Herling Updates!

Courtney's Visit!

2011-09-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

Me and Double "C"

As I mentioned the Amazing Race post, my friend Courtney came to visit with her daughter from Louisiana. Courtney's last visit was in 2009 when she and her family came to Vancouver for her 10 year high school reunion.

Courtney moved down the street from my childhood house, when I was in 5th grade and she was in 4th grade. We immediately became friends. We have always had a lot in common; playing the violin at the same time, both joined the cheer team in high school, both worked for hotels for our summer jobs, went in the same group as one another to high school dances, I broke her bed in high school telling her she made the varsity cheer team, sitting on my front porch eating popsicles (PC days) and watching the elementary kids run home, and having endless talks about makeup and highlighting our hair.

Though her time in Vancouver was busy, I felt like I got good times with her and Reece picking her up from the airport, taking her to IKEA, stayed up late chatting at Sara's house, visiting with her in my room while I was getting ready for the Amazing Race party, and visiting with her while we waited for her train to take her and Reece to Seattle.

Courtney always gives wonderful advice and speaks to me just so that I get it and understand.

Me, Courtney, and Sara just before I took her to the train station.

Here are a few pictures of Courtney and me throughout the years:

About September 1995 hanging out in my parent's bedroom. I am a junior and Courtney is a sophomore in this picture.

October 1997 at Homecoming. Sara was Olive Oil, I was Jack the Ripper's victim, and Courtney was Frankenstein's wife.

December 1997 at Winter Dance. This photo is of the 1997-1998 Varsity cheerleaders. Courtney and I were the tallest...shocker.

2005 Sara and Ethan's wedding. Courtney dancing with Jack and me!

2006 Courtney's visit with Jack. Doing our 1997 cheer camp dance in front of my 2006-2007 cheer squad.

2006 Courtney's visit with Jack. Kristen, Courtney, and me at a BBQ I held at my house for Courtney and her friends. Kristen was on our 1997-1998 cheer team.

2007 Evan's first visit to Louisiana. Courtney and I strike a cheer pose on her in-laws' tractor.

Oh, so funny to look back. Thank you Courtney for coming to visit and making more memories!

Race for the Cure 2012

2011-09-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Race for the Cure was here once again and all the usual suspects were in town to participate. The good news was Grandma was feeling good and back to herself a year after her surgery, chemo, and raditaion. Also, Sara and Mason were both happy to participate with the family this year.

Sara found this cute onesie for Mason on-line saying, "Real men wear pink." Super cute.

As we all move around Vancouver and in Portland, carpooling gets a little more complicated with when we are meeting, who is picking up whom, where we are meeting Kelsey and the other Portland people, and where we are eating afterward. This year Grandma made the decision, not to walk in the race, but to meet us at our lunch spot. She still signed up for the race to show her support.

Pit stop for a picture while Mason was awake. He took a little snooze during the race as it was his nap time.

The walking group.

This year our friend Tricia also participated with us. Tricia and her husband Zach came down from Seattle for our party, so Tricia decided to walk with us as breast cancer prevention is very important to their family as well. Tricia's grandma died of breast cancer several years ago.

Courtney, Kelsey, Mom, me, and Allison.

Because Allison was leaving back to Boise after lunch and Grandma was driving from Vancouver, we wanted an easy spot for lunch to get on and off the freeways for them. Allison's boyfriend, Ian, and Evan and Zach also came and met us for lunch.

It was a fun lunch, a fun day, and a fun weekend. This is why I love traditions.

Amazing Race Party round 2

2011-09-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last summer, we had a fun party at our house to celebrate my 30th birthday. In the late spring, I started thinking it would be fun to redo the evening of festivities and started looking at the calendar for a date. With so many weekends already taken with other commitments, including Evan's EMT class, I chose a weekend after the class completed. The weekend I chose also happened to be the same weekend as Race for the Cure (so extra family members would be in town and could partake) and when my friend Courtney (my childhood friend since 4th grade) decided to come visit Vancouver. The only down side was because Evan was accepted into Fire Academy, he would be late to his own party!

The invitations I sent out to our guests. They are from Tiny Prints.

I of course went on-line to a variety of blogs and Pinterest to get some decoration ideas. One of the projects I attempted to do last year for my birthday (found on-line at Martha Stewart) was create paper stars, sometimes called paper flowers, but the attempt failed.

Seriously, how cute is that?!

Over the summer, I saw this posting on Hostess with the Mostess blog that reminded me about the project and gave me the idea to use paper sacks that I already had at home.

And it worked! I think the problem before was the paper sacks I tried last year were waxy, so the double sided tape didn't want to stick to the bags. With the paper sacks, they are a matte finish, so the double sided tape easily sticks. They turned out so cute, the only problem, I forgot to hang them! Oops!

Here are some other decorations from the party:

The picture on Pinterest looked much cuter, than what I was able to create.

Utensil holders for the guests.

Flowers from Kaaren, she wasn't able to attend the party as it was the same day as her grandpa's funeral.

On the invitation, one of the requests I made was for people to bring nonperishable foods for the local food bank. I was happy people remembered.

Some of the goodies friends and family members provided for the night. We kept replenishing the table with different nibbles along the night.

The weather, up until the day of the party had been gorgeous, but we woke up to rain and wind. Oh man, I was sooo bummed! I had to quickly implement a Plan B and moved most of the party inside. I still kept the tents up, with tables and chairs underneath, and the drinks outside, but the food and the Family Feud game were kept inside.

We had four teams for Family Feud, while the two teams squeezed onto the couch and the wall near the fireplace, the other two teams hung out in the living room, outside, and in the kitchen. Judy was once again my assistant, but rather than handwriting all the cards, I used the Elkins' overhead projector projected onto the wall.

The prizes for the winning team members.

Courtney, Tricia, Kelsey, and Marisa working hard for their team!

Once the game ended, we ate a little more and got new teams situated for the Amazing Race. This year, I planned more stations and spread folks out around the city. Also, rather than having everyone go in the same order together, I had them go in the same order, but one off from one another, so they couldn't follow!

Once everyone left, Sara helped me clean up (Sara and Ethan didn't play as Ethan had injured his knee and had to relive their babysitter), Courtney and her baby girl baby girl Reece stayed to visit, as did Josiah and Alyssa before taking their daughter Ruby home.

There were four teams out and about, and with the help of my coworkers (and their homes) along with my family members, I was able make the Amazing Race a little grander...maybe too grand.

Me, Sara, and Courtney goofing off together, like usual!

One of the stops was at my coworker, Rhona's house. She had a station where a puzzle of the United States was to be assembled. Though, my instructions weren't exactly followed, it looked like everyone had a good time.

I like how Ian is petting the dog, while putting together the puzzle.

During the race, I would periodically get texts from people who would ask questions, wonder how others were doing compared to them, etc. Once Sara, Ethan, Courtney, Reece, Josiah, Alyssa, and Ruby all left. I looked at the time and figured people should be wrapping up, so I took Bear and we sat on the front porch waiting for everyone. Well, a long while later, the first team showed up, just over two hours since the race began.

Team #1 Allison, Kelsey, Chris, and Ian (this team got second place last year!)

Team #2 Darcy, Kristin, Garrett, and Courtney

Team #3 DeShawnte, Zach, Tricia, and Evan

Team #4 James, Brian, Ashley, and Teresa

All the teams arrived within a few minutes of one another, and I got the impression that I made the race a little too long. Courtney and Darcy's team had to stop for gas, so they weren't happy they had lost some time, and James' team thought we went to all family members houses so the the other teams knew where they were going...wrong! We all gathered to have some dessert and everyone began swapping stories from the race including one about Uncle Gary's beacon light (that he just had to purchase from Target) he used at their post so the teams could find them! Ha ha!

All in all, I think everyone had a good time, despite the miserable weather, and I also received a very sweet note from my Aunt Linda after the party, "Just wanted to thank you...thank you...thank you from Rick Rick Rick and I for the very very fun fun time! You and Evan put on a great "game party" and we love it! I know it is TONS of work for you to do this, (thanks to your mom and Judy too). I know everyone had a grand time, you could tell how excited everyone was when they returned home from the "amazing race"...everyone had "their stories" to tell. It was great!! Thanks again you guys, hope we didn't leave your place in too much of a mess, but Evan had ALL DAY Sunday to clean up!! Loved seeing the babies too!! Most of all...loved seeing sweet Bear...he was such a good dog for having soooo many people around. Love, Auntie Linday and Uncle Rick Rick Rick!

What you can do to help

2011-09-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

As we prepare for the annual Portland Susan G Komen Race for the Cure, I thought I would share this thoughtful blog posting that I found on another blog. It is always nice to learn more about how we can support others we love and care about.

Here is what Sharon (of Cupcakes and Cutlery) shared with her fans, "Wendy is a local blogger, her blog is fairly new where she blogs about things that every woman/mom would be interested in but she also talks a lot about what it was like to live with and beat breast cancer. She is SO young. And has a young family. When I decided to do host this contest for Del Webb, I asked her to share some thoughts on how we can best help and support those we know fighting the disease.

Wendy and her family. How cute are they!!!!

Wendy's thoughts:

I was beyond honored when asked by Sharon to guest post on a topic near and dear to my heart. As a breast cancer survivor, many people have come to me asking what they can do for someone going through chemotherapy or radiation treatment. I've put together my favorite ideas with some suggestions to keep in mind.

-Does he/she have small children that require babysitting? Knowing that you're child is well taken care of in your absence is worth its weight in gold. When I was going through radiation treatment, I had to be at the hospital daily for a matter of twenty minutes: get undressed, get zapped, get dressed and go home. But I couldn't take my child with me. She couldn't be in the treatment room and I obviously couldn't leave her alone in the waiting room. Offer up your babysitting services!

-Meals are a biggie. I wasn't so much concerned with eating but I worried about my husband and child going without. There are several routes to ensure your friend and their family is taken care of. 1) drop off prepared meals from places like Dream Dinners that can be frozen and served later. 2) recruit other friends and family to bring homemade meals during treatments. Care Calendar is a web-based system to help organize this effort!

-It was really important to stay hydrated during chemo. I guzzled drinks like Gatorade and bottled water mixed with Emergen-C. A cute little care package with a reusable bottle and a box of Emergen-C is a great gift idea and would cost less than $10. But be sure to ask about specific taste changes. Chemotherapy drugs temporarily alter taste buds and not everyone can tolerate the same flavors, ingredients, or specific brands of water.

-Both treatments can really wipe a person out physically. Walking a flight of stairs can really make a cancer patient want to take a nap! Offer to vacuum their house, fold the laundry or take the dog for a walk. Everyday chores can be quite overwhelming.

-A simple, well-written card is always welcomed! Don't know what to say? Tell them they are strong, that they are fighters and that their hair coming out means the drugs are working! Encourage them to believe in their treatments and the education of their doctors. Remind them of their support system and the love that surrounds them. Cheer them on, as they get closer to finishing treatment. Tell them that having a positive mental attitude makes a difference. These words work wonders!

-Still tongue-tied? Hallmark stores have cancer specific cards. Serious, religious, and funny ones. Believe it or not, there is one that suits your needs.

-Lower your expectations. Sadly, I had a falling out with a good friend during my time during treatment. I wasn't keeping up with emails or returning phone calls and she became frustrated and angry with me. But I wasn't the same "me" during that time. I didn't have the brainpower to care about anything else other than my survival and my family. Don't feel offended that he/she doesn't make the effort they have in the past.

-Offer to go to chemo sessions with them. I didn't always engage in conversation during treatment but it was always great to know I had someone there by my side. Especially the first time...it was the scariest. And the last because it should be a celebration!

-Encourage them to find a support group of patients also being treated for cancer. There are tons of online support groups and many hospitals offer group services. It helps immensely to discuss thoughts, feelings and experiences with someone also going through the same thing.

-A phone call or email just letting them know you are thinking of them is better than anything!

On a personal note: While I was going through treatment I insisted to everyone, including my closest friends and loved ones, that everything was fine and that I was managing. This was a lie. I didn't want to burden others with my needs. I didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable with my disease. If you find that the one you want to help is telling you everything is OK and that they don't need help, think twice.

Thanks again to Sharon for allowing me to share my experiences. I hope this list helps!..."

I don't know about you, but some of her thoughts are things I hadn't thought of. You can find the original blog posting here.

Adam and Rachel's gorge wedding

2011-09-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

I met Adam in at Western, as he lived in the same resident hall as me, but also was on the same floor as my buddy Matt. I spent a lot of time on the 5th floor, but also a lot of time working in the Admissions office where Adam worked as a Star. I sadly worked in the back office and wasn't cool enough to work in the front office as a Star...LOL.

Adam and I graduated from WWU around the same time and when we were back in Vancouver would hang out from time to time, inviting one another to parties if we were having one, etc. Shortly after, Adam and Rachel (who also went to Western and is from Washougal) reconnected.

Adam and Rachel have dated for several years, both owned homes, both obtained their Master's degrees from WSUV, so all of us have been thinking, "When the heck are those two are getting married?"

Well, September 2011 (specifically 9...10...11!) Adam and Rachel planned as their month to finally get hitched in the Columbia River Gorge at vineyard on the Washington side. The weather was predicted to be hot hot hot where I decided to where my hair up for the sheer fact that I knew it would be more comfortable.

This picture doesn't do the view justice by any means, as it was around dusk.

The setting was amazing, the only downside was there was a fire on Mt. Hood, so it was a little smokey on the Oregon side and ruined the view just a little. The vineyard and the event space that has been built for events is beyond gorgeous and very well planned.

Rachel walking down the "aisle" with her mom. At the end of the stone staircase, Rachel walked onto the grass where we all sat with the Gorge as the background for the entire ceremony. Too pretty!

The ceremony was in the sun, so guests spent a lot of the time before the ceremony hanging out in the shade, enjoying drinks provided by the bartenders and music from a live musician. When the ceremony started, Rachel and Adam involved their nieces (as flower girls) and their "kid", their dog Bailey, as the ring bearer.

Bailey had a front row seat, treats to keep her in line, and a water dish to stay hydrated.

The basket of flowers that the flower girls sprinkled down the aisle.

Adam only has brothers, so his groomsmen were his three brothers. The Roselli men are known for being very friendly and giving really tight hugs to everyone. I felt so bad for them as they were in black suits during the entire ceremony. I could feel the sweat dripping down my back and used my program as a fan, so I could only imagine how they felt.

The wedding program given to everyone.

After the ceremony, there was a cocktail hour, and live music again resumed. During that time, I realized that Adam has kept in touch with a lot of people from his life. It was nice to see so many familiar faces from the Admission office and 5th floor days. I was alone still, as Evan drove up after Fire Academy, so I used this time to walk around and check out all the decorations and details.

Flowers hung on chairs marking the entire aisle.

Centerpieces on each reception table.

