Maui Babymoon 2012

So before I post about the other big event in our life (moving into our house!), I thought I'd be chronological and post about our Hawaii trip.

This was our "babymoon" or last trip alone without our little one. It was really nice to just be together and have a relaxing trip! We enjoyed snorkeling, walking/hiking, reading at the cabana, and eating at dives (we're pretty brave). We didn't do any really fancy tours or anything, and just had a low-key, relaxing vacation. It was just what I needed to get my mind off of our impending carpet purchase and move.

Family picture! I have a better one on my phone, but I've decided to just post real camera pictures up here. It's classy to have your first family photo be an arm shot.

Henry doing the haka. He's real tough.

Our last few days it was a bit stormy (notice the sky resembling Seattle, and our hoodies). So there was no swimming in the ocean, but it was great to see the huge waves!

One of the places we really liked, Ono Kau Kau. I LOVE macaroni salad. If only it were healthy.

We did do the infamous "Road to Hana" - a winding road that takes you on the north coast of Maui to Hana. There are lots of little waterfalls and stuff to see along the way, but our favorite was definitely the black sand beaches! They were so cool!

Baby now has proof that she's been to the black sand beaches :)

The view of the beaches from the parking lot. The waves were huge here too!

Shave ice. With ice cream. It was amazing.

The beginning of the Road to Hana.

Cross dressing/posing:

Isn't she charming?

On a hike at Kapalua. This was the most gorgeous part of the hike!

Another shot to prove to our future offspring that she has been to Hawaii. I look like I'm posing all fancy but really I just didn't want my hat to fly off in the wind.

And last but not least, this is the beach and cabana right by our condo. It was so gorgeous!

Watch Me Grow (part 1)

Here is the first of a series of belly pics watching my belly enlarge! This is for you, grandparents :)

(The last one was taken just a few minutes ago so this is a record for me for up-to-date blog-posting.)

Fall 2011 Happenings

So it turns out my parents actually read my blog and want me to update it! Well ok folks, you got it! Today is a snow day, meaning they closed my office and since I don't have much to do outside of labwork (not really available remotely) I am blogging. Totally makes sense.

Biggest news since September 2011.... there is baby inside me! The little one will have a known gender in a few more weeks and will make an appearance somewhere around June 24th. Here is a picture of a stick that I peed on in case you don't believe me:

And the baby itself... this was a few weeks ago so I'm sure baby is much bigger now. My niece thought it looked like a dog, but I'm pretty sure it's a baby.

This was the Fall of Utah trips. I've flown to-and-from Utah 3 times, and next week Henry will make his third trip to the motherland as well. The first trip I made was for my lovely roommate Leslie's wedding. Here she is being happy about marriage:

The second trip was for Thanksgiving. All of my family gathered for my nephew Sam's baptism! Here he is with a great quilt my mom made:

We also celebrated another joint birthday with a chocolate chunk cake that my sister Kim made. Unfortunately I wasn't feeling exactly up to par (silly baby) so I didn't get to enjoy it quite as much as I would have liked. There's always next year!
Me and my sisters. That's the best part of Becca's face, you really don't want to see her right cheek...

The third trip was for another wedding of an old roommate. Deanna looked gorgeous, but I didn't seem to take many pictures unfortunately...

We also got to spend time with family and friends. Henry loved his new baby nephew, Daniel, and Daniel loved him too! Henry could make him calm down and be happy when no one else could. Here's Daniel in a too big snow suit that just looked too cute!

Henry practicing entertaining a baby... he'll be doing a lot of this in a few months :)
Little Santa devil with red-eyes. He's not really possessed, we promise.

In between all those things, Henry dressed up as Waldo for Halloween and carved a pumpkin that won the ward trunk-or-treat contest:

I made a nativity out of lab supplies for an impromptu White Elephant gift exchange at my job. It was pretty fun.

We went snow-shoeing for the first time up in the Snoqualmie Pass. I ended up getting a blister and walking the trail without snowshoes (thus Henry is holding them), but it was still fun to get out and see all the pretty snow!

Little did we know it would be coming to us in a few weeks...SNOWMAGEDDON! There is a road behind me in this pic, but you wouldn't know it since it's all the same color.

And this is on the trail behind my work. It was really pretty, but I'm glad I can just work from home and not drive in it...

Oh yeah... and we're buying a house :) More details on that to come!

Memories of Sunshine

Now that Summer is over in the Northwest here are some memories from our sunnytime/summertime. I realized how it's kind of lame much I talk about the weather with family and friends, but it's just so opposite from what I've experienced before that it's still interesting to me... I think it also means I'm a boring adult. Whatever.

I know we're cool because we took an archery class through Redmond Parks & Rec. Maybe this just increases our dork factor, since we did make many references to LOTR and perfecting our Legolas form (you know where he shoots an arrow and then loads another one in one gracious motion? Never quite got that down).

This is my artsy shot. Those fluffy looking arrows are called "floo floos". They are for shooting "pizza boxes". All of these terms are extremely official.

Pizza boxes. This was the part where we got to shoot up in the air at a moving target. This one always impressed the people driving by. In fact, we had multiple cars stop and watch our amazing-ness.

I didn't just pose with that bow, I also used it to massacre unassuming balloons. Don't be led astray by my demure smile.
Look at that form! Henry is one hot archer.

We also had another visit from family, this time from Henry's sister and her family. We had lots of fun visiting with these adorable girls:

And of course enjoying the beauty of Seattle. Clare's husband Dan did his residency here, so he knows the in's and out's of the city (but especially the hospital cafeterias).

Hidden underneath the cutie in pink is another baby due to come out very soon!

We also spent a weekend in Vancouver BC. It's great to be able to go to an exotic country like Canada with less than a 3-hour drive! In Canada, we had many strange new experiences including eating poutine (think french fries on steroids, if steroids were cheese curds and gravy), using coins instead of $1 bills, streets with no left-turn lanes, and... that's about it. But we did have a good time.

We went to the Richmond Night Market and enjoyed the culinary delights of Asia, as well as all of the cheap Chinese goods you can fathom. Don't mind the weird picture, something happened with the flash and Henry's hand.

Our marriage once again survived the test of riding a tandem bike. We did this once before in Provo and I almost killed us by trying to take one-armed pictures while we were riding. It wasn't pretty. This time I think we did much better. We successfully road our bike around Stanley Park without crashing or fighting for control.

At the Puyallup (pronounced Pee-oo-awl-up) Fair we found SpiderPig (think the Simpson's movie)...

...and a bunny with a good Dungeons and Dragons name (not that we do dorky things like play D&D...)

Oh yeah. And last but not least, I turned into an underwater explorer AND an octopus.

PS These photos are for my niece, Lucy who saw this photo (4th one down) and promptly began to exclaim with awe "Aunt Tori went to SPACE?!?!?!". Hopefully she'll think I am the coolest aunt now.