A rough week

It has sure been a rough week for us. For almost a week after Dave's parents left, Sequoia had had pretty bad diarrhea. This past Sunday, it turned to vomiting as well. What was most scary was that the vomit actually looked like diarrhea. We immediately took her to the vet but they couldn't seem to pinpoint what was wrong (do they ever?!). They ruled out a few things and she tested negative to any virus, so they figured it was probably a GI-issue. Huskies are notorious for having sensitive stomachs, so there is merit to this hypothesis. They gave her some medications that for the first day, she couldn't even keep down. Between this and the skipping of meals, I was pretty stressed out. Speaking of meds, we are also currently dogsitting our neighbors 3 dogs, 2 of which also need meds and follow a pretty strict schedule. Work for me is at a very busy point, so needless to say the week has been stressful. I feel inadequate caring for my sick puppy because of the time I've got to devote to work and dogsitting. A couple of days ago while Belle was playing with the dogs we are sitting, one of them bit her in the muzzle. It instantly turned black and swelled up like a giant baseball. Now I have two injured or sick dogs. Poor girls!
I'm wishing I had more energy to tackle all this and to enjoy the upcoming 4 day weekend, but between the ragweed season beginning and being around dogs that make me sneeze, I managed to come down with what I assume is a nasty sinus infection. It's been getting worse and worse all week and today it rendered me useless for most of the day. I had to leave work at 11 am because I was in tears (not crying) from the pain in my sinuses. At least I got to spend some quality time with my girls.
Wow, I feel like this entire blog was one giant complaint, but it's just been an exhausting and trying week. I'm hoping the weekend is different!

Run David Run!

Yesterday, Dave ran in the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half-Marathon. While it starts at more than 8000 feet, it's a gradual downhill all the way into Idaho Springs. We got up at 5 am to make it to the start line in time. I watched Chris and Dave at the start and then hopped in the car wondering how I would kill the next 1.5 hours. Well, by the time I got out of the Georgetown parking lot and parked in Idaho Springs, I was barely back in time to see the first place finisher. The town was so small, it couldn't handle the 2000-some runners and their families/cheerleaders. I ended up parking about a mile away from the finish-line (sorry Dave!). Dave finished strong and with excess energy at about 1:34. His official time is slightly higher because he took a bathroom break at mile 5 that of course the race didn't pause his time for (but his GPS did). I'm proud of him! That's a super fast pace! It's pretty close to a Boston qualifying time, so hopefully he can get in excellent shape for the Denver Marathon in October and keep that same pace! I like being his cheerleader, although it's a bit frustrating that you only get to see him for a few seconds and the start and finishing lines. Not quite like watching him play soccer!

In other news-- we leave for MN and WI later this week. I'm excited to see family and to have a little break from work. This past week was a long one-- I had more than 50 hours in by Thursday. Travel will do that I guess. So, we are definitely excited for travel that is vacation. We plan to watch my mom play in the Member-Member, head up to the 2nd day of the PGA championship, see Dave's brother and our niece and nephew, and finally make our way to WI for my cousin's wedding. Should be a fun trip!

Where did the time go?

How has it been 3 weeks since my last post? I guess it comes with the territory of summer. It's been pretty hot the last couple weeks-- we've already hit 90s. Yikes. It makes it difficult to do long hikes or walks with the girls as they just can't handle the heat. Boy, how I wish we had a large yard with grass for the girls to get some of their energy out in. I keep saying that someday we should take them to a dog park.
We've had a pretty fun last couple weeks. I've gone to a few Scrapmanias and have gotten a lot of the Alaska trip done. Dave and I have done Waterton a couple times (I bike of course while Dave runs). Dave's marathon training is in full-swing: he completes a 12 or 13 mile run each weekend and this past Weds, he "ran" Mt. Falcon. It's a 2000-some foot climb up in a few miles. He's been pretty sore from that. We've also hung out with some friends and done some nice dinners out. We have decided that we will re-do our office loft for our anniversary gift. We had a designer create a layout for us. We're doing custom honey spice hickory cabinets from KraftMaid. We'll have custom printer/scanner pull-out drawers, a pull out garbage cabinet, and a few filing cabinets. We haven't picked counter-tops yet, but we are leaning towards finding the same granite used in our kitchen. The difference between Formica and Granite it was ~$200, so for that difference, it just makes sense to use granite. We'll have to see if we can find our exact color for a good price, though.
This week has been nice and relaxing. We hosted poker night on Thursday and Dave won! The pot was huge as there were 10 people who played. Dave took away $150! We spent most of Friday hanging around the house and grilling fajitas for dinner. We closed the night with a rented movie ("He's just not that into you"). Today was get things done around the house day. Tonight, we'll have our traditional dinner-out.

