Reflecting.

This past weekend was bittersweet. On Saturday my old high school hosted a memorial for the friend that past away. Sean, my mother & I all attended, along with about 600 other people. The service beautifully showcased her wonderful life and personality...an uplifting yet sorrowful experience. I was quite distraught afterwards but am lucky enough to have a great family to help my spirits with a ping pong competition. I think we topped nearly five hours of playing and the competition was intense. There were initial matches, rematches, more rematches until we each thought we finally figured the other out. It was a fun way to pass the time away laughing, huffing and chiding.

Lake 22: Last week Amy & I did our usual hike, this time to the beautiful Lake 22. It wasn't a very long hike and it was fairly level compared to our past hikes which made it just delightful. We passed by waterfalls, huge cedars, we saw a snake slithering in the rocks, a mouse scamper in front of our feet, played on the many boulders littered throughout the trail, shivered next to the ice cave and ate our lunch looking out on the large lake. We started out at our usual time which is pretty early, apparently, allowing us to enjoy the entire lake and trail to ourselves. But on our way back we passed quite a few hikers making us curious how many had signed the log since we began, 20 people! Not only did we luck out on the people aspect, the afternoon turned cloudy and overcast, quite a contrast to the sun shiny morning we soaked in.

I also had the chance to FINALLY work on our graduation pages. I wrote about it earlier in these two entries: Andrea, Sean. It was fitting to reflect on our college experience and what we gained, earned and will take with us as we move on in our lives.

Being pretty much up to date with our current album, I'm left with time to work on albums I have set aside, particularly my Europe 07' album. The two middle layouts were both inspired by this week's sketch at Sketchy Thursdays. It feels good to be a few pages closer to finishing another album and fun to remember all the adventures I had overseas. It is amazing to me that it has almost been three years since I left for my studies in Tilburg, Netherlands. How time flies!