introducing maggie

exciting news! minnesota's brother and sister-in-law had a baby girl, magdelene rachael, on july 13. the little bundle of joy is their first child, so she's sure to bring the family new experiences and lots of happiness.

welcome to the world, maggie!



two days old and already she's making lovely faces.

in other news, we spent the day in lovely corvallis, oregon, last weekend. mostly we drove around checking out adorable little bungalows and wandering the campus, but we also took time to visit a pizza place, a bakery and an ice cream shop. here we are in front of an enormous abstract sculpture on the campus grounds.



we're hope you're enjoying summer and all that life has to offer. as always, we're sending lots of love and hugs across the miles....the girlz

a tattoo, a rodeo & a sky filled with fireworks

the past few weeks have been filled with fun and excitement for us - fasten your seatbelts, please.

long before kandinsky got sick, lucky knew she wanted a tattoo that symbolized their time together, so we took photos of her cute little paw and traced it in photoshop to come up with her kittyprint. it's located on her right shoulder because when kandinsky would lay on lucky's chest, that's where her li'l paw would rest. lucky is thrilled with the result...



so are you wondering if you read the title of this blog correctly - a rodeo? yep, you read correctly. although we're not rodeo-goin' type gals, we're always up for new experiences, so when stan and alan invited us to go with them, we thought it sounded like big fun. and it was big fun! there was a carnival and an art show and lots of people walking around in boots and wranglers.



it was also a little disturbing to watch grown men and little boys desperately hold on for dear life as bucking broncos and bucking steer flailed madly. all that jolting around cannot be good for the body. and yes, only men and boys participated in those events. the only time we saw women was when the "princesses" rode their horses around the ring very fast as they waved to the crowd or when the barrel races took place. we're convinced it's because women are smart enough to know better than to sit on the back of a flailing animal. just a guess.





overall, our time at the rodeo was great - it did last a little long for us, mostly because the wooden benches are hard after 3.5 hours - but we're so thankful to the boyz for opening our eyes to the world of cowboys.



we spent the 4th at a cookout at stan and alan's house eating the best bbq ribs we've had since being in portland. alan is a fantastic cook! thanks again, boyz, for having us out to your place. we returned to our apartment to watch fireworks because we can see all the shows around the city as well as the ones people shoot off on their own. it was amazing to see explosions of colors everywhere we looked.



we hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the sunshine of the summer. we love and miss y'all very much! t