CougarAndHusky.com

Had a super time down in Sun River, OR for the wedding of Elina and Tom.  Their wedding was on Friday, 08.08.2008 - and what a great setting it was.  We stayed there an extra day and got in a little R&R by floating down the Deschutes River, and even found a rope swing to launch into the water.  No pictures of the river, but take my word for it; it was fun.

I took a lot of pictures, both of the service and the reception; and while I’m not permitted to post them all, here’s a few of my favorites. It was just a perfect wedding start to finish!!!

Made to the ceremony with about 15 minutes to spare.

Great setting on an absolute perfect day!  Elina and Tom moments before the “I do’s”.

The Linden Ave boys - Mark Walters, Matt Drake and I

Mark is demonstrating how one remembers which side the “B”read and which side the “D”rink goes on.

Getting ready for the amazingly well done slide show….

Matt’s ready to start dancing….

So was I…

Umm, is there a groom here?

That’s better….

S-n-B crew….

Jamie’s first weekend away from Pete….time to leave it all on the dance floor….

Turns out that Becky frequently sings to beer bottles at weddings?

Matt and the Man of the Hour - Tom!

Returned home today from a VERY relaxing vacation in Chelan.  We were out there for a whole week and while we had the occasional visit from friends and my folks who were down lake, we really had a lot of down time…just what we wanted.  We did manage to do quite a bit though…picked blueberries to make a pie, putt putt golf, Slide Waters, and a few meals out in town. We were surprised by a visit from Brian/Marci, and even went to dinner up at Garret’s so he could show us his potato gun and green laser.  Of course we got to hear about Dave’s party which required Chelan’s finest to be summoned out - twice!   Good times indeed!

I posted a few more pictures which you can see by clicking this sentence.  

Here’s Paris Soligon…oops, Marissa Soligon getting ready to pick Blueberries…

Reese getting into the lake to cool off….

‘Lil Skipper actually did all the driving for us.

Isn’t this the scene in the Shawshank Redemption?

Reese and I on the patio at Campbell’s in downtown Chelan.

Marissa trying to figure out Sudoku puzzle…

Post dinner walk in town….

“Emerson Cracks”

Reese wanted to climb the bear….

Marissa about ready to bake her blueberry pie….

That’s me…I can tell you where I won’t be on 8-8-08…..

Well I’m home and a bit beat.  Lot of food and long nights of going out in Atlanta this whole week.  Good to relax with my work friends in a different environment.  Maybe I’ll post some more on facebook…I took a lot of random shots.  Who knows, I’ll probably get asked to pull a few of these this week.

Atlantic Station is a new area in Atlanta that has good food and nightlife.  Geisha House sushi was terrific.

Deanna’s first MGX - she loved it.

Kristen and Dametra bringing down the house.

OMG, OMG, I’M HAVING SOOOOO MUCH FUN.

Augusto prepping for the next night’s LATAM party.

Honestly, STOP requesting Will Smith would you?

Do I know how to land a punchline or what….

Keep your head up and everything will fall into place.

You going to light that?

Is there a wrapper on still?

Think that’s better now…

Called FY09 Planning.

Hooked up with Julie Spence for a few beers at her team party at Stats.  Few issues with the doorman, but nothing Julie AKA Cool Hand Luke couldn’t get us past.

Our team rented out the World of Coca-Cola for our kickoff night at MGX this week.  It’s a newer facility, replacing their older one at the Atlanta Underground, located right next to Olympic Centennial Park.  Any one who’s been to the impressive museum knows that it ends with visitors walking to a sample room.  There’s huge pods set up where one can try all the beverages served by Coca-Cola from around the world - in facts it’s set up by continents - I think many of the flavors from South America and Africa would be hits here, but some marketing folks in ATL must disagree.  Well someone, more clever than me, came up with a way to spice up the experience for our event.  Might have to bring this idea to the lake.

Step One: Choose your drink

I’m old fashioned, I went with Coca-cola Classic…in a bottle baby.

Step two: choose one of ~12 mixers to add.  Vanilla vodka here.

Step Three: - Now pay attention closely here.  When told to add your mix to the hollowed out block of dry ice - do not set the cup in the ice like several of my European mates who’ve never seed a block of dry ice did…rather “pour” your mix right in there.

Patience pay off…something about being a virtue???

Step Four: Scrape and Serve…..

Ahh yeah, just one more little slice of heaven in this crazy world.  Rinse and repeat as many times as necessary.

