Puppy Shower

Jerry & Brenda recently got a new addition to their family, a cute little puppy named Pace (pronounced Pah-Chay).   To celebrate we threw them a puppy shower.  Welcome Pace!

Now this is the life!

He is licking pizza sauce off Brenda's fingers.

Unwrapping his gift.

A treat!

He worked on that treat for quite a while.  It must have been yummy.

Another gift...this one squeaks!

Every dog needs a rope.

Sand in the City

The annual Sand in the City event is going on this weekend.  Corey is volunteering to earn hours for her community service requirement at school.  We decided to go down and check out how she was doing & see 

the cool sand sculptures.

Here she is helping out at one of the craft tables.

Her friend Kathryn was volunteering too.  They shooed me away as soon as Corey saw me taking pictures.

They were still working on this sculpture.  All the proceeds go to building a new Hands On Children's Museum.

Go Cougs!

The coug sculpture was part of this Apple cup scene.

This Pooh bear sculpture was my favorite.

Wrestling wolves.

This sculpture wasn't made of sand, but I still wanted a picture of it to tease Corey who is afraid of goats.

Leavenworth

Scott & I have not been to Leavenworth in 20 years.  We have been talking about going back and taking the kids there for a while, but never seemed to find a time to go.  Well, we finally made it today.  It was definitely worth the long drive.  The Bavarian village is really beautiful.  We went in tons of shops, had lunch, and also visited the Nutcracker Museum, which was truly awesome.  They had so many nutcrackers we couldn't even see them all.  The only drawback was that it was so hot...our thermometer read 97 degrees.  That's a bit warm for me, but we still had a great time.   I'm hoping we'll make it back some day during the Christmas season which I've been told is a great time to go.

Scott & Corey after paying to park.  You can see the mountains in the background.  Leavenworth is in a beautiful valley. 

Large murals...almost as good as giant art!

This was a really cool Christmas store.  It had thousands of decorations.  It made me long for Christmas....

Inside the Christmas store.  That hat that Corey is wearing played a song & would flop back & forth.  It was so funny.

        

I loved the buildings in the village.

They had huge pots of flowers everywhere.  So beautiful!

This is where we had lunch.  I had the Pollo Rojo Sandwich which was DELICIOUS!  I could have eaten 2.  It had pepper jack cheese melted over ciabatta bread with shredded red chicken, topped with cabbage salsa, tomatoes, jicama, avocado & a zesty la hacienda dressing.  I'm usually hesitant to try new things, but I am so glad I tried this.  Scott had their Black Forest Ham crepe which he said was very good also. This place was a bit pricey, but well worth it. 

In the restaurant.

In front of the Nutcracker museum.

With the Rat King from the Nutcracker Ballet.  Picture taking was limited to anything not behind glass, which was not much. 

You can see Gabby in the background checking out the nutcrackers behind the glass.  Those were displays of old nutcrackers from centuries ago.  They had traditional nutcrackers like the one with Corey as well as non-traditinal ones like The Beatles, Elvis, Disney characters, Sherlock Holmes, Wizard of Oz, the Presidents etc. 

We drove next to the Wenatchee River on the way out of town.  It was very pretty.