If you followed the stone staircase (which lite up at night to help people watch their step) up, it leads up to a modern barn/stable that houses the catering kitchen, bathrooms, outdoor bar for the bartenders, and a big open room to be a multi-purpose space. Rachel and her attendants also got ready inside. The multi-purpose space has a big fireplace, with a large stone hearth and mantle, this was decorated with pictures of Adam and Rachel.

There were also tables spread throughout the room that housed the cake, the presents, the favors, and the kids kits.

The wedding favors. Rachel and Adam put together a CD of music of some of their songs that mean a lot to them as a couple.

The grooms cake. Super cute...Adam and Bailey.

The Kids Activity Box

All the tables were set up just to the side of where the ceremony was held, so chairs from the ceremony were used around the reception tables. There is a poured concrete slab in the reception area for dancing and for the DJ. There are also tall outside lights step up around the entire area, so when it got dark, they were manually turned on and we could barely tell it was dark.

Evan made it up, just in time to eat some wonderful food, hear the toasts, see the cake being cut, and share a few dance moves with me. I also was able to capture a few more shots of Rachel and Adam on their Big Day!

Evan is a volunteer Fire Fighter

2011-09-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

In early Spring, Evan and I had a conversation one night where he shared that he thought he was meant to be in public service. Specifically, being a fire fighter has been something Ev has always been interested in. Also around the same time, my mom saw a sign at a local fire station advertising they were looking for new volunteers. Evan went in and they shared he could fill out the application on-line. Once filled out, the volunteer coordinator called Evan to give him the date he needed to come in for an interview and a written exam.

While there, Evan was one among about a dozen people. Evan wore his usual gear, jeans and a sweatshirt. Later that night when he came home, he shared that most everyone else was wearing dress clothes or fire gear. He seemed to find, that he was one of the few who hadn't gone through fire cadet school. Evan did well on the written test and during the interview the interview panel thanked him for having a business in the Fire District 6 area. He also seemed to relate well to one of the panelists when they found they both enjoyed hockey.

A few weeks later Evan received an email, from the volunteer coordinator, about his status of joining the district as a volunteer. "Thank you for your application and completing the subsequent testing for volunteer status at Clark County Fire District 6...

Congratulations, you will be moving forward in the process to become a Fire District 6 Support Services volunteer. The next step is completing district paperwork and scheduling an appointment for a breif medical examination and drug screen. Please see Nancy at our Main Fire Station to complete the required district paperwork...Please contact the Northwest Occupational Medical Center...for the medical exam and drug screen...

After all documents received and area approved, you'll be contacted about training dates and times. Please call me if you have questions.

Merrill Thompson
Volunteer Program Coordinator
Clark County Fire District 6"

Evan went to his first training on Saturday afternoon in April or May to be trained on "the bus." There Evan met another volunteer who was just super excited to learn how to volunteer for the bus. He is a C-TRAN bus driver and has had the goal of only seeing and volunteering on the bus! Also that day, Evan learned that if he wanted be called to volunteer on more calls, he would need an EMT course, and probably go through Fire Academy.

Fire polo issued to volunteers.

Class B uniform issued to volunteers, the patch was given separately, that we had to iron on.

I had looked at an EMT or EMS programs in our area once before, but immediately looked up Clark College's Summer EMT course once Evan shared this information. There was one course being offered and it would start the Monday after we got back from Hawaii. The entire process became one big blur of talking with Evan about the course, coming home one night and filling out Clark's admission application, checking the mail for his acceptance letter, not receiving it before we left for Hawaii, asking my mom to look into it for us, several phone calls while in Hawaii with my mom finding out that Evan was accepted, she registered him for one of the one of the last spots, found out what stuff he needed before class (CPR class, immunization records, a textbook, and t-shirt), sending Courtney out to pick up the book and the shirt, then finding the exact CPR class Evan needed and signed him up for it.

It was so crazy, I couldn't believe she was able to get that all done for us! We owe her big time! So, Evan started the EMT class toward the end of June and it would be every Monday and Wednesday night after work and all day Saturday through the first week in September. Though this new commitment meant a change in plans for his high school reunion, his cousin's wedding, and for our evenings together, Evan really enjoyed the material they were learning and the people in the class. One of his favorite classes, was going on calls with a local station. He talked and learned a lot from the career firemen and one even went through drills he would need to know for Fire Academy testing.

Evan wore this shirt every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday for three months. He was sooo sick of it when he was done with class!

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, Evan quickly learned that he would need to soon test for Fire Academy, which is only offered on an as needed basis. Evan learned what skills he would be tested on through talking with firemen, the volunteer coordinator, and on-line videos. Evan was one of eight guys testing for six spots to represent Fire District 6 at Fire Academy. Evan and his buddy Chris (a fellow EMT classmate who Evan convince to test with him and shared info about when Fire Academy was) took the first two spots with the fastest times overall. This was a huge relief, but reality set in that he would need to commit another three months of Wednesday nights and his entire Saturdays to this schooling; plus, running the shop, training for Strongman, and doing odds and ends around the house.

Though the first night of class wasn't his favorite, Evan was issued his gear.

This shirt was issued to all the guys going through Fire Academy who represented District 6. He had to wear this every Wednesday and Saturday, along with blue pants, and black shoes.

Evan in part of his gear with his favorite fire dog, Bear!

I also learned that training at the Academy can be one of the most dangerous times for students because mistakes are made while they are practicing each drill, which can cause injury to themselves or others. The highest rate of fire fighter deaths is usually involving training, especially volunteers (who make up the majority of firemen in the country).

I was also able to find a picture on Facebook of Evan and his classmates doing a car extraction drill. Someone in Evan's class posted this picture.

Stay tuned for another update on Evan's progress through Fire Academy and if he will make it to graduation in November!

Labor Day Weekend Project

2011-09-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

Using some inspiration I found on Pinterest, I took on the challenge to update and reorganize my spices, oils, and oven mits over Labor Day weekend.

Above is the same picture from Pintertest. Looks like baby food jars were repurposed into spice jars. Click on the picture above to find the original source.

Maybe a couple of years ago, I sort of cleaned up the spices, but I felt like the oven mits were too stuffed in their drawer and we were moving tons of items around to get to items in the back.

Spices and oils before.

Oven mits before.

I didn't want to buy a bunch of jars or a bunch of baby food jars, as it would just be too expensive and a waste. I already had several salt and pepper shakers, so I measured the drawer and figured I could get about 50 shakers in the drawer.

I picked up enough jars to just about fill the drawer, bought a basket that fit on the shelf to fit the oven mits, and bought 15 oz peanut oil bottles to hold all the oils. I emptied the oil into a large container, placed it in the fridge, and washed out all the bottles. I filled all the shakers and labeled them with the appropriate spice label. Then I took the extra spices and stored them in a container above the fridge. I placed Evan's spices that he uses the most often in a basket next to the stove: no seasoning salt, cinnamon, salt, and pepper. I also created a key that I taped to the inside of a cupboard, so we could easily find the correct spice jar.

Once everything was in its new space, here was the final result:

Afterward, when I was giving Mom the grand tour, she shared that this is how my grandma stored her spices when she was growing up. She said she even remembered the chart Grandma had inside her cupboard. Guess some things definitely run in the family!

Justin and Antia's wedding

2011-08-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Months before Anita and Justin's wedding, Anita emailed me asking if I would consider doing her makeup for her big day. She recently had had a bad experience where someone practiced on her and she came out looking like a ghost. I emailed back and shared I would be happy to, but nerves immediately set in. I asked her to send me a couple of pictures of what she would like to look like, then before the wedding, I got on-line and watched a few YouTube videos, to get ideas and new techniques.

I bought some new brushes and colors and brought the makeup on the plane with me as my carry-on, so if my luggage got lost, the makeup would be safe! The day of the wedding, I unpacked all my "tools" and here is what the "tool bench" AKA the ironing board looked like.

Right as I was about to get started, I could feel my heart racing and my hands shaking. I was nervous because even though you can stop and start over with makeup, we didn't really have the time so had to get it right the first time. I did take a BEFORE picture of Anita, but I forgot to take an official AFTER picture, so the BEFORE picture got deleted. However, here are a couple of candid pictures that seems to show how everything for Anita turned out.

Once Justin and Anita had their First Look, they changed and joined all the adults in the family for a traditional Chinese Tea Ceremony. Judy and Jim, being "elders" attended this ceremony, while I got ready!

The ceremony overlooked the ocean, beach, and steep cliffs at Pismo Beach. Gorgeous!

There was an arbor decorated with shells and gauze, part of the beachy theme!

The aisles were decorated with blue puffy balls that Anita made, sprinkled with dried yellow rose petals. Blue and yellow were the colors of their wedding, which are also the school colors of both of their colleges: Michigan, where Anita did her undergrad and University of California Santa Barbara.

Here are Anita's bridesmaids watching her come down the aisle. Anita had two bridesmaids, her best friend Lauren and her cousin Charlene. I also did Lauren's makeup. She has pretty small deep-set eyes, so I tried to get them to pop. Afterward, she was really happy with the result. Then later during the reception, she came up and said how pretty she felt, and how many of their friends were complimenting how pretty she looked and how good her eyes looked, so that was nice to hear.

Love this picture of Justin and Anita, they both have big smiles once pronounced husband and wife.

Erich filled in for Evan, serving as an usher. He wasn't too keen on wearing a tie for the ceremony, but was a good sport anyway. Here is a cute picture of Ashley and Erich after the ceremony.

The blue and yellow bride and bridesmaid bouquets made up of yellow roses, calla lilies, with small seashells, green berries, among other fun flowers.

The yummy cake, where Justin was the brains behind the cake topper.

A very creative and fun seating chart. Uncle Michael (Judy's brother) found this surfboard at a garage sale that he spent quite a bit of time cleaning up and refinishing. So thoughtful and unique!

The head table displayed sand dollar shells with Mr. and Mrs. written on them.

Ashley, Jared, and Erich had the task of setting up the centerpieces and name cards for each of the tables. They shared that Anita used a pie chart to show where each name card should be placed (just like an engineer!) and the instructions of how the centerpiece was to be put together was laid out with easy step by step instructions.

The reception had a fun photobooth, with props provided by Anita and Justin, endless drinks, yummy food, and good dancing. Their First Dance was also very sweet.

Anita and Justin put together three highlight reels for their blog from their favorite pictures.

Congrats Justin and Anita!

California Trip

2011-08-19T06:06:00.000-07:00

August has already been a crazy busy month for us with Ella's birthday and Evan's reunion in Spokane, Evan's EMT class three times a week, and then I took a trip to California for Evan's cousin Justin's wedding.

Evan has two cousins on his mom's side that are a day older than him. Davis got married last summer in Paso Robles (see wedding here) and now Justin was getting married in Pismo Beach, CA.

Originally, we planned for Evan to miss his Saturday EMT class, as he could only miss two days of class, but at the last minute the Fire Departments decided that would be the day to test for Fire Academy school. Evan was really bummed that he couldn't come, but didn't dwell on it as he knew it was out of his control, but hated making the phone call to Justin sharing he could no longer be an usher during the wedding ceremony.

Judy coordinated the flights for Ashley, herself, and me to all meet up in Oakland, then fly from Oakland to Burbank together. Judy's brother, Michael, picked us up from the airport and drove us an hour to Ventura where they live.

On Thursday, Judy drove Ashley and I up to Santa Barbara, so we could doing a little exploring. The first stop was at the Mission Santa Barbara, which is part of the El Camino Real.

A bear spout where water from the spout went into a shallow pool for the Native Americans to wash their clothes.

A wall of the church just outside the sanctuary.

Part of the church.

The long walkway, leading visitors to other parts of the mission.

There are many mission buildings like this along the El Camino Real. As you can read on the sign, Mission Santa Ventura is 30 miles away and Mission Santa Inez is 48 miles away.

I believe this fountain is the landmark of the Mission. Many of the postcards and framed photo art in the gift shop, were of this fountain with the Mission in the background.

We didn't stay too long before we headed to the Santa Barbara pier and did a little window shopping in some of the stores in downtown Santa Barbara. I was excited to visit and see Santa Barbara as my Aunt Coni lived there in the 70's during some of the riots. There were a lot of people out and about everywhere we went.

Later that night, Erich and Jared flew in and went straight to bed. Friday morning, we all packed up, shoved all five of us in the car and drove North.We dropped the boys off to play golf with the Kane boys, then drove ourselves to the hotel. Jim met us in Pismo as he flew to Turlock first to spend time with his sister. We checked into our hotel (this is where the ceremony was going to take place), and sat out on the hotel's nice patio visiting with everyone as they arrived, including the golfers. Then, oops, I sat out too long and got myself a little burnt.

Later that night, we all attended the rehearsal dinner. Here are a few pictures from the night:

Uncle Michael leading everyone in prayer-Anita, Uncle Michael, and Justin.

Judy, Michael, and Jared looking through scrapbooks. One scrapbook was one that Anita's mom made for Anita and Justin when they got engaged. The other was one that Justin made for Anita of their first year together. Note: Jared is wearing a polo he purchased at the Masters in the spring.

Pictures of Anita and Justin when they were young kids were set on tables around the room and the fireplace mantle.

Anita's dad and a couple of young cousins that wanted their uncle's attention!

All of the girl family members, errrr and Justin, outside of the restaurant. Judy, Auntie Carol, Ashley, Justin, Anita, me, and Kimberly.

Justin and Anita seemed to be having a lot of fun with all their friends and family members in town. They were very organized, everyone knew their job and where to be when!

Evan's 10 year high skewel reunion

2011-08-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

Keeping up with the times, Facebook is the new way classmates keep tabs on one another, so it is only natural a reunion would be coordinated the same way. Evan's classmates, who were suppose to plan the reunion, decided not to plan it, so a few others came together and planned the weekend long events in Spokane.

I was excited for Evan's 10 year reunion, as he had so much fun at mine in 2008, that he proclaimed that he couldn't wait for his. I was excited to meet some of his friends that I have heard him talk and tell stories about. Wow, does time fly!

We received some reunion information in the mail outlining the events planned for the weekend and it asked that people sign up ahead of time. Planned was: an informal social gathering at a bar on Friday, a tour of their newly remodeled high school Saturday afternoon, and an event at a hotel with heavy hors d'oeuvres Saturday night. We originally signed up and paid for everything, as it was all due back to the organizers in early May. However, like I mentioned in an earlier post, as the summer approached, our summer plans changed when Evan quickly signed up for an EMT class through Clark College.

The plan of us driving over for a long weekend in Spokane changed and I was looking at flights and prices to see how we could get Evan over to some part of his reunion. What seemed to work out best was to have Evan fly in right before the Saturday night event, which meant Evan would need to leave his EMT class early. Then, we would both fly back to Portland together on Sunday.

