The Amsterdam

My cousin Karen is taking a 67 day cruise to the South Pacific. She left Seattle and her next port was Vancouver, Canada. Ron and I received permission to come aboard and visit her. This arrangement had been made months ago as she needed to get permission from Holland America. They reviewed our personal information before approving our visit. Security is important on a ship like this. This is a picture of the Sea View Pool. On hot days Karen likes to sit here in the sun and read. She has been on this same ship for 2 other cruises. You can visit her blog at www.dreamcruise.kweenkaren.com to follow her adventures.

We thought the cabins would be small, but her room is really quite large and very conveniently located.

We had lunch on the Lido Deck. There was champagne to celebrate the people boarding in Vancouver. It's called the Embarkation Champagne Lunch. Great fun!!!

Here we are on the deck of the Amsterdam with North Vancouver in the background.

Karen and I are standing on the stairs in the Atrium. It's a beautiful area of the ship.

ALS Walk & Wicked

I had a very busy weekend, well a busy Saturday. In the morning I walked in the Bellingham ALS walk in support of my brother-in-law Scott Sessions who has ALS (Lou Gerhig disease). We were the green team, can you tell?

Then it was a quick change of clothes and we (Amber, Jodie and I) were off to Seattle to see the play "Wicked" at the Paramount Theater. We met Jennifer there as she now lives in Seattle part time. The show is about Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Bad Witch from the Wizard of Oz. Did you know they were friends from school? It was a great show and I will look at both witches differently from now on.

Betsy's Studio

My friend Betsy is a music teacher and has an amazing studio. However, she is also involved in many other things and has very little free time. She is remarkable at everything she does, but doesn't always have time to get her materials organized. We decided to have a work day, which looks like it will turn into several work days. Today we tackled the desktop, but also talked about ways to organize her files. This is our before picture. Oh my!

This is the after picture. The counter top really is purple now that we can see all of it. We threw away some things, put things away that didn't belong in the studio and filed away things that did. Hurray for us!

Labor Day Weekend

Ron and I got to camp a day before everyone else. We took our bikes so we could ride around Crocket Lake. It's a nice ride of about 6 miles. We stopped at the block house so I could get a picture of us bikers. The weekend started out very nice. Notice that we are walking on the beach with no coats and that the water is very calm. It was beautiful!

Ah, but here is the next day. We are all bundled up and the wind is really blowing. The sun did pop out occasionally, but not for long. Oh, and look at the water now!

The waves were pounding on the beach and breaking over the cement on this light.

Jan's Celebration

Jan said that when she turned 60 she was throwing herself a party. For this birthday she is having a dual celebration. Not only is she 60, but she has been a cancer survivor for 12 years. Hurray for Jan! The party was at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma. She reserved the party deck so we could party, visit and watch the game. Well, some of the guys watched the game and some of us just visited. It was a wonderful evening topped off with a great fireworks show.

Ron, Skeet, Jan and Carole

Rylie Visits

Rylie, my great niece, came over for a visit today. Well ,actually Julie and Cara brought her, but Rylie was the center of attention. She is now 10 months old and would rather walk than crawl. We think she might just skip the crawling stage. She has learned very quickly that if someone holds her hand she can move much faster.

It was a great visit,