Salmon Family Christmas

So, the Salmon Family Christmas actually includes Limbachers, Prices, and Kolbs, but the Salmon's started it I guess! It is taking Tanner some time to get used to our traditions, but I like them. Every time we get together we spend a lot of time, just like this picture ... all sitting in the living room talking, laughing, arguing, listening to stories, playing games, opening presents, watching football ... whatever. But I like that we are all hanging out together. A lot of other places I go the women end up in the kitchen and the men end up in front of the TV. It is fun to hear what everyone has been up to since the last time we all sat together in a living room and did the same thing!

Make a Smilebox postcard

Christmas Tree!

I love Christmas! Tanner makes fun of me becuase of all the traditions my family has, but I love them. It took some pursuading, as usual, but I did get my tree ... and man do I love it. A few years ago I bought sparkly lights accidentally which was anoying at first, but I think they have really grown on me. I love the smell of a real tree. And I love the stories behind each of the ornaments. I do enjoy the trees that some people have with a particular theme and beautiful matching ornaments, but I am partial to my mismatched, home-made-with-love variety. Oh, and our angel lights up. How cool is that!

Flood

While the rest of the country has been hit with snow and ice, we have just been getting rain. There was a break in it for a while today so Diesel and I got to take a little walk with some sunshine poking through the clouds every now and then. The little stream behind our house overflowed it's banks and our backyard filled up. It was incredible!

But it didn't stop our neighbor, Duck, from feeding his cattle!

We Have Internet!!!

Yeah! We now have internet at the house which means I was able to take pictures of the new place and download them for you all to see! The first two are the kitchen. It is going to get some serious paint because of how dark it is in there. Tanner is in the process of replacing the carpet with hardwood ... I am not clean enough to have carpet in the kitchen!


The bathroom we have already done a lot of work in. The last thing will be pulling up the carpet and putting in the tile.
The bedroom is the biggest room in the house. I think it was the last addition.
The dining room with the fun corner built-in.

A few pictures of the living room. Gotta love the purple shag, but the gas furnace is really very fun!


So, there is the tour! Hope you enjoyed!

Things I'd Forgotten About Living in Western PA

Still no internet at the house, but I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about how funny Western PA is. You don't notice it growing up here, but after being gone for a while .... well, here are some of my observations:

1. There are a ton of train tracks everywhere ... and most of them are still in use!

2. It snows quite a bit here too.

3. The accent. It's really gruff. That's the best way I can describe it. It really reminds you that most people here have lived a tough life ... and probably smoked a lot of cigarettes too!

4. Pretty much everywhere you step you are walking over a coal mine ... a lot of those are still active too!

5. You may think you have narrow, windy, hilly roads near you. But unless you live in the Rockies or the Appalachians, you are just kidding yourself.

6. You cannot leave the house or turn on the radio or the TV without being reminded constantly that you are in Steeler, Penguin, and Pirate Country. Typically you are reminded by someone who has gone completely over the top. You know, like someone decked out completely head to toe in black and gold, just getting groceries on a Tuesday. Not even close to a game day. There is even a house in the next town over that is painted black and gold. Now that, my friends, is some serious team spirit!

(No, I didn't take this picture, just got it off the internet. And no, he would probably not be walking through the grocery store on a Tuesday dressed like that, but you get the idea!)

I'm Home!!!

Sorry, still no pictures. And honestly, this town is pretty small and dirty ( I got super spoiled in Petoskey!), so pictures might not be all that exciting anyway. But it very good to be home finally! Once we get internet at the house and can set up our computer I promise to do some catchup with the pictures and let you see where we are living!

Ice Cream

I have to make sure I get to Murdicks to get a Gaslight Grasshopper before I leave ... even though this isn't exactly ice cream weather!

Messiah Homecoming

Tanner got to meet up with some college buddies for Homecoming at Messiah. I'm pretty sure they only actually touched foot on campus for the wrestling get-together, but they had a lot of fun hanging out. Here are some pictures from that:

Google Smile

Next time you are feeling glum ... go to a search engine that lets you search for images (I used yahoo despite my title today) and type in "smile." You won't stay glum for long!