Happy 4th of July!

It's been a busy last two weeks of work and traveling to Colorado Springs, so I apologize for no updates. Not much here on the Shoemaker front other than that we are looking forward to our 3 day holiday weekend. We plan to take the girls to the fireworks again-- it went really well last year and it seems as though Sequoia is very interested in the sounds of the fireworks. We took the girls for a nice run/walk this morning, so hopefully they will be thoroughly tired when they meet Nasa. Nasa is a black lab seeing eye dog in training, so I hope our girls are on their best behaviors.

On the Nimtz front: my parents have listed their gorgeous home in Rochester. They have spent a lot of time, money, and effort in preparation for this. By the pictures, it looks as though they've done a very nice job! They've upgraded fixtures, hardware, put in granite, and done extensive work on the outside including all new painting, repairing the fence, & putting in a new pool liner. We are praying that the house sells and we look forward to someday showing them all the wonderful things this beautiful state of Colorado has to offer! Below is a view of their house and a link to their listing.

Virtual Tour and Listing Details

Came across this WAY cute video of Sequoia as a puppy. I just love the story this video tells; it really depicts her personality well. I can't believe she's already 1.5 years old. We are truly blessed to have Sequoia and Belle in our lives!

We're back from Alaska!

We are back in action from our 3 weeks of vacations. Our trip to Alaska was amazing! It truly is a remarkably beautiful state and it's expansiveness is indescribable. Every mile we touched was breathtaking... and we traveled 1000's of miles! The cruise was a really nice way of seeing a much larger chunk of Alaska than we would've had time for any other way. We took over 4000 pictures and I plan to scrapbook them soon, but you can enjoy our trip journal by scrolling down and reading about each day as it happened.

To see more of our pictures, follow the Pictures link below-- enjoy!

Pictures

Denali - The High One

The train to Denali was very long and while it was beautiful, the 9 hour ride (delayed slightly due to broken tracks) found Dave and I taking lots of naps. Once we arrived in Denali, we settled into our McKinley Chalet lodge before we went out exploring the area. We went to Glitter Gulch and purchased some very over priced groceries as we knew they would have no food in the park for us as we hiked the next day.The following morning we took the 2nd bus into the park (think alarm clock at 5 am!) all the way to the Eielson visitor center-- 60-some miles into the park. We stopped many times to snap photos of nearby caribou, moose, and grizzlies. We were lucky to have so many grizzlies near the road; we even got to enjoy a sow and her cub for awhile!


When we reached Eielson, we were disappointed to see that Denali (McKinley) was not "out." Hidden in clouds, we were told not to be upset because only about 15% of people get to see the mountain on any given visit. We ate our picnic up here and headed back down on another bus.

We decided to get off near Polychrome Pass to do some hiking. Since there really are no trails anywhere in the park, most people just hike wherever. We attempted to follow a hiking guide but quickly released we weren't great with these directions. After pretty much scaling a huge cliff, we made it to this ridgeline that offered a gorgeous panoramic view of the area. We made it to what we felt was the summit and couldn't really figure out any way to make it much further, so we hiked back down. We didn't encounter any wildlife, but did see some bear scat-- so I guess we consider ourselves lucky?

We went back to the road to wait for a bus down, but as we sat there waiting, we decided why not take one more trip back up to Eielson. The weather had seemed to get better out, and we had more than 10 hours before the sun would set. Boy am I glad we did this! Apparently the 2nd time is a charm as we got to see Denali emerge from the clouds when we hit Stony Dome. It was so impressive! Being from Colorado, we are fairly used to seeing 14,000 ft peaks, but we are also accustomed to seeing them from over a mile high. At the VC, we were only a couple thousand feet above sea level looking at a mountain more than 20,000 ft tall! Truly amazing.

