Snoqualmie Falls

We had some very cold weather for a week or so that made for some amazing conditions at Snoqualmie Falls. Andra and I decided to go up there last weekend to see for ourselves. Once we looked down from the lookout deck, we immediately decided to go all the way down to the water to get a better look.

It was pretty interesting once we got out on the rocks. They were all covered in about a quarter inch of frozen mist making them very slippery.

Here's the view once we got down to the water.

Close up of the massive icicles.

Twins at the falls.

Me and the falls

The river was so cold it was freezing around the edges.

It was quite a sight to see Snoqualmie Falls all frozen like that and I'm very glad I got to witness it. It'll probably a long time before that happens again.

First Snow!!

Crystal Mountain 11/13/09

I can't even begin to explain to you how excited I am that we already have snow in the mountains!!! I sure hope this means we're going to have a good snow season. I can't even remember a time in my life where the Washington resorts were open BEFORE Thanksgiving. Crystal Mountain opened on November 11th this year but because of work, I had to wait till Friday the 13th to get up there. It felt so good to get on the snow again!

Here' s me on the chairlift. I was a little excited.

The day was GREAT. Aaron, Brent, Breanna, Alex and I all piled into Aaron's company vehicle and headed up the mountain. We got there right when they opened. It snowed just about all day long, keeping the snow nice and soft. There was hardly anybody up there so we had no lines to wait in. We snowboarded all day long and it still wasn't quite enough. I can't wait to get back up there.

Action shot

Breanna about to go for a run.

All bundled up ready to head down the mountain. Aaron sitting in the background.

Aaron sticking his tongue out at me for taking his picture.

It's really quite sad.....Aaron brought his fancy waterproof/shockproof camera and took tons of pictures and videos of us all snowboarding. At the end of the day, something went wrong with his memory card and now he can't retrieve ANY of the data off of it. He sent it in to a data recovery place in Colorado, but they wanted $350+ to fix it. So he's gonna try some nerd tricks of his to see if he can retrieve anything from it. If it works, I'll post them. HOPEFULLY he can get them because there was some good stuff on there!!

Halloween 2009

This Halloween we didn't intend on having any sort of "party." But as the day approached, it just sort of happened and it turned out to be a lot of fun.

For the past week and a half, Jaime and I were able to have a good friend of ours (also named Jaime) stay with us while she was visiting from Virginia. On Halloween, we all decided it'd be fun to have a little "shin dig" at the house so we scrambled to get decorations up and food/snacks, music, movies and costumes together. And it was successful! I didn't have much to work with for a costume so I wore one of my old softball jerseys from college. Jaime (boy) was able to squeeze into a pair of my khaki scrubs and throw on a old bathrobe and pull of a good Obi wan Kenobi. Jaime (girl) pulled off the ULTIMATE punk rocker chick costume! I still don't quite understand how she got her hair to stick straight up and stay like that all night. It's like 2 feet high!

Obi wan Kenobi

Andra threw together a pretty cool "snow bunny" costume. (nice scarf)

It was fun night! Thanks to all those who came on short notice!

I wish I would've taken more pictures.

Flashback Photos

I found an old picture of Andra and I on Halloween 1990 - 1992 (not sure on exact date).

Andra is the bunny and I'm the cat. Oh, and I just realized Andra was a bunny this year too.

This is a picture taken in the fall probably around 1986?? We look about 2 years old right?

In this picture, we were playing with wolf spiders that had nested in the woodpile.

Andra in purple, me in pink.

Last ride over Naches Pass for the season

A few weekends ago, Brent, Jaime and I went on what will probably be our last ride from Greenwater to Naches. Once its starts snowing up there, the trail is unaccessible until mid June. We left the house pretty early and the weather at home was pretty mild so we all dressed pretty lightly. As we climbed elevation, we didn't realize the temperature was dropping significantly. When we got to the trail head and got out of the car, it was FREEZING cold with a bone-chilling breeze. We started gearing up and thankfully we had unintentionally packed sweatshirts and jackets we were able to layer up with. As we left the car, it actually started SNOWING!

