Christmas

I just realized that I didn't put up any pictures from Christmas. For Christmas Rich and I went up to see our families. On Christmas day we were with Rich's family and we opened presents at around 10:30 pm or so which I guess has always been one of Rich's dreams that finally came true! (it's a long story about why we didn't open presents until later, and it involves lots of snow!) During the day Ryan, Rich and I played in the snow for a while. Rich and Ryan did some snowboarding down the road because there was at least 2 or more feet everywhere! After that, the three of us played on the neighbors steep driveway and did some sledding, tubing and a little more snowboarding by Ryan. It was so much fun! I tried to build a snowman but the snow was a little more icey than fluffy. So we opened presents and we all had a good time. Then we went down to see my parents and family and opened some presents with them. It was really fun and we got a popcorn maker and popcorn! We were pretty excited, we both like popcorn. It was just a fun weekend to spend with family and actually have a white Christmas!
Here are some pictures from Christmas Night!

I made these for everyone. They were chocolate chip cookies in a jar!
Our First Christmas as Husband and Wife!

Notice my face when I saw all of the CHOCOLATE!! Thank you Robbie!

And notice that I'm still eying the chocolate later in the evening?? And Rich thinking, "oh man..."

Rich opening some presents
Me opening some presents (super cool knee high socks!)

Wedding Pictures

Rich and I have been planning on getting some wedding pictures printed and framed so that we could have some for our walls. Well, it's been a while but this past weekend we finally got them up. I'm so exited to have the pictures up. I think that the photographer did a great job and I frequently see Rich standing in the "hallway" just staring at the pictures. He usually says something like, "we should submit this picture so some picture frame place" or "we were so lucky to have so many good pictures. People usually are lucky to just get 6 good pictures at all and we had to narrow it down to just a few!" He's really sweet.
Of course when I went to hang up the pictures I had to get the level out and the ruler and the pencils. Notice that all the pictures are exactly 2" apart?! I think I might be slightly OCD. I don't know.

Gymnastics!

Last night Rich and I went to a women's gymnastics meet at OSU. It was called a tri-meet because it was OSU, Cal and Arkansas. We had a lot of fun but Rich was having a hard time seeing. I guess we will just have to get there earlier next time so we can get better seats. OSU was ranked no. 13 and Arkansas was no. 5 and it was really close through the whole meet. At the end OSU won by .025 of a point. It was good. On the floor exercise one of the OSU girls got the best score with a 9.975 and the routine was amazing! One of the other girls on the OSU team is ranked number 17 in the nation for all-around, so it was cool to watch her on all the events. Here are some pictures from the night. Sorry for some of them to be blurry but they were moving really fast.

OSU on the Uneven Bars

Cal on the Ballance Beam

Arkansas practicing on the Floor Exercise

I would have put some pictures on of the Vault but from where we were sitting it was hard to get a good picture. And they go so fast it probably wouldn't have turned out anyway. I can't wait to go to another one!!

Oregon Coast Aquarium

Today Rich and I decided to go to the aquarium over in Newport. We had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures and two video clips from our day.

Here I am in front of the Seals. One was biting the other one's flippers.

One of the birds in the aviary stealing a fish from the bucket.

Here is a short video of some puffins playing in the water.

Rich with one of the Otters. He played by himself most of the day while the other one slept.

A cool fish in a big tank.

Cool fish that sat on his feet-like fins.

An eel in a glass jar with a shrimp cleaning him. The white and yellow fish was getting cleaned by some other shrimp too!

Here is another short video of a little jellyfish swimming around.

Thank You Meg!!

I just wanted to write a big Thank You to Meghan. I got my package in the mail on Monday and I was so happy! I hear it's an oven mitt but I've seen a picture of Emily using it and thought it looked better that way...


Seriously though, thank you so much Meg. I've already used it! (and so has Rich)

Let There Be Light!

About a month ago Rich and I decided to buy some lights to put over our counter (with the sink) in the kitchen. We had been talking about it for a while but we just never really got around to getting any of the parts. We were at Home Depot on night and we saw these lights that we both liked and they were on sale!! We got them and took them home and Rich put them up pretty much instantly. I took a picture so you could see what they look like! They are so nice to have. It really beats having to turn on the big florescent one when you don't want that kind of light.

Yeah, Rich is whistling away. He seems to do that a lot when he's happy. And we also stuck the cord to the ceiling and wall so it's a little less noticeable :)