Happy Birthday Aaron Barr!!!

Last night Aaron's dad says, "Two words, son: Pushing 40."

Aaron replies, "A few more words, dad: Better than pushing daises."
With that --- let the birthday begin!!

Birthday Eve:

• I bring him chocolate covered strawberries and homemade brownies at work.
• Co-workers sign a hilarious card and sing "Happy Birthday."
• Then, back to work.
• Aaron comes home to see birthday presents wrapped up like the house from "Up".

Must say, of all my really great wrapping jobs, this was pretty special.

See, it's shaped like the house with balloons out of the chimney.

After dinner we frost Aaron's bday cake. It's a two person job. It's also his mom's recipe. Talk about pressure...trying to live up to a guy's memory of his mom's baking. Oiy! Don't know how it tastes, but it looks good!

12:01 AM: I serenade him with "Happy Long-Life" song

9:00 AM: Aaron serenaded, almost as beautifully, by the Crows, "Caw caw caw caw caaw caaaaaaw! Caw caw caw caaw caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!"

Back to sleep for him / I get up.

Aaron knew he was off to good start. To honor him, the crows picked flowers for him. They picked all the adorable little blooms off of the low lying plants and ran then around the yard in celebration and then in their excitement flung them into new places for Aaron to find. Thank you Crows!

10:00 AM:

• Aaron gets out of bed.
• Receives phone calls from family.
• Aaron's dad says, "You should really get a humming bird feeder for your yard."

11:00 AM: Pancake breakfast with fresh blueberries and fried tattors (including extra tasty seasoning, I'm told)


12:00 PM: Time to nap


1:00 PM: Head to Carcreek Park for Seattle Metals Guild picnic.


We walk through the woods. It's a pretty day to be born.


3:00 PM:
Back home for granola bar, fresh strawberries, and book reading.Sitting on the couch with me, "Dad says I should get a humming bird feeder."
I say, "Hum? What's that?"
Aaron explains......
I respond, "Sure. If you want one..." (then turn away so hopefully he can't see me giggling)


4:00 PM: Present opening!!!
Aaron successfully guesses 2 for 5 gifts. (He gets to keep them even if he guesses wrong.)

New ice cream scoop and toppings.

Last present from the Up present sculpture?
Aaron guesses, "Is it a hand sander?!!!" as he shakes the box.
You know what is though. You guessed it! A Humming bird feeder from me. HILARIOUS! I couldn't have paid his dad to tell him he needed one!
His dad must have the Sight.

Aaron opens the "hand sander" and realizes IT'S A HUMMING BIRD FEEDER!! HA!!

Birthday Aftermath

5:30 PM: Anner gets pizza for dinner.

8:00 PM: Watching baseball

8:30 PM: Planning to eat cake and ice cream (using his new ice cream scoop -- can't have enough of those)

That's the birthday in a nutshell. It was really fun. Thanks for all the cards and good wishes.

KILLER CROWS

Hands down. We must offer the most interesting yard in the neighborhood. At least according to the Crow Family.

Cawww

Cawww

CaaaaaaaaW!

Is how we awake every morning. (Actually, that's true for Aaron. I wake up too early for even crows on weekdays.)

Things are escalating here at an alarming rate. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the crows had yanked down our blue lantern, crushed it and then shat upon it. I figured, maybe they don't like "blue". At least I thought that until the red lantern met the same fate.

Lantern attack area.

We're busy people and sure we're not so happy with the crows but there seems to be a real limit to what one can do to deter them. This week the crows crossed a line. We're NOT happy any more. I'm growing weary of mother nature's crow pranks!

This week, on the week of our first wedding anniversary, the crows took aim at the wedding tree!!! GASP! They've completely stripped the bark from the tree in one day. Boy am I mad!! I'm glad I married the man and not the tree, but the tree was doing great and we thought for sure it would live a long life in our back yard. Growing old with us. Now it seems pretty likely the tree's days our numbered and we've resorted to trying to find a way to "take a graft" to see if a new tree can be saved.

I wish I could say the same for the crows.

Wedding tree this past May. His little leaves had just unfolded.... *sigh*

Caw
Caw
CaaaaW.


