A day to remember

I am home from work today (a Wednesday), and usually I'd be happy for a sleep in day, but today I'm home to go to Tim's Grandma's funeral - Issabelle Massie. I didn't know her very well, but do know that she was loved and will be missed by her family. Here are some pictures that I have with her, that are special to me.

She loved our dogs (especially Guinness)! Here is Grandma and Jaeger on the first weekend he was with us.
We were so happy to be able to share our wedding with her, and both my Grandma's. The photo's with the Grandma's are some of my favorites, and I will always treasure them.

Jaegermeister (my master hunter)

Here is my Jaeger Meister, this picture was taken by the ARF photographer and I love it!

Here he is on his first point ever! This was a trip out to a bird farm just before Christmas. I was so proud of my little bird dog.
Afterwards he was so excited to see where his bird went to.
We went out again today. He did such a good job. Pointed on a bird and then flushed it himself... a no-no for a trained dog but ok for a puppy. He then went and found another pheasant on his own and pointed and flushed that bird. It was really fun to see him so excited and doing what he was bred to do.

Jaeger

About a 5 weeks ago Theresa and I drove to Montana to pickup the newest addition to our family. Tim and I now have two pups, Guinness and Jaeger. Jaeger is a German Wirehaired Pointer.



Here he is at 5 weeks old.

And the ride home... he was pretty good as long as he was allowed to sit on my lap.
Guinness and Jaeger are getting used to each other. Guinness still isn't thrilled about the new addition, but is adjusting.
Awww....
Here is the whole family posing for a picture!

Jaeger was chasing his tail - or what he has of a tail, it was hilarious!!

Honeymoon

After our wedding in Banff we drove to Penticton to start our honeymoon. We toured a bunch of wineries around Pentiction and relaxed.

Here is a view from the hotel that we stayed at in Pentiction.
After Penticton we went to Osoyoos, but did not stay long. Our campsite was at the end of the peninsula going into the lake and there was a GIANT wind storm the night we stayed there. I seriously felt like we were going to wake up in OZ. I also woke up with a nasty cold. We decided to cut our time short and drive to Washington.

Here is a picture of one of the wineries that we went to in Wala Wala. This one is called L'Ecole No 41. It is in an old school house.

Here we are at Columbia Crest. They were so nice at this winery. We got a private tour and the lady even gave us a discount on our wine.


On the road again... now we are on our way to Oregon.


The Spruce Goose. How did it get to Oregon you ask... it is a long story, but was very cool to see. If you are ever in the Willamette Valley it is worth the visit!




Drinking Pinot looking over the valley, what I wouldn't give to be back there now!

We've now moved on to the Oregon Coast. This is a cool sea lion cave (the largest in the world I think) that we got to go down into.

We found the coolest place to stay on the coast. It was this lake that was about 5 minutes from the ocean with cabins on it. The cabins had little kitchens and everything in them. After camping for 4 days in the Willamette, this was a very welcome break!

This may have been Tim's favorite thing on the whole vacation... ok next to all the wine! We sat and watched the waves break on the rocks here for ages. It was pretty amazing.

One morning on the coast we did a hike through these cool sand dunes all the way to the ocean. It was cool to see the different terrains meeting each other. Forest to sand dunes to ocean.

After the Oregon coast we drove south to the California redwoods. This was definitely one of the highlights for me! I have to say I love big trees!!!!
We did another hike on the coast in the redwoods. We started up near the highway 400 meters above the ocean. The hike took us down through some spectacular redwoods and giant sequoia's. Interestingly enough the Sequoia is actually bigger around than the redwood. The redwood is the tallest tree, not the biggest around. The tallest tree in the world is 367.5 ft high. That is almost the 2/3rds as high as the Calgary tower!

Here is the ocean mid way through our hike. It is very strange starting a hike walking down 400 meters, and ending it walking back up.
Here is a good example of how BIG these trees really are. It is so hard to get this across in a picture.

This was the tree that was at the entrance of our camp site.

Good-bye giant trees, hello Napa and Sonoma!!

This was by far our favorite thing that we did in Napa. It was a bottle to barrel tasting. It was at the Pine Ridge winery. It included a tour of their caves and ended with a tasting of 3 different Cab's where we compared the vintage that was selling with the vintage that had just been harvested the fall before. It was so interesting to see how the wine had evolved.
We went from Napa to San Francisco. This is an amazing city and I'd love to go back there one day! Here is a picture of Alcatraz from the ferry.

And a picture of the city from the ferry on the way back.

We had to eat at one of the cheesy sea food restaurants on fisherman's wharf.
Mmmmmmmm latte. We went to one of the very tasty coffee shops in San Fran. Microfoam, latte art, roasting their own beans... they had it all!!

Because of our limited time in SF, we did a city tour where we got to see a bunch of the highlights. Here are pics of the Golden Gate bridge.

Walking up the steepest street!



We went to an Oakland A's game on the last night in SF. They were actually playing the Blue Jays.

And here we are taking down camp for the very last time. We spend two long days driving back to Calgary, eagerly anticipating seeing our buddy Guinness again for the first time in a month!!