Updates coming soon!

Stay tuned for updates about our trip to China and our Honeymoon to Hawaii. We know they're a long time coming, but we promise fun stories and awesome pictures!

Our China Adventure

So most of you know that we took at 2 week vacation to China. It was really good to get away for a solid block of time but also really good to get back. China was definitely different than what we expected.

I really enjoyed the Great Wall; the soldiers back in the day must have had thighs of steel because seriously, I have never done so many stairs in my life. The area of the great wall that we went to was almost completely stairs between each of the guard towers. There are 120 meters between each tower and we went up like 8-10 of them. My legs hurt for 3 days after. Like gasping going down the two stairs on our tour bus kind of sore. We were with 6 other people on the other tour and the like 70 year old grandma was doing better than me. Granted she only walked to one guard tower but man I was hurting. Hopefully we have a picture of the stairs we can post, so you can see that it was kind of crazy steep.

The next site that I really enjoyed was the Terracotta Warriors. Some historical sites are impressive because of their sheer size. The warriors definitely qualify as such. Literally thousands of soldiers made out of clay, each with different faces. Amazing.

My next pick (not necessarily in order) would be Longman Grottoes. This one I would say is a lot less well know, but darn impressive in its’ own right. So basically picture a mountain side that has thousands of Buddha’s carved out of it, actually it has over 100,000 Buddha’s carved into the mountainside. There are some that are as small as your thumb that are carved so close together they are like Buddha wall paper and the tallest ones are like three stories high. Old religious sites always impress me. I mean for centuries people were devout enough to work on this mountainside. I know that people spent decades working on the Salt Lake temple but really old sites I can’t help but think that they had even rougher tools and the work was harder. Buddha statues and temples seem to be everywhere in China.

I also really liked the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City. Both were used in ancient times by the Emperor and his family. These were enormous compounds with carving, beams and artwork that I would expect in ancient Chinese architecture. The summer palace has a pavilion kind of walk along the lakeside and literally each beam has a different portrait, still life or motif on it. It’s wild because the walk has to be as long as a football field. I mean the people put a lot of time into these things.

I guess the above four sites are what I would have expected from China. What I didn’t expect was the pollution. Sure I knew it would be in the cities, but it was also horrible out in the middle of no where amongst the rice patties you couldn’t see mountains that were like a 100 yards away. The main problem is they burn coal in their power plants, which dumps a bunch of crud and smut into the air. The country overall was much dirtier than I expected. Like our first 2 hotel rooms had obviously never seen or heard of a western style vacuum and the carpet was all stained, but it was more than the hotel rooms. It’s completely socially acceptable to spit in the street. I got in the way of one man, ewww on my arm. It is also ok to openly pick your nose. Oh, I almost forgot. <3 Squatty Potties, as I called them when I was in Italy. Oh man I have smelt latrines that smell better. The kick of the whole thing, is that they actually rate their bathrooms at tourist sites. So there’s this one that is **** (that’s right 4 stars). I was pretty excited at first, but then I realized that 4 stars meant that it wasn't as nice as an off brand gas station in the States where the key has something enormous attached to it so you won't steal it.

I think the most surprising thing in terms of local culture is how the Chinese LOVE crowds. I mean they LOVE, LOVE crowds. They prefer crowds. Old grandmas that seriously came to my shoulders (mind you, I am only 5’4” and that’s rounding up) had no qualms about body checking, or shoving me to get closer into the crowds. I don’t consider myself Claustrophobic. I didn’t have any problems getting my 3 MRIs but seriously the Chinese were pushing my limits (quite literally) on crowds.

~Amy

Several of Amy's siblings have posted pictures of our wedding and associated events on their blogs. Here are the links:

Going Through the Temple

Professional Pictures at the Temple

Pictures at the Temple

Pictures at the Church

The Temple Day

Ring Ceremony and Luncheon

Engaged Adventures

As I am sure you can tell... The HAPPIEST day of my life!

Valentine Adventure

So after breakfast we headed to the zoo. I have been wanting to go for awhile and Sean realized that the zoo does a special Valentine's Day feeding schedule for the animals (like the lemurs food was arranged in bouquets) so he made arrangements for us to go. We wandered around and saw all kinds of stuff. I liked the giraffes even though they were in their "house" all day. Near the end of the day we ran into Tysha, Jacob and Sawyer. Sean also saw that I made a stop off at the gift store. I thought we were just poking around but he wanted to ensure that I got a memento from our day at the zoo. I choose a pair of elephant slippers, that way he can smile whenever I answer the door in them. :)

I think it is funny that the monkey in this picture appears to be examining Sean's hand on my shoulder.

The day started around 11. Sean came by for breakfast, and he brought me flowers! I love flowers. He is soo sweet he looked for hydrangeas because he knows they are my favorite, but alas they are out of season so he settled on tulips which are the first type of flower he ever gave me. If I had taken a better picture you would be able to see that there are 5 red and 3 white (and you wouldn't be able to see my toes). The card was also really fun. It actually sings, "Can you feel the love tonight," which is from the Lion King, the musical that he took me to that evening. Sean is so thoughtful about coordinating things it is really nice.