For more information about how smart crows are, check out this link to NPR. Scientist have found out that crows can recognize faces and they certainly recognize us. They go crazy when we're in what the perceive as their play land. Damned crows....

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106826971



CAMPING -
Last weekend Aaron and I went our first ever weekend camping trip. Our mis-matched work schedules really preclude us from doing fun things like camping but thanks to Aaron (and his boss) he was able to get a Saturday off. We heading about an hour from here and had a great time with a couple other couples. It was weird though -- there's been no rain in Seattle in weeks and yet it did manage to spend 1/2 a day raining on us. We don't get it. What did we ever do wrong to deserve rain-while-camping and wrath of the crows all in one summer? Makes no difference, we were determined to have fun no matter what. And after my four summers in AK a little rain wasn't going to stop us!

We went on hikes both days. We ate gourmet smores. We did Mad Libs. We told stories around the campfire. Safe to say: a good time was had by all!! Aaron probably most liked the hiking (I was pleased that it wasn't too strenuous) and I liked the pizza over an open fire the best. Yummy! We're re-seam-sealing the tent and hoping we can maybe go one more time this summer. Wish us luck! Maybe I need to take the extra day off of work this time. Fair is fair.

Aaron hiking moves.

Fire roasted pizza.

View from hiking.

View from the car.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US -

Flowers from mom!

Today is our first anniversary!! We can't believe it! It's been one fast year. We're both pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to move in together and meld our lives. We were both prepared for some problems but instead it was all good. We spent the day at the EMP looking at the Muppet exhibit. I like Ernie the most and Aaron likes Beaker. We saw both of them up close and personal (or in sketch form). Then off to Sky Nursery to buy more plants --- can't have enough (especially on the eve of the second annual Ice Cream Social --- things have got to look good!). Finally, we met Martin & Cynthia, Ed & Brigit, and Wolfe & Christa for dinner at Marchellos. It was great fun. Marchello remembers us. He kindly set up two tables for us to choose from; one in door and one out door. We took the patio.

DAHLIAS ARE BLOOMING -

This week the dahlias started to bloom. So far they look great!! We dahlias.

I think I can bloom; I think I can bloom; I think I can bloom....

I CAN BLOOM!

Shhh...it's a mystery date

Mystery Date:
Sometime back in February Aaron said, "On July 1st, you'll be late for work."

"How do you know I'll work late?" It was a reasonable guess since I work late quite often, but still, how can he tell five months in advance I'll work late? He's good at predicting my behaviors, but not that good.

"No. Not work late.... be late. We have a mystery date in the morning."

Well, if that doesn't pique a girl's curiosity I don't know what does! For months I wondered, "What could it be?"

Aaron promptly forgot all about it.

Five months later, on the day before the would-be Mystery Date, I doubled checked with Aaron, "Hey, I have a mystery date on my calendar. Is it still on?"

"Mystery date?" he asked. "OH! Yeah....mystery date. Ummmmmm let me check. Ahh...yeah, we're still on".

Had we not just returned from The Great Food Tour 2009 (our trip to MN) I might have taken the entire day off. But since we were just home I figured I should at least work half a day. I forgot to mention to my boss that I would be out the next day so I left him a voicemail before leaving work, "I'm going to be late to work tomorrow...maybe noon or 1:00pm. Nothing's wrong. I have an appointment. Um, I'm not sure what for. Well. See you around lunch time....I think."

I'm sure that doesn't instill a lot of confidence but luckily there are bigger fish to fry than my wee mystery date.

We got up in the morning, and I'm thinking, "let's go! I have to be at work". Aaron says we can't be rushed. At about10:00 we left the house for parts unknown.

As it turns out it's not very far from our house. We were headed into a gated community, less the gate -- it has a security guard who took a look at us and said, "are you here to see the ladies" Aaron says yes, and the security guard waves us through.

"'Ladies?!" What the hell? Where are you taking me??"

I had been tossed off this road 2 years ago when I was training for the 3-Day. They wouldn't let rif-raf like me walk on the road. They turned me around. It was weird. Now we were driving through Seattle's most exclusive neighborhood. It was NOTHING like our neighborhood all of 2 miles away. The road quaintly curves among huge cedar trees and beautiful landscaping. Houses could barely be seen but when I did see them they looked pretty fancy to me. There was the occasional worker driving along the road too. I kept wondering who are the "ladies" and are we going to be stopped and thrown out. There were no house numbers, just signs. If we lived there it would have said, Barr/Charrier with an arrow.

