Well the long weekend is over and I’m back at work. I hope you had as good of a weekend as I had! If you’re curious as to what we did on Friday and Saturday, check out my last post.

We had so much fun at the rodeo on Saturday that we decided to go back on Sunday (after church and lunch) to watch the rest of the rodeo (it went for 3 days). As usual, we got there late (the rodeo started at 2 but we got there around 3), but we weren’t too disappointed as we missed the PBR part and got in for a reduced rate. lol We still got to see broncos, barrel racing and bull riding. Again it was really fun. However, unlike the day before, this time it POURED for about 10 minutes (just long enough to soak everyone). Thankfully I had my waterproof jacket with me so I didn’t suffer too much.

After the rodeo we drove down a road that ends up going into the water… We’ve explored the shore around that area by boat before, but this was a little different coming in by car. The sun was out and there were dark skies all around. It was really beautiful.

Sunday night we went to “Over the Hedge”. It was a cute movie. We all really liked it. After the movie we ran into some old friends from the Christian School. We visited for awhile and then headed over to DK’s for milkshakes. I always end up seeing someone in DK’s that I know, and this time was no exception. A bunch of guys from the Four Square church showed up while we were there, and I chatted with a few, including Matt and Jethro. I went to HS and college with Matt (and dated his younger brother for quite awhile). The last time I saw him was at his wedding. He now has a baby with another on the way. Wow! This weekend I saw three people I went to HS with, and all three have kids. Pretty crazy. Matt’s dad, Jethro has a chainsaw business that you should really check out.

Monday was a beautiful day, but we had to get back to this side of the mts. so we didn’t get to enjoy much of it. We ended up leaving Ephrata around noon, then proceeded to get stuck in traffic between Cle Elum and Easton. The traffic probably added an hour to our travel time (not very good when you consider that it really only takes us 2.5 hours to get from our house to Ephrata).

Rather than driving straight home, we swung by Frys for Daddy to buy a hard drive (400 gig with an 16 meg cache for $119). Always a sucker for storage space, I ended up buying a HD too (400 gig with an 8 meg cache for $99). Then when we got home, I ordered two external cases off NewEgg. Now I’ll be able to upgrade my current external HD setup – 200 gigs in an Apricorn case – to 400 gigs in a new but identical Apricorn case. Not wanting to leave Tobin out, I also ordered an external case for him in which I’ll throw an 80 gig HD that we got for FREE from Frys awhile back (after rebate).

As long as I’m talking computers, I must also mention that I came to work today and found that my BRAND NEW computer came. It’s a dual core Dell and should be a pretty sweet machine. (I don’t remember all the specs off the top of my head.) I’m going to set it up here in a couple of minutes. Man it’s just like Christmas! :-)

Be sure to check out the pics from this past weekend here (5/28) and here (5/27).

Hope your Memorial Day weekend is treating you well! Tobin and I decided to head to Ephrata to visit my fam this weekend. So far it’s been a blast!

Tobin had Friday off, so I took that day off too. We were going to head over to Ephrata Thursday night (Stephen’s 23rd birthday), however, Stephen needed us to pick up something from him to bring over to Ephrata, so we ended up meeting him at his work down in Tacoma. He gave us the grand tour of his plant (GP), which was super interesting! Tobin and I were both impressed. AND there was a boat in their dock unloading something. Stephen said in the time he’s worked there (3 years or so), this is only the 3rd boat to have docked in their dock. Cool. By the time we were ready to leave though, it was pretty late (about 9:30). Tobin wanted to go for it. I wanted to head over early Friday morning. He eventually caved when I informed him that my cousin, Carne Livingston, was going to be on the David Letterman show. Carne is in the Navy, and I guess it was Fleet-Week in NY, so they packed out the David Letterman audience with Navy guys. Carne came up with a song to stump the band. He stumped the band, and then he sang his song. It was great! Daddy recorded it on VHS (we’ve watched it several times this weekend), and I really wanted to get some frames from that up here on my site. (I don’t know if Daddy has the cables I need to do that.)

