He who layeth stones...

The design plan begins...hours upon hours of placing, leveling, removing, replacing, repeat.



Checkpoint. I almost could see what I was doing at this point.



My helpers arrive to make sure I'm keeping on pace. Sort of....



Marina giving me advice.



Almost there. A whole load of rock short though. Two solid days of rock laying with another and a half to go.

Patty-YO!

Back to work...finally...on completing the vision of a patio under the grape arbor. Started 3 years ago when I rebuilt the arbor to raise the profile of it high enough for someone my height to walk under it. That was a horrible job. But done. Then, when I put the lawn in I left a patch bare, and that has been my weed garden / mud pit ever since. I launched into the job hard after Lori and I agreed on the plan and the materials. First, a whole day of excavating and grading the soil....



Then an entire day of hauling gravel up the front steps and into the pit. Rake, grade, tamp, repeat.



Then a whole day of hauling sand up the front steps and into the pit.



Followed by THE ROCK. Finally the fun stuff.




By my count, 3.25 tons of material hauled up the front steps from the street in 5 gallon buckets, followed by a wheelbarrow ride to the backyard.

Mule time. High Life time.

ZIPPY TIME!!

Lori's birthday Zip finally arrives. She was given clearance from the physical therapist, so away we go on our final day in Whistler. We got harnessed up by the crew and told what we were in for for the day. Five zips back and forth across the valley between Whistler mountain and Blackcomb mountain, over Fitzsimmons creek. The longest zip was going to be 2,200 ft. Bring on the super wedgie!



They drove us up to the start through the area where the bobsled course is being constructed for the 2010 Olympics. We drove right underneath it, and then headed into the woods for an instructional on the first "starter" zipline. Lori was nervous, but there was no time for nervous, because the flight was going to happen one way or the other....yeehaw!



Zip #2 was a little (or a lot) hairier, crossing the valley really high up and going much faster. Totally bitchin. Walk the plank!



Between some of the ziplines, you literally had to hike across suspension bridges and platforms built 150 feet up in the canopy of some huge old growth Doug Firs. Ewok world. Very impressive engineering.



The long zip (wish I could show the movie that I took of it) was so killer. Took about 40 seconds to complete and hit some super high speeds. Felt like a rocket through the trees and over the valley floor. Everyone (even Lori) ended up doing one or several zips hanging upside down like bats from the line. Very cool, but very disorienting feeling...



By the end of the trip, coming into the village and the downhill mtn bike park on the last zip, everyone, even Lori, wanted way more of that. Highly recommended.

Left for home the next day. Hellish trip getting across the border back into the US. Plus, Marina's puking habit kicked in again on the road out of Whistler. Good times. That Griswald family trip to Wally World smell crept into the Volvo...now I know all about it.

When we got back to Portland, I launched into.....THE Alan Parsons Patio Project. Ugh.

Big Mountain Walkabout...

Took our much awaited hike up to the top of Whistler mountain on a beatiful day. Packed up the kids like luggage and started up to the gondola chair. Lori was feeling good enough to attempt the hike, so we were in good shape.



Rode the gondola up to the roundhouse station at the base of the final ascent to the top of the mountain. The girls loved riding in the gondola, but Elena didn't feel safe enough to get out of her backpack.... we watched the downhill mountain bike riders airing huge drops and jumps on their way down the mountain as we floated along above.



We got off the gondola and Lori saw the chairlift that takes you straight up a cliff to the top of the mountain and wasn't really excited about taking the kids on it. Plus it wasn't going to open for another hour, so, we all started walking up the trail towards the backside and top of the mountain. Steep. Pretty soon I had both kids on my back, Elena in the pack and Marina on my shoulders. Mule time. After 30 minutes of that, and turning around to see how far we had come up the climb, we decided to keep pushing on for the top. Lori and Janet went back down to ride the chair, since Lori's back was acting up and it was a tough climb. A very sweaty, mindbendingly hard hike later, with my own back compressing under the weight of 70 pounds of kid, we arrived at the summit. Family photo!



Had a great picnic on top of the mountain with the view 100% clear for 360 degrees. Beautiful. The kids and I built the family cairn to mark our passing there.



After playing in the glacier snow and whatnot for awhile, we headed back towards the chairlift for the ride down. (I wasn't about to pack the kids back down...). And man, what a chairlift ride that was. Literally the thing drops down a series of cliffs. We held the kids, very, very, very tight. Worth the price of admission though. I would have ridden the chair again just for that!



