from tropical storm to winter storm

just a quick update... we made it home to spokane today, miraculously. the last two scheduled flights from seattle to spokane last night got cancelled, and so did the first 4 scheduled flights for this morning... i dont know what to tell you, but after realizing our second flight got cancelled we caught wind of a secret, NON-SCHEDULED flight, leaving in 30 minutes that was carrying most of last nights passengers to spokane... all i can say is, wow! it took me two garbage sacks covering up my keen sandals, a frisbee to dig out my jeep, and some CRAZY driving to get us finally home. its seriously like a blizzard out there. check it out, records are being set here in spokane for accumulated snow fall. 

i trucked through snow past my knees in the front yard as i made my way up to our house when we got home, this pic is taken in the back yard... we will fill you in on kauai as soon as we catch up with this snow! cheers!

autumn in spokane

aaron and i decided we would send out a christmas card this year...we didn't last year for some reason. having a good christmas card involves having a GOOD picture to put on it...so we attempted to take our christmas picture this year using a gorillapod and our camera. we walked to franklin park, which is 2 houses down from our house, hooked our gorillapod to the tree branch and set the 10 sec timer on the camera...here are a couple pics that we didn't choose for the card :)


it is SO hard to take a cute picture playing with leaves...as you can see, we tried and failed plenty of times. i was determined to try to get a good one though :)




by the end of our "photo shoot," our hands were frozen and i was DONE with taking pictures...where is ryan when we need him!

tuba man

if you are a seattle sports fan, then you have at one sporting event or another crossed paths with seattle's iconic tuba man. his sudden and tragic death puts a stamp on this year in sports for the pacific northwest...
seattle times article

Toilet Bowl 2008

its been a tough year for washington sports. with the start of the nba season i had a hard time trying to pick out the players on the oklahoma city thunder... for those of you who dont recognize that name or know what the heck im talking about, no, that is not a wnba franchise... even though it sounds like one. no, that is in fact the new name of the once and former seattle suuuuuper sonics. sad i know. even sadder is the idea of now turning south on i-5 to the portland trailblazers to get my thug on. actually having b-roy on the squad helps a lot, but i think im going to check out those underachieving zags now that i am on this side of the mountains. a team who sleeps through a weak a** conference year after year and tanks the big hype in the big dance, year after year. but home games are like getting into lambeau field, your not getting in unless you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody.... so... yeah. im still working on a solution.

now where as the disappointing seasons from the mariners and hawks are tough to stomach, they are edged out by this years toilet bowl for 2008. im actually taking deep consideration about packing down for this record setting season... take a look. this is truly an historic event.

cabo wabo

hi, this is megan. just this last week, my good friend sarah and i just got back from a week vacation in the sun in cabo, mexico. aaron graciously allowed me to use a companion pass to take sarah with me for my birthday (aaron didn't go because he had school...and because he would have hated the HOT weather in mexico). we had been planning for over a month to go to mazatlan...we had our hotel booked and everything. well the joy of flying standby...when we got to LAX to catch our flight to mazatlan, the flight was oversold and we didn't make it on. there is only one flight out of LAX to mazatlan a day, and the flight the following day was oversold also. so sarah and i were sitting in the LA airport trying to decide what we were going to do when these two women approached us and said that they overheard us talking about our dilemma. to make a longer story shorter...they had a timeshare in cabo that they had already paid for and were not using. they offered the timeshare to us for a great price and there was a flight leaving for cabo in an hour. SO we hopped on the plane and landed in cabo 2 hour later! it seriously felt like we were on the amazing race!

who's on first?

so funny.

Autumn

Autumn is on it's way, and I am ready for it. We had a nice bit of
rain the last couple of days which was refreshing and reminded me of
the pacific northwest again... I am proud to admit that I am one of
those who embraces the Seattle weather and the rains that come with
it. (megan is already showing signs of seasonal affective disorder)
and as you can see, the leaves have already begun to fall and minutes
after this picture was taken we had a bit of hail as well.

School is well under way as I am entering my fifth week. So far so good, I am really enjoying it even though life has become more and more busy. For megan and I, we are learning to embrace the time that we get to spend with eachother as we often can go several days when all we can have time for is a high five or a quick bite to eat as one is coming and the other is going... But we do have each other and I know I couldn't be happier.

appendicitis?

my younger brother jake was taken to the er this afternoon and they discovered that he has an Appendicitis... he is having surgery some time tonight... please pray for him and my family. thanks

horse

i guess you cant be the best at everything...

trippple play

all of that junk mail from comcast finally paid its toll on us and we signed up for a home phone. we have officially joined the 509... we are cutting back on the cell phone minutes so try us at home first.

