Christmas 2008

This year, Richard and I got to experience a white Christmas. It was beautiful on Christmas day to see the huge white flakes coming down. I have to admit though, I was really sick of the snow! Vancouver, WA doesn't usually get snow like this, actually the last time they had this much snow in this short amount of time was 1967! Maybe God wanted it to happen again this Christmas because we just moved here and He wanted us to see what it was like, who knows. But it has finally melted away! Here are some pictures from Christmas this year.

This picture was from a Christmas party we went to at our friends house.

Part of the Doe family on Christmas Eve, we wish Jared, Marcie and Sophia could have been there too! I definitely missed being with my family this year, this being the first time ever I haven't been with them on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, but I was grateful to be able to celebrate Christmas with Richard's parents and sister.

The pretty snow around our apartment.


Looking out our bedroom window with the pretty Christmas lights on.

White Christmas?

So on Wednesday I posted that it was snowing... well NOW it is snowing! Here's some updated pictures of our front/back yards from when we woke up this morning.

...

While I was in the middle of posting this blog, our friend Vicki, who lives down the street, called us and asked if we wanted to walk to the grocery store with her, which is across the street. So Richard and I got on our warmest clothes and took a walk in the snow to the store. It was fun! There were surprisingly a lot of people walking on the streets and we went and got some coffee at Starbucks. This is definitely a new experience for us! Below is a video of the roads and at the end you'll see Vicki and Richard.

Maybe it will be a white Christmas this year...

It's Snowing!

On Sunday, we got hit with a snow storm! All last week everyone here was talking about how the Vancouver/Portland area was going to get hit and we sure did. It started with freezing temperatures on Saturday and then the snow/ice came on Sunday. Richard didn't have youth this past weekend so we stayed inside our apartment all weekend long. On Monday and Tuesday, the temp. was in the 20's but sunny and then when we woke up this morning, it was snowing again, and more than on Sunday! Thankfully, I didn't have to babysit today and Richard gets to come home early from work because the snow is supposed to turn into freezing rain, which I guess is scary to drive in, something I don't really care to experience.

This picture is from the storm on Sunday,

and this picture and the video are from today. I took my cat, Clover out in the snow and he couldn't figure out what kept hitting his face, it was cute.

Everyone say a prayer for Randee, Richard's sister who is flying into Portland tonight.

Christmas decorations!

It has been a lot of fun decorating our apartment for Christmas! Richard and I had to get a few things that we didn't have yet like stockings and a star for our Christmas tree. There aren't many places to hang lights on an apartment, but I put some lights up in the windows and everything looks so pretty.

Here is our beautiful tree that Richard cut down himself. We didn't realize how big it was when we picked it out and once we got it into our apartment we had to cut the top of it off so that the star would fit.

The fireplace with our stockings hanging.

Baby Jesus and the Nativity scene. After all, He is the reason we celebrate this time of year.

And my new collection, Christmas houses! I bought one this year and I'm going to add on each year.

Tree Farm!

On Monday, Richard and I went to a Christmas tree farm to pick out our first Christmas tree! Neither one of us had ever cut down our own tree before (maybe because we grew up in AZ). It was a really neat experience! The farm was HUGE! You can kind of see how big it was in the picture below, but that was not even half of it.

There were 5 different kinds of trees growing on the farm. We liked the Douglas Firs and the Noble Firs the best, but it was so hard to pick!

We ended up picking out a Douglas Fir that happened to be at the very back of the farm. Here is Richard cutting it down with a saw, we had to carry it back up to the barn in the freezing cold rain. It was a great experience and a wonderful new memory that we have together!

Thanksgiving Day 2008

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays! I love getting together with family, watching football and eating a lot of really good food. This year, Thanksgiving was at my cousin Karie's house. It was beautiful and Richard and I had a great time being in Arizona with everyone. We got to spend time with the whole Lawrence/Nutt/Finnin/Cowden family and the whole Doe family too! Randee, Richard's sister, flew in from Indiana and his parents, Don and Lori also flew in from Washington. I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful, and BIG, family =)

Me and my mom.

Here we are all praying before our Thanksgiving dinner. There were so many people we could hardly make a circle around the room!

The amazing food! It looks so colorful. My favorites this year were Steve's sweet potatoes, Marcie's green bean casserole, and the cranberry sauce!

As you can tell, this is after everyone ate. Half of us were in this room watching Kung Fu Panda and the other half were in the family room watching football.

Arizona for Thanksgiving

Richard and I headed to Arizona for Thanksgiving. It was great to be back home and spend time with our friends and family, it made us realize how much we really miss everyone and value their love and friendship. The weather was beautiful! We even brought a little rain from Washington with us to Arizona. Here are some pictures from the week we spent there.

While I was there, I was able to go to a dinner with my old Bible study group. It was so nice to hang out with all of them.

The day after Thanksgiving, a bunch of us decided to go to Goldie's for the "2nd Annual Day After Thanksgiving Goldie's Night". The same night last year, Richard proposed to me after we had dinner there with all of our friends.

