Ford Turns Ten

It's hard to believe that ten years ago sweet little Ford became our first baby. We settled on a dachshund as that breed was small and cute yet not super feminine either. When we saw his cute little face, we were sold, even though we hadn't gone to look at him specifically!

Puppy Ford... he loved laying on my jeans!

For Ford's birthday this year, we bought him some little treats from the doggy bakery. The girls fed him the treats and then he settled in for a nap, per his usual schedule!

He is a sweet little dog that puts up with a lot! Happy Birthday little buddy!

Turning Thirty

Thirty is here, y'all.

I tried to make a deal with Janie that we would freeze time and she could stay two forever and I would stay twenty-nine forever, but she didn't go for it. In fact, she called me old. Which is my fault really, because I told her I was going to be old tomorrow. And she hears and repeats everything. So we went to bed and I woke up thirty years old.

It's not that different, really. And a lot has happened in my life before turning thirty. A lot of things to celebrate. And to focus on the wonderful things that I've accomplished and lived since I last began a new decade, here are some of my top 30 moments from the last ten years:

1. Went to Scotland & England to visit Justin, who was studying abroad.
2. Completed my student teaching in Round Rock.
3. Graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. Hook 'em Horns!
4. Watched my little sister graduate from High School.
5. Graduation cruise with friends from college.
6. Moved into our first apartment together in Grapevine.
7. Started my first job teaching kindergarten.
8. Got engaged to Justin after 5 years of dating.
9. Bought and moved into our first house together in Grapevine.
10. Got married to Justin with friends and family present in Grapevine
11. Went to my first Dallas Cowboys football game.
12. Trips with Justin to Vail, Aspen, San Diego, San Fransisco {twice!}, Florida, Seattle, Canada & Mexico.
13. Attended weddings of many friends & family.
14. Said good-bye to beloved grandparents.
15. Watched Krista graduate from college & begin a career in nursing.
16. Celebrated our 1st-7th wedding anniversaries!
17. Found out we were expecting for the first time.
18. Bought my first car.
19. Wonderful baby showers from family & friends.
20. Welcomed baby girl Nora Lane to the world!!!
21. Ford becomes a cancer survivor!
22. Watched our parents hold their granddaughter for the first time, and our grandpas hold their great-granddaughter for the first time!
23. Surprised by baby #2. Wouldn't trade it for anything.
24. Nora is baptized.
25. Welcomed baby girl Janie Elizabeth to the world!!!
26. Janie is baptized.
27. Attend 10 year high-school reunion.
28. Sell our first house, where we brought our babies home to!
29. Say goodbye to my first doggy ever, Bartley Bad-Dog Baker.
30. Bought our second home!

So much to celebrate! I am thankful for the many adventures I've had so far and am really looking forward to the next thirty years, though time could slow down a bit... Here's how we celebrated 30 for me:

Nora had dance class, so Janie & I went birthday shopping for a little while!

Fun at mom & dad's.

Leave it to your little sister to get big, fun balloons!

Summer Week Seven

We were out of town all of last week, which is why I'm skipping straight to week seven here. It was a big week for us here! We had a lot of house fun happening, including window replacement & repair, a couch delivery, and the installation of internet. Fortunately, those things are nice to have done, but they didn't allow us to do a whole lot of exciting things. Plus, coming right off of a vacation, the laundry was about all I could handle. {And it took me a long time to do it!}

Hanging out on the new couch!

We missed their toddler shenanigans!

Nora started texting this week... Here is her first one!

We did get to spend some fun time with Auntie K this week on her days off. So much so, in fact, that Nora asked her why she was living at our house! But we had a good time swimming in the pool and she and I escaped for manicures & pedicures later in the week. 

She's ready to swim!

Learning about Snap Chat with Auntie K

Poolside picnic

Lots of pool time = pruny feet!

Future cheerleader??

