In Memory Of

Wednesday afternoon I received a text from my brother saying my Grandpa Morris had had a stroke and was in the hospital. I was shocked and saddened. Just a few weeks ago I had written him a letter to see how he was doing. He had even written back expressing interest in coming to the baby's baby blessing in a couple of months.

Today he passed away. It's sad, yet so very happy thanks to the gospel and knowledge we have of life after this and eternal families. He was 90 years old, and for, almost, the last 7 years he has been without his sweet wife. Although it's hard to imagine he's gone and knowing I won't see him anymore, I can only imagine how happy he is today being with my grandma, his daughter and son.

I'm grateful for a grandfather who has lived such an excellent life. He was quiet, but always faithful. I'm thankful for his example. I am so blessed to have had him for a grandfather.

Me with my wonderful grandparents

While my grandpa was in the past few days the hubby and I were discussing our parents and grandparents. (Side note: Our parents have strangely similar family backgrounds. It's kind of weird, but interesting too.) Both of our grandparents on our fathers' side have now passed away. Matt was lucky enough to be able to live with his grandparents for a little while (I get jealous at times wishing I could've done the same). When he shares stories or characteristics of his grandparents it reminds me very much of my grandparents. I'm grateful that we both could have such wonderful examples in our life! I suppose with Memorial Day tomorrow, and the recent events in my family's life, I've just been thinking a lot about family and how blessed we truly are.

Matt with his fabulous grandparents

Aren't grandparents great?

P.S. I like to imagine my Grandma & Grandpa Morris, Grandpa Valdizan (my mom's dad who died before I was born, hence no picture), and Matt's Grandma & Grandpa Walser are all socializing together tonight. It'd be fun to be there. :) Oh, and we both love our living grandparents too and are glad they're still around!

O Canada

Well, this past weekend we decided to have ourselves a little adventure. I had some unused hotel points from the good old days when I traveled for work (which I miss a lot!), so we decided to cash them in for a weekend getaway to Vancouver, Canada! The drive wasn't too bad for being about 8 months pregnant, which I was happy about!

Thursday night we got to the hotel. So, in my family, sometimes when we go on vacation and if we'll have a kitchenette in the hotel room, we will take cereal, paper bowls, and plastic spoons with us to save on the cost of eating out. Then once we get to the location we buy milk at a local grocery store. Well, we decided to do the same thing on this short trip. So we went to the front desk and Matt asked where a grocery store was located. The girl looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language! And we felt dumb, till another employee and hotel guest chimed in and said "Oh, a Superstore!" We laughed about it and figured they don't use the word "grocery", but later during our trip we saw stores with the word "grocery". So we're still confused as to why the girl acted like she had never heard the word before!

Friday morning we went to the LDS Vancouver, Canada temple to do a session. I wish we would've taken a picture to actually document us being there. It was a first for both of us to go through a session in a foreign temple. And this one was SO beautiful! I loved it!

After the temple we went to the main attraction of our trip. The Capilano Suspension Bridge! It was a lot of fun and very beautiful! (I'll try to not put too many pictures! But like I said, it was really pretty so we got carried away with the camera and the nature shots.)

The trees were huge!

The bridge. It's surprising how much it actually sways.

Matt may have been trying to make people lose their balance as they walked across...

I just love all the green trees!

They also had a "Treetop Adventure". Smaller bridges through out the trees.

We spent 2-3 hours walking around.

This refers to the picture up above. Like I said before, HUGE trees!

Matt's span is about the same as the Canadian Goose. The really long one is the span of an eagle.

After the bridge we went to Stanley Park. This park was huge! We made a stop at a look out to enjoy some scenery. We got there and saw Meeko!

Meet Meeko. He was just going along in broad daylight minding his own business.

When all of the sudden he heard something...

And along came Crazy Eye!

Crazy Eye hissed and scared Meeko away.

 We thought it was weird these raccoons were out in the middle of the day.

I'm pretty sure Crazy Eye had rabies.

The beautiful view of North Vancouver from the lookout!

 Well, after Stanley Park we drove through Downtown Vancouver. Really, it reminded us of Seattle or any other big city in the U.S. It didn't feel so much like a foreign country. But we did get lost driving around downtown; best way to see a city is to get lost. :) (I had directions from the hotel to each location, just not from the location back to the hotel...)

I don't know if we were staying in the wrong location, but it seemed kind of hard to find nicer restaurants to eat dinner. All we kept seeing were American fast food places. Maybe we should've just asked the hotel.

Saturday we headed home. It was a nice little adventure before the baby comes! And I'm pretty sure Matt didn't mind having a reason to take a day off work.

There's just something about coming home to the U.S.

Saw this on the drive home and thought it was a pretty interesting name...

And Then There Was Light

Well, this past weekend the clouds and rain here in the Seattle area parted and gave us some beautiful weather! And, fortunately, we had nothing going on and we were feeling great so we took advantage of the wonderful sunlight and warmth.

Saturday we went on a drive to Bremerton. (We made a detour to Cabella's to look at all the things we'd love to have, but can't have right now.) At Bremerton we hopped on a ferry ride to Seattle. (There is a little bit of picture overload coming up from our weekend!)

Mt. Rainier off in the distance

 

Yes, we are wearing sweatshirts/jackets, but that's only because as soon as we got on the ferry the clouds found us, and with the wind it was just a little chilly. But still, it was a beautiful day!

