Ariel Obsessed

Those of you around here know that Adelyn is just a LITTLE in love with Ariel. She wants everything Ariel that she sees wherever we go, wants to listen to her CD in the car, watch her movie at home...on and on and on...let's just say I was REALLY happy when Beauty and the Beast was released from the Vault to add some balance to my life.

Anyway, last night as I was giving her a bath she said she wanted to sing Ariel's song (of course) and I was amazed that she knew about all the words. Here is the first half for your enjoyment.

If you need more, the second half will be on Facebook.

I Know Halloween was Two Weeks Ago...

...but of course I didn't realize that the battery on my camera was dead until we Adelyn was all ready and it was time to head to the church for the Trunk or Treat. Here is a close-up of her fairy make-up. Thanks Jenn! We were here second of three make-up appointments that day.

Jadyn had been her first appointment. She decided to be a goddess this year and looked fabulous, I thought!!

Here we are at the Trunk or Treat. Thanks Arielle for taking this for us!

We didn't let Adelyn get a lot of candy, as she is not even two, but boy could she not wait to eat the candy that she got. Can't you just see the sugar seeping through her in this one??

She can't stop moving long enough for the camera to flash, which gives kind of an iridescent glow around her, making her look even more fairy like! Gotta love these girls!!

Variations on a Cheese Face

We have had a really fun fall so far, despite my protests about summer (the best time of the year, when you live in WA that is) ending. I just had to keep thinking of Sweet Potatoes and PUmpkin Bread and cozy sweaters and boots.

Luckily we were able to have one last little taste of warm weather when we went with Aaron to Lake Chelan for a work event. I thought I could best showcase what we have done in the last month with Adelyn's newest Cheeseface creation. Here it is on the shores of Lake Chelan.

It surfaces again at the pumpkin farm with Jadyn and Olivia. She is not in pain, I promise. She is happy! Doesn't it look like it?

A new Pumpkin Patch. Starting to look a little happier.

Now we just have to worry about Olivia! She looks ticked off! Rachel, I swear we were not torturing her in any way.

Next adventure: the Cider Mill...probably my favorite cheese face of them all. How can you not be happy when you are surrounded by the lovely smells of goats and chickens?? It's crazy how

many times we can go there, spend a mere $2 on feed, and they have fun EVERY time! Gotta love it.

For less cheesy and more pictures of our fall fun, feel free to check facebook. Hope you guys are enjoying fall too. It's hard not too when we have this much sun!

Upcoming Show

I already sent this out on Facebook, but I thought I would post it here in case some of you aren't in a habit of checking your facebook. Some friends from church have put together a talented group of musicians to perform the album Joseph, A Nashville Tribute to the Prophet. Aaron will be playing the guitar and singing some backup vocals.

The Facebook message has been misleading in that you have to pick a certain date when you make an event. They are performing the same show FOUR weekend nights in October. We know that some of you may be coming from far away, so we understand if you can't make it but I know Aaron would appreciate all who come to check it out.

Personally I think it's going to be awesome, and of course we will be having an awesome after party as well. We will have food and good times at our house after EACH of the four shows, so feel free to stop by any of the nights! Let me know if you have any questions.

Hope to see you there!

Do the Puyallup

Since the last post was all about Aaron & I, this post will be all about Adelyn! It was actually sunny the other day so we decided to take her up to the Puyallup Fair. I told her that we were going to go see some animals and boy was she a broken record the whole way up wanting to see them right away.

Most of you know her bunny is her very favorite item in the world, so of course she spent a long time trying to talk to them.

And cows are Aaron's favorite thing in the world, so he wanted to talk to them and get a picture of her with one for his family. Just kidding of course, but it really is crazy to think that he has probably spent more time in his life with cows than he has with me!!!

Another favorite, the horses. Since we have a horse pasture behind our house, Adelyn wakes up every morning wanting to know if the horsie is out. We were amazed at how big some of the ones at the fair were!!!

In the kids section they had a little petting farm where you could get in with some of the animals. Here she is with a little baby goat.




Those of you on Facebook may have already seen the video of her dancing that I posted yesterday. For those on facebook less often, I thought I would post one here too. Don't worry...it's a different one with a nice little chicken wing move. Love it. Of course I taught her everything she knows!!

Those kids just can't help themselves when the Black Eyed Peas come on!

We had a great time and are glad we went when we did because it was pouring rain today!!!!

Anniversary Time!!

That's right! We have now been married THREE years. It's crazy. But what's even crazier is my parents just having their 35 year anniversary. Three years seems like nothing , but they have been three awesome years, that's for sure.

We usually like to celebrate with an adventure instead of gifts, but Aaron had scheduled work the day before and the day after our big day, so we had to get a little creative. I decided to go with him to his event in Spokane, so here we are with the Spokane Falls.

