Family Dinner Finally!

So Nick and I have been married for over two months now and since we had to combine two apartments into one, our place kind of looks like a storage unit right now. Boxes of stuff everywhere cause there is no place for it to go. Nick's mom is coming to visit for Christmas so we needed to clean out the office so we can set up the air mattress. Therefore, the giant 6 foot love sack had to go elsewhere. So we finally had to do something about the dining area that was packed with most of our stuff(the majority of which is wedding gifts(thank you to all of you who provided those - we love them)) So after a hard days work we repacked everything in that area and we were able to put the lovesack in there. This also accomplished the major task of clearing off the table. By the end of today we actually had a kitchen table again, and we ate "family dinner" around it for the first time since we got married. No more TV trays every night! Although I'm sure we will still definitely use them, even after the nativity set quits using two of them as a stand. Anyway, here is our newly cleaned table. Notice all the boxes to the right and the giant lovesack held in its place by the far side of the table. We decided to crockpot it tonight, so we ate a roast with potatoes and carrots. Yum, one of my favorites.

From sledding

From sledding

Abby Goes Sledding

So Nick and I braved the treacherous roads to go visit my brother and Sis-in law in Edmonds to give my niece her first snow experience. We made it safely. They had bought her a cute little snow outfit earlier today. No sleds could be found though so we had to improvise. So my brother brought out a laundry basket and some rope and we pulled her up and down the street. She loved it. Check her out in these videos, I think the second one is the best:
















I also made a snow angel.

From sledding

And Trevor helped Abby make one too.

From sledding

From sledding

Then we made a snowman. The snow wasn't the greatest for this. It wouldn't pack very well because it was so dry. and actually the bottom ball is a giant pumpkin they had in the yard that was covered in snow.

From sledding

It was lots of fun. We're glad we decided to brave the weather to go visit.

The Christmas Story

One of my favorite things to do every year at Christmas is to set up the nativity set. Last year I really wanted to get a nice nativity set that I could use throughout my life. I used the whole long term use thing as a rationalization for me to splurge a little and get the set I really wanted. I don't know how many of you know the "Willow Tree" line, but they are absolutely fabulous. They have all sorts of figurines, not just the nativity. You can check them out here and the story of how they came to be. So the other day for Family Home Evening, Nick and I decided to put up the Nativity set while reading the Christmas story from the Bible. So I got to go to my storage unit and find all my Christmas stuff. Of course I planned ahead and put it all in the back corner at the bottom. *eye roll* So, it took me a while to find it all but I eventually did.

From nativity set

As mention in my previous post, not much room in our little apartments right now. So, I made a makeshift area for our nativity set. This consisted of two wood TV trays and a Christmas colored sheet.

From nativity set

Here is everything out of the big box and ready to go.

From nativity set

As Nick read the story from the Bible(he has a great story telling voice I might add) I pulled each piece from its box and began to put together the Nativity.

From nativity set

From nativity set

From nativity set

From nativity set

From nativity set

From nativity set

Isn't it a great set? I just love it. I hope you all get to enjoy putting up your nativity sets as well, and may they remind you throughout this holiday season the real reason we celebrate Christmas - the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

From nativity set

Christmas Tree

Nick and I went and got our Christmas tree the other day. We found the perfect one almost instantly. I really love the shape. We got it Friday night but didn't have time to decorate til the next day. Here it is after we got it in the house and in the stand.

From christmas tree

Starting to decorate.

From christmas tree

From christmas tree

We got this cute precious moments ornament to commemorate our first Christmas together as a family. Its hard to read but it says on it "Our first Christmas together".

From christmas tree

We also got this photo frame ornament so we could put a wedding picture in it. We want to start the tradition of getting a new ornament each year that symbolizes something important that happened that year.

From christmas tree

Here's the precious moments one on the tree.

From christmas tree

More decorating.

From christmas tree

The finished product!

From christmas tree

From christmas tree

I love having a Christmas tree in the house. And even though we dont have much room in our apartment right now after having to put stuff from two apartments into one, I shuffled things around a bit and made sure we had room. We couldn't go our first Christmas without a real tree now could we?

