If you can't stand the heat...

Is anyone else burning up in the heat this week? Here are some pics to help cool you down :) I've been reminiscing about our dogsledding trip from last winter. Enjoy some more pics!

Cliff & me on the sled


Starting on the lake, hooking sleds up to the poles before we take off




Going across the frozen lake


Sled trail through the woods

8.3.08 8pm pst Alternative Disaster Prep: with Cliff Lau

In today's premier and final episode of "Alternative Disaster Prep: with Cliff Lau" we would like to explore an alternative method to burning emergency candles. Let's say you're hanging around your home one evening and suddenly the lights go out! Remember, this is an emergency,so please stay calm! Ok, good. Now, you're sitting in the dark and can't see a thing, but you're munching on some tasty almonds! Here's your alternative disaster prep solution. Take one of your tasty almonds, grab a handy-dandy lighter and torch your almond until it catches on fire! And voila, you have your emergency light source. Your almond will burn for about 3-4 minutes, so don't eat all your almonds you may need to burn more!

As a continued celebration of Sarah's birthday, we all went to see Wicked, the musical down in LA! It was really good :) And it was so much fun having everyone there - mom, dad, Sarah, John, Jonathan, me and Cliff and a couple of Jonathan's friends came along.





Happy Birthday, Sarah!

"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." -Lewis Gizzard

We planted another vege garden this year. Only this year we called it our "Salsa Garden!" We planted tomatoes, hot peppers, and also some basil and chives. We are just now seeing the fruit of our labor and the tomatoes are sooo sweet.

If you remember last year my tomato garden got so huge it almost grew over Cliff and I in our sleep. Well this year we thought we would out-smart the vine and Cliff built a fence around the garden. Our tomatoes are definitely growing more vertical this year, however I noticed that they are starting to go over on our neighbor's patio cover. Maybe I should warn them... hmmm. Anyways, so we have had success in detering them from entering our home, but now we've discovered it's quite difficult to pick our ripe fuit! I had to reach through a cut out in the fence with a wooden spoon in my hand to get my ripe roma tomatoes this morning.





And look! these are the roma tomatoes I picked this morning! They have little "belts" around their waists for some reason. Wierd.




Bring chips! We've got salsa!

Cayman sure is Grand!

Cliff and I got back from a trip last Friday. We went to explore the island of Grand Cayman and the scuba diving down there. This was Cliff's first trip to the Caribbean, and he loved it! So did I! In fact, Cliff loved it so much he never wants to go to another island. I think I'll have to work on getting him to explore more islands :) Grand Cayman is perfect. The island has it all - warm weather, warm water, turquoise blue clear water, white sand, great restaurants, friendly people, driving on the wrong side of the road... How could you not love it??

Cliff has actually written an excellent detailed review of our trip and I encourage you to check it out here Grand Cayman forum: Grand Cayman Trip Report 6/14-6/20 - TripAdvisor

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy!

Sunset from hotel balcony-




See the turtle? He was sitting there eating something. Then Cliff ate him (or probably his cousin) at the restaurant that night. Ya, we ate turtle because you can in Grand Cayman. They grow them on turtle farms.


Ok, get this. We went to Hell! No lie. See that little devil in the brimstone behind Cliff??


And here is Cliff at Hell's giftshop! Hell is a little town or area in Grand Cayman. I encourage you all to go Hell, and I mean that with the best of intensions, of course! We drove a rental car to get there. Cliff insists that you can get there in a handbasket, but I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of that one...


Cliff got to drive on the right side of the car and the left side of the road. Every turn we made, we had to remind ourselves what side of the road we wanted to be on. Luckily we didn't follow the other tourist driver that drove the WRONG WAY on a round-about!










Us on the dive boat. Diving was soooo amazing this trip that instead of doing one day of scuba diving like we had planned, we ended up doing 3 days of scuba diving!~


Walking to Reef Grill-


We went to Stingray City! This is a crazy place on a sand bar out in the north bay where hundreds of stingrays come to be fed squid by the tourists. It's quite an experience. These huge stingrays are all over you, rubbing on your legs, up your side, trying to find the squid in your hand. You can pet them and have fun with them and then you let them suck the squid out of your hand, but you have to be careful because their suck is so strong they can get a conch out of it's shell in one suck. One ray got a little too friendly with Cliff and he got a hickey on his knee. Ouch!


Aww, relaxation...


Kat, this picture is for you!


So, anyone else want to go back with us??

"They're.. DANCING!!!!!!!!"

Haha! Ok, first off, 1st prize goes to the person who can name what movie that quote is from :)

Quick update on the dancing front - Cliff and I dance. We are dancers. Yes, in the most basic sense of the word, but really we're making great progress. We had two private lessons this week and learned the waltz, rumba, and swing! We can do the box step and the basic swing step (don't know what it's called, does it have a name?) and we learned an under arm turn which Cliff really likes and so do I.

I've always wanted to learn to dance and I'm so glad I can do this with my Sweetie Cliff! Thanks for being a wonderful dance partner, Cliff :)

Stay tuned for the premier episode of...

Starring, Clifford Lau and his partner, Erin Lau.

What will the judges say about their first attempts at dancing ballroom??

No, you're right there won't be any judges, thank goodness! But we'll tell you how it goes tomorroww. We're finally going to our first dance lesson tomorrow evening. I'm very excited!!! :)

(In case you're not familiar, these [edited] photos are taken from one of our favorite TV shows "Dancing with the Stars." )