Cannon Beach

Ahhh the relaxation and rejuvenation of the beach!  I miss it already!  Back in mid-May we traveled down to the Oregon Coast for 5 days with the Warner family.  And Ryan's girlfriend Carly got to join us as well.  We actually stayed in Gearhart, OR which is about 30 min. north of Cannon Beach but we referred to it as Cannon Beach the whole time anyway.  My wonderful parents rented this beautiful beach home about a block away from the beach.  It had 5 bedrooms and a huge kitchen and was such a lovely getaway place. And man did we sack out!  Funny how groggy and lazy you get when you finally let your body have some downtime.

The weekend was filled with lots of trips to the beach and the town of Cannon Beach, lots of eating, walks to the little bakery in town, walks on the beach, flying a kite, playing in the sandbox, roasting smores on the firepit, reading, playing games, taking naps, etc.  It was just what I wanted it to be and just what our family needed! This was Nathan's first trip to the ocean and he absolutely loved it.  We still talk about the beach a lot even now and pretend we're at the beach or going to the beach with our toys when we're at home.  He was relatively brave with the waves and was in heaven splashing in the puddles or playing with his trucks in the sand. He even found his very first starfish!

It was such a fun week.  Now don't get me wrong--we definitely had our moments sometimes.  That's to be expected when the family is together constantly for 5 days.  But all in all we created some really wonderful memories and had some great family bonding time.

We found a starfish!

Such a great beach house for relaxing, playing, and hanging out

Ready for the beach mom!

Flying our first kite--a train kite!

We loved playing in the sand

The beach house even had a sandbox.  Nate played in it about 80% of the time probably.

Relaxing by the fire pit

We love the beach!!

   We also lucked out and got a couple family photoshoots by our talented Ryan.  Here are some of my favorites below:

To see more photos check out Ryan's photography blog at http://ryanwarnerphotography.com/ (and of course if you're interested in hiring him, please let me know!)

Nate Turns 2!

May was an incredibly busy month for us so I'm just now getting caught up on blogging.  Lots of fun posts coming up though because May was a very busy, but very fun month!

First up is Nate turned 2 on May 10!  I can't believe it!  It's still weird to say that he's 2.  Time is flying by. For Nate's birthday we had a really fun day celebrating with friends and family.  We told Nate the birthday plans in April and he couldn't stop talking about it for the whole month.  He would tell total strangers what the plan was for his birthday.  And the day definitely didn't disappoint.

Luckily his birthday fell on a Saturday so we got to celebrate on his actual day.  Our first activity was going to the Woodland Park Zoo!  We were joined by all the family and then also the Faders (Nate's godparents), the Ridges, the Stevensons, and the Walkers.  So Nate had a wonderful combo of his family and closest friends there.  The weather held out and we just had a wonderful, surprisingly non-stressful day wandering around seeing the animals.  The kids got along great and there were no meltdowns!  They led the way to the different exhibits they wanted to see and all the adults meandered around them.  We were there for 3 hours which I thought would be plenty of time to see the zoo, but we didn't even get to see 1/3 of it.  No matter because we had a great time and felt like we got to the important parts.  Our favorites were the giraffes, the gorillas, and the elephants.

Enjoying the penguin exhibit--and praying for the rain sprinkles to stop!

We got to see the giraffes up close!

Gotta love the zoo!

After the zoo, we all ventured down the street to Tutta Bella--Nathan's favorite restaurant!  Tutta Bella is a gourmet pizza restaurant and I used to live right by it.  I probably went there 100 times when I lived in Seattle.  They also have a location in Issaquah now too that we frequent and over time it's become Nathan's favorite place.  I love how he says the name of the restaurant with a full on Italian accent too.  It's a fun place because the food is really good, it's a nice atmosphere, but it's also great with kids and there are lots of families.  We had a great meal and then Nate got to open all his presents and enjoy the yummy cake that Grampa Jay made him.  What a great day celebrating our boy and being with so many loved ones!

Also a big shout out for the awesome photos courtesy of Ryan Warner Photography

Enjoying yummy pizza and salad with amazing friends and family

The awesome cake made by Grampa Jay

Nate opening his new Thomas the Train set with his best buddy Gavin (aka the Thomas the Train expert)

Happy Birthday to our sweet boy!!

Baby Part Deux

BFP on a POAS with an EDD of 9/15 for DS #2!!

So apparently James has been browsing around BabyCenter too much again lately and is only able to speak in baby acronym.

TTC
Megs and I had been discussing TTC so that Nathan would hopefully have a baby brother or sister when he was around 2 years old.  So began the debate of the perfect birthday.  May was no good, because it would be too close to Nathan's birthday, plus there was also Mother's Day.  We briefly discussed June, but that would've required TTC just after James' ACL surgery, enough said.

