Sara's visit

Sara and Nature.... :-)

A pretty stream along our 8 miles of hiking straight up a mountain that day..
On our hike up to Wakeena falls

Somewhere up high that I made Sara hike to that day..haha
relaxing (and sweating) on a WAY too hot day on the Portland spirit
Buck Lake
hiking to Buck lake to sit in our inner tubes in the lake...
Horsetail falls

Seattle

We stayed overnight at a hotel in Seattle after the flight from Alaska

View of the space needle from our hotel

Pikes Place Market...

Dani & Gregor's wedding

My cousin Nick and I....there may have been a little (ok a bottle) of wine involved in this picture....
Gram seemed to enjoy the wine as well.... (sorry gram, I had to post this one...)
Me with my cousin Dani and her hubby Gregor who is swiss but they live in Australia at the moment. It was so nice to get to meet him finally!!
cake time...

My cousin Samantha and Gregors best friend from Australia Arvin (sp?)
The happy couple during their first dance
Mom, my bro Haidan, Cousin Nick, myself & Nate

This was the coolest table there by far!! YA table 8!
The happy couple, plus I caught the grandmas eating hahah...
Cheers!!
What a beautiful wedding and wishes for many happy years to the wonderful couple!!

The shoes called KYLA!

Nick & Beth are getting married in October so I was just looking around on the Internet for shoes to go with the bridesmaid dress that Beth chose for us to wear (see above) and saw some shoes on the NINA website that are called the KYLA! not sure if I would want them for the dress but now I feel like I have to have them simply because they are named after me :-)

http://www.ninashoes.com/-(263)-Silver%20Flash%20Fishnet-(7974-8J56JG).html

I {HEART} IKEA

Cute new leaf curtains from IKEA
cute new bedspread from IKEA
some great pictures I framed with frames from IKEA
I decided that I would tackle trying to decorate our guest room. Can I just say that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Ikea....they have so many cute things that are really affordable and pretty decent quality too. If you have one around you and need to decorate anything I highly recommend going there. The problem is that it is hard to walk out of that place without buying something.... (but hey, how can you pass up $4.99 sheets and $11.99 duvet covers?) I would love to work as a designer for IKEA who sets up the show room rooms...now THAT would be a great job for me!

the Cook ladies visit portland

Mt. St. Helens from a distance....it was kind of cloudy but you can sort of see where it blew out the side of the mountain
we ended up driving up the back side that hadn't erupted and got to look at it from the climber bivouac..really neat and close up!
Lander and Mt St. Helens

Beacon rock was really neat, we were sweating getting to the top though, straight up! Great views of the Columbia river from the top though

We went to the backside of Mt St. Helens and went down into Ape Cave which is an old lava tube. It was really neat, really dark, kind of creepy but totally worth it. I have never walked underground through a lava tunnel before!

new deck, new plants etc...

If we were hillbillies, these could be our hot tubs....
Some pots for the front of the house
Molly and her kiddie swimming pool. The people who gave her up said she didn't like water....well she loves the ocean and her pool so I think they were crazy!
I fenced in a little area in the back by our shed to plant a garden and added some flowers around it. I picked out some tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers etc.. we shall see how fast I can kill them with my brown thumb...haha

building the small deck out back of our house to hold the BBQ and a few chairs to sit out by the fire pit