9 & 10

With our recent 12 year anniversary, I realized that I never did blog posts for our past two year's wedding anniversaries. Since we've been in school here at BYU-Idaho, our anniversary is in the middle of the Fall semester, and so it's made us a little more creative in finding ways to celebrate. :)

10 years! The day we got engaged on the left (Aug 2005) and anniversary pictures (Aug 2015)

In 2014 Jon and I celebrated 9 years of marriage! We had been living in Idaho for about 3 months, and going on some sort of mini-trip together (as is our usual tradition) was just out of the question. We had been hoping to go to Twin Falls and stay in a bed and breakfast and explore this new countryside that is Idaho, but unfortunately with classes, and Edwin only being 7 months old, it was just a hard-learned lesson that our money and time was tighter than ever. Instead we stayed in town and went out to dinner at The Hickory! We had heard great things about the BBQ there, and we were definitely not disappointed.

As the traditional gift for 9 years is wicker, I got a picnic basket (of sorts) for Jon, filled with brownies and Martinelli's for an indoor anniversary dessert picnic. HAHA!

Seriously, you don't want to picnic at the park when it's covered in snow and -11 degrees outside.

Year 9 wrapped up nicely, and then we were off on new adventures in 2015. It was a year of major growth for us all individually and as a family! Then November came around again.

For years and years we had planned on going to Hawaii for our 10 year celebration. Neither Jon nor I has ever been, and we really looked forward to it! But... we had made some major goals to have all debt paid off by April of 2016, so instead of going on a trip, we saved our money and had a nice dinner at the Copper Rill in Idaho Falls. :)

The traditional gift for 10 years is tin/aluminum, so I found this Celtic aluminum infinity knot Christmas ornament on Etsy and gave it to Jon so that we can see it on our tree each year and remember our first decade of eternal marriage!

The best part of celebrating our anniversaries is of course never the trip or fancy presents, but getting to talk about our year, what our favorite parts were, what the worst parts were, and what we want to do better in the coming year, or 10 years!

Our hard work definitely paid off, because we were able to pay off 100% of our debt by the beginning of March this year :) I am so proud of us and the work that we've done in the past 10 years to build our family and get to this point. We also appreciate all our friends and family members who have supported us and helped us reach this goal. Now we are saving for a Year of America road trip this Summer, and who knows what anniversary 11 will bring??

The Fourth Saturday

The fourth Saturday of January fell on the 25th - which also happened to be mine and Jon's 10 year anniversary of dating!

Every year Jon and I celebrate this anniversary by re-creating our first date in some form, or we mix it up and still do "fast food and a movie" but we pick something besides Taco Bell, and we go see a movie currently in theaters. (8 years was Sherlock Holmes and In-n-Out, Last year was the Squeeze Inn and Les Miserables)

THIS YEAR I had great plans. I was going to rent out a private screening and have them play Cheaper By The Dozen (which Jon wouldn't realize until we were there) and I was going to arrange to have Taco Bell food waiting there for us, or brought in during the movie. No expense and effort would be too much for celebrating 10 years in an epic way!!

Except that it turns out arranging a private screening is REALLY REALLY expensive. And if you don't already have your movie in the right format, you have to add an AV package for it to work with the projectors, and THAT is also really expensive. We're talking thousands of dollars here.

So I let Jon in on my plan. We decided instead to do our traditional "dinner and movie" date, but step it up and make it fancy.

First, we went to McCormick & Schmick's for dinner - which we had never been to. Thanks to some gift cards from Christmas we were able to dine in fanciness! It is definitely in our list of top 10 favorite restaurants. Everything was fantastic. Jon and I shared an appetizer of sushi grade seared tuna and an avocado tartar, then after delicious salads and awesome sourdough bread, Jon had the seared sea scallops and I had the stuffed Atlantic salmon. OH MY. So delightful.

Afterward, we headed over to Miabella for gelato. They have a really good sorbet selection, so I always have some good choices too :) We decided to take our gelato on a stroll as we went around The Fountains and back to our car.