Spent the week in Atlanta working very hard.  But as usual, I managed  to get in a little down time here and there.  The Georgia Aquarium is known as ‘the largest aquarium’ in the world.  Build on 20 acres right in the heart of Atlanta next to the Centennial Park.  Incidentally, I was a volunteer for a few month during the 1996 summer Olympics and was in the park about an hour before the bomb went off.  Good times -I always seem to follow the action.  So Kelly and I found an afternoon before our work event began to meet up with my brother’s family.  Paul brought the two girls down and we check out the place.  It is very well done throughout.

Megan led the tour; as an annual member she told me she’s been ~20 times.

Enormous Whale Sharks were brought in from Thailand.  Two died in captivity which stirred quite a controversy Paul was telling me.

Closest thing to getting everyone to look at the camera at the same time.

Mackenzie wanted to be a reptile…

Paul, Kelly and the girls….

Visit to Paul’s house and we had to indulge in some redneck backyard sports.  Shooting cans off the back deck.  Kelly was a pro after a bit of practice.

I just got back this evening from a really amazing five day fishing trip with my buddies. We fished the 280 mile long Nushagak River in Alaska. We caught too many King Salmon to count, and a few Chums we’d just as soon forget about. We stayed at a classy operation on the river called Alaska King Salmon Adventures...for not having much to begin with it’s amazing at what they ship in to make this camp tick for the relatively short 6 week season they endure. It was complete with hot showers and flushing toilets and good food….but the fishing is why we made the 9 hours trek and we were not disappointed. All 10 of us in our group maxed out our daily limit with plenty of feisty fish to keep us busy.

I put up a web gallery of some of the 500+ shots I took. But here’s a few of my favorites ….you can click on any of them to get to my online photo gallery….

Had our friends the Allsops out to Chelan this weekend. Dave and Andy, Brady and Lorie and Matt and Jamie were all there too. We had a LOT of boat time…even did a little video action of Matt showing off his wake board skills - but he has that tape and I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day.

Reese took in her first ever tube ride…

Tina didn’t let her ‘nursing’ get in the way of a tube ride….

Don’t tell Reese it’s a few hundred feet deep here.

Tina and Ryan’s newest addition - Emma.

Look who’s now 7 months old….

Kelly was off in California all week and through the weekend having fun…so I brought the girls over to Chelan fo a little adventure of our own.  Now that Marissa is 5 she’s convinced she’s invincible and is all about doing new things.  What started out as a “let’s just go slow and go in a little circle” with our friends on a Sea Doo, turned into a full on high speed water adventure that lasted ~20 minutes for Marissa.  She loved trying it out for the first time.  Also for the first time I can recall, I headed out without a camera…so I shot these with my Windows Mobile phone…they actually turned out OK huh.

Lynda takes the Sea Doo out every morning - this time with some extra luggage.

Returning from their speed rally….

Big Alg boated over and hung with Reese while balancing a glass of wine and a cervesa.  This is a few hours prior to a VERY eventful night for one of his buddy’s bachelor party.  I wasn’t there; but let’s just say they got to meet Chelan’s Finest, visit the hospital and sweep up some broken glass….or so I’m told.

Out with the old, in with the new.  Took me 3.5 hours to put this new bad boy together on Saturday AM.  If you’re in town come on by and i’ll grill up a burger for ya.

Well Marissa is finally in bed - wrapping up 2 full days of celebration for her 5th birthday. We’re all beat as it was a very busy two days.  Yesterday was a smaller family celebration and today was the full fledge party with a few dozen little ones on the jumper castles.

We had to mail away for the caterpillar larvae today.  This should be interesting.

The art easel was a huge hit…Paint on one side, Chalk on the back.

She asked for a ‘pink cake with princesses’ and Grandma delivered.

Reese waited patiently for a piece of cake.

We all got into the action….

Run Reese Run….

Cake #2

Kelly and I went down to Mexico for a few days. It was HOT, like 98 degrees hot. We were in Playa del Carmen - about an hour south of Cancun. 99% of the pictures we took on Kelly’s camera were taken in a 15 minute window as you’ll see below - which is too bad b/c we really did a lot. We were there for Steve and Katie Block’s wedding, but we had time to take in a morning of snorkeling, lot of beach volleyball which Jeff and I played with a lot of Italians and of course several long nights out. BTW, the long plane flight down offered me a chance to listen to Coldplay’s new album, Viva la Vida, a few times - it rocks!

We met up with Jeff and Elizabeth in Dallas and flew down with them. While it was really too short a trip, we had a great time and are keen to go back again soon.

Super soft sandy beach about 15 yards from our door steps at the resort…..

After dinner I rallied the troops and we cabbed it into town to hit the famous Senor Frogs….

$90 worth of margaritas kicked things off.

Sean and Amy are a couple we hung out with much of the weekend - they’re great, and since Amy was the Valedictorian of our HS class, we had so much in common.

