My Latest Creations

Sorry if this bores any of you!  Since I'm so new at this digital scrapbooking thing, I get really excited and want to show my pages off!  Again, they aren't great, but it's a work in progress...

Spring Flowers

I just love it when the flowers start blooming in the springtime. One of my favorite flowers has to be the tulip.  I was so excited last fall when I planted a ton of tulip bulbs in our front yard, in our old house.  Then we deciced we were going to be moving, and one of the first things I thought of was the fact that I had just planted those bulbs and now, chances are, I won't see them bloom!  WELL, that's exactly what happened.  We moved in February to our new house and left those tulips behind.  Thank goodness for wonderful friends though!  Soon after we moved into our house one of my best friends, Heidi, brought me little one inch tulips, that hadn't even began to sprout yet.  They had a long way to go, but with some TLC, would be big and beautiful.  I was so happy to have some tulips to plant and looked forward to spring to see how they grew!  Sure enough, they are turning out wonderful and look fantastic!  I only have a few, but it's enough to bring a smile on my face.  This fall will be so fun planting more of them!

Cute Parker

I took these pictures of Parker the other day and thought they were too cute not to share.  He can have quite the personality and can give you some great smiles when he wants to.  He loves to hang out on the living room couches lately, so maybe that's why he's so happy...I'm letting him do what he wants!  Anyway, here's our BIG boy! 

OK Go

We had the our friends, the Feelys, over for steak dinner last night (we told Ben we would treat him to some steak since he rescued Cinders out of a tree a couple of weeks ago.) After dinner, I told Ben that he needed to go downstairs and try out Guitar Hero III. He really liked it...a lot. Enough so that we hopped in the car and went down to Fry's Electronics and he bought Rock Band for his PlayStation 3. For those that don't know, Rock Band, like Guitar Hero is a game that comes with a guitar controller, but it also has a drum set and a microphone. You can buy a second guitar and use it as a bass. Essentially, you can have a 4-piece band rocking out to some truly great songs. It is a lot of fun.

The main reason I write this post, is because one of the songs you can play in the game is "Here It Goes Again" by a band named OK Go. I've heard the song many times before and remembered I had seen their music video online a year or two ago. Needless to say, it is really funny/inovative. I'm sure you've probably seen it before, but I have to post it.

Note: This is their official music video, not just a bunch of random guys.

Cinders: Our Problem Cat...

We have this cat named, Cinders, who pretty much drives me crazy ALL of the time.  From the day we brought her home, she's been running around like a phyco kitty and making me want to scream, daily.  Well, since we've moved into our new house she's calmed down a lot and finally likes to be outside (before she was terrified of the outdoors) and get all her craziness out of her system there.  So, all is good with that part. Now, we have a new problem...I don't know if it's a problem with Jeremy, but it is with me.  She's become a GREAT hunter and is always seeking out little animals (mice & moles), which is fine and dandy, except now she's wanting to share her findings with us by bringing them in the house! In the past 4 days, she's brought 4 dead or half dead rodents into our house!!!!!  The latest one was about an hour ago and is what brought me to our computer to vent out my frustrations about his whole matter.  When she comes to the back door with her treats, we see that she has it and of course, we don't let her in the house.  She's become very sneaky though and waits until we open the front door and darts in as fast as possible and brings her little friend with her.  Very nasty, gross, disgusting...you get the picture.  It just makes me want to cringe!  Well, that's the latest of our problems.  We have to always be on the lookout for our hunter cat now, making sure she doesn't get in the house with an extra body!!! (Sorry if this grosses anyone out!)

Seaside & Cannon Beach, OR

  

View from Ecola State Park

We took a much needed mini vacation this past weekend to the Oregon coast.  It was very spontanious and unexpected, but so worth it!  We decided to go back to a favorite area of ours, the Seaside/Cannon Beach area (which Jeremy just posted about our last trip there and the fun we had finding Goonies stuff!). We left on friday night and spent until sunday afternoon playing in the sand, eating, and shopping.  We stayed in a cute little hotel that kinda had a cabin feel to it.  It had two bedrooms and a kitchen, which was very nice with the kids around.   The weather was amazing and everything was beautiful!  We saw some wildlife, including a whale (it's back and spout of water) and a bald eagle.  We also saw some starfish and lots of birds.  It was a great getaway that we all enjoyed so much!  I tried to narrow down the pictures to only a few, but I liked so many of them, I stopped counting.  Sorry there's so many!

These pictures are all at Seaside.  It was a beautiful day!

 











Here we are at the famous Haystack at Cannon Beach. The tide was down so we were able to do some exploring in the rocks and find creatures!







This is the view from a lookout at Ecola State Park, just down from and overlooking Cannon Beach. 







This is back in Seaside on a carousel we rode in one of their little shopping centers.





Seaside sunset...gorgeous.

My Favorite Movie - The Goonies

We took a family trip this weekend to the Oregon coast and I had time to think about my favorite movie, The Goonies, which conveniently was filmed on the Oregon coast. Though these pictures are from last year's trip, we were able to visit most of the same sites this year...I'm sure Monique will post those pics shortly. What you see below are screenshots from the movie and following each of them are the corresponding pictures we took that kind-of match the movie. It was pretty fun finding the locations. Enjoy! County Jail - Astoria, OR

The county jail was closed to the public but had a nice sign on it saying that we could stand in front and take as many pictures as we would like.

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Data's House - Astoria, OR

Data and Mikey's houses were right next to each other. They were on top of a little hill that overlooks the Columbia River. There was a sign at the bottom of the driveway that said feel free to take pictures in front of the house, but not to drive up there. I still felt strange intruding on these people's properties and chickened out going too far up the driveway (there was a guy sitting on his porch just watching us, so that didn't make me feel any more confortable.)

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Mikey and Brand's house - Astoria, OR

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Historical Society (Flavel House Museum) - Astoria, OR

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Road to restaurant (Road to Ecola State Park) - Cannon Beach, OR

I'm pretty sure that I took this picture at the right spot. This was 23 years after filming the movie, so things were a bit overgrown.

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Restaurant field (Ecola State Park) - Cannon Beach, OR

Monique sure is beautiful!

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Restaurant (Ecola State Park) - Cannon Beach, OR

I look like an idiot in these pictures...sorry about that. Anyways, if you look behind me, that is where they built the restaurant set for the movie. If you look close enough, you can see a tree stump that is overgrown with various foliage, you can see the same stump in the movie (behind the car.) Cool huh?

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Restaurant field (Ecola State Park) - Cannon Beach, OR

I just shot this picture of Samantha for fun, but when I got home I realized that it was in the exact location as this clip in the movie.