Mt Saint Helens

This was such a fun experience to be able to go to Mount St. Helens and see how it has changed.  I went when I was living in WA as a kid and it looks so different.  When I went before there were little trees that now have 20 years growth to them.  Over 8 million trees were planted after the eruption.  This is all Hannah wanted to do this summer so we made it our last summer fling!  Well worth the trip!

 This Picture has a really funny story associated with it that caused Rebecca a huge bruise and a funny limp because she forgot how gravity worked!!  We have Mt. Rainier in the background of this beautiful farm scape.

 The trees that you see were all wiped out when Mount St. Helens blew in 1980.  Crazy to think of the destruction that such a beautiful majestic place can have in a matter of minutes!

 You can see the path the landslide took.

 We are a happy family!  Look at Alan's hat....I LOVE it!  It looks fabulous on him, and fits his personality perfectly!

 Closer to the mountain you can still see where the trees were just blown over and still lay there in neat rows.

 Had to get this picture with the fallen tree and the mountain in the background!

The forest is kind of fake looking because everything is the same size and so uniform instead of the diversity of an old forest that once was here.

just a little OC

We went to Ocean City, Maryland this past weekend. We stayed on the 15th floor of the Capri on the North End of OC. Alan's department chair has a condo there and was so very kind to offer it to us. It pays to have well established friends!!
Within 15 minutes of getting there, the high-rise next door had a fire alarm go off and people were running out of the building. Then a couple of fire trucks came along with an ambulance. They were fully dressed in their garb and went marching in as hero's only to come out shortly after having been a false alarm.
We spent a lot of time at the pool and on the beach. It was so much fun to just relax and be together!

Streets of Boston

This weekend we went up to Boston, MA for a Boss family reunion. We stayed in the Charles Hovey house that overlooks Cape Ann, in Gloucester. What a view, it was breathtaking.

We had a lot of fun and kept really busy. The first day started at 4:00 a.m. when we woke up and got ready to leave for the airport. It was a fabulously short flight, in fact I believe it is the shortest flight I have ever been on. Once we were there we relaxed, slept and had fun just hanging out.

The second day we went into Boston for some site seeing. We went to the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow home, a beautiful mansion. My favorite picture from the whole trip was taken there, Joseph and his cousin Taylor who is just a couple of days older then him.

Next we went to the Boston Common, where we went and rode the Swan Boats that have been there since 1877. We also started our trolley tour there. From the trolley we got to see all of downtown Boston. We got out and walked around Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Socks. We then went over to the USS Constitution and walked around for a bit seeing a dry dock, which was quite fascinating. While waiting in line to take a ferry across the harbor we looked in the water and saw jelly fish. Very interesting creatures. We then ate dinner at the oldest operating restaurant in the US, established in 1826, Ye Olde Union Oyster House. Of course they served my absolute favorite foods, (this is oozing with sarcasm, I can't stand the smell or taste of seafood and yes I have tried it!! But there are many in my family that really enjoy it!) We than felt like the pioneers when walking back to cars: We walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked.....After the full day of going around town I was amazed that none of the kids had a meltdown. They were troopers!!!

Sunday we had family pictures on the beach, had sacrament meeting, and went to see Alan's brothers homes, Scott and David, who live in Boston. We also looked around at their schools, Babson and Bently, that they attend / work at. We then took the opportunity to go to the LDS Temple.

On Monday, we went to the Wingaersheek Beach, went up to Rockport (first and last picture) and then had FHE together in two parts. Part one with the kids and part two with just adults.

Leaving on Tuesday the plan was to wake up at 3:00 a.m. but Eden decided that it should be 2 a.m. instead. So we left for the airport around 3:30 and were home by 9:00 a.m. took the 3 kids to school and waited with baited breath until I could climb into bed!

We had a great time, and had a lot of fun hanging out with cousins and siblings!! Thanks to David and Chelsea for all the hard working planning the reunion! I finally had a positive experience in Boston and didn't feel like Charlie on the MTA: "He may ride forever through the the streets of Boston"!

