Rain in the Forecast?

If there happens to be a spontaneous flood for 40 days and 40 nights(we do live in Seattle), my husband will be able to save me and all the animals. How many other wives can say that about their husbands? Heath was asked to dress up as Noah and talk about his adventure building the ark for sharing time in Primary today. So Heath being Heath, waited until midnight the night before to try and figure out his costume. Luckily I had gone and bought him a beard earlier in the day, but the rest was his idea. He did have a walking stick, but we had to hurry and return it to the neighbor's yard before they noticed it was missing. His costume looked the best out of the 3 guys who were asked to dress up. Not bad for a make shift robe out of sheets and felt.

80's skating diva

Since June I have been working on Saturdays teaching kids gymnastics at the little gym in Bellevue. On Sat. night we had our holiday party (it is easier for everyone to get together in Jan.) We had pizza, put on our mini skirts and leg warmers, and roller skated the night away. When I went shopping for my 80's outfit I thought it would be a little tough to find things, but to my surprise the interesting look of the 80's is making it's comeback. I had no problem finding a shiny belt, armwarmers, and a mini skirt for cheap. One of my co-workers let me borrow the sweater with velcro on shoulderpads.







We spent a long time coming up with fun poses for our pics, and only had about an hour for skating(that was plenty of time). I did not do that bad for not having skated since what? junior high. It was alot of fun to just hang out and be silly.

Mt. Baker

On Jan. 3rd we took our nieces and nephew Taylor, Riley, and Rees snowboarding for their first time. The night before they all spent the night at our house so we could get up bright and early to drive to Mt. Baker. It was about a 3 hour drive (a little different than Utah). The snow was better than I expected, and because of the recent storms they had tons of powder. We started out on the beginner hill with Heath and Colt trying to teach all 3 of them. My sister-in-law and I were skiing, but she had not been since she was a teenager. After one run and lots of falling the kids went to an hour and a half lesson that we had signed them up for. After a quick lunch we were back on the slopes. The kids did better than I ever expected and they had fun. We are hoping to take them at least once more this season.

Holidays

I have been such a blog slacker. Here is a quick update of our holidays. On Christmas Eve we went to my sister-in-law Tara & Chris' house. We had dinner,played games and spent the night. Christmas morning all of the adults were sitting on the couches waiting for the kids to get up. We had to actually send the dog into their room to wake them up. The kids got tons of cute clothes. Rees got an air pellet gun, Riley got lots of books, and Taylor got a new cell phone. We bought our nieces and nephew ski passes. I put them in these mazes you had to solve to get the tickets out. At the end of opening presents the kids were sent on a hunt for the last few hidden presents which were a Wii, Guitar Hero, and Rock band. After a Yummy breakfast, we set up the Rock Band. My sister-in-law Tara & I are not into video or computer games. We think our husbands should spend their free time with us :), so it was funny to see Tara get so into Rock Band. She hardly let anyone else on the drums because she had to keep "practicing." At about 10pm Colt says, "You guys realize we have been doing this for about 10 hours straight." WOW! I guess it can be a little bit addicting. Just for the record there was 8 of us alternating all day long. The week before Christmas, Seattle received record amount of snow. At our home we had probably about 12-14 inches spread out over the week. On Christmas Eve it started snowing and didn't stop for about 24 hours so we spent another night. It was alot of fun, and we are lucky to have family near by.

DRUMROLL PLEASE......

****HE PASSED****
On Saturday Heath came running into the house all out of breath because he had seen the mailman and ran to the box so that the second he left he could get the mail. He passed the bar. YEAH!!!! He did not take the Ethics section this summer, so he will take this in February, but the hard part is done. I am so proud of him. He worked so hard this summer studying and it has paid off.

Pumpkin Farm

On Saturday we went with Heath's brother and his family to a pumpkin farm. This was the first time I have done a corn maze. We split up girls vs. boys. It was pretty cool because they had a theme of Narnia. You went through the coat closet to start & they had the white witch at her castle, a beaver home, a battlefield with the lion, and Mr. Tumnus' home. You had to find the 6 mailboxes and punch your card before you found your way out. Unfortunately, the boys won. We then went to the pumkin sling shot. They had an old boat out in the middle of this field with about 6 bull's eyes on it. If you hit a target you got to pick out and take home a huge pumpkin. It was hard to pull the sling shot back far enough. I had to have Heath help pull me back, and then I would fall down when I let go. Heath's brother Colt hit a target last year and this year. We had a lot of fun, and I think this might have to become a yearly tradition.

