"Finnish your Czechs"

What a blast it is to go to an Olympic game! We headed up to Vancouver Wednesday night to watch the Fins take on the Czechs in a quarterfinal hockey game. We picked up Buz and Charlotte at their hotel and zipped over to the University of British Columbia's campus, where the game was played. After going through the security checkpoint, and stocking up on chili and veggo hot dogs for dinner, we settled into the tiny seats and watched the game! These teams seemed really well-matched because no goals were even made until the third period! And, I admit, I got an even bigger kick out of the rowdy crowd! It was a treat to be surrounded by so many different languages, so many happy people, and a real international crowd. A big thanks to Buz and Charlotte for this wonderful experience.

This was my favorite sign at the games!

Yesterday we headed down to Seattle and to the Museum of Flight. Here we are about to board the Concord for our flight to England. =)

And here, President Julie and President Charlotte (the election was a tie) disembark Air Force One. This plane actually did fly for JFK and other presidents (Nixon, etc). It was super cool to see the inside of this plane.

And (because I was forced to take a break from working during their visit), I finally finished a pair of socks I've been knitting for myself for YEARS. I've worn them three days in a row. I don't care if that is gross.

Olympics!

Guess what? Buz (Jay's Dad) and Charlotte are in Vancouver for the Olympics and they are heading down our way to visit for the rest of this week. But first, we have to go and pick them up in Vancouver and we are going to go to hockey game while we are there tomorrow night! We are so excited to be able to see an Olympic sport live!!! And everyone who knows me knows that I am not a huge fan of big organized sports, but I do like hockey (must be the Wildcat, UNH blood in me)! Jay and Buz used to play hockey, so I'll have lots of people around me who know what is going on. I mostly marvel at how many teeth the players have lost and how neat they look on their skates. We will take some photos and post them! We don't know who we will be watching yet - but it is a quarterfinal game at the stadium on the UBC campus. Neat!

Mt. Adams and the Columbia River Gorge

We finally had some fun that is worthy of a blog post! We drove way down to Portland, OR, then west then back north again to get to Trout Lake and some fun in the snow around Mt. Adams. Due to the crappy weather we have had (there is virtually no snow on the west coast this winter, as I'm sure you have gathered from the Olympics) we had to drive high to get some fluff. The snow is a bit soggy, but it is snow! So we drove and drove and drove and met up with Erik at the hotel we picked out - a great place with sweet potato waffles included with the price of the room. Can't go wrong with that!

In the morning we got up, gorged on waffles, and headed up into Gifford Pinchot National Forest (Mt. Adams) to get in some x-country skiing! We had to chain up our tires for the first time ever and this made the guys proud of themselves. They were so proud that Tinkerbell (our Matrix) became invincible! Nothing could stop us! Except, wet and soft snow. So, invincible Tink got stuck. We just laughed - there was no point in getting worried with the five million giant trucks around us that trailered up snowmobiles on the road. A few nice dudes from the town arrived (it must have been our laughter) and helped dig us out with shovels. I joked around that our accelerator got stuck and we had to drive into the soft snow to stop the car (yes, our new car is on the recall list).

Proud men and chained-up Tinkerbell

Laughing men try to dig us out with an excellent shovel, the umbrella!

Grand fir

This is really why we came here! Gorgeous!

The next day we drove toward Portland, OR and stopped at all the waterfalls along the Columbia River Gorge. It was soggy out, but that never stops us waterproof humans. Look at the waterfall closely - just to the left of the falls is a white dot. That's Jay and his jeans. What a GORGEOUS place. Wow, we were all blown away by the lush forests and the waterfalls.

View from under Ponytail Falls

Who is coming to visit?

Boringggg

Please excuse the super boring posts. Between me having no life because of this silly job of mine and both of us being sick - this is been an incredibly boring January. Not what either one of us like. We usually have one day of play each weekend - but because I've been sick and not getting as much work done during the week I don't have time to play during weekends. So, we managed to get out for a short hike yesterday around Heart Lake, a gorgeous lake near our house. Today we might take a break and go in search of one of the few stands of old growth forests left in Anacortes. We found this neat bright yellow mushie - but we didn't have our ID book with us because we didn't expect to find mushrooms in February! Other neat sightings - a gorgeous ring-necked duck, mergansers, and buffleheads. Although we didn't see them this time, it is hard to miss hearing the golden-crowned kinglets. Jay and I have gotten lovely views of these damn cute little birds walking around Cranberry Lake - even flashing their golden crowns at us! Neat!

Here is Heart Lake - surrounded by some beautiful cedars. We came across a few BIG cedars, even with big fire caves, but I didn't take a photo of one. Sorry.... you will just have to come visit us to see some of the big trees. So - who's coming?

This is really what I do all day and night. Darwin serves as a great desk.

Other news - we are heading down to the Mt. Adams area (southern WA) next weekend to meet up with Erik and hopefully go x-country skiing. We need some snow for that, otherwise we will be hiking! But we are really looking forward to getting outside for some serious white fluff and play time. And then Jay's Dad and Charlotte are coming out to visit. They are heading to Vancouver for the Olympics (there is a smallll chance we may join them one night and maybe even see some event, but don't get your hopes up) and then coming down to see us for a few days. So, thankfully, we have some stuff going on this month and we will have more interesting things to post!