Buck Owen's Crystal Palace

Bakersfield, CA - Stephanie and I went to Buck Owen's Crystal Palace for Friday night dinner and drinks. For those of you who don't know country, Buck Owen's (1929-2006) is a well known country singer. He set up the Crystal Palace as a place to continue to share his music, as well as a place to display some of his memorabilia. The outside of the Crystal Palace isn't much of a sight to see, but once inside it's like a club for country lovers with music and dancing. While we were there, we listened to Buddy Alan Owens and The Buckaroos. All of the people who knew how to square dance were on the dance floor, and those of us who don't know just sat back and enjoyed the music. It was a great place to hang out, and ladies, if you're looking for a cute cowboy... ;)

Meet Krissy, Sister #2

Out of the three of us sisters, Krissy is the fun one. Anyone who knows her knows that she is the life of the party and always so much fun to be around. Growing up, Krissy was my cool older sister (older by 6 yrs). She was always doing neat things like traveling to exotic places. Kris isn’t afraid to go to completely foreign places to get immersed into the culture, and she never says no to a new adventure. I would anxiously await her return with all of her interesting stories. I especially loved the story about the time she got her palm read by a psychic while she was overseas… you’ll have to ask her about that one;)

Kris also comes up with the most random places to visit and makes it fun. When my cousins, Elise and Audrey, went to visit her in Indiana over the summer, she took them on a road trip to see the world’s largest ball of paint and the girls had a blast! For Elise’s 16^th birthday Kris thought it would be fun to take our cousins on a surprise road trip down to Southern California. Her idea was to trick them into thinking we were going somewhere boring for them, like Joshua Tree National Park, and then surprising them with something really fun. We had them convinced we were going to a place that would have been boring for two teenagers (even though I’m sure Krissy could have made Joshua Tree National Park a fun trip for them) for several days until we were literally in the Disneyland parking garage.

Krissy has probably traveled for leisure the most out of all of us and she certainly has been to the most foreign countries. Let’s see how many I can name: Spain, France, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, London, lots of places in the US, and most recently, Greece. She got her degree in Spanish at Anderson University in Indiana, and lived in Chile for about six months while in college. She became fluent in Spanish when she was in Chile (which I am super jealous of), and this has helped her get around in a lot of the other places she’s traveled to. Most recently she lived in Indiana, where there are actually four seasons, for a couple of years while working for Anderson University as the West Coast admissions counselor. Her job entailed recruiting students to the school among other things on the “West Coast”, which was pretty much anything west of Indiana. So, Krissy has done her fair share of traveling for her job alone, doing shows and events to promote the school.

In May 2010, Krissy got married to David (the man of her dreams). She just moved up to the Seattle area, where it rains ten months out of the year, to be with him. Although she has visited Seattle several times, she is still going to have lots of new places to explore there. Kris will be juggling a new job and a masters program to be a school counselor while visiting all of these new places with her hubby.

JKLM, L is for Libby

Libby is my baby sister; the perfect one we always joke my parents waited to have. The joke isn’t that she isn’t perfect. She was such a good, fun kid, who never got in trouble. My parents were happy with the rest of us, but I think they enjoyed not having to wash her mouth out with soap.

Libby is an amazing, generous woman; but I’m partial I think my sisters are amazing (now that I’m an adult, I wasn’t always a fan of them as rug-rats). Before Lib became a granola girl in the Northwest, she did an internship in DC for Congressman Devan Nunes. DC is my favorite city and the booger got to live a block away from the Capital Building: I was so jealous! Lib attended college in Kirkland, WA at Northwest University where she got a volleyball scholarship. Lib graduated in 2009 with her BA in Political Science & History; and left us to be an Au pair for two brothers in Spain. She traveled a lot during her two months in Spain, solo and with the family. And after her commitment was up, our mom met her there and the two of them traveled to Estonia, Finland, Italy, and Switzerland. Thank goodness we didn’t start this competition last summer, Libby would have beat us in no time at all.

In a couple months Libby will start Law School and move to Fresno. I’m mourning her move before it happens. I have enjoyed seeing her often, since I’m an obvious escape for her while she lives with my parents (she’s been saving for law school; she’s a smart cookie). When she starts law school she will be broke, so she’ll have an extra challenge to accomplish the 100 new things on no budget.