Super Stetich Bros.

We found this mushroom growing on the lawn of our apartment complex near our covered spot where Lisa parks her car.



Lisa thought maybe if she ate it she could become Super Lisa, growing to twice her size and gaining the ability to smash bricks with her bare hand (but only while jumping upward).

No, seriously though, this looks like Amanita muscaria, a mushroom regarded not only as somewhat toxic, but hallucinogenic. Looks like it's gone now; I wonder if somebody ate it....

Actually, now that I think about it, it does look like that mushroom the bear cub eats in the 1988 movie L'Ours. I remember seeing this movie as a kid, though it was billed in English as The Bear. As is generally the case with about anything you can think of, somebody was good enough to post a clip of this to YouTube:



Ah, that brings back the memories.

Thanks Mom!

So Nick's mom gave us this awesome Kitchenaid stand mixer for our wedding. It's one of the huge nice ones. 6qts, 575 watts. Yeah, pretty sweet. Anyway, we busted it out the other day to try it out. Our first attempt - mashed potatoes. This thing had those potatoes smooth and creamy in no time and they were delish. Two thumbs up from me. We tried it out on cookie dough last night too. Nick said it was amazing. Here's a pic of our new toy in action:

Rise And Shout The Cougars Are Out!!!

Tomorrow is the big game. The one we've been waiting for all season. Both teams are good this year. Utah is undefeated, BYU has lost only one. Will Utah end the season undefeated or will the two teams end with the same record? Tomorrow it will be decided. It will be a great game. I only wish I could be there in person. Or even watch it on TV. I hate "the mtn". I guess I'll be listening to the game via ksl online radio.



Rise and shout all loyal Cougars and cheer our boys in blue on to victory!

GO COUGARS!!!!

Happy 1 Month Anniversary!!

Well, it's been a whole month. We can't believe it. In some ways it feels like the time has flown by, but then again it feels like a long time has passed since we were relaxing on Waikiki soaking up the rays. We know it has been a long time coming but we finally have pics of our big day. These are only from the happenings in Utah as we don't have any digital images fro the reception in WA. Nick is in charge of the honeymoon post, so you can bug him if that doesn't get up soon. We hope you enjoy some of our favorite moments from our special day. Also we plan to upload video from our ring ceremony, cake cutting, first dance, etc. So be looking for all that. Thanks to all of you who were there for us on this special day. Special thanks to our photographer Sherry Ward. We loved our pictures! Everything went perfect as far as we know, thanks to all of you. We love you! Enjoy the slide show:

My tomato committed suicide

[I discovered this post lying among the drafts--it had not been published several months ago when it was supposed to be. Here it is now. -Ed.]

This summer I made an attempt at growing a few vegetables on my back porch. I went to the store and bought a couple of tomato plants, some strawberries, and a variety of seeds. I bought some PVC pipe and fittings, and got some old laundry detergent buckets from Lisa's clinic with the intent of building an upside-down tomato garden. While probably nothing like the legendary hanging gardens of Babylon, it would have hopefully at least provided a few tomatoes worthy of fresh salsa.

Well, I never did build the hanger out of the pipe, but I did transplant the tomato seedlings into bigger pots with cages. My back patio/deck is on the east side of the building, so it only gets sun in the morning, plus it is covered from above by my upstairs neighbors' porch, so in order to give the plants the most sun possible, I placed them on the railing of the deck, which is actually quite wide and sturdy.

One of the tomato plants fell from the deck railing on to the floor of the deck early in its life. Its stem was torn, and I gave up on it. I left it on the floor of the deck and stopped watering it after a while. However, it must have taken whatever scant resources it had available and dedicated them to a single self-sacrificing act of reproduction, because, although the plant was gray and hunched over, it had one tiny, bright red tomato on the end of one of its branches. I did not want the plant's brief life to be completely in vain, so I harvested this tiny but tasty tomato and ate it on a sandwich.

