Merry Merry Christmas!

No jumping in this year's Christmas photo. Housh will probably make a comeback for next year's card.

We hope everyone had a delightful Christmas.

Love, Jake and Jill

To see our last two Christmas photos go here

You might be tempted to think these shoes/sweet little feet are nothing but pure joy. My shins would tell you otherwise. I'm thinking of investing in a pair of sturdy shin guards. I'm not kidding.

Other than incessantly swinging their feet and thus kicking their favorite teacher, my kindergartners are treating me quite well. We had Christmas in our room this week and I got to experience what it feels like to watch a solid week's worth of wrapping get unwrapped in 2.5 seconds. I might have to invest in gift bags next year. :)

Teeny Tiny

It makes perfect sense that with a combined height of 12'5, we would purchase a 4' tree.


Some things however, we never skimp on.

Go Beavs

Although Jake would like for all of you to believe he does not have any orange and black clothing, he definitely has his fair share, and gasp is even an OSU season ticket holder. While he claims, he only does it for the love of certain members in his family, we have enjoyed cheering the Beavers on this season (minus the WSU splattering).
OOOOOOOOOOOO SSSSSSSSSSSSSS UUUUUUUUUUUUU !!!!!!!!!

A few things to consider before accepting a ride from us...

Jake and I make excellent car partners. Rides with us are full of fun and excitement- especially if you like to hear off tune singing and 90's music. However, before accepting a ride from us it would be wise on your part to know a thing or two about our car.

*The defroster must be run at all times. On high. And yes the AC will be on full blast. If it is 40 degrees outside, it will probably be colder in our car. Dress accordingly.

*If you sit in the front seat, you may be asked to squeegee the windshield while we drive. The squeegee and a towel are by your feet. And no, this task does not replace offering to give us gas money.

*Speaking of sitting in the front seat, it would be beneficial for you to wear waterproof shoes. It may be true that whenever Jake turns left, water gushes out of somewhere and gets the passenger's feet wet. Jake will not be happy if you scream every time this happens. In fact, he will get very, very annoyed at you.

*At some point during the drive you will probably be asked to roll your window down. We value your safety, so please do as you're told.

*Did I mention the temperature dial will not stay on heat? Try as you might it will wind right back to the frigid cold temperature.

*If you sit in the backseat, pay no attention to the rips on the ceiling. It is the direct result of Jill having too much time in the backseat with an axe. Yes you read that correctly. If both Jill and an axe are in the car, you might want to consider driving with someone else.

*If you happen to see any sort of dark substance, do not panic. The axe was never used on anyone and what you are seeing is not blood. Nope, it's just some syrup that was spilled and never thought of again. Sheesh who spills syrup in someone's car and never cleans it up! How rude. It is sticky, so watch out.

*And lastly and probably most importantly, the tape player does not work. As much as it saddens us to say, your Amy Grant tape cassette will be unable to play in our car. A real deal breaker.

So...anyone want to roadtrip with us?

All was Quiet...

We were all sitting so nicely on the carpet. For once we were all criss-cross with our hands folded politely in our laps. We weren't picking our nose. We weren't eating yesterday's snack crumbs and at the moment we weren't even petting Mrs. Denbrook's foot. The room was quiet. We were focused. We were engaged. Until.....Ruthie unexpectedly shouted out, "My tonsils are touching my uvula!"

Help My School, Pretty Please

Hello All!

Last month I sent an email to some of you asking you to vote at Pepsi Refresh for my school, Hawthorne Elementary. Long story short, Pepsi is giving away a lot of money to schools to fund various improvement projects. If at the end of this month (November) our school is in the Top 10 we will receive $5,000 dollars to fund our Positive Behavior Program and oh how lovely that would be for our kiddos in Sweet Home. You can vote EVERY SINGLE DAY until the end of the month by simply clicking on:

"I want to fund Hawthorne's program/Vote For This Idea" (to the right of this post)

or by clicking here and then typing: Hawthorne PBIS into the search box

You can also send a text to 73774 and put in 102716 in the subject line to vote for Hawthorne.

One text per phone and one vote per email per day. Have multiple emails? Vote multiple times.

