August 9, 2008 at 12:31 pm (General)
We have lots more pictures from our anniversary geocaching trip, Middle School camp, High School camp, and more! But it’s time to do housework. We also go out of town again Tuesday for the Celebrate Recovery Summit where we’ll hopefully get some great training for Life Hurts God Heals. Pray for safe travels and that we learn a lot.
August 9, 2008 at 12:25 pm (General)
So we had these grand plans of doing multiple hikes on mt Rainier everyday of our anniversary trip. There were two problems with that. First of all, we’ve had freakishly cold weather so there’s still tons of snow on Rainier and we didn’t want to end up a news story. Secondly, we were exhausted from the current craziness of our life (hopefully slowing down in September when our internship is over), and needed a lot of just hanging out and relaxing time.
But we did manage to get a 5 or 6 mile hike in one day. Eric’s done way more hiking than me this summer, doing hikes with some of his youth group guys. The first couple of miles were tough for me, but once we had lunch and I got used to it, I had so much fun. Oh yeah, and my knee was starting to really hurt, so Eric prayed for it and it completely stopped hurting! God is awesome.
Our hike started by longmire, and one of the first things we saw was this little tree growing out of a giant stump.
There was also this cool trunk, I don’t even know how that happens.
We had lunch here at the lookout. It was beautiful and the sun was warm (it was a cool day). Some other hikers came along while we were eating (we didn’t see very many people that day which was nice) and pointed out a grouse that had been sneaking toward us.
They thought it might be a turkey, but I looked it up to make sure, it really is a grouse.
We saw a lot of beauty that day. Thanks God for the great weather.
August 9, 2008 at 11:50 am (Cooking, Fun things we've done, General, Great Dates)
Hooray for anniversaries! It’s one thing you stand up for and say “I AM taking the time off for my anniversary.” So Eric and I did that and found a rustic little cabin two minutes from the entrance to Mt. Rainier (my favorite mountain in the world). This is jasper cabin and I loved it. It was really only a couple steps up from camping. You get a roof (and heater if you need it), a very comfortable bed, and a minifridge and fireplace. It’s a lot cheaper than other cabins in the area because it’s a little more run down (and the water smelled like sulfur, but tasted fine). But it was completely secluded which was perfect, and there’s a…
Hot Tub! My three requirement for where we stayed were hot tub, fireplace, and grill. Normally you get every other hour for the hot tub, but no one was staying in the other cabin so we could use it whenever we wanted. Woo-hoo!
This is the view from the back deck. It was living in the woods and I absolutely loved it. One day while Eric took a nap, I sat out there the whole time and decided I could definitely live in the woods. It was so peaceful, and yet so much was going on. It was fun trying to identify if the noises are birds, wind, bugs or…
…deer! That’s right, this beauty wandered through our backyard while I was out there. Unfortunately I was afraid to reach for my camera and startle her, but she was waiting for us down the street at our dinner restaraunt! We went to Alexander’s for dinner. Yummy food, rather pricey but worth it if you can afford it (thanks mom and dad for your anniversary gift, that’s how we afforded it!).
Eric got a buffalo burger. I got this beautiful and yummy chicken alfredo with peppers. We actually went there because they’re supposed to have the best pie, but the dinner was so filling we didn’t have room! It was great.
That was the only meal we ate out. For our others, we went grill crazy!
Seriously, who says you can’t eat great while camping. Everything we made used just their little grill, and our camp stove. Eric discovered he loves to grill, which I’m happy to hear because I love to eat things that are grilled!
We had Indonesian Beef Satay, Hawaiian Salted Veggie Skewers, sliced cucumber with peanut sauce, and grilled apricots with a basalmic glaze for this meal. It was so amazing, here’s all that was left afterwards…
The next day for breakfast we had an egg and spam scramble.
For dessert that night we made these delicious chocolate, coconut, pineapple skewers. Oh wow, we’ve made them again since because they’re so amazing.
I made the sauce in a pot, toasted the coconut in a pan
Eric grilled the pineapple skewers.
The finished result, a warm, juicy, gooey, chocolately, coconutty, bite of goodness. Serve with napkins!
June 2, 2008 at 10:18 pm (Fun things we've done, Great Dates)
I haven’t always felt great about Seattle. I usually think of it as a rainy, dreary place. Most of what I’ve seen of Seattle is jam packed Pike’s Place Market, or scary Capitol Hill. Today, Eric and I knew we’d be picking his parents up at the airport in the evening, so we decided to tour some areas of Seattle. It was an incredible adventure and I have a new attitude about the city.
First we went to the Olympic Sculpture Park. What a great place. It’s free, and street parking is only a couple bucks. Here’s a few of the cool sights to see there.
I love how the park mixes beautiful northwest flora with the impressive sculptures. The iris is my second favorite flower, and they had them in several shades.
