Good Morning from Florida!

Just a quick note to say I arrived in Florida in one piece. The flights were a little rough, but easy. The short one from Atlanta to Melbourne was actually a very humbling experience. There was a very somber looking young man in a Navy dress blue uniform. You don't normally see military people flying in dress uniforms. While we were midflight they made an announcement that the Sailor was escorting a fallen fellow service member home from Iraq and was on his last part of the journey home. They asked everyone to please remain seated once we got to the gate while the Sailor deplaned and did his duties. The flight attendants offered to move the Sailor to first class (it was a small plane, about 2/3 full) but he refused. He wanted to sit right over the cargo door, right over his buddy. Normally people jump up from their seats as soon as the plane pulls in. As soon as we reached the gate nobody moved. Not an inch. The Sailor stood up, walked down the aisle of the plane and everyone started clapping for him. I was sitting on the right side of the plane and watched as the Sailor and police ever so gently unloaded the casket from the plane. Even though we were told we could deplane nobody moved, there wasn't a dry eye on that plane. It's hard to believe I was anxious about the flights out here and stressed about getting everything done before I went on vacation when these people's lives have been changed forever by the ultimate sacrifice. It was hard to see, but I'm glad I could be part of that yesterday. Reminds me how lucky I am.

On a less serious note...
I made it up and out of bed this morning to enjoy an Atlantic sunrise. Only downside is I'm drinking this stuff the Floridians call coffee, I don't think it's ever seen a coffee bean in it's life...

Here's the view from our balcony! Rough life, I know.

Catch Up (no, not ketchup)

Last weekend Chris and I made our 2nd anual trip to visit our friends Mike and Elaine in Walla Walla. We carefully watched the pass and luckily the spring snowstorms took a break so we could make the 6 1/2 hour drive across the state. The pass was beautiful with all the fresh snow. On the way we stopped and picked up our friend Krista in Yakima. The extra company sure was great!

Mike and Elaine have two fabulous old VW buses. One bus has stared on a few Dave Matthews Band Posters (a little bit of there bus history here on an old post from the Dave Matthews concert in September). This year we wanted to "bait" the poster people with some pictures of the bus in front of a wind farm with the teardrop trailer. Unfortunately the weather was too questionable to bring the trailer, but here are a few samples of what we got:

Chris and Mike en route to the windfarm -

Hey look - it's a greyhound bus!

Windfarm!

The rest of the weekend was spent wine tasting and relaxing with good friends and good food.

Speaking of wine...this past weekend, Chris and I volunteered our time on Saturday to help out at Davenport Cellars. We met Jeff and Sheila on a separate trip to Woodinville and got chatting with them about how they got into the wine business. They attended wine classes at a local community college, then used their retirement money to startup. They've been at it since last summer and are finally beginning to get a tiny return on their investment. They are such friendly people who are following a dream of opening a winery that we offered our help anytime they needed an extra hand. They gave us a call a few weeks ago saying they needed some extra hands to help serve food, clear dishes, etc at the Woodinville Wine Passport weekend (a big open house for all the wineries). Needless to say, Chris and I worked our tails off. We cut about 15 pounds of cheese (haha) and made 360 pulled pork sliders. We had a blast, met some new people and got some good quality people watching time in. It was great to help some people out too. The weekend was a success for them, they had over 600 visitors to their tasting room!

Sunday was spent enjoying some of that 70+ degree weather in the yard. Last year I blogged about putting in flower beds in front of our house. I mentioned that we needed to edge them. Well... it only took us a year to get to it. We edged the front bed and planted some new flowers. A few weeks ago I planted some wildflower seeds on the tiered section and they're coming up so fast you can almost watch them grow!

 The extent of my veggie gardening this year - two tomato plants, a jalepeno plant and some basil.

So that wraps up our two weeks - hope everyone else had a good weekend!

One of Many!

This past Easter weekend Chris and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary!

We took the opportunity to do a little get-away on Whidbey Island (one of our favorite places). Regardless of the CRAZY weather, this past weekend was much less stressful then the same weekend a year ago!

We drove to the ferry (almost missed our reservation!) through SNOWY Port Townsend.

It was SO rainy/windy/nasty on the island. We tried to go to a dog park - but there was a tree down across a car in the parking lot, we didn't feel like sticking around (or getting squished by a tree) so we went to dog park #2. It was so windy that Bear was blowing sideways and could barely run. Oh well, back to the cabin for some lounging and warming up.Bear is NEVER allowed on the bed, so this is a HUGE treat for him.

We stayed in on Friday night for dinner. Chris made the dinner and we had a glass of wine from the Seaglass bottle of wine Mom gave us for our anniversary - thanks mom!

The place we were staying had alpacas on the property - luckily the weather cleared up a bit on Saturday (still windy, but we were ignoring it :). We visited with the alpacas -

Enjoyed a morning hike -

Headed out to Coupeville for the farmers market and shops. We came across a bakery selling hot cross buns. We spent last Easter in Australia and hot cross buns were huge there. They sold them everywhere (including McDonalds). We enjoyed the treat while reliving Aussie memories -

To escape the weather we went up to Naval Air Station Whidbey for some bowling (and for Chris to see the planes again) -

I let Chris play the flying game for a bit before we went back out to the wind -

I wanted an "Anniversary Photo" real bad. Too bad the weather didn't allow for it. I guess this one works, because it is how we spent most of the weekend all bundled up.

Angry clouds -

Bear watching the waves -

It made for an exhausting day -

Sunday we (finally) had some decent weather. We made a stop at the Greenbank Farm for some off-leash time for Bear and some pie for us :)

We headed up-island towards the ferry with a stop at Fort Casey State Park. Lighthouses, old bunkers and beaches - oh my!

By the time we hit the ferry everyone was tired from a long weekend. Bear couldn't even hold his head up, he kept resting it on the car seat.

All in all - a great weekend to celebrate the best year of our lives! Everyone said marriage is great - I had no idea it would be this great! The only thing I would change is somewhere a bit warmer for our 2 year anniversary trip :)