Friday, June 19, 2009

Snow Leopard Kittens born in Seattle!

Woodland Park Zoo Blog | Naturally Inspiring: Spots of beauty: endangered snow leopard cubs born!

Brand new Snow Leopard kittens at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo! SSSSOOOOO CUTE! Yay for more snow leopards to add to their diminishing number on our planet! :) :) :)

Plus, check out these other snow leopard links, complete with awesome photos~

And best of all, the Woodland Park Zoo posted this first video of the snow leopard kittens crawling around!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Summer Roses

From my garden! I also have some honeysuckle in full bloom, all the way across my back fence, and the scent that blows in through the windows is absolutely heavenly! Here are a couple photos of me bringing the outdoors inside~ roses in a bowl:

And all the rest stuffed in a vase (and a flower pot one of my boys painted for me!):

Hiking Galena Creek: Jones-White's Creek Trail

Kevin and I took a little 9.2 mile hike a couple Mondays ago, up at Galena Creek Park on the Jones Creek-White's Creek Trail, which I haven't done since last year with my boys (not that we went all the way around with them either!). I did the entire loop with Kevin one other time last summer, but I don't think I blogged about that day. Anyway, I wanted to share some quick pictures- we dropped the boys off at school, and drove up to the trail head and decided on a counter-clockwise direction to knock that big hill off first thing. Whew! I had forgotten how steep that hill is, and how long! I tried to use my new ap on my iPhone to track our hike via GPS, but after the first half hour, I lost my signal and it stopped recording it. That map would've made for a cool addition to this post! Anyway, here are Kevin and Pirate after the first half hour:

And after another half hour, a photo of the clearing below, where you can just make out Washoe Lake:
And the clouds moving in over the peak:
Kevin and Pirate at the top of that huge initial hill before the descent (and here is also where you can opt to go to Church's Lake, which we did last time, and was really just a big mosquito pond, and nothing glorious about it):
We ran most of the next hour back down hill, pausing only to cross over the creek and look at signs. You can't see it from the picture, but this is my favorite bridge with short logs lashed together.
All in all, it took us just under 3 hours to finish the loop. 2:45 I think. I also got to wear my Dirty Girl Gators for the first time! Leopard print to match my snow leopard. :) And they worked marvelously to keep all the dirt and rocks out of my tennies and socks~

Puppers!


Catching up on some blogging here- I've gotten really far behind because of a couple intense summer classes (yep, HTML is no picnic learning the basics!), so I'm going to post a few short entries with the pictures I've been saving up. Here is an awesome photo of Pirate, who has greatly calmed down this summer! He hasn't been jumping up on everyone as soon as we walk out the back door. What a good boy!

Friday, June 5, 2009

Graduation Girl!

Oh, my girl Alice! I met you for the first time when you were 5, and was lost to you from that moment! I have loved watching you grow and and your interests develop- from antique Barbie dolls, to Pioneer girls, dancing ballet and becoming one of the most accomplished pianists I've ever been lucky enough to hear play~ you are beautiful and intelligent, and you've always given me the drive to work a little harder on my homework!

My love and best wishes to you on the start of your college career in Boston- how I'm going to miss you! And we will go shopping this summer before you go- I promise! School can wait for you~