This cool sculpture was so reflective (polished stainless steel) it seemed almost non existent!
I absolutely love this sculpture of a typewriter eraser that looks like it’s about to take out several cars!
There are lots of paths lined with plants and sculptures, it’s a really beautiful walk.
This was a fun bridge. The guy looking through it was pretty hot 
This fountain was cool, at about 20 minute intervals it alternates between showing the son, the dad, and both at the same time. Fortunately I took the pictures from far away, when we got closer we realized they’re naked!
This was my favorite sculpture. It actually spells out Love & Loss using normal things like benches, tables, trees, street signs, etc. I really liked it.
So next we went to dinner (at 5pm, we’re early eaters). I’d found an Ethiopian restaurant called Addis Cafe online and plugged it into the gps.
We ordered one dish, because Muna (the owner I believe) told us it’s very big. We got the Lamb Tibbes, which is lamb and veggies in a sauce dumped on a large spongy crepe like pancake called injera. Then you use more injera to scoop it up and eat with your hands. We loved it! It was so delicious and made us miss Africa. We heaped compliments on Muna (who made it herself fresh when we ordered it), and promised to bring people there one day.
Next we went to Uwajimaya. It’s an Asian marketplace, and I felt right at home! They had so many ingredients I’ve been desperately wanting for making Hawaiian food as well as some more exotic Sri Lankan dishes. I could have gone crazy but settled for a few spices, Aloha Shoyu (the only soy sauce for Hawaiian cooking), Hawaiian Alaea salt, a mango, sweet chili sauce, and rice vinegar. The prices were much better than a regular grocery store too. Now that I know what’s there, I’ll have a shopping list next time I go. Banana blossom here I come!
Then we went and found the Fremont troll, I’d seen pictures but never actually been. It was really cool.
Our last stop was Volunteer Park. It is a beautiful park with lots of dog walkers, kids, and crazies. I’d recommend not going by yourself maybe. But it’s gorgeous. There was a cool water tower we climbed to the top of.
It has lots of history on Seattle Parks inside the top.
This camel’s sign says “please climb on me”. Eric was happy to oblige.
This was a fun sculpture there by the water reservoir that you can see the Space Needle through.
All in all, it was an exciting day of adventure, and I have a new appreciation for Seattle and its beauty. Thanks Eric for an amazing date day. I love you!
May 19, 2008 at 7:27 pm (General)
Last wednesday the 14th me and my small group of guys went out Geocaching and we grabbed some caches in the area that i have done before and it was a ton of fun hanging out with my small group of middleschool students outside of church and just having fun as a group of guys. The fun/funniest part was when sumner stepped in a pile of dog poo and and was doing just about everythign he could to get it out of his shoes including scraping it out with a stick slamming it on the ground using a rock that poo did NOT want to leave! After a while i decided that we should just walk to the next cache to help him get it out which was sucessfull.
While we were walking in a king county park we found paintballs and airsoft pelets laying around it looks like some people have been having some not so legal fun around there. Anyways we had a blast and i’ll definately miss my guys when official small groups end.
May 3, 2008 at 4:58 pm (church, General)
So last night was probably the craziest night of our internship at Grace. We had a High School Senior Barbecue, and left a little after the official ending time because Eric was working at 5 am this morning. I figured we’d get to bed by 9 so he could get enough sleep. We got to the church at 8:30pm to unload everything from the barbecue. As we were unloading at the north entrance of the church, a tall young haole (haole means white in Hawaiian ~eric) guy with dreadlocks walked in the door. I was in the kitchen unloading so didn’t see him, but Eric said “Hey” and he said “hey” back. We knew there was a youth group from another church staying at Grace last night, so at first thought he must be with that group.
But a couple minutes later, we thought we should double check and make sure he was with the group. We walked down the hallway, and saw a shadow of someone darting down another hallway. We headed that direction, and noticed a box of cookies dumped out on the ground. We saw the door to the gym closing, but no lights being turned on. We got pretty suspicious, so went to our office to get the phone number for Josh, the custodian on duty that night. He was on break at a friend’s house, but said that guy didn’t match the description of anyone with the youth group. He said he’d be there in two minutes so we walked down toward the lobby to meet him.
As we approached the lobby, we heard the voice of Mark Buck, one of our pastors. At first we were relieved, thinking he was talking to the guy, but when we walked into the lobby, everything changed. We realized Mark was on a cell phone, and was shocked to see us, and the big glass front door was shattered! Mark told us to stay there with him, and says “there’s two more people in the building, they’re with me.” Then three police officers come running in with guns drawn!
It turns out, while we were in our office, “Dread Head Fred” (as he’s been nick-named) smashed the glass door at the west entrance. Mark was in his office on the second floor, heard the crash and came out to look over the balcony. He saw the guy looking around, and in his big, deep, Texan voice yelled “HEY!” “Fred” freaked out and practically flew down the steps toward the basement classrooms. Mark immediately called 911. The police were there within 90 seconds. The police helicopter was circling overhead, they brought a dog to search the building, it was crazy!
