Followup

For those who are still wanting updates on Jared's new and improved cancer-free health, he had his checkup yesterday with celebrity Dr. Nichols. Everything looks clean. (I love how boring this post is. Yay for boring!)

Catching Up

It's been far too long since I've found the time to blog (or to read yours. so sorry). Here's what we've been up to...

Two of my bestest friends - my roommates from before I got married - came into town to have a "goddess gathering." We rented a beach house and spent our first weekend together in about four years (they have been living in such places as Korea, Montana, India, and Salt Lake. That was the weekend Lumina moved back the states). It was so sweet and refreshing to be with my soul sisters again, if only for a short time.

Emily teaching Seville how to romp on the beach.

The three (well, four) of us

Me n' Seville share a blissful moment

Emily celebrates, as Emily is wont to do

Wedding Weekend

My brother Bryce and his fiance'(now wife) Kadra got married a couple weeks ago. Bryce is my oldest brother, and the next day, my youngest sister, Kyrstyn, got married. So it was one big crazy double-wedding weekend with all our family and friends and two weddings at my parents house two days in a row. So much fun! A few select moments from Bryce's wedding:

In my estimation, Seville was the best eye-candy there (other than the bride, of course).

Ah, sweet bliss

Seville sees fun stuff over there

Gettin' tuckered out

look at the whole album (25 pictures)

Bryce & Kadra's Wedding

"Strike Up, Pipers!" *

Lots of people asked me why Bryce and Kyrstyn didn't just have their weddings together instead of one day apart. Answer: veeeeeery different weddings! Bryce was married in the LDS temple and had a fairly standard and very classy reception at my parents' house/yard. Kyrstyn, on the other hand, had her actual ceremony in my parents' backyard along with hours of festivities. She and her husband met at Burning Man, all their friends are "burners," and her husband is doing his PhD in ancient Greek Festival (or something like that), so they had this very artistic and unusual festival-type wedding. A few select moments:

The musicians for the procession and festivities (it sounded sort of midieval, sort of carnival-esque, depending on the moment and the combo)

The bride and groom catch a moment together on the lawn after the "feast"

Four sisters

Seville dancing to the live band (Trashcan Joe. They're so fun! If you live in Portland, go see them. (and, yes, Kyrstyn is in the band) )

see the whole album (51 pictures)

Kyrstyn & Mathias Wedding

or even better, if you're really interested, look at my Dad's pictures. Way better (and more - 158 pics): http://www.flickr.com/photos/12596028@N00/sets/72157606001167092/


*"Strike up, Pipers!" ~Benedick in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing calling in the beginning of their typical Shakespearean double wedding

Familymoon

After the crazy wedding weekend, all the extended family members (other than those on real honeymoons) went to a beachhouse for the week for what we dubbed the "Familymoon."

Seville working toward getting buried in the sand. Only patient enough for the legs, so far

Seville's first "horsey" experience on Daddy's back

My brother in law just graduated from Dental school. As a graduation gift, he got a whole selection of fake "hillbilly" teeth.


see the whole album (21 pictures)

Familymoon

Workin' on a Corncob

Seville's first attempt at corn.

Reunion 2008

Thanks to my dear friends for converging on Portland all at once. It was such sweet nostalgia to be together again (most of us) for one night.

Meet Chester

This is Chester. Say "hi," Chester.

Chester and I have a bit of a difficult relationship, though I think it's one of mutual respect nevertheless. Here he is eating the birdseed that is in a "squirrelproof" bird-feeder, meant specifically for goldfinches.

He and I have spent many a moment staring each other down through the kitchen window, him thinking, "is she gonna get out the stick again?" (that I poke him with), and me thinking, "you better not go for my feeder right in front of me, dude."

The Double Barrel

Seville has been an expert nose-picker for some time now...

But this special skill emerged just the other day...

... he may have been smart enough to stop when I pointed the lens at him, but make no mistake, Seville didn't come up with this idea on her own (thanks, daddy, for the valuable life lesson).

Technological History/Nostalgia

I begin by conceding the randomness of this post, both because of the subject matter and because of the infrequency of my contributions to this blog of late. I showed up at my office this morning and had this thought (fleshed out below), but it's too "monday morning" to go try and talk to anybody in the office about it. So here goes:

I pulled out this mini-cassette player I have in my office because I may need to record part of a meeting later today. As I rewound the cassette to the beginning, I pulled it out to make sure I had rewound it to the beginning of side A. Given that I don't use the mini-cassette player frequently, I had to remind myself that with mini-cassettes, side A is fully rewound when the left reel of the two reels is empty, unlike regular cassettes where the right reel is empty (when looking at side A). (As a side note, I confess that I had to double-check the spelling of "cassette" because I use the word so infrequently anymore.) I've never understood why cassettes and mini-cassettes don't use a consistent format, but that's neither here nor there at this point. The bigger realization for me was that generations of people will soon have no idea how to use a cassette tape.

