Thursday, August 21, 2008

Walking Is Fun!

Molly, Dylan, and I went on a walk today on the path in our neighborhood. We usually run on the road, but I wanted a change of pace. The dogs like to sniff in the grass on the path, and I'm sure they liked the new scenery, too!

Here's Molly. This is about as happy as she ever looks on a walk. She usually spends half the time looking over her shoulder to see who's following us. She's a very paranoid walker!

They usually have to walk next to us on the road, but I let them walk in front of me when we go on the path. They feel like adventure dogs this way! Dylan just happily trots along. Molly keeps tabs on him while she checks over her shoulder. I think they look so cute walking next to each other!

Here's a view down the big hill at the end of the path. It goes along underneath the power lines, so you have to listen to them crackle the whole time. It was sprinkling a little off and on, so that really makes them noisy!

Dylan just loves walks! This picture is a little out of focus on his face, but it really shows how happy he was to be out exploring.

I had fun spending time with the dogs. I haven't been able to ride Jack since Sunday because he had an abcess in his left front heel. That one is finally getting better, but today he's ouchy on his right front! We think it's another abcess. So another day stuck inside for Jack, and another day of not riding my pony for me :-(

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Helloooo


That's only funny if you've heard Heidi's voice for Mt. Rainier.


Monday, August 11, 2008

Birthday Cookies

We had a surprise birthday party to go to this weekend for Kim, one of our friends from the barn. It was a barbecue but we all brought something to share. I always like having an excuse to bake, so I decided to make sugar cookies. Amazingly, I didn't have any birthday shapes in my box of 101 cookie cutters. So I did horses, dogs, and stars just for the fun of it. Ting, my riding instructor's daughter, decided to come help me decorate them. She picked the colors that we used. Not surprisingly, she chose pink, purple, and turquoise- her favorites and all, in different combinations, her cross country colors. We had fun with the frosting and sprinkles. She had never used pastry bags to decorate with frosting, but turned out to be a natural!

Here are the trays of cookies. It was boring to just do realistic colored dogs and horses, so we got creative!


Here is Ting with one of her favorites just before she at it! Everyone at the party enjoyed them, and they were quickly devoured! Guess I can't wait to make some more :-)

Friday, August 8, 2008

Photos

I'm defecting from Flikr to the (less restrictive and more free) Google version - Picasa. I've doubled the photo count and hope to double it again over the weekend. (We'll see how much it rains.) You can find it here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dlilient or its permanent location in the side-bar.

Be sure to leave comments so I know which types of photos to keep posting!

Minnesota Summer

We had a great time in Minnesota! Unfortunately, it was an unplanned trip because my grandma passed away. Fortunately, Grandma was 94 and lived an amazing life! I want to get some good pictures to post of her because she was a great grandma. My sisters and cousins and I always had such a blast at her house, so it was fun to reminisce with my huge family!

Erin, Megan, and I all participated in the service. Erin did the Bible readings, and Megan and I brought up communion. My uncle, Dan, spoke about Grandma and made us all laugh and cry. It was wonderful to be with my family!

This is most of the gang. My aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and sisters tend to make it difficult to fit us all in a camera frame! I guess it was a good thing not all the husbands and little cousins could make it. Kidding! It would have been amazing if everyone had make it, but in a big family, that's hard to do!

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center is a fun place to visit downtown. In all the time Dave and I have spent in Minnesota, we never made it down to see the famous "Betty Crocker Spoon" as my family calls it. It is actually called Spoonbridge and Cherry. Dave didn't think my self portrait skills were good enough to fit us and the sculpture in the frame, but look how talented I am? One try, baby! That is the Basilica of St. Mary in the background. Such a beautiful church!
We went to the Star Wars exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota on Sunday before the Twins baseball game we had tickets to that afternoon. My whole family loves Star Wars, (yes, we are dorks) and had fun seeing the actual costumes and props used in the movies. Here is Dave's Vader face. Are you scared yet?

The Twins won the game and moved into first place in our division, which explains the #1 on the cake. My sister, Megan is really good at decorating cakes. She used to work at Dairy Queen and learned her skills on their delicious ice cream cakes! Dave's 28th birthday is coming up on the 24th, so my family had a celebration while we were all together. We love celebrating birthdays!

As usual, there were too many things to do and not enough time while in Minnesota. Every time we go back, I'm reminded how much I love my family and it makes coming back to Seattle very hard! I love living out here, but it would be so easy to just move back and feel right at home. I'm sad that Grandma died, but she gave me one last gift of a wonderful trip back home that I wouldn't have made otherwise :-)