Our trip to Washington and New York, from one coast to the other!

We just got back from an unbelieveable trip......making this our most favorite summer ever!!! I had been so sad that we hadn't had a real vacation in such a long time and then it turned out that we were able to go to Washington and to New York!

We went to Washington first, to see my Mom who lived on the Long Beach Peninsula, near Astoria, Oregon. I hadn't seen her in a year and a half, so we had a wonderful visit! My brother was there from Japan as well, so we got to see him, too. He's a real character and so much fun! My niece and her children and my nephew were also there and my older brother and his girlfriend, so it was an incredible time together; very sad to leave. I wish we all lived closer somehow.

We also drove up to Bellingham, near the Canadian border and visited with Mike's brothers and their families. It just makes you so happy to spend time with your family; they are the most important people in the world!

Then we drove back home to Salt Lake, but while we were in Washington, we were invited to exhibit our art work in Brooklyn, New York. So, several days later, after going through all of our best artwork, we packed everything up and started our drive to New York. We left at 4:30 in the morning so it was an adventure. Mike and I had always wanted to go to New York but were terrified of going, so now we had a real purpose in going and we were so excited to show our work there.

The trip there was unbelieveable!! We went through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvani, New Jersey and finally arrived in New York. Nebraska through Ohio had so much corn, hundreds of miles of corn! I've never seen so much corn. Such beautiful, amazing farms. What a wonderful experience it was to see all of that. It really helps you to appreciate how hard people work to provide for everyone in our country. It was hot and humid, but we got through it. Arriving in New York was total madness! At first, I was ready to turn right around and go home! People live in this chaos, I thought! Crazy! But, after a while, I was ok. I suddenly realized we were fine, although there were millions of things going on all around us. Mike said it's like if you have 20 actors go on a stage and let each one of them do what they want......that's what New York is like. Thousands of people, cars, building, horns honking, pedestrians, bridges, streets going 100 different directions. It was amazing, though, how it all worked somehow. We started unloading our artwork and later showed the curator our sculptures, little furniture and characters and then took a break while they went through our paintings......

Will tell you more a little later. Here's some pictures of our first day there at the exhibit. The exhibit will be there in Brooklyn for a month. We are so excited about it.

Debbie