As the date approached, we were a little disappointed and nervous to attend as many of Evan's friends that live in Vancouver or that he keeps in touch with, decided not to go. When Evan arrived to the Herling house from the airport, Evan really wanted to wear his Shadle Park hockey jersey, but I vetoed it! His point was the year he was on their high school team, was the only year Shadle has had a hockey team! So they are LEGENDS...or so he says.

Truth be told, I felt like we were going to a high school dance, getting ready and having parents take pictures before we leave!

Evan likes to be on time and I like to be fashionably late to parties, but Evan won on this one, so we arrived when there weren't very many people there. Then, slowly a few familiar faces poured in.

Evan, Kyle, and Beau.

Beau came over from Indonesia for his dad's retirement party and for the reunion. Evan lived with Beau's cousin Bruce up in Bellingham for a couple of years. Beau thought it was so funny with how many pictures I took, he said I was worse than an Asian girl! There wasn't a program, so everyone just stood around the room or sat a tables visiting with one another.

Another friend of Evan's from elementary school was Chrissy Englund, she has kept in touch with a lot of their girlfriends from elementary, middle, and high school so she shared what everyone was up to.

Beau, Evan, Chrissy, and Mike.

I was kind of surprised at the small turnout. At 9:30, I looked around the room as I knew people were starting to leave, and counted. There were about 30 people there, so at the busiest time, there may have been 50.

Tara, Bethany, Evan, Ben, and Jordan.

We left with some of Evan's classmates to a bar downtown Spokane, I was kind of ready to call it a night, but Evan wanted to go. He had fun chatting with everyone, whether or not they were part of his class, and buying drinks for people. Let's just say that the next day, I was able to wake up early, and Evan needed a little sleep.

In all, Evan had a really good time, was happy to connect with some childhood friends, and was glad he went.

Ella's 2nd Birthday

2011-08-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Evan's high school reunion and Ella's 2nd birthday fell on the same weekend. Evan began taking an EMT class right after we got back from Hawaii, so unfortunately he had to miss Ella's party on Friday and flew in right before his class party started on Saturday night.

Friday afternoon, Judy and I drove over to Karin's mom's house to help set up and decorate for the party. The colors of the party were pink and green and everyone was invited to swim in their backyard pool. Ella was a little shy around me at first, but she had so much fun swimming with Jim and Karin.

Karin made this cute pendant banner:

Judy and I made puffy balls/poms the night before, but we also came up with mini poms stuck to a stick.

Also Thursday night, I made these cups to hold the goldfish crackers.

Judy and Karin also found this fun way to display a variety of fruit. Creating rainbows out of them using a kabob stick!

Karin's stepsister Courtney made the birthday cake for Ella.

Months before the party, I came across some adorable dresses at Fred Meyer that I couldn't pass up. I thought one of them would be perfect for Ella's birthday, but wasn't sure if Karin had something else already planned and didn't want to step on her toes. I shared with Karin about the dress and she asked me to bring it to the party.

The days leading up to the party, Judy and Jim would tell Ella that her second birthday was coming up, helped her know the age to tell people when they asked how old she was, and would sing the birthday song. Many times, she would say, "No no," she didn't want to hear or sing the birthday song.

Ella wore her birthday t-shirt while she ate dinner and then changed into her birthday party dress that Evan and I bought for her and it worked perfect! The colors of the dress happened match the colors of the party and fit her like a glove.

She looked adorable!

I had fun taking pictures of the party and all the guests for Karin, so she could enjoy the party. Jared had to work, but came in time to eat with Ella and be there for the birthday cake and presents. When we got ready to bring out the cake and sing, it was like everything clicked for Ella. She asked us to sing the birthday song, clapped cause she was so excited, and said cheese and smiled for all the pictures. It was so cute and such a surprise...good thing they practiced!

Love this picture of Jared and Karin so proud of their two year-old!

Once in a Lifetime Trip! Cuz...

2011-07-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

Jillian told us about six or seven months ago that for her 21st birthday we were all going to Vegas. She thought it wouldn't be too expensive as we could stay in the Harshaw condo. Jillian and Darcy's Uncle Kelly lived in Las Vegas for about 25 years and his condo is just a couple of blocks off the main strip.

A few months went by and I Facebooked (who knew that would be come a verb, just like Google) the cousins to see if we could find any dates that matched up. We started looking in May right around Jillian's birthday, but the first weekend we found that all matched up was at the end of July!

Aunt Kelly took over from there and booked our tickets and our hotel room, it was so stress free not having to make any decisions about the time or date to leave.

Thursday night, we all met at the Wack house and Aunt Kelly and Uncle Gary were ready to chauffeur us to the airport. Grandma also met us there and gave us all a little gambling money from Grandpa. She said we could only spend our $1 when we were all together.

Bags packed and ready to celebrate Jillian's 21st birthday!

I was nervous about how long it would take for us to check into our hotel as I read on-line reviews and it seemed the common theme at the Riveria was how long check-in took. But luckily for us, there was only one other family in front of us when we arrived.

Also visiting Vegas during our trip, was Darcy and Jillian's Uncle Wayne and Uncle Steven. Uncle Wayne managed to weasel his way into finding the details out about our trip, and shared that they just happened to being going there and staying at the condo at the same time. Ha ha!

So once we got checked into our hotel, Uncle Wayne called and wanted to meet up with us so he could buy our first Vegas cocktail. We quickly got spruced up and sprayed off the airplane stench.

We all walked to the Wynn, along with a couple of friends from the Vancouver area who happened to be in town, and found ourselves already becoming accustomed to the Vegas lifestyle.

Cheers to a fun cousin trip!

Jillian wearing her 21st birthday sash!

Uncle Steven didn't come out with us, he was just too pooped from their day of gambling. His loss!

Standing in front of the beautiful indoor displays at the Wynn.

Friday we spent some wonderful, much needed time in the sunshine and the pool. I wasn't expecting a DJ to be there playing the cuts for us while we tanned, but it was adding to the Vegas atmosphere. I was happy that I had taken the time to pack two water floaties inside my carry-on. They weren't easy to squish-in and carry; even the flight attendant noticed them and asked what they were. Turns out, it saved us a few dollars not having to rent the floaties from the hotel.

Heeey! Hanging out in our floaties and the pool!

Kristin would be joining us later Friday night, so we decided to go next go next door for lunch. We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into; we had walked into a piece of Las Vegas history. Well, history in Vegas standards.

Love those neon signs!

The famous fire in the lounge at Peppermill. Even in the Vegas heat, it is going.

It was dim lite, with a Peppermill on each table, flamingo Tiffany lamps above each table, and pink and green neon tube lights running all around the restaurant. The portions were huge and the server encouraged us to share meals. I had to find out what this place was all about. I whipped out my phone a Googled it.

Turns out the Peppermill is unique in the sheer fact that is it about 30 years-old, not brand new like most everything along The Strip. It is a stand alone restaurant, not inside a casino, it has its own parking lot, and has been featured in a couple of movies.

The rest of the day we walked (got lost, because of me) along The Strip and hung out at our hotel. Kristin was there waiting for us and we all laid around chatting and drinking some fancy poolside drinks. That night, we got ready to go out and Darcy worked her magic to get us into Tao at the Venetian for free. After some time spent being sardines inside Tao, we wandered to a few other places.

Saturday morning was a new day and Wayne and Steven invited us over for a pool party. They were so excited to have us over for yummy drinks, appetizers, and In-and-Out! Before heading over to their house, we made sure to gamble the $1 that Grandma had given us. We didn't have any luck, except for Kristin!

Trying our luck at the Wheel of Fortune slots!

It was so fun, we sunned in the lounge chairs, played in the pool, and met Elvis! One of the residents at the complex moved to Vegas from Florida so he could be hired as an Elvis impersonator. He came out in his gear before going to perform a wedding ceremony.

Hey Elvis!

After the pool party, we went back to the hotel, Kristin took a nap and we got ready to go out. This time we took a taxi to the other end of The Strip to try and go to a piano bar that Linda and Rick told us about. The piano bar was at New York New York, but was already packed and too expensive to get in. Something like $10 to stand and $25 to sit, but none of the people in the "sitting section" were sitting. No worries, we danced in the club, Kelsey, Courtney, Darcy, and Jill went on the outdoor rollercoaster while Kristin and I visited over a glass of wine, and we visited other casinos.

One of our stops was the new Cosmopolitan, which was fun to walk around and look at the decor.

Courtney, Darcy and Jill, this behavior of acting like "Toddlers and Tiaras" was a common theme on this trip.

The rubix cube like lobby at the Cosmo.

It was a fun night and we made it back to the hotel rather late/early.

Sunday morning, was a new day and we laid out at our hotel, crashed in again on Wayne and Steven (and their pool) before heading to the airport. We had a wonderful trip together, laughing, talking, and making memories on a trip that we don't know if we will be able to do again. Though, Kristin said next time it is all of us going to see her in Phoenix!

Special surprise for Mom's 60th

2011-07-05T23:24:00.000-07:00

For a little while, my mom was thinking she wanted to have a party for her 60th birthday. Then she changed her mind and mentioned a friend was coming into town, so they would probably go to dinner, or maybe she wanted to head to the beach, and would go out to dinner with a couple of her friends who were turning 60 later in the month.

So Kelsey and I worked together on a way to surprise Mom from all her friends. We wrote a note to friends and family members sharing that Mom's birthday was coming up and it would be great if they could send her a card or a note wishing her happy birthday. Then we gave each person a specific day to stick the letter in the mail, this way the notes would come in about two at a time and be spread out among three weeks. We also asked each person to include the puzzle piece that we had included along with their list of instructions.

Then I took off for Hawaii and hoped for the best! I hoped that we had captured all the right mailing addresses for mom's friends and that everyone would remember to send in their notes, otherwise we would be missing pieces for the puzzle!

Slowly the notes started coming in, I would text Courtney so she could spy to see if Mom was even opening them. As knowing her, she would "save them all" to open on her real birthday!

It was fun, some people used our envelope to send them back, some used their own, some people wrote on restaurant checks, notebook paper, paper with their name at the top of it, or bought a new card all together. Some of the notes were hand written and some were typed out.

Mom stuck each note in one of her ribbon bulletin boards, so she had two bulletin boards full of sweet well wishes!

The puzzle ended up being two puzzles; one was full of words that describe Mom, using the words to make a cool design and colors that match her kitchen/laundry room.

The other puzzle was a picture we took in May 2010 when the cousins, aunts, and Grandma were all together for wedding stuff.

Here is how both puzzles turned out after Mom framed and hung them.

[pictures to come]

Disaster diverted...

2011-06-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

Literally minutes before we walked out the door to drive to Seattle (this is where we caught our plane to fly to Hawaii), I decided to wipe off the kitchen counters one more time. The kitchen counter spray lives under our sink, so as I pulled it out, I could see and feel wetness. I immediately said, "Why is the bottom of this wet?"

Evan, who was annoyed I stopped to wipe the counters, was like, "I don't know." So I pulled out another item and the bottom was again wet. Adrenaline immediately set in and I panicked, oh man what if we have a huge mess under there?

I bent over and could see a puddle of water sitting in each white plastic basket that holds all the under the sink items. I slowly pulled each one out, so the water wouldn't spill. Luckily there were a bunch of dry rags in one of the bins absorbed a lot of the water and the holes on the basket are about 1/2 inch up from the bottom, so it didn't get full enough to fill up the base of plastic basket onto the wood cabinet. Phew! Disaster diverted.

One of the two bins that sits under the sink. This cabinet feels more organized than it looks!

We quickly spotted where the leak was coming from, the garbage disposal. I pulled out bins and wiped everything down as quickly as I could. The drying rack, that sits inside one of the sides of the sink, was moved to the side that the garbage disposal sits under, to remind Courtney not to use that side of the sink while she was at our house. Courtney watched Bear for us while we were in Hawaii.

Then we hopped in the car and starting driving North to Seattle. I immediately texted Courtney about the sink issues and called my mom. I wanted to be sure she knew in case she came over to assist Courtney with Bear.

After our trip, we walked through the door and there was a new garbage disposal on our counter waiting for us. Yay! Thanks Mom!

Evan got right to work installing the new disposal, it was then when I immediately I knew our vacation was over. I even updated my Facebook to say, "You know your vacation is over when as soon as we walked in the door, Evan installed a new garbage disposal and fixed the Dyson vacuum hose."

And before I knew it, it was installed. Love having a handy husband!

Last moments in Hawaii...

2011-06-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

When we made it back Ko 'Olina, it was time to get ready for dinner. We planned to eat at the Marriott's fancy restaurant using our hotel credit and a Groupon--Judy knew how to work it!

There are two restaurants on site, Longboards and Chuck's Steakhouse & Seafood. We all met at Longboards, as some live music was playing, and Erich ordered a beer. Then Erich shared with us that it was $8 for a Heineken in can....IN A CAN!

Had to take a picture of that bad boy.

When musician took a break, we had a few minutes before our reservation, so of course Jim went up to talk with him, made a new friend, and we snapped a few more pics.

Jim and his new friend; music brings us all together, right?!

Then we walked over to Chuck's and had an AAHMAAZING dinner for our last night of all being together in Hawaii.

The next morning, Friday morning, Evan and I packed up and drove into Honolulu with Jim and Judy. We wanted to stop by Pearl Harbor to see the museum before going to the airport to head back home.

The entire area had changed a lot since Jim and Judy were last there. We walked around the grounds, read the facts and history about the missiles, anchors, men who served, and more . It was super interesting, just wished we could have spent more time there.

We also stood in line to meet and visit with two characters, two World War II vets who were in Honolulu during the attack on Pearl Harbor. They both had sheets of paper that they handed out to all the guests with their story. They were adorable!

This guy told Evan to, "Come stand next to me for the picture while I hug your wife."

We left Pearl Harbor and Jim and Judy dropped us off at the airport. Sad.

Beautiful view on our way home.

Of course it wasn't all sad, this cutie was waiting for us when we walked in the door.

Hawaii...it's not over yet!

2011-06-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

Continued...

We were happy that we found a free, not too far spot, pretty easily in the public park. We took our time strolling by the park and capturing the picture perfect sites of the sunset, the trees, and the people out enjoying the night. There were so many great photo moments.

We noticed the surf seemed a lot more rough and Judy talked with someone who informed us a big swell had moved in, so the waves were a lot more powerful and pulled out a lot stronger. The Kapiolani Park is pretty interesting in itself, not only cause of the historic monuments all over, but how the land actually became a park. At one time in history, it actually was a horsetrack.

The crowd that gathered to watch the sunset.

So once we stopped walking, where did we end up? The Moana Hotel (where the Banyan Courtyard restaurant resides) of course. It is it is known as the First Lady of Waikiki and was built in 1901. Our evening to the Banyan Courtyard restaurant was Evan and mine second time and Jim and Judy's third time on this trip.

It is a popular spot, so we had to hunt down a table and though we couldn't see the musicians or dancer, we loved hearing the live music.

