Lotsa pictures

I've been informed that it is not in fact, conceited to post pictures of your own mug on your blog, but it IS conceited to leave only that particular post on your blog for weeks on end. Wha.....?? I was just giving everyone ample opportunity to gaze upon the pair of us and say ooooohhh....
Ok fine, I'll post NEW pictures!:)
At the end of April Justin and I went to a Miller family reunion in WA at my sister's house. I have two sisters that live on a tiny 8x8 mile island of the coast of WA. Its an excellent place to visit and vacation but takes a special patience to live on because your entire life revolves around ferry schedules. That includes marriages, funerals, and births. Pretty much you can only die at 9:45 or 10:30 or 2:30.
But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how much fun we had. My parents and 5 siblings came up from Wyoming, one sister came from TN, two brothers and their families from MT, and Justin and I from BC. We all stayed at various "cabins" (flat screen TV, sleeps 6, on the beach type of cabins!) within a mile or two of my sister's place and spent three days eating and playing and partying! ....As one parties with their baby nieces and nephews and parents, you know, croquet and chocolate milk.
So I'll walk you through it with some photos.
This was taken on our way while killing time on the ferry. We may not be photographers but I have to say, I'm pretty sure this photo rivals Dustin and Christy's expertise. I think it really brings out my natural beauty!
This is why we're married, we're very compatible.After horsing around with self portraits, a kindly woman offered to take a picture of the two of us so we put on our "normal" faces and smiled for the camera.


This picture is mom and dad opening their wedding attire and finding out they have 1 hour until the party! We surprised my parents with a late 30th anniversary celebration. My sister Diana put tons of effort into it, ordering my mom a beautiful white dress and sewing a classy vest for my dad. She organized a photo album that we all put together online and had wedding cakes made and a party planned...all while keeping 5 children in line and homeschooling!
After indulging in some truly delicious chocolate cake we went outside for family pictures. It hasn't gotten any less "gong-showish" as we've aged. There's still never a single picture that has everyone looking at the camera and the little ones are always a blur of movement. I guess you might say it captures it the way it is. I haven't gotten any of the entire family pictures, these are just ones that we snapped with our little camera.

All the girls- L-R in the back: Debi, Kimberly, Krystal, Janette, Mom, Serena, Whitney, Diana, Myself ....Serena and Whit are the brave women who married my brothers!


L-R Cherie, Remi, Constance, Lindey
This is the youngest of my sisters and three nieces. The fourth niece got away.



And this is Kaitlynn making her getaway, she wasn't so into the pictures.


The sisters: Debi, Krystal, Mom, Kimberly, Diana, Constance, Me, Janette
This would be all of us doing the "Trevor smile." Very attractive. Yes, I'm afraid we ARE making fun of my down's syndrome brother. My family's joking around is a bit sacrilegious at times. And this would be the original "Trevor smile" and why it's so funny to us. It's not his real smile, it's the smile that comes out when he's posing for the camera. Has anyone seen that episode on Friends of Chandler posing for his engagement photo....it's a similar phenomenon with Trev.
Big brother Don is giving Trevor the rules, "don't smile for the camera."
All the guys. Great posing guys! What exactly does "look at the camera" mean to you?
Ok this one is a little better. What do you mean it's blurry! So it turns out I'm NOT good at taking pictures! Sheesh, give me a break already!
L-R Josh, Donny, Justin, Dad (and Trev) Nathan, and Matt. (Justin and Matt are the inlaws)

The Ma and Pa. Mom never got a white wedding dress so we were pretty excited to get one for her anniversary!
The whole family. I stole this picture from my sister`s blog who has better details and better pictures. You should read it.
Aunt Connie and little Myles.

Aunt Kimmy and Lindey.Aunt me and....oh wait...he's not my nephew. Me and Trev. He's mad because I'm not letting him take the picture.
Uncle Justin and Myles. Myles is the sweetest, best natured baby ever!
Over the weekend we took a hike and a picnic along the beach!
...looks like we're taking over the island...
She looks like a little island flower!
About 30 seconds after the photo was snapped he tripped and his tuna sandwich landed face down in the sand!



We collected rocks and found sea creatures...






































Anyone who was anyone climbed the log...


















Kaitlynn talked to us about log climbing safety...


















We ate mermaid popcorn straight off the beach...it's dried seaweed



















Josh ate worms...






















