Swish Swish in Winthrop

This post would have come a few days ago if Comcast was a little more awesome and didn't decide to only provide us the internet on certain days which apparently did not include the first half of this week. 

Last weekend we got to bust out our new skis again! Actually we went on a bit of a business trip which included hanging out with some pretty awesome clients of Ryans. We met them out in Winthrop (about 5 hours east of Seattle) to visit a site they had purchased a few months ago and are working with Ryan to design a vacation/retirement home. Winthrop is an awesome little town right at the base of the mountains with all kinds of outdoor activities. Last time we were there it was a little later in the year so we did a little hiking. This time everything was still covered in snow so we went skiing. Friday evening when we got out there, we took the clients over to the Rolling Huts to show them a few local examples of modern architecture and get an idea of what kinds of materials they were interested in. The clients also have a boxer and we had brought our dogs out, so Ben and their boxer had a blast chasing each other around.

Saturday morning Ryan and I met up with the clients for a few hours of cross country skiing. They have also just been getting into it, so it was fun doing a few little casual loops around the area on a beautiful day at the base of huge mountains. Later that day we met up with some other friends as well and all went on a site visit to the clients' site on the site of a wooded mountain. It's a great lot with lots of potential for sneaking a view of nearby ridges in the mountain. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Saturday was also St. Patrick's day so I had to be a little festive dressing in green and letting Tara show off a little leprechaun hat ;) That night we made a big dinner while Ryan worked with the clients going over potential idea for their site. It was a great time with new and old friends!

Sunday we headed back towards Seattle with a little stop off mid way in Leavenworth for a little more skiing. By this point my muscles were aching from the day before and the snow was starting to melt a little so we just did a quick loop and headed home. 

In the Navy

I have officially put in my request to separate from the Navy! Pending approval, I should be back to my old civilian self in January of 2013. Having said that, I realize I don't have that many photos of myself in uniform doing Navy kind of stuff. This past week I got a few good ones!

Every couple of months all of the officers get to spend the day together doing something fun/educational. This time we went on a tour of some of the oldest dams in the state, the Cushman Dams. Here's the group that made it out for that day of fun that just happened to be a gorgeous day with some great views ;)

This weekend we also had a big celebration for the Birthday of the civil engineer corps at the Seabee Ball. One of the officers' wives snapped this shot of us, so thanks to Michelle for that! It was actually a pretty good time, but it drives me crazy that I have to wear a sensible suit uniform when all the other ladies get to get all dressed up in ball gowns...not fair! Ryan looked smashing in his suit too!

Whistler, BC

We finally made it up to Whistler for a little fun in the snow. I can't believe it's taken us this long to make it up there and now that we went, we're definitely hooked! It was so much fun! We got up there late Wednesday night and did most of the fun on Thursday. It was a perfect day, sunny skies, and not many people on the mountains since it was a weekday. We spent the whole day snowboarding, and the mountain was amazing. There were so many runs from the very top that we went all the way up there and it took a good amount of time to get all the way back down. I love that, being able to spend so much more time riding down the mountain than riding the lifts up it. 

For some reason after about 6 hours of snowboarding, we though it was a great idea to do some night cross country skiing. As I mentioned before we're pretty sold on that sport as well, so we ended up getting our own skis before this trip. It's perfect timing since all of the end of season sales are going on now. We have a couple more cross country ski adventures planned in the next few weeks too. We ended up getting the skate skis, which are a little more difficult than the classic skis that we had rented the last time. It was an interesting time trying to figure them out, and maybe not the best idea after snowboarding all day. Needless to say we (and especially I) were really sore the next day! In fact, I was too sore to really try to do much of anything the next day. It wasn't that great of a day out either, so I passed up the mountain while Ryan gave it another go. 

One Year Down; A Lifetime To Go!

This weekend was our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!! I can't believe it's already been a year! It has definitely been quite an adventure this first year and I can't wait to see what the next year holds. Since this was also a holiday weekend (President's day) we decided to celebrate with a little weekend trip to the other side of the mountains. We headed out Saturday morning to end up in Cle Elum where we were staying in a fun little winter resort. We had rented cross country skiis before we left Seattle, so we took a couple of hours to ski along some of the resort's trails. It was so much fun! I think we're convinced that a new set of skiis will be in our near future. 

It was pretty snowy and cold by the time were were done with our first little ski trip so we warmed up in our room and headed out to the spa. They had some fabulous outdoor salt baths for us to relax in! It was still snowing, so it was really fun to be sitting in a hot salt bath while having snow fall on your face. By that time it was dark too so it was just lit by a big fire at the front of the little pool.

