A hot time in Sacramento

Our lives have been very busy lately, but luckily it's been mostly fun! This past weekend we traveled to Sacramento to spend some time with our friends. Sam and Harmony hosted us for a wonderful day/evening that included afternoon drinks at a brewery and a mystery theater dinner aboard a riverboat. We were celebrating the occasion of Sam being promoted to Navy Lieutenant. We're proud of him, although sad that he'll be leaving for deployment for most of the next year.
After our drinks at the brewery we headed over to Evangeline's in the Old Town shopping area. It's a huge store with all kinds of fun, weird stuff inside. Heather couldn't resist trying on a few wigs and even bought two. She didn't wear them to dinner, but regretted her decision when she saw another dinner patron wearing a rainbow-colored wig! Harmony took a picture of me and Logan just before dinner started. The food was really good, and the theater part of it was funny and entertaining.
A shot of the four girls (Harmony, me, Heather and Kirsten):
After we drove home on Sunday afternoon we started getting ready for the party I was throwing for my co-workers at our house that evening. It was really hot that day, but luckily it cooled off enough so that everyone enjoyed themselves.
I had a wonderful surprise when I got home at 9:30pm from working the late shift last night. Logan had spent the afternoon crawling around up in the attic (in 90+ degree heat up there) to wire up a reading light to hang above the living room couch. So now I can see really well to read or type on the couch. Yay! It was so sweet of him to surprise me, and he picked out a really nice looking fixture too.

When he's not wiring lights, Logan has been working hard to accessorize his hobby room. The house is getting emptier as the hobby room gets more full! He went on an Ikea shopping spree last week to buy bookcases, glass display cabinets and a new desk for himself. It all looks great in there, and I'm glad he finally has a nice place to display his stuff.
Below is the view from the doorway:
There are Star Wars ships hanging all around his desk:
His bookcase is partially full with books, DVDs, action figures and cars:
Aside from displaying store bought figures, Logan also has some of his hand-built cars on display. He has had most of these packed away since college, so it's exciting for him to be able to display them now:
On top of the bookcase, Logan has his stereo system and CD changer hooked up. The stereo receiver is a hand-me-down that his dad bought in Japan over 40 years ago! It still works well.
Did I mention that there are Star Wars ships EVERYWHERE?
Can you guess whose wall this is? Silly me- I'm too busy working at the library to put my little corner together. I'll get to it sometime soon. I just feel lucky that I get any space at all! (And yes, those boxes on top of the desk are Logan's, not mine.)
I hope everyone has a nice 4th of July weekend. I know that I'm looking forward to three days off.

Bookcase

Logan has been working really hard and fast on the hobby room this week, and continued today by building a built-in bookcase for his manga collection. It looks really nice- very professional! The bookcase looks really nice underneath the window. Logan also worked on caulking the seams in the moulding and baseboards today.
The floor looks really nice, although it's a little dirty and dusty now. I swept off a little section to take this picture.
And what does Clark do all day while Logan works in the hobby room and I work at the library? He sleeps in the flowerbed, of course!

Hobby room progress

Now that Logan is out of school, he has been working hard to finish the hobby room. Yesterday he textured the room while I was at work, and today we painted- primer in the morning and color in the afternoon. Since we want this to be a fun, creative room we decided to use a nice bright paint color.
Here's the room pre-primer. Logan was stirring the paint. Logan had to paper over the windows so the texturing didn't get all over them. Now there's an A-Team in my skylight. Almost done with the primer coat.
Ta da! Our bright green room. The paint color is called Lime Sorbet. Logan says it makes him want to eat mint chocolate chip ice cream. Clark thinks it looks pretty tasty too.
Here's the view from our green room to the yard.
The ceiling is a lighter shade of green. Logan will put white crown moulding up around the edges eventually.
We took a trip to Ikea tonight to look at desks and shelves for the room, and decided to get some wood flooring. It's a dark brown, which we think will look nice with the paint color. Logan is going to clean the cement floor tomorrow to get it ready for laying the wood floor. I'll put more pictures up when the floor is in.

Islands in the Stream...

