Christine Visits!

Christine & I had so much fun this weekend touring around SF & Napa! She got to experience a San Francisco summer for the first time when we attempted to walk across the Golden Gate bridge today in the freezing cold & fog.

Fun in the Texas Sun!

We made a last-minute, surprise trip to Texas for Uncle Doug's 50th Bday party. We took a red-eye out of SF and drove from Austin to Corpus to meet my family at the beach for the weekend. Luckily, we went the weekend before the hurricane hit the coast. We had such a great time and were really happy to visit with everyone before we see them next over the holidays. Happy belated Uncle Doug!

More Pictures Here

....watching the full moon rise

Slideshow!

My mom & I made a slideshow for my Uncle Doug's 50th Birthday party. She spent the many, many hours scanning in all the old pictures we didn't have as digital files. I put it all together with the music and put it on a DVD. This is the second one I created (first one was for Reagan's wedding.) I just learned how to upload videos on Blogger to show it off! I think I might start a business creating picture slideshows for birthdays, weddings, etc. So, if you know anyone who needs a DVD slideshow, let me know.

You might have to scroll down to the bottom of this page and press Pause on the music playing below to hear the music on the slideshow. Enjoy!

Album Fetcher

As most of you know by now I use SmugMug to organize and share our photos. I've been really happy so far with their service and recently was able to see some prints and they look great! Smug Mug is much better than printing at starts with a "Wal..." I recommend printing in a matte or lustre finish.

One of the main features I have wished for is a bulk download option for my friends and family who want to save more than one photo to their computer. Well, FINALLY a SmugMug user has created an application just this purpose-- AlbumFetcher and it works great! It is very simple to use and in just a few steps you can download an entire album from my SmugMug page to your computer. It's also pretty cool because it will embed those files with my captions too ;)

I have created a step by step tutorial here. ............Cheers!

It's Summer!

We went to the Russian River Valley this weekend and camped on the river. This was our first time camping in this area. Normally, we go to Napa or Sonoma and camp and bike around those wineries. The vineyards in Russian River valley look dramatically different as they are surrounded by hundreds of huge trees. The landscape was gorgeous.


As members of La Crema winery (home to some of our favorite Chardonnays and Pinots), we were invited to a members only lunch at the winery in Windsor, CA in the valley. The actual winery isn't open to the public for tastings (only the tasting room in Healdsburg does tastings) so this was a treat to be able to see the winery and tour around it. The grounds were pretty and they had the inside of the production room decorated and set up for the lunch. We had their awesome wines paired with different courses and everything was wonderful! It is obvious being inside the warehouse this winery produces a ton of wine! There were rows and rows of barrels stacked all the way to the ceiling.


Our campsite was just a few miles away and it was a perfect summer day and hot out so we jumped in the river as soon as we got back. Our campsite had a good beach and the water felt great. Karl & I jumped off huge rocks with the kids into the swimming hole. The scenery was awesome and there were huge homes hanging from the cliff side over the water.

The 4th...

This is how we dress to watch fireworks on the 4th in San Fran
......just to see clouds glow red through the fog.

Not the typical 4th of July weather we're used to.

Happy Birthday Julie! The Dodgers won but we still had fun!