I hope no one thinks I don't take guns seriously, I do! I just thought I would make it more fun with the title. The gun we are using is the same gun Clint Eastwood used in his first Dirty Harry movie. We have owned our gun for a couple of months now and tomorrow we are going to get our concealed weapons liscense (no we are not going to carry it around, we are doing this IF we wanted to carry it in the car) so we thought it was about time I actually shot it. I am so glad we did. It has felt really creepy to me to have it in our house and to hear Steve take it out of our safe, and to hear him say he is going shooting. After going out today, I feel a lot more comfortable, and want to go and practice more. It doesn't seem creepy anymore. Here are a couple more pics.Me loading the gun

My Trip!

Well, believe it or not I am blogging again! I accidentally created this picture when I downloaded Picasa, and I fell in love with it! It's my trip in a nutshell! Do you think I should stop now? Well, even though Megan did a great job, I thought I would share some of my favorite things and my take on things as a tourist. Meg and Greg have been there long enough to be pretty much locals.

I had a great time, Megan and Greg were absolutely the best hosts, I never cooked except my oatmeal and an occasional sandwich or salad. I did do alot of dishes because they waited on me hand and foot. Greg was even sick and cooked. There apt. is very small, I was shocked, but it was weird, after I was there a few hours it didn't seem so small. The people Megan works for were gone for two weeks so that gave us time alone at night which was necessary all around because of the tight quarters.

This was our life if we weren't actually at church, or sight seeing, we were walking as fast as we could to get to the next tram, train, or plane. The pic that has no one in it is my favorite view while waiting for the tram.We averaged over 20,000 steps per day. The average person is lucky to get around 5000-8000 per day. One day we got 28,500 steps!! Crazy, but a real eye opener. Here I am 52 years old, and in good shape, but none the less my knees hurt on occasion and for a while every day. In Europe, walking like crazy, my knees never hurt. I have decided all over again, walking is the best exercise and that we were MEANT to move! Normally when I go on vacation or visiting, I gain 7-10lbs, I lost 2.4lbs! Crazy!

The thing I love best about Europe is the old buildings! I couldn't get enough of them! I would stare and stare. Each country has it's own unique style. Belgium was interesting in that it is kind of divided in half, one half is mostly Dutch, and therefore Dutch architecture and the people speak really good English. The other half is basically French and therefore French architecture, and they speak almost 100% French with almost no English. Brussels is a combination of both. This is very Dutch, I didn't keep the French look, but imagine New Orleans Square in Disneyland and you have seen the French look.

The thing I loved about Gent and Brugge, both in Belgium not far from Megan and Greg's was the canals! They were everywhere, I loved them. Brugge in the 1100 or 1200's was the biggest city in the world! It is so tiny it would shock you. But it had 38,000 people in it. I loved walking down the canals imagining the people living there. I could just see them, it was all very real to me, even when we were lost and Megan was going crazy, it was still fascinating to me.

We had a great time in Milan, by far our favorite store was ArmaniDon't we look like models!? I think so. :-) It was the most inspiring store I have been in in a longgggg time. It made me want to come home and sew. The clothes were the most beautiful clothes I have seen in years. I wanted to touch and did everything I saw. We went to one other store like it by a different designer that I also loved. I cannot remember his name, the lady didn't pronounce it very well, I wished I would have written it down.

This next pic is for you Danielle and probably Rebecca too!Another fun thing was how in the heck Amy snuck over and did Graffiti in the Tram station. The amazing thing is if you are familiar with Amy's handwriting, it looks just like this!

The Olive oil and vinegar store, Megan didn't do it justice, it was a party all unto itself, I couldn't get enough samples. Check out all the stuff in the background,I wanted to buy a ton, but knew there was a weight limit on my way back and this was the first place we went after I got there!

One of my favorite things I have decided about Europe is all the Squares. They have these big open spaces with no streets running through it and it is a giant square with buildings surrounding it, go figure why I like them so much. I remember loving them the first time we went to Europe. I could sit in them forever. They are huge. Here's the one in Brussels.It's amazing how much of our life is centered around food! Of course this is only the times we took pics and the times we were out and about. There were many other tasty times also!!

I have to say something about the supposedly botanical gardens even though Megan already said it, just look at this amazing edifice in the background, we couldn't fit it all in my camera all of it wasted on indoor theatres, what a shame! They could learn from us Americans in Washington DC huh Rebecca?

