Fall 2008

Since almost a month has past, most of you know that Andy's parents came into town for a weekend, needless to say, we had a blast with Bruce and Diane. We started our fun filled weekend on Friday morning, filling our bellies with a good ol' fashioned breakfast and a flicker at the picture show. Then we were off to Leavenworth for Oktoberfest. The spectacular fall scenery and great company made for a lovely drive over. We walked the town for a bit before we entered the garden of beer, brats and German entertainment. Later in the evening, we met this hilariously gregarious young woman from Bothell (yes, my home town). Long story short, she made the brat house an unforgettable experience. Since so much time has past, I can't remember her name at the moment but she will be appearing on The Price is Right on December 1st. You will know it's her, she will be were a shirt that says something about the Puget Sound. [Sorry no pic's of this adventure]

Saturday was, of course, dedicated to college football. Bruce and Diane suited up for a chilly evening Husky game. They bought authentic gear and everything--such supportive fans! Despite the gear and the awesome facial tattoos that Diane and I rocked, the Huskies lost another one...boo.

Side note: Either the tattoo itself or the process of removing this tattoo slightly burned my face. The shape of the burn roughly resembling a husky head. Ouch!

Sunday morning was quite the treat. Bruce and Diane made reservations at Salty's on Alki! Oh man, this is my favorite place to eat a weekend brunch. If any of you ever thought I was a light eater, you should see me here. The food is so good I can't hold back, nor should anyone hold back from gorging themselves on this myriad of gourmet breakfast foods. I seriously get some kind of rush, like a runner's high, from this food (somewhat kidding here). Maybe they put MSG or crack or something in it. I get excited even thinking about it. Sadly, Bruce and Diane had to leave after the meal.

Thank you so much for a great weekend!

Later that evening was Andy's flag football game. I tried taking some footage with my camera but every time I was recording he threw an interception, which isn't a typical occurrence. So, i quickly gave that up. I had Jess take a few videos the next week. I apparently have bad camera girl karma. So, Bruce and Diane these are for you:

Obviously, Andy is the player with the ball, if you can see the tiny figures. The clip on top is a diving touch down by our Andy K. On the bottom is his pass for the 1 point conversion. I could never forget the team's mascot: H BEAR! He loves attending these football games.

Here he is watching his Dad play.

Halas turns around to say, "Hey, what up?"

Halas, Andy and I attended my co-worker's Halloween party this year. Together, we came up with a pretty cute idea for a costume. Halas was a caterpillar, Andy was the cocoon, and I was the butterfly. We only got a picture of Halas as the caterpillar. Our idea came to us about an hour before the party started so we were running a bit late. Andy attached stuffed black socks to Halas' harness and an additional belt. Halas also has on tin foil antenna. The socks surprisingly lasted a long time at the party but the antenna barely lasted a minute on his head. It was very amusing, although, Halas might not think so.

I Tri-ed it!

Hey Guys, I finally finished my sprint triathlon.

Despite my not-so-great health and the cloudy weather, I had a good time. I think Andy had a good time as well, despite the early hour. It didn't actually rain during the race and I am very thankful for that.

Pretty much everything went according to plan. Our alarm went off at 4:30am and we were out the door by 5:15. My wave was scheduled for a 7:30 start but was delayed until 7:50-ish.

Here is my training and gym buddy, Dana. She is super cute and a very dedicated partner. She arrived like twenty minutes before Andy and I did! Can you tell that it's still dark out? It's just after 6am in the photo. And yes, she is a Cougar.

Not a super exciting video, but it's something for those who couldn't be there. Yah, it was finally light out by then.

My wave consisted of women 29 years and younger. In the picture above to the left, we are waiting for our wave to start. We didn't have any time to warm up in the water. They said we would have a few minutes in between wave starts to warm up but they lie! They wouldn't let us go deeper than our waists! I was really hoping to get that time to calm my nerves. Surprisingly, I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be. And we're off! The pic on the right is our mass start in the open water of Lake Washington. The swimming distance was a half mile, it took me 19 minutes to complete. Look, there I am coming out of the water and already pulling off my wetsuit. The baby blue swim cap suites me well, wouldn'tcha say? The picture on the right is also very attractive. I had some quail head goin' on. The funny look on my face is because my wet sports bra is making it very hard to get my shirt on.

The pictures from the bike start didn't turn out so well, oh well. Here they are anyway. In the first, I'm waving to the camera. The second is of my back, blowing by, so fast! (...not really) Keep in mind that the shorts I am wearing are for all three sports. So they are soaking wet right now and it's like 50-something degrees out. I was sooo cold. Dennis, can you imaging getting into the water with your biking shorts? Those chamois (pronounced /shami/, it's the butt pad) soak up a lot of water and the water continuously streams down your legs.