If you have any questions, please let me know. :)

Thanks so much for your support.

Love, Jill

It's That Time of Year..

Happy Halloween, everyone!!!

Oh and please ignore the ridiculously ugly Duck beanies we are wearing. :)

The Old Pumpkin Patch

Earlier this month, we took our traditional trip to the pumpkin patch. Unfortunately this year we went home empty handed....someone must have put bricks in the pumpkins this year.
Hopefully someone with muscles in enjoying this guy.

Mmm good.

We have a really great fresh fruit and vegetable program at my school. Every day during morning recess, the entire school gets free fruit and veggies. It is delightful. However, I'm not sure if it was the result of a miscommunication or what, but on Thursday this is what was delivered to my kindergarten room for snack.

Yes, indeedy it is a pineapple top. And a fresh one at that. And yes that is all they sent us. The leaves were mighty tasty.

Lost in Translation?

For the past two and a half years, we have sponsored a young boy from Colombia. We've exchanged many letters and pictures over the past two years. Cristian has often said Jill was very beautiful, so imagine our surprise when we received his latest letter and drawing. Hmm, now who was it that Cristian was finding attractive this whole time?

You can click on the picture to make it larger. :)

Accendo Images Photography

Our photography website is up and running! Check us out here or go to www.accendoimages.com

Thanks!

B is for Bear!

Another sweet black bear. We call them sweet because they were always sighted eating berries and not humans. That's sweet in my book.

A mama grizz and her cubs ran right across a very heavily populated trail near Lake Louise. We like this angle...when the bears are running away from us.

And yet another mama grizz and her cubs. We saw these guys from the road and proceeded to get stuck in a very long bear jam. Eventually the rangers had to come and break up all the cars. Stupid tourists taking pictures of bears. :)

Not a bear, but check out the sweet mohawk.

The Skyline Trail

After spending a day exploring the sights around Jasper, we headed out on our first big backpacking trip- the Skyline Trail where 22+ plus of our miles were spent above the tree line with amazing mountain range views. This trip was filled with anticipation/fear of bear encounters by one member of our two man team. This fear was not dissipated when knowledge of the Yellowstone grizzly attacks was shared with our group. Who in their right mind tells a girl already paranoid about bears, a story about grizzlies pulling hikers out of their tents? Oi. On the way to the trailhead we did see our first bear, but he was just a cute black bear. Not a great picture, but hey, it's a bear!

Here we are before the hike. Showered and with no bug bites. Such a nice feeling.


Aw, the lovely marmots. Did you know they hibernate 9 months out of the year? What a life! I wonder what we interrupted here...

Our first day was a relatively easy 8 miler with great views and tons of nasty mosquitoes. We camped at a place that should have been called death by mosquitoes but instead it was lamely named Snowbowl. Jill suffered 16 bites along her forehead and 37 along her lower back....errr...buttocks. Bites were in all the normal boring spots as well.

Here, Jake is hanging our food and toiletries in a nice little bear hanger. I was so paranoid about the bears smelling our food and then coming to eat us that we hung up our food the second we got into camp (only to get it down about 50 times before bed).
Better safe than dead,I say.



Our second day-a 12 miler- took us up over both Big Shovel pass and the Notch (8800 feet). Big Shovel was a piece of cake, but the Notch took us by a bit of a surprise. We weren't quite ready for either the steepness or the snow that we had to cross over. It is miraculous that no pants were wet during this section of the trip. Luckily we were with our new best friends (fear makes strangers best friends quickly) and the group aspect helped a lot.

Big Shovel Pass

And the Notch

As soon as I was over the Notch the following words were heard from one sweet husband, "I didn't think you were going to make it!" And if you look closely at my face, you can see exactly how I felt during this time.

We rejoiced when we got over the pass and then realized we had many, many more miles before reaching our campground for the night. During this time we were dropping into the trees (where grizzlies like to eat berries and/or you) so we decided to sing to let them know we were coming and to get the heck out of there. One of us sang in a soft and pretty voice (not effective in grizzly scaring) and one of us sang in a very off key, boisterous voice that could only remember the words to kindergarten songs. Thanks to the latter voice, no bears were encountered.


