Weekend In Photos

I decided to document the weekend with photos for a change. :)

We got our 1 year anniversary from the baker on Friday...almost a week late, but it was free. It was delicious.

I was supposed to be studying, but found myself slightly distracted on Saturday.

Cam hung one of our IKEA lanterns outside of the backdoor. It looks super cool!

See, I was supposed to be studying 911 type codes for work....but taking pictures is more fun :)

Maisy and the "SUPER SIZED" sushi roll. Those seriously used to be at least 1/2 of that size. Thanks Petco for supersizing our dog treats.

Sweet Tia

Maisy found a piece of wood to chow on, shocking!

Tia is more interested in modeling

Candy got sweet new kicks!

She is super sassy now :)

Her old kicks were a little worn out

This is what the girls do all day long...

Tia and Maisy's new food dish that I painted for them at Polka Dot Pottery. I love it! The love it too. :)

It has been a year?!

Cam and I just recently celebrated our 1 year anniversary on August 22nd. I still can't believe that the first year went by so quickly! It has been both a whirlwind and a roller coaster. I am so thankful for having met such a wonderful man and I am proud that he is my husband. <3


We sort of celebrated our anniversary for the whole weekend, but that is okay. Right? Friday night we stayed at the Spokane Club because we had a FREE nights stay from when we purchased our membership. We had a yummy dinner at PF Changs and just hung out downtown. We were going to see a movie at AMC, but don't even get me started on the cost of two movie tickets being almost $30. Ugh. Needless, to say we skipped the movie idea.


Saturday, Cam had to work up in Chattaroy for a couple of hours so that was a bummer. That night we went to Heather and Andy's wedding on Lake CDA. It was a ton of fun! The weather held off for the most part and it was great to catch up to people that I haven't seen in a while. Heather was a beautiful bride and it was just a really neat location.


Sunday on our anniversary we started the day off at the Perry Street Cafe for breakfast. Can you say yum?! I love that place, not only because it is cheap, but the food is awesome! Later that day we had our anniversary dinner at Clinkerdagger's. They let us bring our cake topper to the restaurant so that we could have it for dessert. Dinner was amazaing, but I was nervous about the year old cake topper. It ended up tasting absolutely fantastic. The server seemed jealous that our cake was so awesome so we even left him a piece. :)

Pictures--

Thankfully I remembered to pull our cake topper out on Friday

Looks pretty good for being in the freezer for a year

Tia at the doggy spa

Maisy not thrilled about being at the dog spa

Andy and Heather

Beautiful Bride!

Cam and I at the reception

Our topper at Clinkerdaggers <3

Yard work is never ending....

Cam and I have both been so busy this summer that all of the much needed yard work got put on the back burner. Now that we each have a little bit of time and some $ to work on the yard we have been spending a lot of time outside. We are hoping that within the next year the yard will be done and at a level that we can easily maintain.

Last week Cam cut down several trees in the backyard so that we don't have so many leaves to rack up in the fall. I was sad to see them go, but I hate racking leaves. We are also having a professional come out and trim up some of our pine trees and cut down the ones that he deemed as unhealthy.

The other projects that we have been working on are sodding the area where we recently took out a flower bed and a rotten apple tree and barking all of the remaining flower beds. Most beds, we cut out holes for the flowers, but other beds we just barked. It looks so much nicer.

Here are some photos!

Cam getting ready to cut the big tree off the slate patio down

The new sod against the fence where the old apple tree and flower bed was

Bark dust in the flower beds

Tree off the slate patio is history

Replacing the entire fence

Cam also cut down the trees that you could see here

Fence off the garage/sun room is new

View from the street of the new fence

Bark dust in the large flower bed bordering the neighbors

Added a brick border

Still a lot of bark dust left to distribute

Bark dust in the flower beds on the other side of the house with brick borders, we will sod this side of the house next year with a sprinkler system

Yellowstone

At the end of July Cam and I took a summer vacay to Yellowstone. He really wanted to go camping and I didn't really want to go camping, but it all worked out and it was a lot of fun. Of course, we would leave for Yellowstone the day of the bear attacks. At least we weren't there when it happened, right?


We stayed our first night outside of Butte, MT at Fairmount Springs. They have a hot springs under the resort (I didn't get to stay at the resort :(.....) that provides for naturally warm swimming water. We spent some time at the pool after we managed to set our little tent up. Camping in 90 degree weather didn't seem like so much fun in the beginning, but then it got really cold and windy. Luckily, Cam bought me a sleeping bag. Long story, but he wasn't going to buy me one.


After we left the next morning we went white water rafting! I was petrified!!!! It ended up being a lot of fun, but the first 30 minutes I was pretty scared. I would totally do it again. I think Cam had a lot of fun too. He got the award for getting the most soaked! :)


That night we arrived at the KOA in West Yellowstone which would be our "home sweet home" for the next 2 nights. The first night we hung out in town and went shopping. The next day we went into Yellowstone. It took us 10 hours to drive through the whole park. It was beautiful and I took at least a couple hundred photos along the way.


The night there was an awful lighting/thunder storm that lasted a couple of hours. Everything got pretty wet, but luckily we were able to get everything in the Jeep before it got totally soaked. Some people camping weren't so fortunate and ended up leaving.