This was a big ride for me because it is the first time I've ridden the CRF230. I was pretty nervous about riding it because I'm so used to my little TTR125L that I've been riding for the last 6 years.

Here's me at the trail head getting ready to take off. That hanker-cheif probably saved my nose from frost bite! Well, not really...but it made my ride much more comfortable.

Jaime and I with our bikes at the historical Naches Trail sign.

Jaime and Brent. We had the camera timer set and I didn't quite make it into the picture in time, so Brent made the best of it.

All 3 of us at the Naches Trail sign. It started snowing again as we finished taking this picture.

We rode all the way over to Naches and back and I didn't even crash!! I thought for sure I would on such a bigger/heavier bike. But I stayed on and kept up with the boys just fine.

The next weekend we went riding again but stayed local.

Me approaching the jump, Kevin in the back. (This was my first time jumping the CRF230 so again, I was really nervous)

A couple of me going off the jump

Amazing sunset!! I love sunsets.

Fall has arrived

I have to say, I am bummed summer is over. But.....I am happy fall has arrived because it is probably the most beautiful time of year in Washington with all the changing colors and whatnot. And it means winter is just around the corner and I have been just dying to go snowboarding!

I love fall sunsets!


Jaime and I went out on a drive up to the Carbon River area. The weather turned out to be pretty nasty but we made the best of it and hiked around by the river for a while.



We meant to go up to Suntop Lookout back in August for our "5 year proposal anniversary" but we just never got around to it. So we decided to do that on our 5 year wedding anniversary weekend instead. The sunset was amazing but it got SO COLD as soon as the sun went down. We couldn't wait to get back in the car and blast the heat.

Jaime watching the sky.


Panoramic shot of the view from Suntop Lookout.


The sunset

Me taking pictures with my phone


This picture was taken standing in the same spot where Jaime proposed to me over 5 years ago!


We saw this huge elk on the drive through Greenwater. It was really scary because this elk was just hanging out about 3 feet away from cars that were hauling by at 50-60mph! I had some flashbacks from when I hit that deer a few months ago. I'm so glad it wasn't an elk that I hit. They are so much bigger.

Today is my Mom's birthday!! Happy Birthday, Mom!! A couple days ago, Damion was in town for an evening so we all got together (minus Aaron) and had pizza. We also gave my Mom her early birthday present, Rock Band Beatles edition! She was very excited. And she finally decided she would learn how to play instead of just watch and complain about how loud the volume is. Here's a picture of me, Damion, and Mom on vocals. More pictures to come later.

5 Years!!

I can't believe its already been 5 years since our Wedding Day!! What a great 5 years they've been.

5 down.....Infinity to go.

Happy Anniversary, Jaime!



By the way, Jaime got me some amazing diamond earrings and a Snuggie for our anniversary. Haha. He's a funny one.

End of Summer 2009

It's been a while since I've been able to post. This summer has been so great! As much as I'm sad its just about over, we've been so fortunate to have lots of opportunities to get out and enjoy the nice weather and go up to the mountains. Here is some stuff we've been up to.

One weekend Andra, Dustin, Jaime and I drove up to Evergreen Speedway in Monroe to watch DriftFest. This is Jaime's FAVORITE sporting event of the year (surprisingly it beats Supercross in his opinion). It is nothing less than amazing to watch these cars go 90 MPH sideways and only inches away from the other car! I would pay money to ride along with one of these drivers. I mean, Jaime can drive/drift pretty good, but these guys were incredible.

Jaime and I watching the show.


Burning rubber around the "S" curve.


Andra and I watching the show. (we stole the boys' hats)


Of course we've been out dirtbiking as much as possible. I think we made some kind of record this summer of the number of weekends we spent riding.

Jaime and Kevin scoping out our campsite up at Little Naches.


Ready to start unloading.


