Snapshots of June

Three weeks ago Art and I went to a wedding reception.

This is our very good friend Cameron, and his pretty girlfriend from California.

Cameron's mom got married.

Don't we look great? (When taking a picture, always know how far you are zoomed in.)

There, that's better.

Isn't this a beautiful location? Whidbey island is the place to get married.

The next weekend, I went to a bachelorette party. I've never been to one before, and I had a lot of fun! This is the beautiful bride, and the only picture I can show you of the party.

The rest of the pictures I have of her are when she is trying on her gifts (over her clothes, but still). She is getting married today, and even though I haven't known her that long, I love her, and I am so very very very happy for them.

On June 14, Art's brother left for Navy Boot Camp. This is his farewell steak dinner.

My friend Sozan turned 25 right after I did. Her coworkers threw her a birthday party, and since she loves DDR, the theme of the party was "Mock Rave." There was a ton of candy, stickers, glow sticks, and of course, dancing.

I guess I'll have to write a real blog post one of these days, although I don't know when. We move in less than a month, so I imagine I'll be pretty caught up in all of that. So in the meantime, enjoy the pictures!

Happy Birthday To Me! (A Month Ago)

You know what happened a month ago that I didn't blog about? My birthday. It was a packed weekend, full of goodness.

Friday we went out for drinks and a movie with some friends (totally unplanned, totally fun). Saturday was spent in Seattle.

Sunday I went to a Jogo Gym BBQ.

Monday was a holiday, and Art's family came up, and his mom taught us to play Mahjong.

I think that's the best birthday yet. Here are some pictures (they may or may not be in order).

The flowers Art bought me, and had them delivered to me at the office.

On Saturday we went to the Seattle Science Center. This was the butterfly museum. I saw these big beautiful blue butterflies in there (live ones) but I didn't get a good picture of them. So I had to take a picture of the pinned ones.

These next butterfly pictures are of live ones. They just fly and flit all around you. It's so cool! I think this one is called an Owl Eye?

A Zebra butterfly?

Another Owl Eye.

Monarch.

I saw this one hatch! It had a hard time coming out of its cocoon.

A Tiger butterfly? Clearly I'm not up on my butterfly names. Whatever. They were cool.

Space Needle.

You really can spin a 4000 pound rock!

These are called the "Pillars of Community"

This is back to Friday morning. This is what I looked like on my birthday.

Oops. These next ones are backwards. My birthday cake my mom-in-law made me.

I'm laughing in this pictures because they were singing, but no two people were hitting the same notes.

Back to Saturday night! (I told you these weren't in order.) Art took me to The Melting Pot, a fondue place. You guys. BEST. DINNER. I've EVER HAD. Amazing experience. Also expensive. But totally worth it.

They started us out with a cheese fondue. Following that was a salad.

Then meat fondue. (These pictures are not my own, btw.) We didn't get all the meat pictured below, but they do give you about seven different dipping sauces. And bottomless vegetables. We couldn't get enough of the mushrooms for some reason. They were amazing, cooked in oil, and filled with cream cheese.

Then dessert fondue.

On top of the dessert fondue, the waiter brought me three HUGE chocolate covered strawberries with a tiny brownie in the middle, and in the brownie was a candle, because it was my birthday! I loved it. And look at that dessert! They don't just give you fruit. They give you marshmallows and rice krispie treats, and cheesecake, and regular cake, and oh my word it was heaven.

Yeah. That was my birthday. It's going to be hard to top that one. And now I need to do something equally amazing for Art's birthday. And I suck at planning these things. I have five months to figure it out. Ideas?

A Wedding Gift

For those of you who are married and my friend on Facebook, this is repeat information. But feel free to read on and comment anyway!

Basically, I'm putting together a gift for a friend of mine who is getting married. I'm making her an album, not of pictures, but of cards containing advice, wisdom, and quotable quotes about marriage, from married people, based on their own marriage experience.

And this is where I need YOU: if you were given the chance to tell a young bride all the things you wish people had told you (or some of the things people DID tell you), or all of the things you have learned about marriage so that she could have a great start to her marriage, what would you say?

Will you help me out by replying with your wisdom and advice in the comments section? I want lots and lots and lots of responses. Seriously. I dare you to try and overwhelm me.

Two things to note: 1) It must fit on a 4x6 card. In other words, don't write me a novel. :D And 2) on Facebook I got quite a few responses, and almost all of them fit into one of two categories: the "how to fight or not fight" subject, or the "make sure to spend time together" subject. Which is great advice. But I can't fill an entire an entire album with that. So, variety! Variety is the name of the game.

And get your spouses and parents and siblings and friends to contribute as well. I would appreciate that muchly. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, must be completed in one week.

Aaaaaaaaand GO!

2010 Northwest CrossFit Regionals

Here are some pictures of Art from the CrossFit competitions a few weeks ago. (Unfortunately, not from my camera.) I said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm proud of and love my husband and my gym.

Rowing.

Running.

Lifting.

Here is the one video I captured of Art and Jon doing one of the workouts. They had 90 seconds to get as many reps as possible. They are doing a lift called a clean and jerk, and the weight is 275 pounds. I'm sorry that the sound quality isn't so great. There was loud music, and even louder cheering. Yes, that sound you hear is me screaming my head off in the background.

Art Shows His Strength

Two weeks ago we had what's called a CrossFit Total. Basically, you choose a few different types of Olympic lifts, and you try to find your one rep max - how much weight you can lift at least one time, and no more than one time. You add up your one rep maxes from the different lifts, and that is your total - total number of pounds lifted that day.

I wasn't feeling very strong that day, so I didn't participate, which gave me the opportunity to record Art's lifts. These are his one rep maxes on the back squat and the deadlift. The back squat was 320 lbs. The deadlift was 425 lbs. Those are both personal records for him!

I hope this doesn't look painful to anyone. He kept his form and performed both of these safely. No injuries were incurred. In case you couldn't tell, I'm very proud of him. :)

So My Parents Were Here

My parents were here from April 27-May 4. They started out by spending some time on the San Juan islands, just the two of them.

They stayed at a cute bed and breakfast (I stole the above picture from the internet)

They saw some great sights.

They took an air tour of the islands in an open cockpit plane.

We went to Pike Place Market in Seattle.

This is the very first Starbucks.

We went for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.

We went to the Museum of Flight.

And saw some cool airplanes.

And we even took a little field trip to outer space.

We also did a lot of other things that I didn't get any pictures of. It was a pretty fun week. Hope you enjoyed this brief photo narrative of their visit!