Rain Drops & Sunshine

The weather has been all over the place today. As I left the mall this evening, it was pouring rain on me with black clouds to the North and sunshine to the West (lucky for me, I was headed West!) When I got home the evening light was flooding the field next to the house so I quickly said hi to the pups and grabbed my camera. Each day flocks of wild geese land in the field and it is amazing to see their numbers and even more amazing to see them all take off at once. My (bred for hunting) pups find the geese very interesting and if I let them out they will point & flush them out. As I turned around to head inside I saw a sad Miley staring at me through the window wondering why she wasn't outside with me.

You can see all the rain drops on the window from the big storm that had just passed through. OH! And I got my new camera!! :D More on that in my next post.

3 Years Old

Our twins turned 3 on Feb 22nd!! Where has time gone?? I swear we just came home with them but it is hard to imagine life before we had them - love our kids to pieces. Oh, and yes I am talking about our dogs Miley & Koda for those who are wondering :o)

Twins ... why does everyone call them this? I swear, like twice a day I get asked if they are twins becaue they are 'identical.' Yes, they are litter mates, brother & sister, but if you want to get technical about it they are from sextuplets. Either way, I just think its funny that EVERY person goes "Ooooo, they are sooooo cuuuute! Are they twins?!"

Here are some pictures of Miley & Koda right before we moved - Moving day was their actual birthday.

{Top: Koda & Miley playing with their football; Next: Koda age 3; Last Miley age 3}

The Move

Trailer #1 before it was full

Since 2011 started it has been BUSY. We knew we would be moving sometime this year (we were thinking like April-ish) so we had been looking for houses and seeing what our options were.  Well, in about 2 weeks total our lives were turned upside down. Long story short, we now live in Sherwood Oregon till we find our home in Vancouver Washington.  I personally think it should be called Vancouver - Portland.  We rallied and packed up our whole house in less than a week and after 3 straight days of moving - loading moving trucks, driving 8 hrs round trip from WA to OR and back, and battling freezing temps and sideways snow - WE MADE IT!

I cannot tell you how blessed we feel to have had all of the help we did.  On the WA side of things a HUGE thanks to Scott, Coop, Matt, Josh, Loren, Skip, Ben, Taylor, Ken, and Mark. A few of these guys came out 2 days in a row which was so amazing I cannot even tell you.  Did I mention it was snowing sideways which sent it straight into the moving truck? What I CAN tell you is that we would still be loading that moving truck if we didnt have the help. On the OR side of things a HUGE thanks to Dave & Shelley, Matt & Dani, Ed, Marcus & Alissa, Scott and Lorens nephew who all came out to meet our moving truck before Caleb and I had even arrived and had it pretty much unloaded when we arrived. I seriously almost burst into tears I was so happy.

These are all iPhone photos so sorry about the quality ...

my view the entire way to OR - Dave left with the moving truck and Caleb and I each had a car/trailer load with us.

The other view ... 4 hrs in a car with 2 cats = fun times all around, NOT! lol

Shelley put together a fruit basket which was in the kitchen at the new house - so sweet.



Leaving Portland at 6am the following morning in the moving truck to head back up to our house for move day part 2



Snow & freezing temps through Vancouver

my view from inside the moving truck - the thing was HUGE!

Caleb driving the moving truck.  They wanted me to drive it ... hahahahahahahah, funny stuff.  I did NOT.

Sky cleared up in Tacoma but then it started dumping snow when we got home.

Headed back through Tacoma a few hours later ... pretty dark for 2pm!

Gorgeous sun break with a HUGE black cloud ahead of us ...

which lead to more snow ...

the roads got pretty bad at one point but then it cleared up a bit and we made it safely day 2.

I didnt manage to get any pictures of the moving truck or other things but I guess my excuse was we were pretty busy moving! I'm just glad to be settled into a new place with about 10% of our stuff unpacked till we move again in a few months. Hopefully at that point we will have had a few garage sales - nothing like a move to help you purge unwanted/unused items! :o)

L*O*V*E

Reason # 264 - Why I love you ...

... because when I'm with you ...

... I am a better me.

Kees Kees! 

Love you babe!

{photos circa 2006}

Sunny Winter Days

rays of sunlight streaming in

Growing up in Southern California, SUNSHINE is never something you ever think about NOT being there.  It just IS there and you love it but you don't always look at it from an appreciative standpoint.  I have always loved the sun and have always appreciated sunny days but not as much as I do now.  Living in the greater Seattle area for almost 7 years now (I know! Where did the time go??) I have learned to LOVE and CHERISH every single sun break & sunny day that we have here. 

Today was one of those days ... woke up and opened my eyes to see what shade of gray it was outside and was ECSTATIC when I saw that it was actually bright and sunny out!! The sun was streaming into our master bedroom so I grabbed my camera because I thought it was beautiful and I needed to capture it to remind myself ...


reflection in a mirror

New Years Eve

NYE post a month late?  Why not!?  I don't know why these photos fell off my radar but they did ... so without further ado here are a few photos from our NYE celebration.  Caleb and I spent the evening with our good friends, lots of food, and lots of games :o)

Snowflakes, my Tripod & lots of Hats

Each year, I like to get a 'family photo' of our family and this year it seemed like the whole year snuck by before I could really plan out a time to go somewhere to do it.  It had been on my mind since Spring, but being out of town each month, projects and life, it seemed to never 'work out' in our schedules.  With the year quickly coming to a close, I decided to wrap it all into 1 photoshoot - 'family photo' our 'holiday photo' and our '3 year anniversary' photo - check, check & check! I've been playing with Photoshop all day, so I decided to take the opportunity to share some other photos that you did not see on our holiday card ...

Leavenworth bound - a car packed with lots of hats, warm clothing, and my tripod, we headed East. Snow was in the forecast, so I had my fingers crossed, but it was still pretty early in the season (Nov) and we all know how 'accurate' the weather man is (insert LOTS of sarcasm.) As we drove over the pass I got really excited because there was a ton of fresh snow, but then right as we hit the 59er Diner (base of the pass on the East side) there was NOTHING that even resembled snow - DARN!  After some quick thinking I decided our best bet to find the white stuff that I SO wanted in our photos was to head out Icicle Creek - I knew it was high enough that there could be a chance for some snow.  We pulled off on a random spot on the road and set up my tripod and began shooting away. We had a great time and the snow flurries were falling the entire time we were shooting.  Needless to say we were a bit chilly after and headed into town to have some brats and beer - a perfect way to end the day.