The biggest excitement of the week was the secret proposal that Michael had been planning for Krista. We are beyond thrilled that Krista and Michael will be getting married in the near future. We had a fun day celebrating with them and both of our families at the Four Seasons in Las Colinas this weekend. I will share more details in another post, so check back!

She Said Yes

MY BABY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED!!

We are SO excited to share that Krista is engaged! Michael proposed marriage to her in the morning and we were able to celebrate with them both and our families at lunch following.

The wedding will be next fall, so let the planning begin! We are so happy that Krista has found "the one" and how happy he makes her, and we are thrilled that Michael will be a forever addition to our family!

Vancouver {Day Four}

Our last day of vacation.

We had an evening train scheduled to go back to Seattle, so we only had the morning and early afternoon to explore. We decided to head back to Granville Island to walk around a bit, mostly to hit up the brewery, and also to ride the False Creek Ferries around to the different stops.

We went to Cafe Medina, right around the corner from our hotel, but also a spot that has rave reviews online. It was yummy. A definite good call. I had a couple of their waffles with different toppings {salted caramel was my favorite} and Justin had a more elaborate egg and meat skillet thing that he said was good. We had to wait a bit for a table, but it was definitely worth it. Go early.

We took a little tour around the False Creek after that, and then got off at Granville Island. We didn't have a whole lot of time to explore at the other stops after we got out of the hotel and had brunch, so we walked around the market and then headed to the brewery. We each had a flight  of some of their beers and some of them were really good! They were all fine, but I did wish I could take some home with me...

After our drinks, we headed back to the market to get food for the train ride to Seattle. We picked up some meat, bread, and produce {already had cheese} and headed back to get our bags. The train ride home was awesome. The views were spectacular along the water as the sun set. It was clear evening which helped. Customs was a bit more intense coming back into the United States, but nothing that got us off schedule.

We got back to Seattle after 10 PM and so we headed straight to our hotel for the night and arranged for a shuttle to the airport in the morning for our flight home. We had a lot of fun on our trip to Seattle & Vancouver. We made a lot of memories!

Vancouver {Day Three}

Whale watching.

I'm pumped.

So, I knew we had to find a way to get some whale watching in while we were in the Pacific Northwest. We weren't able to work in into our Seattle schedule, so I looked into doing it from Vancouver and found it is about the same distance out to the places where the whales like to hang. Perfect! I booked us a whale watching tour on an open boat, per the suggestion from Justin's cousin who used to do tours herself.

We chose to use Wild Whales of Vancouver. They leave out of Granville Island, which is an easy spot to get from anywhere in Vancouver. We took the Aquabus over the creek to get to the island and then found a spot to grab a sandwich to take with us, since we would be on the boat all day. I wish I could remember the name of the sandwich place that we got our food from, because they were really good! We should have brought more food with us, though. It all worked out I guess.

Our boat was leaving at 11. We got to the place, got suited up about 30 minutes prior to leaving, and headed out to our boat. On the way out, we got soaked but it was so fun! I have no idea why I thought my hair and makeup should have been done that morning... We traveled through rough waters for awhile, but then once we hit the islands, things calmed down a lot and we were able to eat our yummy sandwiches and even take our suits off a bit and enjoy the sunshine.

All suited up & ready to go!

On the way out... before the choppy waters!

...after!

We traveled two and a half to three hours out from Granville Island before we got to where the whales were. They had been moving away from us the entire journey out there so we had to chase them down essentially. We first saw a little group of 5-7 whales, including two babies. They swam together along the coast of the islands and even did a little jumping and splashing. It was amazing. As we followed them along, we heard that there were other whales from the same pod that were further down the coast. We followed along until we got to where they were all meeting, and there were just whales everywhere. It was beautiful to watch them swim along. Our tour guide, who was great, was very excited about all of the activity. She said there were whales from two different pods in the big group and that she hadn't seen some of them for over a year.

So there are a few whales in front of the rock, two different little dorsal fins. Look close!

This one I zoomed in on. You can see one whale jumping and another 

one or two behind it on the left, dorsal fins coming out of the water.

