FUN with FRIENDS

We've had the pleasure of spending time in the company of some exceptional people lately.

A few weeks ago we hosted a Murder Mystery dinner with some fun friends from our ward. It was a blast! Just goes to show you are never to old to play dress up with your pals.




Last week we were delighted to have my best friend from high school Katie Bennion and her hubby Kenneth spend their Spring Break with us. It was SO wonderful to see them and take a bit of a vacation ourselves. The weather was gorgeous while they were here! We took the "Ride the Ducks" tour in Seattle, which went all over the city and into the Puget Sound. While we were down town we went to the Olympic Sculpture Park, which consists of modern art pieces. We also took a stroll through Pike Place Market and ate some delicious donuts and cheesecake truffles. We spent more of the next day wondering around the Woodland Park Zoo and University of Washington campus. We are already looking forward to visiting them in Logan sometime soon!


On the Duck Tour and some of the cute floating homes on the sound!



The skyline from the sound and Pike Place


Getting our Modern Art on and Mitch and Kenneth in an intense game of chess at the Center House.


In other news...
Mitch takes finals next week and then goes on Spring Break!
Megan is going to shoot some scenes for a documentary this weekend.
We go home in about a month and a half for Lee and Claire's wedding in May!
Megan got a new calling at the Primary Chorister at church.
Megan got cast in her favorite musical, Into the Woods!

Huge Adventures...

So, this past few weeks has been quite out of the norm for us! First, we took a trip to Kawaii for a few days in the beginning of January:



Since we were already heading west, we decided to go to one of the main tourist sites around, The Taj Mahal. It's such a beautiful building, but I cannot figure out how we got to be the only ones in this picture! It must have been the off season. Also, in the picture you can see we decided to bring our clock along with, while wearing our Halloween costumes. We sure got some weird looks, but it was all worth it!



The latest thing we did this month was adopt a new pet. We've been saving and saving, so once we finally could pay the fees, we got ourselves our very own pet rino. They (all of Africa) were glad that he would be going to a good home in Seattle. It's quite amazing just how big they are in person!



So that's all that's been going on for us! We'll see what the next month brings for us!


(And just in case you're wondering, life is just as usual; work, school, homework, etc. But we're liking it! We've been able to serve various individuals and I'll tell you nothing brightens your day and mood quite like helping someone. We definitely feel blessed that Heavenly Father has provided such a comfortable life for us to live. Let's all find ways to improve others' lives!)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It was a blast being able to spend Christmas in Utah with family! The 10 days in Utah were filled with food, relaxation, good conversation and games.

Here are some highlights from the trip...
-Family photos at the Union Station. Although it was freezing, we had a blast climbing all over the old trains for some unique pictures....COMING SOON!
-LEE GOT ENGAGED to Claire Burnett. We are thrilled to have her joining the family in May.
-Loads and loads of snow while staying in Santaquin (over 2 feet!), which turned into a massive snowman and snowball fight in the back yard.
-Making and decorating tons of gingerbread men.
-Secret Santa get together with Mitch's friends.
-All you can eat sushi with Anderson and Rochelle (thanks for the invite, the food and the company were delightful!)
-Rochelle teaching Megs how to crochet beanies.
-A delayed flight home due to a missing flight attendant (how mysterious).
-Card and Board games galore with the Phillips family (including the 4 player chess showdown in this picture).




Christmas Morning...once upon a time, long ago, we all easily fit on the couch for a pre-present picture. It's rather squishy now.

Back in Seattle we still had one more blissful week to relax before school starts again tomorrow. We found an excellent $3 movie theater just a couple miles from our house and saw Hereafter, which we both enjoyed.

We celebrated New Year's in the Physics Building on UW campus, which turned out to be amazing! Mitch found the perfect spot on the top floor to watch the Seattle Space Needle Fireworks. It was fun having the whole building to ourselves and watching the fireworks from the warmth and comfort of the indoors. We are excited as ever to adventure forth into 2011.

New Year's Eve at the top of the Physics Building. The tiny light between our heads is the Space Needle.



The view! This is downtown Seattle and the Space Needle during the awesome fireworks.

3 Years, 2 Holidays and 1 Happy Couple

We've been celebrating a lot lately!