The other plant I had much higher hopes for. I left it to grow on the railing, and grow it did. It produced many green tomatoes, but as they were at the point of beginning to ripen, the sun absconded behind that Washington gray for a few weeks.

Apparently this was too much for my plant to bear, for as I walked by the sliding glass door in my living room this morning, I noticed that something was different. I looked out the window, and the tomato plant was gone! As the skies grew gray and the days were shortened, the constant presence

I opened the door and ran outside (well, in as much running as one can do in the space of two steps) and the plant lay upside down in its crumpled cage on the muddy lawn below. I went down to the back of the building to retrieve it. I pulled it out of the mud, and peeled off the slugs which had found the one tomato which had ripened. The stem was seriously broken. I carried it up to my apartment and took it out to the back porch, where I straightened out the cage and stood the plant up again, but alas, the stem broke completely, and the prospect of homegrown tomatoes was completely lost until next spring.

BYU vs UW

I know, I know. It's been a very long time since our last post. I will try to do better. So here goes. A couple weeks ago Nick and I were blessed with the opportunity to watch the BYU football team play. They were up in Seattle playing against the UW Huskies. We had our tickets at least 3 months in advance. I love BYU football! Nick not so much, but he's supportive and watches with me. Here are a few pictures of our adventures that day.

President Samuelson graced us with his presence at the tailgate party prior to the game. He promised us that we would be winning that day. :)


The BYU cheerleaders were at the tailgate party as well. How they get away with those short skirts for their uniform, I don't know.


My day off and I still have to see my boss! He and his family were sitting two rows behind us. They also graduated from BYU.

Just a shot of the field, right before a kickoff.

The whole game was exciting and very tense. It was never more than a touchdown apart and tied a good part of the time. I get really anxious when games are close. I can't handle over time games, it's too intense!

Here's a pic of all the boats that come and anchor outside the stadium. I'm not sure if they come ashore and watch the game or what. It doesn't seem like they could see the field from the boats. There were a lot out there though.



Several players were injured on the field(seems like all of them were Husky players). This one was kinda scary though. They brought a stretcher out really fast and then the ambulance came out onto the field. At one point a woman(I'm assuming his mother) cam running across the field to get to him. I felt bad for her, she literally had to run the whoel length of the field. I guess they thought he might have a neck injury. Luckily I think it turned out to be just a bad concussion.

Many Husky fans are upset about a call the Ref made in the last 2 seconds of the game. The following are reasons why that is unreasonable.
1. If you think the rule is dumb, complain about it before. Not when all of a sudden it affects YOUR team negatively.
2. The rule is not a judgment call rule. If it happens, the ref has to call it.
3. The player knows the rule, and he obviously broke it. (For those of you who missed this amazing game I'll clue you in. Basically an excessive celebration call was made after UW's touchdown to bring the score to 27-28 with 2 seconds left. The rule is you cannot throw the ball high in the air. If you watch the clip, Locker, the quarterback, chucks the ball way up in the air, at least 20 feet or more. )
4. The call didn't end the game. UW still had the chance to easily tie it up with the extra point kick(which was pushed back a little due to the penalty.)
5. BYU blocked the kick. That won the game not the ref's call. People will say that the angle of the kick was different because of the different distance. But come on, field goals are kicked from farther back and are still really hard to block. BYU is good at blocking kicks. Just Look at the last 2 games played against UCLA. But the most important part is the picture that follows:

The final score.

Side note: BYU beat UCLA 49-0 the following week, and Wyoming 44-0 yesterday. Should be a good season. Can't wait to watch whatever games I can this year.

Go Cougars!!

Seattle to Portland 2008

Two weeks ago, Lisa and I rode the STP (Seattle to Portland Classic), a 200 mile recreational bike ride that starts at the University of Washington in Seattle and ends in Holladay Park in Portland.

Lisa and I kicked off the ride at the start line in Seattle at about 6 AM.




The path followed the shore of Lake Washington for a while and we saw some really spectacular vistas of Mt. Ranier over the lake. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture because I don't trust myself to take pictures while riding in the pack. Maybe next year I'll get one of those helmet-mounted cameras.

