Recent Pictures

On Tuesday we had our last cub scout activity before the boys go to Cub scout day camp. (thank goodness I wasn't asked to attend). To celebrate a successful year of cub scouttery and because all of our remaining wolf boys have summer birthdays, we had a cub scout birthday party. We made chocolate mint brownies with whipped cream, and played games. We ignored the sign in the church kitchen about only warming and re-heating foods, and had a blast. As the nazi den leader, I made sure the boys washed their hands and followed the directions. Part way through, one of the boys cracked open the egg, and out spilled two yolks! This was fascinating to see, and the boys loved talking about the twin chicks that might have been.

Sadly, this is the only picture of the brownies, but they were delicious. The boys saw to it that there weren't any extras to bring home.

Also, I'm sure some of you think I'm a bit obsessed with my cats...but you can skip the rest of this post. For the rest of you, who care to indulge me...This was what Wesley got to do on Sunday morning.

We got clearance pet Halloween costumes last fall, and we made the cats try them on. Wesley was more tolerant than Skipper, but neither cat really enjoyed it. Also, whenever I take pictures of Wesley indoors, he gets major red eye. Because I have no photo editing skills whatsoever, I tried to spray paint over the red-eye in a paint document....Any photo editing tips/advice are welcome!

Skipper, looking thoroughly pissed off.

He does make a cute pirate.

I guess that's about all for this post. Hopefully I'll stumble over something a little more post worthy this weekend to give you a break from the crazy cat lady side of me.

Graduation

On the off chance that you may have been getting bored with my little garden updates, I figured I'd share pictures from my day today.

Today I went to work at 7:30. We're doing a summer flex schedule, so I come in a little early each day, take a half an hour lunch, and get an extra day off every other week. I'm excited because tomorrow's my day. I have big plans to visit my favorite baby and kick it in Fircrest with Mike and Cindy!

Anyway, after a long day at work in my extra hot office, I got to go to dinner with my family to celebrate my sister's graduation from high school. I then got to return to Saint Martin's and sit in a stuffy pavilion while hundreds of students were celebrated. I think we were all ready to bolt after the 50th round of Pomp and Circumstance...I really should find that song and attach it to this post. That way you don't have to be jealous that I got to sit through an hour of it. I was assuming this would be the second to last graduation I'd have to attend, because my youngest brother is the only one left now. I was informed after sitting through this one that the exchange student my parents will be hosting next year will also be graduating next June. I think I'm going to be better prepared next time with a Slurpee in one hand and a noise maker in the other. Because really, who wants to clap when there are so many other fun noises to choose from.

The real fun started after graduation ended and we got to take pictures!
My favorite thing was to make Rachel pose with me!

The whole family and Rachel's best friend Holly. (After almost posting this, I just realized this is not the whole family. Nathan will return from his mission in three weeks...is it normal to totally space that I have another sibling, he's just been gone for two years...?)

Proud parents. Three down, one to go.

Lots of picture taking going down.

A brief (and relatively rare) moment of satisfaction about my employment with Saint Martin's. If only I'd realized beforehand that there was reserved parking right out front. I'm sure the walk from the regular employee lot was good though since I skipped the gym in order to make it to these festivities.

Can you believe it?

I took these pictures on Friday morning, so it had only been a week, but look at how much my basil has grown!

It's crazy, and I almost feel like if I sat still long enough, I'd be able to see it grow, and watch new leaves pop out of nowhere. The other little herbs are still growing, but this basil is by far the most impressive!

The New Adventures of Wesley the Cat.

Last weekend we went up to visit Daniel's parents in Gig Harbor. His dad has a project boat, and needed Daniel's help with a couple things. It was a long hot day on Friday, so it was nice to hop in the car with the air conditioning going. We headed over the bridge right around sunset, and it was gorgeous.

We don't usually bring Wesley with us when we go up because he hates the car ride, specifically his carrier. We dragged him along this time with the promise of outside time. So Saturday morning, while Daniel was being helpful and working on the boat, I ventured out to enjoy the glorious morning sunshine.

I've always been a morning person, and beautiful summer mornings are my favorite. The air always feels so crisp and fresh...and I imagine the grass is tastier. Wesley seemed to enjoy it. He got to be an outside cat for the day, and we had a backyard to enjoy the gorgeous weather. Saturday afternoon we did get to see "Up" which was a fabulous movie. I loved it.

We finished up with an evening barbecuing fillet Mignon. Wesley couldn't quite handle the delicious smell of fresh meat, and he begged and begged for some.

"please nanna please, just a small taste"

Wesley was fairly persistent with his begging, and made his point all over her black pants. Good thing for lint rollers!

He was happy after dinner when we fed him some of the left overs. He's definitely one spoiled cat...after all, what kind of cat gets left over Fillet Mignon?

My Garden

I live in an apartment, and it meets my needs just fine. I look forward to owning a home, but I'm happy making the best of what I've got. One thing that isn't really practical about living in an apartment is having a garden, so leave it to my mother-in-law, to give me an apartment garden (for my birthday). I know this isn't technically what it's called, but let me introduce to you, my AeroGarden:

Picture from aerogrow.com

So far my Basil is growing the most.