Last week we celebrated our 3 YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Since our anniversary landed in the middle of the week and Mitch had lots of homework, we kept it simple and I made delicious dinner.


That weekend Mitch took me on a delectable chocolate tour at Theo's. All of their chocolate is organic, fair trade, dark and delicious. The factory tour was also incredibly interesting (I nearly passed out from the overwhelming chocolate aroma). YUM! That evening we took a ferry to Bainsbridge and had sushi at SUBI. The view on the ferry ride back was really beautiful because the city was all lit up.


We celebrated Veteran's Day by going into the city for the first time and enjoying the Seattle Art Museum and Pike Place Market.


We celebrated Thanksgiving with some other young couples from the ward Michelle, Matt and Callan Turner and Bonnie and Kurt Anderson. We celebrated the rest of Thanksgiving Break in Canada! We stayed with some long time family friends, the Mitchell's and played fun games, had great conversations and enjoyed a trip to their new temple. The Vancouver Temple is officially one of my favorites. We hope to be back for many more visits since it's only a 2 and a half hours away.

We are now counting down to our trip home for Christmas in less than 3 weeks!
Also, Seattle had an uncommon amount of snow which resulted in school and work being canceled last week...check out some of the footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg&feature=related

HAPPY HALLOWEEN and more...

Well, after a week of dead things (car, laptop, not to mention Halloween) we are all back to normal. We had a spectacular Halloween with fun games, trunk or treat, dinner in a pumpkin and Wait Until Dark. We also made a never ending supply of gingerbread and pumpkin cookies to go with the frothy, orange ice cream soda drink. We give ourselves an 'A' on hosting our first social event in Seattle. We hope everyone else had as much fun as we did.

Mitch has been extra busy with midterms and homework galore and we are looking forward to Veteran's Day (UW actually gives the day off unlike BYU). We might actually make it into the city (which is less than 8 miles away). Mitch can see the Space Needle from his office. We've had some sunny days, but the rainy season is definitely creeping in on us now.

Other good news includes a new beanbag for comfy movie watching and extra guest seating (thanks Chelle for getting us hooked on the idea and Seattle Craigslist for being awesome!) My job is going splendidly and I now have car seats for the handsome little guys so we can take field trips to the zoo and beach.


Halloween Party @ our place with ward friends!


Strike a pose...






Pumpkinmania


Pumpkins welcoming people to the party & setting up with decorations from Chelle!


SO excited about our comfy new beanbag! ...and the prettiest tree in all of Seattle.

One Year Older and Wiser Too

I celebrated my birthday this week with beautiful weather, tasty seafood and all things Halloween. I felt completely spoiled by friends and family who sent a delightful batch of birthday cards (creative/thoughtful or hilarious birthday cards are my favorite). I also received some lovely flowers and fun Halloween decorations/clothing. Mitch made me a happy fruit filled breakfast and we had dinner at Duke's Chowder House on Greenlake. We also got pumpkin ice cream. YUM!


Tasty food all day long, including lots of chocolate, fruit and seafood.


Pretty flowers from Teddy, Mitch and Alan & Melanie

*Side note: my new favorite place is Greenlake. It's about 3 miles around and absolutely gorgeous with the fall colors. It's a great place for a thought provoking walk, people watching, walking your dog/kids, and eavesdropping on some fascinating conversations/debates. It's the ideal place to go on a sunny day, which we've had lots of since we got here surprisingly.*



Anyway, we also went pumpkin shopping on my birthday and picked out some great jack-o-lanterns to be. Mitch got me an amazing book! It's a collection James Christensen's Art and explanations/history of his artwork. It's call "A Journey of the Imagination". LOVE, LOVE!



Another highlight of the week was watching "How to Train your Dragon" with our friends the Staples and Andersons and having a treat fest with chocolate cake, cookies and lemon meringue pie. On Saturday we got to help at a local food warehouse preparing food for soup kitchens and food banks with other UW physics graduate students. Very fun indeed.

We Love Autumn

After we got the house organized this weekend I decided to try making pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin instead of a can. Here are the results...

BEFORE

AFTER (YUMMY)

I also made beef stew from scratch in the crock pot. I guess I was feeling extra domestic this weekend. The colors are just beginning to change and we are getting our Halloween costumes together. This is my favorite time of year!