Another Year and Counting

On November 12th Brian and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. We are so thankful for our marriage and for the Lord's grace and mercy and goodness to us. God has blessed us incredibly in the last 5 years!

For the occasion, Brian planned out a magnificent trip to Seattle for us. He originally tried to surprise me with the trip but realized the details were to big and needed my input on a handful of things. Needless to say, he did nearly all the work in planning things out for us and made all the reservations. I could not have asked for a more wonderful anniversary gift!

Did I mention that this trip was taken by just the two of us? That's right! Brian's parents were so gracious as to take time off work to watch the boys for 4 days. I was a little nervous having never left either of them for so long (and Ricky at all for that matter) but they did awesome and had a great time with Grandpa and Grandma. I actually don't think they were ready to come home when the time came!

Here are some highlights from our escapade:

We started the journey by driving to Whitefish where we ate some dinner and hopped onto a train. I had never ridden on a train before so this was quite exciting for me. Since we were traveling through the night we rented a sleeper car and although it's tight quarters, a sleeper car is definitely the way to go!

Whitefish train station

Our train

In our sleeper car on the way home

We arrived in Seattle on Saturday morning and after checking into our hotel room (which was AMAZING) we walked down to the pier and ate lunch at a place called the Crab Pot... quite yummy and fun! We had both been looking forward to fresh seafood.

Our lunch consisted of a hodgepodge of seafood and vegetables which they simply poured out of a pot onto butcher paper that had been spread across the table. They gave us wooden boards and mallets to eat with and supplied us with big bibs to protect our clothing... it was great!

Brian showing how it's done!

Although we tried our darnedest, we just couldn't get it all down. This is what was left of our mountain of deliciousness!

After lunch we walked over to Pikes Market and being a Saturday it was nuts!

Tons of fresh fish for sale

You know you're in a big city when you see yahoos like this performing on the street corner! I had to take a picture of him for the kids.

Saturday evening we went to dinner at the Metropolitan and if I had to sum it up in one word it would be divine. It was the most delicious meal I've ever eaten in the finest restaurant I've ever been in!

Patiently waiting for the food to arrive.

Sunday morning we caught a taxi to Theo Chocolate Factory where we participated in a very interesting and enjoyable tour of the facility... and yes, we got to sample lots of chocolate.

It was glorious!

The factory

After the tour, we walked for quite a while just exploring the city and wandering back to our hotel. It was a great way to see parts of the city we wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Here we are along the river bank.

The river was beautifully dressed in fall colors.

As we were walking we came across some neat "boat house villages".

These people actually live floating on the water!

Each night we went back to the hotel and enjoyed some of this delicious port which was given to us as a gift at our wedding. We saved it specifically for celebrating our 5th anniversary and it was absolutely delicious!

Sunday evening we took a dinner cruise around the harbor. There was live jazz music, a mesmerizing view of the city lights, and a beautiful bouquet of flowers given to me by my sweet husband.

It was very romantic!

Our cruise boat

Brian and I on deck the boat.

My flowers!

Monday we took the monorail over to the Space Needle. It's a spectacular building and although we enjoyed it very much we were both glad to have our feet on ground level by the time we were done!

The Space Needle

On the Observation Deck

We had lunch in the space needle.

It was a fun experience with the room constantly rotating in a circle!

After lunch we went to a movie in the IMax theater and then went over to Pikes Brewing Co. for a little refresher before we hopped back onto the train. We truly had a wonderful time and look forward to celebrating many more anniversaries together!

Our Birthday Boy

That's right... Ben turned 3 on Saturday! We had planned a party with family but due to bad weather and nasty roads no one was able to come. We still held the party as planned and I think Ben had a good time despite the fact that it was just the four of us. Here are some pictures of his special day.

We took the boys to the carousel in town. This photo was taken when we first arrived.

Both were transfixed!

The cake: Ben was quite specific about what he wanted for his birthday cake this year. A green cake with m&m's (green is his favorite color). I'm sure it would have looked more like a kite had I made a tail of sorts, but this worked.

Finger painting fun!

A fun gift of legos (his first big boy set) given to him by some dear friends of ours. He likes to play with them for long spurts at a time - I think I like them more than he does!

He and Papa had fun building loaders and other construction machinery the afternoon of his party.

Recent Fun

Here's a new line of pics from the last few weeks. Hope you're all enjoying the lovely beginnings of winter!

One of the fun things we did with the boys on Reformation Day was bake and decorate cupcakes. Well, let me rephrase that, I baked the cupcakes, Ben decorated the cupcakes (notice the huge pile of sprinkles), and Cedric helped us eat them!

Papa and his boys enjoying a book at a bedtime.

Ben has been learning to cut with scissors and loves to cut paper into the smallest pieces possible... and leave them scattered all over the house!

Fall Happenings

We recently made an attempt to snap a nice family photo on our new front deck and this is the best we could come up with before everyone completely lost it while using a tripod on the camera.

Not terrible, but we'll be trying again later!

The boys got a new arts & crafts desk from Grandpa and Grandma Schultz and it's become a new favorite project spot.

The boys... had to capture this tranquil moment of the two actually sitting calmly and nicely next to eachother!

Yesterday the boys and I went to a small pumpkin patch and picked out a few pumpkins to bring home. They each picked out their own and had lots of fun painting them.

It's a good thing they make non-toxic paints these days!

As you can imagine, both boys received baths promptly after painting was finished.

A pumpkin for each of us!

Cedric's pumpkin is the bigger of the two painted pumpkins. Ben was adamant about bringing home a very small pumpkin!

I printed off some recipes yesterday of various things calling for pumpkin. Can't wait to try out some Pumpkin Chili and am really looking forward to having some toasted pumpkin seeds to snack on!

HAPPY FALL!

Life is Busy Busy

Yes, I realize it's been a while since the last post and for that I apologize. It seems we've been really busy with all kinds of random things. As there have been to many things happen in the last month to tell you all about them one by one, here is a brief summary of what we've been up to.

The boys waiting patiently for brownies to come out of the oven after helping me bake them.

Having fun throwing everything out of the toy box!

"Giddy-up horsey!"

"Whooaahhh!"

"We love our Grandpa!"

This picture was taken outside of Absarokee when we drove over to visit my Great Aunt who was visiting from Alabama.

The boys and I went and stayed with my sister and her husband in Laurel at their new house for a couple nights and while we were there we took them to Zoo Montana. Here are a few pics from our time at the zoo: