Black Tie Wedding

Congratulations Jami and Steve!

Jaron and I attended our first Black Tie Wedding this weekend. It was so fun to get all dressed up and fancy for a night. I was completely stressed trying to find a dress and while it wasn't the most beautiful, I was pleased with my dress. Jaron also got a tux and boy did he look good in it! It was a beautiful ceremony, followed by an amazing dinner and then lots of dancing and singing throughout the evening. Jami is also Jaron's voice teacher and her and Steve both have wonderful voices, so we were able to hear them sing that night and see them get married. There are quite a few pictures below, hope you enjoy!!

The first picture taken of us that evening.

They lifted the Bride and Groom in chairs and started dancing with them in the air, I got the picture right before they put them back down.

A full length picture of my gown, and my 5th Shirley Temple of the evening!

Here is a close up of the top of my gown, the bottom just flowed down to the floor.

My handsome husband in his tux!

Here is a close up of us during dinner.

When we got home from the wedding we realized we never had a full length of the two of us together taken, so we put on the timer and took it ourselves.

While it was so much fun to get all dressed up and have somewhere to go, we were exhausted when we got home and promptly changed into more comfortable clothes!

Happy Anniversary!!

Just wanted to wish my parents Happy Anniversary...I think this is your 29th? I appreciate the example you have set for me and all of your children. We love you!

This is at our wedding reception in Yakima. I didn't have one of just the two of them looking at the camera though. Sorry...This is Baltimore, from when we lived in Maryland and they came to visit us. There are decorated crabs ALL OVER downtown Baltimore.

This is from their most recent trip out east to see us...Christ's Church Burial Ground.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! WE LOVE YOU!

The Birthday Boys

Last Saturday was Aspen and Haven's 3rd birthday! I can't believe how fast they are growing up. We had a Bob the Builder party, at their request, and it turned out great! I helped Sarah and Mike do a little of the planning and prep work since they just had a 4 week old baby girl to take care of. Surprisingly they don't sell the Bob the Builder party supplies in stores anymore, so we had to order EVERYTHING online. Luckily we found everything we needed...and more.

Here is Jaron granting Haven's request..."Jaron, pick me up...PLEEEEASE." The boys were so excited about their cake. We found a Bob the Builder cake set online and then Sarah ordered this amazing Double Chocolate Mousse cake from a bakery. They were nice enough to put a road on it for us. This cake was probably the HEAVIEST cake I've ever tried to lift and if you love chocolate you would have loved this cake.

Jaron holding Aspen so he can see his cake...I think Jaron was asking Aspen to explain everything that was on the cake.

I know this isn't the greatest picture but I love it! If you look close you can see Haven's little tongue sticking out just waiting for when he can dive into the cake. In the background is the only picture of me from that day!! I was so busy having Jaron pose with the boys that I forgot to pose myself.Here they are opening their gifts from us...Bob the Builder pajamas and Thomas the Engine slippers. I think they were more excited to open all their toys more then their pj's and slippers, but now they seem to be enjoying them.This was the last picture taken that day, Haven was instructing Mike and Jaron on how to get his truck out of the box, put batteries in it, and make it work. I didn't get pictures of all the festivities that day. But we had a pinata that the little kids loved, and I think Mike and Jaron wanted to take a crack at it too! Then we were going to have water balloons, but since it was so cold Mike blew them up instead and the kids had fun popping all of them. We had a fun day with the boys. Happy Birthday Aspen & Haven...we love you!

More Fun At The Fair

I made Amy walk around the entire food section at the fair so I could evaluate all of my culinary options, weigh the price-value ratios accordingly, and generate a mental menu of what I wanted to eat. First course, one jumbo smoked turkey leg. I've seen these neanderthalic monster morsels at other events and they always look delicious. Plus it's turkey, that's pretty much a health food. One giant slab-o-turkey for $6. I fork over my money, and the guy hands me a leg like an ice cream cone, with the base wrapped in foil. I was like, uh, how about a plate and maybe a plastic fork and knife? The guy gave me a weird look and started helping the next customer/victim.
These turkey legs may walk the walk, but they don't talk the talk. It actually tasted a lot like ham, I guess from the smoking process. It was very fatty, and absolutely impossible to eat. I tried to bite chunks out of this thing like a savage without getting my face and everything else covered in grease but I was fighting a losing battle. If you ran the numbers you'd probably find that I ate like 45 cents out of my six dollar turkey leg... Too bad this giant apple wasn't for sale to eat. It won 1st place for the goliath fruit competition, weighing in at a whopping 2.06 pounds. It doesn't look that big in the picture but it was about the size of a giant grapefruit.

Crazy Traffic and Ringing Ears

Amy said it all in the title caption. We won tickets to a Rascall Flatts concert through my office and it took us two hours in New Jersey to drive about 2 miles to get into the concert. We missed the opening act but it was a good show. Here's another shot of the Rascall Flatts concert. The had a 30 foot projector screen that they had different images on the whole time. The lead singer has a great voice but he's a heavier guy and sings a full octave above where most other artists sing so it's a little strange to see someone so big sing so incredibly high. They put on a really entertaining show though.
One of our favorite over the last couple of years is Daughtry. We decided to spring for tickets to their show at the York, PA fair. This concert was the title reference to ringing ears. The opening act featured the loudest blasting of rock music through gigantic speakers I have ever heard. We might not ever go to another concert in this setting, it was so loud our ears were still ringing the next day! When Daughtry performed though it was an awesome show.
We found out that this was the last show for Daughtry's 2 year tour, after our show they were heading back to LA to record their second album. To celebrate the tour they invited all of the stage crew to come out and perform with them. They were pretty awful but clearly enjoying their one shot at actually performing on stage rather than just setting it up and taking it down. We counted about 16 people including the band and the crew performing this song.
One last Daughtry picture...the stage lighting was pretty impressive for a show at the fair.

