Weekend in Santa Rosa

Kelley and I spent a nice weekend at the home of Brent and Bab's Greenwood. They live in Santa Rosa, CA which is located about 60 miles north of San Francisco. They are the parents of one of Kelley's best friends, Elizabeth.

They also happen to have the beautiful backyard shown in the photo below which is wonderful when the weather is nice and hot.

Kelley took advantage of the vineyard across the street from their home to spend some time painting.



And we enjoyed being out in the country a bit.

Our Apartment

These photos show where we live now. It's a lot different than the neighborhood we stayed in for May and June. The neighborhood is called "The Richmond". Our building is the one behind the telephone pole.


Kelley is standing right below our apartment window. I wish that was our garage but its not. It costs about $250 extra per month to have a parking spot in the garage.

Giants Baseball Game

We decided at the last minute to attend a Giants baseball game this past week. Kelley rode the bus to my office and we walked to the game from there. It is a very beautiful stadium, but it was unbelievable how cold it was watching the game. We didn't stay for very long. Over the right field wall is the San Francisco Bay...that's where Barry Bonds hit all those homeruns.

Time at the farm and on the lake.

During our trip home we split our time between Kelleys parent's house and my parent's home. The farm shots are at the Fannin place.

Kelley and her mom, Annette had the chance to do what they enjoy the best. Ride horses.

Here is a shot of the Fannin farm house.
And some of the animals you may encounter when visiting there...
This is a photo of Kelley on the front of my parent pontoon boat. We both got sunburned due to our first afternoon in the sun at Grand Lake. This is where my parents live.


Kelley and I visited her alma-mater, Hillsdale College. We enjoyed a morning walking around campus and looking at all the new buildings and statues.

Colin's Birthday Party

Kelley and I spent our summer vacation by enjoying 8 days in Jackson, MI.

The first major event was a birthday party!

We celebrated Colin Shirkey's 4th birthday party last Sunday afternoon. It was a perfect summer afternoon to be outside and share cake and play games. Colin is the son of my little brother Daniel.

Micah and Colin are below showing us how to take care of the cake. (Micah is my sister Marilyn's son)


Colin shared his truck with his cousin Alyssia. (Alyssia is my siste Marilyn's daughter)

Micah and Colin were doing their best to tire out Daniel and myself.
My grandma and grandpa Shirkey were also able to make the party. Kelley and I got to seem them quite a bit this week.
My mom got these skirts for my sister, Marilyn and my wife, Kelley. They didn't realize that they were both going to wear them to the party.

Karter was at the party too...making sure we all had enough competitive sports to participate in! I'm not sure what's going on with Micah in the background?

Red-Eye to Michigan

Kelley is meeting me at work in a little bit and then we'll take the subway to the airport. Bus, train, airplane and then when we arrive in Michigan we'll ride in a good old car as Dad Fannin picks us up at 5:00AM EST.

We are pretty excited about going home. We haven't been home since Christmas, which is the longest either of us have been away. Sometimes it feels pretty sad to be gone so long, but I guess that is the life we are choosing for the time being.

Kelley has got to do some blog postings because she has doing some super art. She's starting to do oil painting now. As a matter of fact, one of my coworkers just hired her to do a painting of his home here in the city. That'll be a new challenge for Kelley to paint in an urban setting.

Here are some photos of the area we live near now.

This is a neighborhood named SeaCliff. It's about 8 block from our apartment.

We just recently learned about a trail that walks through this park called "Lands End. This is the northwestern most point of the city. When you walk from our apartment and around "Lands End" you end up...

...looking over this old "ruin" shown below which is called the Sutro Baths...

then you come upon the Cliff House...

then Ocean Beach....

It is still pretty amazing to consider that we can walk to all this stuff and we live in city?

Quiet July 4th...

Kelley and I had a pretty chill day today. We moved to a different apartment last Sunday and where we are now is quite different than our previous San Fran apartment. We are in an area that is very foggy. We didn't see the sun at all today and it probably never rose above 60 degrees outside. On the map below you can it shows where we now live (A) and where we used to live (B). Really it's only about 2.5 miles between the 2 locations, but it's night and day.
We enjoyed some pizza at a local place this evening which was fun.