That got us into July and August.  I've always had a summer birthday (funny how it's always the same month?) and was always kind of envious of the other kids who got to have a birthday party with all their classmates during the school year.  Okay, so it was pretty fun always having a birthday during the summer with the nice weather and all.   But summer also meant James would have to share his birthday, hey, September looks nice!

So we set out for September.  Needless to say, it was a very Merry Christmas :)  I remember Megs disappearing after dinner one night and hearing the distinct sound of a plastic wrapper being opened.  Five minutes later Megs came sauntering down the stairs with a little plastic stick in hand and a satisfied grin on her face.  It was January 8th.

The Bigger Reveal
Our first reveal party was pretty amazing, so we had to work even harder to make the second one just as spectacular (as I write this, I'm sensing a theme with our second baby)!  We finally decided on filling a pinata full of pink or blue colored candy, depending on the gender.  But we would need someone to actually fill the pinata.  At first we discussed asking our neighbors to do it and then giving the left over blue or pink candy to their children.  In the end, we decided that we wanted to find out the gender, by ourselves, alone at home.  If this was to be our last child, we wanted to have our own special moment.

We opened the envelope together and at this point I was pretty sure it was going to be a girl, although I would have been perfectly happy either way.  So I was fairly surprised to see that we were in fact going to have another boy!  Watching Megs expression, I could see that, although her heart was filled with joy to be having another baby, she was struggling to hide the disappointment of not having a girl.  She had wanted so much to have a baby girl that hearing it was a boy took some time and grieving to adjust to the news.  We were soon discussing what a world with two boys would look like, bunk beds, having a playmate, looking up to an older brother and watching out for a younger one, something I never had.  Our new reality was hard to imagine, but left us both with smiles of pure joy.

We weren't entirely sure how to go about the whole pinata thing, but thankfully, it included some strings to pull at the bottom, one of which would give way to the lot of candy.  Everyone took turns pulling the strings, anticipation growing with each failed tug.  Nathan wanted to help whoever was pulling the strings, so it would become a dual effort.  We finally agreed that Nathan should just keep pulling until he found the right one.  What a fitting way to reveal his baby brother, to be the center of the entire event, even though he didn't fully grasp the gravity of the situation that was about to befall him, literally and figuratively.

With nearly all the strings pulled from the pinata, Nathan finally connected with the right string sending blue candy cascading on top of our smiling and laughing boy with cheers from his family.

Photoshoot
We recently had the chance to meet our new little guy and from the initial images, he's going to be a cutie, just like his brother, not that we're comparing!

We are over the moon.

So, here we go again!  We can't wait for him to arrive.

-Written by James ;)




Wisdom from Dr. Zimmer, our OB:

"With a girl, you have to worry about a bunch of penises.  With a boy, you only have to worry about one."

Acronym decoder:
TTC = Trying to conceive
BFP = Big fat positive (pregnancy test)
POAS = Pee on a stick
EDD = Expected due date
DS = Dear son

Out with the Old, In with the New

After 5 years our exciting news is that we are getting new appliances!  We've been looking forward to this day for a long time.  Not that our previous appliances were horrible, but they were just older and more of a cheap version.  The stove always made me really nervous because it got too hot on the surface.

Although I'm so stoked about having newer, upgraded appliances, there is a small part of me that is sad to see our old fridge go.  We have a new stainless fridge and as everyone knows, with stainless you aren't able to hang anything with magnets on the stainless part.  My favorite part about our old fridge is that we covered it in photos/Christmas cards of all our dear friends and family.  The fridge was also filled the past year with kids magnets, Nate's first coloring artwork pieces, stickers, etc.  So everytime I came in to the kitchen, our old fridge just made me happy.  It definitely brought color and light to our kitchen.

I am in no way complaining or stating that I would like our old fridge over our new one, but I just wanted to memorialize our old fridge for the happiness it brought us with seeing the faces of our friends and family and the life/activity of our toddler every day.

With our new fridge, I had to do something--I couldn't just leave it blank, boring and sleek.  So I've done what decorating I could.

It's not the same, but it'll do.  I think the fact that we have way more space, a water/ice dispenser, and fun LED lighting will help me cope with the change.  RIP old fridge--thanks for the great memories!

Snowshoeing....finally!

Up until February it had been a pretty calm winter around here.  Not much snow, pretty dry, horrible ski season (which is actually a plus since James can't ski this year with his ACL still healing).  People were actually starting to get concerned about a low snow pack and the potential for drought conditions this summer.

Then all the sudden winter showed up in February and the mountains got pounded with snow.  There were actually many times the pass was closed and it was dangerous conditions.  Once things slightly calmed down we were ecstatic to finally be able to go snowshoeing!  This is one of our favorite activities in the winter because we own our own shoes and it's much cheaper and easier to do than skiing.

