Becca and Shawn's Adventures

idaho trip

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:30:00 +0000

this past week we drove to idaho to spend some time with shawn's family and to see mountains and trees again! :) on the drive down our dog, denali, had a hard time staying in the back of my car and instead wanted to snuggle up to shawn. shawn had just got off a 12 hour work shift that morning and all he wanted to do was to sleep. having a dog that constantly wanted to sleep with him kept waking him up and he'd push denali away. give her two minutes and she was right back where she had been before.
we were down in driggs, idaho for halloween and so i grabbed all my wiggs before we left north dakota. i thought that they just might come in handy. and they did! shawn's parents got to go to a "trunk or treat" (where families will meet in the church parking lot and kids will trick or treat from car to car.) and halloween party. luckily, i happened to have all of my wigs and we had fun dressing gary and marlene up. marlene even found one of her daughter's old drill team hair pieces which we turned into a striking beard for gary. gary even won the award for the best adult costume!
our primary reason for going to idaho was to see shawn's grandma kay. she had had a stroke three weeks previous. she's doing great and making progress in recovering the use of her body. we had a great time spending time with her. :)
we also got to spend some time with shawn's nephew and neice - linkin and linlee. the kids love riding "horses" and drafted shawn to be their horse several times.
and here's my other wig that i brought. the kids thought that it was a lot of fun to wear. so here's linkin:
and linlee:happy halloween!

Fall has flung...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:26:00 +0000

it's fall and i thought i'd up a picture of our back yard. the leaves took forever to actually fall off the trees and i was kind of excited to rake the leaves and jump in them. but i never did. for some odd reason having a dog takes away all that excitement - the possibility of landing in dog poop convinced me that i better not. ewwwh! so shawn was raked them up instead. anticlimatic.
early this fall (or was it late summer?) shawn decided to get his very first bow. he hasn't actually hunted with it yet but he has done some target practice. he's not bad! not bad at all!
we went and found a field that did not have "no trespassing" signs posted and found a hay bale for shawn to practice on. here he is in deep concentration.
i love all of shawn't facial expressions! here is his "giddy" face. i'll ask him to smile for the camera and so he'll give me a fake smile (which i can't complain because i have a hard time having a real looking smile when i'm told to smile - it's a deKay thing) and then i'll ask him to really smile for me. and then he'll pull one of these faces. i love it! when we took our engagement pictures everytime right before the picture took, shawn would chuckle under his breath to get that perfect smile. i thought it was just so darn cute!
and here we are together. awwwh! :) can you tell i'm freezing from the wind?

i'm back!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:31:00 +0000

ok, ok, satisfied?! :) so yeah, it's been a while and i suppose not many of you are too updated since i have taken an internet break. it's been sooo nice to not have the internet black hole tempt me to steal my time away. yet here i am again... although this is a pretty good purpose for getting back on.

anyhow, here's a summary of the past two months or so. below is a pic of shawn and denali on their daily run. this is how shawn runs denali and she loves it! she pulls shawn on the bike until she's too tired and then he pedals and keeps her going. on this particular trip i went with them on our family bike ride and denali got a hold of a road-kill squirrel. she was so proud of her catch and it took some coaxing to get her to release it. she's quite the huntress. in our backyard she's caught one bird and one squirrel already.
about a mile or so from our house is a Scandinavian heritage park. it's awesome! a lot of the people from this area are from norway. every october there's a huge norsk hostfest that celebrates the norwegian heritage here. here is one of my favorite statues at the park: it's hans christian andersen - a celebrated norwegian. i love this statue as it portrays such a lovable guy that is hard not to want to know what he's thinking.
and here's a building at the park. i think it's a church. i've never been to the park when the building is open, so i've never been inside, but i will make it eventually.
some friends that we've made while here had a wedding reception and i got to make the cake! they were married this spring, right before chris got deployed, and then had their wedding reception when he got back. i happened to get to know this couple through becky's sister, who was in my same ward when i was at rick's college, a million years ago. cool, huh! anyhow, i was nosey and asked if they were going to have a cake, they said no and so i offered to make it. i love making cakes and want more practice at making them so i'm glad they accepted my offering. :) it turned out great! angel food cake with whipped cream frosting - not your traditional wedding cake. mmmm! it was delicious!