Janette dreamt about boooooyyyyyssss.....






All in all...we had a wonderful time! The islands, while perhaps inconvenient to live on, are stunningly picturesque!





Krystal wanted a shot with her and the nephews and nieces....good luck!
I like these pictures because they capture the constant movement at our get-togethers! It's actually getting better as most of us are old enough to wipe our own bums now but that pretty much means it's gone from Straight Insanity to Mostly Chaos. It's a step up.

Photo Shoot

At the risk of appearing very conceited....here are some pictures our very good friends Dustin and Christy took of Justin and I. They do some great great work! If you don't believe me, go check out their site!








Sick, not the weird kissy lips.
So not attracted right now, you have no idea.

Get them away from me!

Ok fine, you want a weird kiss, you get a weird kiss.

Annnd we're done.

Just kidding, actually I love you very much.

Anal-ness

Have you ever watched a movie or read a story or perhaps watched a Youtube.com incident of embarrassingly anal people? I'm sure we've all heard a story somewhere of some self centered person making a complete fool of themselves in the interest of protecting their rights or their pride or their money or... their shiny new red Dodge Charger. And, not to pick on the rich, often the stories are of the rich and/or famous (or the wanna-be's) with their ATM hearts and credit card brittle personalities.
Like each of you I'm aware that these people exist. I have just not had many (if any) personal clashes with them....until yesterday. It was all so ridiculous I wasn't sure whether to be angry or to find it one of the funniest things in the world. So actually, I did both. Laughed and got mad, that is.
Justin and I were on the ferry from WA islands to WA mainland. The ferry announced our destination and asked us all to return to our vehicles so we roused from our naps and hustled down the stairs to the parked car. As we emerged from the stairwell we were "greeted" by Ms. DON'T TOUCH MY DODGE CHARGER!! She was parked directly in front of the stairwell, door open, leaning out of her car, glaring at every single person that walked by and barking, "PLEASE, don't touch the CAR!"
Geez lady, freak out already. What do you think we're going to do, kick it on our way by. Dump our leftover coffee on the hood. Bounce a basketball off of it? We were WALKING TO OUR CAR, not vandalizing the place! Seriously...every single person that was getting off on that side of the ferry got to hear, "DON'T touch the car! PLEASE DON'T touch the car. Don't touch the CAR!!" in a steady nauseating stream. And every one of us reacted the same, we just looked at her. It was so ridiculous and uncalled for that no one had any response other then to pause 1 or 2 seconds in confusion, shrug, and walk away.
And of course, as she's daring any of us to breathe in her air, there's a dog jumping up and down in the back seat. Yeah that's right, barking up a storm, pawing the seats, and jumping up on the windows. I guess you gotta pick your ulcers don't you!
I got in our car in a huff, a very unnecessary huff really, her attitude shouldn't dictate mine but I kinda let it. And as I'm gritting my teeth and dreaming up scathing retorts, a very old, very unassuming little couple ambled past.
The little gray haired woman decided she wanted to drive so she squeezed between their vehicle and El Snabbios to get to the driver's side, steading herself all the way with her hands firmly planted on the hood of the shiny red wonder.
I saw smoke coming from behind the dash.
Then the elderly, unassuming woman decided she didn't want to drive afterall...so she slowly squeezed back through the narrow opening, hands all over the car.
Snobbio couldn't take it anymore and exploded from her car. "DON'T touch the car! PLEASE TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF MY CAR!!"
And old people, you gotta love 'em. They're so unruffled. They looked at her as if she was very interesting and just carried on. They traded positions, using the car for balance all the way as if they were completely oblivious to the frantic woman sprouting gray hairs a few feet away from them.
We all know with absolute, documented certainty that her car will depreciate. A rock will hit it. Birds will poop on it. Random things will scratch it. It WILL happen. And it will end up being just another old car. But for a while in its glory days, it will serve to age and stress one poor woman. It almost makes me feel sorry for her. Thats a lot of wasted energy!

What goes through your mind late at night...

I've always had a dream of finding an abandoned child. I know thats almost creepy. What kind of sick person hopes a child will be abandoned? Let me hasten to say that I don't hope children are abandoned but because I know they are...I want to be one of the people that finds one. I used to fall asleep as a kid imagining what it would be like and where I'd find the baby and the very calm and wise way I would handle the situation. So calm and wise in fact that everyone would think I was obviously the proper person to take care of this child...even if I may have been only 8. And I'd come up with names and imagine being the youngest mother....yeah, anyway. Moving on.

