We were lucky enough to take a vacation - just the two of us - to Hawaii! We had an amazing time and even got to ride bikes down from the crater on the Haleakala volcano on Maui. It was incredible and will have such wonderful memories from this trip forever.
It has been six months since we became an Aunt and Uncle and we are loving it! While we don't live close by, we get tons of photo updates and love to FaceTime with our new nephew!
We unfortunately had to delay visiting family for the holidays, but we were able to travel to see them in January. And we got a white "Christmas!"
Otis has been loving his daily Advent story and treat. Drake and I both had traditions when we were younger where we'd read an Advent story each night before Christmas. This is our way to continue the tradition with our little family.
We've been to our last weddings of 2021. They were both in such fun venues with amazing fall weather. It was so fun to see friends we haven't seen in a while, and of course, dance!
What a whirlwind! Celebrating Claire's birthday weekend took us to delicious Italian dinners and spending time with lots of family and friends. 32 should be the best year yet!
Claire ran into her dad at the grocery store! We love living so close to our family.
One of Claire's best friends since elementary school had a baby during quarantine and this past weekend was the first time they got to meet! He is a sweetie - loves to eat and make towers, then knock them over. Such a fun visit to see this little boy!
Fourth of July weekend at the lake has become a fun tradition with our group of friends. We really enjoy taking the boat out, hanging out on the dock, making bonfires, and spending quality time together. It has also been fun to see how our friends' children grow up from year to year. This past year, they were able to stay up later to watch fireworks and they have become much more talkative! Spending time with them makes us even more excited to have a family of our own in the near future!
We recently traveled to celebrate Drake's grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. Can you believe that?? 60 years. We took a huge group photo where all the aunts, uncles, children, cousins and spouses were together for the first time ever. We even got official family tree t-shirts to commemorate the occasion. It was a special weekend celebrating two very special people. Their love and marriage is inspiring and we're so glad to have been able to see them!
This past weekend was a lot of fun, as we got to spend time with Claire's Grandpa while he was in town. It has been a while since we spent time with him, and he is such a great story teller! He shared many golf stories with Drake and they talked about their love for the sport. He sampled Claire's meatballs and sauce, a family recipe, to see if it was up to his standards, and we shared many laughs. Not too shabby for 94 years old!
Every year my dad saves me the HUGE crossword from our newspaper and it takes quite a while to finish. Drake always helps when I'm stuck on a word!
We're getting excited to celebrate the holidays, especially now that our Christmas tree is up! This year we had a hard time finding the perfect tree - we tried a few places and finally ended up at the perfect place. The lawn was set up like a Christmas tree farm with hot cocoa, a bonfire, a petting zoo and of course beautiful trees. We think we picked a pretty good one and had a lot of fun decorating it together.
We decided to try something new for Thanksgiving instead of the normal turkey dinner, so Drake thought he'd try Beef Wellington! It's something we've always joked about as the fanciest food we could think of. This is from his "practice round" to make sure things would go off without a hitch during our Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out perfectly & was DELICIOUS!
We had a great time this past weekend celebrating Claire's birthday! It was a little different than normal but we still managed to have fun, because of Claire's creativity. Claire loves pizza, so she had the idea to host a "bake your own pizza" party on the night of her birthday. Our close friends and her family came over to our house, and I prepped all of the ingredients from sauce and cheese to bacon, onions, spinach, and other non-traditional toppings. Everyone got to prep and bake their own personal pizza, and of course, we all thought that ours was the best! As you can see in the picture, Claire even tried to throw her dough in the air like you see at some pizza places! It was great to celebrate Claire's special day while staying safe in our home!
We recently returned from a trip to Jackson Hole, where we were able to see Yellowstone National Park, the town of Jackson, and the Grand Teton National Park. It was such a fun time! Our family will typically go to the beach or lake for a vacation, but after being stuck in our homes during quarantine, we decided to head out west and experience nature for a while. We were able to go on some fun hikes, explore the national parks, and we even saw some cool wildlife. The weather was perfect and we made some great memories as a family!
Over the past two weeks, both of our companies have implemented "Work From Home" policies due to the current virus concerns. We're all still getting adjusted, but it's been especially different for our new co-worker, Otis. He just doesn't seem to be interested in working at all. Drake usually comes home during lunch time to play with Otis, but he is not used to us being on the computer and not paying attention to him. We've got some mean stares while on the computer, including the one pictured here, but he's always happy when we take a break to pet him or take him on a walk. Hopefully he will get used to use working from home for the next few weeks!