Morning Activities for Yesterday (before lunch):

• General ‘getting ready’ activities, such as seeing Eric off, exercise, breakfast, showering, etc.
• Watered container garden
• Wrote some
• Goofed off some
• Cleaned the living room (this involved washing baseboards, moving furniture to vacuum, dusting, washing windows, etc.)
• Rearranging furniture (since it was all out of place, I moved some of it!)

Afternoon activities for Yesterday (after lunch):

• Finish cleaning living room (including washing the handrail and wood trim on stairs and in loft)
• Putting away the cleaning stuff
• Starting laundry
• Buying a Father’s Day gift
• Target run for FD cards
• Talking to my friend Steph on the phone

Evening activities for Yesterday:

• Dinner at O’Charleys
• Stop at Lowes to buy a gc for Eric’s dad
• Go to Georgesville movie theatre to watch Ocean’s 13 (much better than 12, not quite as good as 11, a pretty good movie in all reality!)
• Drove home and went to bed with my fabulous husband!

Activities for Today and the Weekend:

• Drive to CU for a meeting at 10:00
• Drop off the Father’s Day gift to my dad since we won’t be around on Sunday
• Finish laundry and pack for the farm
• Visit the farm (leave tomorrow, return on Sunday)

I spent most of the day in Cedarville yesterday.  I had a meeting at 11:00 and worked in my office for a while.  I had lunch with my mom, and we talked for a good long time.  It’s so fun to chat with her!  I stopped briefly at Grace to drop something off to Jeff Brock and chatted with the people there for a bit, and then I went back to my office.  I had to run over to Mom’s office to change a grade, and then I headed home.

Eric and I watched a TiVo-ed episode of Good Eats when I got home (about omelets), and then we had scrambled eggs for dinner!  After supper, we worked outside.  I washed my car and then helped Eric deadhead flowers and trim bushes and such.  Then we came inside and watched MythBusters.  All in all, not a terribly exciting day, but fairly productive.

For today, I have to run some errands, mostly to get Father’s Day cards/gifts for both of our dads. We’ll be at the farm this weekend, so I want to take my dad his gift tomorrow when I’m back down in Cedarville.   And I’ll probably do some cleaning today as well.  I’m not very interesting, am I? *sigh*

Yesterday, I cleaned the kitchen.  And that is about all I got done yesterday, too.  Now I actually moved everything off the counters, used Mr. Clean and washed the counters, the table, the cabinets, the sinks, the oven, the fridge, the microwave, the baseboards, and the window sills.   So it took a bit longer than usual to do all of that!  In the afternoon, I swept and mopped the kitchen floor, too.  I love a sparkling clean kitchen (though not enough to clean it that well every time, of course!).

In the afternoon, I wrote some and read some and goofed off some.  We had sloppy joes for dinner.  Then I made banana bread.  The last few evenings, Eric and I have ended up just sitting in front of the TV for hours, and I decided I was not in the mood to do that.  So my choices were to make banana bread or wash my car.  Maybe I’ll get to the car later this week!    And best of all, without the television on, Eric and I ended up having a really good conversation.  What an idea…actually talking to my husband!  Crazy!  So overall, it was a good evening.

Today, I have to go to CU for a meeting.  And I have some work I need to do in my office as well.  Such fun…

No pictures to share today.  I guess 6 entries in a row with pictures is my new record, though!

Yesterday, I kept pretty busy.  I did a number of chores in the morning:

• I washed all the floor rugs to get the dog hair off them.
• I vacuumed the living room carpet and the couch to get the dog hair off them.
• I cleaned the kitchen up.
• I watered my container garden (I have cucumbers and zucchini sprouting now!!!  It never ceases to amaze me that the plants actually grow when I plant them!)
• I emptied the garbage and took out the newspapers and recyclables.

In the afternoon, I ran errands and talked to people.  I needed to return something to WalMart, so I did that before my meeting at church.  My friend, Ghena, called me just before my meeting, so I talked to her.  Then I had my meeting (very productive/encouraging, I thought).  Then I went to the bank and Kroger.  Eric got home shortly after I did, and I cleaned up the dog poop while he edged the yard, and then he mowed. 

We had pizza for dinner and watched TV until bedtime.  Eric has started watching the new Star Trek on the Sci-Fi channel (this show deals with the very first Enterprise spaceship), so we watched that.  Even more exciting, however, is that the Sci-Fi show, Eureka, is coming back in July.  We are very excited about that!

You know, yesterday I wore the “I my geek” shirt that Eric got me last year.  I think it was an appropriate choice for the day.

