Friends coming home

Freddy's (best) friend Charlie comes home tonight after about 3 weeks away. Freddy will be so happy to see him tomorrow at Narda's house! Julie was nice enough to pick up a 2nd one of these bouncy horses at a yard sale so they could fall off them together. I guess the ear of the green one must be tasty?

We had a WONDERFUL long weekend here - it will be hard to go back to work tomorrow! Friday, we went to the pool, took naps, and walked down to a neighborhood restaurant for dinner. Freddy had his first ice cream cone (a must for the beach next week, family readers) and was in heaven! On the 4th, we went for a disaster of a sail (engine problems, bugs, rain, cranky toddler) in the morning, but redeemed the day with a great bbq with some friends. We lost track of time and by the time we were walking home, it was after 10! Freddy's latest night out ever, but he was good-natured until the end. Today, we had breakfast at a coffeeshop down the street (since Freddy doesn't sleep in no matter what bedtime is!), spent a few hours at the pool, and now I'm thinking about packing for our upcoming trip(s). Fun!

Lounger

One weekend morning, Freddy and I came down early to let Bill sleep a little, and as soon we got downstairs, he climbed up on the couch and arranged himself like this. Like father, like son!

Happy Birthday Grammy!

Happy Birthday to Grammy (or Kathy, or Mom, depending on your perspective)! It's a big one!

Here are a few photos (in slideshow format) of Freddy and Bill on our Father's Day hike. For a week or so, Freddy would hold his hands over his ears and say "bumblebees in my ears". After the first few days, I took him to the doctor, thinking maybe he had an ear infection. But no - who knows why he was doing it? But you'll see that in some of these photos. Hope you like them! If you are viewing this in an e-mail and can't see the slideshow, go to:

http://gowskis.blogspot.com/

Funny Face

I caught Freddy in mid-jump for this photo, and although it doesn't really look like him, isn't it hilarious?

Father's Day

Ok, I have some catching up to do! It turns out we have a lot of great photos on my camera, and more on Bill's (although I haven't downloaded them yet. Here are some photos from Father's Day this year (we also went for a hike, but I'll put those in another post)...I want to split them up because we took some photos of Bill and Freddy last year and I think it's so cute to compare their first two Father's Days together. Hope yours was just as much fun!

Pregnant Brain?

It's the only explanation I can come up with for why I have been so slack with the blog lately. Sorry, everyone! Hopefully this weekend I can get caught up on downloading new photos and getting some new info up. Here are two more photos from our weekend in Virginia (almost 2 weeks ago!). The week we got back, it rained almost every day, including the following weekend. We got just enough sun to go for a short father's day hike, but otherwise got to do some vegging-out on the couch - which was good. We had hoped to go for an overnight sail with Freddy on Saturday, but the weather was just too unpredictable.

Friday evening, our 5th anniversary (!!), we had a fantastic dinner at a new restaurant in our old neighborhood. Sunday night, Billy and I went to see David Byrne at an outdoor concert, which was just INCREDIBLE! What a showman. Got to sit with some good friends and enjoy the great performance. This week, the weather has been warm and sunny. I was fighting a headache bad enough to keep me home from work 1/2 day Mon and Tues, but I still had playgroup at our house Tuesday night and Bill took the boys out on the boat for our friend Greg's last day of residency! It's been a long haul for him, so we're so happy that he's finished!!

We have yet to go out on the sailboat as a family, so although we are hoping for the weekend, the forecast is again showing thunderstorms. Maybe if we don't talk about sailing, it'll stop raining for a day or so.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Rip's dad, Lloyd Bush, who is dealing with some very serious, and unexpected, health diagnoses. He had surgery yesterday, and we're hoping he pulls through and the doctor's give him a better prognosis going forward.

We're Back!

