Category Archives: Pictures

Pictures

In Bloom

What I’m growing at our house…

It’s big. And blue.

I have more hydrangeas than I know what to do with.

Seriously. I wish I could just give you all some of them.  I have already made/given away several bouquets and you can’t even tell we clipped any.  Not that I’m complainin’….just sayin’, I wish I could give more away.

This is a young one. Working on blue-ifying itself.

Mom H says I can change the color for next year by altering the pH of the soil. That’s chemistry….I don’t know if I should delve into that.  But good to know that if I tire of the blue, I can have pink/purple ones instead.

They look lovely grouped in large bouquets.  Especially in my pretty purple birthday pitcher from the in-laws.

Unfortunately, if you have cats your pretty bouquets may not last as long as you’d like. They like to play the game of “lets pull mom’s flowers out & leave them all over the house for her to pick up after they’ve withered away all day”.

Who me? I’ve just been sleeping here all day. Not being mischievous whatsoever.

Twenty Eight

Wow.

28 years ago today I was born, making my mom & dad super happy to have a sweet little girl to balance out the craziness that is my brother (they’ve never said those words exactly, but I’m pretty sure that’s how they felt/feel).

Where has the time gone?

Katie Elizabeth – 1 year old

I have a couple things to say about my glamour shot:

1. I was pretty cute and chubby. And slightly red-headed, thanks to my grandma Leola passing those genes on down to us.

2. Dearest mommy, maybe you could’ve taken a comb or something to the photographer? What in the world is going on there with my hair and how come nobody fixed the baby bedhead look I was rockin’?!

Gonna party like it’s my birthday…..and by that, I mean I will be working all day and then enjoying a quiet evening at home devouring a red velvet cake Todd is supposedly making me.

Lessons in Cheese

Todd says ‘Le Fromage se tres bien!‘ a lot.  But I think what he means to say is ‘Ce fromage est impressionnant’! (this cheese is awesome’)

I was not about to miss my favorite Seattle festival a couple of weekends ago, so we dropped everything on Sunday afternoon to face the slightly smaller 2nd day crowd.

The tourist mobs aren’t fun and the lines don’t move very fast—or at all—but I will fight tooth and nail to get me some of that dairy goodness.

Ok, not really ‘fight’ per say, but we’ve come to learn that the proper Seattle way to get your cheese is to forego the lines and cut right in and grab your sample(s). If everyone did this, things would move so much faster.  Trust me.

Hey, we never claimed to be very polite when free cheese is involved.  You live, you learn. And this is what we’ve learned from the past several years:

There’s not enough time to try every cheese, so don’t even attempt this feat.  Don’t go on a full stomach—or an empty stomach, for that matter. You’ll make yourself sick either way.

Toothpick in hand, slip in line (but say ‘excuse me’), grab your cheeses, step back to savor the goodness and move on to the next vendor that sounds appealing.

If there’s more than one of you, split up.  Use both ends of the toothpick and quickly stab multiple pieces to take back to your comrades waiting in the less crowded area.  Sometimes you can only get one sample of each cheese, so that’s when you divide them up and describe the tastes to each other.  Sharing is caring.

Skip the stuff you can find at the grocery store and go for the local farmers and interesting sounding varieties that you can’t find at Safeway.  Mozzarella? No thanks. I already know what you taste like*.

*disclaimer: I will eat as many goat cheeses as I possibly can get my hands on because goat cheese is the best cheese in the whole wide world. There, I said it.

Have plenty of cash on you. When you find a cheese you love at first bite, buy it immediately.

We obviously didn’t take enough cash with us because we only came home with two cheeses.  A raw milk artisan cheese and a goat cheese, duh.  But we also bought some Confectional cheesecakes, muscat grapes and rhubarb, all off which were devoured shortly thereafter.

The cheeses? They’re still in the fridge, waiting for a sunny day picnic and a flaky baguette.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

Other activities have included the culmination of Girls on the Run spring season and the 5K run.  I had a different girl and different base location this time, and I enjoyed them both even more than last fall.  I love this program.

We also found ourselves being offered free Mariners tickets a couple days apart, and who can pass up a free baseball game, let alone two? Not us, even if we’re not the most winningest team this season.

