Christmas Eve 2009

On Christmas Eve my family always goes to church in the evening and then to my grandpa's to eat and open presents. Our family has grown so much in the last few years that it's getting a little cramped in his house, but it's always a great time : )

There was a beautiful Arizona sunset outside of our church.

Sophia and Uncle Richard.

Joey made the mistake of wearing a santa hat to the party so he had to be santa and hand out all the presents.

Our family. I will forever be the shortest now...

Richard and I on our second Christmas together : )

Thanksgiving 2009

This year, we spent Thanksgiving at Richard's Aunt Rena's house. It was small and quiet compared to what I'm used to but it was still a great time with family.

I made green bean casserole (one of my faves) and a new recipe called Buttermilk pie. It was a hit and the only pie completely gone at the end of the day. I will definitely have to make that a tradition.


All of the family around the Thanksgiving dinner table. Lots of yummy food : )

Fall 2009

I did a post just like this last year and I'm doing another one because the fall colors here in Vancouver are so beautiful I see something new every year.


Here are the pumpkins we got at a farm this year. We were told they are "Cinderella" pumpkins because they are short and long. We were supposed to carve them with Danny and Alex while they were here, but we just forgot. At least they still look good on our front doorstep : )

Here is one of the buildings next to the preschool I work at. I didn't know ivy changed colors too!

Here's our front doorstep looking "fallish".

A centerpiece I made using twigs and berry's I found outside our door. It's so great to live in a place with so much natural beauty!

Alex and Danny came to visit

This past weekend, my cousin Alex and her husband Danny came to visit. Danny was interviewing at a couple of grad schools up here, so there's a chance they may even move here! We had a lot of fun showing them around Vancouver and Portland. We also drove them up to Seattle on Monday and hung out there for a few hours. Here we are at OHSU just before dropping Danny off for his interview, it was a beautiful view of downtown Portland.

On Friday night, we had a Hoe Down with the middle and high schoolers, so they got to tag along with us to it.

The square dancing was probably the best part of the night.

On Saturday we took them to downtown Portland and walked around. We showed them 23rd St., Powell's Bookstore and got some coffee at Stumptown. It actually started pouring down rain while we were on 23rd.

This was on our drive up to Seattle, I had never been there before so it was pretty cool to see.

Here we are walking around the University of Washington campus. We ate dinner at this cute cafe and I had some amazing salmon pasta. My mom recommended getting salmon in Seattle and I'm glad I did.

We had an amazing time with you guys, hopefully the next time you're here it'll be to move : )

Richard's office

A few weeks ago we redid Richards office to reflect more of his style : ) Which in this case is the Phoenix Suns.

An orange wall, a purple wall and two black walls. It was fun painting such bold colors, it's not every day you paint a room purple, orange and black. Now it definitely looks more like Richard.

Random things

Nothing that exciting has been going on in our lives lately, that's why I haven't posted in over a month. Our lives pretty much have been extremely busy with church, youth, and work. We're tying to figure out how to balance our days so that we have time to ourselves to just do nothing (one of my favorite things to do).

We started small groups in homes with the youth on Wednesday nights. It has been going great and they really seem to like it. We've been doing these video series that talk about things that high schoolers deal with on a day to day basis. We've also started a small group study with a few friends of ours too, which has been a lot of fun!

Richard has been extremely busy. He seems to always have something to do or finish at church. He's been planning studies, meetings, retreats, church service... and lots more. We've also been trying to go to some of the many sporting events that some of our youth are in like football and volleyball games. Those are always a lot of fun.

I have been working full time in the infant room at the preschool I work at. It has it's good days and it's bad days, like every other job. Some of the kids are adorable and one (my favorite) just moved up to the next class and out of mine, I was sad to see her go : ( Here is a picture of the room I have been spending the majority of my time in throughout the week. It's in an old Catholic school and the room has a lot of character.


And here are a few of the babies that spend much of their days with me : )


It's definitely beginning to feel like fall in Vancouver. There has been a chill in the air the past couple weeks and it makes me excited for the fall smells and colors. Autumn is the best season! Maybe this year I can really enjoy it since last year I was too focused on moving and being away from my family. Soon it will be Halloween!

The Doe's came to visit

Last week the whole Doe family was reunited in Vancouver, WA. Jared, Marcie and our niece Sophia came up from Arizona and Randee flew in from Indiana. We definitely had a lot packed in to the few days everyone was here and it was a lot of fun.


On Thursday, everyone had the day off from work and so we all got into the church van (there was 8 of us) and drove to the Oregon Zoo. Richard and I had been wanting to go there for a while now. It was a really great zoo with a lot of neat animals that we haven't seen at the Arizona Zoo (like polar bears...).

Richard and I had Randee, Jared and Marcie over for dinner one night. We did cheese fondue with chocolate fondue for dessert (yummy!) and then played this really cool game called Ticket to Ride : ) We also had fun eating at some new restaurants while they were here, like the Island Cafe on the Columbia River and the Screen Door in Portland.


Here's our niece Sophia jumping on our bed. She loved our cat Clover and kept calling him "Meow Meow". It was really cute.

It was great having you all come to visit! Love you guys and see you in the winter : )