Help out my friends!

Hi everyone,

My friend Kathryn and her husband are looking to bring a baby into their home. Please help spread the word to anyone that you know who is considering giving a child up for adoption. Kathryn will be an incredible mother and I am so excited for her in this next stage of life.

You can contact both Jeff and Kathryn here!!

a happy happy day

This girl deserves a great day today...

Why you may ask?

She encourages curiosity.

She's always there to cheer a good friend on.

She can make you jump to new heights!

She's really good at arm length photos.

She knows how to accessorize.

oh yea. and she's one year older.

Happy Birthday friend!

10 on 10

I am joining a few friends of mine for a photography project in 2011. My goal is to appreciate the beauty and simplicity in each and every day (and maybe to inspire me to get a new camera)!

Here we go, my very first 10 on 10!

Life Update/Close to 2010

Good morning bloggers,

Well it has been a while since we've put more than pictures and a few words up here on this blog, and so much has happened to us recently that I thought it would be good to jot down a few memories to close out 2010. Here are a few quick notes of some recent events for us to remember and enjoy.

Thanksgiving
For our first Turkey day as a married couple, we hosted the feast at our home. We are lucky enough to live close to both families and are able to split up this holiday every other year. Last year we traveled to central CA for my official Lee Family Thanksgiving. As I was accustomed to a 7 person table growing up, the small crowd of 75 or so was a big and welcome adjustment! This year, however, we spent the holiday with my family and had our largest guest count to date - 9 people! :) Since I was in charge of the Turkey and hosting duties this year, 9 sounded perfect! The turkey turned out amazing (I had a lucky first try) and we had quite the feast. As my Jumpy members would say, my Martha skills were in full force.

I'm already saving up for next year! Filoli here I come!

Christmas
A bunch of firsts for us this year - and how great it has been! This was our first Christmas together as husband and wife and we already can't wait for next year. Thankfully my hubby loves himself some Christmas and decorating for the season is strongly supported. He may have thought that 1,000 lights for our Xmas tree was ridiculous, but quickly recanted this comment after seeing how beautiful that Noble looked all lit up and adorned with ornaments. Scottie and I have actually bought Christmas ornaments together on major events from the start of our relationship. It was so fun to rediscover the Mickey hat from our first trip to Disneyland!

The hubby and I had our Christmas on the morning of Christmas Eve and boy do we love to spoil each other. We were "good" this year and only went a little over our proposed limits. You just can't help to get the ones you love something you know they will love. We then joined my family for Christmas Eve dinner which included many laughs, stories, and of course, football. The sister and I prepared a fabulous dinner together - we are quite the team! (Mom loves that we both love to cook!)

Christmas day we headed down to CA to spend some quality time with more family. (I told you it's great we live close enough to do it all!) Due to recent events that I will mention next, our four day trip turned into a week long trip which was long over due. Unfortunately, I think we both gained about 20 pounds combined (15 of which attributed to me). If you know us, you know we LOVE to eat. We had prime rib, gourmet mashed potatoes, croissants, Pakistani food, the world's best burritos, in & out, fudge, Chinese food and the list could go on. It was In. Sane.

New job!
2011 rang in with a new job for me and moving back to a career that I find both fascinating and challenging. I am so excited for this incredible opportunity and am having to pinch myself each day to make sure I'm not dreaming. Each day it seems to get better and better and I couldn't be happier.

We have had such a wonderful 2010 and are both excited to see what 2011 brings to us. I can't believe we have almost been married for 6 months! Thank you 2010 for a fabulous year.

getting into the holiday spirit

Remembering the Islands

This my friends is a little piece of Hawaiian heaven.  Pineapple Rum cake from Mark's Place in Lihue, HI. 

Now you may find that you are asking yourself, "Gee, when did she go to Kauai?"

Friends, do not worry... I went on my honeymoon!!!

This is where you go, "Honeymoon! Don't you know you got married in July and it is now NOVEMBER?"

Again, don't you worry.  After we tried our first bite of Mark's delicious baked goods and incredible hole-in-the-wall Hawaiian food restaurant we were in love.  Unfortunately we discovered this place on one of OUR LAST NIGHTS! So we did what any normal food lover would do.  Go back the following night, order a massive dinner, chat it up with some great locals about life in Kauai (while considering dropping everything and moving), and THEN buying out basically their entire baked goods selection before we hopped on our airplane home. 

We have two more loaves left in our freezer well protected and awaiting to be devoured.  Let's just hope that Mark will ship soon, or I guess we will HAVE to go back to Kauai!!

