We feel kind of like we live in the Garden of Eden right now. Colin loves to go out to the vineyard and pick fruit right off the vine. Ann's mom is keeping bees on the property right now, which seems to have contributed to a bumper crop of grapes.

Colin with his mouth stuffed with grapes, reaches for his next victims.

After the grape feast, Colin helped his Nana dig some potatoes for supper.

Resting after the harvest.

Colin has had a recent obsession with my Mom's table knives. As pictured above, one even had to come with us on our hike. Knives are the first thing he asks for upon waking, but I have not let him take them to bed, or around other children. We saw a little boy at Church today who was carrying around two soft, stuffed animals. Brian asked why our child cannot like soft things. He is a funny boy.

Just a cute photo of Brian and Colin walking back to the car. Brian said to please excuse his sweaty back. It was still a bit hot and Brian had about thirty pounds of baby on him. I could not take a turn due to recent, sad back problems brought on by 40 hours in the car and a compressed vertebrae. (Very sad, but we are working on it.) Back problems are for people older than me, but I sometimes forget we are advancing in age. Brian and I met fourteen years ago, which seems crazy.

Since we live 10 minutes away from this beautiful canyon, we went on a little family hike yesterday. Colin was very entertained by his Daddy jumping off rocks. The weather was perfect and we wondered why we have not taken better advantage since we are literally 10 minutes away. We will try to do better in the next couple of weeks.

So I do a little better behind the camera. . . .

It is beginning to look like Fall up the canyon.

Last week we spent at least 40 hours in the car driving all over the Northwest. It was great to see family, but I still have a backache. We do love our hybrid car, because we only had to fill the gas tank 4 times for LOTS of miles. Go Toyota.
We brought back our darling niece Anna from Seattle. Colin LOVES her, even waking up this morning saying her name over and over again. She was a very welcome addition to our back seat.
We stopped to see Brian's Grandparents.

These are the phantom photos from the St. Paul post, which I have tried to re-post several times as they do not want to appear. We really were there, but blogger must find these photos inappropriate. This is my last try with these haunted photos.

I have a little problem with making collages in Picasa. It is a bit of a mania at times. (Some of my friends who are reading this may have been touched by my collage fixation.) So I did this one of my new niece and cannot decide if it is weird or cute. I like it, but Brian did say "disembodied baby parts". I sent it to be printed and will pick it up tomorrow. Maybe seeing the collage on real photo paper will help me know what I think. Any opinions?

The baby is cute and not wierd. Does Ted ever look at my blog? (I kind of do not think so.)

So, when we were in Minnesota for the wedding, we also spent a couple of hours in St. Paul so Brian could have an audition in the building above. The audition went well, and Brian is waiting to hear details on a possible contract in Hawaii. Colin and I walked around St. Paul since bringing wife and baby to auditions is looked down on.

I liked this reflection in the neighboring building.

Colin needed some time pushing his stroller.

On our way out of MSP, we stopped at the Mall of America. Oh Mall of America! It is crazy. Here is a quick view of Camp Snoopy. Leave it to Minnesota to build a climate controlled amusement park. As a teenager I did have lots of fun here. I would again gladly ride the roller coaster, log chute, and the Mystery Mine Ride, but we only had a little bit of time before our flight.

*this entry is out of order because we recently got a small little camera for when we do not want to lug around the SLR. So we just downloaded photos for the first time. We are a bit behind on a few things since we are just home from our tour of the Northwest. We should now be in one place for just over three weeks and it is like a dream. . .

Maybe the photos show up now? My brother Pat confirmed that these thrilling photos were not displaying. (Sorry for the boring blog since we are back in the States. We still need some time to catch our breath.)

We have been on the Oregon Coast with all of Brian's family. The water was cold, but the kids did not seem to mind. We had beautiful weather and fun seeing everyone. We are in the Seattle area for a few more days catching up with more family.

Here is a photo to commemorate our 4th wedding anniversary. We celebrated by getting the deluxe car wash with tri-color foam. (Brian really did say he got the deluxe since it was our anniversary.) It was a great car wash. We did get to run out for a quick lunch at a cute little French Cafe while Colin was asleep, and I ran into everyone I know in Holladay. We will later celebrate our four years at the State Fair. For our first anniversary Brian took me for a romantic dinner at the Pork Tent at the Indiana State Fair, and our second anniversary was also celebrated at the fair. We are hopeless romantics.

Colin loves his baby cousins. This is the most recent Stucki addition, baby Kyle.

Colin was a bit of a sand monster.

All of our things arrived from Indiana, which means we have been figuring out how to put all our things in a very small space. Brian has been very clever with the unpacking, since I do not even really know how to begin. It is nice to see some of our former possessions, and to have more then 3 pairs of shoes and 3 pairs of pants. (But we have realized we do not need many things.)

Also, a couple more photos of Baby Mallory.

The Wedding was yesterday, and a good time was had by all. In the morning my brother, Russ hosted a brunch. His daughters are all very fun and artistic as evidenced by this awesome hat, made by Hannah for the bride.

Detail from the top of the wedding cake hat in front of some appropriate art.


Colin goes and gets Grandma whenever he wants to do something/get something his parents won't provide.


After the sealing, we all went to Buca di Beppos for a nice meal. The bride and groom were very polite and didn't start a cake war.

This is my niece Chelsea and her husband to be, Jake. We are currently in Minnesota and I am doing photography for their wedding. Kind of crazy that Colin's first cousins are doing things like getting married.


Welcome to earth Mallory Kirsten Hinckley, daughter of my brother Ted and wife Libbie. She surprised us all by coming about a month early. Mama and baby are both doing well. Ted is a little shell-shocked, but very happy.


Colin LOVES babies. When this picture was taken he was probably saying, "baby ..baby .....baby .....baby .......baby ....baby ....baby ......baby ...baby!"


We had fun visits from cousins in Utah. These are my sister Mary's twins, Sophie and Ellie. They all had fun playing with my Mom's collection of musical instruments.