Yay Nate!

Nate has had a really exciting semester, and I must admit I am pretty proud of him!!

First off, he won "Best Overall Poster Award at the IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium" (I copied that from the article about it-so I didn't just have to say "he won best poster at a conference he went to in May").

http://www.ece.illinois.edu/mediacenter/article.asp?id=1139

He also received a patent on the "sprinkler project" (I call it) that he worked on as an undergraduate at Utah State. Here's what the article calls it: patent for “Methods and Systems for Wireless Communication by Magnetic Induction.”

http://tco.usu.edu/htm/in-the-news/articleID=10996

He also won best paper at the conference he went to in October (no article to quote from-yet.)

And he recently won an award from the school for excellence in research. He gets to have his name on a plaque in one of the buildings at school.

Most of all he is a wonderful husband and Dad, and takes good care of his girls.



I love you Nate!!!!

Camera Unhappy

I've decided that we are "camera unhappy" because we always forget our camera, or when we happen to take it somewhere we forget to use it.

Therefore, we don't have any pictures of our fun Thanksgiving with Bruce and Brittney Richards and Dale Kirby.

And we don't have pictures of our awesome trip to Milwaukee last Saturday-Sunday to see Cody, Jocelyn and Talmage Pehrson and Lake Michigan.

But, that's what has been going on with us recently.

We did take pictures on my birthday...



Nate and I have played a lot of Ticket to Ride since he got it for me-hooray!!

I also had fun experimenting with gum paste and using it on my birthday cake.

Halloween

We had a lot of fun celebrating Halloween this year!

We picked out pumpkins at a pumpkin patch.



I kind of procrastinated on the Halloween costumes, but was still able to get them done in time-Hooray!
(Several people when they saw Jessica said, "Of course she's Snow White!")




Nate had a lot of fun carving his pirate and it turned out really well! Jessi and I just did the simple pumkin face.

Growing...growing...gone

I guess after our exciting summer I haven't found anything to blog about. Life has been simple, but wonderful. Our girls are so much fun-I'm afraid they will grow up too fast!!
We have had a lot of fun this beautiful fall going outside to parks and around the neighborhood.

Scooting

Now if Emily wants something she can get to it!! (The shiny, springy doorstop is one of her favorite toys!)

Ecola State Park

We made our last trip to the coast last weekend. We are sad to leave the ocean. We went to Ecola State Park and hiked in the mountains and amazing forest! We saw some pretty huge trees, but it was too foggy to see Tillamook Rock Lighthouse from the viewpoint. Afterward we hiked down to Indian Beach. Goodbye beautiful coast!!

Mt. Saint Helens

We got to go see Mt. St. Helens on Saturday!! It was amazing! We went to the West viewpoint (the Johnston Ridge Observatory). We hiked around for a while and got to see different views of the volcano and the changed valley and surrounding mountainsides.

Low tides!!

Here are some of the things you can see on Haystack Rock during a low tide.

Rick and Camille Visit!

Rick and Camille came to visit us last weekend and we had so much fun! We got to go see Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach at a low tide-there were lots of starfish and anemones.



and huge mussels!



Nate and Rick had fun flying Nate's 2-string kite.



Best of all-we got to have a campfire on the beach and roast hot dogs and marshmallows. (It takes a long time to get a fire going strong on a windy beach!!)





Other highlights while they were here:

Watching episodes of "Gunsmoke" on TV Land.com

They taught us how to play Discombobulation and Greed

Rick came in our primary class on Sunday and kept the crayons from the kids until it was time for coloring

Getting clam chowder and salt water taffy

Jack Family Vacation

Nate's entire family was able to come up to Oregon for a family vacation last week. We had so much fun on the Oregon Coast!

Alden and Kira were even able to come early, so we were able to do some fun things with them first. We heard that the place to go in Portland is "Voodoo Doughnuts" where they make all kinds of crazy doughnuts. The shop was pretty scary, but the doughnuts were delicious!!



We also went to Multnomah falls and the other large waterfalls nearby. They were magnificent! We hiked up to the top of "Horse Tail Falls" and there was another waterfall, "Pony Tail Falls." It was fun to walk behind it and see the falls from a new angle!




Everyone else arrived on Sunday, July 4th and we had a big sleepover in our 2 bedroom apartment. Monday we headed out to the coast. We went to Astoria and the lighthouses in Washington on Monday.



Northhead Lighthouse-we even got to take the tour this time with other people there to watch the girls.



"Captain Jack" got to go on a treasure hunt on Cannon Beach for his 50th birthday!! He followed the directions on his treasure map to find an amazing treasure chest (built by Alden and Kira) filled with presents. Liesl painted a beautiful map of Cannon Beach as well!




Jessica sure loved seeing her cousin Carter!




Yaquina Bay lighthouse.



The biggest highlight of the trip (at least for the men) was a crabbing trip. They got to go out on a fishing boat with some professional crabbers and learn how to catch crab. They were only allowed to keep the large male crabs only about 10 percent of what they actually caught. The whole group caught 70 crabs!! (Nate and I spent the following week eating his crabs.)





You can tell by this video they had WAY too much fun!

Hair!!

I just wanted to let everyone know that I do try to do Jessica's hair-although you've never seen it done. She won't have anything to do with it. Occasionally she will ask me to braid her hair, but she usually loses interest after the first braid and pulls it out while I'm trying to do the second. The best luck I have had is when I do her hair while she is watching a show. One time we even made it through the show and to the grocery store-we lost her hair ties somewhere in the grocery store. Sometimes I want to cry when I get done and she looks so cute, but alas she pulls it right back out!




If I try to put 1 or 2 bows in, she insists that I put all her bows in her hair, but that also lasts only a few seconds.



A picture of both of us in braids before........



I chopped my hair off!
I haven't had my hair short in a long time. Hopefully it will be fun and Emily won't get her little fingers wrapped in it as often! I donated 10 inches to Locks of Love, which I've wanted to do, so that was nice. I'm still trying to learn how to do it though.




In case any of you were wondering about the socks on Jessica's hands in a couple of the previous pictures. Ever since we checked out Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss, Jessica has decided she is the fox in socks and goes around with socks on her hands and feet all day (except for meal times, and when I think it is worth insisting she take them off in public!-it wasn't worth it the other day at the grocery store and hey I guess it kept her hands free of germs...) She sure has a style of her own.
I love being a mom!!!!!!!!!

Oregon Zoo

Last Saturday we went to the Oregon Zoo in Portland. We had a lot of fun, I guess too much to take many pictures! Jessica liked seeing the animals, especially the "Tiggers". Still, she seemed even more fascinated finding sticks to hold!



We also got to ride the train through "Washington Park" which is basically a forest. Jessica really liked riding through the woods and seeing the steam engine, but it was too loud for Emily. She cried most of the trip, especially went we went into a tunnel! Good thing we remembered to take a picture before we rode.

Oceanside

Last weekend we visited the Tillamook cheese factory and got to look through windows at workers cutting huge blocks of cheese. We also got to sample cheese, and even though we were there around 9 AM we were all feeling up to eating some ice cream. It was so good especially with their delicious waffle cones made right there!

Afterward we went to Oceanside to see a new beach-which of course was very beautiful. We even got to walk through a tunnel to access another beach on the other side of a huge rock!