August Baby Girls

This is a little late, but we just wanted to congratulate some of our friends on the arrival of their little girls this past month.

Danian Harlow Malstrom - Born Friday, August 15th, 2008

Naomi Jane Eyre - Born Sunday, August 17th, 2008

Congratulations to the Malstrom's and the Eyre's on such adorable little girls.

Gavin DeGraw and Elephant Ears

We braved the hurricane weather and drove to York, PA this past Saturday. While it was absolutely storming here, the rain had subsided in York and it was actually a beautiful evening. The first thing we saw when we pulled into the parking lot was this huge rainbow with vibrant colors...

the second thing we saw was a flashing sign for Elephant Ears! Since Jaron and I both grew up in Washington we are both used to having this wonderful desert at the Fairs, but since moving away from WA we have been unable to find this fattening food anywhere. Utah doesn't have them, Maryland doesn't have them, and until now we couldn't find them in Pennsylvania. Here they have Funnel Cakes, which are good, but just not the same. As you can tell by the pictures below, we were really excited! Jaron was trying to wait patiently for the guy to hurry and make it, and once it was finally done we could hardly wait to take a bite!




While the Elephant Ears were great surprise, the main event that night was the Gavin DeGraw concert. We were in the 10th row pretty close to the center and had a great view. Since it had been raining the entire day a lot of people didn't show up and the seats directly in front of us were empty, giving us a straight shot to the stage. The past year we have been to quite a few concerts and I was extremely impressed with Gavin. He had you laughing as much as you were singing along, and you were entertained the ENTIRE time. He stayed after the show and started shaking hands with everyone and posing for pictures. I didn't want to fight all the screaming teenage girls, so I settled for my not-so-great pictures from the 10th row. I got a few that were really close, but the lighting is all off so this is the best I have to show. All-in-all we had a fabulous evening and we were glad we took the 90 min. trip to get there.

The picture above is actually Gavin DeGraw's brother, his voice and his look are very similar to his brother and it had everyone in the audience confused. No one knew who he was, until Gavin came out later in the show and said it was his brother. There were even girls screaming, "I love you Gavin" during his performance and all he would say is..."my name's not Gavin." But then wouldn't say what it was or anything. While his brother was an amazing entertainer, he was horrible! He sang pretty well, but that was it.

That is Gavin above, I tried to get some good pics of him sitting at the Baby Grand piano covered in sparkles, but this pic turned out better.

Labor Day in New Hope

On Labor Day we decided to explore New Hope, PA. It's a little historic town right on the Delaware river about 40 miles north of Philadelphia. It was known in colonial days as the half way point between New York City and Philadelphia, so travelers would frequently stay the night here and then ferry over the Delaware in the morning.

The morning started early because Amy wanted to check out this flea market they put on. Luckily we made it out of Rice's Market pretty quickly and got into the historic downtown around 10 am. Our first order of business--find a bathroom. There was a little section of indoor shops right where we parked on the street but as you can see from the picture below they had locking doors on the bathroom that required 25 cents to unlock. I told Amy if they wanted to play that game I would just relieve myself in the hallway and leave them 50 cents for good measure but she did not approve. So we ventured on, unwilling to donate a quarter for the use of the bathroom. Besides, they probably charge for toilet paper inside anyway.

Still looking for a bathroom we found Coryell's Ferry and walked down a narrow pathway between the ice cream store that we wanted to try, which was closed for the holiday, and a private residence. We took a look at their ferry and decided to pass on the ferry in favor of finding a bathroom that didn't charge. (The city was known as Coryell until a fire burned down some mills and they considered the rebuilding effort a "New Hope" for the city) That led us to a canal. Apparently they used to transport boats and up this canal or towpath, which was built in the early 1800's, pulling the boats with donkeys. The canal runs parallel to the Delaware river.
The picture below represents the highlight of the trip--a feeding frenzy of tiger sharks. Ok, I guess they were just fish, but big fish. These fish were bigger than the ducks floating above them. After we saw this cool pond of giant fish I had to feed them. We found a Mexican restaurant that was well-reviewed, it ended up being ok. Hilarie called while we were in there looking for date ideas for her new special friend. After dispensing advice, chomping on some food, and yes, you guessed it, using the bathroom, I grabbed a huge handful of tortilla chips and set out to feed these giant fish. The ducks kept getting in the way, but I crunched up the chips and started tossing the crumbs in and apparently ducks and fish like Mexican food too because they went wild for these chips. It reminded me of wild piranhas in the Amazon on the Discovery channel, right in front of us. Finally Amy got bored and made us leave. After a nice walk around town and some window shopping we got some ice cream at the 2nd best place in town and headed home.