the GINOURMOUS issue

...ginourmous because...

...it's been SO very long since I've blogged

...there are SO many things to catch you up on

...it may be awhile before I blog in the near future

So, today will consist of several posts to share our goings-on.

Grab a tasty beverage, a comfy seat and settle in for a long read.

Do be warned: there are A LOT of pictures accompanying these next 3 posts!

Happy New Year

We went to the Oregon coast with our good friends Andy and Paige for New Year's. Our goal was some hardcore R & R! So, there was a lot of tv watching (for the guys that mostly included ANYTHING sports...especially football), plenty of book reading, engorging ourselves with copious amounts of good food, ringing in the New Year with champagne, enjoying the beach (weather permitting) and an educational trip to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

We rented this amazing little house on a quiet dead end street with a wonderful view of the surf and plenty of room for the 4 of us...complete with an outdoor hot tub. Tre brought along his PlayStation and Guitar Hero, which became quite the entertainment during our time there. And the house had a Foosball table so we had at least 2 couple v couple Foosball tournaments. While the guys watched the college football play-offs, I devoured the first two books in the 'Twilight' series. (I had sworn to never get involved in the cliche teen romance series, but I got sucked in...and I LOVED it!) We only spent a couple hours one day walking on the beach as the weather was pretty stormy for most of the time we were there. We even had 70 mile-an-hour winds on New Year's eve night! Pretty crazy!

Paige conquering Guitar Hero...go Paige!

Andy rockin' on Guitar Hero

New Year's itself was tons of fun. We played Hoopla and had quite a riot making fun of each other, especially during the drawing and acting-out portions. HA! As a quartet, we're a pretty good team and we beat the clock each time! Paige is the queen of finding really cool headgear for New Year's! Last year we rocked some awesome antennae and this year she found these really funky hats of all different shapes...shiny and with feathers...SO FUN! Champagne was uncorked, we toasted and watched the ball drop as a crazy storm raged outside our little beach house. I think we stayed up until 3:30 or 4 AM. I have not seen those AM hours in YEARS...probably since my days at Milligan. Needless to say, we all slept in quite late the next day!

A New Year's group pic!

Andy and Das Boot

A New Year's smooch

The guys outside on the porch...cool blur, huh?

Our New Year's pic

Cheers!

Tre wearing his New Year's hat...holla!

After the storm we did make a trip to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. They had this exhibit called 'Oddball' with all these peculiar and unique little creatures. I cannot, by any stretch, begin to recall everything we saw, but I did take a few pics and overall, we had a really great time!

Jellyfish. Aren't they cool?

Jellyfish. My favorite in the exhibit. Not too 'odd' but crazy beautiful!

Eel...Moray, I think!

Andy & Paige at the Aquarium

Nautical Tre...now that's a scary sea creature!

Bird. I should remember the type...I'll look it up!

A Japanese Spider Crab...I cannot tell you how massive these are! Actually I can...see next pic!

Now you can see just how big the crab is...as big as a human head! Thanks Andy!

A lionfish...grrr!

A toadfish...isn't it cute?!?

After several days of crazy storm weather, the day we left was beautiful and sunny...go figure! Due to all the flooding along the coast because of the insane amount of rain, we had to go south and take a much longer route home. But because the weather was so nice, it was hard to be too upset about it! All in all, we had an amazing time and were even contemplating a summer trip to our new found treasure of a rental house!

Waves crashing on rocks at Boiler Bay, the beautifully sunny day we went home.

Winter Storms and Snow

A couple weeks before Christmas, we had A LOT of snow, especially for the Portland area. At first it was magical, beautiful and serene and after 2 weeks of insanely cold weather, knee deep snow and aneurysm inducing driving conditions the snow became annoying, ugly and intolerable. It's easy to tell who your natives are around here...they don't mind the rain but excessive snow gets every ones undies in a bunch!



Tre worked several of the snowy days and I had several days of work off. On my days off, I watched the snow fall, read books, slept and laughed as I spied on the dogs frolicking in the snow in the backyard. They were too funny...like little bunnies hibbity hopping through snow up to their shoulders. When Tre and I were both home together we spent time walking the dogs, running errands and enjoying some lovely fires in our fireplace.

Our snugly little house in the snow

Tre with the pups in our wintry neighborhood

Tre and the furries

Just thought these leaves were cool, all caked in ice

Me and my furries


Thankfully, we had just had our drafty upstairs windows replaced a couple days before the snow arrived. Here are the old ones that were left on the side of the house. I thought they looked rather picturesque!


Some grass covered in snow and ice...so lovely


A snowy bough

The St. John's Police station on a snowy eve. I love how you can actually see the snow falling!

Surprise!

Yep, that's what you think it is. An ultrasound picture. The fuzzy peanut in the middle is a baby. And surprisingly enough, this is MY uterus.

I know.

I freaked out too!

We were definitely NOT trying. We had other things on our minds...trips we wanted to take, projects we wanted to do around the house...all this 'stuff' to get done before we 'settled down' enough to start a family.

SURPRISE!

I'm 15 weeks along now. Over the nausea and GI issues. Now on to headaches and migraines...woo hoo! We have our big ultrasound in mid-February where they'll check all the physical structures and take lots and lots of measurements. This is also the ultrasound where we could find out the gender...but we've decided to keep that a surprise...at least we hope to refrain for begging the ultrasound tech to "TELL US!" We'll see how that goes!

So, Tre and I are going to have a baby! I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything...but I still have several months to process before this new little Clayton, whom we affectionately call 'Monkey' , will enter our world.

Our lives are a changin'!