My bike time was 52 minutes covering 12 miles. 12 miles of wet hills, I might add. I was very conservative when flying down the super steep hills of Kirkland. The up hill climb was more gradual, still difficult but definitely not as scary as the possibility of hitting the concrete at 30+ miles and hour. So I went slow. A lot of people passed me here and I'm sure they had better times than I did. However, I still have all the skin that I started with and that's what is important. There was an ambulance at the bottom of one of the hills about 3/4ths through the course. I could see the EMT's trying to get a person on a stretcher. Later, I heard a lady wiped out pretty bad. That sight made me go even slower. Also, at the top of the first little hill, I saw a guy fall for no apparent reason (I'm thinking his chain fell off while switching gears). It was pretty funny--only because he got up right away. I fell off my bike last week and it really sucked. I feel for the guy.

I am so thankful that I had the abundance of training and practice that I did because when I got off the bike I didn't have rubbery legs. I had run the course earlier in the week, so I knew what was coming and I knew how to pace myself. My time was 23 minutes for 3 miles. I don't know who passed me during the bike but I'd like to think that I passed some of them on the run. I don't mean to toot my own horn...but I passed a lot of people during the run. Other than a muscle cramping in my shoulder blade, it was easy. Here I am running towards the finish line.

I did it! YAH! I've got my medal, a bottle of water and a big smile.

My overall time was 1 hour, 43 minutes.

P.S. I totally have a crush on the camera guy. ;)

An August Update

Not too much exciting news from the past posting. I've been teaching summer school for the past month and training for a sprint triathlon. My days have been mildly full. Andy and I have also taken a couple of weekend trips: Alaska and Lake Alta (or Alta Lake? I can never remember.).

Juneau's weather wasn't very cooperative for touring but we still had fun. We couldn't fly anywhere due to the low hanging clouds. So, good ol' dad hooked us up with some land tours that were pretty cool. We went dog mushing, and held some puppies too!

These dogs are in training for the Iditarod dog sled race. Many of them, like the two lead dogs in the picture, participated in last year's race with our tour guide's husband. The team did quite well, they were 27th(-ish) out of a few hundred.

The dogs will run until the age of 8 years or so (my memory could be wrong, Andy may correct this later). After their racing days, they are adopted out to families as pets. The trainer said they are great family pets and really enjoy their rest and relaxation by that age. They don't require much exercise after several years of running. So, they can be pretty ideal pets for a person with a full time job. Yes, this is a small plug for anyone looking for a pet in the near future.

We took a short tram ride up the side of Mount Roberts. The clouds were too thick to really see any views of Juneau but the scenery was still beautiful.

We rode on a whale watching tour that fed us and took us north west to find some wildlife. We saw sea lions, eagles-from afar, and humpback whales. There were about 13 whale feeding together when we arrived. They are typically independent mammals but once in a while they work together to really feast. There is a lead female that sings to the others, telling them when to blow bubbles and when to swim up to the surface. The boat had a hydrophone that allowed us to hear the songs, it was really cool. The whales swim below a school of fish, blow bubbles that push the fish to the surface and then swim straight up, leaping above the water level, mouth open, landing on their portion of fish. The pictures don't do justice for the experience but here's one anyway.

Zip lining was our last tour of the trip. We were speeding through the rain forest (while it was raining) over the old pit mines from the gold rush. It was exciting and I totally wasn't scared or nervous at first.

How attractive the safety gear was!

More recently, while many of you were in Ocean Shores, we went to Alta Lake with Kyle, Tiff, Gabriel and some of Kyle's extended friends. We didn't take any pictures but it did have some great Eastern Washington scenery. Andy and I went tubing, jet skiing, and I even got up on water skiies.

Hopefully I will be going to Heron Island for Labor Day weekend?

Well, I will wrap up this post with a pic of the two men that I love. Halas totally thinks he is a human. He actually fell asleep sitting like this, head falling to his side and all. It was hilarious.

I hope all is well with everyone. We should see each other soon!

A summer time update

It's summer time and I love it. I've been cleaning
like a mad woman for two+ weeks for all of the
company that Andy and I have had.


A couple weekends ago, my college buddy came down from Canada. We went to sushi, then dancing. We had a blast as usual, that's all that needs to be said. Look at me and Gail. Don't we look so innocent?





