I know, I know it's been a while since I've posted and now I'm getting scolded over e-mail. :) So here it is an update post. Enjoy.
Last weekend I went camping in Brownlee with Annie and her family. Every year around this time they get together with friends and camp and fish for the weekend. If you've never been to Brownlee, it's about 2 1/2 hours North West of Boise, right on the border of Oregon. The campground was very nice, clean, and well taken care of. There is a big huge reservoir there for fishing and boating and a mix of RV/Tent camping spots. It was a lot of fun for the first camping trip of the season, but I have to say that it was also the coldest camping trip I've ever been on. It really wouldn't have been so bad if the wind hadn't been blowing, but we still had an enjoyable time. We got up there Thursday around 7:30 and set up the tent, then enjoyed some delicious lasagna for dinner and some much needed time around the camp fire. We also got to have some yummy s'mores made by Aunt Sue for dessert, and I'm not gonna lie, I went back for seconds. When we decided to call it a night one of the couples there offered their extra sleeping bag to us and I willing accepted. I'm so glad that I did too because it's possible that I would have frozen to death without it. :) I guess I should mention, that Annie and I were the only ones sleeping in a tent at this point of the trip, everyone else was snuggled up all cozy in their RVs. Friday we did some fishing with Annie's cousin Lisa and her husband Brian, the water was really choppy and I had about 10 layers of clothes on. Brian is the only one that had any luck with catching a fish and we stayed out for a couple of hours before heading back to camp. Because it was so cold, we decided to hang out in the tent where we would at least be protected from the cold and Annie proceeded to beat me, more than once, at the game frog juice. I finally threw in the towel, cause I just couldn't take the humiliation anymore. :) That night we had a yummy potluck dinner. There was so much good food, I just wanted to keep eating and eating. My favorites of the night were Aunt Sue's yummy green rice and Lisa's pistachio jello salad. Mmmm. After dinner we hung out in Aunt Sue and Uncle Bill's RV cause it was just too cold to be outside. It was a lot of fun. They are two of the coolest people you will ever meet. They are always good for a laugh and they both have the most infectious laughs, that you just can't help but join in. As we were headed to bed we were informed that we would be going fishing at 7:30 the next morning, which caused to me to think "What are you nuts?" I mean fishing was enjoyable and all, but not when it's ridiculously cold outside and in the wee hours of the morning. I so did not want to wake up the next morning when we had our wake up call at 7 AM. I loaded on the layers again and we got back out on the water and stood around for about an hour and a half, freezing, trying to catch a fish. I don't know that I was doing any good anyway, because my hands were shaking so bad. :) One good thing did come out of it though. Annie caught a double tagged fish and according to Brian she can mail the tags in and get some money for them. Not sure why or how that works. When we were done fishing, we had to pack everything up so we could drive back to Boise. Go figure that today would be the day that it was nice and sunny and warm and no wind. We also had to miss out on what was going to be a delicious lunch with more of Aunt Sue's good home cooking, and the much anticipated fish fry later that night. We got in a game of Yahtzee before we had to take off. It was the first time I've ever played and I have to say that it was a pretty fun game. I totally stink at it, but I'm glad that I could make everyone else feel better about their scores by being the low end of the totem pole. And Aunt Sue didn't have to eat her words, she won the game just like she told Annie and I she would. Sorry for the lack of pictures from the trip, but it seriously was super cold and I just didn't want to take my hands out of my pockets. :)
This is a view from the boat, waiting for the anchor to take hold. Isn't it beautiful? I don't know if you can see from the picture, but the water was really low.
Funny little sign on the way up one of the trails.So this next picture, obviously is not from the camping trip. :) It's old news really, about a couple of months old, but I got a new book shelf and I absolutely love it. Even though it's just a cheepy one from Target, I still love it. I also love the fact that it's big enough to hold all of my books. I know it doesn't compare to your collection of books Allison and Jeff, but come on, there are two of you and only one of me. :) None the less, it was a welcomed addition to my room and a much needed purchase that I'm glad I made.
And last, but certainly not least in my attempt to update my blog. I finally got my Switzerland books printed! Yeah! I know, you're thinking, didn't you go to Switzerland 6 months ago, and you just now got your pictures printed? Yes, I did and I have to say, it's not my fault it took so long. :) So when I went to Switzerland and was staying at my Aunt Susy and Uncle Bruno's house, my cousin Dani was showing me a picture book she had made of her trip to Greece. She had used an online publishing website that lets upload your pictures, then you choose from a bunch of different themes for your book, then you choose the layout you want for each page. The website is called mypublisher.com and now that I have my books finished, I have to say that I absolutely love this website and I'm so glad that I had my pictures printed up this way. I actually had these books finished about a month after I got home, after I had moved stuff around on my computer, gotten an external hard drive so I would have room for all my pictures on my computer, downloaded the program, uploaded my pictures, organized and captioned the book the way I wanted it. I had to make two because of all the pictures that I took, and if you're thinking, "how on earth could you possibly take that many pictures in a weeks worth of time?" Well, when you love taking pictures, and you're in a beautiful place like Switzerland, you just can't help but be a little snap happy. Anyway, whenever I tried to order the books, it kept taking me to a page saying that it was processing my order, but that it would take a few minutes, but then it would never do anything. It also never gave me a spot to put my address in, or billing information. Needless to say, I gave up and kind of pushed it to the back of my mind. Occasionally it would creep back to the front and I would give it another shot, but always to the same conclusion. Then my mom had mentioned that Costco had an online photo publishing thing they were doing and that I should look into it. I admit I never did, only because the thought of having to start all over from square one was not appealing to me in the least bit. So again, the books were pushed aside, life went on, my office cruise came and went and still the books weren't made. Then one of the hygienists that I work with was asking for some formal pictures of me and Colette from the cruise so that she could make them into a photo book that she was doing through Costco. I started asking her if she knew what company they were using, but she didn't know. So I went online and finally checked it out and it turns out that it is the same website I was using. Of course then the books are screaming at me to be finished and I had to give it another go. This time around though when I went to open the application, it prompted me to download the lasted version before I could continue. So I did and that was the solution. As soon as I did that, it let me print my books and a week later they were on my doorstep! The other cool thing is that I had some coupons that they had e-mailed me to buy one get a copy of the same book free. Which I thought was perfect because now I can send the copies of the two books to my Grandma Bitsch, which I think she will really enjoy. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be price wise either. I got two books for $75 and both books had 72 pages. They turned out really nice and I absolutely love love love them. I can't wait to get some of my other pictures printed up this way.
