Seattle

This week is my Spring Break and since Jeff can choose his own hours, we took advantage of the time and went to Seattle.

We left on a snowy Saturday morning and flew up to the beautiful Northwest to meet up with my oldest sister Marie, her husband Manoj, and their cute girls Misha and Maddie. Saturday was filled by touring their awesome neighborhood. They live on a peninsula called West Seattle which is a homey-feeling place located just 20 minutes from downtown. In fact, they have an awesome view of the Seattle skyline from their bedroom. How cool is that?

This is Alki beach (where the sand is trucked in) with the Space Needle in the background.
Then we went to the Mariners Baseball game that night. They lost, but it still felt great to sit in the seats at Safeco Field again. And it helped that Marie got us the best seats I've ever sat in.
After the game, we were pretty much chilled to the bone so we went to Manoj's restaurant at the downtown Courtyard Marriott and got some hot chocolate as well as a tour of the hotel. It's beautiful!

Sunday we went to church and relaxed at home. We played lots of games including this game from India called "Carroms." Manoj was pretty much the only decent player, but he taught his girls well. This is Maddie practicing. (She's 4.) Later on in the week she said, "I had more than Jeff!" which was no lie.
Monday we spent the day as tourists. I believe we went to Pike Place Market, the first Starbucks, the Gum Wall, the Space Needle, and walked along the waterfront. It was a beautiful sunny day, but somewhat windy.

The Gum Wall
Super Convenient Gumball Machine
Placing my gum on the wall (but not before I accidentally dropped it on the ground first, yuck!)
View of downtown from the top of the Space Needle

This is just to the right of downtown, that is Marie and Manoj's neighborhood.That night we went out for the most delicious Indian food! Chicken Tikka Masala, Lamb Saag, Mattar Paneer, Masala Dosa, Chicken Pakora, and Gulab Jamun!

Tuesday was filled with the Seattle Aquarium, an awesome Harbor Cruise with interesting facts about Seattle, lunch on the pier and a great performance of "The Three Little Pigs" by Maddie and her pre-school class.

This is Misha and Maddie with the "Dinner" that they made for dessert for us one night when we were there. So cute!

Corn on the cob, peas & carrots, mashed potatoes & gravy

Wednesday we drove a couple hours north to Sedro-Woolley where Jeff's Grandma Kirk lives. We were able to visit with her for a couple hours before heading back to the city. Sedro-Woolley is a beautiful area close by Canada with plenty of fresh air. It was a beautiful place to visit and we were so grateful to get to visit with Grandma Kirk.

All-in-all it was a great trip! We had so much fun! Can't wait to go back and visit again!!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I'm sorry that my blog is not all that interesting. But I guess that's the way our life is right now. So instead of a post about something super cool and super fun that we've done... here is a post about some super cool and super fun things that I like.

#1 My sewing machine
It doesn't matter what I'm doing, I just love sewing. I got this for Christmas from Jeff's parents and I love it so much. What's even better is that my mom got me all the sewing tools I need to do any project I want, complete with lessons in sewing/quilting. I've used it a lot already and I don't see myself slowing down anytime soon.

#2 My cricut
More specifically the "Create a Critter" cartridge. I have had my cricut for a couple of years now and I've used it a lot for scrapbooking fonts, but I am now hooked on the shapes cartridges now. I wish they weren't so dang expensive because there are so many cute things you can make!

And using these two fun tools I recently made these...

They are see through valentines. I got the idea from here. It's basically just two wax paper hearts that I cut out on my cricut. Then I sewed around the edges with red thread, leaving about an inch opening. Then I filled them with m&ms and a tag. Then sewed up the opening. So cute and way easier and faster than I thought they'd be.

#3 Blogger app on my Droid
I don't know if this is a new app, or just new to me, but it's definitely one of my favorite things. I can now blog from my phone. It's great because it is so much easier to take pictures on my phone than it is to use my camera and then upload it to the computer. It eliminates one step and hopefully changes how often I will blog. (Although I make no promises.)

Happy Blogging!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

2011

Here's what 2011 looks like, in case you were wondering.