Jeff moved passed his first drink pretty quickly.

The solo straw just didn’t have enough throughput for Kelly.

Thinking about installing some of these bar swings at home.

Just got back from our adventurous guys with kids weekend that we’ve been planning for several months now. We had to call a last minute audible and switch from going to the peninsula where there was a high risk of rain, to Lake Wenatchee by Leavenworth in the center of the state - we left rainy Seattle and had blue skies all weekend. We had a blast, just a total blast. All the kids are between 2 and 4 in age and they really get along together very well. This is the first time any of them have ever camped out in their lives; and on the car ride home Marissa’s already asking me when we can go again. The kids got to set up camp, go on hikes down to the lake, do art projects, play “Kids on Stage” charades game, sing songs by the campfire and much more.

So who went? Well that would be Mark and Sophie, Brian and Chloe, Justin and Elise, Adrian and Blake, and of course I took Marissa and Reese. Here’s a few pics and a short movie with more of the pictures if you’d like to see them.

I threw this movie together in literally 3 minutes…enjoy

Before we took anything out of the car, the kids were anxious to go down to the river and explore. Reese was all about the great outdoors.

Walks preparing dinner. He’s not used to doing the work - Marci usually does everything in his world.

Marissa wanted to show off one of the new North Face fleeces that I had ready for all the kids.

Complete with a “Marshmallows with the Munchkins 2008″ embroidered logo….had all peach ones for the girls and one green one for Blake. Kids loved them!

Camps up and running, time to jam down to the lake….

Mark and I talking about patent law…We managed to get in a little bit of trouble with the park ranger for putting our tents in the wrong place…no matter where Mark and I go in the outdoors, we seem to find trouble. We schmoozed with him later for about 45 minutes; thus assuring no more trouble from the authorities….although the ranger did take the time to remind us he carries a firearm. Am sure Mark could beat him in a arm wrestling contest though.

Elise sees the lake while perched on Justin’s shoulders. He managed to pop his air mattress on night one….time for a diet?

Reese started eating when we arrived and never stopped until we left….

Adrian and Blake stayed warm by the fire.

Just got home from Chelan - had a good Memorial Day weekend out there. I really didn’t take too many pictures compared to my usual self - which is too bad b/c we did a few new things including playing in a UW vs. WSU golf tourney at Bear Mountain on Sunday AM. Also Hit Explosion, the 80’s cover band, was playing across the street from Matt’s at KarMa winery. This year also saw us break in Dave and Andy’s new place up lake. But since most the time there was spent helping them move in, I didn’t get a pictures of that either. Here’s another 30 or so pictures here if you click this sentence.

AJ and Blake with the ’smores….

Reese and I watching the crew float in the freezing water.

Marissa DID NOT want to leave this AM. She loves going to the lake.

Matty and I both got a bit too many rays. Don’t let the clouds fool you.

Beers on the fun island after most everyone left town.

Beaven made all the girls these Disney dresses. Marissa is still wearing hers today.

Kelly didn’t set Lola down this weekend.

I’m having a really great week in Chicago. Am here to take a week long course with some colleagues at the Kellogg School of Management, which is very well done. We have little down time here; but when we do have some time I’ve made the most of it. We flew in early and I arranged for several of us to hit Wrigley Field - we actually did the rooftop experience - specifically “Wrigley done right” - it’s a great all inclusive means to watch the game in a very social setting. Then on my buddy Andy’s recommendation, we hit Lou Malnati’s Deep Dish pizza. It been very late nights, but super fun and I’m really impressed with this city all around.

Can finally check Wrigley Field off THE list….

Chris and I at the afternoon game - Cubs won the game…

Don’t know how I get into these situations, but a long story made short is that we had a guy with us who knew the bartenders/owners at EVERY bar in Chicago. This RBV’s were on the house.

Lou Malnati’s Deep Dish - my first time there.

Few of my work buddies…

Decided to walk the Magnificent Mile and see the Chicago Bean for myself (really called Cloud Gate, but most call it the Bean for obvious reasons). Truly a must see; it must be the coolest piece of public art I’ve ever seen. I took a bunch of pictures, but I’ll spare people of them and just share this one.

Kirkland 1/2 marathon at 7.30 this morning for Kelly, then I fixed a really good sushi dinner for her folks and our family. Was my first crack at a dragon roll; and I think it turned out really well!

Elina, Jamie and Kelly trained a lot of weekend mornings for this race. They all did well!

Yes, I am “SushiMan”.

Hit a auction on Saturday night benefiting cancer research. The organization, The Mad House Project was founded a few years back by several of Kelly’s college friends and has really blossomed into quite an event. I think they raised ~$150K last night. Fun time indeed.