Here's to Good Times and Three Day Weekends!

Family Literacy Night is an event that I planned as a part of my AmeriCorps year for Manson Elementary school. Manson is the neighboring town to Chelan, and is a wonderful, small and welcoming community. This was my first ever event of this type, which turned out to be quite the success. With twenty-five volunteers, 100 attendees and several different activities throughout the night, I believe everyone enjoyed themselves and had fun with literacy.

Parent Workshop on "The Importance of Literacy" delivered by community professionals, conducted in Spanish.

"Story Lady" reads to a group of elementary students as parents and volunteers are gathered around to listen.

Students are working on an arts and craft activity that matches the "winter" theme of the stories, before heading back to the gym for a book swap and prizes from the local book store.

In North Central Washington, MLK weekend is celebrated with Winterfest…to some this means ice, snow, jackets, sledding and hot cocoa; while to others this means swimming. One of the ways that towns like Chelan keep their businesses going throughout the winter is by having festivals like this one over three-day weekends. This involved having a huge bonfire of everyone’s old Christmas trees and the infamous Polar Plunge. Oh, yes, several of our group went in!

Winterfest is also famous for the beautifully crafted ice sculptures outside every downtown store front. These are some of our awesome Washingtonian friends.

Happy Birthday, Joe! What better way to celebrate than with Settlers and a box cake?

One weekend, four friends (two couples) got engaged! Congrats to Chelsey and Jimmy (above) and Erin and Sean (below). 

You know you really have great friends when you can call them up late at night in early December, get them all on one phone conversation, ask them to book plane tickets to come visit during President's Weekend in February and they do it that night. After a day of checking out Pike Place in Seattle and walking along Puget Sound, we made the long trek back to Chelan.

Yes, they really do throw fish, just like the one the guy is holding!

First Day in Chelan

I think the picture explains it all.

Went up to the parking lot of my elementary school to check out the view of Lake Chelan.

Saturday night we went out to the Bavarian themed town, Leavenworth, and enjoyed some delicious cuisine at the beer garden.

After spending Sunday morning at Lake Chelan Lutheran Church, we headed up to Martin's house where we were greeted with a surprise!

Martin calls this a "weasel." It is a WWII tank that got a new paint job and still operates. We loaded the inside (and boarded the top) and started to make our way to the top of the hill.

Okay, well we didn't quite make it to the the top of the hill, but had an exciting ride=). Thanks, Martin, visits to your place are always a fun-filled experience.

Hopefully you saw the tower from my fall post....if not, check it out!

What a wonderful way to hang with some of our favorite peeps! Thanks, CA family for coming to visit and Flemings for hosting us! 

Tata for now!

Happy Holidays!

Our holiday party invitation read: be sure to come clad in your favorite Christmas sweater, ready to decorate the tree, sing some classic carols, and enjoy bringing in the season. All was accomplished. 

Many people over time have asked me, "Do you like having your birthday so close to Christmas?" and my response is, "Yes, because everybody is in a cheery holiday mood--so what better time to celebrate your birthday?" This year I got to share the celebration with my friend, Soren. I turned 27 and Soren turned 8. Together we blew out our candles on our Dairy Queen ice cream cake.

What's a holiday party without an assortment of white elephant gifts? (Did you know the the term "white elephant" comes from the story of the kings of Siam that used to give a real white elephant to their obnoxious courtiers. The white elephants were considered a gift that was more work than pleasure and therefore intended to ruin them because of the required investment.) We did not intend to ruin anyone...except for Annie who accidentally got rotten apple sauce, sorry Annie! She seems pretty happy about her corn, though.

Remember our fabulous neighbors, Kathy and Bill? They hosted our Chelan wedding reception that was part of a post. To give you a glimpse into their kind of wonderful people they are, they have basically adopted Cassidy, above as their grandson. Cassidy is 3, lives with his mom in town, but spends his days playing with dinosaurs and keeping Kathy and Bill youthful=). Over winter break, I brought over one of the valuable white elephant gifts Anders and I acquired, and Cassidy and I had fun  building this delicious house. That afternoon, with Kathy and Bill, we drove up the hill, directly behind our houses and up to 3,000 and some feet, and enjoyed the view below.

For Christmas Eve service, Lake Chelan Lutheran Church was dressed in its finest. This is our cozy place of gathering.

