To the top of the world

Alisha, Heidi and me in Seattle . . . we just had to do it!

Our summer was filled with travel as we ventured to the two largest states in the union. We took a family trip to Alaska in July on the Norwegian Pearl. Matthew and I wanted to travel to Alaska to celebrate becoming debt-free as we paid off our student loans in 2011 but we postponed the trip for a year so family could come along. Of course we were no longer debt-free because of the recent purchase of our home, but Dave Ramsey doesn't discourage Home Loans. :0)  The highlight of our trip was our fishing charter in Ketchikan.

Turbot

My 11 lb. halibut

The winner at 23.8 lbs!

Mattie's, mine, Matt's Mom's and Matt's Dad's

Alisha in Ketchikan after a motorcycle ride

We reached our limit for Halibut before our 6 hours was up with our guide, but it didn't happen before catching other creatures like a turbot (used as bait), a couple sharks, and a rat fish. Matthew was proud to be the winner at 23.8 lbs. I was happy with my 11 lb. fish, especially since you have to bring it up from about 300 feet below.
















Other highlights from the trip: Pike Place Market and the space needle (Seattle), riding public transport and walking to the Mendenhall Glacier (Juneau) total cost: $4 per person!  $2 for Alisha because she was a student, riding the White Pass Railway and disc golfing (Skagway), cruising beautiful Glacier Bay and seeing Matt's cousin Kelsey ashore (she studies wild life) via camera lenses and binoculars, and riding bikes around Victoria, British Columbia. We also enjoyed the wonderful sights and eats while aboard the ship. I believe the hands down favorite dessert was the warm bread and butter pudding with caramel topping. We shared this amazing vacation with Matt's parents, my dad, sister and brother Steve, Matthew's sister and brother-in-law, Matt's other sister Heidi and Matt's cousin Jeff.

Our hotel lobby in Seattle

We stayed one night in Seattle before the cruise.  Woke up at 4:30 A.M. to leave for our flight. We were up until about 2 A.M. our time while sightseeing in Seattle.  It was a whole vacation in itself!

The View from our hotel room at Hotel 5. Awesome!

 



Pike Place Market - Pretty!

Maple bacon donuts . . . ? YES!

Sweet shade in our room. Look closely - it took me a while.
Hotel 5 2200 Fifth Avenue and Blanchard Seattle Washington
98121. I think it was built in 1976 and remodeled in 2011?

View from the Space Needle

Steve got caught in a street act!

Elevator at our Hotel

Next we were off to Juneau . . .

Mendenhall Glacier

Steve had to climb up a very wet cliff to get here.
Thank goodness for a zoom lens so I could catch this

Skagway was next. It was the longest stop we had - about 12 hours. Train ride, disc golfing and venturing around this very small town.

You could stand outside on the cars. Fun!

 

The White Pass Railway

Around Skagway

How often do you get to disc golf with
THIS in the background?!

Neat Restaurant

This group shot did have a mountain back there...

haha!

Running and walking path with exercise stops.
This scenic view gives a little motivation I guess.

Cruising Glacier Bay. Amazing. And these pictures cannot even come close to capturing God's extravagantly beautiful creation.

Chunk from Marjorie Glacier with a zoom lens

 Around the ship . . .

If at all possible you NEED to travel here sometime in your life!

Alisha's Grad Party

And the preparations begin . . .

Mom's classic high school symbol/college symbol fruit bowl



This was Matt's photo . . . he likes to catch her in funny acts. Not hard to do :0)



Dry ice in the water cooler

It was a hot day but it was fun anyway.  The last child of the family has graduated!

It's Cake Time!

Last Fall I took a cake decorating class at JoAnn. I learned a lot about decorating and I wasn't half bad at it either.  I also learned that I still dislike frosting when I make it.  I found a recipe online for whipped frosting and altered it but it's not as easy to decorate using it.  I have resorted to cupcakes. People like them and you can experiment with the filling. I guess I should have taken a frosting and filling making class because the decorating is going by the way side . . .
Anyway, I offered to make my sister's grad cake. But she didn't really just want a cake of course! We decided on blackberry and raspberry cream cheese filled golden butter cupcakes with whipped frosting. I guess I forgot to take the picture of the finished product, but here they are in the making!

I thought we should have a cake too. Alisha loved the "black" frosting I made for my Dad's 50th Birthday party. It's the same whipped frosting but I added a sleeve of Oreos too!  Black frosting without the interesting side affects in your mouth.  I thought it would be a great idea to put the cake in the shape of a graduation cap. Easier said than done but I think it worked out!

