Final Glimpses of 2012

  

LOVE these pictures of Santa we got at the Seattle Nordstrom's!

      

                                     Paddle boarding Mrs. Claus.                                    Christmas light tour!

Christmas Eve at Grandma's House

We found the kids snuggled up watching a movie waiting patiently for the time to open presents. So sweet!

They were all excited about the Star Wars that Zach got!

Elissa loved the American Girl doll bunk bed!

Grandma loved the wood canvas that Holly & I got for her. Holly took the picture & put the quote "A Grandparents house is where cousins become best friends".  It turned out really nice.

  

Darin & I scored from the Boyd's!

We won't mention the little incident of Chad having to drive all the way back home for a wild goose chase. :-)

Zach was buried in the back on the way home. LOL!

After our 9pm Christmas Eve service, we hurriedly decorated cookies for Santa.

  

Ratcheting batman wings I tracked down on ebay.

  

Meet Elizabeth (Lizzy), Elissa's (Lissy's) American Girl Doll.

  

The kids showing Nana how to play games on her Kindle Fire. Classic.

Then Grandma came over with her's and they were teaching each other. :-)

Zach brought Grandma the photo album of his first year. Sweet.

I always….always forget to get family pictures on Christmas.

  

ANNUAL SEATTLE WEEKEND

        

We look forward to this weekend all year long.

We think we have been doing it since the year we got married……10 years.

We always go to Benihana's one night and then try a new restaurant the 2nd night. This year we went to The Brooklyn. So, so yummy!

Great times.

The sunrise the last day of 2012.

Our New Years plans changed at the last minute.

Kirstin text'd that Payton had the flu. :(  We picked up the kids from Patty's and planned a Star Wars movie marathon with them. Come to find out, you can rent Star Wars on any of the streaming media. Then Elissa's next door neighbor friend called and asked if she could spend the night, so we let her. She went and had a grand time. We watched Return of the Jedi that was airing on TV with Zach and then went to bed at 10:30pm. I know, lame.

BUT I'm excited for 2013!

My word for 2013 is CHANGE.

I know there is a lot of change coming with moving to a new house and all the ups and downs of buying and selling that will come. I know that there is change in store that I'm not prepared for. I'm praying to go through the change this year with grace and thankfulness.

Happy New Year Everyone!!

A Perfect Gift

Hawaii is our favorite place.

We Honeymooned on Kona and then went back for our First Anniversary (and came back pregnant). 

And I would live in flip flops if we lived in a climate that I could do that. :-)

Darin took the bus from Seattle to Bellevue Square and went to Na Hoku, a Hawaiian jewelry store. I love really thoughtful gifts and I'm not sure if he could have thought of something better.

 

 Elissa saw it and said that she can't wait to have a husband that will buy her gifts like that. :-)

We are going to celebrate next weekend with a trip to Portland and stay in the Pearl District.

Thank you so much Honey! I love you!

I can't wait to get away with you!

10 Years Later......

Still so in LOVE!

You were worth the wait.

Bring on the next 10!

Mexico Memories

Ok, I just needed to post a few more random pictures from our trip.

I can't believe it is now a week since we have been there. It already feels like a dream.

Especially since I have been home with sick kids since we got back.

Honey, I loved our time together!

Love you!

An Amazing Whale Watching Tour!

Saturday, 3.17.12

 We couldn't have been closer to the whales unless we were in the water with them!

Friday we decided to sign up for one excursion - whale watching. I was really there just to lay on the beach and read a book. Darin knows that I was totally overwhelmed when we went in Hawaii and so we decided that since we were in the middle/end of whale season, we should have a good shot at seeing whales. I have heard of people having an experience of the whales coming right up to the boat and I prayed that would happen, but never really thought it would happen.

We tried to go Sunday morning, but they were booked. Darin then wanted to go Monday, but I didn't want to go anywhere on my last full day to lay out in the sun. :-) So we tried for Saturday morning thinking that it was probably be booked up too. Nope, there were two spots left!

I really feel that God worked this whole thing out for us. There were two spots on Saturday. When we got there, we were broke up into two groups. We just "happened" to get on the boat with the amazing experience. AND Sunday and Monday ended up being the hottest, clearest, sunniest days that we were there, so I was glad that we were not out on a boat.

So here is my attempt to capture the experience.

There was also a professional photographer on board and we bought her photos. It ended up that she really didn't capture much more then what I did. I'll use some of both of ours.

Here we are not knowing what kind of adventure we were going to have.

We were only into the trip about 15 minutes before we spotted our first whale. We were on a zodiak, so it went hauling toward the whale. Unfortunately it was very choppy water, so we were all getting soaked and we were a little (alot) afraid of falling off the boat.

Here is my pic of the whale breaching.

Here's the professional pic. She definitely got a better shot!

We hung out here and watched the whale swim around and were getting completely soaked. The captain wanted to go look for some other whales and calmer weather. We sped away.

Darin was the first to spot the whales that ended up giving us the amazing experience. We zoomed toward them. They were breaching and blowing water and we were excited! But then we got there and the whales were under water. When we were starting to wonder if they were going to surface again, they were spotted close to the boat.

We are excited because it is close. Then the photographer who is sitting up higher then us starts saying that they are coming up right next to us.

This is her pic of the whale showing us it's underside.

This is my view.

Then the real magic happened! TWO whales came up right next to us. The crew on the boat had never had this happen in the 4 yrs they had been doing tours 3x a day during whale season. Crazy! They were just as amazed as we were. The captain actually called in to headquarters and were telling them what was happening.

You can see how close they were from the photographer's pic.

Here is Darin's view with the little camera.

And here is my view of the whale closest to us. It's head sticking out.

The second whale gave us a good view of his blow hole.

Another face pic.

I love this fin picture showing how barnacles grow on their bodies.

I love tail shots. This is one that the professional got. She got really close so you can see all the scrapes.

Then after the whales hung out with us for a good 30 minutes, the captain said it was time to go. No one wanted to leave. It seems like the whales didn't want us to leave either. They started giving us a great show! They were breaching.

Here is the professional's pic.

Showing off their tails.

Some more breaching.

It was an awesome experience!