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Jake is getting engaged! To a girl named Kim! Weird, huh? So I invited Jake and the rest of the Terry gang over for dinner. It was a lot fun seeing everyone together. Jacob, Betsy, Wes, Travis, and Steph were all there. Anna couldn’t make it since her grandpa passed away, Thien-An just doesn’t check his e-mail or return phone calls, and Cody, well…

Anyway, Jake’s getting married this summer. He told how he proposed and then I told how I proposed to Kim. Both stories ended up being way longer than needed since everyone turned them into comedy routines. Jake’s known the girl for years from his hometown, so she didn’t come since she lives in Oregon. Everyone brought food, we ate, and then people went home.

Kim and I have been taking a course in avalanche safety. We haven’t really been anywhere that we would have to worry about avalanches, but we figure we might in the future and wanted to be prepared. There’s been about 9 hours of class lecture, which is useful stuff, but pretty dull except for the really cool slide show. The field day was totally worth it though.

We had to get up and meet at 6 in the morning, so that was rough. We caught a ride with someone other people who were also going to the class. Most people we went with were back country skiers. I didn’t realize how popular this was. This isn’t cross country skiing like I used to do. These people have much more versatile skis and like to ski to the tops of mountains and then ski down, hence the avalanche danger. One guy even had a split snowboard. It worked like skis on the way up, then it went back together at the top like a snowboard.

We practiced a lot finding snow beacons. We’d bury them in plastic bags in the snow and then try to find them. The guide forgot to turn his beacon to send one time and it took a long time to find. We spent the rest of the time analyzing snow pack, digging rousche blocks, and discussing avalanche factors.

By the end we were tired, so it was really nice not to have to drive back.

After Kim and I got done seeing Robert Kennedy Jr speak, we headed over to Jesse’s girlfriend’s place. It turns out that she’s about 10 blocks from us so we walked. Jacob bought a new car, a subaru Impreza I believe, now that he has a job at Boeing. Travis, Jesse, Jacob, Waleska and Deborah were there. Mike, Travis’s friend, and his girlfriend were there for a little while but left early. The rest of us played a dice game called 3 man until around 3 in the morning. Travis had some trouble with the game since he was already drunk, so he drank water for most of the game. It’s a good thing he did, because he probably finished off about 6 glasses of water.

Kim fell asleep a bit after two, so Jacob drove us home. We had to get up the next morning at 9 to go to a client’s breakfast that our real estate advisor was throwing. It was worth it for the prizes. We got a $25 gift certificate to Home Depot, a frequent shopping location lately, despite their massive partisan donations to the Republican party.

Kim and I drove down the Oregon coast this weekend for my Christmas present. Our destination was cheese, wine and relaxation. It was great to get away from the house, the internet, phones, computers and the city for a little while. Kim met me at work Friday afternoon and she drove the whole way! I napped a bit and it was good that I didn’t have to drive because my back was killing me when I threw it out falling up stairs… Smooth huh?

We arrived at our secret destination, the Old Wheeler Hotel. Kim had booked us a room with a jacuzzi in a historic old hotel. King bed too! Now that Kim is used to sleeping on a queen she figures that it needs to be a king to feel like luxury.

The next day we went to the Tilamook cheese factory! I love cheddar cheese so I’ve always wanted to see the source of most of the cheese that I eat. We watched the 40 pound blocks get sliced up, packaged and sent off. It was cool, but I gotta say, the Cabot cheese factory tour in Vermont is waaaaay cooler. They have a lot more samples and the tour is guided instead of just looking through a window.

After buying $40 in cheese and ice cream we stopped off at a winery and then drove around the scenic coastline. After a full day we went back to the hotel to relax!

Some more wine and more scenery Sunday and then we drove home, refreshed, but still not ready to go back to work. On the way home we stopped by a huge tree, I think Sitka spruce. Kim loves trees like this.

Kim, Brian, Bridgid and I were at it again this past weekend, trying to find some snow to hike in. Initially we wanted to go camping (and by we I mean everyone but me), but decided against it since we really weren’t prepared. Brian gave me a snowshoe guidebook for Christmas so we looked up a route in there and took off for the Cascades. The hike was just a logging road, but there were some nice vistas along the way. As is our habit, we hiked until we had to turn around in order to get back to the car before dark. On the way back some country yokels in big pickups had driven most of the way up the road. My Subaru made it a good ways up, but these fools seemed to be driving in the snow just because they could. It was freezing rain on the way home so traffic was a little tedious, so we stopped for Mexican food.

Kim and I had presents to give our friends for Christmas that we never got around to distributing before Christmas, so we threw a dinner party last night. We made spaghetti with cheese, sauce and garlic bread. Anna, Phil, Travis, Jacob, Waleska, Preson, , Patrick, , Bridgid, Gabe, and Brian were all there. We almost all fit around our dining room table when we put the three leaves in! After eating we pass out Chinook Books that we got for everyone. It’s an environmentally friendly coupon book that supports local businesses, similar the Entertainment book if you’ve heard of those. Then everyone just enjoyed hanging out and talking. It’s harder now that we’re out of college to get big groups of people together. For that matter it seems harder to get people to do things period. Oh well, it was a fun night.