Here comes the Bride....

It is so funny to me how you can have so many wonderful memories of a place and then you revisit this place after many, many years and you don't remember a thing!!

I was able to go to Seattle, Washington for 5 kid-free days (I think that was probably the best part! Sorry Tracy) to attend a friends wedding. My family lived in Kent, Washington for about 5 years and I would have to say that my best and most fond memories from my childhood are from there. As a family we did many different activities and explored a lot of Seattle and surrounding areas. We would go to the Pacific Science Center, The Seattle Aquarium, Boeing Family Days (my dad worked for Boeing), Seattle Space Needle, Salt Water State Park, Olympic National Forest, The Old Spaghetti Factory, Underground Seattle, etc.

My friend, Tracy Lambert almost Peterson, and I drove around trying to do some last minute wedding stuff and I didn't recognize hardly anything. There was Lake Meridian that I did recognize, and going into Seattle it looked the same, but everything else was lost. It made me sad in a way, but happy that I still had the fun family memories of what we did.

The Beautiful Bride and Me not ready yet!!

Tracy, Rebecca, Sue

Dale and Sue Lambert,
The Bride's parents who I absolutely love!
The Wedding Party

The Drake Fam Reunion

After a long trip, with many events in between, we have returned home to find everything just how it should be:

Our garden overgrown, not with weeds, but the actual plants are enormous, which people don't usally complain about. But when the garden plot is smaller then one of the plants it makes it more difficult.

Our two turtles that we gave to Alan for Father's Day (so that he couldn't complain about having them...Hey, I know how to work the system!) alive and happy and our house didn't stink as much as we thought it would!

Our lawn freshly mowed and trimmed by our good neighbor Grandpa Dan! He also fixed the back stairs, which was a pleasant surprise!!

People taking bets on weither or not we would ever return!

Just some quick highlights from the trip.

1. We got to see my parents new house.
2. We got to meet our almost sister in-law Brittany
3. We got to meet all of the cousins that we had not met yet!
4. We got to go to cousin Isabell’s baptism.
5. We got to celebrate both Peter’s 5th birthday and Father’s Day on the same day!
6. We got to witness little Georgi get blessed by all of her uncles and grandpa’s.
7. We got to see many wild animals up close in Yellowstone, but unfortunately we didn't see any bears (that's all I wanted to see).

All in all it was a good trip and we got to see family and friends that we hadn't been able to see for a long while. Sorry about how many pictures there are, but it was hard to choose just a couple!

Don't feed the bears......or Giraffes

We went on a trip to Boulder, Colorado over Memorial Day this year for the annual R. Wayne Boss Family Reunion. One of the things we did was go down to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Spring and while we were there we also decided to go to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. I was certainly very impressed with this zoo. They take very good care of their animals and you can get up close and personal (as seen in the video). Watch the tongue on that thing, it just kept coming, and coming, and coming! We had a lot of fun playing with cousins and being with the family.

It's a small world after all

About half way up to Newport RI I began to notice that every single car that we passed or that passed us had a different licence plate on it. We began to keep track and continued to keep track as we drove back home and then to and from Pittsburg, PA.

1. Arizona
2. California
3. Colorado
4. Connecticut
5. Delaware
6. Florida
7. Georgia
8. Idaho
9. Illinois
10. Indiana
11. Iowa
12. Kansas
13. Kentucky
14. Maine
15. Maryland
16. Massachusetts
17. Michigan
18. Minnesota
19. Mississippi
20. Missouri
21. Nebraska
22. New Hampshire
23. New Jersey
24. New York
25. North Carolina
26. Ohio
27. Oklahoma
28. Oregon
29. Pennsylvania
30. Rhode Island
31. South Carolina
32. Tennessee
33. Texas
34. Utah
35. Vermont
36. Virginia
37. Washington
38. Washington D.C.
39. West Virginia
40. Wisconsin

Pretty amazing that traveling such a small distance we can see people from 40 different states as well as 5 cars from different countries.