We then stopped in at little Italian bakery/shop and Matt got very excited! He's hoping he found some pesto sauce he loves and been wanting to try for a while. I guess we'll find out tonight. :)

Sunday was even more lovely! So, we headed out with our good friends for a little drive to Snoqualmie Falls. It was SO beautiful at Snoqualmie Falls and even on the drive there and back!

I like this picture because it has Matt's reflection :)

Snoqualmie Falls

Matt made me do a little photo shoot, this pose was all his idea!

 

It was so great being able to get out and see more of the beautiful Seattle area. We have enjoyed living here, but we realized on these outings just why people love it here. When the sun comes out, it's just fabulous! We just wish it would happen more often. :)

Today, unfortunately, we're back to clouds and rain. But at least we had a weekend of fun to hopefully last us till our next adventure! :)

*p.s. less than 50 days till baby's anticipated arrival!*

GiveAway!

So, I really should have put this up earlier, but better late than never ;) For anyone actually checking my blog this late, check out this site: http://giveawaycorner.blogspot.com/

I think you have till the end of tonight to enter to win a $100 Visa card! And, then if you want, in the "Who referred you" part, you can put in "White Flower Boutique". Which brings me to the second part of this post and why I'm advertising the site above. Tomorrow my sister's site and business is being featured as one of the giveaways! :) So, if you're interested in winning (and it's all completely free!) check out the site tomorrow to enter for the chance to win! Even if you don't have your own daughter, it's a great gift. :)

And There is No Queen of England!

So, maybe we haven't been completely strict with our money like I kind of mentioned in the last post. We recently made two movie purchases.

Two weeks ago I was at Target (making my first pregnancy clothing purchases), and Matt was at Fry's (an electronic store like Best Buy). He calls me and says, "I'm going to get you a present". I tried to tell him not to, but he rarely listens to me. ;)  Well, he saw Tangled playing on the TVs and we've heard lots of people say they really liked it, plus it was a good deal. It was really cute and we both enjoyed it! You can't really go wrong with a Disney movie.

Our second movie purchase just happened this Monday. Last weekend we got Megamind in the mail from Netflix. I LOVED it. The Mr was slightly disappointed that I seemed to like it more than Tangled, but I couldn't help it. I thought the music in Megamind was great! And I just haven't learned the songs to Tangled yet; so maybe with time I'll like it more. ;) So, on Monday we decided to just purchase it, and we've already watched it again. This is a clip of my favorite part of the movie:



In the movie Megamind's best friend's name is Minion. Matt has decided he's going to refer to our children as minions now. :)

What's Cooking?

I wish I could say I haven't posted anything new in a while because we've been SO busy with fun and exciting things... But then I'd be lying. So, this is pretty much just a little update on what we've been doing... or haven't been doing.

Well, this week I'm 30 weeks along! I am glad it's down to, hopefully, the last 7-10 weeks.

Me at 30 weeks (my face looks weird :S)

We went shopping last month for some of our first baby purchases. And I refuse to go again till the end of this month. For those of you who don't know I studied accounting, and both my parents have finance or accounting backgrounds. What's this mean? It means I'm cheap and try hard to save money and search for the best deals. Even if that means procrastinating what has to be done. So, all we have bought so far are 2 boxes of diapers and crib bedding. I left the store and wanted to return it all (happens quite frequently when I shop). I figured we could put the baby in a box with a blanket, or my sister suggested a laundry basket. She really won't know the difference as long as she's comfortable, right? (I really had these thoughts; maybe that makes me a bad parent already?)

Anyway, now I'm trying to see if I can make any of the bedding for cheaper. The only problem with this idea is that I am GREAT at starting projects or having a wonderful idea, I'm just really bad at finishing or following through. So, hopefully I can get at least an easy thing, like a dust ruffle for the crib, made before the baby comes.

So, really there isn't much else going on. With gas prices ridiculously high, a baby coming, and housing prices still pretty high here in the Seattle area, we find ourselves at home a lot trying to save money.

However, there is one other thing that is always on my mind: DINNER. I really despise coming up with dinner ideas for the week. I don't know why it's so hard for me, but it is. I like to come up with a week full of dinners, then I can make one shopping trip and hopefully save me time and money! But I also get paranoid about repeating meals. I could care less about eating the same thing over and over, or eating mac and cheese or ramen noodle. But there is someone else to feed in this home besides me. Not that he's picky, I just like to have variety for him.

And, I should mention, I don't really like to cook. My interest has grown some since I've been married. But I'm really really slow (Seriously, ask my husband. I look at a recipe and the estimated time and double it to know how long it'll really take me.) when it comes to cooking, or doing anything. (I can't help it!) So, the easier the recipe, the better. And the fewer the ingredients, the better for my wallet! It seems I'm asking for a lot, but I've been doing better at getting a list of meals each week. I'm keeping track of all the ones we like in hopes to collect around 90 recipes that we like. Then I can just choose from there, or create a 3 month schedule and rotate it, and this way no meal is eaten more than about 4 times a year! You all probably think I'm crazy, but I'm loving my plan. :) Life will be so much easier.

That was lots of writing! Sorry! Unfortunately not many pictures from the past month and a half. But we're hoping to take a small weekend trip in the next week or two, so maybe then I'll have something interesting to post about :)

Sister Sister

I love my sister! She is pretty talented and has lots of passion for the things she does. One of those many things she loves to do is make headbands. And I think know she is pretty talented at making adorable headbands for little girls (or flower clips for adults). Well, her passion for these has led her, and me (I'm the sidekick ;)), to start up her own business! So check it out: White Flower Boutique

My adorable little niece modeling one
of the many CUTE and STYLISH headbands
her mommy has made her