When we got to the REI food stop in Kent, I decided to have one of the mechanics look at my rear tire, which was going wuh-wump on every revolution because part of the tire was bulging. It was the mechanic's opinion that the tube just wasn't seated properly, like it was bunched up in some parts, which caused the unevenness in the tire, so he sprayed some lube in there, inflated and deflated the tube a few times and got it evened out. The ride was much smoother the rest of the day.

The REI mechanics had one of those creepy animatronic Elvis heads that were spotted in the last woot-off.



All the fun we had during the ward campout the few days prior to the STP started to take its toll though. We were already sore from football, ultimate frisbee, and swimming.



We made it into Centralia, the halfway point, about 6 PM, and chowed down at the lasagna buffet at Centralia College's student cafeteria. We met a guy who sat at our dinner table, who told us he had 6 flat tires that day, and that he was at his wit's end. I felt bad for the guy, but I was sure glad that didn't happen to us! We crashed pretty early, not really eager to party late into the night.

We got up the next day at about 5 AM, struck down our respective sleeping accommodations, and picked up our bikes from the police's secured bike area, only to find that my tire was flat! We put in a new tube and hit the road, somewhat discouraged by the delay.

On route to Chehalis, the next stop, my tire went flat again. The tube was still pretty bunchy, causing a nasty ride, so we waited at the mechanic's booth in Chehalis so he could take a look at it. After waiting about 30 minutes in line, he looked at it and gave his diagnosis: some tires and rims are just bad combinations and cause the tube not to sit well. His solution: just keep riding. We picked up some new tubes to take with us.

Next, we stopped in Winlock (which is apparently the home of the World's Largest Egg.



After Lisa enjoyed a fine breakfast sandwich, we hopped on our bikes again to try to catch up with the crowd, from which we seemed to be falling further and further behind. After pedaling about 3 feet I called out to Lisa to stop, because I had another flat tire. So we stopped and patched it up. One of the STP support cars pulled over to help us. We took the tire off, checked it for embedded thorns or glass, and found nothing. I patched up the tube, and the nice volunteer couple (who I later learned were from Olympia [Later? What do I mean later? You'll see]) loaned us their floor pump. They suggested we ride to Vader, where a mechanic could check out the tire.



We made it to Vader. The mechanic said, "The tire looks fine. I'd ride on it!" He gave me another tube to replace my patched one and he also put new rim tape on my rim and gave me a Pedro's tire lever, which he said would be better than the ones I was using, all in an effort to avoid possible pinch flats.

Now in a hurry to catch up with the crowd, we took off, hoping that this would be the final flat and the rest of the ride we would be unimpeded. As you might suspect, this was not the case. Lisa had warned me about the stretch from Vader to Castle Rock, which the STP route guide characterizes as having "rollers in abundance." I would suggest that their definition of a "roller" is quite different from mine and Lisa's. We did make it through the nastiest hills though, and as we were going downhill, my tire went flat AGAIN.

I flagged down an STP support car and just asked for a ride to the Lexington Park food stop where there would be a mechanic. Lisa just rode the rest of the way to the stop, and caught up with us rather quickly. I met the same mechanic there who worked on my tire in Kent. He checked it out, thought nothing seemed to be wrong with it (other than having a flat tube). He put a new tube in and said I was ready to roll (though at this point, my confidence was fairly low). We attempted to scavenge from whatever food was left at the food stop (we were informed that we were certainly among the last 50 riders of the 9500 at this point).

Now, about 10 miles from Oregon, we headed out again. It was starting to get quite warm, now that it was about 12:30 PM. We arrived at the Lewis and Clark bridge, which was really something. I'd heard one of the riders talking about it the day before at one of the stops. He was telling another rider that it was a cool part of the ride—well, that it sucked—well, that it was kind of cool and kind of sucked. I found this to be a pretty accurate description. The scenery was beautiful, but the bridge was just this endless hill.

