D - Christmas 2010

The funny thing about traditions is that it is wonderful for the family but not so very interesting for a blog.  You see, we do the same thing year after year, so I've already told you this story both here and here.  So, I'll try my best to make this short and sweet.

Here are my two favorite clowns grilling our steaks and shrimp for our Christmas dinner.

Eating our "fancy" meal in the living room in front of the tree.

Still a clown while posing for pics as dad gets the camera set up

Ahhhhhh.  Enter little sister to ensure some sweet pics

The fam

Oh, wait!  She can be ornery too.

But this year for your viewing pleasure, we're including a brief video of our big night.  Such fun!

We had another wonderful Christmas.  Noah's favorite gift of the year was from his dad - 2 tickets to the Monster Jam World Finals in Las Vegas in March.  He's INCREDIBLY pumped for their big road-trip "mancation."  Katie's favorite gift was a pillow pet she got from Mary and Neil.  Hmmmmmmm.  Methinks I could have saved a lot of money on her if I'd known exactly how high her expectations were.....

D - Errrr, Ummmm, Make that "Elk"

Oops!  Mike told me that all of the "moose" that we were seeing in Colorado were actually elk.  I guess they were still really cool.  Here's some of his favorite pics.

D - YMCA of the Rockies

Last September we had the pleasure of driving to Colorado to attend the wedding of one of my oldest and dearest friends. Susan and I met at Sooner Youth Camp back when we were in our early teens, and we have been great long-distance friends ever since. She has such an adventurous spirit, and I am always marvelling at whatever bold and unexpected turn her life takes. We could not be more different! I have learned to expect the unexpected with her. So, when she called to tell me she was getting married and I had barely even known she was dating anyone, I just laughed, packed our bags, and we drove to Estes Park, Colorado.

Fun pics as we crossed the state line...




We had no idea what to expect when we heard she was getting married at the YMCA of the Rockies and she wanted us to stay there in the cabins. I mean, we are members of the Y and all, but I have no interest in spending the night there.

As it turns out, we were truly impressed with what we found. It was a HUGE resort facility set in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. There were multiple lodges as well as hundreds of individual cabins. We didn't get to do much there since we were there for a short weekend, but it had so much to offer. Each day had activity classes offered every hour such as arts and crafts, horseback riding, zipline, etc. It was so impressive. It would be such a wonderful place for a family reunion or something similar.



Our little cabin

The best part of all - Bunk Beds!!!!

We arrived here late on a Friday night and had dinner with Susan and Lonnie and some of the others who were already here. Saturday was a free day for us until the rehearsal dinner that night, so we made the most of it.

After a yummy breakfast in our cabin,

We went on a beautiful (though extremely frightening to yours truly) drive up Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. Why aren't there barriers to prevent you from driving off the side of a mountain???

When we visit the mountains, the only thing Katie ever wants to do is have a picnic on top of a mountain. So, we obliged her with a meal very much on the side of a mountain. I got after Noah every time he took a step backward without looking. He kept scaring me to death!

Despite the fact that we saw many moose right up close and personal, somehow this is the only picture I can find right now. We really enjoyed hearing them from our cabin as they sounded their trumpets. Pretty cool experience for these Okies! These guys were on top of the mountain above the tree line.

After our mountaintop experience, we headed back to the Y and took the kids to play disc golf. I think Noah may have died if we didn't try it. From the moment he saw the goals, he HAD to play. We all had a really good time with this.

This one is random, but it's one of my favorite pics Mike has ever snapped of Katie.

That's pretty much it for the fun family activities. The rest of our trip was spent on wedding related activities. I think this is the first outdoor wedding I've ever attended, and it was just beautiful. We are so very happy for Susan and Lonnie and so thankful we were able to be there.

D - Belated Washington Trip Report

Last July Mike and I were able to take a wonderful 15-year anniversary trip to the state of Washington. It was a short visit as I was joining him on the tail end of a business trip, but we managed to pack A LOT into the two full days that we had there - because that's what we do. :)

When I landed in Seattle we had an almost three hour drive to our hotel in Port Angeles. I was starving, so we stopped on the way in Gig Harbor where we ate our nicest meal of the entire trip (food is important to me, so this is worth noting). We ate at Anthony's Restaurant where our table had this BEAUTIFUL view of the harbor and Mt. Rainier in the distance. It was just perfect.



Our first full day of the trip was HUGE. We began with a hike up Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. It offered "amazing views of the Olympic Mountains and the Olympic Peninsula Coastline." Indeed.

Fortunately, I brought along my own nature photography buff, so no beautiful scenery goes undocumented.

Our next stop (and my personal favorite) was kayaking around Lake Crescent. This was the most beautiful body of water I have ever seen - and that really means something given the strong pull we feel toward water vacationing. It was so clear, the weather was absolutely perfect, we were some of the only people on the lake, and the mountains surrounding the lake were just breathtaking. I couldn't help but sing a few verses of "How Great Thou Art."

Since Mike's presence often goes unnoted in our photos, here's one I caught with my phone.

And here's what he usually looks like...

Our next activity was a short hike to Marymere Falls.

And a quick tour of the Hoh Rain Forest

Yes, that was all day one.

We realized when we chose to go to the rain forest that we would not be able to make it to the ferry that we needed to catch to get to our hotel on Whidbey Island, so we had to make other arrangements. Turns out, this isn't as easy in Washington as it is in Oklahoma (or anywhere else I've ever travelled). Almost all of the hotels in this area are locally owned, mom & pop type places rather than national chains, and their front offices close fairly early. Because we didn't' even start looking for a place to stay until 5 pm or so, this proved to be a problem. Also, tmobile apparently isn't big in Washington, so we had no internet service by which to search for someplace.

Fortunately, we were able to stop alongside the road in a place where we actually had a weak cell signal and get in a call to my dad who found this place for us. Thanks, Dad! We wound up here - back at Lake Crescent. We were able to get an A-frame cabin at the Log Cabin Resort, and it was fantastic. The stars that night were the brightest I have ever seen, and I didn't even have to get out of bed the next morning to be able to see this view.

From the outside...

And, of course, the inside....

Because Mike's business experience in Washington had him spending so much time on Whidbey Island, he really fell in love with it and wanted to take me there. It was so very picturesque! We went to Village Pizzeria set on the side of a hill overlooking Puget Sound.

While we were waiting on our food, we had an incredible experience - we saw 5 bald eagles! That was my first time to ever seen one in the wild. Mike, of course, rushed down the hillside to the beach to capture this guy up close.

We took a faster route leaving Whidbey Island than the ferry. We drove across Deception Pass. But not before stopping and hanging out there for a while.

The problem with not blogging a trip for 6 months after you take it is that you forget a lot of details. I've been trying to figure out where we were on our last night, but I just can't find it. So, wherever we were, we somehow found our way to a beach and ate dinner there. We walked along the shoreline, enjoyed people watching, and seeing the sunset. It was a perfect end to a fabulous trip.

A HUGE thank you to my parents for making this trip possible by watching our kiddos during a very hot week of VBS. We kept hearing their lousy, miserably hot and humid weather reports while we were nice and cool in the mountains, and that little escape somehow made it even more refreshing. As always, it was very good to see my babies again at the end!