a few weeks ago me and shawn and denali (or rather shawn, denali and i...) went to explore Theodore Roosevelt national park. we loved it!! we only had a day to experience the park so we went for the quick overview and want to go back to explore it more thoroughly. while there we saw a ton of wildlife! we saw plains bison, mule deer, antelope, prairie dogs, elk, wild horses... it was awesome!! here's some of the bison that we saw. it amazes me every time i run into them that they could care less about anyone or anything nearby. they walked right next to our car - if i was a more daring and brainless person i could've put my hand out the window and touched some of them. there were even two males that did a bit head butting. really cool!
shawn wanted to try and call in the elk so we went on a wild elk chase. we had heard the males bugling and the females calling all night long and that morning shawn was able to call some females in but they didn't come all the way in. so we crossed the river that meanders through the park, randomly found a trail on the other side, followed it for a while and then headed out off the trail trying to find elk. there never were any that answered back but we did blunder into some females and they paused for a bit when shawn did his bugle but decided that we weren't worth the effort so they left. i guess shawn needs to work on getting a more "manly" bugle. tee hee.
this is shawn's tool for his bugle - and it really sounds real! it's a plastic accordion straw that he bends to make the noise right. this particular straw we got free from someplace and it has hearts around it that say "love" and other such un-manly words. i think the pink and red color might've clued the females in to thinking that they wanted someone with a deeper bugle. we'll have to search out restaurants that give away blue or green straws next. i'm sure those'll work better. :) haha!
and here's me chewing on a piece of grass...
and us together! we rarely have pictures of us together since i'm usually snapping all the pictures. we just need to get a photographer to follow us, just so we can be in a picture once together, a picture of us doing something other than posing for the camera that i cleverly hold in my outstretched hand.
here's onto my latest projects: honey!!! people at church have befriended one of the beekeepers around here and so our ward gets a super good deal on raw honey for people to fill up for food storage. this guy owns 4,000 hives, spends the summer here in north dakota and the winter in california renting his bees out to pollinate the crops down there. he gets a lot of honey in the summer and so a friend invited me to go help to fill all the honey orders for our ward. i have no idea how many gallons we filled, but it was a lot!! there were possibly about 20 5-gallon buckets we filled up, plus all the other miscellaneous containers. i personally took home three gallons and i'm so glad i did. it tastes delicious and it's super good for you! i've been trying to substitute honey in for things that require sugar, like my breads.
i took lots of pictures of the honey as we poured it from the vat. when we'd get down to the bottom of the vat the different types of honey would mix (from different flowers) and awesome shapes would appear in the honey. i also asked a billion questions about bees and learned so much that really makes me appreciate the little guys. like, have you ever heard of bee sting therapy? some people claim that they've been cured from multiple sclerosis because of it. and did you know that the bees determine what type of bee a larvae will be (worker, drone, queen) depending on how much food they feed the larvae? it's amazing!
another project i've been working on is making anything and everything out of crab apples. for those of you that don't know or that are in denial, crab apples make some of the best applesauce i've ever had. and the sad thing is that people think that they're just ornamental and that there's no purpose for them other than making a mess of their yard and driveway every fall. that's the wrong attitude! make them into applesauce, apple jelly, fruit leather, apple cider additions and you can substitute applesauce for fat in breads, cookies... they're great! me and some friends did the first batch and then i continued on alone. i wanted a lot because it's soooo good!
shawn got off work early one day and came and helped me pick apples on base. no one wants their crab apples so you just have to knock on doors and ask to take the apples from their yard. and presto! the apples are yours!
there was also a tree on base of normal apples (i don't know what kind these are) that hadn't been pruned so there were tons of little apples. i picked a box of those - they were delicious!
all in all i processed four boxes on my own and it's a lot of work! here's my stash that i ended up with. i'm quite pleased with myself. :)
and for those of you that have asked, here is my house. this is the backyard, which is the only way we go in our house. the front door is reserved for those that don't know better. haha! i'll take a picture of that later for you. the blue thing is a tarp hung on my clothes lines as an awning for the dog when it rains or drizzles. we're working on getting her a dog house. and we rent the main floor and basement. someone else lives upstairs, so we don't quite have a house to ourselves yet.
last weekend my grandparents came up from phoenix to iowa, where they were both born and raised. and since iowa is just a short jaunt away (11 hour drive) i decided i wanted to see and experience the land of my forefathers. here's my grandpa, bob deKay, in front of his name on a monument to all those from griswold, iowa that have served in wars. grandpa served in the korean war.
i got to go to three of the cemeteries around town to see where my ancestors are buried. here my grandparents are standing next to my grandpa's parents (far right) and my grandma's parents and brother (to the left of grandma and grandpa).
g and g took me to a park right out of town and there we found lots of walnut trees with tons of walnuts on the ground. it was fantastic! we had a ball picking them up. i ended up going back on my way back home and got a whole bunch more. they're now sitting in my basement drying so that i can crack them open and get the wonderful black walnuts from inside, as grandma (helen deKay) is demonstrating here. black walnuts are so much harder than those that you get in the store (english walnuts?) and so a nut cracker doesn't really cut it. a hammer works much better but it takes a lot of skill not to blow the nut to pieces when you get frustrated, as i found out the hard way. he he.
all in all it was a wonderful trip. i love my grandparents so much for the people they are and the person that they created in my father. going to griswold helped me to understand them and where they came from better, as well as made me appreciate those who have gone on before me, that i have never met, but have forged the path for me to be.
and to close this rather lengthy entry, a last picture. north dakota has these all over the highway systems and i love it! some say "do your best" or "be grateful" or "be happy" but i always like this one. simply put, "smile."

sunflowers of north dakota

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:34:00 +0000

the sunflowers here are awesome! i was quite surprised this spring to hear that the sunflower is one of the big local agricultural products and i was excited for summer to come so that i could see all the wonderful flowers. and they are wonderful!! there is also a large amount of canola and flax grown so, combined with the sunflowers, the fields are the most wonderful of colors! the flax fields are oceans of blue, the canola fields are oceans of yellow and the sunflowers are golden suns. it's gorgeous! there are also a lot of other grains here which i really can't tell a difference between but i've got the flowering plants down!
i've been going out and taking pictures of the sunflowers and i just wanted to share some of them with you. i've absolutely loved seeing them! when i'd be out among the flowers i would imagine that i was alice in wonderland and would hope that the flowers would start talking and singing to me. just so you don't start worrying, no, the flowers never did talk to me but they definitely mumbled among themselves when the wind would start blowing. :) they certainly have a personality because of their ginormous size.

the weeds next to the fields are quite pretty, too. they're definitely photo-worthy...

Alaska trip continued...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:51:00 +0000

To continue my alaska vacation...
i made it my goal, after the family reunion, that i would go hiking everyday, or go on some outdoor adventure. i stuck to that pretty good except for sunday and 4th of july. i just wanted a rest from being busy everyday so it was just nice to stick around my parents house for a day. so here is another baldy hike. this is krystal, keith and me. and the pic of dad is in the next frame. so this is my "summit" pose that i borrowed from some family friends. every time i reach the top of a mountain i have to have some sort of dominating pose (ha!) to show that i'm at the top and the world is at my feet. corny, i know, but lots of people do it, so there! :) and way to go keith! not bad for a six year old, especially since he beat me to the top! (i'm a slow, steady hiker...)
here's my dad doing what he thought was the karate kid stance. i disagree and think it looks more like a spider man pose. either way he looks rather limber in this photo, ready to swoop down and pounce on unsuspecting villains!!
one of the hikes i did was up to the hatcher's pass area. i parked on the side of the road on the way up and me and raisin took off up the side of the valley and found this beautiful bowl. the tundra flowers were GORGEOUS up there with little streams running here and there. it was great! we stayed up there awhile but i could see a storm moving in from further in the mountains, so when it started to sprinkle on us we headed down.
and just as a side note, a tribute to raisin. she is the greatest hiking companion ever! i don't like hiking by myself, just in case something happens, so i've always taken raisin with me and she's wonderful! she's a great bear alarm and she's not the type that will chase the bear, just warn me of it. she also is very conscious of who she's hiking with and constantly plays "mother hen" making sure no one is left behind. she's nearing the end of her life now and is stiff and has trouble walking smoothly but she never wants to be left behind. as soon as she sees me put my backpack in the car, she is there jumping in my car. she's also now deaf and so it's hard to call her to let her know where i am. so if she looks around for me and can't find me, she starts panicking a bit. so then there i am jumping up and down, waving my arms so that she can see me. i do love her and appreciate her being such a good companion to me.
and here's a photo of me on the drive down from hatcher's pass, after my hike. this is the matenuska river and it's beautiful! and a perfect place to stop and take pictures. and just fyi, the daisy picture at the top of my blog was taken right next to this river. beautiful flowers!
while i was home i probably went and ate sushi two or three times at my family's favorite restaurant. mmmm! there's no sushi here in minot so i had to eat as much as i could while up in alaska since i knew there'd be a sushi draught coming on. ha! anyhow, here is one of my all time favorite rolls - the dynamite roll (the one in the center of the picture that looks like a volcano). it's fabulous! whenever i go that roll always gets ordered even though i'm trying to branch out and find something as fantastic as that but i always come back. oh dynamite roll, how i luv thee! :)
carolyn's family came up and spent the day at mom and dad's house so i got to spend some good times with here kids. here's cayden, pretending to sleep in some baby fireweeds. he's trying to pretend but had a hard time trying not to smile... :)
and here's the youngest, cathryn. she's a very smiley baby who is always into everything! she's very adventurous and has a very strong personality. and notice that nice gouge in her head? that happened when i was watching her and she smacked her head on the corner of the counter. it really makes me feel horrible because she carries that nice reminder on her head.
and here's whole bunch of wildflowers that my mom picked and put on the porch. daisies, columbine, geraniums, blue bells. i love the wild flowers from home!
i know this doesn't show much but the kids are sitting in the flower garden that i started back in 2004. i made a nice little stone walkway and a flat area at the top for chairs that was soon overtaken by weeds. when my youngest sister got married, we pulled out all the weeds, really flattened the area, put some of that black fabric stuff that stops the weeds, covered it with gravel and put some nice boulders around to add to the charm. here's cassidy and cayden sitting in my garden. i'm so glad that my mom and dad have kept it up. it looks great every time i see it!
and one last wildflower picture. i don't know what these are called - i'll have to look them up later and add the name once i figure it out. but they're gorgeous! they're really tiny flowers that grow in clumps and just look so angelic. mmmm!