509.443.5764

thanks.

busy summer

our summer has been jammed pack. megan and i are both looking forward to fall... well, i know i am :) megan would probably prefer that summer lasted a couple more months... school starts up for me next week and with that comes stability to our schedule. here are a few highlights from this last month. we had some good times, lots of time on planes and the rare occasion that found us in the automobile.

this week i flew on four consecutive days. megan and i flew to seattle on monday to hang out with ryan and emily (emily it was great to meet you, even if you did try to give us mono), then flew back to spokane on tuesday so that i could work that night. wednesday i flew to seattle and picked up my friend chappy and we headed down to san fran for some quality time before he and his family moved down to nola. we stayed the night and headed back on thursday. good times with great friends!

i would tell you the name of the pizza we had, but i would need you to fill out a disclosure stating you where 18 years or older... you can only find a place like this in san francisco.

next i had the pleasure to once again make my way to daroga state park for summer safari. megan was camp nurse and i was the MC and one of the speakers. it was a great week, probably one of the best all around camps that i have been apart of. It was great to see a lot of familiar faces and some new ones. this is me and jay making up a bunch of rubbish as we attempt to explain the rules to dye wars.

the last day of camp a couple of us staff people hijacked one of the boats and got in some tube time... patrick got the short straw. on the outside of the patrick sandwich was, big bear... and bigger bear... phil is a little creatively challenged at times.

family reunion in moses lake for megan's mom side of the family. megan with cousins paige, aka "pp" and ashley, aka "munchkin".

check out the form... bowling is cheap in moses lake, we payed $1.25 each.

megan and i spent sunday afternoon at fost falls food fest to watch our good friend austin jam away with his band. it was over 100 degrees, even the shade could not keep the sweet from running off the tip of my nose. does anyone notice something different about megan...?

small town

this was taken in a small town we drove through on our way home from oregon. i dont even think there was a gas station.

wallowa lake

megan and i went camping this last weekend for our one year anniversary. wow. it has gone by fast. we went to megans childhood camping spot at wallowa lake in northeastern oregon. it was great. and thanks to those of you who got us the camping stuff for us off of our registry, we put it to good use.


we switched things up the last night... after dinner i did the cleaning up and megan tackled the fire. (thankfully no one was hurt in the making of the fire.)

late nite cards... who gots the better poker face?

jens wedding

we all headed to mcpherson, kansas for my cousin jen's wedding... the wedding was an hour from wichita, and i could get megan, my mom, and me there on stand-bye, but jakes ticket would have been $700 on frontier airlines... so the closest i could get all of us non-reving was dallas fort-worth. (the price of the rental car and gas was half the price of jakes ticket) which was nice, cause with the price of gas and all the flying we do, we havent gotten much time on the road. we got the last four seats on the plane (none together) and had a 6 hour drive waiting for us. wichita is hot and windy, not my cup of tea... we ate good food and celebrated with the bride and groom and all the family. we left the reception at 10:00 pm and drove through a sweet lightning storm to make our 7:30 am flight out of dallas. aint non-reving great.

jen graduated from central christain college in mcpherson kansas... which just happens to be the same little college in the middle of kansas that megans dad went to. megan couldnt see what face i was making.

mom and megan doing their cake cutting thing.

jake and aaron. ushers. aka bouncers. we decide who gets in.

presenting jen and eric lemus.

all dressed up.

missed it by that much...

when some people hear that we fly stand-bye all the time we get mixed reactions because we are not guaranteed a seat on the plane... we do make educated guesses based on the date, time and flight loads. but there are variables that we cannot control, such as the weather, tour groups and worst of all... cancelled flights. but if you go in to it with the foreknowledge that you may not make the flight for whatever reason... well, it makes for some great stories.

