Two New Favorite Things

I came home from my trip to these:


















I love my wonderful husband, and I love my peonies! Life is good, I am so lucky!

Trip to the Mid-West

So, two weekends ago I took a trip with my Dad and Brother to the Mid-West. We flew into Kansas City, MO, drove to Lincoln, NE and visited Tarkio, MO. It was my first time really visiting the mid-west other than just layovers at airports. I was actually rather pleasantly surprised with the area. The scenery was pretty.... green, rolling hills, tree groves, and of course corn fields galore. Lincoln had a cute little historic district called The Haymarket with breweries and coffee shops. Then there were the thunder storms... wow! Hours of the night sky being constantly lit up with lightning, watching the parking lot turn into a swimming pool within minutes... so cool. We just don't get that kind of thing in the good ole Northwest.

At any rate, the purpose of the trip was to attend the reunion banquet at my Grandfather's alma mater, where they also held a memorial for my Grandpa and Great Uncle. Both of them were on the basketball team and in 1940 they won the NAIA National Championship. They went to Tarkio College, a small college in a small town. It was amazing but kind of sad to see this beautiful campus in such a small farming town that now just sits there, unoccupied.

We held the memorial service in front of the school gym. The building was all locked up, but not to worry, turns out Aaron and I are pretty good with a slim jim :-) The guy who runs the Tarkio College museum even helped us. The inside was all torn up and infested with stray animals, but it was still pretty neat to see. We scattered ashes there where those two young farm boys from Indiana got to be stars for a few moments. It was so special to have that side of the family together to remember that generation of the Lewises.

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Sun Break!

Last weekend, we actually got a nice day on Saturday to get a few things done outside.  The biggest thing was the lattice.  Our deck didn't have anything around the bottom of it, so it showed the ugly area all underneath the deck.  At first I thought the plastic white lattice would be tacky, but then I resigned myself to it because I just couldn't bring myself to think about painting or staining THAT much wood lattice.  Then, once we bought it, I thought it was too white since the trim of our house is more of an off white.  In the end, we put it up, and I'm pretty happy with it actually.  It just was the best choice given the time, effort, and money it would have taken to match it to the house trim.  Besides, we figure the whiteness will fade as it gets a little wear to it.  And I plan to plant more plants in front of it so it won't be as prominent.  Here's the before and afters:

To update you all on the mole situation:  The score so far is Us: 1, Mole: 0!  The underground fence seems to be working so far.  No new mole runs in the yard, and when we went back there to check you could actually see where the mole had dug toward our yard, then made an immediate 90 degree turn at the fence, went down a ways along the fence, then surfaced.  Muahaha!  That's right Mr. Mole!  Don't mess with us!  We're just hoping he doesn't get smart and dig down deeper, or go through the neighbors' yards and then into ours.  Time will only tell...  Here's a pic of where he came up (I wish I could have captured the whole picture where it shows him following the fence, but it just didn't show up very well):

I just had to share my poppies as well... they're so pretty!

June Showers

If April showers bring May flowers... then what do June showers bring?  Here in Seattle, it seems everyone is wondering when we may emerge from these seemingly constant downpours.  Granted we had a relatively pleasant winter, so maybe we're paying for it now?


Well, despite all of the rain, we here at the Gross household have been warming up the inside with lots of great times with friends and family.  For starters, my brother Aaron and his girlfriend Corinne came to visit over the long weekend.  It was so great to see them.  We took them out to Korean BBQ, and continued the tradition of making the trip to Tutta Bella for our favorite pizza, salad, and coffee.  Here are a couple of pictures of the visit.

I love my little brother! :-)

This is the first time we've ever taken pictures with the Troll... it might be this years' Christmas card :-)

I also LOVE dancing with my brother, he's great :-)

































Then this last weekend, we hosted a birthday party for our good friend's six-year-old.  It was just the immediate family, but we surprised him with a full on Batman themed party... so fun!  He was the ring-bearer in our wedding, and is just adorable.


Thanks, Rory, for the helium tank, the balloons were a hit!

The only candles we had in the house were the sparkling kind that re-light.  Poor kid, but it was pretty funny.

And what Batman birthday party would be complete without some Batman fighting.  Here's Noah getting back in touch with the kid in him :-)