Some beautiful pictures of Portland that Travis took while at work. Beautiful city huh! Enjoy!
Tag: Travis
Sunday
The past few days have run on like a blur. I know I’ve done things with people, cleaned the house and even made food…but my mind seems so distracted that I’m glad I documented what I did this past weekend! It was beautiful and sunny.
I’ve recently noticed in myself how affected by the weather I am. I have a lot more energy and feel more go-getter-ish than on say a lazy cloudy day. I think between the two I would prefer a cloudy day to a sunnier one. But I’ve been warned by the elderly that as my age increases so will my desire for the sun. I have yet to see that happen, although I’ve already spent how long on this post about the sun and how it affects my mood for the better? Hmmm….carrying on….
Trav, Emma and I went for a walk on a local bike path and it was heavenly! It was great spending just family time together, people were more friendly saying ‘morning’ as we walked past each other and we had a chance to talk about whatever and not feel rushed because of a meeting to go to.
I think it was in the 70’s! *sigh so nice…(but I still like cloudy days. lol I am forever loyal to overcast days and drizzle. I think it’s the romantic whispy feel it brings with it. Snuggling with my cats…fire on…and I’m a sucker for books, blankets and hot drinks. Sorry for the de-railment of subjects)
As we were getting ready Emma HAD to choose her shoes (which is a morning ritual) and she rutinly picks out these blazing beauties. My mom got them for Emma at Target and she wears them everywhere. To bed even. And when I get her out of her bed, I find her trying to put them on/off herself- which she can’t do but it’s fun to see her get frustrated trying to do it alone. I’m mean sometimes.
You know those annoying people who say, ‘OK, now one the count of three! Ready? OK, now one, Oh shoot..OK try again, one, two THREE!’ and they seem to yell it without any effort at all and embarrass you those around you? I am that person. Here we were on the trail and I humiliated them both. But they don’t look too devastated.
I’m being nice and not blowing this bad boy up to a close up of our faces. Let’s just say it was hot, I was out of breadth and Trav was pushing the stroller at the same time- action picture!
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Later that day we had small group at our house and I was busy making food for it. God bless Potluck themed get togethers…they make my day so much easier. I made (as you see with the picture below) Bacon and cheese JoJo’s (which rocked) a fruit plate (didn’t get to take a photo of that but it was pretty) and some individual cakes for each person.
Don’t ask me why I didn’t take pictures of the dessert…I told you in the beginning I’m not thinking clearly these days. (that’s my excuse and I’m stickin’ to it)
I made a dip for them too, shown below. Picture shows ingredients. And for those of you who don’t like sour cream (*wink, I know who you are) There was BBQ sauce. Because really, BBQ sauce is FAR better than ketchup and should, in my friend Theron’s opinion, become the new condiment leaving ketchup in the dust. I would vote for that.
We had a great time and lounged on our deck (which I struggled in vain to make it cute…but really how cute can you get when you have painting materials lying around because they’re painting the whole neighborhood?!) None the less, good friends are those that look besides the ugly patched up siding and and drop cloths on bushes and hang with you because it’s a beautiful night and we want to spend time with each other talking. No better reason I think. Good friends are soothing to my soul and last night was wonderful. Everyone laughing, talking about personal struggles and being there to listen and sympathize.
Well, right now Monday afternoon, Emma’s napping and when she wakes we’re going to the library to find some murder mysteries and poetry..and maybe even a Barney book. 😉
P.S. I’m trying this new theme out and we’ll see if it sticks. Sorry about the stretching of the photos, I’m trying to fix it.
Nachos and haircuts
Today we had a wonderful family day! Nothing says lounging like nachos and snuggling
the sour cream and salsa is missing in the pictures. But nachos wouldn’t be complete without them.
Emma also thought Chloe looked hungry. They both would live on cheese so why wouldn’t her furry friend like nachos too?!
I had a dream last night that I was giving myself pixie bangs…so after taking a shower I thought, ‘what the heck’ so I took scissors to my hair. Pretty happy with how it turned out.
I can’t believe St. Partrick’s day is Wednesday. Not my favorite holiday but I suppose it’s an opportunity to wear green, a color I don’t wear much. I hope you have a great Sunday and that you are able to go to bed early. Heck, I hope you were able to stay snuggled in your pj’s all day today and eat brownies, cereal and watching movies.
Travis…
Tomorrow, March 3rd, is Travis’ birthday. Sometimes he can remember how old he is, and sometimes not. 🙂 I like to joke with him and make him roll his eyes. It’s a game I play. Anyways, I want to tell all of you out there that he’s a wonderful person who deserves a big bash. Unfortunately, things have been crazy busy here and I haven’t been able to plan my usual big parties for him. And babe, I’m sorry. I’m sure you would have liked everyone to focus the entire time on you and make you feel uncomfortable loved.