These people won't instantly appreciate the ability to queue to a particular song based on viewing the relative thickness of the brown magnetic tape on the left reel and the right reel of the cassette. They won't know the pain of seeing your favorite cassette getting eaten by the tape player only to salvage it through the art of tape splicing. I'm waxing nostalgic now. And sounding oldish. I will stop (accompanied by the sound of a mechanical click as I depress the button on my mental boom box) and get back to work.

I Can't Help Myself

I am indulging in yet another post of frivolous pictures. But there's a reason, I swear! (other than the usual, "ooh, isn't Seville cute" reason). I just got...

The Best Mother's Day Present Ever.

Seriously. I have been forewarned never to expect something like this again, and understandably so.

Behold, the work of my new mother's day present, the Nikon D40 SLR 6.1 megapixel camera:

Hikin' The Red Rock

Jared & Skye as "just friends", Zion, April 2004

I always hanker for Southern Utah in the spring. Jared and I did our first backpacking trip together there (in the picture above), before we were dating, and every year since we talk about going back. I always think it should be an annual event, but you know how things tend to come up. Anyway, 4 years later, we finally made it happen. We bounced around quite a bit, and went to four really cool spots, 2 of them National Parks:

Little Wild Horse Canyon: one of the coolest slot canyons you'll ever hike (coolest I had hiked anyway). We hit this on a Saturday, along with about 57 Mormon Scout troops. Once I got over the lack of solitude and the pre-pubescent teen to adult ratio, it got kinda fun squeezing past each other and seeing how people responded to the greeting, "howdy." Seville pet every dog that came through too, which was quite a few.

Goblin Valley: really amounts to a walk in the park, but a seriously breathtakingly weird lookin' park. I wonder how many sci-fi movies have been filmed here (at least Galaxy Quest).

Horseshoe Canyon: is actually part of Canyonlands, but detached from the rest of it and hard to get to by a long dirt road through the desert sage with many unmarked forks, turns and cows (actually, I bet the cows are marked, but not so drivers can tell). Horseshoe Canyons boasts some of the best ancient Native American Petroglyphs and a couple dinosaur tracks. The hike is well worth it without them though.

Capitol Reef: might be my new favorite National Park. There is so much stunning scenery and crazy rock formation to hike through that by the end of our stay there I practically had visual stimulus overload. Definitely a place to go back to, since we barely scratched the surface there.

See the rest of the adventure below. Or click HERE to go directly to the online album and see 'em big on your screen.

The Update on Jared

Yesterday Jared had an X-ray and checkup with his oncologist, Celebrity Dr. Nichols, and his tests came back clean. Phew! (Jared doesn't even worry about this stuff. It's only me who waits to hear after each appointment).

As for his general health, he's doing really well. He's back at work full time (he has been for some time, but we get asked this a lot). He has hair. It came back in ashen-blonde and curly, as predicted. Here's pics of the blond-ish version of Jared.

The blonde was pretty hot, while it lasted, which wasn't long (I don't mean, of course, that it was hotTER than his normal self, just... you know... hot in a "it's different" kind of way). He's more or less back his normal self now - straight, dark brown hair. In fact, he's been on a quest to grow as much hair as possible it seems, and thus the full beard of late.

So life is happy. We're good. We're gettin' on with things. Until Sunday, life was deliciously boring for a while. I guess you only get so long of a break. :) Now that Seville is a bona-fide toddler, I'm sure we're in for a ride.

Emergency x 2

As if Sunday wasn't enough adventure for us, we just got back from the Emergency Room for yet another accident. Seville fell and cut her wrist open pretty badly this evening, so we had to go get her stitched up. She spent most of her time in the hospital entertaining the staff - a 15 month old and a "waiting room" seriously do not mix well, especially for the lengths of wait-time required in an emergency room visit. So we got to know all the nurses, where the stickers were, how all the toys worked, which hallways led to where, etc.

Though she was, by all accounts, an amazingly calm and tolerant baby for most stuff, the "procedure" was nevertheless one of the most horrid things I've ever had to do - holding her still like that while they stitched her arm. I really don't want to say more about it, because I hate thinking about it. But, once again, she's fine now. She has a new "bracelet" (which you can see in the hospital pic here) and just wanted to go outside in the rain and "smell" (a.k.a. blow through her nose near) all the flowers ("fla") on our street when she got home.

It's a good thing she doesn't really know to be afraid, because she's basically fine after both Sunday and today. I, on the other hand, constantly feel like I want to throw up. Does this get easier with subsequent children/accidents?

70 Degrees and Sunny

This almost never happens at the Oregon Coast, it seems. But last weekend, the unusual weather happened to coincide with a patent law conference at Salishan Resort, which Jared had decided to sign up for and bring us all along along. I couldn't believe our luck.

Seville had never been the the ocean before (what were we DOING last summer?!... oh wait... I remember now), and she had the time of her life. She spent the whole first day just playing with sand about 4 steps onto the beach. We didn't even reach the part about "see the waves?" until day two. I figured there was no need to rush the wealth of discoveries there.