Weekend Update

Here's what we did this weekend.  So nice to just spend time relaxing together.

Squash Risotto

Laundry Day

Movie Weekend

Games with Friends in Atlanta

It's so nice to make new friends

Oh, hello :)

Meet our new friend :)

(Anyone who would like to meet our new member of the family, please let us know and we will be sure to introduce you.) **Warning.  Introduction to the above mentioned "friend" will cause extreme comfort and relaxation**

How bad are we??

So how bad are we at this blogging thing right?  I really need to get into my projects and stick with them.  Right now I have a million projects going on, many of which I will or should be blogging about, but then I start a new project and the cycle continues.

Well I know this is not much of the update you were looking for being so long ago, but we have something we need to share.  Our friend Jen (who is amazing btw.. please follow her blog too!), gave us a really special wedding present.  We absolutely love it! And the best part of all, we get to share her gift with all of you!!   I promise I will update more soon, but in the meantime... check this awesome gift out!

awesome gift!

 and thanks to Jen, I am now thinking of all the people I would like to have this done for.  This artist is just so great!

Happy day to everyonee!

Normalcy...or Something Like It

I know this is out of order and I promise hope that we will post wedding/honeymoon pics and info, but I figured our blog was out of date again and wanted to post a little something.

The months leading up to the wedding were a complete whirlwind and practically the whole 2010 year has flown by. But here we are now, 3 weeks post wedding and things are finally settling down. We came back from our much needed Hawaiian honeymoon with awesome tans and a sense of relaxation. We promised our friends that we would definitely hang out with them once the wedding was over, and so this past weekend we tried to make good on our promises.

Steve and Rachel Trudelle-
As you may recall, Steve and Rachel were the wedding we attended 3 weeks before our wedding. (Yeah the one with the sweet boat cruise). This past Saturday, Steve was running in a 10K at Snoqualmie Days (which is a big celebration thing that Michelle and I had no idea existed) and he and Rachel would be in our neck of the woods. We met them for breakfast at Mabel's (the local breakfast place on the Ridge) and spent a good deal of time catching up. Luckily the Trudelles are BBQ pizza experts and gave us directions on how to make awesomely delicious pizzas without a pizza stone. (We owe you guys!) So obviously we wasted no time and put the pizza recipe to work that night.

Chris and Jessi Stephen-
Chris is Michelle's old co-worker but he and his wife, Jessi, live quite close to us. We had plans to hang out with them Saturday night and since we were armed with a new pizza recipe, we had them come over for "Make Your Own Pizza Night". Michelle and I did our best to have a variety of ingredients so that people could make their own crazy combination of pizzas. I went with a more "everything on it" type while Michelle went with her "Italian Style" which had tomatoes, mushrooms, and even prosciutto (pretend I'm saying it like Giada). It was great catching up with them as well over a bottle of wine and a couple beers.

Evansons and Parnells-
On Sunday we had a belated bday celebration for Michelle at Maltby Cafe (a greater Seattle area institution for breakfast). This place is known for their cinnamon rolls so obviously we ordered one. These things were massive (about the size of a wagon wheel with the weight of a small child) but oh so delicious. It's always great getting together with family and shooting the breeze without any stress.

And so our weekend ended much too quickly (don't they all?) and we now turn our sights onto HOTLANTA, where Michelle's good friend Nikki is getting married this weekend. As you may or may not know, I hate humidity. It goes back to a blistering summer in North Carolina, but I will save that story for later (it's a good one, trust me). Anywho, we will be in Atlanta from Friday-Sunday where I will sweat profusely, but will enjoy every minute celebrating Nikki and Danny and their future together (which will include Sweeney-Castro vacations, right Nikki?)

Side note: Sorry I don't post pictures with posts. I'm not very artsy or creative, which has been reinforced throughout my life on art projects. I was also told I don't write nice flowing essays but instead I use choppy sentences and make careless mistakes. But that could be because I just would spell check and print whenever I wrote an essay. It was much easier than re-reading it and making changes. Blogging is way easier since nobody grades you...well at least not publicly. I'm sure all the teachers out there have some grade in their head as they read this. (B? B-?) My mom is probably grading me the worst, but she loves me no matter how bad poorly I write :)

Thanks for reading this latest entry loyal blog stalkers. If it weren't for you, I probably wouldn't write these. Oh who am I kidding, I wrote one when I thought only 3 people read the blog. I'm sure we've doubled that by now. I hope you all have a good week and a better weekend.

-Scott

PS Whoa, apparently Michelle changed the look of the blog as I was writing this. She loves her green apparently. I need to stop saying apparently.