There are regulations on whale watching - distances to keep and length of time you can stay - so after our hour of watching was up, we headed back towards Vancouver. It was going to be a pretty long ride back as well. We saw some bald eagles, a few more harbour seals, and one or two harbour porpoises, but they were more challenging to see. We hit some rain on the way back which made it a little more uncomfortable, but everything else about the trip was just amazing!

When we got back, we knew we needed to head straight back to the hotel to change clothes. We were still soaked from the trip out and the rain on the way back {suits are not waterproof} so that's what we did. We decided to make a stop in the hot tub before cleaning up for dinner. We ate another late dinner at a seafood restaurant in Yaletown, which had tons of food options.

Oh, and I got my cream puff!

What an amazing day!!

Vancouver {Day Two}

It was a little bit of a juggling act to return both of the bikes AND pick up a rental car at the correct times, but we had a car lined up for our second day in Vancouver so that we could get out of the city and see some surrounding parks and scenery.

We headed out to Lynn Canyon Park for our first stop of the morning. There are two suspension bridges in the Vancouver area, the Capilano Bridge and the one at Lynn Canyon. I have not ever been to Capilano and I have heard that it is pretty awesome, but it costs a pretty penny to get into the park and Lynn Canyon is FREE, so we opted to go there. The first thing you do is cross over the bridge to the other side of the canyon. It was fun and not too scary and I am typically afraid of heights. I have to say that riding the Seattle Wheel freaked me out more than crossing the bridge. I did not, however, linger and look down.

We hiked around a bit and ended up doing a LOT of stair climbing. I mean, I thought the waterfalls in Seattle were a pain... this was worse. I'm sure I complained more than enough. But we did see the bottom of the canyon and Justin got to get down to the water's edge, where he likes to be. It was pretty and it was cool and it was pretty quiet on the trails where we went, even though it really only took us an hour to get around the trails, not including stops.

We made it back up to the top of the canyon to our car and headed towards our next stop, Deep Cove. We had plans to kayak and I was looking forward to it and hoping the waters were calmer than in Seattle. We grabbed lunch before we went to the rental place, which was a mistake because they had at least an hour wait for a boat. If you ever go, get your name on the list first. Lunch was good though! And then we ended up heading right back to the little downtown area to try out Honey's Doughnuts. Um. GO THERE. They serve lunch, too, but we just had doughnuts and coffee and I wish I had taken about six of them with me. They were literally the best doughnuts I've ever had.

Okay, so kayaking. We got a double kayak, which was fun, probably because I let Justin do more of the rowing. He didn't complain. But the special part of this little excursion was that we got to experience seeing the harbour seals for the first time! We had no idea they were in the water and that there were so many of them until our whale watching trip the next day. We had fun trying to spot them and I so wish I had my camera on me, because we saw many of them pretty close to our kayak. We did around 2 hours on the kayak and then headed back to our car. 

We decided to head up to Grouse mountain instead of back to the hotel since we didn't have to return the car by a certain time. We took the drive up Capilano road and passed the other suspension bridge park, as well as the dam and lake, which we decided to come back to. It looked gorgeous. We took the gondola up to the top of the mountain, took in the views, saw the bears that live up there, and had a snack at the chalet. We did find some Wifi to talk to the girls on up at the top of the mountain, which was fun.

I mean, I would never.

Bear!

We stopped at the dam on the way back down, which was very pretty and the mountains in the back were a nice view. We made our way back to Vancouver where we returned the car and then walked towards our hotel. 

After freshening up, we grabbed a late dinner at one of the little places across the street. We chose JAPADOG, which serves Japanese-style hot dogs. They were good! It seemed like a strange concept though, I admit. I think I may wish I had one right now... Unfortunately, the cream puff place closed before we got there, but I had my eye on them for later this trip! 

The Terimayo: a hot dog, seaweed, mayo, teriyaki

A fun day in Vancouver!