Big 'ol update from spring and early summer 2011

Sorry for the insanely long post, but I figured I needed a big huge update to somewhat make up for my lack of blogging the past few months.

Crazy Dress-Up Days
This year Drew and Sam went all out in their outfits for their school's crazy dress-up days.


Here are Drew and Sam on "crazy appearance day"


This is Sam on "Favorite Character" day. She was Fancy Nancy. If you've ever scene the "Fancy Nancy" series of books, you'll recognize that she absolutely nailed this one.


Drew on "Favorite Character" day. Not hard to realize that his favorite character is a soldier just back from deployment to Afghanistan


Drew and Sam together on "Favorite Character" day

Easter 2011
This year's Easter celebration was one for the memory books. First, our church held one massive service at Qwest Field in Seattle with thousands of people attending. It was an amazing service, even when it started to rain a bit. Second, our son Drew decided that he wanted to be baptized at this service and John was able to baptize him at the Easter service. After the service we had dozens of friends come over for a big meal and Easter Egg hunt.


The set up for our church's Easter service


Drew at the Easter service

Drew preparing to be baptized


An amazing moment


The big 'ol Easter egg hunt


Family picture on Easter


It was great to have Grammy and Grandpa (John's parents) in town to help celebrate Easter

Tee Ball and Sounders FC


Our little tee ball player


"Swing, batta, batta, batta..."


There are few things in life more adorable than watching little kids play tee ball!


Missi and our friend Jessica at the Sounders game


At the Sounders game

Sam's Seventh Birthday Party!
We had a great time celebrating our little lady's seventh birthday. There were about 12 of her friends who came over for a makeover themed party and sleepover.


Sam and one of Drew's friends who came to assist with the party doing an at-home manicure


The birthday girl getting her nails done. (notice how her hair has been crimped as part of the "makeover")


Dance party to Hannah Montana!


Massive pillow fight!


I loved the irony in the fact that the girls had a "makeover" themed birthday and then promptly went out into the dirt and worked on building a fort.


I can't tell if "Pillow Pets" are popular among 6 and 7 year old girls

End of School Year and Visit from Alaskan Cousins


Hazelwood Elementary Class of 2011!


Drew and his great teacher at the graduation ceremony


We LOVED having the Alaskan cousins in Seattle for a short visit. So fun to catch up with them!


Sam and her wonderful first-grade teacher.


It was incredible to have this guy be Drew's teacher for the past two years. He'll be missed! Notice Drew rocking the end-of-schoolyear mohawk

In Which I Blog About What Has Been Going On...

It's always crazy for me to look back at the last time I posted something on the blog, when I realize that it has been several WEEKS since the last post. I guess I just need to resign myself to the fact that with the current pace of life, that is about the frequency that I can reasonably expect. In any event, here are a few tidbits from our life lately:

- We celebrated our eleventh anniversary! It is hard for me to believe that we have been married for 11 years - it certainly hasn't seemed that long. But what an adventure it has been. We celebrated by going winetasting in Woodinville, where there are dozens of tasting rooms.


"I think I'm getting some notes of blackberry and with a hint spring mist..."


"No, actually I'm getting a nose that consists of wild mushroom and toasted oak..."

- We celebrated the wedding of our great friend Monica Kerslake to her husband David. We met Monica during my first year of law school in Eugene and she has been such a great friend ever since. Missi was radiant as the matron of honor and Sam was completely adorable as the flower girl. After the ceremony, Sam completely stole the show on the dance floor. It is completely apparent that Sam has received her mother's dancing genes. An added bonus of the wedding was the chance to catch up with my friend Ryan, who was up from Eugene to film the ceremony.


Sam coming down the aisle.


Mr. and Mrs. Chin!






This about stopped my heart when I saw Sam in the veil.




Ryan hard at work.


Missi did an AMAZING job with her toast. A great combination of heartfelt encouragement and humor.

- Baseball season has arrived! I have the honor/privilege/burden of being a head coach this year. We are the Cardinals. I am a mixture of excited and anxious.