We stayed late (well, late for us) into the night, walked back to the car, and played Cash Cab on the way back to our hotel using Hawaiian trivia.

Thursday morning, we couldn't really decide what to do, so we drove out to a part of Oahu that we hadn't been to before. We were told to not go past Makaha as it can be pretty dangerous for tourists, so we just stopped at the beach in Makaha to hangout for a while. The surf was still pretty rough, the beach was empty, the boys threw around the football, and we watch the surfers....well, surf.

When we left, we drove back to one of Judy's favorite beaches on the North Shore, Sunset Beach.

I loved the thicker sand granules at Sunset Beach.

We laid out and then Erich and Ashley found a good spot to do a little "cliff jumping." Okay maybe it was more of a G-rated cliff jumping and could really be called "sand dune jumping", but we used quite a bit of energy to climb up the dune, jump off, and once in the water, used our energy to keep standing with the strong pull of the ocean.

We still wanted to drive completely around the rest of the island and we wanted to do it before the Honolulu's rush hour traffic started.

It was amazing how some parts of the drive the ocean almost came right up to the road, then other areas the road cut really far in, so we were pretty far from the water. On our way we of course had to stop and do another shave ice test! This time we found the location using our smartphones. We were in Laie and a lot of the reviews shared that Angel's Ice Cream was a good spot and a good date place. Makes sense since BYU Hawaii is also in Laie.

The drive was beautiful seeing the high mountains that are so lush, the interesting canopy trees, China Man's Hat, and the sugar mill ruins.

The rest of Thursday to be continued...

Hawaii...the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday

2011-06-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

After the shrimp truck, we turned around and headed back South and made a little pit stop at a roadside fruit stand. Jim, Judy, and Evan all got out to pick out some fresh fruit for all of us.

They all came back with stories about the variety of bananas there were, fresh papaya, mango, and other fruits they didn't know what they were like these guys:

They also came back with apple bananas and ice cream bananas. I don't know if any of us could really tell the difference besides the way they looked.

We drove a little more then pulled over again at what is some sort of burned building.

It is right next to a convalescent home (nursing home), but we never learned what the building was used for or if it was the original building. It was amazing how the outside and the steel beams remained completely intact, but the doors, windows, floors, everything was gone. I just kept waiting for someone to come out and say, "Move it along people!"

Then we decided to go through the town of Haleiwa where Matsumoto Shave Ice is. It is another famous save ice place, with their own style and it is a little unique being located inside of a market. We had to get some to taste the difference and see if we liked Waiola's or Mastumoto's better. I liked Waiola's better, but a couple of others in the group liked Mastumoto's, just depends if you like a more smooth or gritty ice.

We had a great, long day in the sun and being out and about, but we were pooped!

Wednesday morning, some of us got up to take a walk, some got up and purchased some expensive coffee or Rockstars from the cart inside the Marriott, and then we decided to lay low for the day and enjoy the pool at the hotel. The hotel provides as many towels as you need while you are there, so it was nice not having to take the wet towels back to the room.

Evan and Erich worked out a little, but then jumped in the pool and threw a football around (yes all three of us packed footballs in our suitcases) and then wanted us girls to play Three Flags Up with them.

We played around for a while and my shoulder actually hurt right away, man, I am a baby! We all went back to the room and got ready for the night, Jim wanted to head back to Honolulu to visit a guitar shop. So we all decided to go there too, but Evan, Ashley, Judy, and I decided to drive around and see some of the historic sites in downtown Honolulu.

We saw the state capital building

City of Honolulu's City Hall

The missionary grounds and the Kawaiaha'o Church

The statue of Kamehameha stands at the Ali'oilani Hale. The building was orginally supposed to be his palace, but was completed after his death and only used as administrative buildings. The royal residence was eventually built across the street.

The Iolani Palace, which has a big claim to fame, it is the only royal residence in the United States. It was completed in about 1882.

We didn't have much time, so we only spent a few minutes at each spot. It was really nice to learn a little about the Hawaiian history. Our meter ran out, so we quickly made it back to the car and we headed back to the mall to pick up Jim and Erich. All of us then drove into the Waikiki area and parked just outside of Waikiki Beach at Kapiolani Park.

The rest of our evening to be continued in the next posting...

Hawaii...

2011-06-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

Continued from previous posting...Monday afternoon.

So all six of us were in the rental van on our way to our next hotel, which was just outside of Honolulu in Ko 'Olina. We stopped at Costco before checking-in to grab some eats for the rest of the week. Our hotel, though a one bedroom condo, had a kitchen that was fully stocked so we could make meals there rather than eat out.

Once we arrived to our hotel, Ko 'Olina Marriott, we walked around the grounds to scope out the scene and check out the man-made lagoons. During the rest of the trip we would often refer our hotel as "fake Hawaii" as it was beautiful, but too perfect.

Tuesday morning we got up early, went for a walk, grabbed breakfast and then headed North. We stopped at the Dole Plantation to visit the gift shop and grab some pineapple ice cream. It was very tart!

Then we made our way to Turtle Bay to see if we could spot any sea turtles, who we learned have finally made their way back to the shores of Hawaii after being gone for decades.

The next stop was to Shark's Cove where we would hang for a few hours and snorkel. We rented two sets of snorkel gear, so we could all share.

Look how cute we are in our gear!

It was extremely rocky, but we had to leave our flip flops (slippahs as they are called in Hawaii) on the shore then tip toe across the rocks as fast as we could until we could sit and slide into the water with our flippers on. Once out there, it was so pretty. I loved how you could only see the tip of a rock above the surface, but when snorkeling you could see the entire rock go all the way to the bottom of the ocean floor.

Also while out, I would have all kinds of flashes of the movie Finding Nemo with all the different fish we saw. Evan and Erich went out together and got pretty brave getting further and further away from the shore, so Judy and I took a hike to out to get closer to then to take pictures, and we got ourselves into a little bit of a pickle.

If you look at the picture above, you can see how the rock jets out on the right. That is where Judy and I ended up, but it wasn't easy getting there in slippahs! By the time we got out there, the boys were gone, and we still had to turnaround and make it all the way back. This time we took a short cut through a beautiful alcove of shallow calm water.

This is what we had to climbed down to get into the alcove. The water from the ocean would go under all the rocks to this spot.

When we were done at the beach, Evan suggested we keep heading North to a shrimp truck that a friend of his suggested we try out. Judy, Jim, and Ashley were a little worried it was the same one they had been to two years before as they thought the food there was terrible. When we arrived it definitely wasn't the same place, so all were relieved.

Immediately you notice a trend from all the visitors, literally people leave their mark on the shrimp truck or the little pick up in front. The spot is a popular one, with a permanent outdoor eating area, and other vendor booths to patron.

While in line, the cooks were happy to entertain not only themselves, but anyone in line singing along to Hawaiian tunes.

This song, will forever remind me of that spot.

Tuesday afternoon to be continued...

Going to Hawaii

2011-06-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

The days leading up to our trip to Hawaii, I couldn't get the Beach Boys' song "Hawaii" out of my head.

This trip would be a trip for many firsts for us; first time we have taken a trip I feel which was really just for fun...a true vacation. First time Evan has closed the shop for more than a day or two and Evan's first time going to Hawaii. There must be a few other firsts I am forgetting...hmmm...suggestions?!

When we arrived to Hawaii Jim, Judy, Ashley, and Erich were already there and had been there for a couple of days. Jim and Judy greeted us at the airport with leis!

Evan couldn't wait to get into the sun and into the pool! Well, that and to couldn't wait to eat L&L Hawaiian BBQ. We stopped there as soon as we could find the first one outside of the airport.

Judy booked for all of us to stay at the Aston Waikiki Beach hotel for our first night as she wanted all of us to have the "staying on Waikiki Beach experience."

When we arrived there was an indoor/outdoor waiting area, gift shop, restaurants, and a bellhop service to help us with our bags. The rest of the hotel and the front desk were all above this space and businesses. We sat and waited here while Judy went upstairs to check us in.

The view from our room's balcony.

Another great view looking right at Waikiki Beach from our room.

Later that night we walked along the main street of Waikiki seeing the sights, viewing the historic statues and hotels, and enjoyed a wonderful happy hour at Duke's.

Monday morning we were up early, I peered out our hotel window and stared at the hotel across from ours. I tried to see just how many doors opened for people to come out and sit, relaxing with their morning coffee on their balcony...not many...they must have been on the beach, or at Starbucks! Ha!

We had breakfast at the hotel (the hotel encourages you to pack a lunch sack, which they provided for each room, and go eat breakfast on the beach) and drove out to Diamond Head to hike the trail before it got too hot.

Full of energy now, before all the steps!

The trail was filled with tourists of all ages; families taking it slow for everyone, speedy runners and hikers passed us by, and a cute elderly couple who definitely chose the slow and steady route with her in a long dress and shoes I wouldn't wear hiking!

Once you get up the face of the crater, you climb two sets of staircases (both very steep), go through a semi lite tunnel, climb a spiral staircase (that replaced people climbing a ladder) and climb through a bunker, all to get to the very top. The volcano and its ridges have a lot of ancient and modern history.

You can really see the sites from the top.

Looking back at the volcano's crater where we parked and started the hike.

Looking down at Waikiki Beach, see the cute pink hotel among all the huge ones? That is The Royal Hawaiian, one of the first hotels in Hawaii built in 1927.

Once we were all done, we drove back to Waikiki, checked out of our hotel, had brunch at Duke's (again, but downstairs vs. upstairs this time), and found some beach space. Evan, Ashley, and Erich rented two paddle boards to try paddle boarding. They seemed to do pretty good and they quickly realized which of the two boards was easier and what type of waters would be better.

Evan giving me a wave.

I just bought a cheap $3 floaty from the ABC store to float on the water, but kept my eyes open for out of control surfers!

Before we left the Wakiki/Honolulu area, we made a stop for Waiola Shave Ice. They had just moved locations, so we were glad we had asked the Bell Hop at our hotel for directions. We were the only tourists there, among a bunch of locals, and the looks on some of their faces were a little of annoyance.

We laughed at Jim a couple of times, as he loved wearing this shirt for a lot of the trip and even caught the attention of a crazy man one night. Once the man spotted Jim's shirt, he started walking alongside Jim down the street of Waikiki spitting crazy knowledge.

My coworker, Rhona (she grew up in Honolulu) suggested we get our shave ice "island style" getting both azuki beans and ice cream inside. They tasted a little like black beans and were a little strange at first, but Judy and I both ended up liking them.

The crew and our shave ice. This was one of the first places on the trip, Evan asked us to put our cameras away-he didn't want us to stand out as tourists, but to try and blend in!

We finished up at Waiola and started to head to our hotel, when we spotted Leonard's Bakery. They are known for their malasadas. Jim hopped out of the van, while we all stayed put, and grabbed us some doughy sugary goodness.

Didn't bother us that we had just had plenty of sugar and were ready to have some more! Okay, maybe it bothered us a little as we all just asked for, "a small piece."

Pictures and stories from the rest of our trip to be continued....

Next! The guest bath gets a new floor and shower door!

2011-06-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

As summer approach we tried to get more home improvement projects done as quickly as we could since the summer would be another busy one with trips and a possible night class for Evan.

The next room on the docket was the guest bathroom upstairs. The last time I posted about this room was in 2009 when we had painted it and put up a few special decorations.

Now it was time to take up that awful flooring and put in something more updated. Here are a few before photos of the floor.

Evan went to work right after I snapped these photos, doing exactly what he did with our master bathroom floor. We decided to put in the same tile we used in our bathroom as it might help sell our house down the road having all the bathrooms the same and in neutral colors.

But before you stop reading, as you think you've heard all the news before, there was one new accomplishment this time around. Installing a showing glass door. Oh yes, big deal.

Installing a glass shower slider has been a goal of mine, since we moved in. While roaming the aisles of Home Depot one night, I brought up the idea that we were ready to install one. Evan seemed up for the challenge and while I was out one day, he installed it. Though all the styles and brands said they will fit our size space, Evan still had to customize it to fit our tub and space. But it worked!

So here is our guest bathroom, now with a new floor and sliding door.

As you can see, like our master bathroom, the baseboard mouldings all still need to be done.

Here is a view straight on from the hallway.

One thing I would like to do next is change out the plastic curtain rod holding the curtain. I have a few ideas, doing something like this from Sticks and Bricks blog...someday!

Don't you think the room is coming along?

Washington's Strongest Apple

2011-06-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, Evan began training strongman with a local group of guys (and one lady) the day after Christmas 2010. He had worked out alone with focus for over a year before joining this crew, but now he is training with experienced people. To be a good strongman, you need strong hips, grip, back, legs, and pressing power. You need to be good at every element if you want to do well and that's what Evan says makes it so fun. They get together every Sunday to train for competitions and events around the region, some have even participated on the national and world level.

After only training for 3 1/2 months, Evan signed up for his first competition called Washington's Strongest Apple in Des Moines, Washington.

Only two other guys Evan trains with came up to Des Moines for the contest.

Like wrestling and boxing, your weight determines not only who else you will compete against, but how heavy the equipment will be that you will use during the event. With 1 1/2 months to left to train, Evan had to focus not only the events, but work to get his weight down in order to compete in the 231 class. He had been hovering around 250 for most of the winter and spring, so some weight had to come off quickly!

On Friday, the day of weigh in, Evan woke up at 234 lbs. He had to be 231.4 or less to be in the 231 class so he did some jump rope, light jogs, and sweat some water out. He didn't consume any water or food since Thursday evening around 6.

Our trip to Seattle from Vancouver was about 2 1/2 hours, of course we packed the scale and tested the accuracy of the scale using weights! At Fort Lewis, 40 miles from weigh ins, Evan weighed himself to see how he was looking... 233.0 in shorts and a shirt. Oh no! He threw on some Dickies pants, hoodie, and blasted the car's heater and seat heater to sweat off a few lbs. Made weigh ins an hour later at 230.8!

The first event was the farmer walk with 223lbs in each hand. Gravy, so he thought. Evan could go 200' in training with this weight....but not with these implements. The handles were slick as ice and the long tubes made them difficult to control. Evan really considered this event a complete failure. He got 86' in 60 seconds with multiple drops. His body and legs were cruising, but his hands couldn't hold it..

Evan shared with me that he could name multiple excuses, but the weight doesn't care. He got 9th out of 10 competitors in this event.

Not only was our friend Zach (who we stayed with for the weekend) and I cheering for Evan that day, but Ashley and Erich came down from Seattle, Jim and Judy came over from Spokane, my mom and dad came up from Vancouver, and our friends Ali and Zack also drove down from Seattle. Evan had quite the cheering section, I think we might have embarrassed him a few times.

The volunteers had to carry the farmer weights back with a hand truck!

