Our Anniversary Weekend

We had such a great time! Neither of us can believe it has been a year since our wedding day. Boy time flies. A weekend away was the best gift we could have given ourselves.

Friday morning we left for our weekend in Port Ludlow. It is a quiet blink-and-you'll-miss-it town just a short ferry ride away from us. We stayed at the Port Ludlow Inn and loved it. The Inn is a really small hotel (37 rooms I believe) and it has great views, pretty and cozy rooms, and a nice restaurant in the lobby.

We spent the weekend relaxing, walking on the beach looking at sea creatures (we even saw an otter before we came home on Sunday - SO cute!), visiting Ft. Flagler, kayaking, eating delicious food, reading, etc. The tv didn't come on one time - it was marvelous.

If you have the opportunity to get away for a quiet weekend, we highly recommend the Inn. It was just what we needed!

Just a few pictures from the trip. Email me if you want the link to the rest. I took TONS, but then again, don't I always?!

Because it is fun to remember what we were doing a year ago today, I will leave you with my all time favorite wedding picture:

Rachel's Baby Shower

We had a great time!

It rained, and that sucked. There was even thunder and a bit of lightning involved. We were supposed to be having a picnic in my big back yard. There were freshly stained adirondack chairs and a pressure washed picnic table and back patio, picnic blankets and of course the appropriate yummy picnic fare. So, we all had to squeeze into my living room (roughly 15 or so people) for the festivities. It wasn't ideal, but it worked!

I had a great time catching up with some friends I haven't seen in some time and ooohing and awwwwing over tiny baby things! Of course Rachel was spoiled rotten, as is the purpose of baby showers after all! Now she just need a little Landon James around to be able to enjoy the loot.

Once most everyone had left we had one last surprise for Rachel. I worked with three wonderful friends that don't live locally. Two of them even arranged ahead of time to send me their presents. So, once things quieted down I brought out the laptop, so that they could 'attend' her shower via webcam. They got to watch her open their gifts and say hello. It was SO sweet of them to want to be involved. Oh, and you should have seen Rachel cry. She was SO surprised! I knew I would get tears out of her! ;)

Congrats again, Rach!

Mariners Game!

Because Scotty is awesome, he treated the whole fam to a Mariners game! Saturday we had dinner and all hit the ball park to watch the M's wipe out Texas. The weather was gorgeous and the company was even better. It was Emily and Noah's first game, so it was good that they got to see the team win! The boys were dressed in their new ball caps and Emily in her Mariners dress, and on the walk in to the park every Safeco employee handed them baseball cards. I had the best time talking baseball with Aidan and Noah and teaching them all about the only player they ever need to know - Ken Griffey Jr, of course!

My Love: (2nd to Jeremy, of course! Just don't tell him that, it goes to his head... :) )

The whole gang:

Jeremy and the boys:

Noah wearing Jeremy's hat:

Emily in her cute dress (and Jeremy's hat):

4th of July Weekend

What a great weekend! Here's a recap:

Friday:
Most of Friday was spent relaxing at home. We've been running around 24/7, so having a day to veg out was really nice! We went to my dads for dinner and got a chance to hang out with Grandma Shirley and some family friends. It was a low maintenance burgers and dogs kind of night, but those are the best! I even played a few games of cribbage against my dads friends and took all of their money! (okay, $3, but I was excited!!)

Saturday:
Another morning spent in front of the tv or reading. The new Harry Potter movie comes out next week, so we are diligently reading the most recent books in preparation! Yes, we know that we're dorks, but you love us anyway!

For lunch we headed to the home of our dear friends Jessica and Umar. We all had plans for the evening, but we decided that we still wanted to get together. So, we had a lunch BBQ instead. It was great to relax with yummy food and great friends.

Our time with Jess, Umar and gang was short, but we headed up north to meet up with Erik and Sherrie. After heading to the river to see if they won the Duck Race (up to $40k for life!! Unfortunately, they didn't win. Bummer!), we headed to a firework stand and got some great last-minute deals. It was almost 9:00pm when we got there and everything was buy-one-get-one-free! Plus some things were marked down. In the end we bought about $400+ worth of fireworks for less than $100. Jeremy and Erik got to spend a good few hours blowing things up, AND no one lost even an eyebrow. I even got to try out the fireworks setting on my cool camera. Some of them came out pretty good!

Sunday:
The morning was mostly dedicated to work in the yard. We had chairs to restain, a deck and patio to clean up and some pressure washing to do. Plus, just a bit of housework we'd been neglecting all weekend.

But, after our chores were done, Jenn, JP, Aidan, Noah, and Emily came up to play! JP and Jeremy set up the Slip 'n Slide and played with the boys, while us girls sat and laughed and watched them play. We ate bbq leftovers (Jenn's potato salad may be my new fav - sorry mom, but it has bacon in it!) and had yummy margaritas.

Look at Noah's cheesy grin, he just knows he's cute!

This of course meant that we got to spend some quality time with Emily too! We hadn't seen her in a few weeks and she is getting so big!

Overall we had a fantastic weekend. It was great to see family and friends and to get some much needed R&R. We hope you all had a fun and safe fourth! I will leave you with one last picture, one of cute Emily!