Santa Cruz

Visiting Chris and Da must be what it's like to come to our house. Minus the good eats. So much fun. Such cute kids.

Santa Cruz Boardwalk

Family nite is Dollar nite at the boardwalk. I love me a cotton candy and bumper cars with a little wooden roller coaster thrown in. Thanks for the fun, Chris and Da.

Crater Lake

We drove up to Crater Lake last week on one of our days off. There was a lot of snow left from a wet Spring. This was the first time I ever took the trail down to the lake. G and J jumped off a small cliff. Bryce, Kaylynn, Mim, and I all swam in the coldie lake.

Watson Falls

On our day off, we also hiked to Watson Falls and Toketee Falls. So beautiful. I grew up here, but didn't really appreciate it until I married Jesse. I love exploring my hometown with him because it's such a cooler place than the one I grew up in.

Finally, Some Yosemite

Better late than never. Yosemite was AWESOME!Giant Sequoia.



T-man.

Climbing and hiking.
Beautiful views. Waterfalls and rivers.
A herd of cousins.
Dirty and hot. So many babies. Surprisingly good sleep. Great stories at night. Yummy food. Still thinking about that breakfast sandwich.

New Look

Nothing like some vacation time to get me to do a little blog design update. I still need to work on a new header, but that will have to wait for later. So, what do you think? I'm not sure about the rounded corners.

Wildlife Safari

I remember going to Wildlife Safari when I was a kid. There are pictures of me feeding the goats when I was Mermaid's age. Usually the animals hang out in the shade far from the car. This time, the weather was cool in the morning so they were walking around or sitting by the road.

Family Reunion

Watch out Oregon! We're all back for the week! The kids are running wild. The parents are staying up late talking. This is going to be an awesome week!(J's here this time, he just took the picture)

A little update

I'm supposed to be helping J cut boards for shelves in my mom's garage. Every year he comes, he takes it upon himself to organize the garage. And every year, he makes it a little bit better. Instead of complaining that he's bored (that's my job), he MAKES work for himself. How can you not love the guy?

The Palmer family reunion to Yosemite was funtastic. I'll try to add some pictures, but I'm scared of my mom's pc. J's laptop died, so we are w/o our own computer until mid-August. Just writing that makes me want to run to the Mac store and buy something.

The kids are in cousin heaven. It is so fun to see them play, interact, negotiate.

And now I'm going to help my husband help my mom. Table saws make me nervous.

Indiana, Where People Are SO Nice

Our trip to Indiana was. . . not bad. I mean, moving is never a dreamy proposition. And we had tons of help from our friends in Maine (where people are also SO Nice.)

We're wondering if we can put the ticket I got for driving on the Merritt Parkway in the moving truck under our moving expenses. (FYI, a moving truck IS a commercial vehicle. In NY, they know that idjits like me exist, so the signs only allow passenger vehicles.)

Indiana is full of Really Nice People. The kids were enchanted. So many people giving them so much candy. We found a place to live. YEAH! 10 month lease. YEAH! No dishwasher. Booo. Backyard. Yeah! And Mermaid made it into the GT program. Yeah!

We spent 72 hours in Indiana. Accomplished everything we needed to. I think we're going to like it there. (and people continue to be so nice. they're letting us crash at their house while we wait for our house to open up.)