I see Libby has my major competition, she is focused and dedicated to anything she sets her mind to. My husband says it’s our German Heritage. While the German makes Lib and I more focused, it also makes us a little less fun (Krissy is the fun, creative one).

Sister #!: Melanie

As we get our blog started, we thought it would be appropriate, for those readers who don't already know us, to have the chance to learn a bit more about who we are. If you do already know us, maybe you'll learn something new.

I am not Melanie but I have been Melanie's closest sister in age all my life so I can offer a few insights into who she is better than any one else, well, except maybe her husband. She is two years older than me so as children, I was usually blamed for her trouble-making (I was an angel!). When we got to be the same size, she'd continually borrow my clothes but never returned the favor... It was sweet revenge when I creeped past her in height and people starting thinking I was the older of the two. And now, since we've both learned to appreciate each other as friends, it's great having someone with great style whose closet I can raid (well, parts of it at least, we can't share pants...).

Melanie has always been good at giving direction and most of the time, I've been willing to comply She calls it bossiness, I consider it pressured guidance and I do appreciate it. She is a woman who knows what she wants and knows how to fight for it in the nicest way. I have never met a more loyal and generous person.

In 2004 she started working for our family company, Hellwig Products, as a sales representative. In an industry that is predominantly male, she quickly learned she couldn't just be the beautiful, kind person she is but she'd have to really know her stuff. And she does. She's been traveling around the country, getting the "Hellwig" name out there ever since. She never hesitates to get involved in a variety of arenas through her work.

Melanie and her husband, Justin, got married in 2000 and are quite the team. Occasionally Justin gets to join Mel on her travels making the travel much more enjoyable and far less lonely. When Justin isn't along, she usually takes care of business solo. However, since the birth of her beautiful (and perfect) baby last November, the way she travels has changed quite a bit! The days of one carry-on and one personal item have passed. This summer she and her family will be traveling all over California and up into the Northwest so she'll have plenty of opportunities to vie for first place in our competition.

She's a busy, traveling businesswoman and mom and she does a great job at it!

Rules, I love Rules!

Being the oldest sister also makes me the bossy one that likes rules, guidelines, parameters, anything to do with structure. So here I am to setup some guidelines; to qualify a place as one of our 100 new places (100 of them! Eek!) they have to fit some standards (that by the way all the sisters agreed to).

Here are the rules:

The place has to be new to the sister (it doesn't matter if another has been there before) and the sisters can also go together and it counts towards both of their goal of 100

The place can be a restaurant, national park, city, country, anything cool and significant. A Starbucks won't count unless it's really significant like the first Starbucks (but sisters none of you can use this, we've all already been there)

The sister has to blog about the place, give it's significance and tell about their experience visiting the place. Spare no juicy detail! (I'm afraid most of my juicy details will have to do with tricking my husband into going to the new place with me)

The sister has to take a picture of the place and identify in the picture the number it is in her sequence of 100 (100!)

These should be a good start to the rules in this adventure.

Sisters, This is going to be a fun competition/adventure! I know we can all make 100 new places in the next year (we HAVE to because mom didn't think we could). Oh and by the way, I plan to make it to 100 first.

To signify the beginning of the journey I feel like we should sound a gun or something, but a good photo of the 3 of us in Seattle will have to do (there are a few extras in this photo).



If you follow this blog we hope to entertain you, share some cool places (plus ones to miss) and offer some travel advice along the way.

Let's get it started

All of our childhood was filled with family vacations, weekends away, and here and there, an escape from our immediate family with an opportunity to travel with a friend. Although our parents aren't thrilled that we've all lived away from our charming small hometown, I give them the credit for putting the travel bug in each of us.

As adults we've traveled all over the country and the world for a variety of reasons: school, work, missions and simply for fun. We want to dedicate this blog to the travels we'll be doing in the next year however, with an added twist... Each of us (Melanie, Libby, and I, Krissy) has to visit, photograph and blog about 100 new places. By June of next year, we could have 300 new places to read about.

I am currently living in Kirkland, WA just outside of Seattle but only recently relocated here after getting married. It seems like just about everyday there is something new for me to see or do since I've never lived here before but I'm going to try to be as creative as possible to get my 100.

Pictures and more coming soon...