Prop 102

IT'S SIMPLE...VOTE YES!

Swimming Up for Air

Yes, I really am alive! We have been so busy and I feel like the only time I am home is to work before we leave again. I have so many fun pictures to post of our trips to Lake Powell, San Francisco, our family reunion in Idaho, and Steve's big fishing trip to Alaska with his dad! Work is going well and in all of our "spare time" we have been trying to finish up our new adoption profile on Parent Profiles!

I have been reading so many good books lately, while we have been in airports or driving someplace. Yes, I read the 4th and final vampire book, and can say I think it was ok but not my favorite. It was somewhat predictable but surprising as well. Basically, she ends up with everything she wants despite it going against what "traditional vampire" lives are all about. Anyway, right now I am reading Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters and On Account of Conspicuous Women. The latter is by a new author Dawn Shamp. She is a wonderful writer who writes the story of four women in the south during the time of Suffrage. It has had me laughing out loud and re-reading several paragraphs just to laugh again.

Cousin Shout Out

SHOUT OUT to all of my wonderful cousins out there is the blogging world. How many of you are planning on attending the upcoming reunion? I hope to see you all there, Steve and I can hardly wait to escape the heat! Its great reading all about your lives and crazy adventures. Love you guys!!

Lakitis

Lakitis: the state one is in when all thoughts, dreams, actions, and conversations involve activities that take place at a large body of water, specifically a lake. Symptoms include: daydreaming about lake activities during work, mentioning the lake or lake activities in most conversations even when the conversation does not involve such references, waking after sleep believing you are on a boat (more severe cases often cause the subject to believe they are even experiencing a slight rocking feeling), and while working, working out, or even doing daily activities practicing moves like those involved with wakeboarding, waterskiing, or laying out.

Hmmmmm, can you tell where my mind is? I believe I am suffering from all of the above and even this last week have not been wearing make-up or doing my hair or even getting fully dressed as if I were already at the lake. Swimming is better than a shower right? And who needs a towel when you can just lay by the pool and get dry? Unfortunately I have not figured out how to waterski in our pool.

But until time on Lake Powell gets here, this is what I have been doing; I repainted my kitchen with a lot of help from Steve taking down our pot rack and then putting it back up again and from my long time fab friend Shelly (it was even her birthday)!



My inspiration...the color is actually called Lake Blue. I choose it based on the actual color and not the name but I do love the name.


We had a pool fence put in. We're getting used to it and it is easier to have kids around with it in place.
Steve put a tower on the boat with the help of my brother Jared of course:



Anyway, we're on the count down to our first Lake Powell trip, literally counting the days! :-)

Australia

Deciding to have a baby is like planning a trip to Australia. You’ve heard it’s a wonderful place, you’ve read many guidebooks and feel certain you’re ready to go. Everyone you know has traveled there by plane. They say it can be a turbulent flight with occasional rough landings, but you can look forward to being pampered on the trip.

So you go to the airport and ask the ticket agent for a ticket to Australia. All around you, excited people are boarding planes for Australia. It seems there is no seat for you; you’ll have to wait for the next flight. Impatient, but anticipating a wonderful trip, you wait--and wait--and wait. Flights to Australia continue to come and go. People say silly things like, "Relax. You’ll get on a flight soon." Other people actually get on a plane and then cancel their trip, to which you cry, "It’s not fair!"

After a long time the ticket agent tells you, "I’m sorry, we’re not going to be able to get you on a plane to Australia. Perhaps you should think about going by boat."

"By BOAT!" you say. "Going by boat will take a very long time and it costs a great deal of money. I really had my heart set on going by plane." So you go home and think about not going to Australia at all. You wonder if Australia will be as beautiful if you approach it by sea rather than air. But you have long dreamed of this wonderful place, and finally you decide to travel by boat.

It is a long trip, many months over many rough seas. No one pampers you. You wonder if you will ever see Australia. Meanwhile, your friends have flown back and forth to Australia two or three more times, marveling about each trip.

Then one glorious day, the boat docks in Australia. It is more exquisite than you ever imagined, and the beauty is magnified by your long days at sea. You have made many wonderful friends during your voyage, and you find yourself comparing stories with others who also traveled by sea rather then by air.

People continue to fly to Australia as often as they like, but you are about to travel only once, perhaps twice. Some say things like, "Oh, be glad you didn’t fly. My flight was horrible; traveling by sea is so easy."

You will always wonder what it would have been like to fly to Australia. Still, you know God blessed you with a special appreciation of Australia, and the beauty of Australia is not in the way you get there, but in the place itself.

Diane Armitage printed in the April 21, 1995 "Dear Abby" column

For Kiki

This is my niece Kayla, or Kiki as I have been calling her lately. She used to hate that name and we used to call her it more as a joke but she seems to like it now. She usually calls me Crazy Angie. This was taken a couple of years ago when she was about 3. She came over for the afternoon and we swam and did her hair. She was very proud of it and now begs me to do her hair whenever she is over. Isn't she beautiful?

Right now she is very curious about the birds that make their nests in the eaves of our house. We usually have a conversation about them each time she comes over; why they like to live in nests, how they make them, what they eat, why they eat bugs, and do they eat bugs even for breakfast? It always amazes me how much she thinks about these things. She loves to run races with me, thinks its hilarious to sneek up and spank me and runs screaming towards me every time we see one another. I love it.

I can barely speak about this.

I know, I know, soooo sad. And now Mike D'Antoni, I have been mourning.