Last but not least some of my favorite pics, enjoy!The market you see above was like many everywhere!Mc Donalds Amazing!

We sat in front of this Cathedral and ate several meals and just sat, it was beautiful. This was on our walk in Megans forest.
This is how I truly felt in Brugge that day. I was so happy and at peace, it was wonderful.

Chocolate!!!! We walked back to these signs to take this pic, we had walked about 5 minutes back towards the station and realized we hadn't take pics. We had so much fun eating and picking out chocolates we had to have a picture in front of the sign. Even though most of my candy was for others, I like Megan ate way to much of the candy I bought for Steve and I!Last but not least, I loved thisone!!
It was a great trip, I felt blessed to be with Megan and Greg, to have time off from my BH job, and time to just think! Thank you Steve, Megan and Greg!!!!

Gracies dress

Gracie's b-day is Tuesday, so I made her and her doll matching dresses. Well, if I was clever like Lizzie and Danielle I would make a collage of pics with writing, but this is as good as it gets. Other than that, I have been busy trying to get the house and things ready for me to leave. I leave Wed. night to go to Jake and Lyndsey's, then off to the airport Thursday Morning bright and early. Exciting!!!!! A tiny scary, never gone across the ocean w/o Steve, but if Megan and Greg get what they want job wise, it won't be the last time probably. Here are a few pics of my lettuce, I think the one in the top of the triangle is Arugala Rebecca. I might pick a leaf or two this week!!! But they are still pretty small. Been reading and enjoying DVR. Today I did sharing time for my branch and taught Priesthood/Relief Society today. Both were good. Well, that is about all. Love you all!!!!

The rest of the story... And a radish!

Well, after we recovered, I called Dish Network and talked about how much it would cost to get new DVR receivers. They said it would cost us $150.00. I tell this to Steve and he says that's the best they would do and I said yes that is what they said. So he calls up Dish and after a couple of people later, he negotiates a deal with them that gives us 2 Free DVR recievers (that works on 3 tvs) and 3 months of HBO, Showtime, and 1 year of Cinemax, for 1 penny. Plus the first year is at a discount, so in the end it is a better deal than we were going to get from DTV, but no ABC still. But we would have paid more over the next two years w/o any of the above if we had left things the same. Steve is the King of negotiations!!!!

Well, I have been trying out winter gardening, now running into spring gardening and it has been interesting. I can see that some things are possible, they will just take longer. Here is a radish that I pulled that was supposed to take 28 days, this one took 44 days. I should have left it a little longer, it was just a little on the small size. I just couldn't wait to see what was happening under the soil. So I will start planting more, accept that it will take longer and that some things will just not work. We don't get enough sun I have decided for some things I tried. I planted beans and they never came up. I planted peas, and they finally came up, but sparsley, so I need to plant wayyyyy more seeds. The lettuce I started under lights and have now transplanted to beds are doing great!!! I am excited to pick some. I am waiting a little longer. I am hoping to be able to pick some before I go to Europe, but if not, hopefully Steve can pick some or Amy and Mike if they come out to visit. Well, I need to make dinner! Love you all!

Don't count your chickens before they are hatched!

