I do cool stuff too

At the beginning of 2010, many of my friends made goals for the year. And many of them involved doing something active, like running a marathon, competing in a triathlon, etc. Not my idea of fun. I finally came up with the idea of sewing my first quilt. Shortly after I decided, I promptly put it off in classic Naomi style. However, with the encouragement of Oma Becky, we decided to tackle the project while we were in Alaska. After many cups of tea, a couple glasses of wine, and a little bit of swearing, I completed the quilt top while we were up there. I did all the sewing but Becky helped immensely with the ironing and most importantly, the measuring and math. We took the idea from this book and modeled this quilt from it. We made it bigger and I will post another picture once I finish it completely and it is hanging on my living room wall.

While Johnny and Emily were in Alaska last year, they won a ticket to Alaska Canopy, one of the zip line companies in Juneau. They didn't get around to using it so they left it for John Roth when they left in May. He didn't get around to using it so he left it for Peter and I. I was chosen as the lucky one to use it and we weren't about to cough up $179 for Peter to come with me since that is a lot of money and he is afraid of heights.
I had a great adventure and met some fun people. It was nice to do something on my own and especially nice to have something to talk about other than my kids once I got home.

One day Becky volunteered to keep track of our monkeys at home and let Peter and I spend the day on the boat with Greg. It was wonderful. I read, drank tea, and caught this huge Silver Salmon. It was the only fish we caught all day but it was awesome. I set the line in the water and reeled it in. I love that I did it all. Let me tell you, reeling a 15 pound (it is 17 pounds when Peter tells the story), salmon in is not easy. I actually used labor pain techniques while fighting him in. I just tried not to think about the pain!

This dinner was my favorite all week. (And we had some good ones!) Blackened silver salmon, garlic green beans, homemade rosemary bread, and white wine. Not to mention the beautiful sunset we had off the porch. I told Peter I wanted to come back up there for my birthday dinner.

This is the last minute or so of the fight with the fish. I showed him who was boss.