Second event was the keg load and sled drag. Evan had to load a 180 keg, run 40' and drop it into a sled. Then he ran back and grabbed a 200 keg ran back 40' to load this keg into the sled.

Hold the kegs high. Move those feet. Lock your arms. Move them feet.

Once the kegs were loaded, Evan had to pull the sled backwards 80' and they are only given 60 seconds to complete this entire task. In Evan's words, he SMOKED this event by finishing in 48 seconds. He was the only person in entire competition to complete this event, which made him even happier.

After he came back he shared that he knew he would do well. Ha! Such confidence.

Here is video of Evan during this event:

The third event was the 4" deficit 2" axle deadlift with 365lbs each person doing as many reps as possible in 60 seconds. Evan tied for 3rd with 17. First was 25, second was 20. Evan said his back was fine, but his grip just gave way. Still he had a lot of fun with this one.

Here is video of Evan competing in this event:

The fourth event was the yoke walk. It was by far his LEAST favorite and least practiced event. The goal was to carry 655lbs on a yoke for 80' within 60 seconds. Evan considers this time OK by the fact he crossed the line within time of 35 seconds. He really feels that he shouldn't have dropped it though...he thinks he placed around 5th in this event.

It was tough to tell where Evan was placed overall because it was difficult to determine weight class from weight class and then the participants would move around as points were added up and change who Evan competed against in the next event.

Last event was also the most fun. Evan had to lift a keg up onto a platform 52" off the ground. The weight of the kegs in order were 180, 200, 220, and 250 within 60 seconds. Evan got third, with 40.03 seconds. The last keg, 290, was there for a bonus. This was the heavyweight guys' last keg, but a 5th for the lightweights. Evan was almost there, he just kept getting caught on the rubber.

Here is some video from this event:

When the awards were handed out, and after we double checked some scores and made a few adjustments, Evan received 4th or 5th for his 231 weight class. Evan thought it was a very fun experience and a great show. Evan wanted to be sure to say, "If you think you feel big and strong, go to a strongman show...my word there are some freaks out there!"

**Update** Sine the contest, here is some recent video while Evan was training one Sunday. Definitely a personal record, not only for him, but none of the guys have been able to do this! This is a 385 lbs atlas stone lifted to 52"!!!

Ooh la la, is that a new couch and chairs I see?!

2011-05-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

Our living has always been a "work in progress." Wait, what am I saying? Our entire house is a work in progress. When Evan moved in and for a bit after we got married, the living room sat empty. Slowly it was filled with a Laura Ashley love seat and sofa that Jim and Judy gave to Ashley for her Seattle apartment and Ashley didn't need it with her current roommate/living situation in 2008.

After being in our living room for a couple of years, the love seat then moved to Courtney's studio apartment and we acquired Evan's parents green sofa that used to be in their downstairs family room.

I've always had to laughed when we tried to rearrange the furniture (a.ka. the two full size sofas) for different parties like Kelsey's bridal shower or at Christmas time when we tried to get the Christmas tree in there. The upside was always extra sleeping space for guests, which was really needed in August 2010 for my 30th birthday party!

See?! Kaaren's 30th birthday in April 2010, the green couch's back is to us and the blue couch is against the wall. Not to mention a couple of Evan's bicycles hanging out in there!

Christmas 2010, look closely at the edge of the picture; green couch facing the tree on the right and blue couch facing the tree on the left.

So this spring it was time. Time to get the hand-me-downs out and get some new stuff in! Mom convinced me to go to JC Penney with her one night and check out some "deals" they were having. After scoping out the goods, I went home to measure and talk with Evan about the purchase I was about to make. For some reason, he couldn't come with me at the end of the week to look at everything, but he said, "I trust you, we have generally the same taste."

Well, at the last minute, I decided against a chair I planned to order and ordered two chairs they had just started selling. So new, that the day I ordered was the first day they could be ordered! When I got home, I told Evan what I ordered: a cream couch and two chairs that had French writing on them. Apparently he thought I was kidding, as when the chairs finally arrived and were unwrapped he said, "Oh I thought you were lying about the French writing!"

One of the two chairs, aren't they adorable?!

With all the changes around the house recently (see here, here, and here), it has taken a while to get the living room set up to look, well, livable. But we are now ready for the "Soft Opening!" (Soft because in order to be a Grand Opening we would have to have the new carpet installed, pictures hung and displayed, and a table for the lamp between the two chairs.)

The coffee table used to be Evan's grandpa's and was in the family room for the longest time holding all our media stuff.

Here is a picture taken looking from the dining room towards the front of the house.

See the lamp on the ground? Still need to get a small table to go there.

This picture is taken standing on the stairs looking into the living room.

The brown cabinet behind the chair also came from the family room, it used to hold all our DVDs.

I think it looks really cute and again, more us! And as the Frenchies would say, "Ooh la la!" I am still working on the throw pillow situation, but it will come together in time!

I'm famous

2011-05-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, I noticed a lot of traffic coming to my blog from South America. I have a tracking system on my blog site that gives me in numbers and sometimes cities and states of where traffic is coming from and how often. It is just for fun, nothing scary or to find out any secrets!

I found out one of the images from my 30th birthday party (held August 2010) was used on another blog. The tricky part of the investigation was the blog's author resides in Argentina/Venezuela I believe, so I can't translate much of what is written.

Here is what I did put together...The entry was posted on February 18, 2011. The entry was explaining different ways to use honeycomb balls. Here is the picture from my blog that was used:

I typed the original copy into Google asking it to translate to English. When translated is says something like, "you can use them to line roads or pathways..." Seems to make sense to me and what my picture is doing!

Anyway, it was a nice surprise and the blog's author gave me a nice credit towards the bottom! Here is the blog: http://lacelebracion.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/bolas-de-papel-de-panal/

Trip to Boise

2011-05-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

Girl Road Trip!!!

A while ago, cousin Allison invited her friends and family members to Boise for the city's Race for the Cure. The race was the first full weekend in May, which was also Mother's Day weekend (Allison's first without her mom), and just shy of Nancy's one year anniversary since passing.

Lots of talk went around the Conrad family and with Judy, deciding who would be available to go. Grandma really wanted to go and told us we could drive her van there. In the end, Mom, Kelsey, Grandma, and I loaded in the van Friday morning and headed to Boise together. We made many stops, one of which was in LaGrande, Oregon at Hought's 24 Flavors.

Hought's is, in a way, a landmark for the college town, being around since the 50's. It sat vacant for many years, but received a full restoration/renovation, and in 2011 they celebrated their sixth anniversary since the reopening.

The 50's diner claims to serve the best homemade burgers and homemade curly fries in town, along with great ice cream, homemade hot fudge, homemade waffle cones, and friendly service. Many of the furniture items in the restaurant are original to the restaurant with some of the items still being used, others are just for display.

There was a lot of items displayed to see and read, most everything was labeled if it was original to the store or picked up in the last several years. Some of the items were found under the ice cream freezer or under the fridge. It was fun to look at all the vintage candy boxes, soda cans, and pictures of the original owners.

I snapped this photo as a friend of mine used to be married to a Hires. The Hires family was the first in the nation to bottle and distribute homemade root beer. The local Hires family isn't involved in the Hires company. A Vancouver restaurant, Pop Culture soda shop, is really trying to get their hands on selling Hires Root Beer, but hasn't had any luck.

There was a scrapbook out on the counter showing the restaurant before the renovation, during, and after. You could easily tell it was a lot of work and took a lot of helping hands, but once it was done it looked just like it used and a little better. However, in my opinion, they have not kept up on maintenance and have too many flyers of events and special menu items, calendars, modern banners, and newspapers that take away from the appeal of the restaurant.

Once we arrived in Boise, we freshened up, and headed to a local hotspot called Donnie Mac's. The restaurant features "trailer park cuisine" and prides themselves on the unusual restaurant decor like lawn chairs at the tables, wine is served in mugs, jeans hung on the walls, and cold drinks come in old wine bottles. The restaurant was even featured on the TV show called, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. If you want to watch the Food Network clip, click the picture below.

Yup, that's a car in the middle of dining room, the front seat is turned around and a table is placed between and the front and the back seat.

Samples of some of the menu items are Spaghetti O's (served in the can); macaroni and cheese with your choice of hot dogs, sausage, or chili; homemade sweet potatoes fries; and homemade cornbread batter for corndogs.

The garage door which gets open on nice days.

And you can't serve "trailer park cuisine" without having a trailer around!

Saturday morning was the race and we were to all meet in the hotel lobby at 8:20 to get our shirts and race numbers on. Well, Kelsey and I didn't wake up until 8:20...oops! We quickly got ourselves together to meet everyone and we didn't miss a thing...go us!

Allison asked me to bring my Flip video camera to capture memories from the walk. You may remember the video I put together for the 2010 Portland Race for the Cure.

Kelsey and I were really excited that Mom was able to take advantage of some of the "perks" offered to the survivors: she walked in the Survivor Parade, participated in the Survivor Photo, ate lunch in the Survivor Tent, and wrote a message on the Survivor Banner.

Since I forgot my camera and took all these pics with my phone, I don't have any more from the rest of Saturday, but we had a great time! Had a BBQ at Allison's house, visited for hours with her family and friends, and ate at a great Italian place.

On Sunday, before we headed back home, Allison took us on a tour of her work. Yup she works right inside the Boise State Stadium!

There is a great timeline and fun fact wall as soon as you walk in.

And yes, the little story we have all heard about the blue turf is fiction.

Loved seeing the space where Allison works her magic!

A view of the field from the Loge seats. Boise State modeled this seating area off of the Loge seats at University of Oregon's Autzen Stadium.

The campus and the stadium buts right up against the city and downtown area. So pretty!

After the tour, we got back in the van and headed home; Mom drove the entire way...and on Mother's Day...shame on us!

I snapped a few pictures of this run down factory. Our best guess is that it is an old cement factory as there was a newer looking cement factory a few miles down the road from here.

Before we made it all the way home though, we stopped at C&D Drive-In in Boardman, OR; another locally owned burger joint and bakery!

We had a great trip and made lots of memories!

5k on WSU Vancouver campus

2011-04-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

Last year I posted about the first organized WSU 5K on the WSU Vancouver campus. The proceeds from the event benefitted a fund that our alumni oversee and fundraise for. This year, with all the budget cuts around the state, hiring for new employees is taking longer than usual. So as the year progressed, I knew there probably wasn't going to be a Recreation Coordinator in the Office of Student Involvement to plan the 2011 5K.

In addition to their not being a coordinator, the manager of the department would be on maternity leave before, during, and after the event so she wasn't going to be able to take on the event either. So I brought the event to the attention of my boss and the board of alumni I manage, to see if it was something our department could plan and oversee just for this year.

Without hesitation, the board wanted to be involved and plan the event. With a little hesitation, my boss gave me and the board permission to plan. I have planned a few events here and there for work and outside of work, but never a run/race. The good news is, the event was successful, the bad news is, it was a lot of work; more than I think the two main volunteers thought there would be.

About 150 people signed up to do the 5K or participate in the Family one-mile Walk, which was new this year. We recruited some new volunteers, as well as, a few volunteers who helped last year. That meant asking Courtney (who was a huge help at the finish line last year) and Mom (who was my lifesaver this year!).

Courtney and I singing the WSU Fight Song before the race started with all the participants.

Mom was assigned, at the last minute, to set up the reception area for all the participants to enjoy snacks and goodies after the race while waiting to see if they won their age bracket. She set up the entire thing with little direction from me.

WSU's mascot Butch (my office oversees his activities calendar) of course was there again this year and came on his rollerblades to entertain everyone. Sara, Ethan, and Mason signed up for the one-mile family walk and were able to take Mason's first picture with Butch.

Look how cute Mason is with Butch!

It was fun to see so many kids there this year, some parents ran the 5K first and then came back to do the one-mile walk with their entire family, which was our hope and plan. We did have a little mix up on the one-mile walk, as our first volunteer sent the families in the wrong direction, but most of them didn't seem to mind.

We tried to get as many Cougar owned businesses involved that we could and one of the main sponsors of the event was a Coug owned professional photographer. She captured these great photos of the 5K runners starting the race.

It is great to see all the people who come to the event already dressed in Cougar gear!

The race course for the participants is more of a cross country trail, which makes it unique and very challenging compared to other 5K courses. I heard from a couple of the participants who said the run was harder than half marathons they have done.

Another piece of the event was finding prizes to give away as drawing prizes. Again we asked Cougar owned businesses, the Alumni Association, and other business partners for donations. Then once everyone made it into the reception space with their raffle ticket, we had our emcee start calling numbers.

Mom set these all up for us too!

The special thing about our emcee this year is he is a "local celebrity". His name is Nick Allard and he is the morning meteorologist on one of the main Portland stations called KGW. Most importantly though, he is a Coug! He also had a couple of classes with Ethan, so it was fun to see the two of them connect.

I emailed Nick to see if this would be something he would be interested in and he said, "Anything for the Cougs!" He greeted everyone when they arrived, got the race started, and then announced the name of everyone who crossed the line. After the race, he stayed to thank everyone for coming and handed out the prizes.

Nick did a great job, he was super energetic, funny, personable, and very friendly. Though Nick was great, what topped him and was probably the best part of the day...the weather. We have been having horrible rainy cold days this spring, but the day of the race it was gorgeous!

P.S. Here is a video Courtney filmed for me and I threw together. It lives on the WSU Vancouver YouTube site.

Evan's Take on the Floors

2011-04-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

After my last posting, Evan wasn't 100% convinced that I captured and displayed our new hardwood floors in the best possible light; showing their true glorious beauty. So Evan ran around the house and took a few more. Here you go!

Our new hardwood floors...finally!

2011-04-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

So we had to sell this...

To get this...

As I have been sharing, there have been many house projects to get to this point: the staircase moulding, the staircase painting and staining, and painting the walls.

A while back, Evan shared with me he had plans to sell his '71 Chevy Cheyenne truck to purchase a few things, one of which would be the hardwood floors he has wanted since we moved in.

And like getting the walls painted before Rick and Linda went to Arizona, we wanted try and get as much of the wood installed too.

We have been talking about this subject long enough, Evan knew what color I would approve of and what width of boards we wanted to install. When conversations turned more serious, Mom helped us again measure all the spaces we would place wood so we could estimate how much wood we would need and how much it might cost.

Our little "official" sketch. I made sure to keep it safe and sound, so we wouldn't have to do it again.

We searched Lumber Liquidators, Home Depot, and Craigslist, when Evan finally found a deal he thought we couldn't pass up. So things progressed quickly to where we were suddenly stacking boxes of wood in and around the furniture in our living room and dining room that had just been moved to paint.

Just some of the boxes getting acclimated.

Here is our entryway, family room, view looking out towards our backyard slider, and the transition space from the family room to the kitchen before:

The parquet flooring in our entry way. When real estate agents list houses in our neighborhood, they say something like "hardwood front entry" on the description. Sure seems more glamorous than it is when the description should say, "thin parquet flooring over particle board"; Evan did not like tearing this out.