deKay family vacation, part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:25:00 +0000

i mentioned that the kids entertained themselves the whole time and found lots of things to do. they decided that they all wanted to make bows. they would go find the perfect sticks and have my dad tie string on them and then find great arrows. here's hannah with a great arrow that she found. i don't know that it'd be that functional but it really does look great!
for all that really know me, i am a true deKay, which will be defined in a second. this is my campsite. i had to find the perfect site and then i hung my tarp over my tent, just in case it decided to rain the entire time, which it didn't. it only sprinkled a bit the first day but i left the tarp up because it sure heated the air under it up quite a bit. anyhow, i have to have everything perfect and just so and all the knots tied correctly and all. it's amazing how nit-picky i am. anyhow, every time i'd walk up to my tent i'd get a little thrill of pleasure by how perfect it looked. i know, it really sounds obsessive and ridiculous but for some strange reason i love making things work efficiently and neat. And that is the definition of a DeKay.
here's a pic of jennifer and thomas looking out at the ocean. i just love thomas' face in this one. he is such a master of facial expressions and you can tell exactly what he's feeling. water is such a draw for almost everyone and it's exciting and relaxing. especially if you can throw rocks or sand in the water - then it's even better!
the last full day we were there curtis and robert took the kids out in the kayaks. cathryn was not very thrilled at all about being out there and being confined so she screamed and tried to stand up. needless to say, she didn't stay out very long as curtis was afraid that she'd tip the kayak over. the rest of the kids were great! here they are, swarming around the double kayak, waiting for their turn to go out.
one final picture and then you'll be done with my family vacation (although not my alaska vacation)! here's the whole group that came, minus krystal who's taking the picture, bringing the total to 24. my mom's brother and his three sons came, and then krystal and then various siblings and their kids. for the deKay family, we were almost complete with the exception of three: shawn (because of work), tyson (because of training) and jonathon (he's still on a two year mission for our church - but will be home in november! wahoo!!). next time we do something like this i hope that we can all be there. i loved spending so much time with everyone that went - it was a blast!
and just a side note - do you like the shirts? i know you can't really see the print on them but i did it! i learned on YouTube how to screen print shirts, bought some photo emulsion off of a screen printing shop, built some nylon screens and did it. it was great to learn how the whole process was done. next time i do it the shirts will look even more fabulous because then i'll know what i'm doing. :)

deKay family vacation, part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:26:00 +0000

ok, ok. so i haven't posted in a LONG time. it's only been a little over a month, but a lot has happened since then, hence the "LONG" instead of "long". so in the middle of june i took off to alaska for a family reunion. i was only supposed to go up there for two and a half weeks but i ended up extending that by a week. unfortunately shawn was unable to go with me because of work, so i went up by myself. when i got there the flowers were amazing! i absolutely love wildflowers! perhaps i'll have to dedicate a whole post to the best flowers that i took pictures of since i think i spend most of my time photographing them.
here's some of my neices and nephews in a lupine patch in my parents backyard: cayden, rachel, cassidy and keith.
one of the first days i got there we took a nice family hike up baldy, the mountain that my parents house is on the side of. we hike straight up from their property up to the top. not all of us got to the top, as hiking with little kids slows things down a bit. here's a pic of cayden and rachel part way up the mountain with the town of eagle river spread out below. and here's one of those gorgeous flowers! this is a chocolate lily, which are everywhere in the woods around my parents house.
my sister sarah and her husband, chris got to come up with their one month old son, dalin (or is it dallin?). i got to take some baby pics so i'll get those done and posted. and yes, sarah, i'll send them to you. :) he's a very cute baby and was great during the whole trip. people were surprised that they took a baby on the trip (across katchemak bay, out of homer, alaska) but he did fantastic!
i drove down to homer with my sister carolyn and her husband, curtis, and two of their three kids. we stayed the night at a campground in anchor point and while carolyn was putting cayden down to bed me and curtis and cathryn went down to the beach. i was down there at first with cathryn, taking pics and there were some huge bald eagles that swooped down towards cathryn. i think they thought that they might be able to carry her off. i didn't let her get that far from me after that. she had so much fun finding all of the perfect rocks to throw into the water. i really think that's every kids favorite pastime. something about seeing that splash is so thrilling!
and here's a lovely self portrait of myself. i just really liked the effect of the clouds and the sand and the reflective water. *sigh* it was hard to leave.
so the whole troupe met down in homer for our five days of fun and we had water taxis take us across the bay and drop us on the beach that was to become our home away from home. there was a yurt (kind of like a cabin) there that we rented from the forest service and the rest of us set up our tents in that same area. it was pretty isolated there. when the tide came in it completely blocked our beach, so we were stranded there until low tide. it was great!
the sand, dirt, sticks, sea weed, plants, trees, water and rocks provided so much entertainment for all the kids. there was never a moment when they weren't busy. they would find flowers and plant gardens on the beach, they would make castles with mote systems for the incoming tide to fill up... i got the kids to make a mermaid with me. we made sure she was modestly dressed (a full shirt instead of just shells) and we used only the things that we could find on the beach for her composition. after we were done winnie decided that our mermaid needed a mer-dog, so we made one, complete with a sea weed leash. here's winnie, cassidy, me and hannah.
we brought two kayaks with us on our trip - curtis' and my parents. curtis had taken a five or six day kayaking course in katchemak bay earlier in the summer so he was our guru teacher. he took all of us out and instructed us in safety and all the little techniques that he'd learned. it was great! it was wonderful to have someone who had actually taken a formal course instead of just having us use the trial and error method to find out all the ins and outs of things that you never really think about until you do it the right way and find out that it works so much better that way. here's curtis virtual kayaking. i guess the class failed to teach him to use an actual kayak! haha!
and if you know me i have a need to take a random meditation picture everywhere i go. it's just one of my constant poses that define me. so here i am on the beach, sitting on very uncomfortable rock covered in mussels. i didn't really meditate there but if i had it would have been good practice on ignoring the pains of the body, especially those sharp points i was sitting on.dad and keith started building this great tower. they very strategically balanced all the rocks and then dad very carefully lowered keith on it to see if it'd hold him and to see if he could balance enough to not knock it over. he did great! then i decided that i wanted a turn. let's just say that the great rock tower is no longer standing...i just had to put this one in. mad cow disease finally got dear 'ol dad.curtis taking me and krystal bundy (my brother-in-law's sister) out for a kayaking jaunt.
we decided that we were going to go on a 16 mile hike to a glacier. we had to time it just right so that we could hit the tides right, since our beach gets isolated at high tide. chris, krystal, curtis and cathryn came part way in and then turned back to get to the beach before the tide cut them off. they were being the responsible ones and went back to make dinner, help watch kids. the rest of us went the whole way. me and my dad split off from the rest of the group towards the beginning of the hike and so got to sit and enjoy the glacier for a while before everyone else caught up. then my dad decided that he wanted to go down to the glacier, so everyone went down except for me. yeah, yeah, rub it in. i was freezing and the last thing i wanted to do was go and stand on the ice. i probably should've but i didn't. the group did bring back freshly melted glacier water flowing in streams on top of the ice and it really did taste great. i guess i'm just a wimp. ha! so here's dad:
and here's the crew down on the ice below me:
and here's the group on the hike back: my uncle mons, cousins bryce, kyle and tyler, dad, robert (brother) and me.
here's a pic of the kids and krystal climbing on the rocks and peering into a tide pool that had sea anemones in it!
and finding lots of little snails in the water...
dad with winnie, rachel, cassidy, keith and cayden.
earlier this year shawn wanted to get matching celtics shirts. i have to admit that i haven't really worn my shirt since i'm not really all that into sports but i did make sure to bring it with me and to take a picture of me wearing it. i did it for you, shawn! in this pic i'm holding cathryn.
i had decided before i came that i was going to go swimming in the ocean. there was never a day that it was really, really sunny so i had to just go with a cloudy, breezy day. i convinced krystal and several of the kids to go with me and we had a blast! i don't know if you can really call it swimming, though. krystal and i dunked all the way in and i was on my way out when i realized she was still in. the kids were squealing because of the cold and she was patiently standing in the water convincing them to come in. i think they all ended up coming in and krystal would float them on their backs until they decided it was just too cold. i felt like a huge wimp because i just wanted out of there! i did bring soap and did a quick saltwater hair wash but she was just the image of patience and it seemed like the cold wasn't bothering her at all. great job, krystal! the kids all came out of it smiling and laughing and shivering and blue but we had a blast doing it. the picture below is the "before" picture. i don't know that we could've stood around long enough to get an "after" pic.

