Alec is 9! 7.30.2012

Ok this kid makes me feel SOOO old. 

When I first met him he had just been born and was such a little guy and now he is so grown up! 

I can't believe Alec is 9 now. 

Wow where has the time gone?

Happy Birthday bud! You are awesome! I've loved watching you grow up and coming out to watch you play baseball-you are getting really good bud, keep at it! :D

I wish you a fantastic year and hope you enjoyed your birthday! Love you my not so little guy! :)

First date 7.27.2012

You would think going on a date with my boyfriend that I've been with for almost 3 years wouldn't make me nervous lol oh but I was!

 Nate and I got to go out for our first time in two years tonight!

I had butterflies all day!

 Since he planned our first date the first time around it was my turn to plan the date :) 

Which also meant I got to go and pick him up haha oh and get questioned by his parents-so funny! 

We started out with mini golf at Parkland Putters. One would also think that being on the golf team for a three years I'd be a bit better than I was lol. I was a bit nervous at first which totally threw my game off lol but after a bit I got back into the swing of things :) We had fun chatting as we played through the holes :) At the end I let Nate win ;) Then we headed over to Puyallup to go grab milkshakes at Sonic :) We went over to the park and walked around and chatted, it was nice to catch up and actually be able to talk rather than read it over a letter :) It is nice to have him back, still weird at times to look and see that he is really there lol but I am loving it :) 

I would say date #1 was a success :)

Julia has arrived! 7.25.2012

Congrats to Ember & Joe-Julia Kristine has FINALLY arrived! 

This little beautiful girl was so stubborn and didn't want to come out and meet all of us who were anxiously awaiting her arrival! The little girl was supposed to come on July 19th but stuck it out for another week almost!

 She arrived on July 24 at 1:25p.m. 

She weighed in at 8 lbs 5 oz and is 21 inches long!

Ember and Julia were released from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon so I got to go over and meet Julia! It was so awesome to hold this little girl :) 

Welcome to the world Julia! You belong to a loving family with older siblings who love you already and are anxious to grow with you :)

Tacoma Rainier's Baseball Game 7.24.2012

Swing. Ball. Swing. STRIKE OUT!

Tonight my mom and I got to go to the Tacoma Rainier's baseball game thanks to our friend Shawna who had tickets and wasn't going to use them so we jumped on the offer! :D

We got to be apart of the Summit Club for the night which meant-free parking, special entrance, elevator ride to top floor where we got unlimited drinks, popcorn, peanuts, and pretzels! 

Oh and get this...we got to sit 5 rows from the field! 

Awesome seats huh? Heck YES! 

Thank you Shawna-you are awesome :)

The game was good-very nail biting as we tried to keep our lead then to catch up so we wouldn't lose :( 

At the end though the Tucson Padres took home the win 4-3 :( But good effort boys!

*The ONE good play of the game when the Rainier's took the lead was when I went to the bathroom, just my luck haha*

In a blink of an eye 7.22.2012

From December 2009 (our first photo taken on my camera) to July of 2012 (first photo after being apart for 2 years) Nate and I have shared some amazing experiences together :) He has filled my life with so much joy it is hard to explain & usually I start crying!
So I will just say that I am incredibly grateful for him in my life and that he is such a blessing to me! I put this together today to see the changes we've made in the past two years while he was gone serving the Lord! The bottom two pictures are almost exactly two years apart-the left is at his farewell and the right is at his homecoming :) I can't believe it has been two years, looking back on the two years it is sort of like I blinked and it was over, it might have felt like a slow blink at times but overall it was like he left and I blinked my eyes and he has returned. Oh and the saying is so true-they leave as boys and come home as men ;) I think Texas definitely played a role in it too haha! Gotta love Texas :D I love you Nathaniel :)

2 years later....7.19.2012

Nate is home from serving his mission in Texas :)

 He is even more amazing than I remember. He makes me smile and laugh. It is so good to have him home :) I got to go over to his house and see him again for the first time in two years :) 

Ahhhh the hug was SO worth it :) 

He talked all night about his mission, he LOVES Texas ;)

He had such a great time and learned so much and met so many great people! I am so grateful for this experience he was able to have and also for him allowing me to be apart of it as well. To learn and grow right along side him and become closer as we wrote each other each week and really dove into our scriptures :)

 I am so glad he is home! 