The transition from the family room to the kitchen. Carpet in the family room and the linoleum in the kitchen.

Evan and Rick worked really hard for two days straight working from the entryway, down the hall, and through the family room. Rick had installed the hardwood floors at the "farmhouse" and at Kristin and Mike's house. Evan had researched many websites and asked questions to friends who had installed hardwood floors before; Rick and Evan strategized and worked together on the best way to do our floor.

Evan did some of the prep-work himself like smoothing out the floor to make it even after pulling up the particle board.

Love how Bear is acting as the Project Manager in this photo. He is ensuring Evan is sanding correctly.

And finally, here are the hardwood floors all installed:

Entryway

In the entryway, Evan had to cut the carpet to create a border for the new carpet to bump up to.

Family room

Looking out toward the slider

Transition from the family room to the kitchen

Didn't Evan and Rick do a nice job?! Looks great and I love the way it feels under my feet.

New Baskets for the Bench

2011-04-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

The black bench in our hallway is one of the first things I can remember Evan and I purchasing together. We just bought our house and began looking for a couch, when we came across this bench. I just had to have it. So we brought home the box and Evan put it together; and here it has sat pretty much just like this ever since.

Until now. Another hair brained, I can do that myself, do-it-yourself project has been in the works. In a lot of magazines and store catalogues there are pictures of baskets with numbers, letters, or decorations on them then placed on shelves, bookcases, under beds, nightstands, and benches. I have a bench with nothing under it and I have Evan's shoes all over our entry way from the garage...DING! Light bulb!

See? Nothing under our bench. **Spoiler alert** Sneak peak of our hardwood floors!

One day, while I was out shopping at Tuesday Morning for some pillows for our new couch (stay tuned for future posting) I completely lucked out while browsing one of the clearance sections. I found a bunch of house numbers for $1.69. I finally decided on a number combination and then immediately headed for Fred Meyer to see if I could find baskets that would work.

I went on a basket buying frenzy, purchasing pretty much every style and size basket Fred Meyer had that just might work. When I got home, I tested the baskets side by side and with Evan's shoes inside to see which combo would be the best. Then I decided on three of this bad boy.

While at Fred Meyer, I also picked up some small casters so the baskets would easily wheel out from under the bench. So once I picked the chosen basket, I had to sweet talk Evan into helping me attach the casters to the basket. Happily (sarcasm inserted here) Evan took the basket and casters to work as he thought he had some thin particle board that he could cut and lay inside, so the casters had something to attach too. When he was done, it looked like this:

The particle board with Evan's predrilled holes.

Once the casters were attached and everything was nice and secure, I just needed to attached the house numbers. I used some jute string I had purchased during Christmas and secured on each number. Then placed Evan's shoes inside and ta-da! Cuteness.

Baby Shower for Carley

2011-04-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

My high school friend and college roommate, Carley has lived in Virginia for about the last five years. She and her husband announced a few months ago they are going to have a baby in July. Carley and Eric only come out West a couple of times a year, so I was excited to hear and be invited to a baby shower for Carley at her Mother and Father-in-law's house in the Puyallup area.

My GPS on my phone doesn't fail me often, but this time it did and directed me to a neighborhood that wasn't where the party was happening. Luckily, I found a nice mailman who got me turned around and headed in the right direction.

Tina, who was Carley's and my roommate our senior year, attended the party. It was good to visit with her and meet her baby girl, Gretta who was born in September.

There were also a lot of other kids there from some of Carley's college friends and Eric's family members. One of my favorite photos from the day is of Lily, the daughter of Carley and Tina's friend Meghan; she just loved my pearl necklace.

She was so sweet, never complained though you could tell the necklace was heavy on her. Heck, it was heavy on me!

It was great to visit with Carley, and since she was in town, all her family was there too. So I was able to catch up and see everyone!

Painting Party!

2011-03-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

Now that the staircase is about wrapped up, we are onto the next house project. Painting. The thought was the paint needed to go up before the new floors came in for the entry way, living room, dining room, stairs, and upstairs hallway.

Mom kept reminding me, "Linda and Rick are going to leave at the end of March and they are willing to help..." So I took that as, pick a day, pick a time, pick the paint, and do it. I sent out an email to the family and almost everyone signed up. No worries, painting isn't for everyone. Evan shared with me that he could only be there for a bit at the beginning as he had his Strong Man training and then a little in the middle since he had softball games that night.

So the night before, Evan and I did the prep work together, moved furniture, bought supplies, wiped down the walls, and started to cut the entry way walls near the ceiling. Evan climbed way too high on a ladder to do this and to paint the trim and around the window in our entry way. His justification? He didn't want Rick and Gary to have to do it.

Look out below!

The next morning the troops came with their tools in hand ready to work! Linda, Rick, and Kelly had just help Mom and Dad paint their kitchen and everyone had also just helped paint Kelly and Gary's downstairs.

Here is the entryway, staircase, dining room and living room before. **Warning the color was a little off on my camera, so some of the walls look really white, while others look brown. They were all white before painting.**

Entryway

Side of staircase

Dining room

Between the dining room and living room. The wall behind the piano.

Living room between two of the windows.

The hardworkers helping Evan and I out:

Gak! Looks like Uncle Gary ended up on the ladder anyways...Kelly is supervising.

After! The entryway, upstairs hallway, and staircase walls are Behr's primer and paint in Cup of Cocoa (flat enamel). The living room is a little bit lighter in Behr's primer and paint Pecan Sandie (flat).

The long tall wall to your left when you come in the front door

Side of staircase

Robert Doisneau pictures in black frames, going up the staircase

Dining room

The wall behind the piano

The living room walls with the curtains

A new wall display in our dining room, a collection of family pictures

I am still working on getting all the pictures hung back up and the furniture back in place, but it will look nice when done!

Evan and Mason

2011-03-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

First picture of Evan and Mason together. Towards the end of March, Sara and Mason decided to swing by and hang out with us for a couple of hours. Since both "men" in the house were wearing blue hoodies, I decided to snap Evan and Bear's first picture with Mason.

Mason is about 5 months old now.

A Whole New Staircase

2011-03-05T09:15:00.000-08:00

"Oh no! Here they go!" Is the expression Bear was giving us here. Maybe he didn't have faith in us, or just didn't like all the loud noises and banging, but some home improvements around our house were definitely needed. It all sort of started with wanting to put hardwood floors and new carpet in; and like most house projects, in order to do one thing, three other things need to be done first.

Once we got our plans figured out, we Evan started on the stairs. The first time we toured our house before we bought it, right away I noticed the odd carpeting job going up the stairs. It was just staring back at me. I thought, "If I ever want to paint that wall, do I have to paint the carpet too? How do I go around it?" It was not our cup of tea and we wanted to get rid of it.

Four years later, the first step was getting all the carpet and the carpet tacks off the walls. I came home one night and Evan had it completely done torn off and was analyzing how he would add moulding if the walls weren't exactly straight.

Evan cut and configured boards, shoe molding, and edge pieces to close the gap and fit perfectly along the wall, the ceiling, and the bottom of the railing. He was able to borrow tools from Uncle Gary along with his own collection to get it as perfect as he could.

My job was to sand the banister and the spindles to get them prepped to be stained and painted. Since the wood is fir, it isn't a grainy wood, so we had to create our own crevices and flaws that would take stain more in other places. I even brought out hammer and nails and pounded the railing and the staircase post to give it a little "character" and "age."

We had to tag team on painting the spindles and the moulding, so we wouldn't have any drips. It took three coats of white paint to cover the original color/wood.

Once the family came over and helped paint the walls, the transformation really took place. I think everything really came together well and Evan has received a lot of praise from friends on Facebook and our families.

As you can see, the carpet still needs to be replaced, but now that the staircase is done and the hallway is painted, we can start looking.

We don't have a picture of the before, but in the photo above where the white moulding is on the wall and at the bottom of the spindles, was all carpet. Like the stairs/walls leading up the stairs to this landing, Evan had to do the same thing and tear out the carpeting and carpet tacks in this space.

I think we are both really happy with the results. It completely transformed the entryway.

Visiting the 2010 Olympic Cauldron

2011-02-27T23:15:00.001-08:00

I hadn't been to Vancouver, B.C. since I was a college student living in Bellingham. My annual work conference was in Vancouver this year and I was actually excited to go, as I thought it might be a fun side trip for Evan and me, and to see some of the 2010 Winter Olympic statues.

Evan ended up not coming up with me, but one day I skipped out on a couple of conference sessions to take a good power walk and find my way to the Olympic Cauldron that was lit the entire time the Olympics were being held.

I thought the material and texture of the statue was interesting as it is made to look like ice. Don't let the pictures fool you, it was a beautiful sunny day, but freezing! The temperature was breaking records for the coldest days Vancouver had had on this same day(s) since records started being kept. We had also just come through a blizzard and icey roads in Washington while driving up to Vancouver for the conference, so it was an adventure to say the least!

Below is a picture of the informational sign that is at the base of the statue. It is of Wayne Gretzky after he just finished the last leg of the Olympic torch run during the Opening Ceremony. I remember Evan being so excited that a hockey player was chosen to have this honor.

After walking pass the statue, I turned around to see how the statue looked against the skyscrapers of Downtown Vancouver and took a picture.

Downtown Vancouver to the left of the Cauldron.

The seaplanes below the skyscrapers.

The mountains and cityscape view behind (North) of the Cauldron and Vancouver.

To the right of the statue. You can see the windows, in the very right corner of the picture, of the Convention Center (a pride of the residents of Vancouver). The Convention Center is also where all the media was stationed during the Olympics.

By the time I walked back to my hotel, my ears were freezing and I was chilled to the bone. Brrr!

Run with Abe

2011-02-20T23:14:00.000-08:00

Plans, they never seem to work out exactly how we plan, do they? President's Day weekend, the plan was Evan and I were going to get up and head to Tacoma to meet Evan's parents, Ashley and Erich, and Evan's cousin Jenelle and her kids. Jenelle and her family were up visiting from California and we hadn't seen them since October 2007 at our wedding; but as life happens, Friday night Evan woke up in the middle of the night with food poisoning...ugh!

So after being up most of the night, I slept in a little, then ran up to Burgerville where an alumni event was taking place, got everyone there taken care of, ran to Safeway to purchase Evan a few foods and fluids that he might be able to keep down, took care of Evan for a bit, got ready and made my way up North, several hours after I originally planned to be on the road.

It felt good to finally met up with the Herling clan. It was so fun meet Jenelle and Tim's four kiddos and hear all their fun stories. We walked around the mall a little, then we ate dinner at a yummy pizza place in Tacoma.

Ashley & Erich, Me, Jenelle and her kiddos, and Jim & Judy = the Herling clan!

After a couple of hours, I made my way down to Dupont to the Kardonsy's house and the Elkins family was already there for dinner and a sleepover. I enjoyed dinner with them and invited myself to spend the night too!

Towards the end of dinner, Kale disappeared for a little while and when he returned he was dressed up as a pirate! He then went away and came back again (still as a pirate) and said, "I did something different." He seemed to want us to guess what was different, but before any of us could respond, he clarified "I look better!" We all cracked up laughing.

Sunday morning Kale invited all of us to sit down and watch Scooby Doo with him, even Mason. Kale and Clara were so good and sweet with Mason. Kale would explain, to each of us, what was happening in the episode as it played. Then we got on the road and all caravaned to Seward Park in Seattle. Once there, I discovered it was a park in Seattle that I haven't been to before.

Jim, Judy, Ashley, and Erich were all there waiting for us. The morning was FREEZING! I even brought Evan's big bulky wool gloves to wear, but I was still excited as this was the first time I was able to participate in this run that Ali and Zach put on each year.

Ali giving us the run down and getting all the runners started!

Mason was not only dressed up for the theme, superheroes, but he wore his Cougar gear!

Best Friends!

Buckaroo Night with Grandma

2011-02-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

Buckaroo Night at the Coliseum! Who are the Buckaroos you might ask? Well, let's do a "throwback" by taking Portland's current minor league hockey team, the Winterhawks, and go back to the 60's and 70's. That brings you to the Portland Buckaroos.

One banner displaying years the Buckaroos were Lester Patrick Cup champs, I am not sure what competition this is and if the banner hangs in Coliseum year round.

Once a year, one game is determined to be Buckaroo Night; current players wear the old jerseys and former Buckaroos are brought back and introduced to the audience. As they were being introduced, Mom would say, "I remember watching him." "Oh I remember him too."

Grandma and Grandpa used to have season tickets to the Buckaroos, right up front on the Coliseum floor, where the plexiglass is now. Grandma made sure to inform us that "back then" there wasn't plexiglass protecting the audience so you were right up close with the players. Mom also shared that Grandpa would often take one the daughters with him to the games.

Grandpa's seats were right next to Mr. and Mrs. Waddle, the owner of the old restaurant off of I-5 that became a landmark for many travelers.

When we arrived, we walked right by Grandpa's old seats, but we had a mountain of stairs ahead of us to climb to get to our seats for the game; wouldn't you know it, Grandma had no problem walking up all of them. She made sure to tell us that too!

We had fun watching all the players, the game, and talking about this and that. Don't worry, Evan had fun too especially since the Winterhawks are having such a good season.

Of course there are the fights, and usually towards the end of the game there are one or two, but there were about five fights at the end of the game. It was unreal. I was able to capture a couple of good pictures.

The refs breaking up the fight.

The team celebrating with one another, their goalie, and heading off the ice.

It was a fun family evening and fun to go with Mom and Grandma to a hockey game since they both hadn't been for several years.

Cupcakes for the Ducks BCS Game

2011-01-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

The 2010 football season was a successful one for the University of Oregon Ducks, my parents' alma mater. Our family has always been huge Duck fans and this year my parents bought a season ticket to share--don't asked how that worked.

After all the polls and games, the Ducks made it to the National Championship game, the BCS game. This was a first for the program, and it was BIG; all the TV & radio stations talked about was the game where to see it, they sent special correspondents to Arizona to interview fans, the Duck store was crazy busy, and any email that was sent by one of my family members to another ended with, "Goooo Ducks!"

The Kriegers offered to host everyone, like usual, as they have the room for all of us....and cable. After receiving some very fun cupcake wrappers, I thought I would make and bring U of O cupcakes for the big game.

I bought yellow cake mix for the actual cake, butter cream frosting, and Apple O's and Peachy O's (facing the green and yellow sides up) for the topper. They were just too darn cute to eat, but were good once we did.

Cute right?! Despite the cupcakes the Ducks sadly lost.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

2011-01-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve with all the Wacks, the Herlings, and Grandma! We had dinner at our house before church, can I say too many ~~chefs~~ people in the kitchen...it was fun though, quickly cooking about 15 turkey burgers on our skillet, in a very short amount of time!

