MeMyself

FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2009

Soooo…we had our combined 50th birthday party on Friday night (June 26, 2009) at The Blue Pepper Art Gallery and Internet Café in downtown Salem. We were both a bit nervous, afraid that no one would show up. Instead we had a GREAT turn out and there were a few people who showed up to celebrate with us that we had not seen for a number of years, so it was a great opportunity to catch up. Scott & Heidi Grew, a young couple who went to the Vineyard for a short time after moving to Salem from Chicago came and we remembered why we enjoyed them so much. Heidi is an artist and an art professor at Willamette University who is a very intense person who is very curious and interested in people, while Scott is a total character….very eclectic for someone so young. April & Ernie Felguth also showed up. Ernie is nearly housebound due to some serious and chronic back problems, but they rallied and came out and joined us in spite of that. I used to work with April many years ago at the Oregon State Pharmacists Association. We
hung out with these guys quite a bit years ago because we shared a mutual interest in music. Both April & Ernie had filled in working shifts at Tom’s Guitar Store a number of times and April came over and was a great help to Tom many years ago when I was in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. It was really wonderful to catch up with both of these couples and promises were made to not let so much time go by before connecting with them again. Promises I will do my best to keep.

Tom and I put together a “photo board” with old photos from our pasts (like high school ID cards, photos from Tom’s Navy years and some photos from my theater years). We also brought the scrapbooks and spread them around for people to enjoy.

It turned out to be a truly delightful evening shared with many friends, old and new and made us both realize how fortunate we are to have such people in our lives.

Saturday, JUNE 27th

Saturday morning saw us getting ready for our Olympic Peninsula vacation. We ran a bunch of errands, had Joe’s girlfriend, Miranda, come over for her tour of the house and list of things that we would like for her to take care of while she is housesitting for us in our absence, packed up and left the house at about 11:30 to start our adventure. Our first stop was the Great Wolf Lodge. OH MY GOSH!! WHAT A GREAT PLACE!





This has to be the closest thing to a Disney experience that one can get in the great Northwest. It is a giant resort hotel with a HUGE waterpark with some of the best waterslides that I have ever had the pleasure of sliding on. My favorite was one called the Howling Tornado. We were all able to get onto a four person intertube and take the wild ride together. We all climbed into the innertube, grabbed onto the handles and were shoved off by the friendly water park attendant. The hole we were shoved into was a bit dark and after swirling around a couple of curves we were facing what appeared to be a big drop off into the great unknown. We dropped over the edge into a big bowl like area where we were tossed back and forth, from side to side while dropping toward another dark tube. More curves in the dark tube, banking high on the sides and getting splashed with water until the splash landing at the bottom. VERY COOL and LOTS OF FUN!!! Smiles all around…….although Megan said she was scared and was not at all interested in doing it again. Tom, saying he felt a little tossed around, opted for the hot tub and we all decided to join him there. After some hot tubbin’ we decided that we were ready to wrap it up at the water park and head to the room for some R & R and computer time, TV time, etc….. We ending up watching the movie “Inkheart”, based on a book that I had read to Megan a few years ago. It was pretty good. After that it was lights out for Dad, Tucker wandered off to the room with computers and stuff while Megan went and took a few photos of the water slides from outside the building and checked out the gift shop. I “computered” for a while on my laptop in the room, Megan read, then we all got some shut eye to rest up for the next day’s activities.
Sunday, June 28, 2009

I was the first one up on Sunday morning at 7:00 am with visions of Starbuck’s (they have one in the lobby of the building) and waterslides in my head. The waterpark didn’t open until 9 and I wanted to let everyone else sleep in (it IS vacation, after all) so I grabbed the laptop and the card from the digital camera and headed down to the lobby so I could start journaling about the trip while indulging myself with my morning mocha. While I was typing away, a little show started up in the middle of the lobby where they have a “cabin” with animated talking/singing creatures for the younger generation to enjoy. Looked and sounded very Disney’esque…..thought I was in Disney World for a moment. Around 8:30, I went back to the room, where Tom was in the shower, but the kids were still in bed. I woke them up so we could all go to the waterpark again before checking out (I know, I know….it IS vacation, but this place was WAY expensive and I wanted to make sure we got our money’s worth out of it!), only to find out that no one else was really that interested in getting wet. So we discussed our options and decided on breakfast and then hitting the arcade. We did just that, had some fun, Megan came away with a small wolf purse that she traded all of our collective tickets in for, then we hit the road for the second leg of our trip.