I love him :) 

Welcome home Nate :)

Elder Schott's Return! 7.18.2012

Welcome Home Elder Schott!

Elder Schott returned to Washington at 12:50p.m. today :D

His family was there to greet him at the airport!

After the airport they hit up BJ's (it is a delicious restaurant here in Tacoma, home-made root beer & cookies fresh out of the oven served with ice cream for dessert)

They spent the afternoon chatting away and then that evening they went to the Stake President's office and Elder Schott was released from his missionary duty and became Nathaniel Schott again! 

(it is crazy to think two years has flown by!) 

After that they went to dinner at Apple Teriyaki-Nate's favorite place! Or at least his top three along with BJ's now only Frugals (hamburger joint) is left! haha

A good afternoon of happy reunions filled with a lovely evening for the family being apart of him being released!

Welcome Home Nate-I am so grateful for your service in Texas these past two years! You are an incredible example to me and I love you so much :) Can't wait to hear all about Texas and your mission! :D

We like to party! 7.14.2012

Oh Tessa is back and so is our epic adventures! Oh how I have missed her!!!!!! :D
We went for a drive Saturday night and I discovered she had never seen the Fremont Troll. Well we HAD to change that! So we headed that way, a few wrong turns but we got there ;) What is an adventure without getting a little lost? Exactly. ;) We had a lot of fun climbing up the creepy troll or in Tessa's case climbing under him to get that awesome photo in the right there!

On Sunday after church we had the intention of heading out to Golden Gardens to go walk the beach. Well we were cut off thanks to a street market going on. We tried the detour for a bit then decided we could just walk around that! So we found parking-Tessa did an awesome job at parallel parking :) Then we walked up the street and found THIS FISH! It was huge! And there was kids inside of it. So we HAD to see what was going on, so we climbed inside! It had cool paintings on the inside! And of course I had to get a photo of it ;) We were inside a fish, come on. How could you pass that up?!?

Once again our adventure was epic. You never disappoint Tessa ;) Thanks bud for an awesome weekend!

Tessa returns 7.14.2012

My bud came back from Utah today :)
So Betsy and I ran to the Dollar Tree to get supplies to make her some Welcome Home signs :)
Tessa had wanted to just take a cab back to Seattle instead of someone coming to pick her up-so miss independent!!! But after lots of texting and calling to Chris, Betsy, Emily and even Tessa we got it all figured out and had our plan to surprise her at the airport :)

We got there and found the Delta gate and then came the game of waiting! That part is never fun so Chris decided to make a game out of it-we tried to guess where people were coming from ;) yes, we are dorks. lol. Then we finally asked someone where they were coming from and got Utah-WOOHOO!!! She was coming soon! I had the camera ready to capture her face and Betsy, Emily, and Chris had the signs :)

She came up on the escalator furthest from us lol (ya just our luck) and wasn't looking our way so we had to shout her name and then she looked and got a surprised look on her face (priceless!) and smiled and we all got hugs :) Success!!!!

I got a video of it but it was sent from an iphone so it isn't so great but here it is anyways!!!!

Welcome back to Seattle Tessa!!!!

7/11 Free Slurpee Day! 7.11.2012

It is 7-11!!! You know what that means???? 

FREE SLURPEE DAY! :D

After playing some baseball with the Marini's at the park we headed over to grab our 7.11 ounces of yummy slurpees :) I love free slurpee day-who wouldn't???

I loved it so much after my mom got off of work we ran to the other 7/11 by our house to get another one ;p 

Last Letter sent to Texas 7.8.2012

Tonight is the night, I spent my Sunday writing my final letter to Elder Schott.

My last letter to go to Texas-the post office might go out of business now with no more packages or letters from me lol ;)

I can't believe after 104 letters I wrote my last one. 

It is done. 