After trekking across the country and back - 4 flights, lots of driving, and lots of family in between - we're back and wishing we had more time to spend with everyone back in VA. My step-sister Charlotte and her husband James' wedding celebration was so fun (they got married in Nov. but it was small)! Family dinner Friday night at the Tides Inn was a nice chance for Billy and I to catch up with everyone sans Freddy (thanks to mom for babysitting!), and F got to spend some fun time with Grammy and his Posey cousins. Saturday was berry-picking (see photo), swimming with the Poseys and daddy while mom and sis Mary got manicures, playing with dogs (7? 8?), and then the wedding party itself down on Carter's Creek. Freddy got to get his groove on to the music, see lots of boats (plus a random crane and school bus at a marina next door), check out a birds' nest, and eat poached salmon. He entertained and was entertained, stayed up until almost 10 and was adorable pretty much the entire time! I've never seen him so sweaty...but it made his hair curl up and was pretty cute.

Through all that, Bill and I didn't take a single photo, so I'm relying on pics sent from my mom and brother-in-law Erik. You can almost see the humidity in the photo Mom took, below. Oh well. We'll be back at it, picture-taking, soon enough!

Taking a little break...

I don't think I'll have time to write up any more posts in the next day or so, and then we head to Virginia for my step-sister Charlotte's wedding party (she got married in Nov.). I don't even care that it's a quick-turnaround visit - I'm just so excited to see everyone! I know it will fly by - we land around 3:30 on Friday, drive an hour to my mom's, leave Freddy there with his Posey cousins, head to a 'rehearsal' dinner at the Tides Inn, and have the wedding party itself Sat. night. And we will have to leave for the airport around 11 a.m. on Sunday. But mom just e-mailed me to say that she has "Radishes, beets, cukes, blueberries and blackberries-and shitake mushrooms-all ready for Freddy to pick if he wants!!!", so of course it'll be a great time. Oh, and not to mention the 21 dogs she and Grandpa Scott now own.... :) Just kidding, I think it's only 7. Or 8.

"I'm Dri-bing!"

I'm going to catch up this week on a few photos that I meant to upload sooner...here are a few from our visit from Chris Velan, international singing superstar. He has a VW vanagon (sp?), and Freddy LOVED sitting in it and pretending to drive. He is still repeating over and over "where cris-en? dribe chris-en van." I don't know why he just can't say "Chris", but it's probably the same reason he pluralizes some things that are singular (e.g., "strollers" when he only means one).


I wish I could send you some beautiful sunny pictures from last weekend, but alas, it rained pretty much the entire weekend. We had an awesome Friday night at two 40th birthday parties, and a nice casual bbq with our friends Julie & Greg on Saturday night. Freddy had his last music class, and I took a great container gardening class Saturday morning. Hope you all had equally good weekends!! VA folks, we can't wait to see you this weekend, even if it's a super-short visit. :(

Neko Case Concert

Last weekend, we went to the opening concert at Red Butte Gardens, which is a community garden that has an awesome outdoor amphitheater. Concert tickets are usuallly pretty reasonable, and it's a very casual, hang out with friends kind of event. We usually round up most of our friends who have tickets, bring way too much food, wine, and beer, and do a lot of chatting the entire time. Above: Stephanie, me, Larkyn, Julie, and Amy. Below: Billy, Greg, Billy, Ted, and Ben. The weather was perfect (threatened rain but didn't), and we saw tons of other people we knew. And Freddy didn't cry when we left, hooray!

Mine, all Mine

Freddy has the chariot to himself for now - luckily he likes it so much that he got in it before we even hooked it up to Bill's bike...for a ride up to a friend's house last weekend. Helmet? Check. Monster truck? Check. Buckles? Check.

More Boat

Here are a few photos from our boom-less motoring expedition a week or so ago - we are planning to go out on Sunday morning for our first sail with actual sails...should be nice if it doesn't rain! I think this is a great picture of Bill. Can you believe the entrance to the marina? It's that little curving opening in the rip rap/rock wall. Don't worry, I did not drink that entire glass of champagne. ;) The other water photo is us returning to the marina.

Springtime in Salt Lake

I guess it's almost summertime, but either way, we've gotten some good rain lately and everyone's gardens are going crazy (and, of course, so are the weeds). I'll take some photos of our garden this weekend...the huge lavender spread in the back yard is about to bloom, and the roses are incredible - HUGE and beautiful. If only I could keep the aphids off the new buds.