I am making him his favorite cake tomorrow and you can count on me taking pictures of it. (big and beautiful it will be, oh yeah!)
Trav,
I love you more each day because I get to see the myriad of different aspects of your character, love and trust. You amaze me with your walk with God and I am so happy that we are together. Happy Birthday babe! 🙂
Alexis
Yeah I know…
Yeah, I know, it’s been a while since I last posted. There just seems to be so much happening that it seems overwhelming to try and tell/show it to you. I’ll do it this way.
I’M HOPING: to get all that needs to be done before we fly to Poland Monday. 4 days left and counting. Me stressed? No, more like FREAKING OUT. But Travis is being so wonderful and supportive…even when I got sick yesterday and got nothing big accomplished.
I’M PRAYING: that Emma will be either totally doped up on baby benadryl or sleeping her butt off on the airplane the entire way to Krakow. ‘Freaking out’ about this doesn’t come close to how I’m feeling. “no!” is her favorite word and well…she’s entered her 2’s. I’ll just say that.
I’M THANKFUL: to my wonderful hubby. He has been really supportive and encouraging even though he has been getting no sleep. Love you babe.
*also, Brandon and Becky- I love you forever for watching our house/cats for 3 weeks- you’re wonderful!!!
I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO: being in Krakow again and seeing friends…and just…being there. I miss the feeling of that city.
I’VE GOT TO SUCK IT UP: and just be ok sounding stupid at first, while I’m learning Polish. Ugh.
I’M IN LOVE WITH: my new Kindle.
I’ve been into this series…pre-teen at heart.
I SPLURGED: and made my favorite comfort food for lunch… Just noodles, c. of mush and cheddar cheese. It makes the world a better place.
I HAD A GREAT SURPRISE: Travis surprised me and took me to Levenworth for 3 days before Christmas. I was wonderful.
I’VE LEARNED: life is too short to always be freaking out. So I’ve dedicated Saturday to do Emma and my pedicures and manicures.
I SAW: an amazing movie and want to see it in 3-D SO badly.
I AM: leaving now to change a poopy diaper. Peace out 🙂
Christmas Update
Yeah, so I know it’s been FOREVER or something like it since I’ve last posted. So this will be a picture overload post because so much has happened in a week. It’s the holidays, so we fit TONS into this last week. LONG post. You have been warned. Enjoy!
The above pictures are of a Christmas party (no duh) Charis threw at her home. It was a lot of fun, a white elephant exchange, lots of Christmas goodies and then ending with a movie. Thank you for hosting it Charis– it was wonderful! Don’t you just love my sweater?! Yeah, totally rockin’
Oh Spaghetti, how I love thee…let me count the ways…thank you for meeting me for dinner. I love your company.
Below is when Amy, a friend who’s daughter is Emma’s BFF, came over and we frosted cookies. Fun times.
My leaning tower of sugar cookies.
You can’t see it, but I also sprinkled Cinnamon on top of the powdered sugar. So pretty.
Sorry for the blurriness, but here is a sample of half the cookies we made.
Awww, I know it’s a little blurry, but it was the best one. This is Emma’s fake smile, when someone tells her to ‘smile’ for the camera. But of course I didn’t want to take just boring pictures…take at least one funny one!
I think Emma missed that memo.
My favorite. She’s co cute, down to her sparkle shoes. So right now, as I’m typing this in my oh so attractive fleece sweatpants, Trav and I are in a hotel for a little getaway to Leavenworth. It was all planned by him and was a surprise the whole time. It was awesome. We took a train from Everett to here and am having a great time. The hotel is nice, with a fillig breakfast, but one thing that’s weird is the silly wallpaper in the bedroom. Observe below.
Nice huh. Hehehe. Nothing says romantic like crayon banner wallpaper. Sexy.
It was really slippery slushy and I almost fell a couple times. Trav thought to capture it on film. How thoughtful of him…
This is for you Jamie
This is for you Mom. Found your dream home.
If you have lasted this long and read the entire post, pretend me hugging you. I consider you my friend. 🙂
Chunky Lime Jello with Cheddar Cheese…
Yes, you read that right. You know when you marry into a family and you see quirks that are…way different from the family you grew up in? Yeah, well Travis’ family doesn’t have that many, except for a couple glaring ones. One in particular I tease him about a lot during the holiday season. What is it? Prepare yourself. His family makes green jello with fruit in it (normal so far right?) then adds a huge layer of whipped white cream and then tops it off with CHEDDAR CHEESE! The picture below isn’t a good example, but it’ll do. They went light on the cheese for some reason this year. When they brought it out Trav and I both smiled. For him, because he knew how much it sickens me to think of lumpychunky lime jello with shredded cheddar…Ugh. I smiled because I was so going to take a picture of it and blog about it.
