Heartwarming

Heartwarming pictures I've been meaning to post since May Grandpa Davison 1919-2009Mom 1948-2001Dad and Mom

Mt. Hood Pictures

Nick & K'Lyn playing Xbox-I believe they are playing Halo which was played a lot this weekend due to the crummy warm weather:)

Ski Bowl East

A round of cards-I didn't win:(

Settlers of Catan-Fun Game, again I didn't win:(

Displaying my style-you can't see it in the picture, but I'm wearing shorts, with underarmor pants, socks to my knees, a funny body building shirt (Dan gave me) with white shoes. Nice :)

Front Row-Cara & Laura

Second Row-Nick, Brian, Brad & Matt

Third Row-Alisha, Jeni, Dan C., K'Lyn & Dan S.

Winter Adventure in Government Camp

I need to start off by saying we chose this place because on the Internet it looked so well put together. Very nice place to stay. There was an older place we could have gone with, but didn't look as nice. Okay now with the story...

The trip started off okay, just getting out of the Tri-Cities maybe 1/2 hr to 45 minutes late which bothers me just a bit. We went maybe an hr & 1/2 and someone needed to stop for a potty brake. Then maybe an hour later another potty brake for a 3 1/2 hour trip. Okay, I admit I had to go both brakes, but I could have waited on the 2nd stop...probably. We made it safe & sound after 2 brakes and 1 U-turn.

The place was beautiful inside and out. Once inside we pulled names to figure out where everyone was to sleep. Dan and I ended up on the hide-a-bed. Fine by me. Nick and Alisha had to stay on the floor which they both planned on anyway. Dan and I didn't know it at the time, but we would soon end up with the same fate. After an afternoon of relaxation and planning out our next day we pulled out the bed. Nick decided to test it out. He barley sat on the edge of the bed before he went right through. I'm so glad I told Dan to bring the sleeping bags!! This was the first of many interesting things to happen to us this weekend.

Let's just get to the good stuff...we are on a skiing trip right, but there was an inversion which means it's warmer in the mountains than in the city. Nice right-absolutely not. You'd think it would be nice to ski in warmer weather, but not 59 degree weather-it's pure ice. Skiing on ice isn't too bad for me, I'm used to White Pass, but the snowboarders had many bumps & bruises:) oh and poor Brad and Laura got beat up. Brad with a twisted knee and Laura hit her head pretty hard.

Okay, so we are a little beat up right. We come home shower up eat dinner. Let's quickly talk about a couple near explosions with dinner before getting to the grand finally. This happened to us a couple times. The stove was gas and we had a little trouble getting things started when someone from another room came down and said "Wow it smells like gas in here!" I didn't smell anything because I have a cold-I would never have noticed. This happened a couple of times-we ended up loosing a few brain cells and airing out the house a lot. Oh & of course not lighting the stove until things got cleared out.

Here comes the funny, but not so funny part. I had to use the bathroom. Little did I know the bathroom was having problems all day and no one mentioned it. I went to the bathroom flushed everything went down except a little bit of toilet paper. Okay, no big deal so I waited for the water to fill back up and flushed again. Still wouldn't go down. At this point, I debated leaving the paper there for someone else to find, but my conscious said no. I even thought about calling to Dan for help, but thought I'll just try one more time. Let's just say always go with your gut instinct. I flushed a 3rd time and the water started to rise and rise and rise. I yelled for Dan to save me, he came right up, but it was too late! Water was just starting to poor out over the top. He quickly got the water turned off, but had to take the top of the lid off to fix the chain. He sat the lid on the corner of the sink and when he bent down to turn off the water the lid came crashing down onto the toilet and broke the toilet. Water came crashing out everywhere. Plus it gave Dan some nice cuts on his thumb and toe. After about 5 minutes the people downstairs said water was coming through the ceiling (poor craftsmanship of the builder-they didn't caulk around the tile). There was less than 1/2 inch of water of the floor it didn't even get everywhere and yet it was coming through the ceiling. I spent the night cleaning up the floor and blow drying the ceiling. What a fun Saturday night! We found out later the next morning a person about a week ago broke the top of the toilet in another unit. I'm not quite sure how you brake the top part of the toilet, but I'm glad they did because we were able to use the bottom of that toilet with our top so we don't have to pay for an entire new toilet. We've also found out there is lawsuit going on with the builder for bad work and I can sure say it definitely was a pretty place, but not built well at all. We weren't even aloud out on the deck because the railing broke. Nice, never judge a book by it's cover. We should have gone to the older place we saw on the Internet. That way if anything was going to brake, it would have by now:)

The trip overall was fun, it is always nice to get of town with friends. I'll post some pictures when I get them from Cara. I did get a picture of the toilet so enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I've been given a real hard time lately about not posting anything new on our blog, but honestly I really have nothing to say:) So let's see what I can come up with...

Dan and I are looking forward to our annual Ski/Snowboard trip with a group of 10 others in January. This year I was determined not to be the one who planned the trip and I succeeded! Well, that is after getting very frustrated on not being able to find a place to accommodate both size and cost. My wonderful friends Tim and Alisha pressed on and were able to find a beautiful place in Government Camp, OR. It will be a tight squeeze, but it should be tons of fun:)! I'll post some pictures when we return.

