Glassfest 2013

Emily went with her best friend Cat.

Just hanging out

Rainbow

All our forest friends are back

Ginger is watching cat TV. Out there today is a Morning Dove, Squirrel and a Chipmunk if you look close.

Spring is finally here

Weekend Project

We didn't get quite finished (one more row on garage door) but we also helped the neighbors clean up the neighborhood tennis courts yesterday too.

All we have left is to fill any holes and final sand before paint. As much as we love the cedar some of the wood is pine so it will not match. Hopefully this week if the weather holds we can paint this section completely so we will know what the final house will look like.

A couple more years

Paint Shaver Pro

5 mins with the paint shaver pro and the sander and we are back to bare wood. This will make the job so much easier.

Wish they had never painted that cedar. It is beautiful but we have no good way to ratio between the boards all the way back to bare wood since it was also stained.

Beck's new outdoor sink

The top is made of an old solid wood door. Beck and Em sanded, stained and polyurethaned it. The sink is solid cast iron we found at restore.

We just need to add the bottom shelf and put a facia on it.

We deem winter over

So we planted herbs and some veggies our neighbors gave us.

All cleaned up

Em washed, waxed and put on her stickers today.

Making Moms outdoor sink

Finished buying our materials at Restore this morning. Emily is working hard. Finished project to come.

Getting there

Half a day of 2 heat guns, 2 scrapers and a lot of elbow grease. There were 4 layers of paint on there including purple!

Before

Getting ready to paint the house this year. Here is what we started with.

Allegheny River Dancers

Bill Crouse and the Alleghany River Dancers performed after dinner at the AISES conference. It was an amazing show.

The Longhouse at Gonandagon

We got to tour Gonandogan today while at the AISES conference.

Good morning Deer

Stylized Lion

Fooling around with snapseed

Lazy Lion

Imagine our surprise when we came around the corner and saw this guy snoozing in the sun!

Introducing...Baby Luna

The Buffalo Zoo has a baby polar bear that frolics for an hour a day...and we got to see her!

30,000 feet

Goodbye Idaho!

Elk

Fresh elk for dinner.

Basque Food

Boise has the largest Basque population in the United States we found out.

Downtown Boise

It's 70 here today and spring has started.

Leaving Salt Lake City

The views....

Are amazing from this airport.

Anne Burrell from Food Network

That's her in the right side of the picture. Saw her in the Salt Lake City airport today.

Salt Lake City

Happy Easter!

He got away

There was a chocolate bunny and some bunny poop under the box.

Our trap

We set up a trap to catch the Easter bunny last night. We woke up this morning to the trap sprung.

Back to Frankfurt

Waiting for the morning ICE train to Frankfurt to catch our flight home.

Dinner

We ate at a restaurant that Valerie's father recommended since he was from this area in Germany. The restaurant was called Rathaus which didn't sound too appetizing. It was great real German food and more German beer was sampled.

Stuttgart

Nothing in English to tell what this building was but it was pretty impressive.

Stuttgart

We took the train on a 2 hour ride back to Stuttgart to spend the night. This was the central square.

Lots of snow at the top

Since it was the day before holiday for the Germans they invited us along to their companies Easter party of fresh open pit fire fish and vegetables with some good German beer.

Almost to the top

The Black Forest

Our vendor was in the hills of the Black Forest. It was an incredible drive up the mountain.

Freiburg

The view from the hotel window.

Freiburg

Tonight we are in the Black Forest region of Germany in Freiburg. This is not a Best Western like we have in the states.

Munich

Had snow the day before we arrived.

Doner Kabob and...

More German beer!

It was a beautiful

The first part of the day was a beautiful ride from Kahl to Munich. The hill behind the houses was covered with grape vines as its wine country.

Trains

We spent 7 hours rising trains across Germany today. Glad to see the end of the day. Just a 2 hour train ride tomorrow.

Tonight's dinner

We went to a Bavarian restaurant tonight for our last night in Kahl. I started dinner with a liver soup and the main course was a Pork Shank with creamed cauliflower and some potato ball thing.

It was all amazing and finished off with a glass of pear schnapps that our German host insisted was to "help with digestion" of all the Bavarian meat.

Off course they just happened to have dark Paulaner beer we had to try.

The local pale ale

Are you sensing a theme?

Nuclear power plant

Is like Springfield on the Simpsons with a giant nuclear power plant just outside of town.

The local dark beer

One of the old churches in town