shawn's birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:20:00 +0000

first of all, thank you all for your comments about those paintings. i just really liked making them and i have no idea if they actually looked like anything. so thanks! i'll do a second round soon and we'll see if i can gear those more towards the ideas everyone had.

here's a confession. and it's a pretty pathetic and sad confession. since i've known shawn i have missed every single birthday of his. this was the fourth birthday running. so sad! the first year i went up to barrow, alaska for a bird job. the second year i was backpacking in china. the third year he was deployed to iraq and i was in arizona for a bird job. and this year i left on his birthday (june 16th) to come to alaska for a family reunion. it's terrible! so this year i made his birthday last three days long. on sunday i made his breakfast in bed, which he ended up eating at the table - i need to invest in some food trays. and then i made a birthday cake that was incredibly, deliciously good! it was angel food cake with whip cream frosting and strawberrys with strawberry freezer jam on it. it really melted in your mouth. i was excited that it turned out so well! so we had some friends over to celebrate. and then on monday i took him to lunch, since he works the night shift. and on tuesday morning i flew away. next year i'll make it even more fabulous to make up for my continued absense every year. so just an advance notice, 16 june 2010 i am busy. please don't ask me to do anything because i figure it's about time that i put in an appearance on the right day. :)

Oil Paintings...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:50:00 +0000

so... i just wanted to get a critique from everyone. i'm starting to work with oil paints and loving it! they mix great, they smear great and are just all around fun to work with. anyhow, i am just wondering what you think of these paintings. they are more "modern"/abstract art, which i was never really a fan of before but i'm really starting to like more and more (but still am very choosy on what i like). so what do you think? should i keep doing these or drop them? they might just look like kids paintings and i would never know unless i'm told that. it's that whole bias thing since i'm the one who painted them. i really appreciate your comments! :) i've mainly used variations of black and white but will get more colors going if i decide that it's worth it to keep going. and i'll probably use these as backgrounds and paint silhouettes on them. like a few small bird silhouettes flying or such...

and just a side comment, i didn't improve the colors in photoshop to make them as they naturally are, so the colors are what you get from bad indoor light. they really are much more vibrant than the pictures suggest.

don't forget to leave your comments and let me know what you think! THANK YOU! :)