Since Jaime got his "street legal" dirtbike a couple months ago, I've been a little jealous. Something inspired Jaime to go look through all of our dirtbike titles and he found a 1-in-a-million chance clerical error on my older TTR125L title. In the "notes" section where it's supposed to say "Not for street use" it was BLANK. So he called up the DOL and just as he'd expected, that makes my bike legal to register for road use!! I went to the DOL the next day and spent 45 minutes with a very confused employee but I walked out of there with a license plate for my bike. So now we'll be able to ride the hundreds of miles of Forest Service roads without getting hassaled by the rangers.


We've had some injuries these last couple months. Jaime's were within 2 weeks of eachother too. One day after work, we decided to go for a quick ride over at Ravensdale. As we were heading back, it was getting a little dark in the woods and somehow a sharp jagged branch sticking out into the trail jammed Jaime right in the neck. He was pretty freaked out that it went into his neck because there was blood on his hand when he grabbed at it. LUCKILY it hit at a perfect angle that just scraped him up real good.
Here's a couple pictures of it the night it happened and the day after. It also scraped his chest and shoulder but I didn't get pictures of those.


About a week and a half after that, I get a phone call from Jaime while I was work telling me he was just getting discharged from the ER. I of course got all worried and frantically demanded details on what happened to him. He was at work cleaning up some tools, and while putting them away, his whole tool box fell over on him. He picked it back up but in doing so, a brand new box cutter had sliced his finger very deep. (I almost passed out just from him telling me the story.) Anyways, he had a co-worker take him to the ER where they put 6 or 7 stitches in it. The cut wrapped all the way around his finger. The Dr. was very suprised at how deep it went and said he may never regain feeling in his finger tip.

Here is the least-nasty picture of his finger about 2 days after.


Good news is.....he does have feeling back in his finger tip! And no more of those stupid box cutters that don't retract.

I've had my share of pain too. Just last Thursday/Friday, I had my 4th kidney stone episode. I hate these little things so much. They are SOO painful! This one I started feeling about 2 weeks before, and then one day at work I felt like someone was stabbing my side and back with thousands of hot jagged knives. I knew pretty much right away what it was. Suprisingly, I didn't have to go to the emergency room for this one. Maybe my pain tolderance is getting higher or something, but a couple of Jaime's left over percocet was enough to get me through it. This one was a little smaller than my last, but still pretty big at about 5mm.


Alright enough of the gross injuy stuff. Back to fun stuff. On September 12, Jaime and I celebrated our 8 year "Dating Anniversary." It's amazing how fast time flies by. For our anniversary we went out to Deep Lake (with Andra) and spent the day swimming and floating around in our rafts.

We docked up to this small point that Jaime calls "Jaime's Island."


Us standing on the jumping log.


Me diving into Deep Lake.

Later, we met up with Dustin and the 4 of us went out to Ravensdale to watch a beautiful sunset.

Here's the view from a nice view spot we found.

Awwhh...8 years later.....
Then we hit up Dairy Queen. If you haven't already tried the Cookie Explosion Blizzard, DO IT!!

Our last camping trip up to Little Naches was Labor Day weekend. Even though it rained most of the day and we got hassaled by the Yakima Sheffif, it was a lot of fun. We got some muddy dirtbiking in too. (Sorry no pictures of the that. I didn't want to ruin my camera)
At night, the skies cleared up and there was a full moon. It was so pretty! The moon and stars are so bright up in the moutains that it actually cast shadows. You can walk around with no flashlight and see perfectly well.
One night we decided to go for a drive up the forest service roads with a spotlight looking for elk and to get some firewood.
Bon and I sat in our chairs in the bed of Dustin and Andra's truck.

We got to see about 5 or 6 elk. Only females though.....the bulls must have been hiding.

Bon and I goofing off while the boys cut up all the firewood.


Another picture of me and Jaime.


I have no specific reason of posting this picture other than I just love it! Most of you know Jaime has a hard time making normal faces for the camera. So I was very happy to get such a cute picture of his perfect smile! Well, that's it for now. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!