TEN, 10, the big 1-0

I remember in our first year of marriage, a man in our Broomfield, CO ward said to me, "Enjoy this time because tomorrow you will turn around and you will have been married for 14 years." I couldn't see it then, but now I sit here amazed that 10 years have passed before my eyes.

• married on March 22, 1997 in the Bountiful Utah Temple
• honeymooned in Newport, RI
• moved 9 times so far
• have three kids
• 2 cars
• a house in Laurel, MD

All this in ten years!! Amazing time keeps on tick'n! I have been lucky to be married to such a wonderful man, who supports me in the things that I do and loves me despite my downfalls. I love you Alan! Happy Anniversary!

We decided that we would go back to where we honeymooned for our 10th Anniversary. Leslee Boss, Alan's stepmother came and watched the kids for us. Thanks Leslee! We drove the 7 1/2 hour trip up to RI. It was amazing. It was like we were there yesterday! Everything looked the same. We stayed right on the Bay in Jamestown and were able to see all of Newport as well as the bridge. We didn't have Internet access (which Alan and I didn't know if we could live without) and no responsibilities. It was a lot of fun, we read, went out to eat, went sight seeing, walked along the ocean, watched movies, drove around, went to Boston and Salem, MA for the afternoon. Most of all we enjoyed relaxing and not having to wake up in the morning! We love the ocean as you can tell by all of the pics.

Our little family getaway...

This last weekend we got to go to Ocean City for a little getaway. I love leaving the world behind and being able to fully enjoy my family. It was a last minute trip before the semester started for Alan. We didn't tell the kids until Thursday night that we were going. All morning I got to listen to Joseph excitedly ask "We going to the Beach House?" I would say, yes we are going to the beach house and his response was always Hooray! Hooray! We took Hannah out of school early, to which she was thrilled. Peter was more than happy not to go to school so that we could pack and get ready to go. It was fun to see their excitement.

It is so funny to me that you can say a word like beach and your mind is filled with images of hundreds of umbrellas, people, sand, sun, hot, refreshing water, building castles, etc. Well those images fled as soon as I got out of the car. It was freezing. It was different being there in the winter, having only been there in the summer. It was still fun collecting shells and look at the beauty of the ocean for the 10 minutes we were there.

The best part of being away is being able to do things that we don't do at home, like playing hide and seek, watching movies curled up on the couch together, just enjoying the conversations of my children, or watching my husband actually read for enjoyment. I really enjoy not being connected to the outside world. The phone never rang, there were no urgent emails to respond to. Everything we did was for our own enjoyment.

Moments and memories like these are little gifts so that when life starts taking it's toll I can close my eyes and dream!

White Christmas

It has been a long time since I have had a White Christmas!

In Colorado this year they have gotten more snow in December then they have in 30 years! Pretty amazing and we were there to witness history in the making. We planned it beautifully. We flew in 3 days after the first storm hit, had another one hit 3 days after we got there. Which was fun to be part of! Two days after leaving Colorado storm # 3 hit.

I am not one that really enjoys being in snow. I think it is beautiful, but I dislike very much being cold. For the love of my children I brought all of my snow stuff as well so that they could play. It was fun we built a snowman, made many snow angels and ate enough to feed a platypus! Peter especially enjoyed eating the snow. On one of our walk he would pick up a handful of "clean" snow and thank me for this delicious icy dessert! Precious moments.

The other important discovery was that Joseph does have a bit of his mother in him! He really doesn't like being cold!! It took about 3 minutes before he wanted to go inside, saying "I'm cold mom!" He was miserable outside. He watched us finish building the snowman from inside continually singing "Once There Was a Snowman" happy as can be! The funny thing is that a couple days later he was the first to get in line to get ready to go outside in the snow! What a funny kid!

My thoughts and opinions have not changed about the snow but it was a lot of fun to spend an hour or so with my kids outside in the snow! They were having so much fun and to hear there laughter and conversations was well worth all the discomfort.