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As promised, this it the new stain glass window my mom made Eric and I. All I can say is, I LOVE IT!!! This is in the guest bathroom upstairs and the window faces out to the street so you can see the light house, etc from outside too. Love that. It’s also cool too that the land and less opaque glass goes up half way so you don’t have to worry about flashing the neighbors. I love, love this window. It goes great in the bathroom which is sort of a coast, beach theme.

This weekend we’re up in Washington. We’re really here for the Jazz and Wine festival in Ellensburg and to visit with family. Last night we drove through the night to Othello and got there about midnight. I was so surprised to see my mother, who is the sort of person in bed at 10pm, up and waiting for us. She rocks!!!

So we get in, go to bed and get up this morning. It was a great morning. We all sat out on the back porch sipping coffee and talking about things. I can’t remember what we were talking about but being there with Eric, my mom and brother was really nice.

One of the reasons we were there in Othello first was because I needed my mom’s help and advice in sewing my very good friend, Natalie’s, wedding dress. It sounds all complicated but it’s not a typical wedding dress and is made up of about 5 pieces. so nothing too hard but still a challenge. So my mom, gotta love her, helped me with the dress today. It was really nice working on it and asking her advice and us getting a long the whole time. It’s nice when we can do that. Sometimes we try and we end up butting heads and it’s not a fun experience but today, today was different and really nice. My mom is so cool that when it came to putting in the zipper, a “blind” zipper which I’ve never done, my mom did the whole thing. I was so happy she did that and thankful because that was the part I was really worried about messing up. SO here’s a shout out to my mom, because I’m not sure she knew how thankful I was for her help and advice.

MOM…. THANKS A MILLION TIMES FOR YOUR HELP TODAY! I DON”T THINK I COULD HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU. THANKS FOR BEING THE GREATEST MOM EVER!!!
Love your daughter

I should have written this on Sunday but by the time Eric and I got home, 9:30pm I just couldn’t do it. Here’s the story of our LONG LONG Sunday drive. My mom called earlier in the week to let me know that she was going to be in Lincoln City, OR on Sunday through Tuesday. She asked if Eric and I wanted to, we could come to the beach and visit on Sunday. So that was our plan. we’d get up Sunday morning, drive the 2 1/2 hours to Lincoln City, see my mom, Israel, Penny and the 4 kids and Sophia. We got up early on Sunday, OK 8:30, but that’s early for Eric, Mr. I hate mornings. So we’re in the car and we stop at Coffee People for some espresso fuel and think we’ll get something to eat while we’re there. Of course the one we stop at doesn’t have food and the guys were so slow it took forever, last time we walk up instead of using the drive thru. Finally we get in the car and drive. We’re listening to music looking at the landscape, talking about where we’d like to build, what’s important to us.. yada..yada.. yada. We’re making really good time and thinking we’ll be there before the parade at noon when…. we hit a brick wall, not really but figuratively. All of the sudden, when we’re something like 30 miles from Lincoln City the traffic is bumper to bumper and not moving. So we sit, and wait… and wait.. and a County Mountie comes by to tell us the road will be close for about an hour. Apparently some woman decided she needed to drive too fast, hit another truck and they hit two motorcycles. Needless to say the two drives of the motorcycles were dead on the scene and the passenger of one of the motorcycles was Life Flighted to the hospital, of course the woman that caused the accident wasn’t hurt. They were wondering if alcohol was involved at all because supposedly she came from the casino. So we sit there wondering if we should turn around or not. It was sometime then that I called my mom to tell them we were stuck in traffic and i didn’t know when/if we’d be there. She told me she was in the same traffic. i guess they were about a mile ahead of us or something. The bad thing for her was that the four kids were in the car with her and they’d all been there for over an hour so the kids weren’t happy. After a lot of hemming and hawing and trying to decided what to do, we turned around. The funny, or not so funny thing was once we turned around a bunch of people that had turned with us turned back around again because supposedly there was an accident the other way. of course there were no officers there to direct traffic and tell us what was going on. Mom and I were standing on the road talking about it all when suddenly the cars started going so mom and I jumped in with Eric and drove down to Dallas and at some point we pulled over for something to eat, quick just in a mini-mart. I had felt so bad, Eric was STARVING and was sort of irritated that we didn’t go back to McMinville and eat. If we had, I’m sure he and I wouldn’t have gone to Lincoln City but by the time we knew that wasn’ happening we just decided to go with the flow for the day. Then we were off to Newport and then Lincoln City. What was supposed to take 2 1/2 hours took more than 6 hours. I mean we could have almost driven to Othello and back. What a crazy day. We did get to go to the beach with the kids and took some rad pictures. I’ll post those tonight when I’m at home. We ended up staying in Lincoln City for a few hours, went to eat and then headed home. It was about 9:30 by the time we got home. What a long day, all because some idiot had to drive too fast.

I’ve been scrapping a lot this weekend.  I finally got the last pages of our wedding album done.  Ok, well they’re not TOTALLY done, I mean the pictures are on the pages and everything, I just have to add the journaling and fun stuff.  I got something like 12 pages done today.  I was on a roll for sure.  Now it’s on to things in 2005 once I finish the journaling and then update something in the 2004 album.  I’ll be so glad when I actually get all caught up.  I was at Target the other day and found a great leather album with “Family” sewn on the front.  It’s a great looking album.  I’ve got a project in mind for that album already.  I’m going to do all black and white pictures with minimal embellishments.

Here’s today’s picture.

This is a great picture.  It’s of my mom.  I’m not sure how old she is or where it’s taken but I love it.  I love the scarf on her head and the smile on her face.  She looks so happy.  I’ll have to ask mom what the story is about this picture.  You know, looking at it got me thinking about my pictures when I was young.  We look at these old kinds of pictures and have a laugh at how tattered and washed out they are and how “basic” the cameras were.  Now a days cameras are so much better, makes me wonder, in 20 years what will pictures and cameras look like.  Do you have an old picture?  What does it say about you?