Here fishy, fishy

A friend once asked me, "If you were stuck on a desert island with only one kind of food, what would that food be?" My answer was immediate and simple. It would be this:

My love for these golden pieces of cheesy, salty goodness runs skin deep. It started when I was about 12 years old when I was waiting by the salad bar at Hardee's waiting for my dad to order our dinner. I was looking at all of the stuff that could make a salad fit to eat when I noticed a bowl full of these funny looking crackers shaped like fish. What I did next was wrong. Against the law, even. I stole one. But I'll never regret it. I was hooked forever and I'm still not sorry I did it.

At the time, these little babies were kind of hard to find. And, because they were hard to find, I thought they must have been very expensive. So I didn't even dare ask my parents to buy them for me. Over the years, however, they have become a food staple the world over. Well, maybe not the WORLD, but definitely in MY house.

Now they come in all sorts of flavors:

And all sorts of sizes. This one is my favorite:

It's the Costco sized 3 pack, no less.

Now I will tell you how to eat them correctly. I promise, I've got this down to an art form. You'll get the maximum amount of satisfaction if you eat them this way: Put them in the right side of your mouth with the salt side against your tongue. Hold it between your teeth vertically and gently bite down--slicing the fish into two whole pieces. Now you have TWO goldfish! What could be better? Now that you have two goldfish, you can go ahead and chomp away at the both of them. Wasn't that great? You can thank me later.

I'm so proud to announce that my soon-to-be 23 year old son has inherited my passion for goldfish. He takes a little baggie of them to work with him every single day. He works at an investment firm in Seattle and must look so cute eating them at his desk, wearing a dress shirt and a tie. His co-workers are jealous, I know.

Thank you for listening to me go on about my food obsession. I will write about my second favorite food soon enough. Here's a hint:

Wallace, Idaho

About a million years ago, like, 15 years ago, we decided to take the family on a little trip to see what we could see. One of the stops we made was in a little town called Wallace, Idaho. The town is famous for it's silver mines that, at one time, produced the most silver than any mine in the world. Some of the mines are still working. This one was open for tourists like us.

We took a little tour of the town of Wallace. The entire town is on the National Historic Register and has kept its turn-of-the-century charm since the beginning.

We've thought about it a lot since then and decided it was time to take another trip. This time, only Allison would accompany us on our strange quest to see what we could see.

We stayed at the luxurious (not really) Stardust Motel. It's within walking distance to the main drag. Actually, everything in Wallace is within walking distance to the main drag.

We ate huckleberry pancakes for breakfast at the Red Light Garage. I highly recommend them.

A view of Bank Street. It's completely full of antique stores and a few saloons, too.

Another view of Bank Street. I love how cute and unspoiled it looks. Although I love Park City, Utah for its mining history, I think it has been completely turned fake by investors and tourism. A tiny little house in Park City is at least $1,000,000. Real estate in Wallace is much more reasonable.

Isn't this a cutie? Allison, AND the house.

I have a feeling we'll be visiting again 'cause I love Wallace. I've already said that, though, haven't I?

The Imelda of Makeup

Some people love shoes. Remember Imelda?

Some people love purses. Add about 25 more purses to this and you'd see both of my daughter's closets.

I have one purse and about four pairs of shoes. That's all. I don't care. I don't need to be a fashion statement. Paige and Allie would testify to that. They'd also say it's very, very sad.

BUT! I do have one big, giant weakness. It is this:

I LOVE MAKEUP! I love it I love it I love it. There. I said it. I am a makeup addict and a makeup junkie. I am a big hoarder of makeup. I absolutely can't resist it. It's like a drug. Sometimes, just the knowledge of having the opportunity to apply my makeup is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning. Now THAT'S sad.

After shamelessly spending who knows how much money on department store brands (Lancome, Clinique, Bobbi Brown), I have finally settled in on my favorite eyeshadow. Believe it or not, each one of these palettes costs $5.00 and I got them at Target. No kidding. Some of them were even reduced to $3.00. I wear this kind of eye shadow every day. It's by ELF (Eyes. Lips. Face.)

But when you buy the Lancome sample deals, you get the greatest creams, lotions, makeup remover, dewrinklers and anti-aging solutions on the planet. Keep 'em coming!

The stupid thing is, that no matter what kind of makeup or what shades of shadow I use, I still look exactly the same day in and day out. Oh well.

And how many faces do I have to apply all this junk on? Only ONE. That's why, at the end of the day, this is actually all I need.

I still think shoes and purses are a waste of money. Makeup, on the other hand, is totally worth it.

A gem

I'm cleaning out a corner cabinet that has been neglected for the past, ummm . . . 10 years or so and I ran across this gem. It was taken while Tom and I were dating and before we were even engaged. Notice the leather tie that I bought for him in Florence, Italy.

Aren't we gorgeous together?!

I love Egypt

Last year at this time we were preparing for the trip of a lifetime. My parents treated their daughters, their sons-in-law and one child from each family to a Mediterranean cruise. We visited some amazing places but right now I just want to write about Egypt.

I went to Egypt in February of 1981 when I was on study abroad in Jerusalem. I took four rolls of film (obviously this was before the digital world) and, for some horrible, horrible reason, not one single roll of film worked. The film never advanced in my camera and they were all unexposed.

Well, I'm sure the important things haven't changed much since 1981 and thank goodness for awesome digital cameras.

I've been glued to the news reports about what's been going on in Cairo and Alexandria for the past several days. Thousands of people have been protesting against their government and things are totally out of control. Without going into the details, I will just say that I hope it clears up soon because I want to go back there someday and spend a LOT of time all over that amazing country.

Sorry, but there are lots of photos in this post. How do you narrow hundreds of photos down to just a few for one little blog? You don't!