So recently I was laying...lying...? Laying? I think it's Lying....anyway...

So recently I was lying in bed, mostly asleep. Justin was fast asleep beside me and I was in that 'in-between stage' when it feels like you're awake and you wish you could just fall asleep and then you roll over and it wakes you and you realize that your body was sleeping. Only your silly brain thinks it's awake.

So as I'm drifting off, all of a sudden, I heard a baby crying! Not even kidding, I heard a baby! It sounded like it was right outside my window or maybe closer to the garden spot, not desperately crying- softly crying. My heart was pounding before my eyes even had a chance to pop open. Of course as the adrenaline rushed toward my brain and it began functioning properly I quickly came to the realization that what I was imagining was perfectly impossible, ludicrous, not actually happening. I laid there blinking in the dark for what seemed like a full minute (but was probably about .7 of a second) trying to place this "cry" that sounded less and less like a baby and more and more like....Justin's nose whistling...!?

Yep, that's what it was. My own dear husband had a whinish sort of snore going on and my foggy brain had heard it as a baby's cry. And all in a matter of about 5 seconds I had already heard, rescued, named, and raised it. What a let down! I actually felt disappointed and almost shot a little glare at the offending nose. I didn't actually, I just said "almost." What I actually did was give him a little helpful prodding so he'd turn over. ...and then I pretended it really had been a baby and revisited my childhood 'abandoned baby' scenario. In a more grown up fashion. I'm 25 now...they really WOULD let me keep the baby!

Australia at last!

Without further ado....here are the pictures....

As we had intended, we spent every sunny day here...at the beach.
Justin and Brad, before the first surf!These guys are so passionate about this sport. If they're not in the waves, they're constantly watching them.See what I mean. They would actually get out of bed at 6:30 or 7:00 to go look at the waves before breakfast! Rain or shine, waves or no waves, they were out there every day!And here's me and my brief moment of dedication. Homework.

We got to go camping for two days. Lots of fun. Not smoking hot...or altogether without rain...but fun nevertheless.
This was the only ax we had in camp.We had a great idea of roasting potatoes in the fire. Boy did we ever roast them. Those aren't briquets, those are potatoes...well done. Actually they were delicious, we just couldn't eat the outside inch of charcoal.

We had a fabulous little portable Bialetti espresso maker that made amazing camp lattes (complete with ash sprinklings) and best of all...Tim Tam Slams. Mmmmmmm I like this picture because it looks like Steph is rearranging a wedgie (lets assume she's not!) and Brad is mid-bite. This is me.
This is a very large bird. These guys are so huge!!See...it's as big as me!!
The blow hole. Pretty cool actually!!
Yes this is a huge bowl of shrimp remains. They were tasty but I couldn't get past the little legs....ugh...
Happy Valentines Day to us! We had our dinner at like 10pm!
For our cigarette butts.
We actually saw these real live kangaroos in the wild. And by "we" I mean the guys, not me personally.
But I did see these at the zoo!! I'd never actually seen a joey in a pouch before!! SO cute!!
"Hello? Is this thing on? "See look, I even fed them. It looks quite harmless in this picture but after we fed these little guys we got 'mobbed.' Hehe Now I know why they use that term! They jumped up on us and shoved us around. Greedy little jerks.
I know posting pictures of zoo animals is really very silly because you don't care. But these are particularly cute pictures so I will post them anyway!
My question is this, how can a camel, a HUGE camel, survive on grass and leaves? I'm about 1/3 its size and I would die. Where do they get their protein? Don't they NEED protein? Can someone answer these questions?
We got to pet one of these...i would have posted that picture but um....I'm waiting for a certain friend of mine to send it to me. I won't mention any names but it begins with "st" and rhymes with "befinee."
Cute? Or just creepy?
I know this isn't actually a lemur but all I could think of watching this thing is "I like to move it move it!"

I think this video is great!

I know I should be ashamed of myself and I am just a little. But let me tell you that in the midst of 24 hours of airports and airplanes in the wee hours of the morning....this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life. I probably laughed for an hour! Just where are we supposed to place our order?

And if you want to see even more...go here... http://s233.photobucket.com/albums/ee156/Cairli/