So one Saturday we headed up to Gold Creek in Snoqualmie Pass to enjoy the beautiful views and get our mountain fix.  We actually did the trail last year which you can read about here. What we didn't anticipate was that Nate wouldn't absolutely love it right off the bat.  With snow flying in his face, the cold temps, riding in a sled for the first time, and no toys involved I'm not quite sure why he didn't absolutely love it.  What toddler wouldn't?  We took Nate snowshoeing last year in our hiking backpack a couple times and he was in heaven every time--very content and would actually fall asleep! Hence here we are in the dichotomy of our life: baby vs. toddler--toddlers have a lot more opinions about things we're discovering.  But we trudged on.  Eventually we came to a spot where people had built snowmen and that helped cheer Nate up.

All the sudden he felt much more brave to ride in the sled and was having fun eating the snow.  We soon stopped to enjoy some lunch and then he became a completely different kid--very happy, enthusiastic, etc.  Man the miracle of food.  We should have started with that from the beginning.

Nate attempting to do a snow angel

After lunch Nate took a long ride in the sled as we took the trail around the pretty lake.  The views on this trail are so beautiful.  It's not a difficult trail, but it's amazing how much of a workout you can get in snowshoes even if the trail is relatively flat.

After about 30 min we could tell Nate was getting tired and it was naptime.  So we tried the backpack again. This time I think he was appreciative of the chance to rest and enjoy the ride.  In about 10 minutes he was fully asleep!  He did that last year too, but I didn't think it would happen as a toddler.  He slept the whole rest of the way and James and I got to enjoy a peaceful journey through the snow.

Yay for naptime!  And yay for James' strength carrying a heavy backpack!

Thank goodness for the sled once he got used to it

All in all it was a great winter day.  We're excited for hopefully a better winter next year to do this many more times and even get up to ski more too.  Ok now we're ready for spring......

Seahawks are World Champions

What an incredible football season it's been!  Seahawks just won SuperBowl 48--their first SuperBowl win ever!!  James and I have waited all our lives to witness this and we still can't believe it.  The whole time we were watching the SuperBowl we were in total disbelief and even though they went up 43 to 8 (against the Broncos!!!  Best offense in the league!!!), we wouldn't let ourselves fully believe the win until the final seconds of the game.  We had to keep pinching ourselves.  I realize that for all the people watching who weren't Seahawks or Broncos fans, it was a pretty boring game.  But for Seahawks fans, it was like we died and went to heaven.  All parts of our team played perfectly.  It was the ideal culmination for a hard fought, magical season.

Yesterday Seattle had a parade for the team downtown and over 700,000 people attended.  The fan base in this city and the team's relationship with the 12th man just gives me chills sometimes.  It's such a great community bonding experience.  All week I think most of my conversations have been about the Seahawks and the SuperBowl. Everyone now has a "where were you when the Seahawks won the SuperBowl" story or a crazy parade story.  Unfortunately we didn't get to the parade, but we watched it on tv.  Such a spectacular thing to watch.

Probably the most special thing for me though has been that James' favorite team has finally won a world championship.  He believed in them all year and was always positive about their abilities when I was doubtful.  He grew up watching the Seahawks games with his dad and on SuperBowl Sunday he and his dad got to witness probably the most spectacular game of their lives together.  And now we have a 3rd generation who is in on it too.  Leading up to the SuperBowl Nathan wanted to wear his Seahawks attire every day.  And throughout the day he would randomly just say "Go Hawks!"  What a special thing for James to share all this with his dad and his son.

Ok I know this is getting pretty schmultzy.  But this has been a pretty big deal around our house.  We're excited for the journey again next year.  And in the meantime, we'll watch the replay of the game for the 50th and 100th time--whatever we need to do to get us through to August.

Christmas Catch Up

I'm really not surprised at all that it's the beginning of February and I'm just now doing our Christmas post.  Feels like I'm always behind on the blog.  But oh well.  I only do it for our family so all that matters is that I do it right?

Here is a recap of our Christmas 2013 through pictures...

Annual trip to Molbaks for Christmas decor and samples of danish!

Making Christmas cookies with Nana and Pops

Annual trip to Nielsen's Bakery to pick up danish for Christmas morning

Christmas Eve with the Warners

Nathan had lots of presents to open!

Christmas morning at our house--Nathan got a new kitchen!

Building a new toy airplane with Papa

Christmas day with the Spauldings & Antis'

Visiting the Zoo Lights at Woodland Park Zoo

What a fun holiday!  Nathan was at such a fun age this year and helped make our holidays more magical. We're so blessed and spoiled by our families.  What special times we got to share that we'll never forget.