle for a cherry-pickin' good time.

Will add photos when I get/take them!

VD Picnic

The company I work for had a summer celebration last Friday. I don't think it was associated with Memorial Day, but it felt like it.

We went to a near by park - and enjoyed the outdoors.

A great thing about the company I work for were the wide variety of foods we brought. We have a lot of foreigners - which meant fantastic food!

Food, table one

Food, table two

I ended up bring a nummy corn salsa (for the vegetarians), a pasta/fried chicken salad, and a dump cake with frosting my Mom had been telling me about the weekend before!

There was a lot of food!

After lunch, we had a volleyball game (see picture above). Man was that sand hot and messy. I got sand in places sand should not go.

But it cooled off and we enjoyed ourselves. I tried to get our CSO (Chief Science Officer) to bring a keg, but he wouldn't. He said he couldn't fit it on his motorcycle! Boo hoo. I guess it was a company party...

Nothing like a good picnic. Now I am craving homemade samosas. Drool.

A Proud Moment

Last year, we decided to plant a garden. Darin spend at least a whole weekend digging up a patch of grass next to the house (in the sunshine!) in Jake's fenced in yard. We decided he would be a good watch dog for animals and such. We got the seeds, the 1x4, and realized the wood we had gotten was treated and you weren't supposed to use it for gardening.

So we went and got untreated wood.

And it sat in the garage for over 8 months.

Oops.

When I was in California (a month or so ago), Darin actually re-dug the garden, cut the wood, and planted the seeds.

This was 100% Darin's.

Garden, Week 1

We also got some jalapeno plants from our neighbor Jeff. Those were the plants on the left front (near the wood). And then we waited for the plants to come in.

It was actually pretty exciting - mostly because Darin doesn't remember where he put what and kind of put too many seeds in.

Garden, Week 4

As far as we can tell, we have broccoli (back left), with zucchini over growing everything else (back middle) and something on the back right. Carrots maybe? In the front was the jalapenos, then the middle was another unknown, and then tomatoes (front right).

We water the garden twice a day.

And it's doing very well. Darin was very proud of his garden. We're looking forward to the zucchini coming in - probably will be pretty soon.

And then I can make zucchini bread!

I'll keep updating on the status of the garden.

Please think positive thoughts towards our garden growing, and Jake not noticing the veggies that will soon be popping up and/or lizards that might live there and/or dirt that might be fun to dig.