Septoplasty Surgery

On Friday morning I had surgery to correct my deviated septum. I haven't really ever had problems breathing, but when I was younger I got wicked bad nose bleeds that were hard to stop. This is the first time I have had surgery with general anesthesia. I remember lying on the table with the oxygen mask on, and the next thing I knew I was waking up. I didn't have any pain, I just felt groggy. The surgery only lasted about 45 mins. On the way home Heath bought me some soup from Panera Bread since I was starving. I wasn't really thinking and I took a pain pill on an empty stomach on the ride home. When we got home I told Heath I thought I was going to throw up. He got the fan and helped me get settled on the couch. He had just walked away when I told him to grab something for me to throw up in. He grabbed the garbage can, but he was too late. I threw up all down the front of me, on the blanket and the TV remote. It was pretty gross. He was so nice and helped clean me up, although I could tell it was making him gag. From then on I was fine. I have not had any pain and have not needed to take any pain medicine. It is just uncomfortable because there are plastic splints up my nose helping to hold it in place, and I have to breath out of my mouth a lot. The worst part is that I have to irrigate my nose with saline solution 3 times a day. I hate the feeling when it runs down my throat or back out my nose. All in all, it has not been that bad, and I think it will be worth it when I can breath better and don't have as many bloody noses. I have the whole next week off from work so I can rest and recoup.

My 2nd Rock concert EVER

On Sunday night I went to my 2nd concert ever. I think the first one was Pearl Jam with my friend Jen in Utah. How sad is that. I don't even remember who it was. We saw the Counting Crows & Maroon 5. A couple of weeks ago I heard on the radio there was a promotion and that for one day only tickets were $10. We bought tickets for us, Heath's older brother Chris and his wife Tara, and his younger brother Colt. It was in an outdoor amphitheatre in Auburn. We started out on the lawn in the back because we thought it would be nice to eat our dinner and be spread out from other people, and then it started raining. We quickly moved to our covered reserved seats. We went mostly to see Augustana (who opened) and Counting Crows. It was really neat because towards the end when the Crows were playing they had the whole Augustana band come on stage and sing a couple songs together. Maroon 5 was ok, I liked some of their more popular songs. It was cold & we got rained on, but we had a lot of Fun.

Falling Asleep to the Sounds of the Ocean

I had Monday off work, so on Sunday morning we packed up our backpacks and drove to La Push, WA. It is right on the coast by the Olympic Peninsula National Park. It took about 4 hours by ferry and driving. We first stopped off at Rialto Beach. We climbed over HUGE trees that were stacked on a small strip of beach that led out to this big rock.
At the bottom of the rock we found some tide pools filled with starfish.


Next we drove to Second Beach. We had to backpack in for about 3/4 a mile through the forest. It was a beautiful day, about 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We set up our tent and chairs and just sat and relaxed while staring at the ocean.

We started a fire and cooked our Yummy dry packed food. It really was pretty good. We had lasagna and Raspberry Crumble for dessert.
We watched a beautiful sunset and fell asleep under a full moon with the whole beach to ourselves. This was our view from the tent.
The next morning we went exploring and discovered we didn't have the whole beach to ourselves, but the other people were so far from us we didn't even know they were there. It was an awesome weekend just Heath & I relaxing with 3 of our favorite things: the ocean, camping, and each other.

Japanese Gardens

On Labor Day Heath & I went to some Japanese Gardens. The first one is in the University of Washington Arboretum. It was fairly small, but very beautiful. They had a pond full of turtles and Koi fish. The fish must be fed well, because they were the biggest Koi fish I have ever seen. The second garden, Kubota Gardens was south of the city. As we drove there we started to wonder what it was going to look like because it was located in a bad area. We were pleasantly surprised. It was big, fairly clean, and not so Japanese. I think they continue to call it a Japanese garden because it was started by a Japanese man & his son in 1923. During the Second World War the garden was abandoned for 4 years when the family was forced to live in an internment camp in Idaho. The city eventually named the garden a Historical Landmark and is now free to the public. It is a great park with lots of trees, open grassy areas, and really pretty flowers.