We only planted our garden 2 weeks ago, so I'm really impressed with how quickly things have started sprouting and growing. It'll still be a few weeks till it's ready go use use, but it has been so easy to care for. Yesterday was the first time it asked for more water and nutrients. All that involved, was pouring water into the garden, and emptying two little nutrient tablets into it. This garden lets you know exactly what it needs, and the lights are on a schedule, so there's no forgetting to turn it on or off. This is really my kind of contraption. Our garden came with an herb kit, and I'm sure I'll love cooking with fresh herbs during the summer and fall. But when it's time to replant, you'd better believe I'm going to do strawberries. I can't think of anything better than having a garden full of fresh strawberries in the middle of winter.

The Midas Touch

A long time ago, there lived a man, and whatever he touched, turned to gold. King Midas is now famous for that, and the phrase "the Midas touch" is now well known.

I seem to have just the opposite problem. Especially when it comes to electronics.

Examples:

1. My first laptop was stolen a few years ago. When Daniel and I were engaged, he did a medical study for money. He had to stay in the medical center for a week, without many of his personal belongings, so I figured he could use my laptop to keep him company. Even though they had security cameras monitoring the rooms, and everyone who came in and out of the building, there was "no way to recover it". Yeah...it sounds sketchy to me too.
2. My replacement laptop worked just fine until the power cord stopped working. To solve that, we were able to find an older, but compatible power cord to solve the problem.
3. Shortly after the replacement power cord came along, one of the memory sticks gave out.
4. We have since upgraded the memory, but the replacement power cord is dead. I'm dreading paying full price for a power cord, so until I decided to drop $100, I charge my laptop at my parents house once a week when we're over there on Sunday evenings. Then I hope it lasts the rest of the week.
5. For Christmas 2 years ago, my wonderful mother in-law got me a Chi hair straightener that I'd been wishing for. It was great, and I loved it. For about the first two months. Then all of a sudden it stopped working. There was no warranty on it, so I had to pay to have it serviced. It's now in working order, but doesn't it seem like 2 months is a pretty short lifespan for something like that?
6. I got a new camera last fall. The very first picture I took, the flash popped up, and wouldn't go back down. Thankfully Costco has the best return policy, so I was able to return the camera. I did however have to wait till Christmas for my new one (and thankfully, so far, no problems with it).
7. 10 days before Christmas, Daniel and I got our first cell phone plan. A few days after Christmas, I was running an errand for my mom, and my poor new cell phone fell out of my pocket and into a puddle of melted snow. It's little screen was glowing ominously from the bottom of the puddle, but there was no restoring it. Since I had only had my phone for two weeks, I was still within the period of time to sign up for insurance. Thankfully, they let me sign up, and I was able to get a replacement phone.
8. Last September, I got a sweet little mp3 player from woot! It has worked very well, and I've loved it. Until Thursday. I took it out of my purse to connect to my speakers at work, and all I could hear was ticking. This is unfortunate, since it's still pretty new, but especially because I've been on a good gym schedule, thanks in a large part to my mp3 player. This morning when I grabbed my gym bag, I had the quick foresight to transfer the micro sd card from my mp3 player to my cell phone. I even grabbed the special connector headphones so I can use them at the gym tonight.
9. Now imagine my disappointment when I tried out the music player on my phone earlier, to find that only one of the ear buds works on my headphones. These aren't the typical audio jack headphones either...they had a special plug that isn't readily available. I suppose I should just be grateful that I have one working ear bud, but it's getting old.

I don't write this for pitty...I'll get by with one working earphone...I just want to know if anybody else has this kind of problem, or if it's just me. I have a feeling I'm not the only one, and the underlying cause just might be that electronics are made cheaper and cheaper, with the intent that consumers will buy things more often.

What's your opinion, am I a wrecking machine, or is it a well delivered scam from corporate America?

three more.

I love this picture. I'm glad Stephen bought a copy...I don't know if I would have spent $20.00 on it, but I'm glad he did

This one is somewhat embarrassing. This was the first time we went on this ride, and Daniel was a complete natural. I wasn't. I wish I could say I really improved the second time we rode it...but sadly that is not the case.

You might notice I'm ranked 93rd though...not too shabby...unless you consider this picture was taken during a magic morning, one hour before the park was totally open...

I have more pictures from my in-laws that I'll post, but the weather is gorgeous, and I'm booked the rest of the day. Happy Memorial Day to all...and also, happy birthday to my beautiful mother!

As Promised...

So here we go! These Disneyland pictures are all from my camera. Hopefully after this weekend, I'll be able to get pictures from my in-laws. I'm hoping they took more pictures than I did, because even though I carried my camera everywhere, I didn't always pull it out when I should have.

Tom (Daniel's Dad), Daniel, Me, and Daniel's brother Stephen

This picture is the first day at Disneyland on the tram on the way into the park. Daniel's mom made us matching "Guglielmo Family Vacation" t-shirts. We all humored her that first day and wore them. And since the poll results were inconclusive regarding the fanny pack issue, I decided to give both options a try. The first two days I sported an awesome fanny pack and loved the hands free convenience. It was also useful because I had burnt my shoulders the very first day we in the pool. So my purse wouldn't have been kind to a fresh burn.