You'd look way off in the distance and there was this bridge way above the river. And then you pedaled, and pedaled, and the bridge didn't get any closer. And finally you got on the bridge, and it just kept going up. "Surely," you'd think to yourself, "surely I will arrive at the center of the bridge soon." And, while it was not soon, we did arrive eventually, and coasted down the rest of the bridge into Oregon. We were too late for the motorcade escort, which Lisa says is quite cool; the southbound lane of the bridge is shut down and hundreds of riders are escorted across the bridge at once.

Anyway, long story short: in the next thirty miles I got another couple of flats, swearing each time that the next flat I got would be the last, either because I'd finish the race and then throw away my back tire, or that I'd just resign myself to fate and give up. I had to take the latter options somewhere just before Scappoose, about 20 miles before we would arrive in Portland. I didn't have any more fresh tubes, and I got another flat, just riding along the highway. I flagged down a car and, lo, it was the same couple who loaned us the floor pump in Winlock. I told them I'd had it (actually, if I had felt that changing the tire would make a real difference I would have tried to do it, but I only had the old patched tube, I was sure it would go flat in another 10 miles, and most of the mechanics were shut down, and any more time, and the finish line would have closed before we got there).

They asked if someone could come pick me up and I said yes, but it would take about an hour and a half for my ride to get there. They radioed in and got permission to take me in to the finish line in Portland. That way, Lisa could ride the rest of the way in and I could meet her there and my aunt and uncle could pick us up as previously planned. I don't know, maybe I should have tried to ride in on the patched tube, as it was the final resource I had, but it was 95° out on the road, this was the seventh flat of the day, and I had already sworn three times that I was going to quit. As it was, at least Lisa got to ride triumphant over the finish line.



And now, we have an excuse to ride next year for the 30 year anniversary of the STP—we still have to both finish it.

Oh, and here's a sample of the wacked out stuff people ride on the STP:



I wish I had seen the guy riding this. I wonder if the form of the bike alone is sufficient to discourage theft. It looks like it would be tough to get the hang of mounting it; you'd have to do it kind of like a penny farthing.

A good time was had by all, especially after we recovered from our bike seats. I got a pretty decent farmer tan, and Lisa got some lovely glove tan lines.

The Ring!

We finally got the ring we picked out today and I get to wear it from now on!! Here are some pics I took of it on my very ow hand. Ignore the awesome tan lines from my bike gloves. Those are from the STP we rode this last weekend- photos will be coming of that shortly.

She loves her bananas!

Here is a video of my adorable niece. I was feeding her a banana. I love how she tried to eat the whole thing in one bite - and she does that on every bite she takes! Anyway, enjoy. Sorry about the bad video quality, its from my cell phone.

The Post You've All Been Waiting For

Last Saturday was our 4th dating anniversary. To celebrate, Nick took me downtown to this awesome little French Restaurant overlooking Pike Place Market. There were roses waiting for me on the table. It was perfect. The restaurant is called Chez Shea. We did the tasting menu which is an eight course meal that lets you try a bunch of the things on their menu. You can see the menu at their website. I was kinda scared for the Foie Gras but it was actually really good. My favorite quote from the dinner: Nick-"So, four years huh? Sorry." It made me laugh a lot. Here's me with my roses outside the front door:



We sat right inside the top corner window. This is a view from down at the market.


We enjoyed wonderful scenery as we left the restaurant.


All dressed up for the evening.

So the original plan was to go the Rose Garden at the Woodland Park Zoo right after dinner. Unfortunately we got a little lost and arrived right as they were closing up so we decided to go back the next day.

It was a beautiful garden with thousands of amazing roses. I was playing with Nick's camera trying to get some cool close up shots.





There is an adorable little gazebo at the back of the garden.

So we were sitting in the Gazebo taking pictures of ourselves when Nick gets all serious and asks if we could count this day as an extension of yesterday since we were supposed to be there the night before. Then he got down on one knee and pulled out a ring and asked me to marry him!! Just in case you were wondering, I said yes. This is a pic of where I was sitting when he asked and was taken right before.


We are still in the process of getting my ring so he proposed with his grandma's.

Here is a picture of the setting we have picked for my ring which I should probably get in a couple weeks!!!