Sunday was our official anniversary...yay! After checking out of the resort we headed further east to Quincy, WA where our main destination was Cave B winery on the Columbia River. It was a gorgeous location, and the wine wasn't too shabby either ;) In fact it was good enough for us to join their wine club!! We were convinced because the February shipment (which we got to take home with us) had a special member's only wine that we could only get if we joined. We got to taste a little bit of it and it was good enough to make us want to join! While we were there with the beautiful scenery, we also got our 1 year anniversary photo. I saw this idea on Pinterest and loved it! So each year we'll plan on taking a photo with our photo from the year before wherever we are for that anniversary. So this year we took a photo with our wedding photo at the Cave B winery overlooking the Columbia River! Now we have a tradition to keep up for next year too!

After our wine tasting we continued onto Lake Chelan for the night which was dark by the time we got there so we just wandered around the town for the night. In the morning we got some spectacular views from our hotel over the lake. It was so beautiful. I can definitely tell why it would be a hot spot in the summertime for lake activities. 

We were just staying there for the night to check it out and headed out in the morning towards home with a little stop off in Leavenworth for some more cross country skiing. Again, we are totally sold on this sport and can't wait to do some more!

This was a great weekend to celebrate a great first year of marriage. I still can't believe I've been lucky enough to be married to such an amazing man for a year now. I love him even more now than I did when I said 'I do'. That's such an awesome feeling. I can't wait to see what kind of adventures we get into in the following years. Never a dull moment with this man ;)

We're Gonna be some Super Models!

A few months ago I bought a living social deal for a photo shoot just because it was cheap and fun and I always like having good pictures of us! A few weeks ago, just in the nick of time before it expired, we set up our photoshoot! We decided on the Pioneer Square area of Seattle to get some good views of downtown and old buildings in the background and it was close enough to the waterfront to scurry on over there for a few shots. Anyway, here are a few of my favorites! Also, Mom, I'm in love with that faux fur vest you got me for my birthday!!

Yay Little Brother!

Little brother came up for the weekend to visit! He got in Thursday late at night and he's our first official overnight visitor in our new house! We spent the day Friday wandering around our little neighborhood and seeing the sights like this little park that overlooks Seattle. Friday night we went out to a charity masquerade. It was for Urban Artworks, an organization that Jordan's sister in law (and fellow Seattle architect) volunteers for. It was so much fun to have a fancy little night out. The masks were all made by the kids that are part of the program and some of them were completely awesome. I loved mine! They also had great food and wine and entertainment for the night. For the charity part, there were several tables set up with donated items for auction. We went around a put our names and bids on a few items. As the night went on we updated our items a few times, but only ended up winning one of them. We got a set of super awesome down pillows!! Jordan went away with a pretty sweet photo he bid on too, so we were all big winners for the night! At the end of the night they also had a live auction which was super intimidating. Unfortunately all of those items were waaaay out of our price range so we didn't participate. There were some pretty sweet steals though for those people who did win. We finished out the night with an ice cream stop at Molly Moons on the way home...yumm!

Saturday we put Jordan to work on the house. It was super awesome for him to volunteer to help us out because a few of the things definitely require a couple of guys with actual upper body strength. We mostly just did demo and clean up work tearing down the back potting shed outside of our bedroom. After all the help this weekend, we're about halfway done tearing it down and a ton of the extra construction debris has been disposed of. It was huge progress for the weekend, thanks little brother!!

[before]

[after]

[loading up a truck of trash] 

Saturday night we hung out with Jordan's sister and brother in law again. They had us out to dinner at their house and it was super delish! Good work on that one Matt! I had told them I would bring over the dessert for the night so I gave a cake roll my first try (chocolate strawberry)! Unfortunately I only have a picture of the last remaining slice of it. I think it ended up tasting really good and maybe even better the next day when the last slice was devoured, but there were a few things I would change for next time. I think I ended up cooking the cake a couple of minutes too long so it was a little too dry to roll well. It cracked a couple of times, but looked fine after the frosting went on. Also the filling I used was a plain vanilla recipe but I added strawberries to it so I think it made it too runny and not fluffy enough so the layers were pretty thin. Either way it was yummy and I'll definitely be up for trying a cake roll again. They're so fancy looking and something different from normal desserts.

We finished out the night with a few bottles of wine and a game of trivial pursuit...which quite frankly I was pretty impressed that we were even able to get a winner with trivia questions from the 80s! It was a fun challenge though!

Sunday after a little brunch at a local hot spot up the road we got in a little more work around the house. I can't even tell you how much better the back of our house looks now! We would have kept going with the demo work but the trash truck that we were filling up got a little too full so we decided to call it a day after that. With a few hours to spare before Jordan had to get to the airport we got all packed up and headed out for some wine tasting! We hit up 2 wineries and tasted some delicious wines. A nice was to relax before we had to drop of Jordan at the airport and send him home! I hope we get some more visitors soon and I definitely need to start planning our next SF trip to see everyone again! Love my family!

[Novelty Hill Winery] 

[Mark Ryan Winery]