Well, we decided to change to Direct TV and become modern with DVR because Dish dropped ABC which Lost is on. It would save us some money because of the special they would offer changing companies, etc. It all sounded good, although you know us, that decision took days and hours. We finally make the decision and I call and make the arrangements. They tell me someone will be calling me within 3 days to set up an appt. About 5 days later I realize that they still haven't called. I call them and they say I haven't signed up. After you know the typical "hang on I will see what happened", they discover that the name and phone # connected to my account isn't correct. So she takes about 15 min or more trying to change that and discovers she can't do it and someone else will have to do it. But she does make an appt. for me and it is 5 weeks later!!!! I think oh well, we have lived fine w/o it all this time so whats another 5 weeks. They send me an email to confirm my info and the name and phone # is still wrong. I call and they work on it and finally they get it right. About a week before our appt. I get an email saying that they are coming on the date they said they would and our time slot is between 12AM-1AM!! I think boy this company is not very together. The day before they are supposed to come I decide that I should call and ask what the real time is so we can be prepared. I find out they have changed the date WITHOUT notifying us and it is a week later!!!! We would have sat around all day wondering where they were. Our new appt is supposed to be between 12-4pm. We get all ready the night before make sure all the rooms are clear and ready. About noon Steve starts pulling the TV's away from the walls, and about 3:30pm the guy calls and says he's not going to make it by 4, he is running late and it will be be in the 4-8pm time slot. Disappointed but oh well. About 6:30 he still hasn't shown up so through the wonderful technology of caller ID, I call him and he still isn't done!!! Now we all know this is not summer and it is going to start getting dark soon. He shows up at 7:45!!! He actually thinks he is going to install it, a 3-4 hour job!! He then proceeds to tell us all the many holes he is going to drill and that he has never done a job with 3 dvr's before and that means..blah, blah, blah. We tell him that we think it is too late at night and that we want him to come back the next day. What a shock-(not!!) he can't squeeze us in he has appts already scheduled for the next day. We are trying really hard now not to start yelling and swearing. We tell him we want a first thing in the morning appt. no matter what. He calls in and they say they can fit us in on Friday morning. We say okay. So we spend the next 24 hours trying to decide if we still want this knowing all the things this means that we weren't expecting. We even starting wondering if we just wanted to cancel Dish, and Direct TV and just use DVDs and the Internet. In the end we decide to go with Direct TV and put up with all the unexpected things. Friday morning comes, I get up forgo my morning exercise because the installer will be in all the rooms I exercise in. He shows up about 8:15 and Steve takes him all around the house inside then outside, and Steve comes in and says to me that it looks to him like we won't be getting Direct TV after all, they want to drill holes into our roof to install it.! Dish put the dish on our fascia boards but Dirct TV won't do that. Well, on the coast you drill as few holes possible in your house and you never drill into your roof!!!! The wind will drive water into the smallest holes. We aren't newbies to the coast. Steve gets on the phone and talks to the head guy and they won't budge. So after all that we send the guy away, we sit down at the table and both sit in shock and disappointment for a few minutes before we say anything. What a mess! Oh well, life amazingly will go on! Ha Ha. So we are still in the dark ages. We are thinking about upgrading with Dish to dvr, but I am not holding my breath!

The other day I wrote about this in my journal and thought about how we let ourselves get so upset about things of the world, and Steves response to me when I said that to him was, "we live in this world!"

Well, other than that excitement I have a crazy weekend, Salem for WW's tomorrow, and Corvallis for church on Sunday. Hope you all have a great weekend. Love you all!

Movies

On a silly note, I looked up what the movies on the plane would be when I go to Europe, and their were about 5 or more that I hadn't seen! I am pretty excited. I know I need to sleep if I can and probably will, but a few of them are: High School Musical 3! (haven't seen), Me and Marly, Australia, and many more that I haven't seen and looked good. One small but fun perk of a long trip! I read about jet lag and how to help with it and it said not to use sleeping aids, I was planning on that! They did say to eat fruit, pasta, rice or anything high in carbs. They said that was a natural sleep aid, interesting huh? They also said to change your watch to the time where you are going. I better get a cheap watch. I am taking my donut type travel pillow and I am going to buy or make a sleeping mask and ear plugs. Another interesting thing they said was to stay outside as much as you can when you get there because the sunlight helps to signal to your body that it is supposed to be awake. Any other suggestions are very welcome! Well, I promised myself that I would start going to bed early and getting up earlier and it is already later than I planned on going to bed. Oh well, maybe tomorrow!

I visited a small organic farm yesterday, it was one of my WW members place. It helped sooooo much, I am more excited about my greenhouse again. He made it much more simple, and not so many steps. He sells his produce to high end restaurants, so I trust what he says. I am excited to try it his way.

Well, love you all!!

I can't believe it has been a week!

Make sure you scroll down. There are some fun things towards the end of the blog.

After the little Arnold's left I nursed myself back to health and then we went to Idaho! It was great fun. I am so mad at myself, I didn't dump my pics from my cards before I left, and never got around to it while we were there so I didn't take pics! That is a first for me! Soooo I will always get my cards emptied before I go!

We went first to Boise to see Robin and Don. I am glad we went there first before we went to Tim's. We got to take Robin and Don out to dinner all by ourselves. It was much nicer that way to be able to not have so many people around. Robin is doing amazing. She is so determined, so she can talk, walk without a cane and has feeling in her right arm. I enjoyed talking to her very much. We always have talked easily so we didn't have problems communicating. I am very optimistic that the girls will have her zipping around the house and using that arm before Don comes back from Iraq. Plus I think the girls are more stubborn about making her talk, so she will just get better and better at that. We stayed at Tim's, Penny and Walt were there also. We had a blast talking to all of them, and went out to dinner the next day with Robin and Don and the rest of us.

