Petal Power

Our yard and pots are in full bloom now so I thought I would take some pictures to share how pretty they look. I love this time of year! Our petunias are looking very nice. Much better than the Fuchsias we tried planting last year.
 

  

A close up of the rose bush by our front door. The thing grows like a weed!

Love these baskets. They turned out so nicely!

My absolute favorite. The Peonies. We were supposed to have 2 white, 2 light pink and 2 hot pink, but it looks like we might have gotten 3 white, 1 light pink and 2 hot pink since I have 3 plants with white peonies blooming. Looks like the pink ones won't be blooming this year, but at least the white ones did. And they smell wonderful too!

And of course, no post is complete without some kitty pictures! Here's Muscles hanging out with us looking cute and regal as usual. Didn't want to be pet of course, but demanded you know he was there. What a crazy cat!

Happy Birthday!

  
We made the trek down to California for Memorial Day weekend and had a great time! It was my aunt's 50th birthday on Saturday so we drove down to surprise her. Needless to say on the way down on Friday she called me very suspicious that we were on the way down there. Apparently my email I sent before I left made her suspicious. I still maintain it was a normal email and she's just too damn clever for her own good! (I just re-read the message I sent and see nothing out of the ordinary in it!)

  

We stayed in a really cool and funky beach house in Rio Del Mar overlooking the beach. (it's the house on the left in the top picture.)  It was a very pretty spot with an awesome view of the town and the beach.

Mom and Dad ended up surprising us by showing up late Friday night. Bryan and I thought they might be arriving for the big event, but when they weren't there when we got there and weren't there by the time we went to bed we thought we must have been wrong. That was a fun surprise. We spent Saturday playing on the beach which the kids loved and then went to the party at this yummy restaurant for the party.

    

On Sunday mom and I took over the kitchen and cooked dinner for 18 people! We had Dad (aka "Top Chef") BBQ chicken and then we made Grilled Corn Salad, a green salad, Mac & Cheese & Chile Cheese Rice. We finished the meal with fresh strawberries and watermelon. (We were in strawberry country after all!) I love going to the produce market when we are there and seeing what yummy fresh vegetables they have there. Their fruits and tomatoes always were better than what I can find at home. I am pleased to say however that with all the Farmer's Markets available here in Portland that our fresh local produce is starting to be as good as what we an find in California. However finding yummy fresh local tomatoes for 87 cents a pound right now is unheard of here! 

All in all we had a great trip. It was WAY too short, and the drive was WAY too long (11 hours), but it was an easy drive and our books on tape (cd actually) made the time pass faster. It was great to see family we haven't seen in forever again, even if my aunt's kids are all taller than I am now! 

Now it's back to the real world for most of us. Gabi left today for the rest of the week at outdoor school. She should have a great time and I think her brother is glad for some time away from her for a while. At least the weather is supposed to hold so she should have a great time at the coast. 

Oh yeah, and when we got home my peonies are blooming so I'll have to take some pictures of them and post them for all to see. My hanging pots are in full bloom too so I'll post them tomorrow so you can see how pretty the front yard looks now!

Happy Mother's Day!

What a great weekend! Beautiful weather, good racing, great friends, and a wonderful Mother's Day.

Well, the racing didn't start out all that well, but it improved by the end of the weekend. On Friday Nick had a really bad crash during practice that fortunately I didn't see. Apparently he most have caught some air on a jump and ended up landing face first on the ground. He got a mouth full of dirt, cracked his helmet visor in multiple places and the mouthguard of his helmet. Plus he got a bloody mouth and bloody gums around his front teeth. Not to worry, he's fine now but biting down was a little difficult for a couple of days. He also banged his knee up a bit and he complained his ribs were sore, but no permanent damage was done. We took Saturday off from racing and went out to the track on Sunday for Mother's Day. He ended up placing 2nd which was great. Gabi qualified for her main event - had a class of 5 riders. She ended up 4th, just out of the trophies.

Saturday we had a chance to use our firepit we got for Christmas for the first time. We invited some of our BMX friends over for dinner Saturday night and set the firepit up in the backyard to roast marshmallows after dinner. That was a lot of fun. I can see a lot more lazy summer nights hanging out around the fire pit in our near future. It's so nice to have a completed backyard we can actually use and enjoy!

Mother's Day was a great day for me too. Gabi made breakfast for me. She cooked link sausages and made Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls. She did an excellent job and I think I'm going to put her in charge of breakfast a little more often now! She wants to make muffins next weekend. More power to her! The boys were going to BBQ hamburgers for me for dinner, but we ended up going to the Wood Stone Steakhouse in Oregon City instead. It was a delicious dinner, and I got a rose from the restaurant too! My Mother's Day present was awesome too! I got a smoker! I have been wanting one since we had the amazing smoked ribs we are lucky enough to enjoy when we go camping with our friends Larry & Peggy. Their son Brandon makes the best ribs in their smoker! And since my last attempt at BBQ'ing ribs didn't go so well, apparently my family decided a smoker was a good idea! Can't wait to get it all set up and start using it. We have some Turkey breast I think I will try first. Now I need to find a good smoker recipe book! I see our summers filled with lots of friends, smoked meats and s'mores. Can't wait for summer!