Kim and I went to the Premier for New Years. Phong’s company Zango threw the party. Phong was drunk when we got there and repeatedly appologized for it. G Love and the Special Sauce were the live band and I thought they kicked ass. Most of the people there didn’t pay much attention though, which is a shame since they’re such a cool band. We got there around 9:30 and there weren’t many people, but by the time midnight rolled around the place was so packed that you couldn’t even get to the bar for a drink. Kim and I hardly drank just because it was so hard to get a drink. We found Phong, Justin and his girlfriend and had a fun time in the photo booth. The photos were free! Kim and I left a little after midnight to try to meet up with Danny downtown, but parking was a pain and it was starting to rain so we went home.

Kim and I drove back to Eastern Washington Thursday evening for Christmas with the family. We got in late and immediately went to bed. The next day was a relaxing Christmas Eve day. We viewed the first few hundred of my dad’s Kenya photos and lounged around.

We went to church service a little early to help put out luminary candles. There were already plenty of people to help, but we set joined in anyway for something to do. It was a nice service and I got to see a lot of people that I hadn’t seen in a while. Daniel Meade was there and I hadn’t seem him in 3 years. In talking we discovered an amazing coincidence: Daniel is living in the same room in a house by the freeway that I was living in 3 years ago when I last saw him. Daniel had never seen the house and it’s all different people there now. I think it’s funny that he’s even living in the same room since the room was an attic with low ceilings. Daniel seems a little tall for that room.

We all went to bed and Santa Claus filled the stockings. The next morning we opened presents and ate candy. After cleaning up all the wrapping paper we left for Grandma’s house. Sarah got a pogo stick and we all had to try it. It was pretty hard actually. Sierra and Sarah put on a play where they painted faces upsidedown on their chins and did a comedy routine. We did a white elephant gift exchange and I ended up with the gift that I brought, a backpacking snowshovel.

Gabe, a Japanese studies major, decided to have a Japanese themed day. This started off with all you could eat sushi at Todai’s in downtown Seattle. I definitely ate all that I could eat. In fact I didn’t eat anything else until the next day. The fresh sushi was too good to stop eating.

Gabe and a friend of his watched some samurai movies later in the day after we had napped off our food coma. I watched part of Lady Snow Blood, but then Kim and I left to visit Jacob and Travis.

Jacob, Travis, Waleska, Anna, Phil, Jesse, Deborah, Kim and I all drank and talked. Everyone seems to realize that we’re all much more mature at our parties now than we used to be. I think we realize this as we sit and talk about all the crazy stuff we used to do while we were together in college, and know that we don’t do stuff like that so much anymore. It’s probably a good thing, but it’s easy to miss the old times.

Kim’s parents, Ron and Joan, picked us up from Kim’s grandma’s on Saturday and we went to stay at a time share in Indian Rocks Beach west of Tampa. Over the next few days we were very busy sight seeing and having fun around Florida.

Sunday we went to an auction, saw the sponge docks, and bought some stuff at a gigantic flea market. The auction was fun though none of us bid on anything. It’s probably a good thing that Kim didn’t have a number or I think she might have started using it just for fun.

The only unfortunate part about doing all this is that we had to drive everywhere, and as everyone in Florida told us many times, traffic is terrible. The main problems are that lights are 3-5 minutes long and they’re everywhere, and too many drivers are either over 60 and pay no attention while driving along at 40 mph or they’re crazy and drive along at 70-100 mph (not a good combination). Thankfully, Ron did all the driving so Kim and I were spared dealing with all the traffic. He even managed to avoid a fender bender accident that happened right in front of us.

Monday Kim and I gave her parents their Christmas present, a kayak trip to see the manatees! Read more about that in my other post. Kim and I also opened gifts in the stockings that her parents had brought for us.

Tuesday we went to Myakka River State Park. We saw an amazing amount of birds including the roseated spoonbill, vultures, and many varieties of herons and egrets. We did a boat cruise of the lake and also saw alligators! They were basking on the river banks to soak up the sun and some of them are huge. We saw some swimming in the water and some walking on the land. I can’t get over how much they look like dinosaurs. After the chilly boat cruise we did a canopy walk where we climbed up a tower so that we could get a nice view over all the palm trees. On the way home we stopped at an injured bird sanctuary so we got to see most all the birds we had been looking at in the wild up close and then some.

Tuesday night Chip, a friend of ours from California, had flown into Florida to be with his family for Christmas so he met up with us and we went out with him and his brother Ray. We went to a cool Irish pub with a thatched roof in downtown Tampa. It was fun to catch up with Chip and meet Ray. On the way home Chip avoided an accident with a crazy driver who decided to change 3 lanes of traffic going 40 mph on the freeway with no warning and without looking to see that there were cars behind. Crazy people.

Wednesday we went to Ybor City, the old Cuban district in Tampa. We saw part of the museum and then went to find Cuban food for lunch but had a hard time finding it and settled for Italian.

Finally we said our goodbyes and Kim and I got on the plane to go home.