After church, we all took pictures in front of our Christmas tree; not sure why, but the ladies each sat on the guys' knee. I refused of course, I am just too big for that sort of thing. At least the photos captured the Christmas Tree's good side.

Cousin Nolan (Nolan is our third cousin; our Grandmas are first cousins.) joined us at the Wack house for Christmas day fun and Christmas Day afternoon and night at Grandma Conrad's house.

He even joined us for our family picture in front of Grandma's tree. I promise, there is a tree back there, look between Dad and Nolan. The tree just has to be pretty short so Grandma can reach the top when she decorates.

Look at us, we all look like goofballs between the smiles on our faces or the clothes we are wearing.

The next photo op, was requested by Grandma; she wanted one with all her grandchildren. Unfortunately, we are a little ADD. Good thing Grandma looks like a star.

For some reason we managed to get a photo of just the cousins, did you notice we are in age order?

Kristin, Conrad, me, Kelsey, Darcy, Courtney, and Jillian.

And don't forget the Herlings!

This year's skit was loosely based off of the ~~awesome~~ unpopular TV show, Name Those Lyrics. We came up with easy and difficult Christmas carols and typed out most of the lyrics. Then we showed the lyrics on the TV screen, but left blank spaces where some lyrics should be. Each team had to name the lyrics that were missing by "Locking In Those Lyrics!"

One of the Name Those Lyrics teams consisting of Troy (Kristin's boyfriend, far left), Uncle Gary, Grandma, and Erich (Ashley's boyfriend).

And if that wasn't enough of a treat, we had another little diddley up our sleeves for everyone.

Did you enjoy that? For some reason, we think it is hilarious.

We picked up Burger King crowns and wore aprons, to correctly dress for the part, and sang with our best voices!

And just in case you were wondering, after I saw these photos, I decided my creative outfit won't be worn again. Wowza!

We did receive some fan mail for our performance! Well, actually they are just sweet notes from some family members.

"A quick note to let you girls how you keep outdoing yourselves each year! What a wonderful way to include all out newcomers this Christmas...I loved looking around and seeing everyone singing! They really were! Something everyone could do together, and the bigger team numbers helped make it a group effort (not on the spot feeling). We were impressed with the use of PowerPoint...filling in the blacks, just like the TV program! Even had the scoring figured out....and props for the "ding, fries are done"...did you remember those lyrics from the ad two years ago? (Was that ad shown this year? Wonder why not?) Geniuses all of you! Thanks for the video of last year, priceless! With all you have to catch up on, and entertainment you love to do at the sleepover, you still pull out another winner super show! Woo-hoo...how about "half-time" performance for the BCS Championship game? Go Ducks! We Love You All to pieces!

Love, Momma and Aunt Colleen"

"DITTO GIRLFRIEND NIECES! We all loved the performance, and OUR participating...What a fun time we always have with the skits you girls provide for all of us...we definitely look forward to it, and wonder how you guys come up with ideas at a "sleepover"...thanks again for the memories...Yes, we totally enjoyed the video from last year...Gary and me dancing...NOT...ha ha ha...Thanks again, very glad Kristin was able fly in early enough for all of you to do the sleepover. Thanks Lindsay Rae and of course Evan and Bear for the use of your lovely home...LOVE YOU ALL...AUNTIE LINDA"

"I'm so thankful we have the kind of family that loves to be silly and have fun! The memories we create are full of laughter and love and I so thankful for that! I asked Troy that night, "'Well, did we overwhelm you?'" and he said, "'Absolutely not! The way I can describe being with your family is a night full of pure joy and love,'" Thank you all for making him feel so welcomed and included - I wouldn't have expected anything different, just know how much I appreciate it! Love you all!!! Love, Kicken"

Similar, but not exact

2010-12-25T22:40:00.000-08:00

Right after Christmas, Judy, my mom, and I went out shopping. One of the stops we made was to Ross where Judy and Mom were all over an item they thought I needed. Knowing that I love French stuff and knowing that I heart these Pottery Barn ceramic canisters, they thought their find would be perfect for me to get.

The jars retail for around $14-$49 a piece, depending on the item.

Photos from Pottery Barn website.

My friend Lisa has a couple of the Pottery Barn pieces in her guest bathroom and I have always thought they look adorable, but I just couldn't bring myself to purchase any of the pieces for myself. So I hmmm'd and hawed over whether or not I should get these look alikes.

There are three cream ceramic jars that are different sizes, a small, medium, and a large. For all three, they were only about $15! So I gave in thinking, "What the heck?!"

I decided to use them in my bathroom to hold my headbands, ribbons, and clips. So far they are working well and look pretty darn cute too.

New Christmas Tree Decorations

2010-12-18T23:17:00.000-08:00

Christmas festivities were in Vancouver this year, so with the cousins coming over to our house for the annual cousin sleepover and with the Herlings coming to stay with us for Christmas, my goal was to have the house clean and decorated for everyone. Once again Kelsey and Mom saved me with helping decorate and clean!

I wasn't planning to change up my Christmas decorations at all, but when I came across this photo of a Christmas Tree decorated with vintage license plates and burlap (two of my loves), I had to try and recreate it.

Photo credit: Funky Junk Interiors www.funkyjunkinteriors.blogspot.com

The burlap material I already had in my craft supplies as I had used it in college (probably around 2000 or 2001) to give a thrift store desk I purchased a facelift. I also already had some white with light brown stripes seersucker material in my craft supplies leftover from a sewing project. Now that I think about it, I wonder where that seersucker outfit is?

Anyway, rather than buying wood ball ornaments, I went with red. I found some pretty cheap ones at Walgreens for $5.99. I also went through ALL our ornaments (we have more than enough) and picked out the ones that would go with this new theme. So they were vintage looking, wood, and ones that had earth tone colors. Then, I ran into our garage and carefully grabbed Evan's license plate collection off our gas water heater.

Now, I know my recreation is nowhere as cool as the one from Funky Junk, but I still had fun with it and next year I plan to paint the license plates to also look "old". I think this will help capture more of the look and feel I was going for.

This vs. That

2010-12-11T20:23:00.000-08:00

Part of my daily routine is looking through various blogs from around the World. Some of them are about home decorating, some are about weddings, and some are written by friends and family members about their lives. One morning, I saw this photo among many photos on a blog, then I saw the same photo again in the Pottery Barn catalog. Of course I thought, "I can make that!"

Below is a photo of the Pottery Barn one:

The website gives all necessary details about the item, along with the price...

Frame made of mango wood with a distressed gold-painted finish.

36" wide x 48" high x 2.5" deep

Five wire stands, each with five metal clips attached in the center, display cards and photos.

$199.00 then it went on sale for $159.00. $159?! Still crazy, who would pay that?!

Below is the one I made and it cost me about $3. Well, technically $3 because Mom had the frame, I already had the wire and the hooks, so I just needed to purchase the clothespins. The metal clips are hard to find, so I purchased tiny clothespins from Craft Warehouse.

I thought this frame would be fun to hold cards from friends and family members and when we don't have any cards to hang, it can hold my French photography prints.

Sneak peak at our new wall color and molding, more details to come soon!

Instead of five strands I have four, but it still works just fine. What do you think?

Guest Bedroom Refreshed

2010-12-04T18:19:00.000-08:00

The guest room got refreshed, finally. Almost 3.5 years of living in our house, I thought I should complete the guest room. And once this project was completed, I learned a few things...1) I couldn't have done this project without Mom and Kelsey's help and 2) that this room is destined to be pink.

While removing the switchplates from the plug-ins, I found traces of a dark pink color under them, almost a Pepto Bismol color. I thought to myself, "Isn't that funny that I plan to paint this room pink and it has already been pink before."

The room's past revealed...pink.

It took me months to find the right shade of pink as some samples were too mauvey, others were too princess/ballerina pink, and then I found buried beneath a pile of papers a Behr color swatch where I circled a color and labeled it "guest room." I had completely forgotten about this note and immediately went to Home Depot to get a sample of Behr Soft Feather. Once on the walls, it was PERFECT--exactly what I was picturing.

Before painting the room wasn't warm, inviting, or exciting.

Just one of the sad walls.

Once I got painting, I thought I kept getting paint on the ceiling; I soon realized that it was old paint and the room has been painted a similar color before. This meant that this room has been painted a two shades of pink twice before!

I started the project on my own, but the room really got going once Kelsey and Mom came over to help. Here are some before and after photos.

Before:

After:
Before:

After:
Before:

After:

Before:

After:
Before:

After:

New knobs were added to the desk and dresser. This is the first time the desk has had knobs since 2000/2001.

Now that I see these pictures of the desk and dresser, I think I have more painting to do.

Snow Here...Snow There...

2010-11-28T18:28:00.000-08:00

Before we left for Spokane (for Thanksgiving), Vancouver had some interesting weather. It became very cold and started snowing. This kind of weather is odd for the end of November and the cold snap also affected the Gorge area, up to Tri-Cities, and Spokane.

Our backyard.

The weather prevented us from driving over on Wednesday night as it wasn't safe. We decided to continue to watch the weather and the roads to see if it was still an option for us to spend Thanksgiving in Spokane. We left Thanksgiving morning and slowly made our way northeast; about every hour we saw a car off the highway in a ditch. Sooo scary!

Our front yard.

We made it to Spokane safely and Evan's family was relieved we were there. Little did we know, we didn't leave the snow and bad weather behind.

The handrail going down into the backyard.

The snow kept falling and falling. Spokane didn't shut down, but the big snow plows had to be brought out to the neighborhood streets and the snow just kept falling.

The dogs didn't seem to mind and neither did Jim; he had just received his first snow blower for his birthday and was having a lot of fun with his new toy. As soon as snow hit the sidewalk and driveway, he was out clearing it.

The amount of snow that accumulated was unreal! Spokane's weather also made national news.

Since we didn't know how much more was to come, or how it would affect the Spokane airport, we brought Ashley back to Vancouver with us. She had plans to fly the next day from Spokane to Seattle, but she had a final that she couldn't miss and didn't want to risk it. What an adventure!

60th Birthday Fun

2010-11-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

Another reason to celebrate while in Spokane, besides Thanksgiving, was two very special people were turning 60! Jim and Judy's birthdays are about a month apart from one another; Jim's birthday is November 6th and Judy's is December 9th. It was great we could plan and celebrate a dual birthday party for them.

Happy Birthday!

Balloons from the party.

All us kids planned the birthday party for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Jim and Judy did have knowledge of it, but we wanted to plan it. We invited their friends in the Spokane area to join us for pizza and drinks at local hot spot, Five Mile Heights Pizza Parlor. Hot spot being used loosely here; truly meaning it is a Spokane staple. Five Mile is a place that many families go for a family friendly meal and as Evan shared, for a while the Herlings went there every Sunday after church!

Brought some of my decorations from Vancouver to Spokane. White pom poms were hung from the ceiling at Five Mile.

We did have one secret surprise we were planning (besides the record snow fall for Spokane), but as the party drew near, Judy figured it out. We emailed all their friends and family members to send us photos and stories that we could collect and create a slideshow.

So Evan, Ashley, and I worked hard scanning all the photos, getting the photos into the computer program, getting songs imported, and typing out all the stories. We even disassembled Jim and Judy's flat screen TV from their family room and packed it into the car to take with us to Five Mile! This way, we could show the slideshow to everyone who came to the party.

Vases brought from Vancouver and flowers placed on all the tables.

Evan, Ashley, and I arrived early to decorate, order food, and get the room all set up for the party. It would have paid to have been a fly on that wall, we were a little hilarious in our process to get that all done! As mentioned earlier, Spokane had record snowfall for that time of year, which prevented some friends from coming to the party. With saying that, some friends made a huge effort to get there; someone came on their OWN birthday and someone else used an RV snowplow to plow their street and driveway so they could come.

Everyone visiting with one another and you can see the streamers hung too.

The slideshow turned out good and of course made Judy cry...I wish I would have been more on top of it to get a photo of Jim and Judy together or even the entire Herling family...bummer!

[insert slideshow here]

After the party and after we cleaned up, Evan, Jim, Judy, Ashley and I relaxed and had a little fun in the ball pit!

No wonder kids love these things!

Ashley really is between Judy and me in the photo below, she seriously couldn't get up on top of the balls and we couldn't hear her asking us for help!

All of us in the ball pit together. Too bad Jared, Karin, and Ella had already gone home—it would have been a great Christmas card photo!

Can you spot all five of us?

Ella's Platypus Face at Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T18:21:00.000-08:00

Evan and I traveled to Spokane for Thanksgiving this year. One of the highlights that kept us entertained day after day was a specific face Ella would all of a sudden bust out. I called it her Platypus face.

She would go from this:
To this:

From this:
To this:
From this:

To this:
Isn't that so funny?

Here are a couple other photos from the weekend that are my favorite.

Evan and Ella mimicking each other.

Bear acting like he got caught right before getting into some mischief!

Bathroom Floor Upgrade

2010-11-14T18:18:00.000-08:00

When we moved into our house in 2007, our house was 10 years old. After being here a few years, we are beginning to tackle a few bigger house projects...like tiling the bathroom floor. It all started when Evan spotted water draining out of our shower onto the floor; his prediction was the water was going under the flooring.

The small water stain in the rear of our shower which caught Evan's attention.

So we talked it over, got brave, and decided that there was no time like the present to begin this project. Evan was a little worried how long the linoleum would take to pulled up, since he had heard a few stories about the length it has taken others. He marched upstairs announcing, "Okay, here I go." Within a few minutes he yelled, "I am done!" What muscles!

How the bathroom floor started.

Project Manager Evan and his assistant Bear.

Once Evan ripped up the linoleum, we learned Evan's prediction was right. There was a lot of water damage on the particle board that was beneath the linoleum.

Ewe gross!

The particle board under the linoleum was Evan's biggest headache of the entire project. He had to chip it up by hand, piece by piece.

After a few days of heaters and letting the wood dry out, Evan cut the carpet out of our sink area, but left the carpet in our bedroom and closet. We plan to replace all the carpet later.

Evan used his strong math and problem solving skills to predict how many tiles we would need and how many cuts he would have to make with a tile saw. Since he hadn't used a wet tile saw before, he wasn't sure what to expect, but he did a great job!

The new floor before the grout, sanded caulk, and sealant were added.

We had to order and wait for the sanded caulk to come in, but once in, Evan was able to spread the grout, fill gaps with the sanded caulk, and seal everything. Evan learned many things along the way and will do a couple things different when he does the upstairs guest bath and the downstairs laundry and guest bathroom.

Below is the final product, and at this time, the only thing left to do is install the baseboard molding. Evan and I haven't decided exactly what we should do as some of the baseboard molding was damaged from the water, so we can't just put it back up to reuse it.

Overall Evan is pretty satisfied with how everything turned out, but I think he did a great job!