Ready

I don't have many phone calls today, which means I have too much time on my hands to do too much thinking. Me and too much thinking can be dangerous. That plus I'm missing Tanner and really can't wait to move to be with him again (no offense to my team and friends here in Petoskey). So I've been spending a lot of time searching for apartments online which is very frustrating because Waynesburg apparently is not quite caught up with the rest of society. I can find virtually nothing online about much of anything in that town. I was feeling pretty stinky about the whole thing until I found this website. It does a great job of making Waynesburg look cute and quaint with lots of fun stuff to do. I might actually enjoy this backwards little town! http://www.villageprofile.com/pennsylvania/waynesburg/main.html

Hiking!!

My dogs have been destroying things again. Granted, it is just thier own beds, which doesn't really bother me, but still kinda tells me that I'm not giving them enough attention recently. So, after a long week of preparing for our home invitational and a long, crazy morning at the invitational (ok, really Erin did most of the work ... but it was still a busier week!), I took Drake with me out to where some friends were camping for the night. We didn't stay overnight with them, but it was still good to get out in the woods and do some hiking. Drake had fun releasing energy with Tex, and I got to have converstations with adults again. I actually think I'm getting rusty! I have a hard time talking about anything but cross country and the house. I need to work on that! So, here is a picture Martin took of us ... and if you notice, I'm the only one not really paying attention. Drake is probably distracting me, but I should still pay attention ... the high schoolers are rubbing off on me!!!

More Cross Country

OK, so like the never-ending pictures of snowshoeing when I first started this blog ... I have a feeling we are going to have never-ending pictures of cross country. This is kindof an appology, but not really, since I'm doing nothing to fix the situation! Honestly, right now there is nothing more interesting in my life other than cross country (at least the only thing interesting enough to take pictures of!). So we had another race yesterday ... the first that really ment something as a team ... and we did great! Here is a picture of the girls at the start of the race that I think is terrific! How do I keep meeting people who are such great photographers?!

First Cross Country Meet!!

We had our first cross country meet this Saturday. The Mud Run in Charlevoix ... the kids actually run through 2 ponds and have to jump over logs and hay bales on the course. We did really well. Both teams can in 3rd out of 25. Here is a picture of me standing around (pictures courtesy of Mrs. Jensen).

And one of some of the kids who decided to go back into the pond after the race was done!

PA

I got to drive down to Pennsylvania this weekend to see Tanner, drop off some boxes at his parents house, and pick up Drake. I also got the camera, but realized that I can't download any pictures from it onto my work computer, so this blog will probably be pictureless until November ... unless I get pictures from other people again. That isn't such a bad drive, but having a book tape would have been nice. I'll have to make sure I do that next time! Book tapes make time fly when you are driving!

Mom, Dad, and Lori Visit

We rented a pontoon when my parents and Lori came to visit last weekend. I really enjoy riding up and down the Inland Waterway. The Indian River was closed for some races, but that was ok becuase just doing the Crooked River gave us time to get back to Petoskey for the Craft Fair in the park. And we saw the Lipizzaner Stalions (http://www.lipizzaner.com/) that night too. Can you tell my family likes to go, go, go on vacations??!!

Here is Diesel getting loving at the very beginning of the trip.

And a little bit later on checking out the Lock.

Lori decided that after spending as much time on the water as she does, it was about time she tried to actually drive a boat. She did great! And Lori got a good picture of the Clock Tower. I'm kinda gonna miss pictures like this even though I feel like I see a million of the right now!!

Triathlon

My parents and Lori came up last weekend for a visit and stayed long enough to watch my first triathlon! It was actually really fun and I did well. Lori took some great pictures. The first one show us all milling around near the start of the swim.

The next one shows us swimming. Don't ask me which one is me. I have no idea. I think I finished 5th in the swim, but I passed a number of people, so I wasn't 5th at this point.

And here is me running. My best event, but definately the most tiring!

I got second overall for the women, which was really fun ... but I can't say the competition was all that stiff! Still, it was nice to get a plaque for my first attempt!

