Old Friends and Neighbors

It's very difficult, yet exciting to watch kids grow up. Our old neighbors, the Humphrey's, lived next door for many years. Their girls are just a bit older than ours. We watched as their girls hit milestones and it scared us to know that our own girls were right behind. When I wish I could slow life down and keep my precious girls small forever, I often think of the words to a favorite song...

Summer's going fast, nights growing colder

Children growing up, old friends growing older

Freeze this moment a little bit longer

Make each impression a little bit stronger

Experience slips away

Experience slips away...

Kristen Humphrey, the tallest one in the middle of the picture above, is getting married. Yeah, and that's Debra and Karen in there too (along with Ali) not all that far behind. sigh... This is one milestone that, for my own girls, I'm hoping will be far behind our old friend and neighbor.

Congratulations Kristen!

Story Telling

Last night we all went to the Timpanogos Story Telling Festival's Midwinter Conference. What a delightful break from the cold, wet and smoggy winter doldrums. I told Becky as we were walking out that it was like a big turkey dinner on a fast Sunday. Just getting a taste of the Summer event takes me back to Provo Canyon in late Summer, sitting in the tents and enjoying one of our family's favorite Summer rituals. I enjoy that memory as much as any Hawaiian vacation.



For those of you that don't know about the festival, it is over Memorial day weekend every summer at Timpanogos park in Provo Canyon. We go every year and I usually take a day or two off work to attend the weekday session. Funny stories, sad stories, interesting stories and even some just plain stories. When they are told by the world's best story tellers you cannot help but being taken away for a few minutes to another place and time. The great thing is that even our kids love the festival... every one of them. We all look forward to it and relish the little treasures of books, CDs and DVDs we bring home.


Here are some photos of festivals past...

It gets hot in August.

The crew waiting for the next story

Making pottery at the festival at the foot of Timp. Don't leave it behind this year!


At the Scera Shell for the Saturday night Laughin'




The band warming us up for some fun!

The real star of the show

It just doesn't get any better...

The blondie girl

Puppet masters!

Lunch with Tucano's. Maybe it does get better!

Riding the shuttle bus to the story telling festival is as fun as a roller coaster!

Dallas!

Our desktop computer died and the laptop is all but useless. I haven't updated for a while, but that doesn't mean there haven't been plenty of facts to torture! It's time to catch up. I think I'll post several short entries rather than one big long one, so stay tuned!

First off, I now have a shiny new screamer to work on. A Dell Studio XPS with the new Intel Core i7 chip. When I opened up Task Manager and saw 8 cpu windows, I got the giggles! The chip is a quad core, each core being hyper-threaded, which the OS (64 bit Vista) sees as 8 separate cpu's. Very nice and very responsive, no matter how many things are going on. Take a look, you might get the giggles too.

We had a wonderful trip to visit Natalie in Texas in January. We had to take Duke back though. Returning a dog that you love to his owner in Texas who has recently recovered from Leukemia isn't as easy as it sounds! We had to get him a kennel... (No, we didn't ship Melinda with him in the cargo hold)



Becky had to run all over the place getting shots, vet certification, grooming etc etc... We got Duke home and Natalie and the Colonel were happy to see him. That makes it worth it. You can see the happy homecoming at bluesparklyshoes

We all love you Duke and we miss you terribly!

Here are more pictures from the trip...

This crazy bird (A Great Blue Heron I believe) flew to this pond at the Fort Worth Botanical Garden's - Japanese Garden and he stalked and fished out a Koi from the Koi pond... right in front of us. No kidding, this brutal yet beautiful spectacle of nature took place not 10 feet from where we were standing.



Another brutal spectacle of nature... A young boy stalking a squirrel, or is it the other way around...


The bird soon after arriving at the crime scene

Picture perfect! Natalie and the Colonel.



All of us Paulsens love to skate and we helped Natalie learn a little bit before her skating lessons. Please don't look at the skates I'm wearing. It's embarrassing! I thought of taking my own skates with me to Dallas, but... Ok, if anyone on my hockey team sees this I'll never hear the end of it.





Three beauties in one shot. There should be a law...


The cattle drive at the stock yards in Ft. Worth.



Teaching super Nats how to skate. She did great!

At the Japanese Gardens in Ft. Worth










Some things are more beautiful than even the most beautiful gardens.








Sisters!