As it turns out there is one particularly fancy garden there, the Miller Gardens. The Elizabeth Miller foundation helped create The Great Plant Picks which is about the only way we know what plants to buy. People who know what they're doing with plants try out a million different varieties and then report on the most difficult to kill types and put them on the GPP list. They keep the exotic, hard to grow ones for themselves.

We arrived at the Miller Garden (which we found by following the directions: "you'll cross four speed bumps, at the fifth bump look to your left...."). There were 3 other people and 2 interns there. The gardener of 12 years gave us our tour. I don't think we were seeing the "ladies" like the security guard predicted but it got us through the checkpoint and I sufficiently caught off guard when we arrived at the garden. Apparently the tours are extremely limited because the fancy neighborhood doesn't allow many guests. Moreover the tickets get reserved within hours of registration. Aaron had signed us up back in February.

The garden was totally and completely overwhelming, but we had a great time. It took me by total surprise and was really, really fun. They go all over the world looking for rare and exotic this'es and that's and bringing them back to try out. Mostly, I fell in love with one room of the house which was half indoor and half outdoors, complete with a fireplace. I need one for myself now.

After our 2-hour tour we left. I was totally exhausted!! I needed food. We stopped for lunch and then I made my way back to work. I snuck back in to work and got down to business, but that made my week!! Aaron is SO sneaky!!

Anniversary Art:

Speaking of gardens. It'll be a while before we can sell tickets to tour the CharrBarrGardens but we're keeping most things alive. We bought ourselves this really cool bird bath in honor of our first wedding anniversary. Our hope is to use it as a center piece in the front yard when we re-landscape out there some day. For now I refuse to put water in it because I don't want to make the yard any more hospitable to crows or coons by supplying them with fresh water. If they're going to lurk around our house there are going to be some hardships.

We also stopped by a yard sale and picked up 4 beautiful ferns and 3 really arty big flower pots all for a few bucks. We've still got to plant them but we're excited to try some new things and I love having fancy pots to plant in. I'm all about the containers!

Crows:

The crows taunt us at their every chance. They wake Aaron up in the morning with their, "CAAW...CAAAW". They still pick the little tags our of the dirt and jump up and down on the wedding tree. Lately, they've taken to sitting smack in the middle of the waterless bird bath just for the view, I guess. It's proof I'm not entirely my mother's daughter because they've perched themselves in the front yard and I haven't whipped out a gun and shot 'em from the kitchen window. I would consider having her do it though.

Dream Kitchen:

Check out this amazing kitchen picture. I want this kitchen!!! I don't know how many woodshop classes it'll take, but I think a curved cupboard looks awesome!!!

Happy Birthday America!!!

Last week was my second favorite holiday (next to the opening of baseball): Fourth of July!!! Last year Aaron and were shut-ins, spending the entire day at both computers researching and writing our wedding ceremony. I learned later that my pal Martin did the same thing, writing a wedding ceremony from scratch, but he did it in a few hours one night in a bar. That was probably more fun but in the end we're both hitched to the one we love so that's what really matters. I digress. This year we gathered with our good friends, Martin & Cynthia, Ed & Brigit, and Martin's brother Dennis. We went to see the Mariner's rookie league team, the Everett Aquasoxs. It's a great place to go because you're up close and personal with the game. There are tons of family entertainment between innings And as the sun goes down you can see all sorts of fireworks on the horizon. After our big bottom of the 10th win they haul out a little set of fireworks into center field and put them on as music plays throughout the little stadium. We ate popcorn and ice cream and had ourselves a time!!! I hope we can do it again next year.

That's the news for now! Cheers!

Minnesota 2009

We're just back from Minn-e-SO-tah....

Our trip can probably be summed up in these pictures and a list of the food we ate over the past seven days. Since food = love where I come from we know we know my family was pouring the love on us.