 Well for a Saturday night it was getting pretty packed (as expected) and apparently parking was in high demand, because some old man started following us in his car (presumably to get our spot which he assumed we were walking towards) but seriously he was right behind us at a creeper pace following us at 3mph - a young man and his 7 month pregnant wife! - to our car... I mentioned quietly to Jon that we should just keep walking and walking. So we passed our car and went WAY down to the other end of the parking lot, and then crossed over to the path on the other side and walked ALL the way back. This guy would not give up! And he never even asked if we were headed to a car, or if he could have our spot. He just creepily kept following for a good 5+ minutes, which felt like an hour! Finally I think he figured we were just enjoying our date and so he split off in search of another parking place. I was just amazed at his stubborn insistence of following us like a stalker when Jon and I were just trying to enjoy our dessert. We had a really good laugh about that one. And were thankful that we were in a nice area and did not get kidnapped or shot :)

Next, we were going to go see a movie - BUT there was nothing that looked very good in theaters that we haven't already seen :( We decided instead to back up to our 8 year wedding anniversary that we just celebrated in November, and used our gift card to Color Me Mine and paint some pottery!!

We had never been there before, and had NO plan on what to paint.

In case you have never been there either, I will do a brief summary.

Color Me Mine is a "paint-your-own-pottery" studio. They have the pieces there ready to go and you pick out whatever you want to paint. Once you buy your pottery, you pick out your paint colors. Then you get to work! The possibilities are endless and when your creation is done, they clean up your mess and glaze your pottery during the week for you to pick up a few days later.

Jon and I picked out a chubby cookie jar for our family since we have never had one.

The colors we picked were a soft lime green, sea mist, and teal, with black for accents and writing.

Jon painted most of the jar green. Then I painted the lid and the front oval.

Jon added some embellishment to the knob on the top:

I did the wording on the front, and Jon worked on the decorative vines: 

 

 

We had a lot of fun creating together and designing everything as we went!

 Me with our finished cookie jar! (painted, but not yet glazed)

ages 26 and 28 - 10 years after our first date

We were super happy with the finished product. The glaze made all the colors pop and it looks so cool!

 Right now we have a candy stash in there, but we're looking forward to having our own kitchen again someday and filling it with delicious cookies :)

It was a great way to celebrate 10 years of togetherness and have a keepsake to launch us into the next 10 years - and beyond!

8 Years of Marriage

On November 18th, Jon and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary!

Every year we try to go on a mini vacation somewhere. Our original plan was to go visit our friends Bay and Shawn in NV, but when Shawn's grandma had a bad fall earlier this year, the whole family changed Thanksgiving plans and so our mini trip was cancelled. I couldn't let this year go by though as this was an opportunity for us to have our first night without Kate and have a little time to ourselves before baby #2 arrives!

In about a week and a half's time, I planned a surprise trip for me and Jon. I wrote Jon 8 anniversary cards that all told him things I love about being married to him. The final one had his anniversary gift, which was a gift card to Color Me Mine so that we can paint something awesome together. The traditional 8 year anniversary gift is pottery :)

 

I had changed my work schedule and doctor appointments that week so that Jon wouldn't know that I had moved everything around. On the day we were going to leave, he thought I had to close at work. Instead I came home at 4pm and had road trip snacks in the front seat of the car! This was his last day of teaching before the next term, so it was a good chance to celebrate another semester completed.

I gave Jon his first card which said we were going on a surprise date. I had already packed our bags and they were in the trunk. Our neighbors and ward friends were already set to watch Kate overnight and had her bag and pack-n-play. Jon was so surprised. "How long are we going to be gone??" He asked. I didn't tell him where we were going, but just that I wanted him to enjoy it!

We drove up the hill to Nevada City where I had made reservations at a cute Inn. It was adorably cozy and small, super cute and clean! All of the shops in the town were lit up. I was so excited to wander through it all! It reminded me a little bit of Portland and the older shopping district that we loved.

