Birthday Celebration

I was a little worried about how my day started. I had such a bad headache all night and spent the morning feeling miserable and nauseated. Luckily by mid-morning things started to turn around and I started feeling better.

I got lots of cards from family and friends. I got a bottle of wine from my friend, Annette. My friend, Jill, bought me lunch. I had treats on my desk and then dinner out with my family and cake at home. I turned out to be a much better day than I anticipated.

I actually started out my birthday celebrations on Sunday by going out to lunch with my friend, Colleen, and going to see "Bridesmaids" with her. It was quite a movie. A lot more raunchy than I thought it would be but very funny.

So now--one more year til the big one. I'll have to enjoy my 40's while I can.

Getting Ready to Join the Penguin Nation

We celebrated Chris's 19th birthday today. He made his cake--confetti--and requested Chinese for dinner so that is what we did. I gave him a photo album of his pictures from middle school and high school and a Penguin sweatshirt. I was pleased that he liked it so well. He also worked on a job application all day. They are offering a college internship position to work with the youth group at church. Hoping he can get that. I think it would be a good experience for him.

So in less than a month, he will be starting school at Clark College. Our friend, Bob Knight, who is the president of the college coined the phrase "Penguin Nation". So Chris will be joining Oswald and the rest of the Penguin Nation soon. He got signed up for classes in July. Yesterday we went to take care of paying tuition, getting an ID card, bus pass and books. So he should be pretty well set. He'll be taking English 101, Sociology 101, a career exploration class and fencing. So it should be a pretty good schedule to ease into college life.

Silver Wedding Anniversary

It is hard to believe that I have been married 25 years. Bill and I had a lovely weekend. We struggled for a long time trying to figure out how we were going to celebrate this milestone. We've talked about doing an Alaska cruise but never got around to planning it. We talked about Friday Harbor but I looked at lodging there and it has gotten to be so expensive to go there. We've never been to Vegas. I even joked that we could renew our vows at some wedding chapel there but going this time of year isn't very appealing--way too hot. Plus with having to take care of Beverly, we couldn't do anything really far away or long. So we finally settled on an overnight trip to Walla Walla. We were last there five years ago on a three day marathon winetasting tour. So we decided to go back and maybe try to see a few other things.

I booked a room at the Marcus Whitman Hotel-a lovely old historic hotel that was built in 1928. I figured that we may as well go for the best place in town for our anniversary. And it was actually very reasonable compared to our trip to Chelan. We flew over yesterday morning and arrived just in time to eat at the restaurant at the airport. There are a whole bunch of wineries located right on the airport and we figured we had better eat before we start doing any winetasting. After lunch we went to Le Chateau and Tamarack and bought a couple of bottles of wine. It had already gotten pretty hot there though so walking around the airport wasn't fun anymore and we decided to call the hotel shuttle to pick us up. We were there too early to get into our room so we explored downtown a little bit but again--it was so hot that we ducked into a wine bar and had a glass of wine while we waited for our room to be ready.

After laboring long and hard to try to find some place to eat based on the recommendations we were getting, we finally decided to eat at the hotel restaurant. It was a little expensive but was so good. Everything we ordered from martinis, appetizers, entries and desserts was absolutely wonderful. If you are interesting in seeing what the hotel looks like (I didn't get very good pictures), here is the website Marcus Whitman Hotel.

After breakfast this morning, we headed back home but had to make a detour because the weather was so bad here at home. We landed in Hood River with very high winds. Luckily, the airport FBO had a courtesy car so we went to downtown Hood River to walk around and have lunch while we waited for the weather to improve. Three and a half hours after we landed, we were finally able to take off again and things had improved enough that we were able to land in Vancouver without problems.

So we had a lovely weekend to celebrate our landmark anniversary.

Love-Today, Tomorrow, Forever

Went to our friend Cindy's wedding yesterday at her new home with her husband, Jim. Cindy is a long time friend of Bill's from when he was at West Point. Her dad was the officer/instructor assigned as the sponsor for the fencing team so he knew her whole family and spent a lot of time in their home. Cindy was about 15 years old at the time but she would practice fencing with the team and they considered her their little sister.

Her dad's last duty station was here in Vancouver so her parents retired here. We even lived just around the corner from them for awhile but didn't know it until after they had already moved. Somehow, Jonathan found out that we lived here and contacted us when Cindy and her children came up to visit from Honduras several years ago. We reconnected again about four years ago after Cindy moved here with her children in the process of divorcing her husband. Bill has really enjoyed reconnecting with her and I have enjoyed becoming closer friends with her as well over the past few years. Hearing her stories about her twenty years living in Honduras are fascinating to me. It is such a different world than we live in.

She is legally blind and has struggled to find her way--trying to find a job for over three years and trying to sort through dealing with her blindness, some cancer issues and her divorce and custody issues. But things have finally started to come together for her. She went to Lion's World in Little Rock, Arkansas about a year ago to get training to work as a blind person for the IRS. She really lucked out by getting an assignment in Portland so that she could come back here to live again. She has known Jim for several years now and they have fallen in love and decided to get married.

The marriage ceremony took place in their backyard. Cindy looked beautiful in her blue dress and it was a very nice ceremony. We haven't seen much of her or Andrea and Daniel in the last year so it was fun seeing them again. And I have seen Laura once but have never really met her so it was nice to talk to her for a little bit as well. Louise enjoyed telling our boys stories about their dad and the other cadets from when she knew him as well as some other Army life stories.

Our best wishes go out to Jim and Cindy as they start their married life together.

The Old Firehouse

They had a fireman theme at the fair this year. That is why there are fireman pictures on the layout of Chris from the barn. They had a really cool exhibit of vintage fire wagons and trucks--over 40 in all. I loved seeing all the old fire wagons from the 1800's and the shiny well restored trucks. There was even a brand new 2011 truck. The display was to honor all firemen but especially those that lost their lives on 9/11.

Last Year at Fair

Now that Chris has graduated from high school, this was his and Ranger's last year at the fair. His heart wasn't really in it this year. But he stuck with it. He debated whether he even wanted to go to fair or not but I convinced him that he might regret it someday if he didn't. He didn't do quite as well this year because of it. Plus they had a really tough judge that didn't give as many blue ribbons. Chris had already decided he wasn't going to go to state fair this year anyway but it was still a little disappointing to me that he ended on a less than good showing. So now Ranger just gets to be our pet and doesn't have to endure poking and prodding and having to sit still (not that he ever did anyway) on the fitting and showing table. I'm glad we got to experience 4H as an organization. We learned a lot more about rabbits and it was a good experience over all.

A New Beginning

Bill and I went to Kristin Guest's wedding last night. Her mother, Colleen, and I have been friends for over 15 years and during those early years, we spent time with the children as well. The last several years have consisted of being limited to just going out to dinner on our birthdays. So while I haven't known Kristin more recently, I knew her as a little girl and vicariously through my conversations with her mother. I wish her and David all the luck in the world for their future happiness.

It was nice to see Colleen. She was very happy. She and Michael looked very nice all dressed up for the occasion. Colleen is my friend that had a stroke in January. I keep hoping that she will regain more use of her right arm and to be able to have conversations with her again some day like old times.

The wedding sort of reminded me of my own wedding 25 years ago. It was a relatively small gathering-maybe a little bigger than ours, the groom is in the army and they had their reception in a community center like we did. Only a few more weeks until our anniversary. While this is a picture take in May--it is appropriate for our anniversary. We are still in "Luv in the Couv".