Our Anniversary

We had a real treat this weekend. My sister Erin and her hubby Daniel came for a 3-day visit. Since our anniversary and theirs are in the same month (only one week apart, actually) we decided to celebrate together with a day-trip to Salt Lake.

Here are some shots that I took while we walked around the city.

This is a grill surrounding a little tree. I just really liked the star pattern.

We were planning to play miniature golf, but the place we wanted to go was apparently in the middle of this big construction sight. So, no golf.

That's what I get for not calling first.

We meandered around outside the LDS temple, just to see the place. The buildings were pretty.

I really liked the lion's head details.

The gardens were spectacular. I had no idea there were so many flowers planted there. I took many more pictures of flowers than anything else. I just had a hard time appreciating these 100+ year old buildings that took 40 years to complete, when I've been to Notre Dame, Windsor Castle and other such architectural wonders that have almost reached their thousand-year mark. I'm a wee bit picky.





After that, we went to the Gateway Mall, where I nearly got manhandled by a saleswoman at a kiosk. Those are some pushy people! On a whim we went to the theater and watched Terminator. Good movie. Violent, but good. After that, it was on to the main event: The Cheesecake Factory!

Daniel is a punk for closing his eyes at the wrong time!

That place was packed, but we got in pretty quick. The food was great, but that's not the real reason we went. We went for the cheesecake and we were not disappointed at all. I could only finish half of my slice, but I still think I gained a few pounds from it. It was worth it though. :)

So, Happy Anniversary to us and Happy Anniversary to Erin and Daniel.

A picture of me in the rear view mirror on the drive home.

The next day we recuperated from the cheesecake by playing a round of Wii golf. Here's Ryan about to take a shot.

He's getting good advice from Wilbur, who is now a little one-eyed pirate snake.
Yep. He lost his eye. :(
But he's super healthy otherwise. :)

We really enjoyed having E & D come for a visit. A great time was had by all.

Wilbur's eye is clear!

That big blob on Wilbur's eye finally came off! It happened May 14 while he was shedding.

This is right after it happened. That thing on his neck is the eye cap.

He is doing much better now. I'm still not sure if his eye will heal or not--it was a little red at first, and it's gradually becoming less shiny than his other eye. He may lose it because it was under there for so long, but at least it has a chance to heal now if it's going to at all.


So many things were affected by that eye problem. His energy was going down and it seemed like he was losing his appetite, but now, he's exploring around his aquarium more, the infection in his mouth seems to be gone, and we're hoping his appetite is back; we'll know for sure when Mckee's has some pinkies available.

Turkey hunting in 2009

Well, I'm about a month or so late with this post, but better late than never I suppose. Kathleen is usually the one to keep our blog up to date, and she's been reminding me regularly that I need to go ahead and get this done so she can start posting new stuff. So, here goes. Dad and I went on our annual turkey hunt in north-central Oregon from April 15-18 this year. We've been doing this trip for about 4 years now, and it's always a lot of fun. It's the perfect way to ward off the several months of cabin fever I always develop between December and March. Anyway, last year was the first year we were both successful in bringing home turkeys (mine was bigger of course), and in the process we found a natural blind that someone had made a long time ago that was in a really good spot. In fact, we both shot our birds last year from that blind within an hour of each other. Well, this year dad hunted the blind by himself on opening morning because I couldn't get there until that evening. He had some birds come in and a really close call (i.e., missed a shot at a running bird), but no luck. On the second morning we set out well before light to hunt it together, and low and behold, when we got there, someone else was already in it! How frustrating! Well, at first anyway. It actually turned out to be a good thing, as we ended up finding ourselves in the right place at the right time about an hour later. As we hunted the oak trees on the edge of a deep canyon, a gobbler ended up coming in below us without ever knowing we were there. In fact, when he gobbled he was only about 40 yards away from us, but the steepness of the canyon hid him from view. Dad and I dropped to the ground, and he got out his call while I got my gun ready. A couple of soft clucks and yelps from dad and he came right to us. I shot him at about 10 yards when his head finally popped over the rim of the canyon. What a cool experience that was! Dad didn't end up getting a bird this year, but we're both 50% now (2 birds in 4 years), which is about 4 times the average success rate for the unit we hunt, so I think we're doing pretty good. Hope you enjoy the pics!

Turkey pictures...

This is the blind we both got our birds from last year.

This is the view from inside the blind with a couple
of decoys out.