California, Here We Come!

We are leaving today for Quincy, California where we will be staying with family for a week. We have rented a cabin on Buck's Lake, and will spend our time water skiing, wakeboarding, and playing on the beach! Sounds amazing, huh? We will be at the cabin with Aaron's sister and family, and Aaron's parents, we leave tonight and will drive back to Grants Pass on Saturday morning to raft with my parents and our family from Chicago, then finally home on Sunday night. It will be a busy week, but lot's of fun! I may not be able to post this week, but will try. If not, I will post pictures when we return. Have a great week!

P. S- I'll be sure to include more pictures of me in my hot yellow bikini! ;) Hee hee

Twilight

I just finished three amazing books: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and am waiting impatiently for the fourth, Breaking Dawn, which comes out in 16 days, 5 hours, 31 minutes, and 25 seconds...24...23...22 I can't wait! There is a midnight release party at Borders on the 1st/2nd and I will be there to show off my trivia skills.:)

"When Bella sits next to Edward Cullen in biology class on her first day of school, Edward seems utterly repulsed, even attempting to change his schedule to avoid her. After tricking a family friend, Jacob Black of the Quileute (pronounced Quil-yoot) tribe, into telling her the local tribal legends (flirting with him to do so), Bella concludes that Edward and his family are vampires. Although she was inexplicably attracted to him when she thought Edward drank human blood, she is much relieved to learn that the Cullens choose to abstain from drinking human blood, and drink animal blood instead. Over time, Edward and Bella fall in love. Their foremost problem is Bella's "alluring scent", making Edward struggle to resist his desire to kill her. However, despite this and Bella's strange knack for constantly landing herself in dangerous situations, they manage to stay together safely for a time.

The seemingly perfect state of their relationship is thrown into chaos when another vampire coven sweeps into Forks and James, a tracker, sets his sights on Bella. With the help of Victoria and Laurent. Under the assumption that James has kidnapped her mother, Bella is lured to her former dance studio, where James attempts to kill her. Edward, along with the rest of the Cullen family, rescues Bella before James can kill her. The story ends with Edward taking her to prom and telling her that he dosent want her to turn into a vampire.

Stephenie Meyer has stated that the apple on the cover represents the forbidden fruit from the book of Genesis. It symbolizes Bella's and Edward's love, which is forbidden, not unlike the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as is made obvious by the quote from Genesis 2:17 that opens the book. It also represents choice."

I am not normally in to vampire books, but this series has had me up beyond late at night too excited to think about sleeping. The movie comes out on 12/12/08! Check them out and maybe I'll see you at the midnight release party! To read more go to: www.stepheniemeyer.com

Run Like a Girl!

Today was the annual Run Like a Girl 10k trail race at Lower Mcleay Park in Portland. I ran with 749 other women on one of the most beautiful, and challenging coarses I've ever been on. We started at 9am in waves of fifty women every 90 seconds, I was in wave four. Aaron and the kids came to cheer mommy on and give lots of kisses!
I had a touch of the stomach flu last night, but I really wanted to run the race, and so against my better judgement I did. I definitely felt the effects from it on the run, but am so glad I did it. The trail seemed to be 99% up-hill, I think that every participant walked more than once to recover from the steep incline. You couldn't take your eyes off of the path because of all the rocks and tree trunks..hence the 'trail' run. There was a group of about 5 of us running together in single file and encouraging each other on our Mt. Everest run, which was a lot of fun. Then at about mile four we hit a pretty steep down grade, (Praise Jesus for down hill!!) and then we all fell. Other women started yelling "ladies down, ladies down" and they all came to our rescue. I left some blood on the trail, took a minute to walk it out, and then kept on. Finally, I made it to the finish!! I was cheered on by three sweet kids, and an awesome husband, the best sight ever. :) A great end to the weekend!

Baseball Boy

This week Ryan had his first baseball camp, ending this evening with a game. Here are some pictures from tonight


Getting ready to pitch to Mommy for practice.

Waiting for the game to start!

Batting with a run to first...

First to third and a thumbs up!

Third to home with a high five, way to go Ryan!


Every morning this week, Ryan woke up at 6 am and put his baseball pants, hat, and cleats on and would sweetly announce "I'm ready for baseball, Mama." It was a fun week!

Bezunesh

"This little girl is three years old and weights just 10 pounds due to mass food shortages in Ethiopia. Her name is Bezunesh, which means something like "You are more and more" or "You are so much". Her mother must love her so very much and yet she is watching her baby die of starvation. According to CNN, there are at least 120,000 Ethiopian children who have just one month to live if food relief doesn't come through soon. It's so easy to feel guilt over the plush American lives that even the American poor live out. While we complain about rising gas prices, our bellies are still full. The price of rice in America rises just a few cents and the big stores like Sam's Club and Costco start rationing how much rice we can purchase. So, we run out and buy the maximum alotment of rice...just in case. And even in purchasing that maximum alotment, we spend less than a dollar more per bag than we're used to spending. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the price of rice and other foods is soaring so high that even working class Ethiopian families, are finding themselves going hungry. Lord, please intervene for these people...and use your people to do it."

You're all I want

So beautiful!