trip to st louis

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:31:00 +0000

two weeks ago shawn and i went down to st louis, missouri to pick up my car. since we were coming from alaska (and i think they do this with all overseas tours) they will ship one car to the nearest port to your new base. so we drove one of our cars down (shawn's) and we shipped my car. it's seems a little silly to say it, but i really missed my car! for some reason it symbolizes freedom and everything that i love, so i was really ready to go and pick it up. i was a bit worried that they would've only shipped it to seattle, which would've meant going all the way back west and driving the same road again to north dakota. luckily, they shipped it to st louis and paid for me and shawn to go and pick it up. we ended up taking the amtrak down - it was great! i've never taken a train in the united states so i was interested to see how it differed from other places that i've been. we didn't get a cabin, so stayed in the public seating cars the whole 26 hour train ride down.
here's a pic of me on the train, towards the end of the ride, with shawn studying for his big upcoming promotional test in the background.
we got into st louis around 11 or so at night. we looked around for a place to stay but all the places right around the train station were really expensive hotels. because we didn't want to wander around a busy, unfamiliar city in the near midnight we ended up staying at the sheraton. wow! the rooms were beautiful! a huge downside of staying there is that they want to charge you for everything. most hotels now have wireless internet as a courtesy but not the sheraton. they wanted to charge us $5 for 2 hours. ridiculous! and no free breakfast. the restraunt was ridiculously expensive for basic foods so we didn't eat there. and we made the receptionist look up everything for us on her computer instead of us paying $5 to look up directions. i also did a bit of long distance internet searching through calling various members of my family and having them look things up. thank you all, i couldn't be as travel savvy without you! :)
here's st louis!
while there we went to see the massive gateway arch. for some reason i thought that this was a random sports thing and so i wasn't too excited to go and see it. but shawn convinced me and i found out that it was a national park and the arch was to commemorate the westward movement in our american history. cool! the grounds were beautiful and the day was sunny and warm.
we decided to take the little ride up to the top of the arch. i'm so glad that i have my national park pass! it's 630 feet to the top and we got to ride in these cool space capsules to get there. each capsule seats 5 people and on the way up we were the only people in our capsule. which was good. shawn can get a little claustrophobic and so when he realized that we had to be trapped in these things for four minutes he started to get a little panicky. below is a picture of his face when he had that realization. just a bit worried...
luckily, when the door closed there was a little window that we could see out of and that made him much at ease. and here's me, all ready to go in my space suit jacket. well... it's not really a space suit jacket, it just looks as if it could be.
and since i know you're dying to ask me this question, i don't get claustrophobic. if you ask shawn about me he'll say that i do get claustrophobic. i don't mind being in small spaces with no window. but i do mind having my body or body part pinned or held firmly. if i shook someone's hand and that person would not let go of my hand, i just might have a panic attack. or if someone held me in too firm of a hug... but i really don't view that as claustrophobic, it's something else that i just don't know the name of...
and here's shawn looking down on all the little peons below. 630 feet make those people look minuscule!
at the bottom of the arch there's a great museum that tracks the westward movement. i'm such a museum nut and love to educated myself as much as i can about anything and everything. they had a bunch of quotes all over the walls. some of them were absolutely heart breaking, mostly from things that were done to the native americans and how their views were treated as nothing. here's one: "what! sell land! as well sell air and water. the great spirit gave them in common to all, the air to breathe, the water to drink, and the land to live upon." -Tecumseh. how touching is that? it is pretty ridiculous that these things that you'd think would be human rights to have and to share are bought and sold and selfishly guarded. too bad so many people don't respect the earth enough that we could ever move to the point where we'd all share and live in it alike. below is another quote that i like:
and here's shawn with the gateway arch in the background.
shawn was pretty excited to see the st louis cardinals stadium and so we just had to go to a game. it was my first big baseball game. when i was little i'd go to my dad's city league games, and i'd go to my brother and sisters games, but those aren't really fan based. it was crazy how many people go to these pro games! i was shocked! we got our tickets from some random guy on a corner in town and so saved a few bucks. that left us just enough to purchase a peanut shell to split between both of us. just kidding! we actually got some fries and we made sure to get a bottle of water before we walked in the gate to the stadium. food is soooooooo expensive there! all in all it was a great new experience.
when we got back to minot, north dakota, our rental house was ready for us to move into. i'll make sure to post some pictures of it when we get our things unpacked and looking nice. pictures of boxes never did it for me... for mother's day eve shawn got me a bouquet of flowers and a dairy queen cake. he really does have a soft spot for those cakes and now i understand why. in the middle of the cake are little crumbly chocolate things on a pudding-like layer. yum! and no, i'm not making an announcement. i am a future mother and a kind-of-mother (other words known as a loving aunt) to all my nieces and nephews, and we have a dog - so i deserve those flowers and that cake! :) it was wonderful! thank you, shawn!

family dinner

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:16:00 +0000

on the last sunday before me and shawn left to move down to north dakota, my family got together for a farewell dinner. it was also to celebrate the birthday's of my sister, carolyn, and brother-in-law, curtis. my mother is an amazing chef and she made us all indian food. it was fantastic!
here's some of the toppings to go on the chicken curry.

here's my wonderful father and mother contemplating what to eat first.
this is catheryn townsend.
hannah deKay.
keith bundy.
cayden townsend.
cassidy townsend.
winnie deKay.rachel bundy.
jennifer and thomas bundy.
tyson bundy.
ma and pa kettle.
bethany and robert deKay. (i thought i had a better one of you two, but i didn't.)
shawn robson.
catheryn and carolyn townsend.
curtis townsend.
sarah and chris davenport live in colorado and jonathon deKay is in uraguay. other than that this is my wonderful, stupendous, loving family! i love you all!

February and March

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:55:00 +0000

For two and half weeks in February my sister and her husband took off to Hawaii for two and a half weeks and me and Shawn watched their three kids for them - cassidy, cayden, and catheryn. here's (from left to right) cassidy, winnie (my brother's daughter), and cayden. cayden loves his big sister and wants to do everything with her - including dress up! :)me and shawn took the kids to the first day of fur rondy, the festival in anchorage that kicks off the iditarod sled dog race. this is me at the grand parade...
... and here's shawn and the kids at the parade. cassidy ended up getting pretty cold so towards the end of the parade wasn't having all that great of a time. we went and found a place to have some hot chocolate to warm up and then kept going to some of the events around town. we went to the train station where they had model trains set up where the kids could learn about trains.
and we went to the snow sculptures. i think the judging took place the following day so people were still working on sculpting. below is cassidy and cayden standing in front of a kayaker riding a wave.
and here's catheryn and shawn in the train station. we made sure to wrap her up pretty thickly so that she wouldn't freeze. we did such a good job that she slept almost the whole time we were out and about.
february brought my nephew, keith's, birthday. he is now officially six years old. at his "cousin" party they had paper airplane races and made crazy hats. this is my neice, hannah, with her hat. this was a really crazy hat and very unique so i just had to take a picture. way to go, hannah!
and here's keith with his birthday cake. my sister let him choose any cake he wanted and he chose this one, probably because it came with a play cell phone. he looks a little tuckered out in this pic.
and here's the attendees starting at the bottom, going clockwise: zoey, keith, rachel, cassidy, natalie, bethany, jennifer, sarah, hannah, jeremy and winnie.
here's keith:
i talked to jennifer a few days before keith's party and she mentioned that he had wanted a pinata so i volunteered to make one. here's paco, the mexican chicken. notice the really cool chicken legs made from yarn. when i dropped him up and down with the rope when the kids were swinging at him his legs were flying!
and here's me and thomas at keith's "friend" birthday party. he got to invite two friends to go bowling with him and i came along as well.
here's the bowlers. the one on the left is keith and the one on the right is rachel, his sister. i can't remember the names of the other two, oops!
and that's february and part of march!