We took the last bus out of the park and spotted many more grizzlies on the way out for a grand total of 16 throughout the day! At one of our reststops, we got to watch a wolve devour an artic ground squirrel.


Towards the entrance to the park (and the nearby campgrounds), we came across our first angry bear. The grizzly was frustrated with the bus following him on the road so he began to snarl at us. Frustrated, he decided to charge the bus. After he realized the bus wasn't going anywhere, he angrily ran off. Dave and I commented on how we were lucky that the only mean bear we encountered was when we were on a bus. Scary to think that this bear was near the campgrounds. By the time we got off the bus, it was well past 10 pm and we were starving. We enjoyed some good pizza at a local joint and went straight to bed. Still can't believe that the sun was no where near setting by this point...

Our last day of vacation took us back into Denali National Park to check out the dog kennels, some visitor center area hikes, and to enjoy some delicious ice cream before we boarded the motorcoach for our evening ride back to Anchorage. Dave and I tried to spend most of the bus ride sleeping because we knew we wouldn't get much sleep during our red-eye flight. There was only 4 other people on the entire bus, so it was nice to have space to spread out. We made a stop in Talkeetna to enjoy the views of the south face of Denali. We had four hours to kill at the airport prior to our red-eye, so we tried to occupy the time shopping, eating and sleeping, but there really wasn't much to the ANC airport! By this point in the trip, we were exhausted and ready to head home to see our girls. I really think the trip was just the right lengh-- any shorter and we would've disappointed it ended so soon and any longer we would've been tired and anxious to be home.

Kenai Fjords NP

Our last morning on the ship was spent eating breakfast and waiting in the Rendevous lounge for our turn to disembark. It was sad that the cruise was ending, but I'm glad we had the land portion of our trip to look forward to. At this point, we just weren't ready to go home!
We started the morning in Seward off by hiking to Mile Zero-- the true start of the Iditarod. While they do a "fake" (for show) start in Anchorage, the real starting point is on the coast in Seward. As husky owners, we felt obligated to see the starting line!

We spent the day on a catamaran tour out of Seward into the Kenai Fjords National Park where we saw a pod of Orcas, lots of Dall's porpoises, and some humpback whales. It was neat how close they were to our boat! I was thinking a 6 hour tour would be a bit long, but every minute of it was spent enjoying the scenery or snapping photographs of all the wildlife.

We even got to see the Colgate glacier calve 100's of feet of ice into the ocean. It was as loud as thunder and enough current was generated to really rock our boat!

Following the catamaran tour, we boarded the Alaska Railroad for our journey to Anchorage. This has to be one of the most scenic train routes in the world! We got to enjoy it from the 2nd story glass-domed cart. Simply beautiful!

Upon arrival for our quick night in Anchorage, we were happy to find that we had been upgraded to the penthouse suite at the downtown Hilton. We had a wonderful view of McKinley at sunset (even though this was almost at midnight!). We had to be up early the next morning for our train to Denali, so we only had a chance to spend a little bit wondering around downtown Anchorage.

Glacier Bay

The following day was a crusing day through Glacier Bay and up to the Hubbard Glacier. We had to wake up very early and dress extremely warm, but it was worth it to see these massive amounts of ice calve into the ocean.

The blue color of some of the icebergs is truly incredible. Each piece of ice was like an intricate sculpture of crystal.

We spent most of the rest of the day sleeping, eating, and packing. Unfortunately, the cruise was about to end... but not before we got to enjoy one last (and my favorite) dinner of Filet Mignon.

ISP, and not the specific impulse ISP

Our last port in Alaska was Icy Strait Point. It was different than all the other ports in that it was small, quant, and only had one store-- we even had to tender in! We enjoyed hiking along the beach and through the rainforest as well as hiking up to the little fishing town of Hoonah. We saw so many bald eagles in this area!

There wasn't much in the way of excursions in ISP, so we decided to take kayaks out for some scenic sea kayaking. It was Dave and I's first kayak adventure and we really enjoyed ourselves. We saw 3 bald eagles devour a huge salmon and managed to successfully not fall out of the kayak into 40 deg water.

Since this port was a shorter day, we had our final formal evening onboard. We got dressed up to enjoy lobster and filet mignon and an evening show. The seas were rather rough and it was mind-boggling to see the water levels rise and fall in the dining room windows.

