Tis the Season...

Update 9/2/08: I promise to get some pics up of the weddings some time this week...keep checking back!

For Jim and I this year has been one FILLED with weddings. So Far we have already attended 4, one of which Jim was the best man in, and now in the next 3 weeks we have 4 more! I am off today to Tahoe to attend one of my oldest and best friends, Chad Koch's wedding. I am really looking forward to it, as it will be a small gathering of all of our closest friends. I have never been to Tahoe so its a great excuse to go. Jim will be staying in Spokane and attending one of his buddies weddings in CDA. I wish i could make it back to go to Derrick's but I really didn't want to miss Chad's so this was the best way...one representative of the McCollum household at each wedding.

I get back from Tahoe on Sunday afternoon and then turn around the following Friday and head to Boise for another one of my oldest and best friends, Chad Downs's wedding. Jim will not be attending this wedding either as he will be in Seattle watching the Coug's kickoff what we hope to be a suprising season (keep your fingers crossed anyway). This will be the first wedding our entire old school crew will get to be together in FOREVER, so it will be especially nice to see everyone. Kristen is even flying in from NYC for the weekend. We did not get a chance to hang out much while she was home for the summer so some quality bonding will be taking place on this trip :)

Once i get back to Spokane I will have Labor Day off to relax from my travels and then that Saturday we have another wedding! This one is at least in Spokane and we can both attend. After that i think the majority of all our weddings will be over...until my sister gets married in November (apple cup weekend-do people not check thier cougar schedules before making such huge life decisions? I know i do!). Even though it will be a busy couple weeks, i absolutely love weddings and I am very excited to be able to go to all of these events and share in each couples day. They each have picked partners who are a great match and really complete them, and I know they all will live "happily ever after!"


Hope you all have fun-filled, sun-filled weekends.

***As many of you who know me know I am terrible when it comes to taking pictures. I usually have my camera I just am not the best at remembering. Most pictures on here are actually stolen from other friends facebooks or myspaces. That being said I will try my hardest to take some pics of my travels and of the weddings to share with you all :)

A tradition is started...

Over the weekend we got to spend some quality time with our good friends, the Labelle's and the Snyder's, camping up at Priest Lake. We picked the best weekend for it as it was extremely hot all weekend long. Our original plan was to camp up at Lion Head camp ground, but when Megs, Chris and Jim got there Thursday morning it was already full. Apparently lots and lots of people had the same plan. They headed back around the lake and found a spot at the first campground they stopped at, in Reeder Bay. It worked out great being so close to Elkins…we could walk over for breakfast, things we forgot, the cleaner bathrooms (Megan!!!), or a little nightcap :)

Even though Elkins was so close we did do a lot of our own cooking. One morning we had bacon, eggs, and pancakes (thanks chris and jim) and another night we had Steak and corn, it was so good i am still thinking about it! Some pretty impressive camping meals if I do say so myself…not that I did any of the hard stuff. Diane and I cooked the hamburgers and hot dogs on the last night :)

Bobby's Grandpa even let us take the boat out for the day on Saturday. Bobby, Chris, Megan, and Diane all wake boarded while Jim brought us back to 1992 and did some knee boarding.

We spent the majority or our time on the beach playing in the water, reading, consuming beverages, relaxing and soaking up the sun.



Bobby had some trouble finding a chair to hold him...He's such a Tuesday:)



At night we played games and told stories around the campfire and even had a near death experience with a cell phone battery and the fire (oops). Thankfully no one was hurt and it is something we can look back at and laugh about in the years to come; as was the entire trip. Looks like we have another tradition to add to our growing list of things to do together!

Once every 4 years...

The summer Olympics begin today and I am counting down the hours till the opening ceremonies! It is no secret that i love all sports and grew up in a sports enthused family. Our family vactions were not so much vacations as they were driving to my siblings soccer tournaments when i was young. Even when we were not playing in actual games my siblings and I were "hosting" our own Olympics in the backyard. We had opening and closing ceremonies (equipped with fireworks if you can believe it) and we each picked a country we would represent. I was always Frace because at the time my "boyfriend's" last name was Franz. I think this is really where my love of Olympics, and all sports in general, started. It was usally just Terry, Sheila and I who would play, as I think Sean was old enough to realize how big of nerds we were; but we played every sport. All the events took place in our front or back yard and street and I'm fairly sure our neighbors thought we were nuts. Below is a description of some of the games we would play.

Baseball: with only 3 people it was a little difficult to field a team but ghost runners helped complete the games

Basketball: one on one with the person sitting out acting as ref

Tennis: Thanks to the cracks in our street we had what was a pretty good court, except if you got it past the opposing player then you had to run down the street after the ball.

Volleyball: a cleaned out garage, a ballet bar, a taped floor and a big rubber kids ball work wonders.

Track: your basic races in the front yard worked well for this event. And i vaguley remember the high jump consisting of the same ballet bar described above and some old mattresses placed underneath it

Our all time favorite was SOCCER: We used the rubber ball from volleyball (my parents would have been wise to take out stock in these since we went thru so many of them) and had two pillars on our house which we used as goal posts. Occasionally, we would have inclement weather, (thanks to a strategically places sprinkler) that we would have to play thru because that is what real soccer players do. No matter what the game would always end in penalty kicks and so we would line up by the curb and do our best to get it past the goalie.

Once all the games were over we would tally up which country was the all around winner and then hold, you guessed it, the medal ceremony. Now I am not sure if we had actual music for each countrys anthem but i do know we had medals. We would take our brother's old soccer medals that you got for competing in different tournaments and use them as our Gold medals. I dont think second or third ever actually got anything besides made fun of for not winning the whole thing(Gee i wonder if this is where my competitive drive comes from?:))

It is clear writing this that my brother, sister, and I had entirely too much time on our hands, but looking back now they really are some of my favorite memories. It was the most awesome thing to be able to hang with my older siblings and not actually have to force them to play with me. We still all laugh about these crazy things we did when we were kids. But it is no doubt where I got my love for all things Olympics. As I have gotten older, clearly i have learned to love the olympics for other reasons but thats a whole other post. So while you all will be going on with your daily lives you can bet that for the next 16 days I will be at home engrossed in the Olympics and my childhood dreams of standing on that podium, with the national anthem playing in the background and the real gold medal being hung around my neck...and secretely rooting for France! :)