Then we came home the very long way, first via the Grand Coulee Dam, one of the largest concrete structures in the world!! With that amount of concrete you could build a highway from Seattle to Miami or a 4 ft wide sidewalk around the equator twice! And they built it in the 1930s. Ridiculous.

Our next stop was Sun Mountain Lodge in Winthrop, WA, a very cute very little "old western" town. We took a little nature walk that evening and came face to face with a family of deer. It was a very beautiful spot overlooking the Methow Valley.

There are tons and tons of trails that people use to mountain bike or horseback ride in the summer and cross country ski in the winter. So of course we had to take advantage of that!

This was taken shortly before I totally biffed it. This was my first time doing real mountain biking and I was scared out of my mind but ended up having a great time. Coming down, that is. Riding up is probably the most grueling thing I have ever done!

The next two nights I convinced Aaron to camp...for some reason I like camping a lot more than he does. I guess I can thank those Warnick genes for that. Luckily Aaron admitted that he enjoyed it more than he imagined he would.

Here we are with Liberty Bell mountain, an absolutely breathtaking stop on the way to the North Cascades.

We took advantage of the beautiful day and took a hike. On that hike we were very excited to spot a bear...yes it may look more like a black dot we are so far away, but hey, it's a bear in the wild so Aaron was thrilled. Just ask the 20 or so people that he told as we kept hiking.

Here is just one of the gorgeous views along the way. This was one of the prettiest hikes I have ever been on. It is called Maple Pass and I will go back anytime with anyone else who wants to check it out.

Here are the views from the spot we scoped out for lunch. It was hard to decide which view was the best, the mountains were so jagged all around.

This was right after we met some people from none other than Burley Idaho. I swear everywhere we go in the world we meet someone with Burley connections somehow. Crazy!

This is continuing on up the North Cascades to Diablo Lake...the color of the lake was so green and so beautiful. There was a campground right on the lake that I am ready to go to next summer...anyone want to join me you let me know!

Of course we have tons more pics but in order to keep everyone's interest, we will keep it at that. A big thanks to my sisters and my parents for making it possible by taking care of Adelyn while we were gone. You guys are awesome!!

THIRTY!!!!

Well well well, a lot of you have already seen some pics from the big event floating around on facebook and on other peoples blogs, but for those of you who haven't, I thought I would post a few here as well.

Yes, I turned 30!! Yes, I threw myself a party. But it's not pathetic cause I did it in style...in 80s style of course! 1980 brought not only me into this world, but Pacman into the US. So my sister Jenn made a very appropriate cake for the celebration!

Aaron dressed up as Hulk Hogan and even dyed his mustache for the celebration.

Yes, that is Mr. T in the background...we pity the fools who couldn't come to the party! I told my again amazing sis Jenn how awesome it would be to have a life sized cutout of Mr. T for decor/photo ops and she decided we could just make one.

Our backyard decor with our dolled up guests ready to rock. Pay no attention to the empty picture frames showing of course how behind schedule we were getting everything ready.

Here we have another fine art piece...one of my childhood heroes.

I don't think this picture needs any words.

The last of our "life-sized" cutouts. You can see we had a little trouble fitting our faces, but isn't Jenn awesome to have thought of all this?! Of course, if I had known how many hours we were going to spend coloring, I might have thought twice about the idea.

A big thanks to Sidse too for her artistic help. We have two more pics that we didn't even get to...guess we'll have to save them for the next party.

Here we have the winners of the costume contest and the runners up. I was so amazed at how decked out they got. Don't they look incredible?! You guys are awesome!!

A lot of the folks had already gone home for the night, but here is a group of the girls. The one on the far right is my sis Kathryn, another big help for making the evening a success. It's so nice to have a recreation professional in the fam to make awesome games. Her jeopardy was so much fun...and Dave Coleman's 80s trivia knowledge was very impressive.

Even though we had a lot of hiccups and things didn't go quite as planned, I hope that everyone had a great time. Thanks for helping me have a totally tubular birthday bash! Last but not least, a big thanks to Aaron for coming up with the idea in the first place, letting me go a bit crazy, and patiently putting up with my endless requests that weekend. Love you!

If you haven't seen the rest of the pics on facebook, definitely check them out.

Broken Bones and Cousin Bonding

I guess I didn't mention it in my last post, but before we went to Florida we actually drove to Idaho. Aaron's parents most graciously volunteered to watch Adelyn so that we could have a little time to ourselves and we gratefully took them up on that. So getting to Floriday actually meant driving 10 hours to Idaho, driving 3 hours to Salt Lake, then taking two 3-hour flights and one hour drive from that Airport to finally make it to the resort. Yikes! Luckily it was awesome.

Less lucky is how many pictures we DON'T have from our Idaho section of the trip. If any of you are listening out there and do have pictures, please send them my way!! We did get some cute ones of Adelyn's first bonding bath with her baby cousin Mikaiah. There wasn't room enough in the bathroom for everyone who wanted to witness the cuteness.