megan, my mom and i where on our way to michigan for my cousin madisons graduation party. our plan was to fly from seattle to minneapolis to travers city. after a heck of a time getting through getting checked in (two days a week nwa has a direct flight to tokyo... which left the same time as our flight. thats an extra 300 travelers trying to get checked in) we made it to our gate just as the flight began to board. while waiting at the gate i discovered that the earlier flight to minneapolis had cancelled, which meant we were not getting on that plane to minneapolis or any other that day. but by near chance at the next gate the flight departing a half an hour later was headed to detroit... a long story short, i managed to get my mom and i on the flight after much deliberation with several gate agents, but not megan... (this all happened VERY FAST! i ran over to the other gate to wake my mom up so that we could board) i told megan to wait at the gate until she saw that plane leave the gate, her plan was to try and get on a later flight. when my mom and i got on the plane (we were the last ones to board) we noticed a couple of open seats but the gate agent was on a mission to get the flight out as soon as possible, even though she knew my wife was waiting at the gate and there was an open seat for her on the plane. the flight attendants assured me that we would not leave with out megan, so the gate agent ran down the jet way to get megan (but megan was told that there was no way that she would get on the plane, so she started walking out, but turned around and ran back after hearing her name shouted from afar). so after all of that megan, my mom and i all got on the plane that was oversold... and we all sat next to each other in the same row-just another day of non-reving.

while catching our breath and laughing about this whole crazy half an hour, my mom turns to me and asks how this would affect our bags and if we would make our connecting flight in minneapolis... i said, mom... this plane is going to detroit... the look on her face was awesome. we had lots of good laughs and memories from this trip. we made it to travers city, stayed in a sweet summer house, and made it to the grad party as planned.

lake michigan looks like a friggin' ocean.

the harbor at lake charlevoix.

madison the graduate, and uncle preston.

megan getting her game on. good form.

kabobs

its crazy that just two weeks ago we had snow and now its in the 80's... i thought the weather in spokane was crazy but i guess its that way everywhere this year.


it was bbq time with the davis'. i work with austin, and jaclyn is his wife. they live just a few blocks away, and also go to the same church... summer time is here and it is going to get busy.

East Coast

We took on another adventure to visit some friends, Daniel and Jenny McDowell. They moved to Boston last summer so that Dan could attend Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. It is an adventure because we fly stadbye... so there is never a guarantee that we will make our intended flight, therefore we wound up arriving a day early and leaving a day later than planned... barely. (the flight out of Boston that we got on was oversold by one seat and there where 16 standbye passengers trying to get on... and mysteriously Megan and i both got on, and actually had seats next to each other... wow, it does not always turn out like that... but that uncertainty makes it the adventure!)

We also took a road trip to New York city... driving in Time Square definitely added to the adventure. New York is an incredible city, each time I go back it blows me away. Here are some pics from the trip.

"Make Way for Ducklings" at Boston Public Garden.

Grand opening of the Boston Apple Store, now the largest in the US.

Our first night in NYC was a little drizzly.

Dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

This was the hotel we stayed at, a block away from time square...

Central Park.

Headed to Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Thank You Mcdowells.

mickey mouse land

well... i remember it being way cooler when i was like 10. the roller coasters where cool, but i guess it has been a while since i have been on one because i didnt last long. after ride number 3 i was a basket case. so in between california screamin' and the tower of terror we needed to take pit stops at winne the poo land, bugs life, and pirates of the caribbean. bugs life in 3D was probably the highlight.

we joined up with team turner, which made it worth it. this place where "dreams come true" is hardly "the happiest place on earth" but i relived mychild hood through the munchkins. at that age everything is THE BEST and SO COOL! it was actually really fun to see how excited the kids get. by the time we got to the park jayson had the system down with fast passes for everything. thats the way to go if your going to do it. lines are for the ill informed.

these two girls where fearless and great encouragers when i thought that i could not go on...

goofy was getting a little restless with all the paparazzi following him everywhere, i guess enough was enough.

this was on the tower of terror... it was actually a decent ride.

hooked up some cheap tickets on stubhub for the angels game. 5 rows from the top behind home plate...


we had a nice time in LA, but i think next time we will check out the disneyland for big kids... las vegas :)

i had a visitor today

my brother jake came to visit me in spokane today. we had a good ol time playing custom halo and call of duty games... one vs. one... (which is not to be confused with dan playing one vs. one poker) i was skeptical at first, but it was fun when you turn up the speed to 300 percent and make gravity 10 percent. i taught jacob how to play backgaman... and he beat me at it. dang it. but then he taught me my new favorite game that is going to take over the word, sock golf. which is kind of a version of frisbee golf, but different. i beat jake. then we played with our macbooks and watched cloverfield.
we packed a lot into little time. yeah.

drive safe jake.