Behind the Times

I'm a little behind the times here, I guess I don't really have a real good excuse for my lack of blogging... Pull up a chair, grab a snack and get comfy. We've got some catching up to do.

So all the way back to Mother's Day. I'll make this one brief because both Mom and Jenna already blogged about it. On Saturday Mom and Dad came up so Dad could help Chris do a little weed control in the driveway.

Dad assisted Chris in the driveway with the torch while Mom and I stayed safely inside baking. Chris and Dad exterminated all the driveway weeds they could and Mom and I conquered our baking extravaganza.

On Mother's day we were blessed with the company of the entire family (minus Ryan  and Chelsea). To make a long story short, we had a great time with great food. A photo summary of Mother's day:

Kyle, Jenna and Payton made the drive up from Portland!

Mom, Daughter, Daughter! or Mom, Mom, Daughter :)

She's adorable, but I don't think the baby craze has worn off on us yet : )

I'm glad we had a relaxing Mother's Day weekend because things got a bit rough for awhile...

While Dad was over, he noticed the floor was raising up near the base of the toilet. Not a good sign. Chris donned his head lamp and went in the crawlspace for "investigation". It was either the shower (bad news - we'd have to rip out our NEW tile, cut the shell out, etc) or the toilet (messy, but not as bad news). The puddle underneath the toilet in the crawlspace was a dead giveaway we had a little toilet leakage going on.

Step 1: Investigate (with a helper of course)

Step 2: Remove toilet and tear up the BRAND NEW molding, floor a wax toilet ring.

Step 3: Realize you don't have the right tools for the job and con your wife during her moment of trauma (MY BATHROOM WAS IN SHAMBLES) into letting you buy new tools.

Step 4: Survey the damages. Count your lucky stars that the water damage did not go under the cabinet, shower or up the wall. Just a lot of stinky, stinky moldy wood.

Step 5: Remove subfloor and OSB plywood.

Step 6: Hey look - water damaged insulation. Out that goes.

Step 7: No more demolition - forward progress now! Install new insulation, OSB and subfloor. (Take note of the shiny new flange extender for the toilet)

Step 8:  Put new floor back in. Luckily this stuff is as "waterproof" as they advertised.

Step 9: And finally - reinstall toilet. A welcomed sight.

Neither of us knew what we were doing so it was a stressful project. Luckily Chris had the luxury of taking the day off work to fix our little situation. I guess they say - you live and learn :)

The next weekend we decided just to lay low and recover from our bathroom disaster. We did make it down to Bremerton for the Armed Forces Day Parade. The parade was HUGE (2+ hours) and we did score a free BBQ lunch. It was a great day to spend outside.

This reminded me of the San Diego submarine races. Perhaps a near relative of the WWU 2 Person Human Powered Submarine??

Not every day you see this rolling down the street of Bremerton.

Ok - now fast forward a bit. Chris had to do a "make up drill" for missing out on National Guard drill while he was in Florida. His make up was to drive the brass quartet to Spokane so they could play a welcome home ceremony for some troops. I was allowed to tag along and I was all over that opportunity because I had a very special person to visit over there!

Chels took the time out of her day to introduce us to the garbage eating goat of Spokane and gave us a good quality tour of the city (included a stop for a delicious lunch at a French cafe). Too bad the weather did cooperate fully, but we had a great time. Because we had to go pick up Chris' unit-mates we didn't get enough time together. Don't you worry - I'll be back to cash in on that pizza :)

Last week we caught a Mariner's game with some friends we met in Leavenworth awhile ago. It was a great game with great company and great garlic fries! Too bad the roof was closed for the game.

Cheap seats!

Garlic fries - the reason for Mariner's games.

This last weekend we had the pleasure of hosting our friends Mike & Elaine this weekend. We had an enjoyable evening relaxing at the brewery before resting up for a trip to the Folklife Festival in Seattle on Saturday. We had a great time chatting, lounging and give the pinball machine a good run. Unfortunately my camera was MIA and there are no photos from this weekend... Oh well - they'll have to come back again!

Stay tuned for a post this week or next - exciting changes going on here in the Walker household.

A hint -

In Response to "Poor Logo"

Kyanne blogged that her dog Logo has been sleeping at the top of the stairs because her dog bed just isn't good enough...this is what we have to live with...

Mine had to resort to curling up into the tiniest dog ball 80 lbs can make because I had the nerve to put his bed in the laundry.

This is what happens when the dog ball expands...

Sunshine State!

Chris had to spend two weeks in Coca Beach, FL for business (I know, rough). I got the opportunity to fly down and spend a little time visiting my husband and soaking up the 85 degree sunshine.

I arrived in Florida late on Weds night. I woke up to a beautiful Atlantic sunrise on Thursday morning and hustled Chris off to work. That left me with time for a beach walk and sunshine soaking with friends!

 View from our hotel room - not bad :)

Chris returned and we had arranged for an evening kayak trip on the Indian River off Merritt Island. The main goal of the kayak trip was to see the manatees. The manatees were HUGE and I was giggling like a child everytime one would come near my kayak. After playing with the manatees we headed out to the islands in the river and saw crabs, fishies, rays and a bunch of birds. No gators though. Dang.

Friday we took off for Savannah, Georgia after Chris got home from work. We had a great opportunity to spend the weekend with Chris' parents who drove down from North Carolina to meet us.

 

We got stopped dead on I-95 for about a half hour. Not fun in the sun and humidity. Chris got out to check out what was going on.

The fanciest rest stop we've ever seen

"We're glad Georgia's on your mind"

We spent Saturday enjoying each others company and wandering around Savannah. It's such a beautiful city rich with history. It's definitely on my "vacation go-back list".

 A Savannah steamboat with Mom Walker.

 

I managed to wrangle a bunch of squished pennies for my collection.

After exploring Savannah, we headed up to Tybee Island for a little Atlantic fresh air. Tybee Beach was very crowded. Different from what we're all used to on the coast.

Dad Walker!

Entertaining ourselves.

The next day we made a quick jaunt up to Hilton Head, South Carolina. My primary goal was to check another state of my list (I'm now at 25 - Chris 29), but we all have heard a lot about Hilton Head so it was fun to check it out.

Four of us in SC!

Unfortunately, the weekend went by way way too fast and we were back on the road to Florida. On the way back to Cocoa we stopped by St. Augustine which is the oldest continually-inhabited city in North America. The history here was amazing. We made such a whiz-bang speed trip through St. Augustine that we're already planning a trip back here.

Florida National Guard Armory. Go Guard!

We visited the Fountain of Youth (discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513). They have managed to make the Fountain an amazingly cheesy tourist trap. But we just had to stop...

There it is!

Cheers to youth! The water was NASTY! Very sulfuric.

We visited the old Spanish fort

And the oldest school house in the US!

The next day Chris got to leave work at lunch, so we made one last trip to the beach. Good bye FL sunshine! I had a great time, but I'm a Washingtonian at heart - give me my rain!!

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!