Category Archives: awesome

Weekends with friends

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I went to Seattle recently to visit a friend of mine that I’ve known for 33 years. We started school together back in 1978 so I’ve known her a long time. As I was driving I heard my absolute favorite song in the whole world, ‘Jane Says’ by Jane’s Addiction.

For whatever reason that song is like a good punch in the stomach.  It’s as if you hear something that tastes like candy for your ears.  I love this song.  It got me to thinking what other songs are my ‘punchy’ songs.  I’ve got only a few

  • “Jane Says”, Jane’s Addiction
  • “Sistor”, The Nixons
  • “Close my eyes Forever”, Lita Ford with Ozzy Osbourne
  • “The Air That I Breathe”, The Hollies
  • “Escape (The Pena Colada Song)”, Rupert Holmes

There are some really great songs out there that will stop my in my tracks, but not like “Jane Says”.  But as usual, I’m digressing from my topic.

When I got to Jaren’s we did our usual ‘catch up’ thing.  Good friends can do that.  We haven’t seen each other in months and we simply picked up where we left off.  It’s awesome.

So Jaren and I went to Carnation, WA and to the local bazaar where I proceeded to drop some cash on locally made products.  I found some amazing shawls that were too short.  And then I found the longer ones!  They were perfect for a tall girl such as myself.  What was funny, was that the second Jaren and I started looking at the shawls within 5 minutes there was a run on this lady’s merchandise!  I got my 2 and got outta there.  Beautiful hand-crafted items make me think of home.

Then we found the jewelry.  You simply cannot go wrong with jewelry.  Boy, listen to me…again, I’m digressing.  The whole reason I was writing this was to talk about how I was the tallest person (male or female) at the bazaar.

People were staring, kids were pointing, and I can’t tell you how many weird looks I got…it was awesome.  What was even better is Jaren’s reaction.  She didn’t do anything, it didn’t phase her.  She’s so used to it that I’m not sure she even noticed.  That’s what good friends do; they don’t notice how tall you are even when the rest of the world does their best to point it out.  Isn’t that great?

Jaren and me from our 'girls weekend' last January.

My TALL Summer

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One my most favorite things to do is take fun pictures especially while I’m traveling.  While my summer may not have been my best summer on record, I did get to take a few pretty good pictures and I got to take an awesome trip with my family.

Our trip was ‘Up North’ fishing with my family.  We rented a cabin on North Star Lake MN (about 5 hours north of Minneapolis) with 8 adults and my 4 year old niece, Baileigh, who is the most adorable little kid EVER.  (I should insert here that all my nieces and nephews are the most adorable kids EVER!)  Anyway, this cabin is truly awesome in a surprising way.  There’s no TV.  That’s right my family actually had to talk and do things together.  It was wonderful and I’m a little shocked that we all had as much fun as we did.

My niece loves to sing.  One night while she was in the shower and the rest of us were sitting in the living room area, she started to sing. “And I rock this club, and I go all night singing Aye-Oh…..let’s go!”  It was the funniest thing ever.  She got the words all wrong, but it was hilarious.   That would be our song of the weekend.  She also learned how to use the end of a jump rope as her microphone (thanks Aunt Holli!)

'And I rock this club...'

I also need to mention that I found my new favorite chair.  It was on our way to the Lake although I don’t remember which city it was in, the chair of course was dedicated to Paul Bunyan.  Anytime there is a large piece of patio furniture sitting in a parking lot it seems to beckon to me to sit back and relax.  So I did.

I think I finally found the perfect chair!

Now one other thing that we usually do when we take these family vacations is we play volleyball.  Almost everyone is over 6′ tall (with only one exception!) and I have to imagine that if we were against someone other than ourselves we could be quite intimidating.   This year it was the Jennings’ girls against the significant others.  My mom was our one and only spectator and she clapped for both teams so it didn’t exactly feel like a real game.  However, I’m very proud to say that the Jennings’ girls won!!!

Bump, Set, Spike!

We spent much of our time fishing, boating, kayaking, playing games, eating…it was a nice and relaxing.  My family is really fun.  I never did catch a fish but then, neither did my dad.  Heather was the big winner with a 45″ muskie.  We threw it back.  Muskies aren’t a good fish to eat…I learned that from the guy who helped us catch it.  Hmmm…I guess I could say I had an educational summer.