Here is a shot of the port city of Alexandria. I don't know how many millions of people live there but it was the most crowded city I've ever seen. We spent a day there; half of it in a dirty, filthy, disgusting taxi-cab whose driver totally ripped us off. The air in Alexandria is thick with smoke and exhaust and grime. I remember wishing I could just take one breath of the air from my home back in Redmond. I remember thinking I would give a million dollars for one big breath of fresh air.

We took a day trip to Cairo and crammed everything in that one day as quickly as we could. It didn't make any sense to do Cairo in one day and I don't recommend it to anyone. But, that's why we have (or HAD) big plans to go back one day.

This is a picture of the famous Nile River. Allison was so disappointed because she thought it would be covered with ferns and papyrus like it looked when Moses was found in his little baby basket. But it looks like this for miles and miles.

The drive from Alexandria to Cairo takes three hours. This is how we knew we were there. Imagine seeing this out of your bus window. It honestly took my breath away.

Here are a few random shots of one of the seven wonders of the world.

The Sphinx was amazing. Look at mine and Allie's outfits. You would not BELIEVE the time it took for us to find the absolute perfect outfits for this day. Half the fun of this trip was planning our wardrobes. I know. . . very silly of us.

I love this picture of Allie and the camel guy. I thought he was asking her if she had fun but he was really asking her for more money.

Here's the whole gang.

I love this picture of the cousins. Elizabeth Burnard, James Christiansen, and Allison Taylor. Those lucky kids!

The pyramids are very close to the city of Cairo as you can see. I imagine that they were far, far away from Cairo hundreds of years ago and that the city just grew out to meet them.

We didn't get a good picture of the Egyptian Museum where the fabulous King Tut exhibit resides. It was crowded and hot and we were in a hurry. But I still remember how amazing it was and how beautiful the 3,000 year old artifacts were. Last week, some vandals got into the museum and trashed some of them. Unbelievable.

Here's the last shot--as if you need more. But really, I still can't get over how amazing Egypt is.

A place with a view

When Tom was a kid growing up in Cincinnati, he used to visit his grandparents in Utah and would spend time at the family cabin at Sundance. When I was a kid, I used to spend time with my friend, Jennifer, at her family cabin at Sundance. We would hike to Stewart Falls and spend all day exploring. Tom would hike to Stewart Falls and spend his days exploring, too. I wish I had a time machine so that I could see if we were ever in the same vicinity at the same time. Wouldn't that be a kick? Maybe we passed each other on the trail to the falls. I think I would have remembered seeing him, though. He was a pretty cute kid. And he probably would have liked my friend, Jennifer, and not me. But, that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, all this to say that Tom and I both loved escaping to the mountains. So it was always a dream of ours to get our own cabin someday.

When we moved to Washington we noticed that a lot of people we met had a "place" either in the mountains or by one of the many lakes around the area. Of course, their places were large and luxurious but all we wanted was a little place to hang our hats while we explored and hiked to water falls.

We found our little dream cabin at Lake Wenatchee. Well, it wasn't a dream cabin at first. At first it was a nightmare cabin. It looked like this:

Maybe that picture doesn't make it look as bad as it really was, and I promise to go into more detail about the four-year, weekend renovations but it really was a horrible little place. That's all you need to know for now.

It's on 9 acres (all woods and mountain) and was built in 1923. No one had lived in it or visited it for about 30 years except squirrels and mice. In fact, squirrel and mice nests were in every corner and all inside the walls. It was disgusting. But we had a dream. A vision. And we worked hard for many weekends until we got it looking like this:

And here's what the back looked like.

This is what the back looks like now.

It's been an amazing and extremely fun transformation and it has brought so much joy to our lives to work on it together. Actually, Tom has done 99.9% of the work but I was very supportive. We've taken hundreds and hundreds of pictures of each step of the way so there will definitely be more to follow.

And finally, this picture is taken from the corner of the property. We call it "The View". It's about a 10 minute hike from our cabin and we love to take everyone there to see why we disappear from Redmond on the weekends.

A nice Saturday

Tom, Gypsy, and I woke up at 5:00 on Saturday morning and drove up to Lake Wenatchee. It's been raining all week here in Redmond and it was getting to be pretty depressing. Rumor was, it was supposed to be sunny up at the cabin. So we headed up. This is what we saw from the cabin's driveway.

Gypsy and I relaxed while Tom worked on projects around the cabin. Around lunchtime, we decided to go for a hike. We decided to go to Hidden Lake--a three mile round trip. Just perfect for a new puppy.

We must have taken 60 shots of Gypsy but only three of them worked. She is constantly on the move.

I love going to Lake Wenatchee--especially when it's sunny. I think this was one of the top five beautiful days in memory.

Sneakers

This is Sneakers. He was only 7 weeks old when we brought him home and he looked like a little Beanie Baby. The breeder wanted us to be patient and wait a little more before we took him, but it was impossible for three small anxious kids to wait one more day. As a result, I felt Sneakers never really learned how to be a "real" dog. He thought he was human.

This is my favorite picture of Sneakers. I use it as my Google profile picture. I love his soulful look and the little bags under his eyes.

Here is Sneakers at Lake Wenatchee. He never really loved going up there but we would drag him with us many, many, many times. He's such a poser. Loved getting his picture taken.

Sometimes he even smiled for the camera.

This is the last picture I took of him, right after the vet called to tell us his 13 1/2 year old body was falling apart and we needed to put him to "sleep". It was one of the top five saddest days of my life.

I loved everything about Sneakers. The way he slept under the dining room table with his chin resting on the rung of the chair. The way he tried to trick us into giving him treats by pretending he needed to go potty. The way he'd lift his arm for a tummy rub whenever Tom walked by him. I even loved the way he smelled.

Rest in peace Sneakers. I miss you!