Garden 'Monsters'

I realize spiders are good and supposedly a gardener's friend -- but that doesn't mean I like coming across them when I'm on my hand and knees in the dirt! Look at the size of this one - and it's on my SHOVEL, not my trowel!

I looked it up online and I think it was a female trap/folding door spider. I about had a fit when I saw it moving next to my hand. I started screaming for Thor to come over - i'm sure the neighbors thought we were having an emergency (which, from my perspective it kind of WAS an emergency - the dang thing was huge! hah hah) I can't find much information on this type of spider online - but I'm at work anyways, so best not to spend the whole day researching spider species. =)

Sarai in her Sweater!

Awhile back I finished knitting this sweater for my friend, Merriah's, daughter Sarai. I thought I'd lost these pictures of Sarai in her sweater, but I just found them - isn't she sweet!? And you can see how nice and deep the hood is on this sweater - it's perfect for large baby noggins!

Audrey & Alex!

Audrey & Alex came to visit OVER A MONTH AGO on their tea shop tour of the Northwest - and I am just now getting around to throwing up this picture (I should note that 'just now' is actually April 16 since the date of the post only reflects when I loaded the picture into a draft post). Terrible! I should make it my Q2 2010 goal to be a more timely blogger - I have about 5 draft posts from March that I still need to put up. Eep.

Hawaii 2010 - Part 3: Hiking

On one of our last days in Hawaii we did the Swinging Bridges hike with Anna - it was beautiful! We had the added benefit of discovering Waihe'e Valley Plantation macadamia nuts which are like crack! Seriously - they are the most delicious mac nut I have ever eaten - they tasted like butter. I did a quick google search and couldn't find a website for them - but here is the phone number that was printed on the bag: 808-244-2120. SO much better than tha Mauna Loa nuts you always see at the airport & tourist shops. If you're going to Hawaii and planning on bringing mac nuts home you should just try to pre-order them from Waihe'e Valley Plantation. (sheesh - listen to me - you would think they were going to send me a crate of nuts for giving them a plug on my blog! wait a minute...maybe i should call them and see if they'll send me a crate of nuts for putting a plug on my blog! hmm.....if thor & i spontaneously gain 40 lbs. each you'll know what happened!)

Mom & I headed up the trail.

A wee snail that Anna shot photos of.


Mom & I on a swinging bridge!

Mom, myself and sweet Anoo!

One of my absolute favorite pictures of the trip!

This picture is ridiculous - I look like I'm trying out for some Broadway production! But I told Anna I would still post it to the blog - so here it is. Have a good chuckle.

Hawaii 2010 - Part 2a: Snorkeling & Scuba!

Here are some pics from our first day out scuba/snorkeling with Anna! I don't remember the name of this place - but it had a bit of a precarious entry into the water (by my standards) in that the waves kind of wanted to rub your knees along the coral. Ouchy. I was careful though - and escaped unscathed.

Mom swimming under water.

Mom - unwinding the dive flag line. Periodically you'd look over and she would have forgotten to unwind it and the flag would be about 10 feet under water. so cute!

Here I am - puttering away on the surface.
Do you see the wicked looking eel peering out from the coral fingers. eeep! Anna was swimming down to take a picture of the nudibranch in the lower left hand corner of the picture and the eel surprised her! This was only about 15 feet down, so I was able to free dive down to see this eel myself. Neat!

A sea cucumber that Anna wrote 'i heart sarah' on with her finger. Ahhhh - so sweet! A wee little sculpin.

Neat view across the reef

I love the detail you can see in this close-up shot of the coral!

Hawaii 2010 - Part 1: Whales!

I got back last week from a great vacation in Maui visiting Anna! Mom and I went together and we spent the week sleeping on Anna's porch (so lovely!), hanging out on the Pacific Whale Foundation boat with Anna and watching whales, and watching the third season of Arrested Development while drinking gin & tonics (a must-do activity for any hawaiian vacation!)


After about the first hour of vacation I re-remembered that Anna is a much better photographer than I am - so I packed my camera away for the rest of the trip and am using only her pictures for my blog posts. =) She gave me about 270 pics on a CD, and while I'm not going to post all of them, even the weeded out assortment will take some time to post here so I'm going to put up pictures in phases.


Here is a collection of my favorite whale pics that Anna sent me - they are not necessarily from the week we were there, but we did see all of these activities happen while we were out on the boat!

Echo Red to Red - Thor's first XC race

This past weekend Thor did his first XC mountain bike race, the Echo Red-to-Red, out in Echo, OR. He raced in the Cat 2 category and got 5th place - pretty neat! I was sorry I couldn't be out there to cheer him on, but I was busy slacking in Maui visiting Anna with my mom. =)

Here are links to two pictures of Thor on the course that were taken by Oregon Velo:

Picture 1

Picture 2 (this is the better picture!)