January to February

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:55:00 +0000

here's the photographic summary of my life starting in january.

for the pic below, my sister was the assistant coach for a volleyball team and they would sometimes have practices right next to my house so i would sometimes watch her kids while she went to practice and they'd stay the night since she'd get home sometime after 9. this is cayden and cassidy, sleeping on the floor in our apartment. carolyn peeked in after she came back from practice and thought that it was so cute that they fell asleep holding each other. awwwhhh! cute!
and here is shawn. right behind my parents house is mt baldy, part of the chugach range. this is a very popular climb in eagle river and it's one that my family does a lot. keeps us all in shape. me and shawn and denali (our dog) and raisin (my parents dog) hiked up here. it was a bit difficult because the snow was no longer snow, but ice. going down was quick and i was very lucky that i had a crampon that i could dig in the snow as i slid down the mountain to slow me down.
and here's me at the top of baldy, squinting in the sun.
i thought this was a cute picture. it's shawn and my nephew, cayden. we were going to the commisary during shawn's lunch from work.
this is winnie, my neice, in front of one of the walls that i painted a tree on in her and her older sister's room. for christmas this past year i drew my parents this picture from a photograph that i took in their yard of a mom and two baby moose.
here's my niece, cassidy, making the assent of... a rock. she just looked like a really hardened mountian climber in this picture even though it is only in my parents yard.
these are some of my nieces and nephews at thomas's 1st birthday party. starting at the bottom left corner and moving clockwise: cassidy, keith, hannah, rachel, and cayden (with my mom and dad in the background).
here's me with the birthday boy himself! one year old!
shawn took me on a surprise date in february and wouldn't tell me anything about it. i got home from work, he told me to get dressed warm and then we drove up to mt baldy's parking lot and he took out a backpack that looked heavy and a bundle of wood. we then hiked up a little ways and he stopped and unpacked his back pack. he was carrying a dutch oven! that's why the back pack looked so heavy! he then proceeded to make me dinner with the anchorage city lights twinkling in the background. it was a quite cold night and i was grateful for that warm food. it was delicious! chicken and beef and onions and peppers with lots of spices. mmmm!!!here's me and shawn with a full stomach and freezing faces!

the million year post...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:49:00 +0000

i know, i know. i've heard lots of gripping (or is it griping?) lately that i haven't posted in a million years. i suppose i'll excuse the complaining because... it's totally true! and here's the list of excuses that i've prepared. *ah hem!* first... just kidding! i really won't go into those but i will give you a quick update on our lives now and i'll work to get more pictures on here sometime because a blog without pictures...
me and shawn have moved to minot, north dakota, courtesy of the air force, and get to be here for the next two and a half years. it's not the most scenic place in the world but the people here are extremely wonderful! we found a house to rent but can't move in until the middle of may so we're living the hotel life, not knowing where we'll be the next day and hating it! i can't wait to get into a real house and get our stuff here. by the time we move in it will have been about two months since we left our house. that's way too long!

Mural...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:32:00 +0000

here is a link to my sister-in-law's blog, "deKay dreams". i did some paintings at her house in my nieces room and she took some pictures and posted all about it. i need to make sure i get over there and take some pics as well! :)

official substitute teacher...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:27:00 +0000

I'm a substitute teacher! Because of the holidays it took a little while to push all of my paperwork through the proper channels. I had a training class last week and then my first job on monday. I got to be a music teacher at an elementary school. we didn't actually sing anything. the teacher had left a movie to watch, so that's what we did. then today school was cancelled because the weather decided to warm up and rain on us. so that turned the whole road system into a massive ice skating rink. when shawn drove to work this morning he said that he saw a bus sideways, i'm assuming off the freeway. not that safe at all. so i stayed home today and did things around the house and prepare a few lessons for school. i'll get to actually teach someday! :)

cccolddddd.....!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:48:00 +0000

it's been freezing up here!! we've been dealing with -10* to -20*F this week and last week. way too cold! i really miss the warm sunshine. so yesterday i went out to start my car (after not running it for two days) and it would not start. luckily a friend was nearby and came over to jump me but the car would still not start. and then my extension cord was way too short to actually reach the car to plug it in. for the past few days shawn has been ultra worried and so has been running his car every night for a bit because his car doesn't have a plug. so the moral of this story is to listen to your husband! don't be so over confident next time. :)

me and shawn went out to go ice skating on friday but after we were outside for 20 minutes our faces were frozen so we decided not to go. on saturday we were more prepared and took lots and lots of gear and went hiking so that i could go and take pictures. the following pics are a summary of my last week:

this is at the end of our hike on saturday. we were outside for several hours (i'm not sure how long). i wanted to see how big the ice chunks on my eyelashes would get so i resisted the urge to clean the ice off. it was getting so bad that everytime i blinked my eyelashes would stick together so that it was a pain to get my eye all the way open again.

here's a pic of shawn and our new puppy, denali. she's really a great dog and listens and is very calm. she's only about 3 months old or thereabouts.

this is a pic from the trail that we were walking down. beautiful! you might have to click on the picture to get the full effect, so that you'll see it bigger.

this is from friday. me and shawn drove out to ship creek, which is the corner of anchorage that touches the ocean, where they have all the cargo shipped to and from anchorage. it's also right next to the train station. this tree stood out incredibly well. the frost all over the tree contrasted so starkly to the blue sky.

my mother does a lot with the cub scouts and last week she had her neighbors come down to take some of the boys and their families dog sledding. it was incredibly cold so the turnout was low and those that did stay didn't stay long. i showed up because i could :) and i really wanted to try my hand at mushing. hehe! all the kids got to go by themselves on a quarter mile loop with one dog pulling them and the adults got two dogs. we did have a couple of people that fell off but the snow is a nice cushion. this pic is of my mom coming in at the end of the loop.

this pic is from the day after christmas when my whole family went to my brother-in-laws family cabin. these trees look like they're topped with marshmellow cream. :)

this is a view of the sleeping lady (mountain on the top of the pic) from ship creek.

here is another pic from our hike on saturday.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:37:00 +0000

I just wanted to recommend this book to all. It's fantastic and kind of heart-wrenching but worth it. Read it!!

Summary of the fall...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:55:00 +0000

okay, okay. so it's been about a million years since i've last posted (and i'm serious - a million!) and i decided that i let you all know that i'm still alive. so shawn got home a week after i got home in october and then we had two weeks to romp and roam and do whatever we want. :) so we went on a little adventure to fairbanks, alaska to go to the hot springs up there. it's about a 7 hour drive north. we coasted into town just as it was starting to get dark, found out where the hot springs were and started driving. now, we were driving our "new-to-us" audi and one of the down falls of it is that the dash lights don't work so when it's dark you can't see the gas gauge. you can probably guess the rest of the story but i'll fill you in just in case you don't get it. :) so we started driving down the road to Chena Hot Springs and the last time i was there i remembered it as being right outside of town. after about a half an hour we started panicking. and then our gas gauge light came on notifying us that we were about to run out of gas. unfortunately for us we had passed the last gas station a bit before and it closed at 8pm. all the normal 24 hour gas stations were all the way in fairbanks, so that didn't help us any. and to add to the suspense a bit more i had no cell service since we were driving down a very narrow valley AND it was -10*F. COLD! remember that i had just come from arizona and shawn from iraq. jumping from +90* to -10* was quite the experience! so we found a little road side motel/restraunt and pulled in. as soon as we walked in the door the old lady gave us an odious look and decided that she didn't like us. i pleaded and pleaded and tried to pull every trick i knew but she would not give us any help or any gas. we decided to try our luck to see if we could make it to the hot springs. we did have a good sleeping bag in the car that would tide us over if we did get stuck out there. we barely made it to the hot springs and were so happy to not have to freeze to death in the snow. so then we got our room and asked and pleaded with the hot springs people to please have pitty on us. did they? nope. i actually overheard them say "not to get involved" with us and our predicament. in the morning after trying everything i could think of i remembered i had roadside assistance (why did it take me all day to figure that one out?!), we called, they brought out some gas and we only had to pay for the gas. so... the moral of the story is (1) that fairbanks people aren't always that helpful (no offense if you're from there - maybe it's just the chena hot springs road people) and (2) always remember roadside assistance! haha! anyhow, on our way home we made sure to stop at north pole, alaska and go to santa's house. unfortunately santa was away getting ready for christmas and was only there on weekends, so i didn't get to sit on his lap. :( as a side note, if you send a letter to the north pole it might just appear on the wall at santa's house. there were tons and tons of letters pinned to the walls there from kids all over the world. it was really fun to read them!