- We took a trip to Great Wolf Lodge with our friends the Foglios. This was one of the kids' Christmas gifts and we had a blast. If you have kids, I recommend checking out Great Wolf. If you haven't been, think of a fairly large hotel with a huge indoor water park included in the price of your room. They also don't allow non-hotel guests to use the water park, and this limited capacity means that you don't have to wait in line for 45 minutes to use a water slide. They also have this crazy treasure hunt throughout the entire hotel called "MagiQuest" where you have a wand and have to point it at certain features (picture frames, plants, lights, etc...) in order to complete certain quests. It was a great time.


Drew hit it big in the arcade.


Sam and her BFF Taylor.





- We went to see The Decemberists in their "Popes of Pendarvia" tour. What a great show. I can't emphasize this enough, but please go see this band if they come through your town. They are total stage performers and you will have a great time, even if you don't know much of their music. Here is a review of their show in Portland, which took place on the night following their show in Portland. Without a doubt The Decemberists are one of our favorite bands right now.





- Speaking of music, I am listening to "Sigh No More" by Mumford and Sons a lot right now. Check it out. It's a great album.

Drew's Oregon Ducks Playlist

If you've been living under a rock for the past 6-8 weeks or have absolutely no interest in sports, you might be among the very few people who don't realize that our beloved Oregon Ducks are playing against the Auburn Tigers in the BCS Championship game on Monday. Suffice it to say, we are all very excited about the game and will be rooting like crazy for our Ducks.

Drew has a great teacher this year - a really good guy who was also Drew's teacher for fourth grade. One of the many reasons why Drew and his classmates (and their parents) like this teacher so much is because of the CD player he has in the classroom and the music that he often plays throughout the day. He even allows students to bring in their own music to join the playlist.

If I were a mathematician, the equation might look like this:

(Drew's love for the Ducks) + (the BCS Championship game on Monday) + (Drew's teacher allowing students to listen to music) = Drew's Awesome Oregon Ducks Playlist.

That's right...one of Drew's main request for this weekend was that I help him burn a CD full of all his favorite Duck songs so he could take it to school on Monday and play it all day long in anticipation of 'the Natty!

Here are the songs that made the playlist:

1. Call Me a Duck by On The Rocks
2. Green and Yellow by SpeedyGunz
3. University of Oregon Fight Song (original version)
4. I Smell Roses (I Love My Ducks) by Supwitchugirl
5. Return of the Quack by Supwitchugirl
6. Oregon Ducks Fight Song (electronic jazz version)

And, we also had to put I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas on the mix, cause we are really hoping that Monday night will be "a good, good night..." The icing on the cake with this awesomeness is that Drew asked me to take him to school on Monday so we could blast the playlist from our car with the windows down as we rolled up to the school. Love this boy!

Drew and his most recent passion

Our son Drew is now 10 years old, and his latest passion is something called "airsoft" or "airsofting." If you aren't familiar with "airsofting," it is an activity where you have a gun and you attempt to shoot your opponents with small plastic BBs. The guns are usually battery powered (sometimes gas), and you can usually hold a few hundred rounds of ammunition in your clip. As we have learned, there is a whole subculture of people who really, REALLY get into airsofting. I mean, you can spend several hundred dollars on your gun, then several hundred more on various other equipment and supplies. Many airsofting enthusiasts also produce videos of their battles and then post them on Youtube for others to view. And Drew has been bitten HARD by the airsofting bug. We are now on his third or fourth gun, each of them successively more powerful than the previous gun, and he has a full wardrobe of camouflage fatigues, a helmet, a facemask, etc...Several of Drew's friends are also interested in airsofting, so Drew has organized "battles" in the forest near our house.

But his favorite place is certainly an airsofting-specific facility called "Tacoma Tactical." I took Drew and a few friends down to Tacoma Tactical over the winter break and we had a great time! It's basically a large warehouse with several small "rooms" that provide cover.

Here are a few photos of Drew in action.