I'm planting one pot of these poppy mallows in our back yard where a spurge plant bit the dust. They do so well here, especially in a low-water environment, and I think they're so pretty in spring. Freddy likes watching the bumble bees (from a distance). Oh, and this is post-haircut!

I wish my hair grew this fast!

I guess I need to adjust my expectations for myself as to how often I'm going to post on this blog! Argh - anyway, time to catch up on some photos. Here's a photo or two of Freddy pre-haircut (last night). For those family members who will see him in 2 weeks in VA, he's now freshly shorn...photos of that to come soon! It does look like he either has Bill's or Aunt Mary's hair - it's curly short or long, and I can't tell you how many people said "oh, don't cut it - those curls are so cute!" Yes, cute and shaggy and almost rattail-like in the back. Sorry!

House Construction

Per our homeowner's insurance requirement (and the fact that shingles were actually falling off the front of the house), we are replacing our roof - already a 2-week project that will probably take 3. These guys have been working HARD - we had 4 layers of old shingles, including wooden ones on the bottom, on the older main part of the house. Yesterday, they brought in a huge crane truck to lift pallets of shingles onto the roof for installation. I rushed Freddy home from daycare so he could see it (he was stunned into silence). Watching them maneuver the huge crane arm through a GIANT (at least 30-40 feet) box elder tree and onto the roof without breaking any major brances was pretty incredible. There were about 10 packages of shingles balanced on the peak of our roof when they broke for the day. Wonder if they're still there now?

City of Rocks, Idaho

We ended up driving up to Idaho on Saturday after all, ready for Freddy's first camping adventure - and an adventure for us with 20 adults and 17 kids expected at our group campsite. City of Rocks is a rock climbing mecca, so although we didn't expect to climb much, we thought we might get in a few routes.

Well, bring on the rain.

We borrowed a big tent from some friends who must have forgotten to waterproof the seams, and the rain fly didn't go all the way to the ground, so our tent was not exactly dry. Luckily, Billy had packed several tarps, so we covered up and stayed mostly toasty all night. Freddy wasn't interested in napping in the tent (and falling asleep in the backpack on a hike wasn't an option, because it was raining), but he did fall asleep that night after lots of books, and slept more or less through the night. He LOVED the tent. Our friends Dan (Cantrell) and Annie drove down from Big Sky MT, and it was great to catch up with them and hear about their wedding plans (July 11!). Billy was the best dad/husband, packing up all our wet stuff and driving the entire way home while Freddy and I slept.

If you get this by e-mail and don't see the slideshow, below, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=mvgeier13&target=ALBUM&id=5340343058923059345&authkey=Gv1sRgCLOZp-mC3NzBPQ&feat=email and click "slideshow".

THOMAS

Freddy experienced a little piece of heaven on Friday, when Billy took him to see Thomas the Train at the Heber Railroad (a little rail outside of Park City). See below.....

Crane Day

So sorry for the long delay in new postings! Last week was totally nuts, and we were away most of this weekend on a camping trip in Idaho. Photos to come from that next...our friend Chris Velan is on a cross-country music tour and arrived last night. He plays in Park City on Friday night.

The currently-named (and not for long, hopefully) Galley I is in the water! I'm glad I wasn't there for "crane day", 'cause it would have scared the daylights out of me. We took an 'motor' last Thursday, and it was a beautiful night. Notice I didn't say "we took a sail". Kind of hard without a boom or any sails...but by this time tomorrow, it should be more or less rigged.

Bicycle, Bicycle...

Our friends handed down their little trike for Freddy...although he's mostly too small for it, and it's missing its handle, he has been having a good old time "riding his bike." Thanks to Doug and Christine for the sweet Yankees jersey! The flame shoes make him go really fast.

Wow, am I a Slacker!

Here it is 5 days since my last post, and I'm heading out of town for the next 2! Sorry, everyone - I hope to be back on track next week. I'm leaving in 45 min. for a weekend of canyoneering with some ladies from here and the Denver area. Should be fun! I'm not taking a camera, but hopefully someone is and I'll be able to post photos when I return. In the meanwhile, I'll leave you with some photos of one of MY favorite childhood memories - licking the beaters! Freddy wasn't that into it after the initial lick, but don't worry, I'll teach him.