So we ended up heading over to the other side of the mts. (the right side IMHO) early Friday. We made it to Ellensburg at around 7:45 and parked the car at Jerrols. We wanted to buy Tobin a new Central hat, and I wanted a new pair of Central shorts. Well we didn’t find anything interesting there, but we left the car there, and walked over to campus. I visited my old prof, Dr. Gellenbeck, and we ended up chatting for an hour or so about work and stuff. It was neat. Then Tobin and I walked over to the new SUB building and were pretty impressed by its size (wish it would’ve been there when we were at college there!). Unfortunately the campus bookstore didn’t have any interesting hats or shorts either.

From Ellensburg we drove to Moses Lake where my mom teaches for Big Bend. We got to see her office and meet some of her students and then we went out to lunch at this awesome little Chinese Buffet place. Finally, we drove to Ephrata, and I took Tobin down to the High School to see the art show that was supposed to be going until 3. They’d taken it down early, so I took Tobin over to the art classroom and introduced him to Mrs. Parker, and she gave him the grand tour of her room. I think he was jealous. lol But she showed him some pretty cool projects that she had done this year, and he got some great ideas.

We capped out Friday night by going to the movie X-Men III. I liked it.

Saturday we drove up to Coulee City for their rodeo. It was a lot of fun. Daddy and I took our cameras (which are identical by the way), and got a BUNCH of shots. The professional photographers who were shooting the rodeo had Canon 20D’s (I took a shot of one of their cameras), AND the lense that Daddy wants (70-200 F2.8). Anyways, we got to see calf roping, bronco riding, barrel racing, and bull riding. It was great. ML and I saw a few people we knew. I ran into a girl I went to HS with (who has a husband and a baby). Wow, everyone’s growing up (I think kids are still a few years out for us!).

From Coulee City we drove to Moses Lake where M&D looked at cars. If you read my blog last week you’d know that their van was rather sickly. Well it’s totally kaput now, so they do need something new. They didn’t find anything though in Moses Lake (except for Chinese food – we went there the second day in a row). Good times! I sure miss this side of the mts – and my family. It’s good to be back (even if it’s only for a few days).

Check out the photos section for more pics from this weekend.

I’m back at work today after a jam-packed weekend. I kicked off the weekend by working late on Friday. Then Saturday morning we picked up kids, met up at the church office, then headed down to Big Splash. Believe it or not, the weather was beautiful. The weatherman had been calling for rain all day (it rained Friday night), but come Saturday the sun was out, and clouds were scarce.

In case you’re wondering just what Big Splash is:

BIG SPLASH is a region-wide youth event that takes place at Wild Waves and Enchanted Village – a Six Flags Theme Park in Federal Way, WA each May. The purpose of the event is to reach teens that normally wouldn’t attend church with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. The park offers a day full of roller coasters, waterslides, & multiple music & talent stages. The day ends with a high-energy concert by today’s popular Christian bands & the opportunity for young people to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Anyways, the day was a lot of fun. We had about 20-25 kids come – and I think they all had a pretty good time. Unfortunately, nearly everyone got burned (though I didn’t). You could pick out the youth at church yesterday – they were all glowing.

We enjoyed the rides and the water (I had a lot more fun in the water than on the rides), as well as at the concert. Hawk Nelson, Superchic[k], Thousand Foot Krutch, DJ Maj, and Floodgate Alive all performed. Superchic[k] was my fave group. I’m sure Floodgate Alive was great – but we got to the ampitheatre after they were done performing.

I think that it was about 11pm by the time we got home from dropping kids off after the event.

Sunday we went to church (Tobin actually went to two, he checked out the Tukwila Presbyterian church), then booked it down to Stephen & Heather’s. We met up with Stephen, my parents and ML, and carpooled down to the Tacoma Dome to watch Heather graduate from PLU. Congrats to Heather! We ended up sitting in the nose-bleed section, but we could see everything pretty clearly.  (Check out the photos that Stephen got.)

I especially liked what one of the speakers said:

“You’re editing your obituary every day…”
-William H. Foege, MD (’57) Regent, Pacific Lutheran University

It sounds a little depressing, but it’s true… Mr. Foege had a great speech. I was impressed.