Jake woke up early the next morning and took this picture near our campsite. Wowsers!

Our last day found us hiking out 9+ miles. Unfortunately many of those miles were on a really old forest road that was overgrown with trees and berry bushes with our only views being bear skat. Lots and lots of fresh bear skat. Too tired from the previous days we didn't make too much of an effort to make extra noise. Instead we chose to believe we could outrun our fellow hikers should a beastly grizzly appear while we dreamt of this.

Welcome to Canada

On our way to Jasper, Canada--- not a bad view from the car!


One of our first stops was Mt. Edith Cavell


Angel Glacier


If we were normal people, we might consider using this as our Christmas photo, but we have something much stranger in mind.

Bainbridge Ferry to Seattle

This is the story of a boy (or maybe a man?) who took a few too many pictures while riding the ferry, and got pooped on by a seagull...twice!

The beginning of many posts about our trip...

Let me just say before we start the next few postings that I love my husband dearly. However, there were many times during our three week adventure that I thought his intent was to kill me. Jacob is very efficient in planning trips, but he apparently believes that we are super human. I am definitely not.

Our trip was supposed to start off nice and easy. Drop the beloved cat off at his loving grandma and grandpa's (they were oh so thrilled to have him for three weeks), visit friends outside of Seattle and do a quick and painless overnight backpacking trip to get us warmed up and ready for Canada.

The drop off and visiting off wonderful friends went as planned. The backpack along the Olympic Coast, not quite so much. You see, someone who planned the trip didn't read the tide chart and we found ourselves beginning the hike two hours before high tide. This wouldn't have been a problem if there hadn't been a long stretch that required a low tide to cross. Being the determined (or maybe foolish) couple that we are, we started the hike anyway.

Not too sure on her feet, this hiker was not excited to be rushed along these boulders- especially when the guidebook described them as "it is the rare hiker who manages to get through here without slipping at least once." This hiker was not rare.

After scrambling for a mere one mile with the tide rushing in, we ran into a couple who informed us we would not be going any further until the tide went down. So we waited...............for SIX hours. So we waiting in this little nook with our new friends.

When the tide was at a manageable level, we continued on towards this:
That would be a sand ladder. As yes that is what we climbed up, but no worries it was simply " a ladder that hangs from the cliffs above and is made of solid wooden rungs between two parallel metal cables. A rope hangs down the middle for hikers to pull themselves up- it is functional but quite strenuous for the typical hiker." Good thing we're not the typical hiker....

Atop the headland (and excited to not have fallen) we skirted along a cliff edge.

A few hours later and we would find ourselves putting up our tent. In the dark. Only to get up at 6 am the next morning and hike back out to avoid the high tide once again. The rope ladder was even more fun trying to go down- especially when you factor in all the slimy mud on the rope. And thus concludes our first adventure.

Seattle and Jake's battle with the seagulls...

We're back!

After 22 days of sleeping in our car or the back country, we are back! We had a wonderful three week adventure in the Canadian Rockies and can't wait to share our pictures and stories with everyone. While Jake narrows down and edits the 1000+ pictures he took, I'll leave you with this gem:

Yep, that's Jake on an open air toilet. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Sneak Peak for Carrie and Jake

We had the pleasure of photographing Jake and Carrie's wedding last weekend at The Dalles Ranch. It was a fantastic venue and a beautiful wedding. We feel so thankful to have been part of their special day.

Haley and Mark Photo Shoot

Jake recently started a photography business called Accendo Images. The company website isn't up and running quite yet, so we'll be posting some of his work on here for the time being. We're very excited about this new adventure.

Miscommunication

A few weeks back, we went on our first backpacking trip of the season. It was a nice simple jaunt on the coast around Bandon, Oregon where we had the beach ultimately to ourselves. As with any long hike there were times of silence. Jake broke one bout of silence with the following question:

Jake: "So, do you think we should have two?"
Jill: "Babies?"
Jake: "No, trekking poles."

It's nice to know we think about the same things during our moments of reverie...

Grandpa Duman

My grandpa passed away last Thursday. He was the sweetest (and by far the cutest) man I have ever known. He was loved and adored by all who knew him and will be missed greatly.

Love you so much, Grandpa!