Those calendar pages were made with the Archiver's calendar kit for this year. The kit comes with three coordinating papers for each month. The layouts I did on my own, with the help from the ideas posted on the Archiver's website.

And I love making calendars so much that I made two for next year. This next one is a kit made by Basic Grey. It was nice because they gave you all the pieces and directions for how to put it together. I liked it because I didn't have to think much, but I also don't think it's as cute as the other one. This one I will take to school to hang in my classroom.













PS- Sorry about the low quality pictures. One of these days I should really learn a thing or two about photography. Anyone want to teach me?

Remember that One Time...

Remember that one time, when I said I was going to be a better blogger? Yeah, right. I've come to accept that I am not a good blogger, and I don't think I ever will be. But I'll keep trying. Here's the update for the past 6 months from us.

• A Dream Job: In May I got a dream job, well... a 2nd dream job. I LOVE teaching and I LOVE scrapbooking, so what's the new dream job? I work at Archiver's teaching scrapbooking classes. I love it. And on days when I'm not teaching classes, Jeff says I get paid to do my favorite thing, which is shopping at Archiver's. It's a win-win situation!

• Trip to Colorado: We started out our summer with a fun trip to Colorado to visit my family. We had a fun time hanging out and doing a bit of sightseeing. We visited Estes Park, up in the mountains. And we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park, which included a drive on the highest paved road in the world, and a photo op by the Continental Divide (which is not at the highest point on the road... how confusing).

• 5k... Not 5000 Miles: At the end of last year, I decided I wanted to do something different. I have always wanted to get in better shape, but it never seems to work out for me. So I decided to start training for a 5k. I have always hated running, and I still don't enjoy it, but I did it anyway. Training went really well for the first few months, then I got my wisdom teeth out, and it all went downhill from there. I still ran the 5k, I just didn't quite meet my goal. I do want to run another one and do better. Anyone with me? Even though I still don't enjoy running, I am starting to understand the running "addiction" people get. Especially when you run a race and everyone is cheering for you at the end. It's pretty cool.

• Camping on the Oregon Coast: My family tries to get together each summer and do a camping trip. This year we went to the Oregon Coast. It was so beautiful! You just don't see those kinds of trees in Utah. We had a lot of fun going to the beach, sightseeing, relaxing, and playing games. Jeff and I also got to fly our dragon kite for the first time. Too bad I got it stuck on the roof of a restaurant. I was really bummed because it was a really cool kite that his parents gave us for Christmas one year. So I embarrassingly went into the restaurant and asked them to throw it down for me. And since they were nice about it, we got our dragon kite back! Another funny story from that trip is the incident with the raccoons. We were close by a little lake, so a few people in the group decided to get fishing licenses. After two days of fishing and not catching anything, my brother went out one last time in the early morning. To our surprise he came back with a fish! My mom was so excited to eat fresh seafood for dinner that night. We put it in a ziplock bag, in a small ice chest and left for the day. When we came back to camp later that afternoon, the fish was gone. The ice chest was open on the ground with the empty ziplock bag next to it. One raccoon paw print left on the ice chest was the only evidence of who took it. Those animals are so sneaky.

• Moving: The month of July started out uneventful, but ended with madness. We knew our lease was ending so I looked for a couple days on Craigslist for a new place to live, but I didn't find anything better than where we were living. So we got an email from our landlord about resigning a contract. The thing that surprised us is that he wanted to raise our rent... by $75 bucks! Now if the apartment was worth it, that would be one thing, but this was a basement apartment, with no dishwasher, and the tiniest bathroom known to man. It was not worth it. But "to be fair" our landlord offered to meet us half way with the price if we did the yard work. So we would be paying more rent, and doing more work, for the same apartment... hmm, doesn't seem fair to me. So we looked a little harder and found a great apartment to move into. We love our new place. It is on the top floor (no noisy people above us), it's WAY bigger (1200 sq. feet), it has a built in dishwasher (no more babysitting the portable one), and everything else that we wanted. Plus, the landlord is awesome. I think we will be here a while. (This is the only picture I have of our new place. It's just a random picture I took with my phone of Olivia in her "new favorite place." ...disregard the dirty dishes. That never really happens around here.)
  

