The feast after Thanksgiving

Abby and I traveled to Tacoma for Thanksgiving this year. We spent Thanksgiving weekend with her family. We surprised her mom by meeting her at the Thanksgiving day church service. We had to get up early to make it in time, but it was worth it because we definitely surprised her. The service was awesome too. The meal at the Marions was fantastic. Thank you Marty for the delicious food.

We're thankful for loving families, terrific friends, great jobs, our house, driveable vehicles, and a loving spouse.

On Saturday, Abby and I migrated north with her family to have lunch with the Seattle Marions (Abby's older brother and his wife and two kids). Josh cooked lamb and pork for lunch; man was it scrumptulescent. We spent the afternoon chatting, playing with the kids, and eating great food.

Here are a few pictures from Saturday:

The Terp Inn under construction

Over the years many of our friends and family have lived in and visited our house. Up until last week, we had never made any improvements to the guest rooms. With the exception of the two-week stint we spent in one of the rooms, we've just never spent much time in them, so we never saw the urgent need to make changes. We apologize to our guests. That's all changed. Anyone who plans to visit or stay with us in the future will be in for a nice surprise.

We finally built up the courage to paint our guest rooms. After a week of wrestling over paint colors, we finally decided to paint one room a mocha color and the other a caramel color. We pulled the oak-colored molding off the wall and painted it white, and repainted the closet doors white. The rooms are looking great. We're not done yet, though. We picked up crown molding from the store and will try and get that installed in December.

For anyone planning to visit in the next month, don't worry, the Terp Inn is open, you just may have to put up with a little construction activity.

International date night

What's a guy to do on a Saturday night when he's married to a smoking-hot woman? Cross the international border for an intriguing date night, that's what.

I've had a hankering for sushi for the last month. No ordinary sushi restaurant in Bellingham would do. Abby had the brilliant idea of going to Vancouver, B.C. and making a fun date night out of it. We spent the last week planning our night.

We left the house shortly before 5 p.m. with our NEXUS cards in hand, crossed the border quickly and easily in the NEXUS lane, and made it to the restaurant by 6 p.m. With directions and a map book, we didn't get lost once on the way there.

Our reservations were for 6:30 p.m. We had a half-hour to wonder the street and browse through a few shops. We stopped in a candy store and reminisced about all the different kinds of candy we liked. We were tempted but didn't purchase anything. When we finally got to Shijo, everything on the menu looked good. All we had eaten that day was french toast for breakfast. Needless to say, we were starving. Just for the two of us, we ordered two appetizers and four sushi rolls. For those of you who have eaten sushi before, that's a healthy helping of food. The food was delicious. Well worth the drive.





We then headed to our next destination for dessert and drinks. After spending about 15 minutes searching for parking, we finally arrived at Delilahs. It was very nice and cozy and had great mood lighting. We shared a slice of vanilla cheesecake; and let me just say that it might have been the best cheesecake I've ever had.

We made it home by 10:30. We would have been home a little earlier had we not taken the wrong bridge out of Vancouver and spent 30 minutes slightly lost. Thank goodness for map books. That thing has saved my bacon several times in Vancouver.

I'm very thankful to have such a beautiful wife to dote on and tote around.

Winner winner chicken dinner

Abby called me at noon-30 today. I answered with a curt, "Unless this is an emergency, I'm going to have to call you back; I'm really busy." I called her back less than 30 minutes later to learn some great news. No, we're not pregnant. She had just won two tickets in her company drawing to the Dec. 7 Seahawks game against the New England Patriots. Booyah! If had known that was what she was going to say, I probably would have answered the phone a little more nicely. I'm really excited to go to the game despite the fact the Seahawks are abysmal this season. This will make it three years in row that we've made it to at least one game.


(Oct. 2007, game against the Rams)

One thing is for sure, the game won't live up to the same hype that we felt when we got to go to the playoff game against the Redskins last year. That was amazing.

Slumber party for James' 28th

I spent part of the weekend at a slumber party in Bellevue with seven of my best friends. We had a blast celebrating James Aires' 28th birthday.

We played basketball...


played video games (Wii fit)...


... ate delicious sandwhiches and stayed up until 1:30 a.m. It was A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

Can you believe that at 28 years old, James can still dunk a basketball?


One of the funnier parts of the weekend came when we were playing basketball. We decided that the only way to determine who should have really won the presidential election was with a friendly game of basketball. We divided into two basketball teams; those who voted Democrat versus those who voted Republican. Surprisingly we had an even three on three.

Matt Metsker was hurt and couldn't play.


You'll be happy to know that the GOP (Dustin, Corey and Taylor) beat the Dems (Tim, Peter and James) in three straight games. We (the Republicans) decided that if the Democrats hadn't spent so much time trying to share the wealth (I mean ball), been more selfish and taken more shots, and made the tough decisions that weren't the most popular but were the best in the long run for everyone, they might have had a chance at winning. We eventually switched up teams and won games with bipartisan efforts.





That's me, trying to dunk on a hoop a few inches shorter than a normal rim.


That's Tim trying to dunk on the same rim.


A big thanks to Taylor Swedberg Photography for providing the pictures. I accidentally deleted all the pictures and videos I took during the weekend. I was pretty bummed when I realized what I had done.

It finally dried up

This is going to sound like a weird tradition. You see that marker in the picture? You know what that has been used for? I think two of my roommates from college can explain pretty clearly what it was used for.



This marker has been used prior to two weddings: Taylor and Mindy Swedberg's and James and Ingrid Aires' weddings in 2004.