Another good friend of mine from college has moved into the house with Andy and me. Julie just graduated from Colorado State (I think) with a Master's in Speech-Language Pathology. Along with her diploma, she brought her puppy, Simon. He's a five months old Springer Spaniel--soooo cute! Simon and Halas are getting along splendidly. They wrestle and chase to no end. It's fabulous not having to entertain either of them and they are still exhausted at the end of the day.


Andy's parents, Bruce and Diane, came up for the fourth of July weekend. If you know them, you know that they are so awesome. We can do anything and have a great time. We made fresh ice cream, barbecued, and they taught us a new card game: "Up and down the river." We took them to Gas Works Park for the fire works--a big thanks to Dennis and Jess for saving a spot for us--they were in awe of the show. Oh, we played shuffle board at the Knarr before the fireworks. It was a great day.


On Saturday, Andy felt a little under the weather so we laid low, which is a great excuse to eat a lot of yummy food. We ate breakfast at the Maltby Cafe. If you haven't been there before, you need to try it, just bring pants that have an elastic waistband. After we came out of the food coma from the Cafe, Bruce and Diane spoiled us with a abalone and crab dinner. WOW, what a meal!



They left Sunday morning, the weekend was top quality! They really are amazing people.

Now that our company has left, I get a break from cleaning. Well, only a little break. Having two dogs in one house can create a really hairy mess. This week I'm hoping to get a bit more serious about training. Most of you know by now that I'm hoping to complete a sprint triathlon at the end of the summer. The sprint tri is much shorter than a full triathlon so don't be too impressed. I think I'll participate in the Kirkland or the Mercer Island sprint tri in September. Let's hope that I don't have any more injuries before then.



Since Halas and I have had so much time together lately, I'll conclude this post with a super cute picture of him. I love our dog.

This will only happen once, thank you George Bush!
He gave me a bunch of money today :)

A month later...

Sorry guys, I gotta find a grove with this blogging thing, I always forget.
So some big events went down in this past month: I turned 24 years old, I was involved in a car accident and Andy and I almost moved to Idaho. Crazy!

My birthday was awesome. It was exactly what I wanted in a birthday, good weather, good food, drinks and great company. Thank you so much to everyone that helped with making my birthday celebration so much fun.

My car's axel was messed up, a wheel was bent and the other driver strategically hit three different panels making for a long stay in auto body shop. I still don't have my car back but i should get it this week. I'm thinking of it as a three week rejuvination at the auto spa.

To move on to something more interesting, Andy and I visited Twin Falls, Idaho last weekend. Overall, our idea of living there was "doable." It was what we imagined, not horrible but not somewhere we would try to live. There was beatiful scenery and offordable housing. I have some friends that just moved over there as well and we had a great time hanging out with them.
Andy did very well in his interview and was offered the job by the next Monday. However, he declined the offer by Wednesday morning. So, to releave some of you, we will not be moving to Idaho.

On the other hand, the possibility of moving to Spokane is a little stronger now. Last Monday and Tuesday, two women from the WSU and EWU's SLP grad program (that's the Speech-Language Pathology program I'm waitlisted at) came to my work to observe our program. One woman is the director and supervisor of the preschool that is within this SLP program. The other woman is a teacher in the school. They are thinking about including the little one's, about three years old, into their pre-school program as well. So, they wanted to see how we run our class.

They watched my class for almost two hours and it went pretty well. At snack time, while the kids are quietly stuffing their mouths, I started some small talk about the SLP program in Spokane. I mentioned that I was on the waitlist for each school. The teacher, not the director, said, "Your totally in!" I shrugged off her comment because I know that can't happen so easily but the women continued to inquiry about my application. The director took my name and asked my a few more questions. She told me she was "thoroghly impressed with my work" HOLY CRAP!
Then she went to my coworker that just graduated from this program and she and my boss gave me great reviews. My coworkers are so amazing! The director woman called each school right then and there and had my name moved to the top of the list! AHHH!

The next day she explained that there are no guarentees because someone has to decline for me to get in. However, many of the out of state people decline because the tuition is so expensive. So, she actually told me, "there is a strong likelihood" that I will get in. If there is good news, I should find out by mid-June-ish.

That's the update on my life. Other than the wicked virus/head-chest cold that I have right now, I'm reall happy. I feel like my life has been exiciting with all of these new opportunities arising.

Hey everyone, let's hang out soon, 'K? I love you guys

Take care and don't get sick!

I'm blogging now

Ok, I'm apart of the blogging crew now! My blogging cherry has been popped. It's a big day.