He got out of the building before they sealed it off and searched it, but we could see how God protected us all and worked everything out perfectly. I’m very suspicious, and probably would have questioned the guy immediately if I had been the one to see him come in. If he was on drugs, it’s quite possible he would have responded violently. The youth group staying there was still at Acquire the Fire, so wasn’t in the building. Mark was able to tell the dispatcher we were in the building with him so the police found out right before they came in, otherwise we probably would have ended up on the ground with guns pointed at us! Also, by going to our office to call Josh, we didn’t have a confrontation with the guy.
All in all, it was quite an adventure. I learned Mark Buck is quite the comedian, and the Auburn police are incredibly quick in their response time. I also learned why Eric wants me to drive to and from my girls’ Bible Study at night, even though we live less than a block from the church. Poor Eric got almost no sleep before work (we were at the church until 11 and then hyped up after). He is also the only one who saw the guy’s face, though hopefully the security camera got him. We praise and thank God for His protection of everyone involved, including “Fred”, and hopes he gets some help.
April 28, 2008 at 2:55 pm (church, Fun things we've done)
This last weekend, the 25th through the 27th, Diana and I took some time to rest, relax, and focus on our marriage at familylife’s Weekend to Remember. It was a great time to get away and enjoy life at the bellevue hilton. When we checked in, we were given a hundred page book which we covered the entire weekend throughout 10 sessions focusing on things like why marriages fail, Christ’s role in the family, and the roles men and women play in the marriage. The weekend was definitely something that I would recommend to anyone that is married, healthy or not. Our speakers spoke in a way that didn’t assume too much about our marriage to make it irrelevant.
Diana and i have been married for 9 months now, and we were one of 5 couples that had been married for less than a year. The couple that won the award for married the shortest had been married for 3 months. What made them really interesting is that the man had a bar code tattooed into the back of his head! It totally made Diana and I use our imaginations and think that maybe he was an escaped experiment or he had the mark of the beast.
By far the most memorable moment was when the fire alarm went off at 11pm on date night and everyone was walking out of their rooms in varying states of dress some in pajama’s, some in bath robes, and Diana and I in our street clothes because we had no idea how long we would have to be outside. Luckily we just hung out in the lobby and read the last battle until the alarms stopped going off and we went back to our room to finish our Monk episode and go to bed.
April 23, 2008 at 8:56 pm (Technology)
For those of you who are not familiar with what Pandora is in the website sense it is an online radio station that you “train” by giving thumbs up or thumbs down to songs i have been working on this Christian music station for a while and i think i have it pretty much dialed into where i want it. For those of you who think that online streaming music sounds worse than FM radio definitely need to listen to the quality that Pandora puts out.
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh2020966840648108
April 17, 2008 at 8:45 pm (Cooking)
April 17, 2008 at 8:08 pm (Fun things we've done)
This past Tuesday was Eric’s 24th birthday. I wanted him to think of something he’s always wanted to do but never had the chance, so he decided on the Seattle Underground Tour. This tour is not something you’d want to bring young kids on, not because it’s terribly inappropriate, but because they’d probably be bored. At the end of our tour, the parents of a couple kids in our group asked how they liked it. They replied “Too much history!” But for us, that made it extremely interesting. It’s not really all that to look at, no skeletons or anything like that, just old musty ruins. But the history and stories were fascinating.
Probably the coolest thing was learning about the engineering feat to build the ground a story higher than it originally was. This is a picture of what used to be the first story of some Seattle shops, we were standing on the original sidewalks.
What’s interesting, is after the fire the destroyed Seattle, the city shop owners refused to wait (for years) until the streets were built a story higher. They went ahead and rebuilt their shops. So once the streets were built, shoppers had to climb ladders from the street to the sidewalk and back up again. If you wanted to cross the street, you had to climb up a ladder, cross, and climb down another one! This was bad for drunks heading home from the bar, and for pedestrians down below when freight fell off of trucks above. After several deaths, the owners decided it was time for the sidewalks to move up as well.
Basically bridges were built between the road and the buildings, then the bridges were connected and paved over to make sidewalks. It’s really quite impressive. The second story of the buildings, became the ground floor, and the first story became an unused basement. The area under the sidewalks was never filled in, and created the tunnels. There are some skylights in the tunnels, here’s an inside view of one.
It’s one of the few that’s also visible from above ground. Most have been paved over because they weren’t safe.
All in all, we had a great time and really enjoyed it. If you haven’t tried it, it’s worth the $14. Just make sure to get there half an hour early (we were surprised by how full it was) and bring cash (no checks or credit cards accepted). Enjoy checking out the old toilets and bathtubs!