Well, that's all for now. I am debating on going out to shovel more snow! Love the workout! Picture is from last years winter of our water feature.

Beginning Adventures

The adventures of Dan and Jeni started 9 years ago. Although there are many exciting things between vacation to vacation I'm going to focus on the vacations:)

The beginning Hawaii a wedding gift from my loving parents.

1st Anniversary road trip to Crater Lake, stopping here and there all along the way. Watched X-Men in Salem on the way home, Dan's movie pick.

2nd Anniversary road trip to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; our main focus was Silverwood. I love roller coasters!! Watched Legally Blonde my pick!

3rd Anniversary a week in Las Vegas! The highlight of the trip was seeing the Blueman Group-I can't remember when I laughed so hard! Watched Borne Identity Dan's pick.

4th Anniversary back for another week in Vegas! Yep, didn't get enough the first time and wanted to go back. Watched Pirates of the Caribbean my pick. If you haven't noticed the trend Dan and I rotate each year who gets to pick the movie. This way I can get him to see a girly movie.

5th Anniversary road trip to California, Yosemite National Park. Stopped in Reno on the way down~very beautiful scenery, but taught me never to gamble (a story for another day). The real adventure with this trip was we were meeting on-line friends of Dan's from The Netherlands. Yes, that's right we went all the way to California to meet strangers. At least they were strangers to me. Dan had been playing computer games with them for more than a year conversing back and forth so he felt as if he'd known them for years. I had a little anxiety about the entire trip. Bas and Kim turned out to be perfectly nice normal people. Not ax murderers or swingers or anything else my sister could think of:) Oh, I almost forgot...we watched Aliens vs. Predators. I begged so hard for him to pick another movie, no such luck.

6th Anniversary we went to 2 places during the month of July a short road trip to the Oregon Coast-Lincoln City and a White Water Rafting with friends. Great trip! Then, September we went to The Netherlands to see those same crazy computer friends, plus a few more. We traveled quite a few places around Holland, then went through dirty Belgium to get to France where we went on a Segway Tour of Paris. I would do the Segway tour a million times more it was so much fun!! After Holland we drove to Germany to visit Dan's family. Although it was nice to see Dan's family, his grandma ended up dieing while we were in Holland, so Germany was full of funeral arrangements. Dan was able to show me a little bit of his childhood, a fun place called the Wasserkuppe. It was so much fun it's hard to put into words. Nothing like it in the US. Anyway, it was my year to pick a movie and I had such a hard time picking we watched 2 Fantastic Four and Wedding Crashers. Fantastic Four was way better than Wedding Crashers.

7th Anniversary full of more adventures. We started off the year going to Canada on a skiing trip with friends. What a beautiful place, trip, just everything. Then to warm up we went to Hawaii in March. The trip was gifted to me by a close family friend. It was actually my parents time share which my dad gave to a close friend of my moms when she died~my parents were always so generous and the generosity came in full circle. So very thoughtful of Linda to think of Dan and I when she decided not to use it this year. We went to the Big Island of Hawaii with Dan's parents~so far my favorite Island, I've many more to visit. We went White Water Rafting in July with friends (on our actual anniversary). Then Dan's friend Chris from Holland came for a week in September. We took him around Washington State and Victoria, BC. Dan's pick for the movie was Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

8th Anniversary was full of a couple more fun trips. Our 1st trip was a Cruise to the Caribbean. First stop was Belize, I'd never seen a 3rd world country up close. Very sad. 2nd Stop Costa Maya, then Cozumel, Grand Cayman and then back to Florida. Fun, but we were beat after this one; Dan got very sea sick. Our 2nd trip was with my brother and a few of his friends to a Nascar race in Phoenix, AZ. A fun adventure for sure, I'd do this one again, but maybe a little smarter on what I decide to do (I got held captive by my brother friends, while Dan and Jimmy were enjoying some relaxation at Mark's, I just had to see the town-it serves me right). There were no movies in July I wanted to see so I settled for Evan Almighty-it was just okay. Pretty much a disappointment.

9th Anniversary well unfortunately there were no big trips this year. We went on so many in the past we used up all our vacation. Not really, we are saving our vacation for a big trip for our 10th! We did go on a few small excursions..Our first small excursion was to Montana Big White for a ski/snowboarding trip with friends. I still can't get over the b-bqe sauce from a restaurant-I wish I could remember the name. Very fun trip. Then, Dan and I went Portland for some motorcycle riding, watched some drag shows (no not drag as in men dressing like women) drag as in car racing. It was fun-we rented an RV the best way to go when traveling. I love the convenience of the bathroom (for all those germ a phobes like myself)! I went on a 2 day White Water Rafting trip with a group of friends. Another fun adventure on the river:) We watched The Dark Knight and we both enjoyed it! Actually, I enjoy most of Dan's movies except for Alien Vs Predator.

We've been blessed with several adventures throughout the years arriving safe and sound to find ourselves into another adventure. Can't wait to see what next year has waiting around the corner, I think I see Italy...Till then enjoy the pictures on my facebook account.