DECEMBER - And then it was BTS. (RUN... save yourself!!) 5 of 5

Whew! Made it through report cards this month... Aaron's favorite time of year and mine too! (NOT! ...to use the favorite 90's phrase). Luckily, Aaron has helped me build a report card comment generator in Excel that I've been able to use to help speed up the process. It can be incredibly time consuming to write personalized paragraphs for 53 students and we don't have the comment codes that middle and high school teachers get to use. This allows me to communicate personalized information about each child and reduces the time needed to generate these comments. Each time I use it I think of new ways to improve it. I find it easy to use, but it is not super user friendly for those that are not technologically savvy. I would like to make a version that would be more user friendly, but just haven't devoted the time to figuring out how. Anyone wanna help? :)

This year we celebrated Christmas in Walla Walla. We enjoyed homemade tamales with my family and made it out to an ugly sweater party. How do we look?

After Christmas we headed up to Vancouver, B.C. to meet with Aaron's lomg lost brother Brock ;). We had been to Vancouver before, but had a much better experience this time around. We stayed at the Sandman in on Davie St. and were able to enjoy a 23 story view from the balcony. The hotel was walking distance to many eateries and shopping. It also had a nice little gym and steam room. Our first night there we enjoyed dinner at Moxie's. Afterward we walked around town and took in some music from a cover band, but left soon after a creepy looking guy kept trying to follow us around the bar.

Mmmm....peach bellini

The next day we met Brock, Emily and the kids at the Vancouver Aquarium located in Stanley Park. Aaron and I would like to go back and explore the park a bit more.

While at the aquarium we took in our first 4D movie. We watched the Polar Express and it was quite the experience. The seats shook as the train barreled across the screen, and water splashed us as the train plummeted into a half frozen lake. It was a whole new way to experience a movie and we would definitely watch a 4D movie again.

Unfortunately, the next day Aaron had a full blown cold, which for him is severely dibilitating. :) We stayed around the hotel and ventured out for a walk around lunch time, but quickly came back as Aaron's symptoms worsened. We made our way back home the next day (Jan. 31), and spent the night in as Aaron nursed his cold.

NOVEMBER - And then it was BTS. (RUN... save yourself!!) 4 of 5

November - San Jose & San Francisco, Pro-Education Demonstration
My family came up to visit for my birthday weekend bringing a John's Bakery cake in my favorite flavor too!

Then for Aaron's birthday we headed south to San Jose where we visited with Kyle and Shalyce in their new location. They were great hosts and we had fun touring the area with them! Here is a video slide show of our trip.

After the Thanksgiving holiday (our first here in Vancouver - Thanks for hosting us Mike!), I went up to Olympia, the state capitol for "Day of Action." It was interesting to see all the different demonstrators. I don't think I'm cut out for protesting, so you won't see me at the Occupy Camps anytime soon. Here are some shots of the day.

SEPTEMBER - And then it was BACK TO SCHOOL. (RUN... save yourself!!) 2 of 5

September... BACK TO SCHOOL... nuff said. At least those of us that are teachers understand.  You teacher/moms are rock stars! I still do not know how you make this humanly possible. September was pretty much all back to school with one quick trip to Walla Walla for our nephew Israel's first birthday.

Birthday Boy

And then it was BACK TO SCHOOL. (RUN... save yourself!!) 1 of 5

So school hit and I disappeared. Well kind of, I've still been out and about, but the planning and grading took precidence over the documenting of our day to day. Anyway here is a synopsis of the last 4.5 months :). Part 1 of 5.

August...
Goodbye Mazatlan. We made our way back from Mazatlan. We stayed at a rental house called Casa Bonita and we're thankful for air conditioned rooms and pool! The house was located in the historic part of town just 1 block from the beach and boardwalk (malecon) and walking distance to the open air market, cathedral (aka Sauna - not air conditioned), and bus stops.  Despite reports that travel in Mexico is not advised, we went and experienced not a single dangerous hiccup. Don't do crap you wouldn't try to pull at home and you should be fine. COMMON SENSE people!! It was incredibly HOT there, but with back-to-school looming I was not ready to come back to reality. Here are some shots of the house...I'm happy to pass on contact information if you should wish to check it out in person.

Pool

Kitchen/Dining/Living Area

Entry to Casa Bonita

Cathedral

Quilting: I was interested in learning to make a quilt, so I signed up for Quilting 101 at JoAnn's. Here is my project.

And I got a sewing machine in November... so maybe in the next year I will finish a quilt and share it.