This picture (done by Marcie's great photography skills) is of Richard, me, my brother Joey and his girlfriend Abby. Richard sure looks excited in this one.

The night before we were supposed to leave, I realized we didn't take a family picture. So we took a few pictures with my camera's timer. They turned out pretty good! Even though I'm in my pajamas and Jesse is pretending to be an opera singer.

Blazer's Game

On Wednesday, Richard and I went to the Blazer's game with our friends Krystal and Barry. It was a lot of fun and the Blazers were beating the Bulls the entire game. It was Oden's first home game with the Blazers and the crowd loved him (he's from Ohio State). And don't worry, we are still Suns fans! Here are some pictures from that night.


That is water in Richard's hand... he stole a beer cup to fill up with water because they wouldn't give him a cup.


The Rose Garden in Portland. As you can tell, it was cooollld outside.

Leader's Retreat

This past weekend, Richard and I, along with 9 students and 1 other adult leader, went to the Great Wolf Lodge to have our first "student leader's retreat". The Great Wolf Lodge is a resort about 1 hour away and it has a huge indoor water park inside the hotel. It also has a whole bunch of other things for kids to do like an arcade, dance club, magic quest, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and more, so you can imagine that everyone was pretty excited to go there. The picture below is of the water park from the outside, you can see the slides that come out and go back in.


The main point of this retreat was to get the students ready for 'student led small groups' which Richard will be starting in the youth groups come January. Richard had prepared some great material to get the students informed and ready to lead on their own. I had a lot of fun getting to know everyone better and them getting to know Richard and I better too.

Here I am with the 4 girls that came. We had a huge room with 4 beds and a fireplace, so it was very roomy =)


This is a picture of a few of the guys getting off the "Tornado", definitely the most fun ride there.

Halloween, or as they call it here, Harvest!

Halloween night, Richard and I went to the church to help out at their annual "Harvest Party". It was a huge carnival in the gym with different booths for the kids to play games at and get candy. Can you guess what we were? No, I am not Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman (as someone thought), I am Hannah Montana and Richard was, apparently in this picture, a crying bear.


Richard got the wonderful job of doing the game "Where's the ball?". He couldn't fool anyone at first, but by the second hour of moving around cups with a ping pong ball in it, he got pretty good! I handed out candy to the kids who won (and to those who didn't). It was a great Halloween here in Washington!

All Hallow's Eve, Eve

On Thursday night, we had a pumpkin carving party/contest with the high schoolers. Richard and I went to the store and bought 10 pumpkins and the youth carved them into some pretty interesting things...

Here we have the Cinderella pumpkin, made by the artists of the group...

And here we have the "puking" pumpkin and the "brain coming out of the ear" pumpkin...

After everyone was done carving their pumpkins, we had a contest between the boys and the girls. The picture above was what the boys made, they ended up winning. It was called "make me something out of pumpkin guts" and they had a bucket of random objects to use. It was Richard's idea, he's pretty creative.

Richard's day off

This past Monday, on Richard's day off, we decided to drive to Portland, which is only 20 minutes away. It was a beautiful day out, clear skies and in the high 60's. We parked downtown and went into Powell's Bookstore, walked down 23rd Ave. and got bagels and coffee and walked around the nearby neighborhoods. The trees were so pretty and the houses in the neighborhood were all decorated for Halloween. Downtown Portland is a normal big city with a bunch of tall buildings, but the neat thing about it is that it also has lots of trees and a river running through it.

We thought this was funny, "Rich's; Cigars, Magazines and Gifts". Maybe he'll take it over one day.

It's officially fall

It definitely looks like fall in Vancouver. The colors are so pretty I had to take some pictures while I was driving around. This is one season that we missed when living in Arizona. And you can see by the blue skies that the weather has been pretty nice so far, still sunny but a little colder than we're used to in October. Next time I post pictures showing the weather, it will probably be gloomy and rainy, but for now, we are thankful for this beautiful time of year.

Multnomah Falls

Phil and Adam were in town from Arizona this weekend for a wedding, so we all decided to go see one of Oregon's beautiful landmarks, Multnomah Falls. It was really incredible! It rained the whole drive up there and then right when we arrived, it stopped, so it was perfect timing to get out and walk around.

Here is a video clip I took while we were there, I couldn't figure out how to make it right side up so you have to tilt your head sideways =)

Haunted Corn Maze

We went to a haunted corn maze the other day with about 130 middle and high school students. It's an event the church does every Halloween with the youth. I haven't gone to a haunted house since 8th grade and never thought I'd go to one again. Ironically enough, I went into the scary part of the maze while Richard had to go through the non-haunted side with some kids who were too scared to go through the haunted side. It ended up being a great time... and a little muddy!

The past 3 months in a nutshell...

We have a blog! So a lot has happened in the past three months, I'll try to sum it up quickly...

We got married on 8-8-08!


and went on our honeymoon in Maui, Hawaii

then we moved to an apartment in Vancouver, Washington

and Richard got a job as the high school youth pastor at Vancouver First Church of God (and I'm currently substitute teaching in the Christian schools in the area)

So here we are today... a long way from home but enjoying this new adventure that God has led us to.