This is Drew at Tacoma Tactical. He is on the "red team," which is why he had the red headband on his helmet.







Being completely honest, I have mixed feelings about Drew's most recent passion for airsoft. On the one hand, I recognize that this is an "all boy" activity, and I like the fact that Drew is working on developing traits like leadership, courage, and fighting for what is good and right. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of airsofting because I think it might foster a false impression of war (which is horrible) and firearms (which are dangerous and deadly). When done the right way, airsoft is actually pretty safe. You always wear eye protection, and when you get it hit it feels like you are being pinched. Also, to be completely honest, I wish that Drew would be passionate for a sport like soccer or baseball, but I understand I can't force that on him right now. For now, we are letting Drew explore this recent passion, but we are attempting to moderate it.

Whew! That was a tough day...

But I loved it. What am I talking about? Last Wednesday I took the day off work (thankfully I'm not crazy busy right now) and did a version of the Cascade Triple Crown. The CTC is an attempt to climb Granite Mountain, Mailbox Peak, and Mt. Si in one day. That equates to about 22 miles of hiking and 11,000 feet of elevation gain. I heard about the CTC from a friend at work who loves to climb, and we decided to go for it to "commemorate" the fact that one of my best friends in Seattle is moving to the East Coast in a few weeks.

We had been advised to do Granite first, Mailbox second, and Si third. The reason for doing it in that order is two-fold. First, that is how the mountains geographically sit east-to-west. It was easier to start farthest east and then progress westward. Second, Granite is fairly challenging, so it was good to start with that one. Mailbox if definitely the most difficult, and Si is the easiest. We wanted to do Si last when we were the most tired.

We met at the trailhead at 5:30AM and started climbing Granite just before 6:00AM. There were four guys in our group, and the other three were definitely all in better shape than me. Granite was a great climb, fairly challenging in parts, but nothing too tough. We took a slight "detour" that we thought would save us some time, but ultimately slowed us down because we were climbing through snow up to our knees. It also got really steep and we didn't have mountaineering gear with us (crampons and ice axe). We did, however, have Yak Trax, and those were really helpful for Granite. If you haven't done this climb and live in the Seattle area, I highly recommend it. Great views from the top and a good trail. It was about 4 miles up and we gained somewhere around 4,000' of elevation.


Here we are at the trailhead getting ready to head out


Two of the guys I climbed with on the way up Granite


This picture does a good job of showing the type of terrain we faced heading up Granite thanks to our "shortcut"


On the climb up Granite Mountain


At the top of Granite


One down, two to go!

Mailbox Peak gains about 4,200' of elevation, but it does it in around 2.5 miles, so you can imagine what the terrain is like: STEEP! The trail heads up and just doesn't level out. My legs felt pretty good after Granite but Mailbox was pretty tough. The other guys powered ahead and reached the summit 5 or 10 minutes before I did, but we all made it.


They aren't joking! Mailbox is very challenging!


Here is the iconic "mailbox" at the summit.


Made it to the top. Looks like I was eating something when this photo was taken.

I was feeling pretty tired heading to Si, but it isn't too bad of a climb. It's about 4 miles up, and also gains around 4,000' of elevation. The first two miles up Si were no problem and I was leading the group at a good pace, but the last two miles of the hike were tough. Part of the reason it was tough was because something I had eaten (probably the energy gels) were not sitting well in my stomach (this is another story in itself - ask me about it sometime). But we made it to the top, and managed to make it back to the cars around 7:30PM, making it about a 13 hour day of climbing.


Here is my buddy signaling to his wife down below. She was able to see us on top from their house!


On top of Si - it was all downhill from here. My smile is a bit deceiving as I was feeling pretty wiped by this point.

Here I am writing this 3 days later, and my legs still don't feel like they've fully recovered. Missi asked me if I had fun, considering the punishment I inflicted on my body, and I can honestly say it was one of the best times I've had in quite awhile. The guys I was with were excellent, I love being in the mountains, the weather was perfect, and I love pushing my body hard. It was a great day!