Whoa.

 Dropping it off in the mail box it really hit me that this is happening

Elder Schott has almost completed his mission :)

We've grown so much over these past two years and to think our only communication has been through letters-it is insane to think that I will be talking to him here in 10 days :)

His response to this last letter will be in person-

OH MY GOODNESS :)

Surprise visitor from Colorado! 7.7.2012

Guess who flew in from Colorado for the weekend-Emily :)
Emily and her dad Roy worked together to surprise her mom for a belated birthday gift-it worked!!!! :D
Tonight we went over to a relatives of theirs and had a party! It was nice and hot outside so how else do you cool off? Oh with water guns ;) It was way fun :D
You know those stories when the girls say "we've been friends since we were in our mom's wombs"??? Well I am lucky enough to have a friend like that. My mom and Lori used to work together at Home Base (before Home Depot was around in Tacoma haha). Through life, moving, job changes, growing up, and raising their families these two have stayed friends through it all and even have created the same connection between Emily and I. They have become family to us, even the daddio Roy lol ;) I love you guys so much, thanks for always being there for us and treating us like family-inviting us over to all your fun events :)

Carlye comes to town! 7.6.2012

My old roommate came to Parkland to visit me-she is such a sweetheart :D
She had plans with her boyfriend later that evening but made time to come out a bit early to come hang with me to do some shopping and chatting :) It was such an awesome afternoon! I've missed Carlye :)
We went and checked out Forever 21-awesome store....we got some awesome photo moments from some of their stuff haha!
Funny story-so we had grabbed Starbucks to drink as we walked around the mall and I had finished mine so  I decided to go drop it in the garbage but the only one I saw was outside so I walked it out totally forgetting that I had a shirt under my arm so as I walked out the alarm went off! I stopped dead in my tracks-freaked out and ran back in and placed the shirt down as Carlye laughed at me...I started laughing and ran back outside to go throw away my drink lol (still got to be a good citizen haha) and when I returned the store attendant came out to ask if everything was ok Carlye and I just laughed and then explained what had happened and the lady just laughed and walked away. Basically I would be a horrible theif lol!

After the mall we grabbed ice cream cones from Baskin Robbins :) Sat outside in the sun with our ice cream-perfect way to end an afternoon! Thank you Carlye for a fantastic afternoon :) I loved seeing you again and being able to catch up!!! :D

4th tradition still lives! July.4.2012

Kids in Red.

Girls in white.

Boys in Blue.

Each 4th of July my mom gives us our 4th shirts-I love this tradition. No matter where we are we all match :) I love that! It is our family connection ;) I hope you all had a fantastic 4th :D

Proud to be an American July.4.2012

I love living in the U.S.of A :)

I really love the sunshine on the 4th of July as well. Cause of celebration in fact-inter-tubing anyone???

Oh man was it a blast! Got to hang with friends on the beach and chill on a boat (yes the line "I'm on a boat with my flippy floppies" was said baha!)

Then switched and headed up to Seattle-Alki Beach with my mommie. Went and saw our dear friends LuAn and Jules for the evening and for some fireworks! Got to see their new place now that all the craziness of moving in has settled down! Their view was beautiful and laughing was a given for the evening! :D

Happy 4th to one and all :) God Bless America!

Oh say can you see! July 4.2012

Usually it is the boys in black well this girl changed it up a bit and switched it to the boys in white-Washington tshirts for all of Nate's buds in Texas :)

This 4th of July box was bittersweet to put together-of course I enjoyed decking it out in the red, white, & blue but this was my LAST box I would make for Elder Schott. Crazy to think of that! 

I can't believe the mission is almost over-eek!

So the contents for this package:

silly string (for Elder Schott to get back at his comps for the water guns I sent in June ;p), USA necklaces, glow sticks, flag covered chapsticks for his comps, a striped tie for my Elder, crunch bars, and flag candy-mints that had flags on them lol. Very patriotic package to celebrate the good old USA :)

Happy 4th to the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You guys are amazing and I am so proud of all y'all :) Love you Elder Schott :)