Monday, September 8, 2008

Gas Works, trolls, zoos, proposals

Washington pics...

Seeing Kirsten is always an adventure... I won't get to see her as often anymore when I go to Seattle, though. Last week she moved out and is now living with some friends in Boise!

On Labor Day, Tyler (Kyle's brother), Kyle and I played tourists in Seattle.


We went to Gas Works Park...


There were very few nice days while I was in Seattle but since I left the weather has been "just perfect", of course. Anyway we luckily got one of the nice days for Gasworks, lots of people had their boats out and the view was beautiful.



After Gas Works we visited the Fremont Troll

I remember coming here when I was younger but Kyle and Ty had never been. I thought it was kind of funny to fly up from Vegas and show them around.

Our next stop was the Woodland Park Zoo! This was one of my favorite places when I was little.
I think I acted like a little kid running around and snapping pictures... To give myself credit though I didn't actually jump up and down or bang on the glass.

This guy's (or girl's) fur looks so soft, like velvet. I probably wouldn't want to test that theory, though.

I am not a snake fan but I don't think I've ever seen a snake actually doing anything other than laying coiled up napping or looking bored.


We only had 2 hours at the zoo (it goes fast and we didn't even make it to every exhibit) but we stayed to watch these guys for awhile. They are so colorful and flashy and this one in particular was having as much fun checking us out as we were him, I think.

The gorillas also held our attention for awhile... Sometimes their actions are so human-like you feel kind of weird watching them through glass. This female was laying with her legs crossed and her arms folded until the other gorilla got up and walked past her. Then she grabbed a stick and poked him in the butt with it as he walked past without even bothering to uncross her legs.

This gorilla was perched on a log, watching the water while musing over life in general (or its next nap).

This gorilla was showing her baby off to everyone and for good reason- It was super cute! She sat down on a log after this so the baby could scamper off her back and play.



Okay so squirrels usually aren't an exhibit at zoos but this one was so tame he jumped up on a garbage can for a closer look and let me get really close for a picture.

The hippos were pretty boring. This picture was about it.

The giraffes were more amusing... There was a big giraffe and a little giraffe ("little" in comparison to the big one, of course... giraffes are never exactly little). It was about dinner time and they were impatiently wandering in and out of their super-tall giraffe barn.
The "little" one could barely peer over the fence at us onlookers.

The big one had no problem.

I like tapirs, I wrote an article on them once. They are very interesting. Well they probably are interesting in the wild, anyway. One of them was sleeping and wouldn't even look up for a picture (rude). The other one was pacing around waiting for food and letting out weird chirruping noises that sounded like a bird.

The elephant was waiting for food, too, and wasn't doing much but you can't go to the zoo and not have a picture of an elephant.


The flamingos are a new exhibit, I guess. Mostly they are smelly and stupid-looking. Kyle said the plastic ones are probably more interesting.
Tyler was amazed at all the animals...

Last but not least we stopped at the park overlooking Seattle where Kyle proposed to me 8 weeks ago.


Ty obligingly took some pics of us.

To the very right in this picture is the exact (ish) place that Kyle got down on one knee!

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Bridesmaids and dresses

I was excited to finally go shopping with my bridesmaids while I was in Washington!

The bridal shop was very small and had each dress in one size so the girls had to take turns but we got the job done and had fun with it, too...
We tried a sash with the dresses. The dress had to be pinned with white clips because it was too big for both Kirsten and Tia.

We got serious business out of the way first, like comparing the sash color with my color swatches...
This is the color the bridesmaids will wear... The lighting of the store makes it hard to tell but it's a very springy green.
And then we had fun trying on pretty much every veil in the store and driving the two ladies who were working there crazy.

Some of the veils were... interesting. This one Kirsten tried on was the smallest in the store. The biggest veil trailed about 4 feet on the floor! It reminded me of Princess Diana's train... Okay not that extravagant but you would probably need a couple of kids to walk behind you to hold it... I tried walking with it and it hurt my head!

Kirsten wondered at one point how any of us are mature enough to get married...


We definitely had too much fun!


Victoria

August 16 Mom, Dad, Kyle and I went to Victoria.


The peace arch
At the border

We stopped to visit Dad's aunt Eileen in the resthome

Waiting for the ferry

The view from the room in Victoria

I took this picture while we were eating at a yummy fish & chips place down by the houseboats.

More views from our room... Beautiful sunsets!

View of the houseboats at night.

View of the houseboats from the room.

We were in town the weekend of the dragon boat races.

Before the races started, some of the water-taxis got together and performed a synchronized water-taxi dance.


Kyle enjoying the Victoria view.

Some of the houseboats were pretty cool...

But for a few reasons we decided we'd still probably never want to live in this particular "neighborhood" of houseboats...


None of us had ever seen a flower like this before... It looks so alien! If anyone knows what it is please leave a comment, I'm still curious about it!

This seal has been around Victoria for at least 3 or 4 years. His name is Charlie and he's recognizable because he only has one eye.

At the beach






When Mom and Dad were in Victoria one time they wandered around a massive graveyard for 2 hours trying to find Dad's grandparents (on his dad's side). We drove past the graveyard this time and saw someone there so we stopped to talk to him. He had several big books (originals) with every name in the graveyard handwritten in them. He looked up my great-grandparents first by date, then by name and finally found their plot. The grave marker is fading and sunken into the ground but it marks my great-grandmother, "M.A. Shepherd 1849-1936" (for Mary Ann). Great-grandpa is buried here also but he isn't marked. He died when he was 80 from complications after being hit by a car. It must not have been going very fast since it was in 1922!

We were walking down one of the streets near where Grandma used to live and I stopped to look at some paintings through a window. I think I gave Mom and Dad and Kyle a heartattack when I started yelling... The big one and the little one on the above left (you can't see that one very well) were painted by Dad's nephew, Keith.

And of course no trip is perfect without Starbucks...
A gorgeous sunset on the ferry-ride back