Familiarity & Newness

A couple highlights from this week...

Our friend in Eugene, Michael, took it upon himself to round up this collection of Eugene goodies to send along to us through a friend of his that was coming through Juneau on the ferry.  SO NICE to have familiar, feel-good items sent our way :)

 And here are some shots from today's new hike, overlooking the Mendenhall Glacier and Lake...

2012 Olympic Track Trials

Because we essentially missed all of the Olympics this year, I'm extra glad we made the effort to go to the Track & Field Trials when they were held in Eugene.  

We had seats very close to the track, on the non-finish-line side, and it was awesome!  We got to see women's pole vault, women's discus (which turned out to be very exciting, actually), men's shot put, and a few sprints.  Men's 100m, Women's 400m, and Men's 400m.

When the winners did their victory laps, we actually got to give them a high-five and offer our personal congrats!

This is the reigning gold medal discus thrower.  Her coach was sitting near us, so when she came for pointers, we got to listen to him talk to her.

All the other athletes jogged their victory lap...except the shotputers :)

It was a neat event to experience; the security was like TSA and the energy in the stadium was palpable.  Lots of tight muscles to admire, too, along the way :)  Go Team USA!

The Family/Friend Tour comes to a close

For the rest of our Midwest tour, we did:

• visit all remaining grandparents...
• have a lovely visit with Lew & Val, including going to the Newport Aquarium, playing lots of Quiddler, spraying ammonia and warding off the raccoons with Rush Limbaugh radio, sharing a meal with their friends Carmen & Deanna, and trading ZB/Massage sessions... 
• and we went to our friend Travis' wedding in Missoula, catching up with all kinds of old friends from FPC and the YMCA...

And we loved all of it!  Now if only I had photos of it.... :)

Regardless of no photos, just wanted to say a big thank you for helping make our summer a wonderful one!

Nationwide is on your siiiiiide!

After Louisville, we returned to Lew & Val's for the rest of our Ohio stay.  One of the days, I drove to Columbus to have lunch with Caroline at her work, Nationwide Insurance!  It was great to see her and visit, even for just a lunch break :)

Thanks for extending your lunch hour, Caroline!  Loved getting to see you!

Louisville or bust!

After D.C., we flew to Cincinnati to visit Lew & Val.  We basically slept and recuperated a little more and then drove to Louisville, KY to visit Ben, Becky, Alex & Brooke.  This was our first time seeing their home, meeting Brooke, and our first time seeing Alex since our wedding!

One touristy thing we did was take a tour of the Woodford Reserve Distillery, which is about 45 minutes away from their house.  Since Brian is a fan of scotch, this was a big treat for him.  

The tour was really interesting and informative, and caused us to become fans of Woodford Reserve.  They're one of the distilleries that's consciously decided not to go huge-scale like Jack Daniels.  And, Ben helps farm with the guy who farms all the corn for W.R.  Pretty cool! 

The infamous Brooke stare.  I wonder what she's thinking!

Once again, we just couldn't seem to make picture-taking a priority, so we're savoring these few!  It was sooooo nice to be there!  We basically just hung out at home and played with the kids a lot (yay!), went to church, visited with Becky's mom who was also visiting from MN, and did our best to stay out of the heat by going for early-morning jogs :)

Thanks for a wonderful visit, B&B!  We loved it!

Mr. Elliot Vander Naald: Memorial Day Baby!

We visited Kevin & Tracey during the last week of June in Washington, D.C.  This was our first stop of our family/friend tour, and it was a full trip!  First of all, we got to meet their new baby boy, Elliot.  At that point he was only about 5 weeks old, and is a strong, healthy little guy who is a spittin' image of his dad!  We enjoyed getting to stare at him, hold him, ride with him in the backseat, shoosh him to calm, and swing him around in his carseat (that'd be Uncle Brian's trick) :)  

For our first full day there, we went to the National Museum of Art to see a human-interest photography exhibit that looked interesting.  We also got to benefit from the fact that Tracey is a natural tour guide (and a professional one!) and so we learned all sorts of fun facts as we drove through the streets of our nation's capitol.  We also went to a neat little food store where Kevin was friends with guy working, and we got some delicious treats (sausage, pesto, cheese, and chocolate chip banana bread!)  Nearby the store was a sandwich shop where we ate some amazing gourmet-type sandwiches.

During our time there, they got a crazy thunder storm, and the power was out for just about two days.  We made the best of it by hanging out at Wegman's, a cushy grocery store with an impressive prepared food section!  We joined lots of other power-outers there, playing games, eating food, and enjoying the air conditioning.  We even went to the movie theater to see The Avengers, and little Elliot was a champ, not making a noise once through the whole movie!

We have Kevin to thank for these lovely photos, as we didn't have our act together enough to take any pictures of our own!

Thanks for a wonderful visit, K&T!  It was good to be with you and see a little bit of life in D.C.!

Fisherman Brian

Yesterday Brian walked out the door at 8am saying, "I'll probably be back around noon..."  At 9pm, he finally came home.  With half the bounty from the day: 1/2 a salmon!

They got lots of bites, but only one catch throughout the day.  They also saw lots of whales; even a mama whale and her calf which was coming up out of the water quite a bit, about 50 yards away from the boat.  Needless to say, Brian had a great time :)

Here's Brian with their 7-8 lb. salmon

The lone catch

 And, of course, more beautiful scenery...

We're going to enjoy our first Alaskan fish (or 1/2 a fish) tonight for dinner!