Here is a link to my photos from Yellowstone

http://picasaweb.google.com/tashamalcolm/YellowstoneVacay?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ7S48nYo_ijXg#

Adventures of July

It takes a lot of time to update people on your life. Good thing I am unemployed for a couple of weeks. My last day at Elements was July 26th and I start my new job as a 911 dispatcher on August 9th. Wish my lots of luck! :)


Well July all seems to be a slight blur, but I will try and catch everyone up to speed. I was slightly disappointed I couldn't spend the 4th of July in Oregon with my family, but with two trips already to Oregon in June it just wasn't possible. Cam and I decided to be adventurous so on the 4th we drove over to Montana (about a 90 minute drive) and rode our bikes down the Hiawatha Trail. I had heard of people biking it before and it sounded like a lot of fun to me. The trail is about 16 miles and takes all down hill. The first portion of the trail is 1.7mile ride through a very dark and cold tunnel. There are quite a few tunnels the rest of the way down as well. The scenery was gorgeous and we both had a lot of fun. When we got back home we took a much needed nap and then went over to Cliff Park to watch the firework display from Riverfront Park. It was okay, but nothing is better than watching fireworks in Manzanita on the beach.

At the beginning of the Hiawatha

Cam

Cam biking through one of the several tunnels

Cam biking on one of the bridges

Awesome views...This is looking down on the trail

Awe!

 On July 5th Cam and I both started the Insanity workout program. I am so not into running right now so I wouldn't something that would be fun and challenging to try. Insanity is both of those, but probably more challenging than fun. It was put out by the same manufacturer as P90x, but it uses your body as resistance and focuses on cardio. I love it and I am obsessed with it. The first day is the "Fit Test" which both Cam and I didn't do so hot on. Then you workout for two weeks and do another "Fit Test". On my second fit test I did awesome and almost doubled most of my reps from the first time. Cam isn't into as much as I am, but occassionally he will do a workout with me. I am also trying my hardest to follow their diet as much as I can so we will see what happens in 60 days! Currently, I am in my 4th week. The 5th week is recovery, followed by 4 more weeks of workouts.

This is after my 2nd Insanity Fit Test

I went to Missoula with Lindsay to watch and support her in running her first marathon the second weekend of July. It was so hot! I am glad that I didn't have to run it! I am so proud of her finishing it. Marathons are not easy, I repeat, not easy. Especially when the heat is in the 90s when you finish.  I was happy that she is already talking about doing another one.

Lindsay right before the start of the Missoula Marathon...so proud of her!

Cam went to Olympia the third weekend in July for his Uncle Brady's 50 birthday party. He said it was a lot of fun. Brady rented out a train for mystery themed dinner party. I wish I could have gone, but I didn't want to leave the girls alone when I knew we would be gone at the end of the month.

 Pictures of Tia and Maisy enjoying the nice weather outside--

Morning puppy kisses.....

I finally convinced Cam when he got back from Olympia that we had to do something with our backyard. It looked awful. The weeds were taller than me in certain places! The girls would go outside and get lost in the "jungle" of our backyard. It was getting to the point that I was going to mail out party invitations for a "White Trash Party" because at least we wouldn't have to spend money on decorations. Our yard has always looked nice, but with Cam working on two jobs he just isn't home enough to work on our own projects. We bought seem weed blocking tarp and laid it out and now we are in the process of purchasing bark dust to cover it with. We are about half way done and our yard already looks a million times better. I guess we won't be having our white trash party afterall. :)

HUGE Weeds!

 After some bark dust

The following weekend we went to Seattle with Brenda and Paul to watch the Red Sox play the Mariners. It was a fun little road trip. We hung out, did a little shopping, and watched a good game at Safeco. Cam was dying to to stop by Ikea to see if they had any stainless steel table tops. His plan was to use them as desks once the home office gets remodeled. He finally found them in the clearance section for a steal at $40 a piece. After purchasing them we all we realized that Ikea doesn't sale tie downs. They will let you use all of the twine you want to "tie down" your purchases. Just awesome. Cam and Paul finally got the tables lifted on top of the Jeep which wasn't an easy task because they were heavy. Of course, Brenda and I were "supervising" the whole time. Wink, wink. After using what seemed like the perfect amount to twine to keep the tables in place on the luggage rack we set out to find a hardware store to purchase the tie downs. Not even a block away from Ikea the tables started shifting pretty signficantly. Poor Paul was trying to hold them into place through the sunroof while the rest of us were looking for the closest hardware store, Target, or a Wal Mart. We finally found a hardware store where the purchase of tie downs cost just as much as one of our two table tops. After a close watch through the sunroof of our table tops we hit the freeway for Issaquah so we could grab some lunch. We got some funny stares at other drivers on the freeway and it made us feel a little odd, but oh well. Someone has to laugh at somebody! After lunch in Issaquah we got back on I90 and only made it a couple of miles before on the tie downs came loose and almost came flying off of the car. After an emergency stop, Cam and Paul added some more tie downs and we hit the road. Of course we were so paranoid about the table tops that the four hour drive back to Spokane included having to keep the sun roof open the entire trip with Paul holding onto the loose tie downs. It was so incredibly hot and with the sunroof open the AC didn't even help us stay cool. Trying to have a conversation was impossible when you are going 70MPH on the freeway and having to yell at eachother so that we could be heard. We did eventually make home in one piece, with two Ikea table tops. :) Of course, Paul and Brenda may never want to take a road trip with us again. Now lets see how long the table tops sit in our garage.......

Playing Tourists--

Paul & Brenda

Us

Yum...red velvet cupcakes!

Cool poster I found in a running store in Redmond

Another poster

Cam getting gas before we headed off to the game

Paul and Brenda

Having fun @ the game

Ortiz up to bat

Home run for Big Papi

Big Papi crossing Home Plate

Yummy....garlic fries

GO RED SOX!

The Seattle PD ride in style

Securing the 2 tables with twine @ Ikea

Paul holding onto the tables because they started to shift pretty bad after we left Ikea

Cam spotted a hardware store...thank goodness!

This would be above our heads in the back

Ooops. Tie Downs 1...Cam & Paul 0

Poor Paul had to hold the loose tie downs all the way home