Looking Back: Portland Weekend

My cousin, Kassondra, got married over Memorial Day weekend in a tiny little town in Oregon. It was a beautiful wedding, I'm so glad we went. We made a long weekend out of it by staying in Portland. While there we visited friends, ate great food, and then stopped at Mount St. Helens on the way home. Fun fun time!

The awesome wedding location: The Historic Balch Hotel in Dufur, Oregon.

We spent  a lot of time at the wedding taking pictures of me and Henry.

 And of my Handsome Husband and Henry

 Back in Portland - we met up with the Hall Family.

Mmm, let's just take a moment to look at the most memorable meal from our trip - breakfast at Pine State Breakfast. A gooey fried chicken and fried egg sandwich (this sandwich is pictured at the top of the link) and an andoulle corn dog with honey mustard.

Then dinner with the Mellor Family. Trying to force another toddler hug.

This was mine and Rob's first visit to Mount St. Helens - it is so so cool! We were told that it was very rare to get the view we got of the mountain because it's usually not as clear as it was this day.

Secret: This Marriot hotel where we're eating breakfast not where we stayed. We stayed at a different Marriot about a half mile away. Our hotel didn't serve continental breakfast, so we took a little stroll down to this hotel that we had stayed at the last time we were in Portland in order to eat the breakfast there. We felt okay about it since they're both the same company (and since we had stayed there before, we knew the food was awesome and we knew just what door to walk through that would make it look like we were legit).

Jenaca's Bridal Shower

My good friend Jenaca got married last week - I'm so excited for her and grateful I was able to show my excitement by being at the wedding and by helping to throw her a bridal shower weeks before her big day. I wanted to make it a special party, so I mustered up all the creativity I have (read: I copied lots of ideas) and helped to create this:

 

 

One last picture of the bride-to-be (now bride):

Some quick Henry pictures

From October 27, 2012. Just shy of 18 months.

Maui 2012 video by Rob

Hooray, the video of our Maui trip is complete. And wonderful!



Return to Maui from New Land Media Works on Vimeo.


Now, how can I manage to go back again next year?

Looking Back: Henry's first birthday

Henry's birthday involved small celebrations, but he got to have three of them! The first was with Rob's family. I made cupcakes (I got uncharacteristically creative with these) and Henry was able to celebrate with, not only the cousins and other family he loves, but with new friends (Lee and Lisa... and OLIVE) too!

Yep, these are cute.

 

The obligatory watch-the-baby-get-messy 

 

Henry and Olive: fast friends

 

Next was May 2nd, Henry's actual birthday. No big to-do on this day, just a day of some of his favorite things: pancakes for breakfast (we Skyped his aunt Monica and uncle Jachen during breakfast, so they were the only family to celebrate on his actual birthday. What an honor!), library, mall play place and... that's all I remember.

Dad surprised Henry at the library's story time! He was supposed to be at work then all the sudden walked in!

 

Getting a stamp at the end of story time.

 

Then, the third celebration was with my family and some of our closest friends. No cute cupcakes this time. We celebrated Cinco de Mayo the same time, so here Henry is enjoying a gluten-free cupcake. Mmm. No, he's not gluten-free, but I wanted him to have a cupcake rather than a "pile" of tres leches cake that the rest of us ate - better for pictures.

Henry opening presents.

 

Rob, demonstrating a mask similar to what Henry got for one of his gifts.

I felt bad at first not doing a bigger celebration for Henry. I knew he didn't care, but I wanted to "mark" the importance of it by doing something more grand. In the end, what we did was perfect. He got so much love and attention by those he loves which is all I really cared about! Now that he's almost 18 months, I already can't believe how little he was when he turned just one! We love our little boy!

Camping

This past weekend was our ward campout at Cascade Park up in Granite Falls.  As luck would have it, it was also the same weekend as Stephanie's parents campout so we all decided to go up a day early and camp together as a family.

Henry loves being outside so camping was pretty much heaven for him.

There were many bats to be played with.

My partner in crime in her camping gear.  Henry wasn't the best sleeper while we were there, but this girl can totally roll with the no-sleep punches with the best of them.

On Friday, all of the boys went up to the archery range.  I soon discovered that my brother-in-law Mark is pretty serious about his archery(notice his own compound bow that he brought).

But not as serious as me.  See that whistle, that's for me taking command on the archery range.  You'd better watch out.

Europe Trip: Day 13 & 14

Wednesday was the 4th of July, which I found out really means little to the Swiss.  So instead of celebrating it, we decided that we would celebrate Jachen's birthday (July 5th) by driving to Lake Walensee and having a little picnic.  As a rest stop on the way there we stopped by a monastery on Mt. Sion to take a look around.

Here's the view:

Here's the monastery (these pictures look awesome by the way -- they were taken by Stephanie using the Cross Process iPhone app):

On the side of the monestary they had a nice collection of gnomes.  Henry didn't care how many other people or things had touched this gnome -- he needed to kiss it.  He has a thing for kissing gnomes.

We pause for a family portrait:

Lake Walensee is one of the smaller lakes in Switzerland -- but it was clear and as blue as any that we had seen...and pretty cold.  We found a nice spot to picnic and quickly commenced with eating our 4th of July haul.

Henry saw rocks, so he basically just wanted to throw them.

Engagement photo.  Notice we are both wearing shirts that Monica designed.  You can get your own here.

Our picnic at the Lake was cut a little short by a giant rain storm.   So we packed it up and hit the road.  I was a little bummed, because I was determined to jump into that lake.

While driving home we passed through Liechtenstein once more.  From the highway we could see a big castle sitting on top of the hill in Balzers.  After looking for a way up we eventually found one and found the castle to be The Gutenburg Castle.  It was very cool and is currently being used as an event.  If anyone would like me to come shoot their wedding in Liechtenstein, I am there.

The view from the castle:

The hill near the castle seemed like a great place to take some family pictures.

Von Trapps:

 Just as we were leaving the castle it began to rain again... a lot.  We felt bad for the group that was assembling under umbrellas to take a tour of the castle.

When we got home, we finally decided to let Jachen open his birthday presents.  We had brought them with us to the lake but because of the rain-out we didn't have time to open them there.  He was eying them the whole time so we figured that we'd better let him open them.

Here are some of the things he got:  American cheesecake and a new pair of Pumas.

 

The next morning we packed our things up early and left for the airport.  We were amazed that our 2 weeks in Europe had gone by so quickly.  We are so happy that we went, and so happy that we took Henry with us.  It was definitely a different experience with a 1 year old, but we were so happy that Monica and Jachen were able to meet him face to face.  He was definitely in love with them and we were probably most sad about the fact that they wouldn't be able to see him face-to-face for so long.

Thanks Duschletta's for hosting us and making our trip so great!