Frosting Recipe:

Heat milk and start adding flour slowly while stirring.  Do not let the flour clump up. Continue stirring until the mixture begins to thicken.  Let it cool so it does not melt the butter later. I stir it every so often so it doesn't get a gooey layer on the top. Beat soft butter and sugar with a mixer. Do not melt the butter first, it's better if it's been sitting out until soft. Cream with vanilla. Put flour and milk mixture into a clean bowl. Slowly add the butter, sugar and vanilla mixture. Beat until fluffy. If adding oreos, add them whole or crushed to the flour mixture when it's still hot. The oreos break up by themselves - so easy!

 

5 tbsp. flour

1 cup milk

(I use whole because it's creamy)

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

(I used powdered because that's how most frosting is made. My sister-in-law used regular granulated because I didn't specify and I think hers tasted even better! It takes a lot more time to beat the mixture if you use granulated because of the grainy texture)

1 tsp vanilla

 

Filling Recipe:

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup shortening

5 tbsp butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla

1 pkg cream cheese

pinch of salt

jam or fresh fruit

Beat the milk, shortening and butter. Be careful because you can easily lose your ingredients if they splash out. Add the cream cheese and vanilla. Add the powdered sugar. Add the jam. If using fresh fruit - puree in a blender first so any seeds and chunks can fit through your bismark tip.

 

 

 

 

Life as homeowners!

 

So, obviously owning a house is more work than renting, but ours did not need much work when we moved in.  Dog smell carpeting in one room, really sticky stuff on the kitchen counters, no grout in tile work behind stove area . . .

unfinished paint in the kitchen after patching . . .
I made the color more cheery too

a peach bedroom . . .

boring white front entry. . . 

no caulk around the tub, no stove . . .

random pieces of unattached trim, and outside - a post replacement and installation of a gutter. All but the last 3 on the list are done. You have to have a few things out of place I guess! Matthew is very excited for his newest addition, surround sound. I was reluctant because we are trying to pay this house off in less than 5 years . . . but . . . I have to admit - it sounds pretty cool! We even got to host Matt's Mom's family for Christmas! Now we're really feeling like adults.




mmm . . .

First Saturday breakfast in our new home!

busy . . . busy . . . busy . . .

It was a busy spring and I had a lot to think about besides moving. I finished my dad's quilt. It was supposed to be for Christmas - or at least that was the plan before I got my teaching position. Things got delayed a bit and I finished it at the very end of March.

Baby Violet's Quilt

I also had to get a quilt done for a college roommate's baby shower in April and a ragtime for my sister's graduation party in June.  I managed to finish all of them on time only because my sister's party wasn't until June 30th. It's extremely difficult to finish a quilt while the person is living with you but I discovered shutterfly books were a bit easier to conceal. I was waking up at 5:30 in the morning to get things done before she woke up to go to work with me. And this is why there were no blog posts in April, May and June :0)

Alisha's Quilt - finished pictures to come later. I guess I forgot to take any!
Click HERE to see the finished product.

Alisha's shutterfly book - I took her senior photos in summer 2011

Where we left off . . .

I guess I left off in February . . .

In March we looked at a house down the road a mile or so from Matt's parents. We really didn't plan on buying a house for another year but it was close to family and cheap, as it was a foreclosure. Well, it didn't really work out but it did give us house fever.  I realized that houses were not as expensive here as where I grew up and we really did almost have a down payment of 20% already saved.  And so the hunt began. We spent HOURS on the internet looking at houses.  It seemed long, although it really wasn't.  We really liked another foreclosure and put in an offer in April. The house was given to someone else even though we had the highest bid.  We were disappointed but later we found that God was protecting us from a huge, expensive mess. We had a few more experiences of looking at houses online, thinking 'this one looks nice' and we found that pictures can be very forgiving. On a Friday night we picked out 4 more houses to look at with our realtor and made a Monday appointment.  The next day another house popped up and it looked really nice - possibly beautiful cabinets, a nice laundry room and dining area, one room that looked a little interesting but could probably be fixed with paint . . .   I told Matt and I think that might be our house.  It was the first one we looked at that Monday night and I fell in love.  I hardly wanted to look at the other 4 houses. AND the room that looked iffy in the pictures turned out to have greenish walls that looked fine and a built in entertainment center that perfectly fits our flat panel television.  SCORE! And, by the way, it did have beautiful cabinets.  We wrote an offer and it was ours! We closed on May 31st and moved in June.

It's been a LONG time . . .

We have had a TON of changes in 2012 and as I figured . . . this blog would be forgotten.  This Christmas Break I spent organizing our house which I never really finished when we moved in.  Maybe now I'll have the time to be blogging...? We'll see!  I have about a hundred things to blog about . . . I guess we'll take them one at a time.  Two Thousand Twelve in Review. . .