• Trip to California: Before the summer was over, Jeff and I wanted to visit his family in California. It was a pretty relaxing trip. We went swimming in the pool, did some shopping at the outlets, and I got to go to my first SF Giants game. It was such a beautiful stadium. We had a lot of fun. Especially since we got to see a "Splash Down" home run, where the ball is hit over the right field wall into the SF Bay.

• School Days: And then the summer came to a close. I wasn't quite ready for school to start this year, but it did. I am now ending the first term if the school year, which is crazy. But I do have to admit that I love my little kiddos this year. I only have 19, which is great. But they are pretty much all good kids. I have one that likes to act out, but he has been doing SO well lately. And my kids are so awesome as a whole. They work SO quietly. I have never had a class that was so quiet. I have had people come in and say, "Is this a first grade class? It's eerie how quiet it is!" I know some of it is that I've gotten better at classroom management (This is my 5th year teaching... crazy?!), but a lot of it is just the kids. They are an awesome group, and I love them.

So I think that wraps up the update. I hope to keep up this blog better, but I make no promises. Stay tuned...

A New Car

So back in April I took my car in for a tune up and realized what I kind of already knew. With the ammount of repairs that my car needed, it was totaled. This list gives you an idea of the ammount of work it needed:

• No heat and no A/C
• Gas gauge broken
• Turn signal broken and making a weird sound... constantly
• Bad shocks
• Numerous leaks and issues with the engine

So... we decided that it was time to part ways and buy a new car.

We went shopping when my parents were in town and found this beauty for a really good price!
It's a 2008 Hyundai Sonota. And it's a silvery-blue color. Plus it has a sunroof, A/C, and doesn't make strange sounds! What a deal, right?

Well, something you may, or may not know about me is that I share the same opinion of those vinyl family stickers as my friend Nicole does here. So on Sunday when I drove my new car home from church, Jeff asks, "What is that thing on the back of your car?!" Sure enough, this is what we saw...
We were so confused. Was that on there when we bought the car? (It was a used car.) Did someone put it on there after we bought it? Who and when would they do that? And why? Well, remember how I said my mom and dad were in town? Remember how I said I share the same opinion as my friend Nicole? Apparently I am not quiet about that opinion and my parents saw it as an opportunity to tease me. Hilarious? Yes. They got up early Sunday morning before we went to church and put it on my car. Apparently my mom had been planning it for weeks and had her vinyl lady cut it for her special for her trip to Utah. Loved it, but now it's gone.

So remember how I said this was a 2008 Sonota? Well as we prepared to change our insurance, we noticed that the 12,000 papers that you sign when you buy a car all say 2006. What? Exactly. Here's what happened. The car had just been traded in when we came in to look at buying one. So there was no sticker with the specs in the window or anything. "Apparently" the salesman thought it was a 2008. (That's what you get for thinking.) And "apparently" the finance lady who does the paperwork knew it was a 2006. So when we were passed from one to the other, that piece of information was never passed. And wouldn't you know that as we signed the paperwork we carefully checked our names, address, and the mileage, but didn't catch the mistake in the year. Go figure.

As you can imagine we were more than a little upset that we hadn't caught the mistake then, but were even more upset with the fact that they had (not intentionally) lied to us. We went back and fought for something to be done. So we now have free oil changes and tire rotations for a year. Thanks. But I don't think I'll go back there when my car is totaled next time.

I wish I was a better blogger

For all the hours I spend reading other people's blogs, you'd think I would write on my own blog more often. Yep, you'd think! Well, here is my "July Resolution" to be a better blogger. And I actually have a lot to blog about over the past few months. So here is a list to get you excited about what will be coming shortly.

• A New Car
• A Dream Job
• A Trip to Colorado
• 5k... not 5000 miles
• Camping on the Oregon Coast
• Moving

There, that should keep me busy for a while. Mostly that list is for me, but I hope you are prepared to see a lot more action on this blog than you are used to!

And this picture is just because I think blog posts without pictures are some-what boring.