The tradition started with me before I got married. My groomsmen, mainly my college roommates, thought it would be funny to sign their names on my rear the day of my wedding. They had their way with me and I spent part of my honeymoon with names and slogans on my rear. It didn't exactly wash off very easily.

I wasn't about to let any one of them get away with anything less than I what I got the day of my wedding. SO I BOUGHT THE BIGGEST PERMANENT MARKER I COULD FIND. (That's the marker in the picture.) Taylor and James both got a taste of the marker.

There are some great stories and memories behind this marker and I'm sad to say it finally dried out. Not to worry, the store has plenty more and there are still four roommates left to get married. Hahahahahahaha!

Check out the fossil I found

Guess what I did for the very first time? Yup, saw real fossils in the wild. Want to find a cool fossil like me? Here's how:

Step 1. Visit Chuckanut Drive after a rockslide.



2. Get private access to the slide zone



Step 3. Search out that sweet fossil, like the one below.



And it's just that easy.

In case you don't recognize the fossil on the side of that boulder, it's a palm tree frond. That rock is so big that its nearly the size of a small car.

Most fossil hunters don't wear orange vests and yellow hard hats when they're hunting. I do though, because I take it seriously.

Truth is, we had a rockslide on Chuckanut Drive near Bellingham. And for work I got to go to the slide area and check it out. I've been selling the story to the media for the last couple days. They love a good emergency. Its not uncommon for our maintenance crews to find fossils in the rocks when they slide off the hillside and onto the roadway. This just happens to be a really big, really nicely preserved fossil. According to some of the other engineers who've worked these slides before, they said that a fossil like this would sell for $5,ooo. To bad it was too heavy to put in the back of my jetta.

Yeahahahahaha!!!!

No, that is not Steve Irwin. Yes, that is Tim attempting to touch a real alligator. Watch the video to see if he survives. This happened in May 2007 when a gaggle of us traveled to the Everglades in Florida.

It was a full house

Abby and I hosted her family this weekend and we had a lot of fun together.


Before her family left to come up to Bellingham, Abby's dad called me to ask if I needed him to bring any of his tools. I said, "No, I don't think you need to. Why?" He said, "Okay. I just wanted to make sure; we dont' want the Vann's to out do us." I laughed after I recalled the blog post that Nick and Andi posted about her family doing stuff around their house all weekend.

What Abby and I really wanted was for the Marions to come have a fun weekend at our place with no strings attached. They host us all the time and we wanted to return the favor. Plus, it's nice to not have to drive to Tacoma every once in a while in order to see family.

But... truth be told, there were a few things I was looking forward to having Bob's help with.

(To mimic Nick and Andi's post)
Bob helped me do the following:

• Buy and install a new battery in the truck. (He helped me save $41 at Sears. Score!)
• Remove the old cd player and install the used one from the truck in the Neon
• Fix stereo wiring in the Neon
• Properly wire and operate our new DVD/VHS recorder
• And, on his own accord, straighten the alignment on the closet door in their guest bedroom because it was bothering him

The rest of the time we just hung out and had fun. Abby and Becca found time to bake a pear-cranberry pie together.


We even found time to go bowling together. Bob and Marty couldn't remember the last time they had been bowling. I think Bob may practice in his spare time though because he bowled several strikes and had the highest score. Something smells fishy there.



We went to church Saturday night so we could sleep in Sunday morning and watch the Seahawks lose.



We're very thankful to have a wonderful family.


Have you ever seen an 8-year old bowl before?

We got dressed up this year

Did you see what we were for Halloween?


That's my cowgirl! H-O-T, hot!


Notice the bling attached to the belt. I customized it.

Don't we just look like we walked off the prairie and into a saloon?

I'm most excited about today because...

Today is election day. That's not why I'm excited. I'm excited about today because it means that all the campaining can stop. No more giant poster-sized mailers in the mailbox. No more telephone calls (for those who still have home phones). No more negative advertisements during commercials on the radio and tv. No more candidates interrupting my halftime shows to pretend like they care about sports. No more roadside signs. No more of any of it for at least one year, hopefully. Since they campaigned for two years for this election, we can assume they will campaign for three next time, right? I'm not sure what the TV media are going to cover now that the election is practically over.

You know what my prayer has been for the last week? No, not that the campaigning and negative ads would stop. Regardless of who gets elected, I've been praying that God would use that candidate for His glory, His kingdom and revive this country. Neither candidate will make everyone happy. But God can use them to do miraculous things. That's what I'm praying for.

Best of luck to those who voted. I hope the right candidate wins.

Willamette Valley wine tasting

Abby and I drove to Salem, Oregon this weekend to visit our friends Kevin and Becky Hussey. It was nearly a six-hour drive from Bellingham, but it was worth it. We had a blast touring the Willamette Valley vineyards and tasting wines. We found time on Saturday to visit the Honeywood Winery, Willamette Valley Vineyard and Firesteed vineyard and winery. Our favorite was Firesteed.

Here are a few of our favorite pictures from this weekend. One of the funniest pictures is where we're all jumping in the middle of a vineyard. Kevin has this fantastic cheerleader-arms-point-down jump going on.

This may have also been the best weekend to take a drive across Washington and parts of Oregon. You'll notice in the background of the pictures that the leaves are changing colors. The trees and vineyards were all ablaze with color. On our way down, Abby and I would point and say, "Oh, look at that tree!," or "no, look over there," or "did you see that one!," "wow!" Abby's favorite trees were the ones with red in them.