Homemade pizza
Caramel Apple Pancakes with butter and pure maple syrup (mmmm, sugary goodness)
Homemade melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies
Rhubarb cake
Rice krispie bars
Homemade ice cream at a new-to-us ice cream parlor in St. Paul, called Izzy's. Home of the "Izzy Scoop"
Homemade sweet rolls made with real live duck fat
Homemade banana bread (my Honey was so happy)
French toast (twice; once from each parent)
Omelets
Waffles with eggs and sausages
Homemade dry rub ribs
Homemade cole slaw
Popcorn with real butter
Walleye fish fry with real butter
Homemade Rhubarb sauce
Brownie sundae
Pig roast sandwiches
Sheet cake
Home grilled chicken saute
Root beer from a real keg
Chocolate chip cookies
And chocolate molten cake sundae from Chili's

We may never need to eat again.

The flight to MN

Dad making us pizza on our first night. One word: YUMMMY!

Planting flowers with Grandma (Aaron picked out most of the flowers, including a miniature rose, the center piece.)

Father's Day on the Jonathan Paddleford - a river ride down the Mighty Mississippi


Aaron calls his Pa from the Paddleford.

For Father's Day we got dad an astilbe and planted it for him. By morning the bunny rabbits had completely devoured it. I guess it was a Happy Bunny Day for them.

Pig Roast!!
There was a Pig Roast / Open House for my great-uncle's 90th Birthday (grandma's brother).
It was Americana the whole way!!

Kid's playing in the lake at the Party.

The traditional open house sheet cake (actually, there were three); Aaron was in heaven.

Aaron, Dad, Anner and Grandma at the party.

Anner at the party.

THE CROWS:

Aaron and I need another dose of gardening advice. This morning I woke up and looked out the bedroom window and noticed that a flock of crows were taking over our Garden Room. One was pulling of the little pink hearts off of our adorable little pink bleeding heart bush! Another was bouncing up and down on our wedding tree like it was a crow trampoline and a third was yanking the plastic tags out of the ground (the tag that tells us the name of the plant and how best to not kill it) and running around with it like a game of Catch the Flag! I yelled for my hubbie and told him what kind of debauchery was going on in our yard he put down his razor and ran outside in his slippers, charging the threesome, and yelled, "gitt!", like he meant it!

The crows few to the neighbor's roof and stared down at Aaron to "caw...CAAAW" at him.

Now what? We have black-winged vandals trashing our beautiful Garden Room. Will a scare crow really work? How about a giant eagle sculpture? We're headed to the Everett Garden Art show. Do you think a kinetic sculpture would cure them? Is there anything like "slug-go" for crows? Maybe some Crow-Go?

We need help....
What do you think?

WE VISITED JOHN MCCAIN:

Well, not exactly. We visited the great state of Arizona; although I would meet John if I had the chance. Maybe someday they'll be an almost-presidential museum for him and I'll go to that.


I got to go to a leadership training in AZ with my company. It was a really a great training; learned a lot. Then on the last day my Honey joined me. I met him at the airport on a triple-digit day and we got a rental car and headed north where it was a "dry 80 degrees".

We wanted to go to Sedona but we're not rich enough for that, so we stopped in Cottonwood and stayed with the Regular People. Cottonwood is a scenic 20 min drive to Sedona at about 1/3 the price. It was perfect. We ate breakfast at a little local dinner where were half the average age of the rest of the patrons and the Blue Hairs shuffled from one table to the next passing the "news" to their neighbors. Everyone knew everyone else. I had the best omelet of my life, no amount of cheese or butter spared, and then it was off to Sedona.

RED ROCKS: We stopped at Red Rocks State Park on a whim and it turned out to be a real highlight of our visit. Actually, it probably tied with the homemade ice cream we had at the end of the day but it ranked for sure! It was halfway between Cottonwood and Sedona. The park is made up of a series of short little trails. We started wandering around and before you knew it our little walk turned into a real hike. We were out there for a couple of hours and end up getting high enough to have some incredible views. The red rocks are just gorgeous. Words and pictures don't do them justice so you'll just have to go see them for yourself. Aaron and I had both driven through the area in the early 90's but this was the first time we had hiked there. It was well worth it to get out of the car. We saw lizards (shown above), a deer, and lots of cactus. After our 2 hour stop-over we continued on to Sedona.