Marisa's 30th Birthday

2010-11-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

My good friend Marisa turned 30 at the beginning of November. She invited all her friends to join her and her parents in Portland for the celebration. Marisa did receive an extra special surprise for her birthday, her sister flew into town from California!

Marisa and her boyfriend Bruce

During the planning stages, Marisa did plenty of research and sort of stressed over what to do or go for her birthday; as she says she isn't a party planner. In the end, Marisa invited us all to Portland's Beauty Bar for happy hour where you get a martini and a manicure for $10, then to eat and be entertained at Sweet Basil Thai, and finally end up at Candy to dance. This is a bar that is for only for people over the age of 24. And since we are all now in our thirties, that includes us.

Marisa's party was on a Friday night, so I came home from work, got ready, dropped Evan off at a Portland Winterhawks hockey game, and met everyone at the Thai restaurant. Only this wasn't your typical Thai restaurant!

Here all your servers are dressed in drag. So you order your food, then watch the one of the girls perform on a small stage near the front of the restaurant. Lights go on, music is cued, and one of the girls lip syncs and dances around the restaurant to engage the restaurant patrons. Yup serious....nothing like eating your pad thai and watching men squirm in their seats.

Marisa with her friend good Heather, who helped her plan the party. They work together.

After finishing our dinner, and after Marisa had had a few drinks, she joined our server on stage for one number. She looked adorable; only someone who is pint size can get away with something like this!

Marisa on stage shaking her groove thing.

We talked with one of the **cough cough** performers, who shared with us that this is his part time job after school. High school that is; he is only 16. I guess some high schoolers work at McDonalds and others work in drag at Sweet Basil Thai. Go figure! It was a super fun night with my girl...

P.S. Sorry the photo quality is so bad. I took our new Flip camera we purchased for Evan to make short videos of cars and the gym.

Halloween and Pumpkin Project

2010-10-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

Halloween at the Herling house. I know some families go all out decorating for certain holidays, but we certainly don't. Given that, I thought our front porch looked pretty cute this year.

Then I decided to take pictures of our neighbors' front porches, as some of them do get pretty...ugh...creative. While taking the pictures, some of the neighbor boys were watching me and thought I was pretty odd.

Not sure what the Obama cutout is all about...

I invited our friends Lea and Jason to bring their daughter Adyson by so she could trick or treat at our house before heading out with their friends. She was Tinkerbell.

Knowing that she LOVES money, after giving her candy, I asked Ady if she wanted some money. She got more excited for the money than the candy. She said, "Oh Yes!" I gave her some nickles and dimes and she was overjoyed at the clinking the coins made in her pumpkin bucket.

One of the Halloween projects I roped Courtney and Mom into this year, was a new way of carving your pumpkins.The goal was to put string lights through the shell of the pumpkin. So you don't carve a face or design in it at all.

We started with two pumpkins that I completely cleaned out. Then with a sharpie, we put dots all over the shell that marked the spot we would put the light. Then Courtney had the tough job of shoving the meat thermometer into the shell to create holes of the lights to go through. She did one complete pumpkin and when I started the second, it hurt my hand too much to continue.

Then all of a sudden, my mom said, "Why aren't we using a drill?" Luckily, Evan had a drill (already charged) and drill bits (that I was able to find) in the garage. The task was done...like that!

Here is the final product lit up on our porch.

I think the pumpkins were a hit, as some of the kiddos who came to trick or treat at our house, would run away to their parents on the sidewalk and say, "Mom did you see those pumpkins?!"

Baby Mason

2010-10-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

Mason Jack Elkins
October 22, 2010

As life would have it, I wasn't able to meet Sara and Ethan's little guy as soon as he was born. Our new little "nephew" came over a month early. But when Ethan called to share that Sara was going to have the baby early, I was on BF mode. Thursday morning I couldn't focus on my work, so I packed up my computer and my work, and headed to the hospital. Even if I wasn't in the room, at least I was at the location.

I stayed by Sara's side along with Ethan and Sara's parents most of Thursday. On Friday, I got a text from Connie (Sara's mom) very early in the morning, sharing the good news that Mason had been born! Then for most of Friday, I left Sara and Ethan alone, so they could rest, be with Mason, and their family. After work, I stopped by. It was just Sara and me, before her family came and brought her dinner. Visitors were not allowed in Mason's room yet, which was fine, at least I could see Sara and how she was doing before I left for Bellingham for the weekend. I was so disappointed I had to wait the entire weekend to meet him!

Even behind the mask you can tell how proud Ethan is.

After work on Monday, I came straight to the hospital as Sara was anxious for me to meet Mason. Sara hadn't yet been discharged herself, so she was staying in one room and Mason was staying in another in the NICU.

I was expecting I would just be able to look at him from his bed, but Sara was able to hold him and learn to nurse while I was there. It was a very special moment, Sara and Ethan were so excited to see how well Mason was doing. Every milestone he made, was one step closer to being home.

Ten fingers, ten toes, ears, and a nose! Ethan was soaking up all the information he could, as Sara would say, "Ethan you remember this, as I might forget." He was asking a lot of questions and wanting to perfect swaddling and other things to be a big help.

Kangaroo time with Daddy.

It is hard to believe Sara and I met when we were 12, when we were just kids. Now, 19 years later, we are having kids of our own. Well, not me yet. Many of our friends have kids, so Sara and I have been "aunties" for a while, watching their little ones grow up. For some reason with Sara having a baby, it just feels different, our lives are changing. I know Sara and Ethan will be great parents.

WWU Crew Reunion

2010-10-23T17:04:00.000-07:00

Last year, I received an invitation in the mail to attend a rowing event on Western's campus, but it came too late and I already had plans.

So this year, when I received the crew team's save the date, I marked my calendar right away. It was a little vague on exactly who was invited, but it shared that it was a celebration for 20 years of women's rowing. In August, when Gretchen and James were here for my 30th birthday, as Gretchen walked out the door she asked if I got the save the date and if I was coming up. I was like, "Yes, yes, yes!"

So I waited and waited and waited for the invitation to come. When it finally did, I facebooked many of my former teammates and some of the girls from my boat, to see if they planned to attend. I got a little nervous as the date approached, as it seemed that Gretchen and I might be the only ones from our team that would be going.

Front of invitation

Backside of invitation

Luckily, my girls came through! Mom and I drove up north together, so she could keep me company, and once in Bellingham she could go visit with her friend Billie who lives there. After mom dropped me off at Gretchen's house, Gretchen and I got ready and headed to the Western campus, but waaay later that we planned.

The program we received when we checked in.

We parked in the gravel lot that we were "instructed" to park in, then walked the long walk to Carver gym. The entire walk we were like, "wait that is new" or "I don't remember that." During this walk Gretchen was having small contractions, so we were trying to get there as fast as possible so she could relax. We found a note on the gym door telling us that the event has been relocated to another building on campus! Oh man!

I couldn't believe that we didn't get a phone call, email, or text about the room change so we could have parked closer to the building. Plus, once in the building we couldn't find the room as this building was newer when we were on campus. So we were lost. Wandering all around, going up and down stairs, wandering random hallways until we finally we found it! The students were already packing up the registration table when we got there to check in. Yes, we were that late. We snuck into the room and gave hugs to our former teammates who were standing right by the door. Only, it didn't feel like we were sneaking in with two tall girls with big hair walking in. The program was just wrapping up when we got there. Ahhh! We missed the entire program!

Decorations on the buffet table.

I was bummed that we missed the video that they showed too, but I was reassured by Katie that there weren't many video clips or pictures from our years. As I looked around the room, there were a few parents, siblings, and a lot of shorter girls. I felt like Gretchen, my teammates and myself were some of the tallest women in the room. How could that be?

There was free brie to enjoy. I think I demolished the entire sampling.

Karla, who stayed with the program after we all graduated, coached for several years and knew a lot of the other former rowers who attended the event. She told us that before the evening she told some of her former students to "just wait for her teammates to come, as we are all so tall!" It just makes me laugh, as I love it.

Aimee, Katie, Karla, Coach, Marcie, Gretta, and me.

After visiting for a while, enjoying our free wine and beer, we realized we were the only ones left in the room! Gretchen and I quickly decided that we really did come at the right time. It was cute to see that Gretchen and Katie were both pregnant. Katie knows she is having a little girl, but Gretchen doesn't know. Coach asked all of us, how we liked the event, and shared his future plans for it.

I told all the girls they had to do a cheerleading pose. Luckily, Gretchen is pregnant, as I forgot my jeans. She let me borrow her maternity jeans that are too big on her. Oie!

Afterward, we decided to meet up at Boundary Bay, a local favorite. It was such a good time! Back home at Gretchen's house, I was able to play and visit with Eleanor quite a bit.

With her bear.

Eleanor is about 18 months and so soft spoken and so smart. She kept wanting to touch my jewelry and liked my "pretty circles"...AKA...my earrings.

Going through my suitcase and purse; new items are so much more fun to go through than the normal toys and items around the house!

What a whirlwind, and a quick overnight trip, but so much fun!

Corn Maze and Getting Into Fall

2010-10-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

Time to go pick out our pumpkins and have some fall fun! Kelsey and Dad found a new place in Delta Park that we thought we would check out. A lot of the places that we know about in Vancouver are super popular and we assumed too crowded.

We chose to go to Fazio Farms, located in Delta Park in Portland.

Look at their cute hand painted sign that hangs in their "ticket booth".

We arrived to the farm late Sunday afternoon, but the pumpkin patch wasn't busy at all! We first decided to try out the maze.

The brave souls entering The Maze of No Return! Evan of course purchased a sugary beverage to take in with him.

Soon after entering, we naturally split into groups. Kelsey and Evan followed one another, Courtney and I stayed together, and we ended up picking up Chris along the way. Dad stayed back in their food booth to eat a hotdog and visit with the owners.

We first tried the maze without the map, then we tried the maze with the map, in the end Kelsey and Evan finished about 20 minutes ahead of Chris, Courtney, and me! Turns out Kelsey and Evan accidentally discovered little flags that marked the path.

At this farm, they don't really have a pumpkin patch that you wander through to pick your pumpkin. They have them artfully displayed around the tents, wagons, the cornfield, and other places for you to easily pick one.

Afterward, everyone headed back to the Herling house for some fall goodies. I wanted to try something new, maybe starting a new tradition to do each year after we visit the pumpkin patch. I thought would would do a "caramel apple bar" where everyone could create their own caramel apple with a variety of toppings.

Some of the toppings to choose from like: peanuts, coconut, salt, sprinkles, and chocolate chips.

While everyone created their own concoctions, we all sipped on fresh apple cider with cinnamon sticks. Here are some of the caramel apple results!

Luckily, Courtney had a white board marker in her purse that she uses with her kids, so we could mark our plates.

Mmmm mmmm yummy! What a fun treat and we enjoyed going back for seconds!

Sara's Baby Shower

2010-10-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

Shower time for Sara and Baby Elkins!

Cute sign that either Kaaren or Ali made to hang in the dining room with all the food.

The week after Sara had a shower in Shelton with her friends and family up north, Kaaren, Ali, Marisa, and I held a shower for Sara at Sara's house here in Vancouver.

Fun children's books served as decor on the food table.

We implemented the colors of the baby room into the invitations and decorations.

Cake for Baby Elkins! Not sure if it will be a boy or a girl!

Ali had this cake made by the same friend who made her wedding cake.

The use of orange was used at the shower, not only because of the baby room colors, but for the oranges that Sara couldn't get enough of at the beginning of her pregnancy!

Leave it up to Kaaren and Ali to think of everything. They made the food labels ahead of time, so we could write on them when all the food arrived.

Not only were there cake and cupcakes, but Ali made these cute sugar cookies to look like onsies. The homemade owl was a gift from Kaaren to Sara that she purchased from a friend of theirs who makes and sells them.

Again, Kelsey's wedding decor came in handy! The "escort card hanger" and "birthday wall" from my 30th birthday was used to display all the completed onsies.

Decorating onsies is a fun activity we have done at other showers. This was one project Sara wanted to do for her shower and we were happy to oblige!

Guests could either draw pictures with fabric markers and stencils or iron on fabric after cutting the fabric into different shapes.

Look at that cute belly behind the glass name tag!

Fuzzy Navels for everyone to enjoy...a little creative mixture Mama Wack and I came up with since we made them without alcohol. Again oranges!

The use of brown was also used, again to match the baby room colors, so brown ribbon, brown linens, and brown balloons.

Some special notes and gifts from Baby Elkins' Great Grandparents...AKA Nana and Popie

Girlfriends!

A quick snapshot of us girls, we are pointing who will be prego next!

Quick THANK YOU to Kelsey who was captain camera for most of the party. She did a great job and is a natural!

Our THIRD Anniversary

2010-10-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

Though we have only celebrated three anniversaries, I feel that so far the word to describe them would be...Random. We really haven't "planned" anything, or if I do, it gets completely altered. We haven't yet established any traditions, we sometimes celebrate on the actual day, sometimes we don't, sometimes exchange presents, sometimes we don't...

So what was in store for this year? Evan and I were in Pullman the weekend before our anniversary, but didn't do anything there to celebrate. Then, I took Monday off of work and Evan left early from the shop and we headed out to McMenamins Edgefield.

Looking north while standing on the grounds of McMenamins. The hills in the background are in Washington.

The grounds at McMenamins Edgefield are beautiful, many people hold their weddings and other celebrations there. Both Evan and I haven't played on their par 3 golf course, but we have heard it is a lot of fun, and easy.

The scorecard matches the creative theme and flair that all McMenamins locations are known for.

We got on the course just in time, as they close at dusk. We were able to play 9 holes, taking our glass of wine and beer with us to each hole. The golf "clubhouse" is called the Distillery Bar and used to be the horse barn when McMenamins was a poor farm.

After playing, we sat in the Distillery Bar, ordered dinner, and visited. We were the only people there, so we visited with the bartender...AKA Lindsay asked the bartender a lot of questions. Inside the bar is a wood burning stove that was so warm and toasty!

A page of our score sheet, I insisted that we kept score. Evan beat me by 16 strokes...

The actual day of our anniversary, Evan sent flowers to my work. Only it turned out not to be a surprise, as Evan got too excited and antsy, so told me before they came!

Evan had quite the ordeal trying to order the flowers, which makes me appreciate them even more. Sounds like there was a communication barrier between Evan and the store clerk, with Evan trying to explain what to write on the card and what sort of flowers they should put together.

The inscription on the card, I don't think Evan was amused.

Also for our anniversary, Kelsey said that she would like to cook us dinner. When we got home from work, Kelsey, Mom, and Courtney were already there cooking in our kitchen. So I was under the impression they were creating a "date night" of sorts for us, meaning that it would be prepared and Evan and I would eat...alone. In typical Wack style, guess who stayed and ate with us? Yup, the Wack women!

Us on our third anniversary!