The big city of Houston!

On to Quilt Market! We left Salt Lake City at the butt crack of dawn, 6:50 AM and arrived in Houston around 11 AM. On our way to the hotel we see the devastation Hurricane Ike left, large city buildings with windows still blown out, tarps over lots of roofs,etc. We set up our booth and then went to a wonderful dinner at Spencers. Back to the convention center, which is seriously the size of a city, to set up for sample spree. We all know what Black Friday is...well Sample Spree is basically a Black Friday crammed into a room with quiltaholics! It was madness! The next day, we were open for business! Mary's booth turned out really cute and her quilts looked like artwork on the walls. Sidenote: we had these lamps in our booth and they would just randomly turn off or flicker so we decided we had a haunted booth space!We kept busy most of the day. We met up with some of Mary's friends, (now my friends) and had a great dinner at Bennihana's. The following 2 days were a blur because they were so similar! Lots of, "would you like a flyer? All of Mary's new patterns are here for Market!". I think Mary did pretty good considering she is possibly going to be designing some patterns for some fabric companies, possibly being published in a magazine and we all made some new friends. I went around meeting some other vendors and telling them about my Cottage Quilt business. Then the breakdown of the booth!! I don't have any pictures of the booth other than the one I took from my cell phone but you wouldn't believe what we fit in our suitcases! We flew back home late Monday night and were ready for bed! Houston is quite an eclectic city, maybe one day I will get to venture further than the little park across from the convention center!


Mary's booth! Home for 3 days...

Trip to D.C

Well, so much to catch up on! Thomas and Victoria went to D.C on Tuesday, Oct. 14th. It was long plane ride for Tori but she was a great girl for daddy. The next day, they went to the National Zoo and saw the giant pandas, little turtles learning to swim, and a fish cat (larger than a house cat). She said the little turtles were her favorite! They also went to a park and watched the planes land, which they literally fly right over your head! They hung out with Aunt Laura and Jeff and watched Night at the Museum. They went to Washington Monument, and road all the way to the top! Here's their view!



After that, they ventured over to the Natural History Museum and Victoria got to see lots of animals and precious stones. Check out some of the pictures here! Lindsey met up with the family on Thursday. Laura, Lindsey, Thomas and Tori all went to the D.C. United soccer game. It was awesome to see all the D.C. supporters groups, they were crazy! Friday morning Laura made us some scrapple! East coast breakfast meat, good stuff. We then went to the George Washington Masonic Memorial. What a beautiful place! The grounds were well kept and the view was amazing from the top! We went to a candy store in Old Town Alexandria, bought $18 worth of taffy and then later found out it comes from Taffy Town. (A Utah company!) Our flight left early Saturday morning and before you know you it we were back in Utah!

Meanwhile, while we were in D.C, Jordan was helping his mom take care of Bosco. He gave him lots of kisses! Now Thomas owes him a trip to see the Jazz play!


The plane is going to land in her hand!


The Giant Panda!


At the D.C. United Game


George Washington Masonic Memorial

We love going to the D.C. area. We can't wait to go back! Its important that everyone sees these memorials and monuments to realize how much our founding fathers went through and how important it is to remember history. There is still so much more to see in D.C. so I'm sure we will plan another trip soon.

Work, work work...and play!

I'm going to Washington, D.C. in October for a conference for work. I am so excited to go back to one of my favorite places in the country! This will be my first tradeshow that I will be working at, along with some of my co-workers, should be fun. :) I will also be seeing Laura and Jeff while I am out there. Thomas is going to try and go out during the same week. I hope he can find a flight. He's such a history buff! The trip just won't be the same without him.

The following week I am going to Houston for a quilt tradeshow...yes, I said QUILT tradeshow. My boss Mary, has a booth at the Internation Quilt festival and we will be promoting her company Mary's Cottage Quilts and my website, http://www.cottagequilts.com/. This will be a fun one as well, but lots of work.

Tour of Utah- Stage One

Thomas loves cycling and the Tour of Utah is the biggest race in Utah! We will be going to 4 out of the 5 stages. Here is a recap of the first stage. We headed down to Nephi, site of stage one and followed the cyclists on their stage.

Our first stop was Fountain Green.



Next stop was Mt. Pleasant

Here is the breakaway (leaders) after they had went the wrong way! They had to turn around.


Fairview stop, here comes the peloton!


King of the mountain stop...Go team Garmin!

And finally we arrive in Nephi for the finish!

Finish Line and the top three finishers

Here is Thomas with Jason Donald from team Garmin Chipotle who was the stage winner.
Thomas sent in a fan experience to Slipstream (owner of the team) and they posted his picture and his comments. See the link here for details: http://www.slipstreamsports.com/2008/08/14/tour-of-utah-pics

More to come as this is only stage 1!

RSL Meet the team day- August 7, 2008

We are big ReAL Salt Lake fans! We headed up to Snowbird for the annual meet the team day.

Thomas with Kyle Beckerman

Tori and Jordan love soccer!! They were so excited to meet the players and they wore their jerseys. They got all the players autographs and Jordan had his ball signed.


I took all the pics so I am not pictured. It was a fun evening and we can't wait for RSL to get into their new Sandy stadium!

Getting started...

Well I am new to blogging, just trying to get my feet wet. Here are a few pictures of our family,

The Welkers!

Here is a collage I made for Thomas on Fathers Day a few years ago

Family pic taken in July 07' at Fairview Lake

Another family pic taken up by our family cabin in Fairview, July 07'

More to come!