I had even packed sparkling cider for us! Jon was very impressed. We walked a short half mile to an AMAZING restaurant for dinner. Friar Tuck's is definitely in our top 5 of all-time favorite restaurants. After dinner we walked back to the Inn. I just had to get a picture of Jon brushing his teeth with his winter hat on :) It was a bit chilly. Luckily we had a great heater in the room!

The next day we spent our time perusing the shops and had a fantastic lunch at South Pine Deli. Jon found me an awesome pair of wool socks as well as an adorable hat which he bought for me for our anniversary. I've never owned a nice hat before, so it was a lot of fun trying them on!

I would say that Jon's favorite store was the Fur Trader. They had real fox hats with the paws still on and the tail hanging down the back. If they weren't about $300 I'm sure he would have purchased it right on the spot. We loved looking at the coats and blankets! So so so soft. We were also able to pick out our Christmas ornament for this year, which we love to do on our anniversary trips. The winner: a felted fox with a pipe. He is currently chilling in our wreath on the door of our room since we don't have a Christmas tree. We also loved visiting the antique stores. There was some fantastic art deco era jewelry that the antiques lady let me try on. Holy cow, they were beautiful! It was cool to see that some had cuts of diamonds that aren't used anymore in modern jewelry. We could have spent hours in there!

We didn't bring our camera on the trip or the phone charger, so there aren't many pictures. But I kind of liked it that way. We just held hands and talked instead of worrying about social media or capturing every detail. It was such a great chance for us to feel like we were dating again and just talk about our past year and what we hope for this next year.

I'm so thankful for a husband who will do fun spontaneous things with me, even when he has no idea what is going on! I'm glad that he likes to go antiquing with me and stay in cute Inns. I'm so glad that we've made it through year #8 and can't wait to see what we talk about at the next anniversary celebration. We have a new found love for Nevada City and will definitely be going back!!

7 years

 Every year for our wedding anniversary, Jon and I go on a mini vacation together. This year, because Katherine is so small, we brought her with us!

We have been talking for years about going to Oregon, up to Astoria to visit the places where they filmed The Goonies. My Aunt and Uncle live in Portland, so we decided to make a whole big Oregon trip out of it :)

Our drive up was amazingly beautiful! Oregon has all the parts of Northern California that I love. Trees, trees, green, trees, rain and more trees!

Kate was perfect the entire car ride. She slept, I sat in the back and fed her with a bottle every few hours, and she would stare out the window babbling at the scenery. We think she likes trees too.

We were able to stay with my Aunt and Uncle which was perfect! We just crashed the first night and woke up first thing the next morning to visit the famous VooDoo Doughnut shop.

 My Aunt volunteered to watch Kate for the day, so she and my cousin, Claire had a blast with the baby while we waited in line for sugary deliciousness...

It was much smaller inside than I had expected, but totally funky and awesome!

We ended up with a dozen doughnuts that we picked out ourselves. My favorite was the VooDoo doll (pictured below). Behind it you will see the peach fritter, Captain my Captain, the butterfinger doughnut, the Tang doughnut and the fruit loop doughnut. ALL were delicious.

Jon's favorite was (of course) the maple bacon bar!

Supposedly the wait is normally over an hour long. Good thing we came on a rainy weekend! It was still packed, but we only had to wait about 10 minutes.

From there we trekked a few blocks to Powell's.

This bookstore is a full city block and 3 stories of rooms upon rooms of books. They sell new, used and out of print books. We spent at least a good 45 minutes drooling in their rare book room which was temperature controlled and included some books originally printed in the 1600's. (ahh!) I was almost too afraid to touch them. After 3 hours we had to make ourselves leave so that we could see other parts of Portland. I didn't even count the number of books we left with.

After Powell's we were hoping to eat lunch at a food cart, but they were closed for the weekend. Instead we stopped by the Keep Portland Weird sign:

And ate lunch at Sizzle Pie. They had quite the assortment of Vegan pizzas, which made me very very happy :)

After lunch and browsing through some thrift shops in downtown, we headed over to 23rd street where there are adorable boutiques and restaurants. Salt & Straw was recommended to us by my Aunt and Uncle, so we definitely had to get Jon some ice cream!

