Better picture - close up

Once the picture was loaded - it was obvious it was not easy to read.

Here's a close up of where the areas are located!

Beautiful Washington State!

For those that are not familiar with the San Juan Islands - here's a map that hopefully can help!

The blue is the area where all my family lives out there (waving to all the cousins!) in the Gig Harbor, Port Orchard region. Although I think that Patty is on the Tacoma side (waving at Patty too!)

This is the area that my Dad fell in love with. In 1994 we visited Washington for the first time with my Dad & we fell in love with it too! My Dad unfortunately, didn't get to fulfill his wish to move out there before he passed.

My Aunt Jani had moved out there many many years ago. She finished her life out there & has a gorgeous resting place overlooking Lake Washington! (Blowing kisses to you Aunt Jani)

In the orange are the San Juan Islands. This is where we visited in 2002 with the pictures in the previous entry. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

Blaine is where we are actually staying (red) - it's across from the San Juan's, just barely south of the Canadian border!

I am so excited for July to come!!!

So excited!

I am so excited! After almost a year of trying to get a reservation - we finally got exactly what we wanted for our vacation this summer!! We have a condo just south of the Canadian border in Blaine Washington! Just a ferry ride away from the San Juan Islands!

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I have been trying to get a spot up around the San Juan Islands through our time-share. It has been booked solid every time I've tried & we've even been on the wait list for the exchange place with no luck for western washington, oregon or canada! Last night by shear luck - I checked availability & there was a week that had just come in!!

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The Hays family had a reunion in Washington in 2002 where several of us took a ferry up to the San Juan Islands to go on an Orca Whale sight seeing trip.

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Here are some pictures from that trip.

Look how young everyone was - Ashley is a senior & all the boys are out of high school!!

I have a better camera now then I did then - so hopefully I can get better pictures! I did see one of them do the spy-hop (peek up out of the water like they are standing on their back fin) - but didn't get a picture of it!!

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I am so excited to get back up there!! What a trip this will be!! We are working out plans right now on when we'll go, when we'll come back, etc!!

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Guess what else I found - look at this awesome picture of Janet & Kylee!! Precious!!!

A Great Big X

Rod Blagojevich is now the X Govenor of Illinois!! The senate got it right!!

Hope you smile that big in prison big guy!!

Are we Crazy?

I'll let you decide.....we decided to take Amie with us on our anniversary trip!

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Since 1997 we have taken some type of a trip each year on our anniversary - some years a quick over night in a neighboring town - some years a whole week!

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This year we are going to the US Virgin Island - St. Thomas. We've never been to the Caribbean so this will be our first trip.

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We've always looked forward to some "away" time! And when we started doing the get aways - the boys were way older than Amie is now. And true - two years ago we went for a week and left her with my sister Janet (oh the fun Aunt Janet had!!) But - we just don't want to leave her - even though she would stay with Grandma - we just don't want to leave her! Is that crazy??

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Is it because we are older?? I don't know!! Tickets are bought - so it's a definite!

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We don't go til the end of April - but planning is well under way!!

Make A Wish Update

Make a Wish called us this last week & they have set up a date and time to come out and meet Amie & help determine what her wish will be.

This is very confusing - because we want to make sure that this wish is what Amie would want - but how do we figure it out??!!

So - we went straight to the source!! You will laugh when you hear what she said to me:

Me: "Amie - is there anything you want?"

Amie: "No"

Me: "Would you like to go on vacation somewhere?"

Amie: "No - my go movie my Ky"

Me: "We can go to a movie with Kylee again. But is there somewhere you might want to go?"

Amie: "No - my go movie my Ky"

So.....this is not going to be easy!!

BRRRRR It's cold!!

I am soooo ready for spring!