4th of July in Canada!

We were super Patriotic this year and went to Canada for the 4th of July. John (best man at our wedding) was in Toronto doing some business at Canada's Wonderland so we drove up to meet him. We had lots of fun hanging out and John even got us into the park which is HUGE. We went on the giant behemoth roller coaster and then headed out to water park to cool off on the hot day.

John and Steve

The mountain and waterfall you see when you first enter the park

New Loom!

Recently I got a new toy, a brand spanking new loom. It's a rigid heddle loom, which means I can't do any of the super fancy weaving patterns, but it costs 10x less than the fancy looms that can. So far it's been lots of fun. The loom is more limited than knitting. Really I can only weave rectangles. Fortunately there are lots of rectangular things to make. Also, weaving is MUCH MUCH faster than knitting.

Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom

Steve helping with the warping process

This is the first thing I made on my new loom. A nice standard scarf. I finished it in a day. One day! Can you believe that.

Dark Purple warp, light purple weft with pink accent.

Now really, who keeps putting these cat pictures up on the blog?
How many cat pictures do you need?
(answer: MILLIONS!!!)

New herbs for a new home!

So, we're here in Midland all moved in. We've been spending time exploring all of town, which is of course small and doesn't take much time, but it's been fun. One thing Midland has to offer is a good farmers' market downtown on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. Coming from Berkeley, our expectations may have been a bit low for a mid-Michigan market, and we were pleasantly surprised. There are a lot of flowers available right now, and every time we've been, there have been more fruits and vegetables. Some are from California, but we'll ignore that. Everything we've bought has been fresh and tasty. They sell some herbs there, so we figured it'd be time to try growing our own again.

I tried growing some in Berkeley, but they unfortunately can't survive a large amount of neglect. Who'd have thought? I put them outside at our old place, so I never thought about watering or pruning them unless I was on my way in or out from school. Now, though, we've got these beautiful plants growing next to our large sliding door and under a full spectrum CFL. The Thai basil, with its large purple flowers (that we pruned after a day so it wouldn't stop producing leaves) and Greek oregano, tasted delicious on some pasta. We haven't had the mint (in its own pot to prevent aggresively taking over the others), but it smells great rubbed on my fingers. Even though we've only had them a few days, we're getting excited about someday having some real ground and a real garden. Until then, we'll survive with some potted herbs.

Congratulations Steve!

Or should I say Dr. Steve!

Trip to Sequoia

When the Guillaudeu parents came to visit we decided to visit the giant sequoias. The trip through the 100 degree heat in a non-air conditioned car was pretty brutal, but totally worth it. The trees were utterly amazing. I was there and I almost can't believe how big they are!

Steve is thrilled about the General Sherman Tree
Largest living tree - by volume

The senate grouping of giant sequoias
and a very tiny Aimee

Fallen Sequoia's Roots
and a Steve for scale

Laying in the paved "footprint"
of the General Sherman Tree

Beautiful spiderweb photo by Steve
Yes, it is covered in pollen

View from the top of Morro Rock

Super Honda goes under the tree

Crescent Meadow

Grizzly Falls

Apartment hunted!

We found an apartment in Midland a week ago. We're getting a 2-bedroom place on the upper level of a four-unit building. It's a really nice apartment, much larger than what we have now for less money! It's got a cathedral ceiling in the living room, a large balcony and glass window doors, a decent kitchen, washer/dryer hookups, a garage and driveway, and the complex has a pool and hot tub. We're not moving in right away, unfortunately, because it isn't open until July 11. We're going to be in temporary housing until then.

After looking for the apartment, we spent some time hanging out around town. In particular, we spent a nice afternoon at Dow Gardens looking at the tulips and other plants in bloom. It's a beautiful garden. It is going to be strange for us moving somewhere with seasons. I doubt as many things bloom in January there as in Berkeley, but we'll manage. We do miss playing in snow. Thankfully, the apartment complex takes care of the driveway and streets, so we can just play in it and not have to push it around.

Don't forget we have a link to our photos on our home page at the top right, and we've added a link to Scott and Sarah's new blog, where you can see their new puppy Lola.

Skydiving celebration!

We wanted to celebrate finishing my degree, and what better way than by jumping out of a plane? Both of us have wanted to go skydiving for a long time. We didn't come up with the idea, however, without some help. Jason came over to watch Point Break with us one night. When the skydiving scene came on, he jokingly asked if we wanted to go. We had been planning on celebrating by having dinner at The French Laundry (if we could have ever gotten reservations), but realized this was a much more memorable idea.

We had eight people lined up to go, but four bailed at the last minute for various reasons. Thankfully, Tripp and Mike were still able to join us. We all had a great time.

We went to the Parachute Center at the Lodi Municipal Airport. It's an interesting operation they have running. Everything seemed to move really quickly and smoothly. Maybe they'd take more time with people during the week, but it was Mother's Day, and it was crowded. We got shuttled through putting on the gear, watching the training video, and getting on the plane really quickly once our turn came up. The plane ride didn't take long, but long enough to cast some occasional doubts. For example, we leveled off at 8000 feet to let a couple of people jump out, and then we continued climbing to 13,000. Seeing those two disappear made us realize just how easy it is to fall out of a plane.

When we got to 13,000, Aimee was first. She didn't really have time for second thoughts because the plane had 8 tandems jumping. They just crouched, waddled to the door, and tumbled out! One couple went before Steve had his chance, again with no second thoughts. It actually took a couple seconds of free fall to realize what was going on.

The free fall was tons of fun, unlike anything we've done before. The air rushed by so fast that our faces were flapping around. There's really nothing to compare it to.
Once the parachute deployed, we relaxed some, but that part wasn't as fun as the free fall. We got to make some turns and spirals, which did wonders for Aimee's stomach, and before we knew it we were on the ground.

We've got more photos posted, so if you're interested, check them out. We had a great time, plan on doing it again, and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to celebrate a special occasion or Saturday!