We just got home this afternoon after four days of camping, and we had a great time. I really loved our trip to Europe last year, but I think this vacation may have been even better. It was very relaxing, and I loved spending so much quality time with my boys.
We had beautiful weather, and the campground was almost empty, so it was nice and quiet. Part of the campground was closed off, and we saw why when we walked through that area later. A huge tree had fallen over across the road and crashed into the bathrooms. The picture below shows how big the root system was. The tree trunk must have been about four feet wide. We drove into the nearby (very small) town of Dardanelle for a few supplies we had forgotten, and saw this picture of Smokey outside the general store. Logan was happy to pose with his alter ego (see my last post if you don't know what I'm talking about). Our days while camping were filled with hikes through the woods, which are part of the Stanislaus National Forest. Being a national forest means that we can let Clark run wild and free off-leash. He had a fantastic time, especially when we encountered some snow still hanging in there at the higher elevations.
Logan was also very excited to see the snow. He and Clark are two peas in a pod, and they're both cold-weather lovers.
A few years ago I had bought Clark a backpack, intending to train him to wear it on hikes and long walks around town. Often, dogs with focus problems or fear issues (like he has) perform better when they have a job to do, like carrying a backpack. But Clark didn't like wearing the backpack when we first got it, and so I hadn't tried again to train him to use it until now. When Logan strapped it on him before we left for a hike the other day, he didn't mind it at all. In fact, he seemed to be very excited to wear it. And he looked so cute!
Since this past winter was such a wet one, the river was running really fast and high, so we couldn't explore the island that my family used to go to when we camped at Clark Fork years ago, But we found enough other beautiful places to explore.
We had to cross a few smaller side streams on our adventures through the woods, which often included walking across fallen logs. I was glad all three of us made it home safely!
Banana break! Clark was kind to carry bananas for our morning snack in his backpack, although they did get a little bruised and wet when he ran through the water.
More snow! The look of pure joy on Clark's face cracks me up.
Our newest family (self-)portrait, taken while enjoying the view from the edge of the stream.
This is what a dog looks like after two hikes in one day. Even in the woods, he's still a lap dog. And yes, he was actually asleep!
My handsome boys!

On the move

The last few weeks have been busy, but fun, for Logan and me. Logan finished school on Thursday, and is very excited to be off for the summer. His last few weeks of school were crazy, with parties to plan, assessments to complete, and report cards to finish. In addition, he took a few days off to serve as the best man in his friend Alex's wedding. Oh, and he got to dress up as Smokey the Bear too! Here's "Smokey" with his class: The Thursday before school was out for Logan, he and I took an early morning flight to the midwest. I flew to Indiana, where Alex and Emilie's wedding was being held, and he flew to Chicago for the bachelor party, then drove down to Bloomington the next day to meet me. The wedding was held at the Memorial Union on the Indiana University campus. It's a beautiful campus, with a really nice hotel on site where we stayed. The memorial union is a large, castle-like building made of limestone. Here's the view out our hotel window down onto the lovely little cemetery below:
On Friday, when Logan and the guys were making their way from Chicago to Bloomington, I rented a car and drove to visit Logan's grandma, who lives in a little town in Indiana called Bicknell. The drive was beautiful, and the two lane highway wound through lots of lush farmland. This is what most of it looked like:
Aside from where the highway intersected with other highways, the intersections were mostly of the gravel-road variety:
After about an hour and a half of driving, I made it to Bicknell!
There's one stop light going through town, and if you blink you'll miss the town altogether. I turned off the highway onto Main Street, which was lined with banners on the light poles:
A view of the brick buildings on Main Street in Bicknell. It's a pretty quiet town:
After visiting with Logan's grandma for a few hours, I made the drive back to Bloomington, and we attended the welcome BBQ at a brewery that night. The next day was busy for Logan- he had lots of tasks to complete as the best man. It was overcast that day, but luckily the rain held off, and the ceremony was held outside as planned. Logan looked very nice in his tux:
The ceremony, which was performed by Alex's sister Amy, was full of laughter. Emilie looked beautiful:
The wedding was also a mini-reunion for Logan and some of his high school friends. Here are five Monta Vista class of '96 graduates- all very successful adults now:
Alex got to choose the shoes for the groomsmen. Very spiffy!
Logan and Alex, enjoying the reception:
Alex and Emilie walked to a nearby bed and breakfast after the reception ended, so they tied cans and a "Just Married" sign to Alex:
We flew back from Indiana on Sunday evening, and the next day it was back to work for both of us. The day of the wedding had been the last day the Mitchell Park Library, where I work, was open for service to the public. The library will be torn down in a few months to make way for a new, larger library and community center. So, the staff's job this past week was to pack up the library and prepare for our move to our temporary location down the street. We had to pack all of the books that are going into storage onto these huge orange book carts:
And everything else went into these plastic crates. There was a sea of orange in the library:
Each book that was taken off the shelf to go to storage had to be scanned into the computer with a status of "basement" so we know where it is. Dave scanned books all day for about three days straight!
Here is the mostly empty children's room:
The movers dismantled our workstations and offices on Thursday morning. Here the walls of my office are being taken down:
All of the phones in the building were collected in one area. By Friday, we had one lone working phone in the whole building:
It's hard to believe this space used to house seven staff people and their desks!
This is where my office used to be. Note the lines in the carpet where they removed the walls:
A shot of the outside of the building, complete with brown paper in the windows so customers don't try to come in:
Another, more flattering, shot. It's not the nicest looking building, but the gardeners do a great job:
Yahoo! Mitchell Park Library is CLOSED:
By the end of the week everyone was exhausted, and a bit stir-crazy:
Yesterday (Saturday) we had a groundbreaking ceremony and celebration at the library and community center, complete with crafts for the kids, ice cream, and jugglers. I think a lot of people will be glad to see the building come crashing down.
Today Logan, Clark and I are leaving for a few days of camping in Stanislaus National Forest. We're really looking forward to the fresh air- and I'm looking forward to seeing something other than book call numbers all day!
I puttered a bit in the garden this morning and was very excited to find the first two ripe tomatoes of the 2010 season. Yay!