They had 2 huge cake pans of it. It went fast.
Last time we visited, they had it in a bundt mold and added a heavy amount of cheese. My eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.
I do have to confess that I did grow up in a wierd home. I never, and I mean never had green bean casserole with those crunchy onion things on top, never had nuts in desserts (even sundaes and brownies), never had cold macaroni salad (we were Germans and had cold cucumber salad and potato salad- but cold wet noodles?…yeah, not so much) and we never had jello with fruit in it. Now that I think about it…I don’t remember having jello much at all. I guess it would taste OK, but the whole idea of lumpy chunky jello doesn’t send my taste buds into a frenzy of delight.
Instead, I LOVE hot or cold sauerkraut and HOMEMADE potato dumplings. I think warm shredded red cabbage is to die for and lastly…I could live and I mean LIVE off creamed spinach. Yeah, I know- now you feel bad for Travis huh. 🙂 He sure had a lot of new flavors to try when he entered my mom and Oma’s kitchen. hehe Good thing they’re great cooks.
But never chunky lumpy jello with cheddar cheese.
Yes I’m alive
(push F11 to see this full screen!) And I haven’t forgotten you. I have been wanting to post, but being in Seattle, not always around a computer and visiting EVERYONE has been a bit overwhelming. SO I just focused on trying to document it with my little Fuji friend. All in all, I took over 200 pictures. Yikes.
I first want to show you my good friends Ferry and his wife Robyn. They have an adorable little boy, Josiah. They live in Holland and both our families look forward to hanging out more when we’re in Europe.
Robyn, I just have to say that I count it a huge privilege to have been able to be apart of your life for the past 4 or so years. I am happy to see how much Ferry loves and dote’s on you. Having our children be friends as they grow up is just the icing on the cake. I really really look forward to going on holiday’s together as families and having Thanksgivings together too. ~alexis
(I love how pale fair skinned Emma and I are)
OK, and now a huge amount of pictures. I took some on Thanksgiving…but that is for another post. You will understand later. hehehe My sister and I woke up at 4:30am and went shopping the day after Thanksgiving. And it was a blast seeing old ladies push their way tot the cashier and get free little gifts that I’ll either throw away soon or give to Goodwill. For this post, it’s of Trav, me and Emma along with my mom and sister Jamie. (Check out her blog here!) We went downtown for black Friday and saw the Christmas tree lighting. It was beautiful, cold, fun, cold, a great memory and cold. At least Emma was all bundled up.
cute huh 🙂
Everywhere we went the garbages were full of people’s trash. As ‘duh’ sounding as it is, Seattle-ites keep their city clean! They use their garbages and there isn’t any lying around on the streets. And of course the garbages were filled mostly with Starbucks cups. But hey, it was a cold night and what else would you drink?!
Before and after the tree was lit. They even had fireworks after it! They also had choirs to lead the masses in Christmas carols before it was lit.
Emma is the best toddler baby ever. She didn’t fuss, want out or anything else. She even fell asleep in the stroller. *sigh, my little personal angel.
It was a LONG night and so we went home and snuggled in our fleece pj’s with your pants stuffed into your socks- don’t judge us we were freezing. (my mom and I) and Trav zoned out on his new phone, Jamie was into downloading her picts, Emma was asleep in her room and there was coffee brewing.
I think we went to bed around 11pm. Long black Friday day. But oh so worth it.
Halloween Experience
We did it, our first Halloween trick or treating…and it will probably be our last, seeing that we’re hopefully still planning on being in Poland sometime next fall/winter. Who knows, we’ll see.
It was a fun night with all of our friends from church and we prayed befoe and while we were walking around the neighborhood. Many people here don’t see the spiritual affects because it has been culturally ingrained. Our friends who hosted the party, made a point to go to their neighbor’s houses to maintain and encourage relationships. Children are a great bridge.
Emma was our darling Princess Snow White.
She liked the glow in the dark bracelets more than getting candy. Oh well, thank you Dollar Tree. It was still a fun experience for her 🙂
OK cute huh. But I was TOTALLY awkward here because I wasn’t next to Trav or Emma and I didn’t have anyone to be cheesy with.
I love this picture. Didn’t you know Snow White wore hot pink socks?
OK all together….’awwwww’
Every Princess has to have a carriage.
At our friend’s house winding down.
Sweet Fruit
OK, so I found this AMAZING blog with tons of awesome ideas. For moms, wifes, party planners, people who just needs to organize things better (me) and photographers. Dig in.
While roaming, I found this super cute idea. I thought that I could do this easily enough and even though it doesn’t look as good as her post (it never does) it’ll still show my meaning. Here is her post. I hope you can adopt it to those who you love.
I’m going to randomly add these into Trav’s lunches
Awwww
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. ~ Abrahan Lincoln