One day we went to Twin Falls to partake of the deliciousness that is Cafe Rio and we decided to take a little detour to Shoshone Falls. With as many times as we have made this trip to visit Aaron's family, it's crazy that was the first time I had ever been there! Seth and Aaron said it was pretty low and unimpressive, but I actually loved it.



What I am definitely lacking is a picture of a 100% miserable Adelyn upon our return from Florida. That's right. She cried and she cried and she cried some more and I was convinced that we had done irreversible emotional damage by leaving her so long. I finally noticed she was complaining the most whenever we picked her up by her underarms (the usual way to pick up a toddler) and wondered if she had hurt herself.

Sure enough, Ainsley said she had fallen not long before we got home and that was definitely when she started getting so grouchy. But they just thought she was tired because it was 4 pm and she hadn't had a nap. So we decided to take her in just to be sure and wouldn't you know, her second broken bone in less than two years (I'm sure her doctor thinks I am negligent!!).

This isn't her ex-ray but just imagine Adelyn's little tiny collarbone split right in two. Poor thing!!



Thankfully she is young and resilient and back to her usual self in two and a half weeks or so. My aging body could use a little of that!!

She is in love with peek-a-boo and kept saying over and over again, "Where Ad-yn go?" She doesn't quite get the don't put bags on your head thing yet.



This past weekend we had the chance for a little more cousin bonding enjoying the beautiful weather out on the Puget Sound.




Despite my occasional ranting, there are definitely times where I LOVE where we live!




Thanks Hillary and Dan for making the trip down! We'll do Super Mario Bros. next time for sure.

More Longing for Sun

Yes, two sun worshipping posts in a row, what can I say?? I have a one track mind on these 60 degree shower-filled days when it's supposed to be summer!!!! Most of you know we went to Florida a couple of weeks ago for Aaron's work so I thought I'd share a few pics and stories.

Truth be told, our mere three days there left me wishing for a little LESS sun. It was sooooooo hot! You walked out the door for two minutes and were covered in sweat. So needless to say, this is where I spent pretty much ALL my time while Aaron was in meetings. It was awesome right there overlooking the ocean. The less awesome part was how sunburned I got....even my legs peeled, which I can't remember happening in all my nearly (way too nearly) 30 years.



The training event was held in the South Seas Resort, which was on the very end of Captiva Island, just off the coast of Ft. Meyers. They had two manatees swimming around right in the marina a couple of the days we were there and this is, believe it or not, the best shot we got of one of them!



Here we are getting ready for the awards banquet. Out of the 9,000 employees in Aaron's company, he was one of 140 selected to attend this talent council...for the last two years he has been number one in his position in the country! Yep, this is me being the proud wife. He works very hard and it was nice to see him get honored for it.



We had to get a closer look at that sunset while we were waiting for the banquet to start.



After the banquet they had a big dance party on the beach with an awesome DJ and a bonfire. Here we are with some of his colleagues that were selected to go...after our run on the dance floor. Aaron was feeling too tired to dance until they played a little butt rock and then he was out there front and center doing his air guitar, missing his mullet wig sadly left back at home.

He put on a good enough show that this lady came up to me and asked, "are you with him?" Then she wanted to give us tickets to the exclusive after party!! So awesome. Then when this other lady asked me if we were married because we looked so good together dancing...like we were having so much fun and belonged together. So random.



Our next day we pretty much played the day away. They gave us a card for money and activities while at the resort, so we went jet skiing in the morning. Of course Aaron dumped us trying to keep up with the tour guide! Oh man I always forget how bad salt water tastes.



Then in the afternoon we went parasailing, something neither of us had ever done before. I was really surprised at how peaceful and calm it was whie we were up there...just like a giant hammock 1500 feet above the water! We saw a little pod of stingrays from above, which I was glad we saw then instead of while getting dumped.

And then the mini vacation was over before we knew it and of course before we were ready. It's already got me daydreaming for that Hawaii trip!!

What Happened in Vegas

Okay Rachel, you asked, and you shall receive...you have spurred me into action!

Last month I was fortunate enough to be able to take a trip BY MYSELF (the first trip by myself since Adelyn was born) to Las Vegas. One of my best friends ever turned 30 and to celebrate, her husband rented out one of the cabanas at the M resort and one of my other favorite friends and I were able to fly out for the big party.

Here we are, for what we realized was the first time the three of us had been together since 2001!!!



Here is a better look at the pool and hotel.



This was our cabana, complete with a tv, stereo system, fridge...

...private hot tub...

...and a private sunbathing deck, which we rarely left the entire six hours we were there. It's amazing how something so simple can be so fun and so relaxing.

It was seriously the best ladies' weekend ever!! I had so much fun. Wish you guys lived closer!

A big thanks to Erika and Bryce and their hospitality, to Becca for making the trip, and especially to Aaron and Kathryn for taking care of the babe in my absence.

Now if only I could come up with something as cool to celebrate my own impending 30th birthday!