House for Sale

Our house was listed for sale on Monday, and I already had one showing (yeah!!!). Turns out we didn't have enough trees for them, but they liked the house, so I felt good about that. Tanner and I (and several other very nice friends!) worked long and hard to get it looking this great. Check out our hard work at http://www.realtor.com/realestate/petoskey-mi-49770-1102237394/

And our realtor put together a virtual tour: http://www.visualtour.com/shownp.asp?T=1644439

Tanner still has the camera, but our realtor took great pictures!!

Almost Alone

I don't have any pictures this time because Tanner took the camera (I think accidentally?). So I will keep this short, but wanted you to know that if I had a camera, I would show you how awesome our house looks. New paint, spotlessly clean basement, new stepping stones to the front door, new gutters, even a new deck!
It is already feeling very quiet here. Honestly, I was kinda looking forward to Tanner leaving so I could really get the place clean (and keep it clean!) and things have been tense with the stress of getting everything ready. But he's barely been gone a day and it is weird with just me and the dogs. So this morning, right over the farmer's field was a huge, bright, complete arched, double rainbow. It kinda felt like God was reminding me that he would take care of me. So between the dogs and God, I'm being watched over!
The good news is Tanner is coming back this weekend. Then you will get pictures!

My Birthday

Yes, I know that was a while ago. I wanted to show some pictures that my friend took from the boating trip we went on the weekend after my birthday. The first one is a lock that we went through to get from the Crooked Lake onto the Crooked River. I don't think I'd ever been on a lock before, so that was pretty neat.

This place is on the Crooked River. It might be where we stopped on the way home to go to the bathroom and then got a rope stuck in the prop.
Just a picture of a cute little kid fishing on the river as we drove past. And I think this is my new favorite picture of us!This was right at the begining. You can see Oden Island behind us. We went all the way up the Cooked River to Burt Lake. Then we went up the Indian River to the Inn Between which is a neat little restaurant right on the river and got lunch there. Then we turned around and went back. If we had kept going we could have gone all the way to Lake Huron, but we wouldn't have gotten the pontoon back to the rental place in time! It was really a fun trip, and I hope we get to do it again sometime.

Visitors!!

I love having visitors. It gives me an excuse to play the hostess ... which for me means fixing up the bedrooms and bathrooms all nice and touring around beautiful Northern Michigan. Which, honestly, has a lot more meaning now that I'm leaving. I actually got to see a few things this weekend that I havn't seen before becuase I was showing my Grandparents and my Mom around.

On Saturday we went up to Mackinaw City. There is a lighthouse that we toured and an old fort that they are reconstructing. I find all that local history stuff pretty facinating.

Then on Sunday after church we drove around Bay View and Wequetonsing to see all of the beautiful Victorian homes and gardens. They loved it!!

Then we went to Charlevoix to listen to the Petoskey High School Steel Drum Band. I love watching them. They have so much fun while they are performing!

Shooting Clay Pigeons

Not sure if I got the spelling on this one right, but just wanted to share a few pictures of us shooting clay pigeons in Tanner's parent's backyard. We made a very last minute trip to PA this weekend and stoped briefly in Grove City. I'm usually a pretty good shot, thanks to Mr. Cliff always letting us shoot when we visited them, but the boys definately outshot me this time!

Here is Caleb shooting a double.And all of the guys together as the sun was starting to set and we were running out of pigeons. Seeing Eric again was a pretty neat suprise. He is Tanner's older brother who lives in Germany and we hadn't seen since before we got married. And Drake watching longingly from the house. Tanner didn't trust him not to chase after the pigeons!

Nashville

Last week Tanner and I got to fly down to Nashville, TN where Tanner's grandparents live. His Mom's whole family meets down there every year for the 4th of July. When everyone was there I think the count was 18. It is always a relaxing time of swimming in the lake, tooling around the lake in the pontoon, and eating lots of good food.

Here is Tanner on the Jet Ski. And Tanner and I on the back of the poontoon with Tanner's aunt. And this one is of all the guys right before thier golf outing. For those of you who don't know. Tanner is actually enjoying golf now! Probably thanks to Martin's excelent teaching. Courtney and I hanging out in the lake.And a picture of Caleb, Nana, Pop Pop, Debra, and I the morning we left.