I had a very busy weekend!  On Friday night, Eric and I went up to the mall and wandered around for a bit.  We didn’t buy anything, though.  Yesterday, we went for a bike ride and did a few chores around the house, after church, of course!

The really fun day, though was Saturday – Party Day!  We had been invited to 4 parties for Saturday:
2 birthday parties, a house-warming party, and a graduation party.  We
only made two of them.  One of the birthday parties was in Cleveland,
so we didn’t make it to that one!  And I ran out of time before I got
to the graduation party because I had to return Noah to his house
before we left for our second birthday party…for Holly’s 2nd
birthday! 
For Holly’s party, we had a picnic in their backyard with
our whole family and Deb’s parents.  The girls were really great (not
one meltdown, really), but that might have been because they could run
and be loud all they wanted to since we were outside!  Some pictures from the event for your enjoyment:  First is Holly and Kelly (she was “posing” for the camera!).

Swinging was the major activity of the afternoon.  Those girls LOVE to swing!   

The presents and cake were lots of fun.  Holly isn’t nearly as into pulling off paper as Kelly is, but she loved the candles!
 

My parents bought Holly a wagon, and it was a huge hit.  When I started pulling her, she grinned and laughed.  We ended up taking two trips around the block (one with both girls, one with just Kelly), and we did a number of circles around the backyard.  At one point, Holly climbed into the wagon all by herself and announced, “Shannah, ready!”  We all laughed, and of course, I pulled her around again!
 

My life was not very interesting yesterday.   I spent most of it in front of computers.  There was a chance that I was going to have to go to CU for a meeting, so I was watching my email pretty closely.  But that meeting still hasn’t been scheduled, so I doubt I’ll feel so obligated to stay close to home today!

Other than working on various computer-based projects, I put the garbage out, watered the plants, made cookies (they turned out this time!), and made dinner.  I finished a book I’ve been reading for a while (a biography of Dolley Madison), and I watched some TV (there isn’t much on on Thursdays).  Today, I need to run a couple of small errands, and other than that, my day is pretty open. 

And now…the Final Installment of my Vacation pictures…LAS VEGAS!

Actually, this first picture is of the Hoover Dam, which I thought was really cool.  They’re building a suspension bridge beside it so that no one will be able to drive across it anymore, so I was glad we did get to actually go over it before the bridge was finished!  The second pictures is the view from our hotel room…the Sphinx’s butt!

And of course, our views of the Strip at night…

And my personal favorites…Eric was playing with the camera and got some very artistic shots!

Yesterday, I ran errands and worked a bit around the house.  I went to WalMart for my groceries and household supplies.  I got Holly’s birthday present (some new clothes…among other things, I found 2 cute little summer dresses for $3.50 each at Kohls!).  I also planted the rest of my container garden, worked on the computer, and played with Noah.  Speaking of Noah…this is what he looks like:

And even more fun, I have a rose bush blooming.  We planted them about a month ago, and here’s the first bloom!

Other than that, I can’t really think of anything terribly interesting from yesterday, so on to the pictures from our vacation.  Today…we visit the Grand Canyon!

We began on Memorial Day by driving out of Utah (YAY!!) to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  We spent the day there and then drove to Flagstaff on Monday night.  We went to the South Rim on Tuesday morning.  At 9 am, there weren’t tons of people there (very nice), but there were lots more by the time we left (about 2:00).

These three were taken at the North Rim:

These three were at the South Rim:

Here’s us with the panorama behind us:

And, what I considered to be the coolest thing at the Grand Canyon…Eric got great pictures of the condors!

Yesterday, when I got up and after I let Noah out, I sat down at my
computer to work on something.  Eric came down and left for work, and I
went back to my computer.  At about 8 am, I got up to go to the
bathroom and had an epiphany.  I had not made Eric’s coffee or lunch! 
I had totally forgotten, and even his leaving empty-handed didn’t
remind me.  Oops!  He, of course, doesn’t mind because Battelle has a
cafeteria with multiple coffee and lunch options, but still…I can’t
believe I totally forgot!

I vaccuumed my house yesterday to stay ahead of the fuzzy dog hair that
Noah leaves around.  Eric is seriously opposed to getting dog hair on
his nice clothes, which I totally understand.  But I think we can
manage to keep the clothes “safe” for one week!  I also took Noah on a
walk and worked on my computer.  I actually did work yesterday for
classes and the fall.  And I finally updated our small group website
for the summer’s activities. 

Today, I am going to run errands, I think: get some groceries, drop off
the recyclables, maybe look for Holly’s birthday present.  Sadly, I
will also need to make cookies again today, I think, since the cookies
I made the other day do not taste right.  I can’t figure out what I
did, but they are not very good.    Oh well…that gives me something to do, I guess!