After flying over night on Christmas Eve, we arrived home to Minnesota, had a wonderful Christmas with our families, the Petersons, the Clarks and our California family=). We celebrated Jill's birthday at Erte in Nordeast.

And the addiction continues...luckily we got my family into it too! Settlers saw a lot of action over the break. Whether playing the game at home or at a random bar until 2am, anywhere works. Brick, anyone?

And the fun continued on New Year's Eve. On the only night of snow in MN, we drove out to Cottage Grove, to hang with the Gusties. Eventually we returned to the Rasmussens' house. Below we are promoting an exciting new, microbrewery in Minnesota called, Olvalde Farm and Brewing Company. Check them out!

 A late night walk in the snow=).

The Gruber gang reunites. 

A pleasant surprise. As Anders and I were en route back to Chelan, we ran into Aaron and Amber, who were on their way back to DC. It was great to see a few more of our California friends.

Amoeba, Aloha!

As Anders and I started planning our honeymoon travel, we realized that a stop in the Bay Area would be a great way to get to Hawaii! 

We booked a flight for early Thanksgiving morning so we could arrive in time to do one of those cherished holiday activities--cooking! Fifteen people in the kitchen, five delicious casseroles and one turkey later, the fun had just begun. Thanks, Bowles family, for passing on this fabulous sweet potato recipe to Andy--over the last few years it has become a Thanksgiving favorite!

Did someone say, "Amoeba?" While the cooking was fun, and the eating even more enjoyable, by far the best part of our trip was our wonderful group of friends, our California family, coming together to hang out. Jill made the trip from Minnesota, Trevor gave up Potter family home cooking to stay in Cali and we were reunited with Julie's brother, David, from our trip to Oregon for last year's Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, and here is a picture of us re-living our wonderfully crafted flashmob (thanks, Britta!). This move is appropriately called the Amoeba=).

The guys headed out through San Fran to go surfing for the day. There's no photos of us girls doing one of my all time favorite Bay Area activities...but let's just say I have a beautiful new lime green skirt as evidence of how we spent our day.

Have I ever mentioned how much I like sushi? If not stay, tuned, it will come up again=). On our last full day we packed into our favorite sushi bar, ManPuku, and then headed up to Indian Rock for the sunset. 

Our weekend in the Bay was everything we hoped for (Thanksgiving meal, hanging out at the Albatross and the Miz-Lo, playing some Settlers, hearing updates on life) and it was great to see everyone! We're so thankful to have such amazing friends. We hope to come back again soon! 

Aloha, Hawaii! We all know that Hawaii is known as paradise right? In other words, you think of beaches, nice weather, palm trees, etcetera. However, they don't just call it the "rainbow state" because it fits with the theme. On top of everything else, there really is a rainbow almost every day. Hard to believe until you experience it, but just in case you still don't believe me, check out the double rainbow that just showed up out of the blue...no pun intended=). 

For the beginning of our week, we stayed with some wonderful family members, the Culhanes. Sadly we do not have a great photo with them, but, we did have a wonderful time and therefore made some great memories. Geoff, Pi'ilani and Kehau have always been great connoisseurs of Hawaiian food, and to celebrate our wedding/honeymoon they took us out for an incredible dinner at a nice restaurant. Enter, this beautiful ahi tuna (told you the sushi would be back), and I'm in heaven! We so appreciated our time with the Culhanes on Oahu and also look forward to seeing them again. 

On to Maui! We show up at the rental car agency and they say, "Would you like to upgrade to a Jeep for $60 total  for your 4 days?" (much cheaper than the arm and a leg they asked for online when booking in advance), so with one look at each other we say, "Yes!!" This was one of the best decisions we made. Thanks to Scott, our personal tour guide (via text), we made our way around the east coast of the island. I never cease to be amazed by the  myriad of fresh fruit available right on the side of the road, so refreshing.

Oh yeah, and we found some sweet waterfalls on the side of the road too! Can't beat spending the day swimming in a lagoon and having your new husband jump over your head=).

The late afternoon view from our car...did I mention that we got a Jeep and it was awesome?!

Another really amazing thing about Hawaii, are the areas of the islands where there are no buildings, and very few people...just incredible views. As we completed our drive around the south coast of Maui, we were following the sunset for about an hour, and besides the rolling road ahead, there was nothing but the sloping hillside and the ocean. Definitely worth the trip. Aloha until next time!