Skagway, hehe

The next day landed us in Skagway (insert childish Dave giggle here) where we decided to rent a car and drive into the Yukon territory of Canada. We decided on the car because we could go at our own place and go much further. The railroad/bus combo would've cost us $460 and would not have taken us all the way to Emerald Lake. We hit Canadian customs about 1/3 of the way into our trip and that's also when we began to see some wildlife!

We spotted our first two bears down on the railroad tracks where we were able to photograph them from a safe distance (and with a cliff separating us) until they got spooked by a maintainence cart. We lost them at this point and decided that Dave should hike around the bend to see where they went. I proceeded to walk the other direction on the shoulder of the road. For whatever reason, I picked my head up momentarily taking my eyes of the railroad tracks and to my surprise, the two bears had made their way onto the road-- not at all far from where I was! My first instinct was to scream "Bears!" to Dave and my second was to RUN back to the car. Now I know that is exactly what you are NOT supposed to do but I could not stop myself from running. Luckily I didn't have a far distance to the car and that the bears didn't seem hungry nor interested in me. We got back in the car and took pictures of the two from the safety of our vehicle. From this point to nearly Carcross, we spotted 7 black bears. I think we were extremely lucky to see this many, but had we seen none, this drive still would've topped my list for most scenic drives! It was 90-some miles of gorgeous reflective mountains and lakes. We had not a cloud in the sky and got to enjoy the serene scenery all to ourselves. I'm so glad we got away from the crowds and took this nice long drive into the Yukon territory!

We stopped in Carcross to get some Tollhouse ice cream sandwiches (a vacation tradition) and then followed the "Get Your Buns In Here" sign to a local cinnamon roll shop. Boy were they delicious! With full tummies, we made it to Emerald Lake and took a moment to take in the beauty that is this area! Since it took us some 4 hours to make it this far, we knew we had to make better time on the way back in order to not miss our boat.

Emerald Lake

"Juneau" Alaska is pretty?

The next port was Juneau where we took a morning helicopter ride thru the Juneau icefields and landed on a glacier where we met a team of 80 Alaskan huskies. Because our group was only us and 1 other couple, each couple got to have our own team of dogs. It was truly an awesome experience to be pulled through the mountains with a team of dogs. While it was nearly 80 up on the glacier, they had just gotten nearly 2 feet of fresh snow and the dogs looked tired pulling us!

It was by far Dave and I's favorite excursion of the trip! After grabbing lunch at the famous Red Dog Saloon, we took a bus to the Mendenhall glacier where we did a few hikes and got to touch our first pieces of glacier ice. After the long day in port, we deserved the wonderful 4-course meal that awaited for us back on ship.

Ketch-me-if-you-can

On the 3rd day, we hit our first port in Ketchikan where we took a 730 am departure aboard a seaplane to the Misty Fjords National Monument. The spectacular vistas of mountains, lakes, and fjords was breathtaking. We even got to land on a secluded mountain lake! You can only see the Misty Fjords by air and it's typically a very rainy place, so we were delighted that we had clear blue skies.

We spent the afternoon exploring the shops of Ketchikan before taking the hike up to the Totem Pole park.

Bon Voyage!

We departed for Alaska out of Vancouver in the early afternoon. It was my first cruise experience and Dave's 2nd (although his first was a Disney cruise as a little kid). We were excited for all of the ports we would visit and the delicious food we would eat. Upon checking into our room, we had to report to our muster stations for training and then we set sail for the Inside Passage. We waved goodbye to Vancouver and said hello to our home for the next week-- the Celebrity Millennium.

I was amazed with the facilities! There were restaurants and buffets on every deck; there were fancy gyms, pools, casinos, bingo halls, theaters, and auditoriums. It's like it's own little city on the sea. You can imagine my excitement finding that you could have any type of food you wanted at any hour of the day. And while the restaurants and buffets are closed from 2 to 5 am, the free room service operated 24 hrs/day! Our first full day on the ship was spent at sea, but we used it as a time to take in the beautiful sites of the Inside Passage from the top viewing deck and even found time for some Bingo. It was the first Formal night and we enjoyed dressing up for the fantastic four-course meal. After dinner, we enjoyed a show at the theater.

Our dinnermates: all of them were from New Jersey and one of the couples was even our age!

I can't imagine a better place to cruise-- you don't just see water from your room, you see beautiful fjords and mountains rising from the ocean floor. It made the day at sea magical!

Vancouver Bound!

We began our Alaskan adventure in the pacific northwest. We chose to fly into Seattle to visit with Lonnie before driving up to Vancouver in advance for our Alaskan cruise departure.
In Seattle, WA and met Lonnie in Kirkland for lunch. This sounds like an unusual combination, but I loved the peanut butter bacon cheeseburger I had for lunch! We then made the pretty drive thru to British Columbia. We checked into the Westin - Bayshore in Vancouver (a beautiful hotel on the waterfront!) and we put on our hiking gear and did the 6 mile loop around Stanley Park. It had really gorgeous views of the ocean, downtown Vancouver and the Lions Gate bridge. We capped off the evening with a romantic dinner atop the Vancouver Lookout which was a similar setting to the Space Needle. The restaurant revolved around a couple times throughout dinner and we got a birds-eye view of the beautiful sunset over Stanley Park. Our meals weren't very filling, so we spent the night exploring the famous Robson St and got some wonderful gelato there.

The next day we headed north to the Capilano Suspension Bridge where we had a ton of fun bouncing on the planks some 200 ft above the river, exploring the treetops adventure course, and taking in the amazing vistas. This was our favorite activity in Vancouver!

Dave had never been to Vancouver before and I think he really liked how modern and clean the city was! The last time I went, I didn't explore Capilano or Stanley and it was quite nice to see the more scenic side of the city!

Iowa

We just returned yesterday from spending Memorial Day weekend in Iowa. We went back to celebrate Jack's 3rd birthday, attend Scott and Jessie's wedding, and to meet our 4 month old niece, Caroline.
We spent Friday attending the rehearsal dinner and capped the evening off by playing with Jack and his train set. Saturday was a blast (literally!): we celebrated Jack's birthday with cake and presents and walked to the nearby park to launch his model rocket. We got him a model rocket and 3 class C engines. He had a great time doing the countdown and pushing the "go" button; although I'm not sure once the rocket was off the pad that he had any idea what was going on. I think Brian and Dave might've had more fun than him! Jack's absolutely adorable with countdowns... it goes something like this when he does the count: "10-9-8-7-6-Main Engine Ignition-5-4-3-2-1-Blastoff!" Jack has become a really fun kid; he's always happy and is extremely intelligent.
After time at the park, we headed to the wedding. It rained just after we left the house but had stopped by the time we needed to walk to the church. As soon as the ceremony started, it began to POUR. So hard in fact that it was difficult to hear the minister! By the time the ceremony had concluded, the rain had let up. The wedding was beautiful. In particular, we really liked the sand ceremony which used the analogy of two types of sand being combined into one but that each type is still distinct amongst the combination. It was similar to the heads and tail of a coin analogy used at our wedding. Both Jessie's dad and Scott gave emotional speeches that left very few dry eyes.
Dave and I had a really good time on the dance floor with Jack. He must've spent an hour dancing around with his glowsticks. We even taught him to "raise the roof." Towards the end of the reception, the fire alarm went off. As the fire trucks arrived, the captain found Jack wandering around the bushes with glowsticks hunting for frogs. He joined Jack with his giant flashlight and eventually invited Jack to join him on board the truck! He got to dress up in a firemans hat, sit in the drivers seat, and even sounded the horn! I think the day truly had to be one of Jack's favorite days!
We celebrated Jack's birthday (one more time) at Hickory Park in Ames. He was very tired from the previous day, but his eyes bugged out when they came out and sang to him with ice cream! Afterwards, Dave and I (with his parents) went around ISU's campus reminiscing of our good times there. The campus sure has changed alot! I can't believe it was the first time we made it back to ISU since I graduated 4 years ago! We enjoyed going back to the SSOL (now the SSCL)-- we owe our relationship to that place! It seems like just yesterday that we were working on cube satellites there together!We were lucky that our stop-over on the flights home was in Minneapolis and that my parents were to drive up to see us. We had 4 hours to kill, so we went to the Embassy Suites hotel and enjoyed a really nice brunch with my family. It was a short visit, but enjoyable nonetheless.