Titanic Voyage

Last week we took a voyage on the R.M.S. Titanic.

There was a traveling exhibit of actual Titanic Artifacts that made a stop at Washington Square over the weekend. They gave you a boarding pass with passenger information of an actual passenger that was aboard the Titanic. You walk through the exhibit looking at the artifacts, and then at the end you look at this huge list and see if your passenger survived or not. Unfortunately Bryan's passenger did not make it, but the rest of us did.

It was a small sampling of artifacts, but still very cool to see and experience. The kids enjoyed it as much as we did. I think we have all always had a fascination with the Titanic and seeing just a very of the memorabilia from the ship was  incredible. Here are some photos of some of the stuff we saw. At the very end of the exhibit there was a guy that caught me taking photos and told me I couldn't do that. Good thing he wasn't at the beginning!

Oh, and the family photo was taken at the beginning of the tour in front of the "Grand Staircase". Looks like a scene from the movie! 

Ship's Hull. The big circles are where pipes ran through for water or steam or something like that. The little holes on the side are where rivets used to be. It said after testing that the metal was discovered to have a large amount of slag in it which would make the metal more brittle and likely to break in the cold ocean temperatures the ship was in at the time of the iceburg incident.

Rivets from the ship. Same info about them. They had a large amount of slag in them as well which could have caused them to fail.

A Fleur-de-Lis ornament that was used to decorate the first class cabins.

The middle support for a bench that was most likely on one of the decks. Notice how bent it is.

All in all it was a great exhibit, and it was free! What more could you ask for. It was presented by Country Financial, and I'm sure we will get some sort of follow-up call because of this, but for the history we saw I think it's worth it.

Interesting weekend

So we had a pretty good weekend, even with the rain and stormy weather. Nick was able to race on Friday which was a beautiful day I might add. Nick ended up with a second place which was so cool. He won the first round with an amazing pass that brought him from 3rd to 1st on the second to last corner. It was great! He has been racing the same 2 people for 2 weeks now and has gotten 3rd every time. This time the other guy, Issac pushed Taylor high into the corner and Nick was able to slide by them on the inside and take over the lead. That put him into position to win 2nd overall. They were all tied going into the main and he was able to beat Issac for the 2nd place spot. It was great!

Gabi didn't end up racing because she got an injury earlier in the day from the trainer we had picked up the night before. (It looks like the one pictured, only Gold.) Bryan found one of these on craigslist so we got it for their training purposes. It forces them to pedal hard and build up those leg muscles. But what Gabi found out is you can't stop pedaling or the pedals come back to bite you. She ended up with a huge nasty bruise on the back of her leg and was limping around the house for a couple of days. She's better now, but couldn't race on Friday night.

So we had really stormy weather pass through on Saturday with big gusty winds and tons of rain. It was a really cool storm that lasted about 15 minutes I think. Then it was all pretty and sunny after that. But it was drizzling most of the day too so the racing was cancelled that day. We were thinking of going to Salem for racing but it didn't happen. Laundry and cleaning happened instead. 

Sunday the weather held all day, but they still cancelled racing. I'm assuming the track was just too wet from the rain the day before, and the threat of rain all day, but who knows. In some ways it was nice to have a free Sunday Bryan and I ended up going to the Mexican flea market in Gresham. He had wanted to show it to me for a long time saying it was just like Mexico. Well, he was sort of right. The booths were not filled with Mexican trinkets though, just lots of cowboy boots, little girl prom dresses, CDs (all in spanish of course) and clothes and random crap. The food looked good though, but we felt completely out of place. It was a whole different world, and interesting to say the least.

Then last night I went to make dinner. The first ribs of the season for us. The menu: BBQ ribs, Corn, Salad, Mac & Cheese. Yum Yum Yum! So I seasoned the ribs perfectly, put them on the grill and sat down to watch some Hannah Montana. When I went out to turn them I opened the lid and this is what I saw:

For the 1st time in 16 years I burned dinner beyond recognition. They were just little bits of charcoal. That's all. It was hilarious! Bryan made me take a picture of it for posterity I guess. So needless to say we did not have BBQ ribs at home last night. We were forced to go to Busters BBQ and had ribs there instead. Mine would have been better, but well not that time. I'll try again later. And maybe a little less distractions that time. I'm sure my family won't let me live it down for a while but that's OK. It's not like I burn dinner very often at all. LOL