I discovered my camera had a neat firework setting. I played around with it during the fireworks show the first night and had a lot of fun.

I'm pretty sure that Pirates of the Caribbean might be my favorite ride. I loved it especially because we never had to wait more than 10 minutes to get on it, and a couple of times we walked right on and the boats were waiting for us. That was pretty much the story of our trip though. The lines were all really short and we were able to use fast passes to beat the crowds on the weekend. I think the longest we had to wait for any one ride was half an hour for the California Adventure Ferris Wheel. We got in a swinging gondola, and it was neat to be that high over the park, and all of a sudden start swinging unpredictably.

Dead Men Tell No Tales
Not so flattering self portrait on King Arthur's Carousel
We all went on the Jungle Cruise together, and because of the matching shirts with Guglielmo clearly spelled out, we were suddenly incorporated into the story told by the skipper.

dinosaur bones on Thunder Mountain

We took our niece on this ride, and amazingly she loved it. She may be only a 3 year old, but she did awesome on the roller coasters. She also loved the Matterhorn.

Resident Ducks who finished off Stephen's $17 breakfast.

We pent a surprising amount of time feeding the ducks at Disneyland. The deal that we got was five days for the price of three. Because the park was so empty, it felt like after the first three days, we had already done everything we'd wanted to at least twice, maybe three times, so days 4 and 5 were spent taking things a little slower. Thus, the ducks.

I always loved Pooh Bear when I was little, so I was really happy they made a Winnie the Pooh Ride. It was a little psychedelic during the hephalumps and woozels sequence, but overall, it was a great kids ride. I also got mauled by a tigger on the way down the hill from Critter Country. I was walking with Daniel and Stephen, when all of a sudden from behind me, I was getting bounced and patted by a big fuzzy neon orange tigger. It happened so fast and unexpectedly that nobody got any pictures, but it happened!

The hotel pool from our window

Sad to be packing up and going home!

We had a late flight on the 13th, so we drove out to Huntington Beach before we went to the air port. It was a nice beach, and we must have been at the dog area, because there were a bunch of cute dogs playing in the water and chasing each other along the shore.

I only got into the water up to my mid calf's, but it was refreshing, and not nearly as cold as the Washington beaches. I still prefer the ocean in Hawaii, but I love a good beach anywhere. I wish we'd had more time and beach equipment, because I would have loved to play there all day.

Daniel and Emma playing at the beach. Getting some last minute wiggles out before we got on the plane.

I can't wait to have kids. I know Daniel's going to be such a good dad. He adores Emma, and is so good with her!

I love Palm Trees. I'm certain I could live in southern California and be a very happy person. I love the sun and warmth, and ocean.

I also loved this purple tree that was growing near the airport. I don't know what type of tree it is, but it was gorgeous!

Waiting at the airport. The Long Beach airport was really small, and had a nice outside waiting area where we got our last does of California sunshine before we had to get on the plane and come back to the rain.

Love the scenery!

Stephen is such a weirdo. But we loved having him there. He made people watching very enjoyable. And even though the lines were short, there was still a lot of people watching to be taken care of. He also went on all the scary rides with me. Daniel didn't want to go on Tower of Terror, or the Maliboomer, so Stephen and I did those by ourselves. I may have screemed like a girl and felt nauseous the rest of the afternoon, but it was fun to try rides like that.

We also rode California Screamin' and Space Mountain so many times we knew exactly when to make faces for the camera. The last time we rode Space Mountain, Stephen bought a picture. I'll try and scan it, because our poses, (mostly Stephen's) are priceless. His last pose involved taking off his shoe during the ride, posing with it for the picture, and having it back on his foot when we got off. I've got to hand it to him, that must have taken serious skills.

I'm so glad I got to go on vacation. It was just what I needed. And after having been back at work for a week now, I'm sad that vacations have to end. However, all good things do end, but, I've got other things to look forward to, and life is good.

A conversation about blogging.

Yesterday Daniel asked me about my 'webpage'. I think if he calls it a webpage instead of a blog, it makes it ok for him. For some unknown reason, he thinks 'blogs' are silly.

Anyway, he asked me how often I post. In return, I promptly asked him if he ever reads my blog. He said no. Which is fine. I don't mind that he doesn't read it, and it doesn't surprise me. He then suggested that I should post every day, and he wanted to know why I don't post more regularly.

I explained that I don't always have a lot to say, and that I do most of my blogging at work (I know, I know...) where I don't have access to my pictures, and most people seem to think that a blog without pictures is hardly worth a visit.

Thus, why I haven't posted about my fabulous trip to California, which happened over a week ago. I did take pictures, and I did have a wonderful time, but I kept waiting to get more pictures from my in-laws, who still happen to be in California. So I wait...when I really ought to just jump right on in and post. Even if it's without pictures.

So to hold you over until an actual picture post and Disneyland narrative (maybe tonight!?), here's something to enjoy!

Day one, walking down main street!