Mountains are cool.

Mo Whistler

So, Lori's back turned out to be a major lumbar sprain, so the poor thing kicked off her trip to Whistler with a bout of physical therapy and muscle relaxers. And on her birthday to boot. But she was a trooper, and carried on, even though her husband went out to run 18 miles with his sister on the "epic trail" called Comfortably Numb out in the valley alongside Blackcomb mountain. 3 hours and 40 minutes of it. Really, it would have been a hard trial just to hike, let alone run, but my sis and I survived...barely.

Baby Beckett was a hit of the party. The girls would crowd him all the time. He will be one spoiled dude one day. I'm already jealous.



We had a muted birthday party for Lori, and pushed out the ZipLine tour that I had set up for her birthday to happen later in the week. Girls made birthday hats and sang. Cooked another big barbeque dinner (what's new for the Thompson's?)



Pete and I took my dad golfing for his birthday the next day over in Pemberton. Cheap(er) course in the valley, but that is really only relative. Beautiful course, set right up against some huge mountains. Beautiful day too. If only we could keep our balls out of the water, weeds, swamps, trees and the occasional habitat zone...Funniest thing I've seen in awhile, Pete tee'd off one time and plunked his ball down into some bull rushes in a pond...all of a sudden we heard a horrible "SQWAAAAK" and a huge Heron took off from the same spot. Good shot for my brother in law.... 2 points.



I think my dad had a good time, although Pete and I lost almost all of his balls out his bag. Thanks dad! We kept "borrowing" balls...of course, that is relative as well. Great day out on the links.



After we got back, we spent the rest of the day lounging at Alta Lake. The girls spent hours digging in the sand and running around in the water. Hot beautiful day. The good news was that Lori got back on the horse, and actually rode her mountain bike to the lake and back. PROGRESS!!!



Spent the rest of the in between time with other mtn bike rides with Pete on the BC trails, complete with wooden trick bridges and teeter totters and stuff, swimming pools, ice cream in the village, and major cookouts. Dropped dead every night.

Big mountain hike and ZipLine still to come!

Whistler Rules!

Made it to Whistler again! The place where 11 years ago, a day after proposing to Lori, we arrived in her new VW Jetta with mtn bikes on the roof, and I plowed them into a condo garage, beating the crap out of Lori's car. She should have learned then to turn around and RUN! ;) Anyway, good to be back...the trip started out quickly with a scavenger hunt that my folks set up for Pete and Lyssa and fam, and my fam to quickly get reoriented with the village. Fun time running around with the kids finding things. BUT, along the way, Lori threw out her back carrying our jog stroller up some steps. Didn't know it yet, so more later on that saga...



My neice Olivia and Elena had an immediate love, love, push, scream, love, dance, kiss, hit, take, love relationship from the start. They will be a dangerous pair one day...



Grandpa and Grandma spent hours chilling with the kids, swimming, breaking up toy fights. Fun times!



At "Adventure Zone" they had all sorts of things for kids to do. Elena was a bit too little to do any of them, so she hopped on the hopscotch and followed us around plugging her nose from the smell of the pony rides.



Marina however, stepped into Olivia's spot on the super bungee trampoline thingy after Olivia decided it was a little too wily for a 2 year old. Smart girl. Marina was freaked too, but the girl running the thing was great and slowly got Marina up to "Super Bounce" height. The rest of the week Marina would be staring off in space and I would ask her what she was thinking about, and she would tell me... "Jumping".




Too much to do in Whistler. Haven't even cracked the egg.

BackYardAgains...

We made it back home to Portland and immediately got back into our routine...I found my long lost smokey barbeque and some High Life...





Elena found her princess dresses....



And Marina found her buddy Evan....



All was well for our two day turnaround to head to Whistler BC, jet lag and all...

Coming soon....

- Back in our Backyard!
- Whisler RULES!
- The Days of the Patio
- Pig Roast 2007

stay tuned.

Back to America!