Don't start to think our Valentine's Day was completely one sided. I made a pretty killer breakfast; I should have taken a picture. I made French toast out of Challa bread with orange zest and vanilla extract, hash browns in a large heart, eggs in two small hearts and yogurt with a fruity smiley face (strawberries and blueberries).

Birthday Adventures

February 1- My 24th Birthday. Sean is the most thoughtful guy I know. I love telling others about him and the things that he does for me because he is just so GREAT! He made me a chocolate birthday cheesecake with my name spelled out in strawberries! Lucky for him it's a short one. ;D No really, he made everything perfect on my birthday. He came over early and took me for a walk like I love to do. Then it was off to church. After church he made me raclet, one of my new favorite dishes. Then it was present time… he came up with a theme for my birthday and carried it throughout. The theme was CHOCOLATE; he obviously gets women or at least this woman. The day was incredible!
In keeping with the chocolate theme all of my presents were wrapped in chocolate cupcake wrapping paper. He did such an awesome job!
Smiley for chocolate! We still need to finish those off- Yum!
Sean also brought me pink tulips in the morning! So pretty-- also the green and pink are pretty close to our wedding colors! If you look closely you can see the photo booth pictures from the day before; they are laying on my bookshelf .

Random Adventures

January 26- We went tubing at Summit for funsies (Thank you Cherlyn for scoring us 1/2 price tickets). Don't we look disgustingly happy and cute together?
So when Sean invited me to go tubing with a rope tow I was thinking, "cool, easy little hill and I don't even have to schlep myself back to the top." But when we got to the hill I realized that I had gotten much more than I bargained for. Check out these crazy long and steep runs that have been made for tubes. I was so scared I watched Sean go three times before I was willing to give it a try (mind you like 4 year-olds were going by themselves.) Sean was great, very encouraging and patient. It was so fun to do a big outing on a week night. It's like staying up late on a school night, there's just something fun and special about it.
Saturday, January 31. Sean and I went to the International District of Seattle for the Chinese New Year. It was one of the many awesome adventure dates that he plans. We watched some amazing martial arts, drummers, and of course the dragon dancers. The finale had deafening firecrackers, but it was phenomenal (I don't know how they were able to dance for so long).
Sean did a pretty good job on this shot, wouldn't you agree? The International District looked great with all of the decorations and lanterns.

Sean's not single anymore! Hooray! (That might be because he is willing to share his coat in a chivalrous manner-- It was SO cold.)

So the real story behind this photo is that in July before Sean and I were dating we went with a group to the carnival area around the Space Needle. While we were there, Sean had his picture taken by this sign with a sad face on, because at the time he was single. It was his profile picture on facebook until we started dating in September. So when we went back to ride the carousel together it seemed only fitting that we take a happier picture with the sign. While in the area we also rode the bumper cars- where I totally whomped on him and took some fun pictures in a photo booth (We'll have to see if we can scan and post those).

Arizona Adventures

The weekend after New Year's we went down to Arizona to visit Amy's homeland. Sean got to see why it would be great to have an excuse to travel to Arizona every winter- you can go hiking in January in shorts! Oh, and Amy's family is pretty nice too.

Hiking Sabino Canyon

Taking pictures of Sabino Canyon.

Hiking A "mountain" above ASU. Sean laughed thinking how weak and puny that A is compared to the Y of HIS alma mater.

Miscellaneous Adventures

At the New Year's dance at the state fairgrounds.

At the Nutcracker ballet. We couldn't get to the first showing because of snow, but they were nice enough to offer us tickets for the next week.

Being attacked by sea life at the Seattle Aquarium.

Sean gets friendly with some sea stars.

Christmas Adventures

Our original plan was to spend Christmas at Amy's house where we had set up the Christmas tree, but on the afternoon of Christmas Eve her power went out and it started snowing again so we spent it at Sean's house instead. We loved that our first Christmas together was a white one!

The view down Sean's street. Not possible to drive on, but we did take a walk to visit Sarah and Leah at their parents' house.

Our second snow child. We've already forgotten his name, but he sort of looks like a baboon.

Amy sporting her new Christmas hat. And the aftermath of opening presents in Sean's front room.

Sean playing with his new toy helicopter.

Amy got two stockings full of gifts this year.

But Sean's stocking was bigger.

The tree we had to leave behind because Amy's power went out.

Snowy Adventures

The last few weeks of December Amy discovered that contrary to what everyone said before she moved here, it does in fact snow in Seattle. And when it snows, the whole city shuts down. Both of our cars were snowed in for several days, but we were able to get out and have some fun, as evidenced by these photos.

It may not be driveable, but it's still useful.

Amy survived our snowy walk.

This was Sean's idea, and he taught me how to make a good one- you've got to jump in.

We found a snowy playground and had fun like when we were kids (well, like Sean was a kid- Amy didn't grow up with snow).

Sean did my hair. Aren't my pigtails cute?

Our first child. Steve the snowman.

Don't we look cute all bundled up?

Poor SLiK. His bum bum is cold.

Ugly Sweaters Not People

After a long and fruitless search for ugly sweaters, we decided to make our own. Sean's artwork + my great grandmother's stockings + my hot glue skills = priceless heirloom shirts.