February

If you haven't noticed yet, I've got an awesome new blog header! It was designed by my brother in-law Aaron. How professional do I look now?!?

I don't really have one big thing to post about right now, but there's a few updates on what we've been up to lately! We've been able to spend a few days taking advantage of some fun winter sports just outside of Seattle!

 Ben had a lot of fun when I took him snowshoeing!

 Ryan and I spent a day cross country skiing. It was a beautiful day out and a great workout!

 In the month of February we also had the pleasure of celebrating our second wedding anniversary!! We decided to do a little weekend getaway to Vancouver to celebrate a little.

In other news, we've still been spending lots of time with all our buddies at the Crossfit Gym. I've really loved becoming part of such an awesome fitness minded community and we've made some awesome friends there. We've also made a lot of progress in our own fitness. Check out Ryan as he gets a ring muscle-up! Very few people can actually do these, so it's a pretty big deal, and Ryan's been trying for a while to get them and now he's got them!

My Grandpa

This past Friday my Grandpa passed away. The funeral is today. I have lost a few other close family members in my life, but this is the first time I've had such mixed feelings about his passing. Obviously I am selfishly sad. He will be missed by so many people. He has a wife of 68 years, 5 sons, 4 daughter-in-laws, 13 grandchildren, 11 grandchildren-in-laws (one more engaged), 13 great-grandchildren with one more already on the way, and I'm sure many many more to follow. We all have so many great memories of him. I remember every day around 4 him asking where we were going to go for 'the big one' (supper), and him telling the server it was your birthday even if it wasn't so you would get a free dessert and get sung to. I remember him calling me Pamela Jean, despite the fact that my name is Pamela Lynn. He said I had so many other random nicknames that he should make one up too. I remember learning and playing sooooo many card games with him at their cottage on Spider Lake. I remember visiting my Grandparents in Florida with my brother and cousin; my Grandpa introduced us to a great frozen custard place called sweetberries. Randomly throughout the days we would hear him say 'Mmmmm, Sweetberries', as if he was still thinking about the frozen goodness...we still laugh about it to this day ;) I remember when I moved out to Seattle he told me he always loved to listen to when the Detroit Tigers played the Mariners because he could hear the trains go by in the background because there's a big station right by the stadium. I definitely remember at all of our weddings that Grandma and Grandpa alllllways won the anniversary dance (the longest married couple gets to dance the longest). What an awesome example they are to all of their Grandchildren of a life long marraige. 

For all these reasons and so many more, I am mourning the loss of my Grandpa and will miss his presence in my life. I am also, however, overjoyed that his time has come. I remember over 13 years ago My Grandpa told me he was going to go home to Jesus at the turn of the millennium. I was slightly horrified at the time thinking 'why on earth would you say that to your teenage granddaughter'?!? Clearly he was mistaken about leaving us in the year 2000 and God kept him here another 13 years. Over those 13 years he's made other similar comments about it being his time to go. I think it's just been recently that I've realized that he was never saying he was unhappy or wanted to die. What he was really saying is that he's had an awesome life and was completely happy with everything he's done and he was ready to dance on streets of gold and sit at the feet of Jesus. For that reason I am really happy for him that he has finally made it there. Also, what an awesome testimony for the rest of us! It just reminds me to live life to the fullest and spend time with the ones your love, but our end goal should be to spend eternity with our heavenly father. I love how excited my Grandpa was to do that. I love that we all have so many great memories with him and I love that we'll get to spend eternity with him and I can only hope that when I'm nearly 90 years old I'll have the same happiness with my life and eagerness for my eternal life. 

NYC for free!

Three of my favorite things ever are family, traveling, and getting a good deal on things. You can imagine my excitement when I managed to work out a free trip to NYC to visit Ryan's little brother, Aaron! We had been wanting to visit ever since Aaron moved out there in the fall, so every once in a while I'll search for flights to see if there's a good time to go. After Christmas I did a few more searches only to find that flights were oddly cheap for MLK weekend and one of the cheapest airlines was Delta on which I had large amounts of frequent flier miles. I checked out their site and discovered that I could use my miles to get TWO FREE FLIGHTS!!! That made that decision to go pretty easy!

We got to NYC late Friday night and met up with Aaron and Chena at their apartment. By that time we were all getting pretty hungry so we hopped on the subway over to a little pizza place in the East Village.

Yummy late night pizza!

Delicious bagels with ridiculous amounts of cream cheese goodness.

Saturday morning we got moving slowly and meandered down to a bagel place near their apartment. I have never seen such an expansive collection of cream cheeses. We all got a bagel and shmear and it totally hit the spot to get the morning started. It's always a good sign when you show up to a place and there's a line out the door. That means you're in for something great!