We spent a couple of hours on an art walk. We saw lots of cool thing and met some really nice people. I kind of expected we'd buy something but we didn't fall in love with anything so we didn't.

JEROME, AZ: The next day we went to Jerome which is a little rundown-nothing of a town ....sort of. The buildings are falling apart and it's pretty much a one lane street that switchbacks up the side of a mountain. It's an old mining town that's re-branding itself. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning when we rolled up. Someone referred us to the Flatiron Grill for breakfast which was pretty much the cutest, tiny little down-home shop you could hope for. There were four tables and we sat at the bar. They at about 10 things on the menu, espresso, homemade lemonade and a big basket homemade cookies, muffins, and cornbread. What more could we have wanted?? We had our breakfast and headed through the streets.


Turns out the nothing-little-town is PACKED full of art and unique little stores. It's all retail and all tourism. As the day went on more and more people showed up and a crazy amount of polished motor cycles all over the place. Bands started playing, restaurants overflowed, and the throngs wound their way through the town. We were not expecting anything like that but we were having fun. Not a chain store in site. Glorious!! The views were incredible. The scenery is just so much different than what we're used to. We went to tons of art galleries, including one that was rated #1 in something by Niche magazine. We wandered around all day, had ourselves some pizza, and then headed back to Phoenix to see Aaron's college friend the infamous "JMan", who I've been hearing about for years now.

Downtown Jermore

This building is convered into a glass blowing studio (studio is in the former basement)

Once we found the JMan residence we we're enthusiastically greeted by 2 adorable little girls four and under. You could light a small city if only you could harness the energy!! When their little brother woke up they just referred to him as "The Baby." As they climbed all over Aaron, "That's The Baby....want to hold The Baby?....Mom they want to hold The Baby..." You wouldn't have known that The Baby had a name or could have been referred to as "my brother". I'm not sure they've made the connection yet, that The Baby is related to them. The Baby was equally adorable. We passed him around and everyone got to hold The Baby. We had a great time and it was really fun to meet Aaron's college friends.

Then it was back to Seattle which has been enjoying unseasonably nice weather.

GARDEN UPDATE:


Everything looks great. Lost of wedding plants are coming back and looking good. If we can keep the crows at bay we'll be in good shape. The highlight this week was an unexpected white poppy. Every hear of such a thing? Maybe it's not a poppy??? It regrew from our "seed balls" from last year. I think last year we had a few red poppies. This year it's white with a red fringe. Very cool surprise to wake up to.

Seattle Brain Cancer Walk 2009!

Me and John's Memorial Car

For friends who may not know, John was a detective in Anchorage. They honored him with a memorial car. Karen gave me one to walk with.

This weekend was the 2nd Annual "Cranium Crusade". It's a fundraiser for the Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment. All the proceeds go directly to patient care. They are focusing in on innovative and cutting edge treatments.

This year's highlights were the fact that the number of participants tripled from last year; so many so that they ran out of bib numbers! We raised over $200,000. THANK YOU to everyone who contributed! According to the doctor who heads CABTT $5,000 can get a patient a clinical trial....so that's a lot of hope for a lot of people right there!!. Far and away the biggest highlight were the number of survivors out on the track.

He summed it up in his remarks. As the survivors stood on the field he stated the obvious -- they are all somebody's loved-one and they all deserve hope and help. He was pretty amazing. He devotes his Fridays to "advocacy" -- meaning he's doing everything he can to educate people. He said he'll meet with anyone who wants to know more should just make a Friday appointment. That's pretty impressive in my book. It's enough to commit me to do it another year. So if you want to join me in 2010 just say the word.

It was a lot of fun and very festive. Here are some photos:

John's Memorial Car

Me and my homemade t-shirt --

it has John's name and badge number on it

The CABTT tent

Wall of Honor --

if I would have known ahead of time I would have brought a picture of John. Instead I filled out a sticker that was meant to be stuck on our shirts or bibs. I put it on the wall and later I noticed others had done the same thing.

Starting Line

This is the start of the walk as the walkers poured on to the track

I'm guessing there were 1,500+ there. By the time the front of the line made it around the track folks were still coming out of the gate!!

Gathering for Closing Ceremonies

Doc honoring his patients