in november we went down to idaho for two and a half weeks to see shawn's family. it was fantastic to get to see all his family. and for those of you who are wondering, yes, shawn did get an elk. the majority of the meat is still in idaho (we'll pick it up in april on our way to north dakota) and we got the jerky shipped up to us. delicious!

then christmas. whew! it's always a busy time of year and this year was no exception. one of the most time intensive presents that i gave was for my parents. i did a charcol drawing of a photo of three moose that i took in 2004. everyone was amazed and astounded :) and it turned out great! i'll put some pictures up here of it when i remember to bring my cable to hook up my camera to the computer. after christmas we went out to crooked lake with my whole family (minus one sister and family and my youngest brother) where a brother-in-law's family owns a cabin out there. you drive right on the ice to get to the cabin (taking a boat didn't quite work on the ice). we played in the snow a lot and built some great snow caves - one of which works kind of like a slip-n-slide with a snow tunnel over it. quite fun! that brings us pretty much up to date and i promise that i'll try to keep everyone current! we don't have reliable internet at our house which makes email and all this other stuff quite difficult.

hope you didn't fall asleep reading this! i'll be sure to have pictures in the future. :)

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:38:00 +0000

just a quick note... feel free to comment on my blog. i know that there are a ton more people out there that look at it than actually comment and i'm just curious to see who looks. :) thanks!

Team Yellow-billed Cuckoo 2008!

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 02:05:00 +0000

I've heard a lot of gripping (haha!) about how it's been about a month since my last post so i decided i better get on the ball and get caught up before life starts running away without me. Below are the members of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo Team that i was apart of this summer.

For starters, here's Murrelet Halterman - our fearless team leader, hungrily eying a delectable cicada. mmmm!!! Murrelet is from California and has two dogs that are her faithful companions, Pipit and Tui.
Eli - the head supervisor of our team, from California origianally but now a resident of southeastern Arizona. He's really into energy efficient living and being completely self sufficient. He also happens to have a great sense of humor and was always coming up with ways to keep us all smiling and laughing. (Refer to "lobby the lobster" in previous post...)
And Shannon, another supervisor. She's not a big fan of the camera and so wanted to try to hide from the camera. I do have to say that i like this picture, although it is a bit blury. Haha!
Luckily, Shannon was okay with being in a group photo and with a little help from my friend, Photoshop, i was able to display her shinning face, minus the hat. Shannon is Australian and yes, she does have an awesome accent. Just ask her! (She was born in the U.S. to an Austrailian family, so is also American - but don't tell her i told you!)Diane is our third supervisor. She is from Texas, moved to Washington, raised her kids there and is now a resident of the world. Her dog, Brew kept us company throughout the summer. This picture would have been perfect but for the twig that's in front of her face - just try to imagine it's not there and i'll work to get it photoshoped and i'll make it disappear! Vona, or Iwona, is our resident Polish representative. She moved to the states when she was 10 (or 11? 12??) and is busy adding more and more bird experience to her resume. She and Eli are the two that swam across a part of Lake Havasu with me. Vona was also a great encouragement in dragging me to the gym and keeping me in shape. She is from New Jersey and is now living in California.
Eric was the youngest member of our crew. At 18 years old he had the most bird knoweldge out of any of us and was very patient with those of us (me, in particular) that had next to no experience in that realm. He's the next Einstein of ornithology. Haha! He is now going to college in Colorado Springs.
Joe. Need i say more? Joe is an avid birder and would sneak off with Eric to go look for everything that was out there to see. At the beginning of our summer we would fill out bird lists with all the birds that we saw. Let's just say that it was probably Joe and Eric that compiled the most comprehensive list of birds we encountered. Joe is from West Virginia.
Amanda, the Puerto Rican. Amanda was my survey partner throughout most of the summer and shared in my stress as we came to the realization that we had to write down all the birds that we saw! Ahhhh! Then we found out that the only bird that we really had to know cold was the cuckoo. Whew! Relief!! The other stuff wasn't as important and, hey, we had Joe and Eric doing such a good job anyway!
Bob is from California. He's a retired engineer, after which he went back to school to get his biology degree and has been doing field work since. He's a trooper! He worked in Barrow a few years before I worked there, although we worked on different projects. He has a few kids, step kids and lots of grandkids. He's now home in California enjoying being with his wife and family.
And last of all, Dave. I know that the picture below doesn't really show you his face, but i have to admit that i just thought that this picture turned out really well and i just had to show it. Dave is from New Jersey and is an up and coming birder with lots to teach. He is working on finishing his last class to graduate with his bachelor's and is now living and working in Tucson, Arizona.
Below is a picture of Dave and his dad that i took off of Dave's facebook page. I felt kind of bad that you couldn't really see his face in the picture above so i thought that i should put a more complete picture on here.
That's my crew! Hope you liked it! I do have a few more posts left of this summer that i'll be working on getting up in the near future.