Tree Removal: Those of you that have been to our house may remember we had three large trees in the front yard. YES, I said HAD! August and September brought the removal of these trees. Why? Because we are the anti-tree huggers, hate pine needles, and want to kill the planet. RIGHT... The trees were in bad shape and constantly dropping branches... of which two caused damage to vehicles. We had an Arborist (tree scienentist) come take a look and he said they would be goners in the next 5 years or so. Aparently the tree roots were not well protected during the construction of our house and driveway. We were able to get the builder to agree to cover half the cost of removal, which was nice because our 1 year warranty on all things house was long expired. Thank you New Traditions! Sorry trees! My dad, uncle, a family friend and Aaron's cousin all came and helped in the effort.

They took down two of three trees. Then chooped away at the tree rounds which were sold as firewood. The third tree enormous tree was removed in September by a pro as the guys were a little wary of it's size and a mistake would have been VERY costly.

Timbers Soccer that is... Portland now has a major league team and it was fun to go watch them and listen to the Timbers' Army chant. They won the game!

August 8, 2011 = 2nd Anniversary: Hike #5 - El Faro - Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico

I still did my regular Tuesday hike this last week while on vacation with family in Mazatlan. (P.S. Don't believe the rumors... you are perfectly fine to travel there.) Aaron and I spent the morning of our anniversary hiking to the top of the highest natural lighthouse in the world (the lighthouse isn't tall, the location of it is just high). We walked 1.4 miles to get to the start of the trail up to the lighthouse.

You can make out the lighthouse at the top of the peak in the background.

I spotted a couple hermit crabs on our walk.

Ready to start our ascent. Until Aaron was distracted by work...

Right next to the trail was what appears to be part of the city water system. Aaron has been working on a water system in Oregon so he was intrigued and already wondering whether he could involve himself in this project : )

We met a lot of animal friends on this hike. This is an Iguana. After talking to some locals we learned that the brightly colored green iguanas like this one are not native to the area, but have resulted from escaped pets. 

We hiked on the gravel path and then reached a set of stairs with 300 steps. 

It sounds like a lot, but it wasn't too bad. The heat and humidity were the hardest to deal with.

(...even Aaron made it up!)

We were rewarded with a stunning view of the city and ocean below.

The lighthouse

We almost came home with a pet... until he made a yucky sound like he was about to puke and hopped up on Aaron to try and get a nibble of his shorts. (We assume this little guy belongs to the lighthouse keeper.) Aaron has dubbed him "Mexican Rudy."

After a break we made our way back down. We saw more people heading up and more animals taking in the views and the heat.

This iguana is native to the area and one of the bigger ones we saw.

Watch out for the spiders!

...and feral cats! For those of you that don't know me well... I'm not really a pet person. Growing up the only pets we were allowed were fish. (Although, Jazmin and Danny snuck a few cats and dogs in a time or two.) For some odd reason they are attracted to me; especially cats! Aaron just laughed as this guy followed me down a couple switchbacks.

Afterward we walked back to the house and relaxed in the pool. Later that night we celebrated out anniversary by taking a walk on the "Malecón" (boardwalk) and having dinner at an Italian restaurant in Plaza Machado. The two years has flown by! I'm so lucky to get to share my life with you babycake : )

The Hard Life

Aaron has been working pretty hard on the water treatment system for the City of Detroit, OR.  Detroit is right on Detroit Lake. I went down with him for a couple days last week. Aaron spend the time busy at work and I found a nice spot at one of his job sites to read, sun, and enjoy the lake. Here are some shots...


Aaron's Office

The View from the Office



Hard at work



The Lake (my office)



Summer so far: Rafting - Girls Weekend

This last weekend I went on my first ever rafting trip on the Deschutes River near Maupin, OR. The weather was nuts the whole weekend. It rained the Friday we arrived and some more the next day. The weather seemed to clear when we were ready to get on the river. We navigated successfully though our first set of rapids called Wapinitia.

We weren't so successful on the next set called Boxcar. A rush of water swooped me out of the raft and I went for a thrilling ride down the river. Notice I started out wearing a hat and sunglasses...

After all the excitment we stopped off for lunch. Just as we were finishing our meal it started to downpour. We huddled under a bridge to wait it out. After walking over to the bathrooms in the park (and enjoying having warm water) we headed back to the raft to get ready to take off further down the river. Just as we were getting ready another downpour including hail came down. Remember we were under a bridge... the nasty water that had been on the road above dripped gushed down on a couple of the girls. Yuck!! At about this point I started not feeling so well. My vision was blurred and my stomach unsettled. Rather than risk navigating the river in poor weather and with the strange symptoms I was having we decided to call it a day and one of the girls hiked up to the road to hitchhike to get the vehicle we left at the end spot. I came back home that night nursing a headache. (I rarely ever have a headache!) After calling the nurse's line at the doctor's office for advice they told me just to keep an eye on it and have Aaron wake me during the night as there was a chance I had a mild concussion after being tossed around in the water. It took a couple days to feel "normal" again, but I did have a good time on the trip!