40th Birthday

It's official!  James is now Over the Hill!  The dreaded 40th birthday has come and gone and James survived.  Luckily we did lots of great celebrating to help gently and happily ease him into old age.

The big celebration was a 5 day trip to Lake Chelan with our good friends the Faders and Carter Stevenson. We left Nate with the grandparents and had a super relaxing and fun weekend with lots of laughs, good food, games, great conversations and amazing memories.  The boys golfed 3 days in a row.  Heidi and I both being pregnant got to sleep in and lounged in the sun reading our magazines.  We did finally join the boys at golf on the last day and helped drive the carts.  We only made it through the first 9 holes though and then got too hot and spent the rest of the time in the clubhouse.  We made dinner at night and there were tons of games of cribbage and a late night round of Mexican Train dominoes.  James and Carter both brought their guitars--such a treat to get serenaded!  Some of our favorite highlights were a special birthday dinner for James at Sorrentos at Tsillan Cellars.  James' best friend Russ and his wife Tammy were in Chelan at the same time and got to join us for dinner as well as Heidi's dad and his wife Julie.  It was an amazing dinner with great food, lots of wine, and just really special interactions with some of our most favorite people. Another major highlight was one evening taking Heidi's dad's boat over to Campbell's resort and visiting the Beach Bar for fun tropical drinks and swimming at the beach.  I think James had a really great time and it was a really special way to enter into the forties.  Thank you to our dear friends for making it such an incredible weekend!

The birthday celebration continued into last weekend when we had dinner with James' family.  Again more wonderful time with loved ones plus ice cream cake!

I don't want to speak for James but I think his 40th birthday turned out to be one of the most fun and memorable birthdays he's had which is great considering it's kind of a scary milestone.  Happy birthday my sweet husband and here's to 40 more years!

Celebrating with the Warners at our house

Good buddies--James, Jesse and Carter

Bump shot at about week 35!

Lovely dinner at Sorrentos

Happy birthday!

Great gift from the Seatons

Fun trip to the Beach Bar

Amazing view from our condo

Celebrating at Gramma and Grampa's

Love this photo!  Don't get photos like this often enough

Such a cute couple!

Yummy Baskin Robbins ice cream cake--James' favorite!

Nate loves to help open cards and presents

Spoiled rotten--tons of great gifts this year!

  

Our ChelanMan!

HUGE KUDOS to James who just completed his first Olympic Distance triathlon at the ChelanMan event in Lake Chelan last weekend!!  We're so proud of him!  Lots of hard work and sweat went into training for the event not to mention he just had ACL surgery last fall!  James awesomely conquered the 1 mile swim, 25 miles of biking and a 10K run with a smile on his face and great determination.  And he felt great afterwards which shows he was well in shape.

The weekend was so fun because we got to stay right down the road from the park where the race was held with good friends who were also competing.  It was so great for James to have his tri workout buddies there for support, I loved getting to hang out with the other moms as we cheered on our guys and of course Nate had a great time playing with the other kiddos.  We all celebrated with a yummy dinner on Saturday night.

Nate and I are so proud of you James!!

Just about to begin!

Luckily we stayed close so we got to take a swimming break with baby Hope while Papa was racing

Still smiling even as he gears up to run

Nate entertaining himself while we waited

There's the smile again as he comes to the finish line--what a stud!

Hooray!!

5th Wedding Anniversary

Hard to believe but James and I have been married 5 years!  For our anniversary in May we decided to celebrate a little bigger for the 5 year milestone and traveled up to Victoria, BC in Canada for the long weekend (by ourselves!).  What a glorious time!  Although we missed Nathan terribly, it was so nice to just get some couple time and reconnect.  It's amazing how relaxed we were!  Nathan is a really great kid and not stressful at all, but you realize how constantly "on" you are when you have a toddler that you're trying to keep track of, pay attention to and teach.  It was wonderful to check out for a few days, have adult conversations, get a lot of sleep and just be on our own schedule.

We stayed at a lovely little boutique hotel called Abigail's right close to downtown Victoria.  We really loved it and would definitely stay there again.  It was a nice combo of small inn and bed and breakfast.  They had a wonderful breakfast spread in the morning, appetizers in the late afternoon and cookies upon arrival.  How could you not love it with all that?  And the staff was extremely friendly--always willing to help with restaurant or activity suggestions.

The weekend consisted of renting scooters to take a beautiful ride on the outskirts of the city near the ocean, awesome food, visiting Butchart Gardens, reading, taking naps, playing cribbage, walking around the city, etc.  James also got to partake in a little Cuban cigar smoking session one evening after dinner.  The perks of Canada!  :)  It was just what we were hoping for and a great way to celebrate 5 wonderful years of marriage.

Happy anniversary to the greatest husband ever!  I'm so blessed to be on this life journey with you!

Beautiful ferry ride

Whenever we rent scooters, the big Darth Vader helmets always crack us up!

Beautiful views on the outskirts of the city

My favorite shot of Butchart Gardens

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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!!