colorado kayak trip

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0000

last week a few of us decided that we were going to kayak down the colorado. we were doing vegetation plots about an hour's drive north of lake havasu city, so after all of our plots were done two of our crew dropped us off on the river to paddle the 15 miles down to lake havasu. the colorado, at this point, is a slower moving river with none of the gripping rapids that are associated with the grand canyon. i say this just because i know that when i used to hear "colorado river" all i would think of was the grand canyon rapids. well, this part of the river has none of that so don't you worry for me! :)

here we are at the boat launch. we had lunch first at the restraunt/cafe/bar that's attached to the docks and then were ready to begin our adventure! the three of us that did the trip are pictured below : your's truly, joe and eli.
the night before eli had checked the weather and it had said that it'd be partly cloudy so we weren't too worried. once we got on the water and paddled for mabye 30 minutes these dark clouds started assembling. oops! we weren't too worried because we're all pretty aware and prepared to deal with things if a huge storm brews up but we decided that we were going to try to keep ahead of it the whole way. this picture is of joe and eli at the front of the storm.
and another picture showing the amazing clouds! during the whole trip we stayed just ahead of the storm hearing thunder in the background and getting only a few sprinkles on us. it was very pleasant and cool and the lighting made my pictures look all that much better.
because i was behind my camera the whole time i handed off my camera to eli to take a picture of me just to prove that i was, in fact, there.
there were some amazing cliff walls right along parts of the river and eli decided that he was going to try and climb some of those. this picture is after he had jumped in the water from the rocks and was getting up on his kayak. yeah, you can tell he grew up on the califonia coast...
this was an incredible rock that i thought looked just like a skull. i can totally see treasure island and goonies taking place here.while on our trip down the river we found lots of trash from those (grrrrr!) messy partiers on the river. eli would go picking up the trash he could and once in a while he and joe would find a treasure (i did mention treasure island, right?!). here is a blowup lobster that he found, affectionately named "lobby the lobster".
and here's joe with one of his found treasures - a buoy! he also was on the sit-on-top kayak and so got to carry the ice chest with him. when it got really windy he definitely had to paddle a bit more than me and eli to prevent from drifting upstream.
we timed our trip so that we got close to the end just as the sun was setting. we sat and watched the sun go down until it started getting really dark and then we paddled as hard as we could to get to the pull out. we had forgotten to bring our headlamps so i wanted to make sure that i could kind of find my way to the car. while i was paddling in the dark through a whole bunch of sedges there were a ton of coots in front of my kayak. when i would get close to them you could see the whole flock run on the water ahead of me. it was so neat because i could only see the water as it sprayed from their feet but the actual duck was lost in the darkness. i wish that i could've captured that on film for you because it was so awesome!!
it was wonderful to do this little trip and i really wish that we had done it earlier in the season. when i come back down to arizona i'll definitely have to do this again!

more iraq pictures...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:59:00 +0000

here's some more pictures of my incredible husband in iraq! he just put them up today so i can be honest and tell you that i didn't forget to post them this time. :) shawn asked me to put these up especially for his family, so they could see what it's like over there, so enjoy!

shawn's iraq pictures...

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:45:00 +0000

here are some pictures of shawn that he took over in iraq. i'm glad that he took them because it gives me a little more of a feel for what he's doing and where he's living. it's taken me a while to get them posted because... i forgot! oops! sorry, shawn! i was just so happy to get them that i forgot to share them with everyone else. anyhow, here's shawn!
cozy bunk beds, don't you think?!

see that incredibly irrestistable smile? that's my man! :)

august posting

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:24:00 +0000

here's a bunch of pictures from this past month:

me and eli decided that we were going to swim across the southeastern section of lake havasu, near where the bill williams river dumps into the lake. i'm proud to say that we did it without drowning or getting hit by a boat! we actually had vona come along to kayak alongside of us just in case we needed a bit of help (she towed the blue kayak behind her but i'm proud to say that we didn't need it) and more importantly, the kayaks served to make sure that boats saw us. this is in a section of the river that is a no wake zone that not many people wander into because it leads nowhere. occaionaly a boat will come in to go fishing or to park so the people can go swimming. we swam all the way across and then decided that we were still in pretty good shape so we swam back across to the starting point. on the way back vona decided that she wanted to give it a try so eli tied the boats to himself and towed them to the boat launch. all in all i swam 1.08 miles! wahoo! it's 0.54 across and next time that we swim it we plan to swim it four times and see how we do. and don't worry, we'll take the same precautions next time. :)
this is a picture from the coziest hotel that i've ever stayed at in a little town in california, palos verde. we occasionally stay there to do surveys at a wildlife refuge there. if you can't tell what's in the picture, all those things are cockroaches. they were in all the corners of the room, in the kitchen cabinets, there were little bugs that crawled over us a night (fleas? bed bugs?). at least this time we got a room that the toilet actually worked in. yeah, i have to admit that it was funny staying there because it was such a novelty. i've never stayed in a place like that so it was a good experience. i probably won't be going there again after this summer although i will remember it with fond memories.
a rattlesnake! my boss, murrelet, went to use the bathroom and found this little treasure right where she had planned to go. have i mentioned that i love snakes? not!
this picture was taken just north of yuma, arizona at imperial wildlife refuge, where we would occasionally stay at a usfws field house while we were doing surveys. that night there was a huge storm and the sky was in turmoil. after the storm i got to see one of themost beautiful sunsets that i've ever seen. the picture does not do it justice!
and me and vona at imperial wildlife refuge, up on the viewing deck.
me and vona on a kayak survey in yuma, arizona.
my sister, carolyn, and her daughter, catheryn, came down to visit both sets of grandparents in phoenix and safford. due to how my work schedule is arranged i can choose when to take my days off for the month (two for every week, plus holidays) and was able to spend a week with them. it was a wonderful breather to escape work for a while and to get to know one of my neices. she loved me!
this is catheryn, carolyn, and grandpa deKay.
grandpa deKay, catheryn, and grandma helen catherine deKay - whom catheryn helen is named after.
after we were in phoenix for a few days we headed down to safford to visit my mom's parents. on of the fun things to do when we were little was to hold and haul around all the new born kittens and puppys that were born on granna joy's property every summer. this kitten is just 10 days old.
my great grandpa bought this cabin back in the 1930's up on mount graham outside of safford. it's been a long time since i've been able to spend some time up there so me, carolyn, catheryn, granna joy and papa went up to the cabin for three days. we got to hike to the bear cave, read a lot, and just spend some time breathing in that fresh mountain air. ahhh! it was wonderful!
every time i pulled out the camera to take pictures catheryn would start smiling while looking right at the camera. she knew that we would say smile everytime that we pulled it out so now she's got that practice down without even having to tell her to smile. she's a ham!
i thought that this picture was so funny. she kind of looks like a sherlock holmes chewing on a pipe. i'm sure carolyn is trying hard to break her of that practice while she's young! haha! :)
funny coincidence - me and carolyn were actually in the process of reading the same book - the proper care and feeding of husbands, by dr. laura schlessinger. i had picked mine up in a goodwill in yuma and her husband, curtis, had checked this out of the library for her. even though i think dr. laura is quite rude and over the top on the radio i was quite impressed with the book and it helped me realize things that i can do better in my marriage. i highly recommend this book to everyone.

one of my cousins told me that i'm pretty good at using the timer on my camera. yeah, i'm sure you thought that i really was sleeping, but in fact this is completely posed. even though this wasn't completely "natural" i stayed there for a long time thinking on that rock. it's the most perfect thinking rock ever!papa and catheryn... again, catheryn is a sucker for the camera.
and, to finish off, me and catheryn in papa and joy's backyard. this time it's me who is acting up for the camera!
it was a fantastic vacation for me and i'm now ready to work hard for one more month until i get to go home. and then shawn comes home!!! yipee!!! :)