Pretty uneventful trip back to the States...except for the pukefest that our girls had just after we touched down in Seattle. Wheels on the ground, Marina all of sudden bolted up and screamed "I have to get off this plane!" then barfed. As Lori and I were tending to her, Elena, watching her sister puke, got sick herself. All over Baby. Yeah, the good times... ;)

Ah Paris....(day three)

Woke up to another beautiful day, and headed down to the Rue de Mouffetard behind the Latin Quarter where Lori remembered an open air market opened daily. We were early by Parisian standards, but did find coffee and some croissants, and I got a hungryman's crepe. Then things started to open up and the people came out in droves. We ate our breakfast in a little park in the square of the old village that the Mouffetard was and planned our day.



We headed to the Sacre Cour way up on the hill across town. Fun climbing up a ton of steps to get there. Hundreds of people were there, and vendors and all sorts of crazy stuff. We toured the church then wandered the streets for awhile, looking for a place to eat.



Lori spotted this place at the bottom of a long set of stairs where we could just kick back and watch people for an hour or two while we had french onion soup, some beer and some lunch. Great time.



Then we wandered down the hill to the red light district and checked out the schedule and prices for the Moulin Rouge. Expensive, and needed reservations. Too much hassle for us. ;) So we kept rolling back towards our end of town.



By now we were totally wasted again from a long day of walking around, so Lori got the brilliant idea of getting tickets to ride one of the sightseeing boats on the Seine, and then going and stocking up on some bread and some beers in our backpack to smuggle onboard. You can sit outside on the top deck of the boat and ride around for an hour listening to a tourguide...and drinking beer in the sunshine. Like I said, brilliant.... Eiffel tower was far point of the tour. I ran to the Eiffel in the morning, not a soul there but me. By this time in the day, there were thousands of people... that is the story of Paris. Get there early and the city is yours!



Came home, and had a long dinner back at our Italian restaurant across the street. Met another American couple at the table next to us and hung out late into the night. Finished off with a Parisian banana split.

Home late.....the next day we woke up to pouring rain, which didn't matter, because we were down into the Metro one last time and on our way out of Paris....

Great 10 year anniversary trip....

Ah Paris.....(day two)

We woke up in Paris and hit the town hard. Walked many, many miles as well. Beautiful day. First we hit the D'Orsay museum which featured the rise of impressionism. Very killer museum, with lots of paintings that really are in my genre of favorites. Really cool to get up close and examine the style of blotted colors adding up to a brilliant painting.



After several hours in the D'Orsay seeing every square inch of the place, we went on a hunt for some quality baguette sandwiches, and got there by first wandering across the Seine and walking through the gardens alongside the Louvre. That place is immense. Never even stepped foot in there...wouldn't know where to start. But the garden was nice. People watched for awhile in the sun and had our lunch. Then started walking up the garden towards the Champs Elysee.



The Champs is a long walk, that progressively gets closer and closer to the Arc de Triumph. Along the way the sidewalk gets wider and wider and the people more dense. We got a bitchin crepe along the way, and did some shopping in some of the stores. Crazy in there. French people and tourists trying on clothes in a frenzy with loud American hip hop blaring out of speakers. Kooks.



Made it finally to the Arc, pretty impressive and massive. Hooray for Napolean.



After making it all the way back to our place in the Latin Quarter, we were exhausted and hungry (and thirsty). I learned my lesson the night before that buying beer and wine out in the restaurants is expensive and dicey, so while Lori took a little siesta, I searched out some wine and beer from the street, and got some meat and cheese for a primer. We downed all that, got cleaned up and made our way to Le Loop Blanc, which was a restaurant our friend sent us too. Good chow, and fun sitting out and watching the night come on.



Home late. Long day in Paris...

Ah, Paris....(day one)

Made it to Paris by the skin of our teeth. The floods of England were moving in to stop us. Netty drove us to Luton airport north of London, and as we drove along the rain got heavier and heavier. By the time we were in the airport, the building was actually flooding on the inside through the doors and the roof. BUT, miraculously, we made it out, and into 3 beautiful sunny days in Paris.



Our hotel (St Jacques) was right in the heart of the Latin Quarter, which was great, as it turned out to be close to everything we needed. Especially my restaurant with anchovie and caper pizza (Napoli) right across the street. Ended up setting up our room and going to dinner there the first night. Dinner as usual, started late, and lasted a long, long time.



Afterwards we wandered through the serpentine streets of the quarter, where vendors were out, restaurants were crammed, street performers were singing, and everyone was partying it up.

Where have I been?

Sorry for the wait. Back in PDX after getting home from Europe and our Whistler trip. Working on the patio project now. But I have some time to get caught up....Here goes....