Anyway, here’s part 3 of our vacation (this one is shorter!).

Memorial Day weekend was spent at Bryce Canyon and Zion National
Parks.  We started in Bryce on Friday night and finished on Saturday
morning, and then we drove to Zion, found a place to stay, and visited
Zion on Sunday.  Bryce is pretty small, so there wasn’t much to see. 
It was 95 degrees when we were in Zion, so we ran out of energy pretty
fast.  And by this time in our trip, we were getting a bit bored by the rocks…so, the best part of both of these parks is the return of
trees.  There’s more water in this corner of Utah, so there was more
vegetation.  Not lots, mind you…but definitely more!

Here’s Bryce Canyon.  Notice the raven.  He was huge!  And, though the signs telling you to leave the wildlife alone were posted in MULTIPLE foreign languages, people were still feeding and bothering the animals. Stupid people!

By the way, these rock formations are called Hoodoos.

And here’s Zion NP.  These peaks all have “religious” sounding names because the Mormons were the first white people through here.  First is the Pulpit and the Altar.  The next are two of the three Patriarchs (Abraham and Isaac, I think.  There is a peak named for Jacob, but it was to the right of the shot).  Then a couple of other views we saw.

Yesterday, I hung around the house with Noah for the most part.  I took him on a walk in the morning.  For as big of a dog as he is, I was surprised how fast he walked!  And when he slowed down, he walked right beside me.  I never had to drag him, and I never had to clean up doggy-poop.  Yippee!

During the day, I cleaned up a little bit, put some travel stuff away, started the dishwasher, made cookies, planted some seedlings we had started, and spent most of the day working on the script for this year’s Christmas program.  I am aware that it’s June, but we actually do best to start this soon (or even a bit before).  This morning, I edited through my rewrite, and then emailed it off to be read by someone else.  We’ll see what they think of it!

Now on to pictures!

“What I did on my summer vacation: Part 2”

On Thursday of our trip, we drove into Canyonlands National Park.  This park has 3 sections and no way to access all three from a single entrance.  So we drove 70 miles to the southern entrance (called The Needles) and hiked.  The first picture illustrates where the name, Needles, came from!  The rest are pictures from the hike we took (about 6 miles, total).

On our way out of the Needles section, we took this picture of Wooden Shoe Arch.  They do a great job naming their rocks!

In the evening, we drove through the northern section of Canyonlands NP, called Island in the Sky.  Notice all the canyons.

On Friday morning, we got up and drove from Moab to Bryce Canyon NP.  The first and last are pictures of the drive and the middle two are of Capitol Reef National Park (which we only drove through…it’s not a very interesting park).  The petroglyphs (rock carvings) were pretty much the most interesting part. 

Tomorrow…into Bryce Canyon National Park!

It is SOOO good to be home!

That’s what I kept thinking all weekend long.  It was a great feeling to wake up in our bed in our house.  Ahhhhh!
The weekend was not terribly exciting, though (thankfully!).  We both just goofed off on Saturday.  I can’t even remember what we did.  Oh no…wait…yes I can.  We did very little until about 5:00 when we met my parents for dinner at a Chinese restaurant on the east side (Hunan House).  We had a good time just laughing and hanging out with them.  We watched Oceans 11 when we got home…Vegas seems to create a desire to see that movie!

We’re dog-sitting again (for a friend, not for Karen), so we have a big fluffy mutt named Noah hanging around with us for the week.  I picked him up on Friday, and he’ll stay until next weekend.  He’s not a very rambunctious dog. He’s mostly laid in front of the front door staring out through the glass at the neighbors.  I think he’s settling in a bit more now, though, because he finally ate something (yesterday) and he’s started to “talk” at us when he wants something.  Of course, I have no idea what his whining/noises mean…but that’s okay!

I thought I’d do more pics from our trip for you this week…now that I have time to really find good ones to show you.  So today will include the pics from our driving and our first national park.  Enjoy!

We begin with out entrance into Utah.  Colorado wasn’t very exciting (except for the snowstorm in the mountains), so here’s what Utah looked like from our car.  As you can see…it’s long, flat and boring!

We took a scenic road to get to Moab, where we stayed from Tuesday to Friday morning.  It was evening here.

On Wednesday morning, we went to Arches National Park.  You saw a couple of shots from there last week, but here’s the entrance sign and some of the shots I took from the car as we drove into the park.

Next we took a 6-ish mile hike to see the various arches.  This first one is called Landscape Arch.  The second picture is the view from that bridge that I had trouble getting over.  Eric loved the view…crazy man!

And finally, some random other pics for you to enjoy!