It’s been a strange week of visiting the cabin, mixed with some not-so-wonderful storm chases.   Snapped a few cute pictures of my neice, Adeline picking some flowers.

After the type of year we’ve had so far, with barely any good storm chase days, we figured that since last Wednesday didn’t look the greatest for chasing, we better be normal people and just head to the cabin.  Little did we know it would result in tornadic storms right near our own home!  Lucky for some of our friends, it was a perfect evening chase close to home.  Unfortunately for us, we had a hard time enjoying life at the cabin while watching radar on our cell phones and knowing that their were likely nice tornadoes on those storms.

So when Thursday seemed to be an even better day for chasing, we decided to pack up and chase.  Long story short, we drove a lot and barely even saw a storm since the cap just didn’t want to budge.

Friday we were back at the cabin and Friday night, Beau’s family joined us.  One bad chase didn’t leave us too bitter and we got to enjoy a wonderful fish fry along with our own Tiki Party on Saturday.  It was good times.  But then Sunday came and we decided to leave the place I love early and book it down to southern MN/northern IA.  Storms were slow to get any real development and there were lots of them.  Very hard to pick which one to go after in that situation, especially without any of them looking great.  Action started to pick up later in the day near the MN/IA border but all because of our road choices, we ended up barely seeing anything.

It was one of those days that made me feel like I should just stop forecasting the weather or storm chase ever again.  But on Tuesday, a quick little “chase” a few miles south of my house brought me to a good summer storm.  Nothing all too severe, just some wind gusts ( probably up to 45 mph at the highest), a few good lightning strikes, and the wonderful smell of summer rain.  It was enough to remind me of my love for storms.

Here’s a pano I made as the squall line came in.

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Our newest nephew, now 3 days old (with Beau’s brother, Ben – the father).

Zachary Eli. I love that he only lives a few houses away from us, so I can go get my baby fix when I need it :)

More pictures to come, of course!

By the time this post publishes, I should be enjoying the view at the cabin, maybe fishing, maybe reading, maybe eating some delicious summer foods. All of the above possibilites are just fine with me.

Picture above:  A few shots I took last fall the last time we were at the cabin.

I’ll be sure to document the few days we have at the cabin, since I’m not sure if we’ll be able to get back up there again this summer. Time goes too fast, and our lives just seem too busy. But you can bet I’ll be doing what I can to arrange another little trip up to the cabin for later this summer!

My sister in law (I know, I’ve been posting about sister in law’s and nephews and kids tons, but I just have a big family!), Amy has awesome kids. Just plain awesome. Adeline and Grant have grown up so much just in the few years I’ve been a part of Beau’s family.

We headed down to visit them out of the blue one day after I was recovering from a week of overnights. Beau woke me up at about 10am, (I’d gone to bed about 7am) and told me we were heading down to Amy’s place for awhile. It’s a couple hours drive, so luckily I was able to sleep again in the car. And playing with the kids, hanging out and having hamburgers on the grill on a nice summer day woke me up perfectly.

My coworker, Ron’s adorable little boy, Dylan. He’s so sweet. Especially when he told Beau and I that we didn’t need to leave that night after we had dinner with them. “We have plenty of beds,” he said. Seriously, adorable.

More pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dayzeecloud/sets/72157619466994877/

This first picture may be my most favorite picture ever. I headed over to my sister in law, Britt’s place on one of my days off last week. With my crazy schedule, seems like we never get to see each other anymore, but she’s got a couple days off during the week now, so once in awhile, it just works out.
I hadn’t seen my little nephew in months… and gosh, he’s only about 5 months old as it is. I needed to see him! Oh my, and isn’t he cute?

More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dayzeecloud/sets/72157619614882576/

Saw this over on Michelle Moore’s blog and just loved it. (By the way, she’s an awesome photographer!) I’m a person that gets hooked on something and can’t do anything but focus on that one thing. Like play a song over and over and over… and over a few more times. And it’s sort of fun to document your likes, month by month.

WATCH: Grey’s Anatomy – I can watch old episodes of my favorite shows anytime.  Plus I can’t have silence in the house when I’m alone.  I always want to have at least some noise in the background.  So when I’m editing photos or just catching up on facebook or emailing, I’ll pop in a disc and just have it play in the background.  Plus with all the crazy stuff going on in my favorite shows, it can’t hurt to get a reminder of what happened in the past.  You know, because it’s so incredibly important… oh wait…

LISTEN: I found Pandora quite awhile ago, but I hadn’t used it recently because I couldn’t find a station I liked.  Well, just randomly, I thought I’d plug in Mandy Moore’s name and see what I got.   Somehow it gives me all the songs I could ever want to hear.  Switchfoot, Avril Lavigne, Taylor Swift, Jordan Sparks, Leona Lewis.  All good. So my new Mandy Moore Pandora station (don’t know if that link will work or not) is the best ever!

EAT: I don’t know why or how, but it took 24 years for me to realize my love for green peppers.  A few months ago, my mother in law took me and my nephew out to eat at B&L’s Pizza, a local pizza place.  Their specialty pizza is green peppers, onions, and sausage.  It was delicious.  Well ever since, when Beau and I have frozen pizzas at home, I chopped up some pepper and onion for it.  Then it crossed Beau’s mind to make some pizza from scratch.  This pizza is the best pizza ever.  Seriously.

LUST: I’m not an Apple fan, at all.  In fact, I have been fairly against all of their overpriced products for quite a few years.  Well… I had a chance to really play with the iPhone a few days ago, and I’ve fallen in love.  I soooo didn’t want to like it, but I couldn’t help it, and now that ATT has lowered the price on it, I’m all over getting one.  May take a month or so, but I”ll have one soon.

READ: I love Jodi Picoult, and when I found out that one of my favorite books by her was being made into a movie, I had to reread it.  It’s only been about 2 years since I read it, but I wanted a refresher before I went to see the movie.  Very funny+sad story about two sisters.  And by the way, every book I’ve read by this author (which is probably close to 7 or 8 by now) has been phenomenal.  Great writing, awesome stories.

PS. Heading to the cabin soon, and I’m way pumped! You can expect some awesome, summer-time fun, cabin pictures in the next week or so.

So, I was a little lazy when we first got home from our vacation and stitching together a big panorama just didn’t sound like fun… waiting at my computer… watching it do its thing…

But I finally got around to it and made a wonderful panorama of the view from Apgar Lookour – one of our longer hikes.  Felt like we were climbing a huge mountain!

Click to see larger because it gets even more awesome then.