Their menu was full of amazingly weird flavors. Jon had the strawberry balsamic vinegar with black pepper. I had just a tiny taste. SO good! Jon also tried the honey lavendar and pear with blue cheese.

Although I didn't have any ice cream, I did get a pocket apple pie and some dark chocolate with sea salt. mmmmmmm

That night we went out for our official anniversary dinner.

Blue Hour in the Pearl District was absolutely FANTASTIC. They have a cheese menu that you order from before the appetizers. Jon was very excited about this. The atmosphere was unlike any restaurant I have ever been in before. They had lit tree branches covering the ceiling so it felt like eating in a park at night.

 After our fancy sorbet, we headed to Papa Haydn's on 23rd street for "real" dessert ;) It was just a totally different atmosphere and crowd of people. At 10:30 at night this place was PACKED and we waited about 15 minutes for a table. I didn't get a picture of my dessert, but I'm pretty sure it was the best thing I have ever eaten. Dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and real raspberries on top... I don't know what they put in this cake, but it was like a literal slice of heaven.

The next day we slept in and went to church with my cousins. Kate had a new outfit to wear (Thanks Deb!) But she looked a bit concerned about her face-to-bow ratio :) haha. So ridic. I love it.

 After church we visited Lynsi Barfuss and fam in Beaverton, met their grandma... and then hung out with my cousins for dinner and a little BYU TV. It was so nice to just have a relaxing family and friend day!

Monday we drove up to Astoria. Luckily we picked the day they were having a huge storm with 40mph winds and torrential rain. The freeway on the coast flooded and a semi tipped over on the bridge to the lighthouse, so needless to say it sort of limited our sightseeing options!

Our first stop (of course!) was the Goonie house:

 

We all got pictures in front of it, and then it really started getting rainy and windy. The house was a lot smaller in person than we expected. It's on this hill at the top of a gravely road. There is really no room for a lot of cars to be able to drive up, park and turn around, so they ask you to go up the hill on foot.

 

From there we went to the Astoria visitor's center where we found out that most places were closed due to power outages, or on back up generators. Awesome! We took our chances by going to the film museum (the old County Jail) where they filmed the Fratelli escape scene at the beginning of Goonies. It was open!

 

 

The jail inside was very small. It was a really working jail in town for a long time.

 

Jon in the cell where they filmed the hanging scene:

 

 

They even had Data's costume on display:

 

 

After a few fun mock movie scene reenactments we headed across the street to the Flavel House.

 

 

This gorgeous Queen Anne style Victorian was built by Captain Flavel way back in the day and is now a restored museum. Jon and I LOVE Victorian culture, so this was super fun to see. It reminded me a lot of the Winchester house in San Jose... but without all the weirdness :)

 

After a seafood lunch by the ocean we headed back to Portland and spent the evening walking around Pioneer Courthouse square and 23rd street.

Kate looking at the lights of downtown:

It was so much fun to see my aunt, uncle and cousins!

I used to hold Claire constantly when she was a baby. And now she holds my baby :)

The Hardy fam! Craig, Lynnette, Spencer and Claire.
(Camden and Nathan are both out on missions right now)

Kate was so wiggly she just wouldn't hold still for any pictures!

 

The Alston's

 

And then we headed home. It was adorable to see that after we had Kate buckled into her carseat she snuggled with Eeyore :) 

 

 

The drive home was rainy pretty much the whole way... all 10 hours back into Sacramento.

 

The nicest part was making up a story about clouds with Jon. We even got this one beautiful break of sun. My phone does not do it justice, but it was super rad.

 

As I thought would happen, we both fell in love with Oregon and would move there in a heartbeat. It was everything about Northern California that we love, plus some funk and a lot of Vegan food. Could not have been a better place to pick for vacation!