After graduation, we headed over to Heather’s parent’s place for a BBQ. That was a lot of fun. Between that and visiting with Stephen & Heather (and friends), we got home around 11 again.

You may have noticed that I also mentioned cars in my title for this post… Well that’s because on Saturday while Tobin and I were at Big Splash, my parents came over and met up with Stephen at our house to work on our car. They eventually found that our camshaft was broken in two… Stephen thinks he’ll be able to fix it when he gets some time off work. I hope he can. I’m sure lucky that my brother’s so handy with cars!

As if our car being broken wasn’t enough, my parents’ car basically died on them this weekend. They were able to drive it home (limping really, it didn’t drive very well at all), but it’s basically shot. A whole bunch of things are wrong with it now. My poor parents! The ironic thing is they looked at cars to buy on Sunday between church and graduation (and no, they didn’t buy anything!).

So that was our weekend. (Oh, and in there I also did some homework for my Data Warehousing class…) Busy! Tonight I have class too, and Tues we have youth… I’m looking forward to the three (possibly four) day weekend coming up! :-) Hope you had a great weekend (hopefully a bit more restful than ours).

Happy Friday! I hope you have a great weekend! We’re going to have a very busy one kicked off by Big Splash (all day Saturday), and followed up with church, and Heather’s Graduation and Jamarr’s Birthday all on Sunday. Phew! I might just be glad to see Monday roll around (though that means I’ll have class, so NM).

Why are we going to Big Splash you ask? Because we’re youth leaders at Neighborhood Life Center. And this is going to be a BIG event for us – with 15-20+ kids coming. I just hope that the weather holds up (it’s not supposed to – but we all know that the Seattle weather people can’t be trusted!). Oh and if you want to see what our kids look like, check out our youth photo gallery.

Heather is graduating from Pacific Lutheran University on Sunday. She just learned that the graduation ceremony is going to go from 2:30-5:30 or so. Well that won’t be as long as the WAAAAAY long graduation ceremony that I went to in Anacortes (they had about 10 valedictorians there). lol We’re really excited for Heather! She’s going to be a teacher! (Well she already did her student teaching, so I guess that makes her a teacher now.) :-) Heather will be a great teacher.

My family will be coming over for Heather’s graduation… So it will be fun to see them. Hopefully they won’t have to bring the car hauler though! The Brown Bomber decided to die on the way to Youth group on Tuesday. It’s not running at all. We’re not sure what’s wrong with it, but don’t think it’s the timing belt. Stephen took a look at it last night, but couldn’t definitively figure out what the problem was. I think he’s going to take another look at it today. If he can’t figure out what’s wrong Daddy might tow it back to Ephrata on Sunday (I’m not sure the car’s even worth the gas money to do that). Fun, huh?

So that’s what’s up with us. How’s it going for you? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Check out the photo section! I just uploaded some new pics that I took around the yard. Here’s a sample:

Beautiful, huh?

[Disclaimer: I don't like nor do I condone watching Southpark - however I thought this was just too funny not to post.]

My sister just sent me a super funny pic – of our family + Dan (as Southpark characters).

What do you think? lol L-R (clockwise): Daddy & Mommy, Stephen & Heather, Dan & Margie Lou, and Tobin & Tammie. lol Take note of the gun in Stephen’s hand, and Tobin’s freckles (and art stuff). Classic.

Want to try your hand at this? Visit the South Park Studio 2.

ML you crack me up. I had to add this image, right, in response to her comments about Stephen’s shirt and bandaged hands… lol (Click on the images to view full size.)

Oh, and in case you don’t know him, that’s my husband, Tobin, left.

Today is May 1st. Happy May Day. Happy Birthday Heather! Today also marks the CSS Reboot Spring 2006. I’ve used the Reboot as an excuse to move my site over here to tammiesprings.com (hosted with Dreamhost). Jsprings is hosted on Windows (Parcom), which is a tad bit limiting for some of the things I’d like to do. How do like the rebooted site? How do like the rebooted site? Take a look around and let me know, but be forewarned that it’s still a work in progress.

Oh and in case you’re wondering what’s going to happen to jsprings… Well I’m going to make it more professional looking and host Tobin and my portfolios here – rather than my (more informal) blog.