This was my first time being there with the dome closed.  The second game they ended up closing it halfway through the game. That felt very much like the movie Independence Day. :)

The Saturday night game we got free t-shirts but lost the game.  The Tuesday night game we had even better seats, were there with a couple friends, and I savored my once a year hotdog. And we won!

I think we might be getting spoiled, it’ll be hard for me to go back to the cheap seats.

Running Around the Rockies

Brace yourself for an onslaught of photos. I’m recapping 4 days of vacation into 1 post.

Last week, we went to Denver to see our friends from college, Meridith & Dallas—who was the best man at our wedding. Talk about a small world….I knew both of them before I even knew Todd, as I had them in some of my advertising classes at K-State.  At the time, I never would’ve thought 7 years later that we’d  still be hanging out, but I’m so glad life has worked out the way it has.  Wow, 7 years, I feel really old right now.

For our Thursday recreational activity, we headed out to Roxborough State Park for a mild hike.  In rattlesnake country.

If you know me, you know I have a huge fear of snakes.  HUGE. Thanks to the promise that the weather was too cool for snakes to be slithering around (I shudder at the thought), I pressed on through the threat of snake and/or mountain lion attack.

I’m glad we went hiking, it was gorgeous there, with the red rocks reaching out towards the sky.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

On Friday, I split off to hang out with two of my college roommates, Shannah & Angela, who also live in the Denver/Colorado Springs area.  Man, I really miss these girls.  The years living with them were some of the best (albeit craziest) years of my life but now we’re all grown up and responsible adults.  I was super excited for this reunion also because I finally got to meet Angela’s little girl, Brightyn.  It’s so awesome seeing girls I’ve known for most of my life turn into moms.

After a full day of shopping and catching up on several years of life apart, we said our goodbyes and then Shannah dropped me off to meet the rest of the gang at a lively dueling piano bar.  Quite the entertaining night.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .

Saturday we made a pit stop for doughnuts & coffee and drove an hour north to Ft. Collins.  Why Ft. Collins, you ask?

Well last fall, Mer somehow convinced me to sign up for the Colorado Marathon (I chose to do the 1/2 marathon instead and she signed up for the full but ended up changing to the 1/2 now that she’s 3 months pregnant).

Somehow when I registered back in December I made the good judgment not to attempt the full. Thank goodness.  Let’s just say that my training (if I can even call it that) for this race was very lackluster.  We also got to see Dallas’ dad & stepmom who brought out over 40 runners from their training program in the Kansas City area.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

Sunday morning was race morning and we were all up and out of the hotel by 5 a.m.  Us runners had to take shuttle buses up in the mountains and then run down the canyon to the finish in downtown Ft. Collins.

I wish I would’ve had my camera—but it’s a pain to run with—since the start at sunrise, winding down through La Poudre Canyon, next to the river was just amazing.  It looked something like this:

Once we got out of the mountains, the race was basically flat (thankfully, since I was not prepared for much of a hill challenge).

(photo courtesy of runningmemories)

Surprisingly, I felt great.  My main goal was to have fun and not injure myself, both of which I achieved.  It’s nice not being out to set a personal best or feel pressure to run harder.  I was having a blast, and finally around mile 8, I saw my handsome cheer squad.

Finished in 1:54:54.  Not my fastest time, but for only getting a couple good training runs in, I was very happy.  This was my 9th half marathon and Mer’s 2nd half marathon.  Did I mention she’s 3 months pregnant?!!!

Every postrace calls for a dynamite breakfast, of course, so we checked out of our hotel and went to Mer’s favorite breakfast cafe, Snooze.

I should also mention that the wait for this place was longer than it took me to run 13.1 miles.  Yeah, we waited outside for over 2 hours, not knowing it would be that long when we first arrived. :)  But it was good.

We headed back to Denver, took a much needed nap, watched Ironman 2, and flew back home the next day. Colorado was good to us.  We had a blast. We’ll for sure be back for more.  I’m hoping next time I can go snowskiing.

Rocky Mountain Fun

Here’s a quick sneak peek of our long weekend visiting some of our college friends in the Denver area.

It was a relaxing trip of hiking, shopping, watching movies, lots of laughing and catching up on lost time.

And my philosophy: what good is a vacation without a ‘little’ run scheduled in?