Updated To Do List!!

Here is our “Things to Do before we move in 2013” to do list update…

1. Go to a Mariners Game (baseball)
2. Go to a Seahawks Game (football)
3. Go to a Sounders Game (and why not a soccer game)
4. San Juan Islands (off the coast of WA)
5. Leavenworth at Christmas
6. Tulip festival in Mt. Vernon
7. Hike in the Olympic Peninsula
8. Canyon Beach in Oregon
9. San Francisco
10. Napa Valley
11. Disneyland/LA
12. Hawaii
13. Mexico with Charlie and Julie for their 30th bdays (and Doug’s too)
14. Halibut Fishing
15. Shooting an Elk (this one is for Doug)
16. California Beach
17. Redwood Forest
18. Catalina
19. Portland
20. Crater Lake

Hard to believe that we only have 10 more months here in WA! Halfway through with our list!

Are You Ready For Some Football????

Fall is right around the corner and you know what that means?!?!?!  I get to drag Doug to another pumpkin patch and FOOTBALL will be on all the time!!!  I love watching football and I love going to the games.  I haven’t been to a game in a while and going to a Seahawks game was on our to do list.  Our friend Steve has season tickets to the Seahawks and when he asked us if we wanted to tag along to a preseason game we were stoked to go!

Steve has great seats!  A bunch of other people from Madigan all have seats in the same area.  Hopefully we can tag along again in the future.

The best part of the game was that the Seahawks actually WON!  Maybe they will be good this season?  Who knows!?!

Watershed at the Gorge

All the showers are over with and Doug is coming home this weekend….now is the time to finish catching up on here.

At he beginning of August we went to an awesome 3 day concert at an amazing venue called the Gorge in central Washington.  We saw some of our favorite country stars!  Dierks Bentley was my favorite and Miranda Lambert was awesome!  Sarah Evans, Uncle Kracker, Dwight Yokam, and Tracy Lawrence were some of the others that we saw.  Blake Shelton was playing on Sunday night but we had to leave so we could be home to go to work on Monday.

We left Friday after work to drive the 3.5 hour drive to the George.   We picked up Rob and Jenny and realized that we had all packed way too much stuff.  We had to shove all of our camping stuff into every nook and cranny to make it all fit!  We headed out only to sit in traffic for a good part of the ways.  We arrived to the Gorge, got an awesome right at the entrance camp site, and set up camp. We put up our tents and then went into the concert.

The views were absolutely amazing!  I’m so glad that we went.  This is by far the best place to watch a concert!

We had great weather, great company, great views, and a ton of great artist to listen to!

Madigan Ortho Graduation 2012

We said goodbye to some good friends this pass June.  It is always sad to say goodbye to Army friends, but then you never know when you path will cross again.  We could even be stationed together in the future! 

As a forth year resident Doug was in charge of putting together the Graduation Dinner.  One of the other residents booked the location and decided on the menu.  They put together the traditional roast video.  This year it was a Top Gun theme and they did a great job!  I am excited/nervous to see what the video will include next year when they will be acting as Doug, Scully, and Chad. 

Doug tried to keep me in the dark about the dinner because he didn’t want me going overboard.  He put me in charge of getting a cake and I begged to be able to do the centerpieces.  I ordered the cake from Top Foods.  They make delicious cakes, but I wasn’t quite sure that they could decorate it the way I envisioned it.  One of the ortho resident’s designed this amazing new “logo” for the Madigan ortho department.  I wanted it to go on the cake but knew that it was very detailed and I wasn’t sure how it would turn out.  The baker/cake decorated promised me that she could do it and it would look nice.  I was nervous when I picked up the cake and I was pleasantly surprised by how great it looked!  

While I picked up the cake I also picked up 9 different bouquets of flowers to use for the centerpieces. I divided them up between 12 99 cent vases that I purchased at Wal-Mart. They made cute little arrangements and Doug was proud that I stayed under his $50 budget that he gave me.  I didn’t get any pictures of the arrangements…I was not in picture taking mode and I need to get better about taking pictures!!!!

We did take this picture with Doug’s iphone.

These are the wives of the guys that graduated.  They are such a lovely group of girls that will be missed!  They are all stationed at bases in the Southeast so maybe we will meet up again one day if Doug and I are lucky enough to get back home in the South!

I can’t believe that the dinner next year will be honoring Doug, Scully, and Chad. It seems like we just started this journey a few months ago and in about 9 months we will be about to head on to our next destination!  Doug may say differently, but these past 4 years have flown by!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game….

Since Doug has been staying/working up in the Seattle these past few months we are trying to mark some Seattle things off of our to do list.  First up was a trip to Safeco Field to see the Mariners play.

The Mariners played the Dodgers and I believer there were more Dodgers fans in the stadium than Mariners fans!

We had awesome seats right behind home plate!  Steve and Karen came with us to enjoy some baseball.

The roof of the stadium closes during the game when it is raining and as you can see it was open during our game.  The sun wasn’t out and there was only a light drizzle coming out of the sky.  Normal Seattle weather.

We had a great time, but probably won’t be going to another Mariners game…They have nothing on the Braves and Turner Field…except for the moving roof!

Camping in May

Doug loves camping!  I like camping too….only in a camper with heating/air, stove, bathroom with a toilet nearby, comfy beds, tv/dvd player…some may call my kind of camping “glamping”. 

In May we drove out to a little spot that our friends have camped at before near Mt. St. Helens.  We were in a National Forest and the guys were in heaven shooting their guns.  Right after we set up our tents a downpour started.  Our cute little setup quickly turned into tarp city!  We had a good time hanging out by the fire, shooting guns, and hiking through the forest.  Wrecks was in heaven too and loved running through the forest and getting into any type of puddle/water source that he could find!

John and Pavlina are getting ready to take aim at some targets.

Hiking through the woods was beautiful!

Wrecks loved getting in the creek!

This tree was huge!

It took a little coaxing but we finally got Wrecks to walk onto the log.

He was a pro by the end of our picture taking session.

About to hit my gazillionth bulls eye!  Ha!

This is the steel plate that we were shooting at…

The weather clear up and we had a great time hanging out in the woods!  I’m not in any hurry to go again, but I am willing to do it again.