After breakfast we transitioned from the apartment over to a hotel in the Upper East Side. Yet another fun free amenity! I had enough Marriott points to snag a free hotel for a couple of nights, so we took advantage of that! The hotel was pretty close to Central Park, so we started out with that gem. Although it was a little chilly out, we lucked out with a couple of beautiful days in the city!

Ryan, Chena, and Aaron enjoying the view in Central Park

I mean really, how awesome is this view of the skyline from Central Park?!?

Passed by the Guggenheim Museum while at Central Park so we had to snap a  pic!

One of the things I for sure wanted to see in NYC was this building, the Hayden Planetarium. It happened to be right by Central Park as well. When I was in my fourth year in Architecture school, one of my assignments was to build a section model of this building as a study in structures. It has really beautiful exposed structure. I was super excited to see it in real life, and it's an awesome building!

The sun is beautiful setting behind the skyline.

Saturday night we were on a mission to get some delicious dumplings in China town. I was also on a mission to hang out with my High School buddy, Yelan, who also lives in NYC!! We all met up at an awesome place in Chinatown. Again, you know you're in for a treat when there's a line out the door! After some awesome dumplings, we got even more awesomeness at Rice to Riches, where they serve endless flavors of rice puddings!!! It was like an ice cream shop, but with rice pudding. I am still craving that, hopefully shops like that will pop up in Seattle soon! We had a tiramisu rice pudding and a chocolate hazelnut rice pudding. It was awesome. We spent the rest of the night at a local bar catching up with Yelan and her fiancee Matt. So great to see them!!!

Me and Yelan :)

On our way back to the hotel. I bought some new ear muffs in Chinatown and LOVE them!

Sunday morning started out with a trip to the highline; an elevated park located on an old railroad track. There were a ton of people out enjoying the cold but sun shiny day. 

By the time we finished walking the high line, it was about time for some brunch! Luckily we ended up in a great area for little cafes and great food! We found the Grey Dog and once again, line out the door...good sign. It was little place off a side street, and was awesome food! Strangely enough it also apparently has some connection to University of Michigan. They had 'Michigan Sandwiches' and the menu said 'go blue' on it. It was super subtle, but being from Michigan I was super excited to see it!

At the subway station, Ryan found a twin friend. Ryan also currently looks like a bear with his  ever growing beard.

One of the other big things I wanted to do in NYC is see some lovely bridges!!! I love bridges, so it was great to be in a place with bridges all over the place and gorgeous ones at that! Picture above is a view of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.

Brooklyn Bridge!

We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge

View of the Manhattan Bridge from the Brooklyn Side

After our bridge site seeing we headed back to Manhattan, caught a few minutes of the football games and wandered around seeing the sights.

Wandering through Times Square

Times Square

Stopped to get some pizza at a great little place where you can run next door and buy a bottle of wine  to bring in to the place!

One of the last things I really wanted to see was Rockafeller Center and 30Rock!! It was super cool seeing it at night too. I love pretty lights! We wanted to go to the 'Top of the Rock' too, and turns out I could get an awesome over half off discount on the tickets!! yay military discounts!!

View from the top!

Observation deck was awesome!

I was having issues figuring out my phone...it made me sad.

Wandering through the streets and came across this view of the Empire State building. It's so pretty lit up at night!

Last day in NYC, we started with some brunch and did a little shopping. I was unaware that there was no sales tax for clothes in NYC. Next time we come here I will pack no clothes and just buy lots of things there ;) This time we both just bought new pairs of boots! 

We wandered through Bryant Park.

Wandered through Grand Central.

We headed to the airport Monday evening and had a layover in Minneapolis. I mention that only to show that the terminal we were out of in Minneapolis is awesome!! Each waiting seat has it's own iPad that you can use to read the news, check your flight status, or even order a drink from the bar! How fun is that?!?

We made it back to Seattle around midnight. When we got back to the house it was a whole 42 degrees in the house because I had turned off the heat before we left. It was a little tough to come home to and try to fall asleep in! Luckily it warmed up pretty quickly! We had such a great time in NYC and I can't wait to go back and visit again!!!

First Week of 2013!

This year started off with a bang, quite literally! Unfortunately we both got pretty sick with colds as soon as we got back from Michigan, so our new years was spent relaxing at home trying to get better. We did, however, walk down to a nearby park that overlooks downtown and watched the midnight fireworks at the space needle to ring in the new year!

A couple of days later I got to celebrate my 29th birthday! Again, I was still pretty sick so we kept it low key and Ryan took me out to a nice birthday dinner at a place I've been wanting to try out for a long time. It was delish!

Spending the whole week being sick meant we needed to make up for it on the weekend! Saturday night Ryan had put together a cocktail party for my birthday at our house! Luckily I was feeling mostly better from my cold other than a lingering cough. It was so much fun getting all dressed up and hanging out with our friends!

Thanks to Scott for taking a few pictures at the party! It was so much fun, I love all of these people!!