Happy Birthday, Dad!

Hope you enjoyed your birthday!

Love,

 Donald and Krista

Custom shoes

This is really late to be posted (almost 2 months late). I guess I forgot to hit the publish button. Check out my custom shoes!

My first shoe fitting (02/20/2012).

   It was just like the fit sessions that I hold at work for outerwear except now I had to give feedback rather then ask the questions. How do the shoes feel? Where are they tight? Are there any points that are not comfortable? These were questions that I had to answer and I found that articulating what I was feeling was harder then I ever thought it would be. The shoes that you see are just a prototype made in generic grey leather made around the custom shoe last that was built for my feet. With all the feedback that I was giving the phototypes would be sent back to the fty for changes then the real shoes in my chosen leather would be made.

Can you see all the pen marks? That is how the shoe maker will remember where to make changes.

Here's the final product of one of the pairs that I had made.

Worm time

   As most of you know I had been keeping a blog going during my Shanghai experience. I had a great time sharing stories and apparently even a few people like reading them. Now that I'm back to "normal" life in Portland OR Donald and I have decided to keep the blog going. We would like to share some of the new adventures that we have around Oregon. Now, don't expect this to be a daily blog but when we can find the time we will share pics, stories and videos.

   Donald is out of town currently, traveling for work. Funny as it is,one of his destinations was Shanghai (too bad that trip couldn't have happened while I was living over there). When Donald leaves town I manage to keep myself busy doing all sorts of things around the house. And there's usually enough to keep me busy for quite awhile. This weekend my focus was the front yard. With the weather being sunny and warm it would have been hard to resist not spending every possible moment outside. Here's a little tour of what's going on in the McLellan front yard this spring.

Worms, worms and more worms.

 I love that living in Oregon means finding the worlds largest earthworms. I never new that worms could get so big! We're talking worms that stretch out to 12" sometimes...totally not joking. As I was pulling weeds in the front bed I kept finding these monsters that I just couldn't resist playing with. Finding worms to play with is one of my favorite aspects of gardening...Donald can attest to this. I am constantly calling him outside to show him the Worlds Biggest Earthworm (wow, I just googled the world's largest earthworm and found this pic. I'm kind of glad ours aren't that big!).

I played with these guys for a few minutes and eventually put them 

back into my front  garden bed and continued to weed.

As long as my hand!

    So maybe earthworms aren't your thing, I have plenty more things to share that aren't nearly as slimy. Check out the 2 HUGE artichokes that I have growing next to our front door. They were purchased as 12" starters last year and are now over 2 1/2 feet. I hope to get a few artichokes to eat off them by the end of summer.

Lovely artichokes

Then there is my Spurge. This plant makes me so happy and has
also grown like crazy since moving to our front yard.

  Donald and I had to remove a giant Birch tree from the parking strip in front of our home last year b/c it was ill. In it's place we purchased 2 trees from a non profit in town called Friends of Trees. We got a Magnolia and a Tri Color Beech tree. Both are starting to bloom!

Now I'm sneaking in a few backyard plants to share with you :)

   And then there are the tulips. Since I grew up in Holland MI I took the beauty of tulips for granted for a long time. To me they seems like a giant pain in the tush b/c we had a festival to celebrate them and this festival would bring hundreds of thousands of tourist into town during the week long festival. But now that I don't live in Holland and don't have to witness Tulip Time every year the tulip has become my favorite flower. I find the yellow and red mix to be the most beautiful and mine are already in bloom.

Left, more tulips. Right, check out the giant Rhododendron. 

This rhododendron makes me and my neighbor, Stephanie, very happy this time of year.

   It was so great having sunshine all weekend and getting the yard cleaned up so we can continue to look like respectable neighbors (the freshly mowed lawn is what keeps us looking respectable! :) As much fun as I had this weekend I can't wait for Donald to get home. Things are much more fun with him around!