Then on to the Leslie's. We had so much fun in Firth/Rexburg. The girls were home because Rebecca is going to home learn them. I am so excited for them. Rebecca will be the pioneer for our family. It will be fun to watch and see if it turns out that all or most of my grand kids become home learners. The Jonas Brothers movie was out and I took the girls and Rebecca to it. It was SO MUCH FUN!!!! It was in 3-d so we all had our cool glasses on and got to pretend we were at a concert and back stage. I had a smile on the entire movie. They are amazing performers and unless they are liers, they are amazing people. They are clean dancers and dressers, athletic, cute and decent singers. At the end of the movie it was the Jonas Brothers at the movie theatre watching their movie. They asked their body guard if they had any popcorn left, they didn't, so one of them leaned forward (3d remember) pointed at us and said "you there with the red shirt on, can I have some of your popcorn?". Well, we went while all the other kids were in school, so there were literally about 10 people in the theater. I had on a red sweater and had the popcorn bucket, the girls loved that, the part of you that loves to pretend felt like he was talking to me. It was a great time. We went to Sub Zero ice cream before it started, Nummmmmyyyyyyyy! Better than Cold stone.

Because the girls were home I cooked a little with Gracie, and helped the girls do blogs. Anna and I didn't finish hers, we didn't start until a couple of days before I left, and the last day we spent at Danielle's, so it didn't leave much time to finish Anna's. So I told Aliese she needs to help Anna, are you reading this Aliese? We watched Kit Kiterage, that was good. Just being together was fun.

Steve and I went to Rexburg to see Clay and Danielle. I went shopping with Danielle, we went to DownEast, or whatever it is called, Payless Shoes, and Walmart-the expensive stores! I got one shirt, and Danielle got a couple of bargains at Walmart. We then went back home, visited with Clay. Steve came back from visiting a best friend from High School and then we went to dinner. Chinese, so Steve and Danielle were in Heaven. Then home for LOST!!!! It was so much fun for me to watch it with someone else that loves it. Steve has never let himself watch it, so I always watch it by myself, and until this Wednesday, on the computer. So it was fun to watch it with Daneille and Clay. Then we came back to the Leslie's, went to bed. Then next morning we got up and Rebecca made us German Pancakes, nummy! Then on the road back to Boise, saw Robin and her fam again, then back to Oregon. We got home about 11:00 pm. Exhausting! But nice to sleep in our own bed.

The next day, Steve got up and shaved his beard! Yes for those of you that didn't know he had a beard. I tried to like it, but I married a clean shaven man. Here are the bearded pics.After he shaved his beard Steve jumped into my car and drove to Philomath to get our new gun! I have to say it was hard at first, but I feel it is a good thing. We live out in the sticks where there isn't a police or sheriff's dept. We share the police with the county. We are going to go out and practice so we can both (me mostly) can become comfortable with it.

The big news is I am going to EUROPE!!!! I am going to visit Greg and Megan. Steve is staying home and taking care of the beach house, I get to leave the laptop home! Yea!! It will be the first time since the Internet became our main mode of advertising (word of mouth and return customers being the other) that I will have a day off. Of course I get Sunday's off. I am so excited. I will teach Steve all the computer stuff and just go and play! It will be fun to shop with Megan and just hang out. I bought some new tennis shoes (why do we call them tennis shoes?) and am going to start wearing them in the house to get used to them. I am going to fix a few of my clothes to make them pick pocket proof for when we are traveling in Milan. I might make some new shirts, we'll see. I am hoping to get down to my normal weight so I can buy a couple of classy outfits! I live in a branch with older people and there are some that are older than me that really love clothes, so I have no hope of ever not wanting beautiful classy clothes.

We have had crazy weather lately, sun, rain, hail, snow and wind. I went to Costco yesterday that is always fun.

Oh and another cool thing in our lives is that we are getting direct TV on Wednesday! Just in time for Lost! We have always had dish, but they don't have ABC here so we are switching, which means we get new receivers!!! that will be DVR!!! Yes the Arnold's are becoming modern! I will now get to watch Lost on TV and tape and pause live TV. I am so excited! Well, this has been long. Hope you all made it! Love you all!