What we've been up to lately...

So for the past few months, Richard and I have been in the process of looking for our first home. It's definitely been an up and down process but it also has been a lot of fun. We are so excited and blessed to be in a position where we can purchase a home. The market is great right now and an added bonus is the first time home buyers tax credit refund. Here are a few (of the many) houses we've looked at...





We have made an offer on one house in particular. It's a short sale and therefore does NOT take a short amount of time to get an agreement from the bank, go figure. We could really use your prayers that everything will work out, especially considering the tax credit deadline is April 30th! We have high hopes and know that what ever happens, happens for a reason.

Easter 2010

We hope everyone had a great Easter! We had originally planned on spending this Easter in Arizona since we spent last Easter in Washington, but that didn't quite work out. It was another cold and rainy Easter for us, very different from the sunny, 80 degree weather we're used to, but it's always great to have family to spend the holidays with.

We spent the day going to church and then lunch at Aunt Rena's with Don, Lori, Randee, Cousin Lori, Cousin Jerry and the boys, it was a lot of fun.


Randee, Richard's sister was able to fly in from Indiana to spend the weekend with us and her parents. It was a quick trip for her but I'm glad we were able to go get some sushi while she was here : ) The next stop for her is graduating from the Anderson Seminary with a masters in Intercultural Studies! I can't believe it's almost been 2 years since we moved here and she moved to Indiana.

This is Richard as a mad scientist in the children's skit before the Easter Scramble at our church this past Saturday, isn't his hair awesome! He said he could get it even bigger if he had used a hair dryer...

K9 Unit comes to FCOG

One of the high school leaders at our church is a cop and he brought a few of his K9 officers to youth group a few Wednesdays ago. It was really neat to see the dogs and learn about how they are trained. One important point the officer's kept saying was that when they train the dogs, they are basically training them to 'play' so that when they are not on the job, they're friendly pets.

Look! It's Sirius Black's animagus, Padfoot, from Harry Potter.

Here is a video of one of the dogs attacking Richard, it was scary!

VHS Winter Retreat

This past weekend we went on a retreat with the high schoolers to Mt. Bachelor in Oregon. It was a lot of fun! Richard had been planning this for a while now and we had about 30 people go on the trip.
We stayed in 3 houses that were close to each other in a community called Sun River.

Here's Richard and Nathan playing some worship songs during one of the sessions we had with the group.

It was about a 4 hour drive and we got there Friday night. On Saturday we all went to the mountain and half went skiing/snowboarding and half went tubing. I went with the group that went tubing. It was fun for a little while but I guess the conditions that day made the tubing kind of slow so we didn't get to go really fast.

Mt. Bachelor was beautiful and it snowed most of the day we were on the mountain. Richard just got a snowboard and used it for the first time this trip. I wasn't able to get any pictures of him snowboarding but he's pretty good and picked up on it very fast.

Snow 2 years in a row!

Last year, right around Christmas time, Vancouver got a whole bunch of snow. Everyone was saying that it was so unusual and that it hadn't snowed that much in 10 years. Well now I'm doubting the locals because it just snowed again!

On Tuesday, I was at work and a coworker came in and told me it was snowing outside. That was at 2pm. When I left at 6, there was a good 4 inches on the ground and it was still snowing pretty hard. The forecast for that day was rainy and 40*.

This is what it looked like when I stepped outside, it was so bright and beautiful outside.

My car was covered! Thankfully I made it home safely, even though it took me 40 minutes and it usually takes 10. That night we even ventured out to the Doe's house to celebrate Christmas with them. We were joking about how it was deja vu from last year!

The snow is almost melted away today, but it was fun while it lasted!

Christmas in AZ

This year, we spent Christmas in Arizona with my family. Richard and I are going to try and switch off the major holidays between our families every year and we spent last Christmas in Washington with the Doe's.

It was great weather while we were there and we had a lot of fun spending so much time with family and friends.

Here we are with Jared, Marcie and Sophia outside of In-N-Out, one of Richard's favorite places in AZ.

Richard and my brothers got tickets to the Cardinals game for Christmas, this was before they left.

My mom and I in the aprons I made for us baking for Christmas.

Apparently there was a dance party in Jonny's room.

Here I am making cookies with Aunt Gail, Karie and Marcie.

There is a link to the right to all of the pictures from Christmas this year.

Christmas Day 2009

On Christmas morning, I was always the first one up and then I would wake up my brothers. Well now that I like to sleep in later... my parents are the first ones up. It was a lot of fun spending Christmas morning with my mom, dad, brothers and Richard.


My brothers were a little sleepy...

Richard got a new scarf, that I crocheted myself!

My cool snuggie from Jesse, that will get used all the time up in Washington.

My brothers got a Wii and my parents got the Wii fit, too bad we live so far away!

Rusty is very good at opening his own presents too.