THERE'S SUMMER!!!! (volume 2)

we went to gearhart beach with our friends Jon and Kendall for the 4th of july this year. Its a great beach to just relax at. You can drive down the beach in your car and pick anywhere to park. We built a fire, played fetch with Rommie and made some s'mores..mmmmm. Oh, and of course lit off some fireworks.










































































We had a great 4th with our friends! As fun as all those things are tied with celebrating the fourth, the most important is to celebrate the ones who have served our country so that we have the freedom to choose. Thank you so much!!! God has blessed America in so many ways, the 4th is a great reminder to not take those blessings for granted.

THERE'S SUMMER!!!!!!!

Wow.....its been SO long since our last post! Almost a year but not quite :) Since we have way too much to update all at once, we just wanted to show some updates we've done since last summer around our house. We have absolutely loved being homeowners and all the fun and not-so-fun things that go along with that. The main things we've changed is building a wall and a fence in our backyard.



This is how the yard looked originally when we bought the house. The back part of the yard sloped up to an incomplete fence that definitely wasnt gonna keep Rommel in the yard.

heres where we had to dig out the slope of our backyard and dig out a 90° angle so we could build a retaining wall. Rommie was being the observant contractor for us :)


Getting the first row of the rock wall was the hardest part and then it went pretty quick.



Nate and his dad worked two weekends straight getting the posts, crossbeams and pickets up, they did an awesome job!

Here's the before of the kitchen countertops

The new granite countertops are amazing! We have a friend who works for a granite company who helped us get a great deal on them.

We are still in the process of finishing the tile backsplash and painting the walls, so when we finish those we'll get some more pictures up....promise it wont be a year! :)

Where did summer go?

We have had quite a fun yet busy summer! Trying to get used to owning a home and all the responsibilities that come with that has been a good challenge for us! We're now digging up our backyard (i'll post some pics soon) trying to build a rock wall and a fence before the summer's over. We have gotten to go to the beach quite a bit which has been fun, especially with Rommel, he's such a good dog and we've had an awesome summer spending time with him. Life is so different as a dog owner in a good way! It makes us get out and go to the beach, or on a hike or a walk, we're a lot more active now which is a good thing for us too! Heres a cute video of him at our latest beach trip trying to dig up somethin...he never found anything though :)








Oh yeah! And YAY football season is upon us :) We got our Seahawks season tickets in the mail and are excited to have 8 games to get to go up to Seattle to see, we'll take pictures and show you! :) The season home opener game for the Seahawks is September 14th against the 49ers...sorry Nate, Anne will have to wear Red and Gold that game!

Life's a Beach! :)

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a great week :) We thought we'd share some pictures from our weekend at the beach. My mom and I went to Cannon Beach friday night and stayed all weekend and Nate came over with Rommel Sunday morning. Also, my cousin Jill from Chicago happened to be in the area and came with her husband Rene to the beach which was awesome! I usually don't get to see my family from Chicago very often and I think it had been about 5 years since the last time, so we were really excited to see them and had a lot of fun catching up. Here's a picture of us at the beach together with Haystack rock in the background.




Rommel met a 4 month old Golden Retriever named Riley when we were walking around town, he was such a cutie and played with Rommel for 30 minutes or so. Its so cute to watch puppies play and these two became friends quickly!

Ok, so for some reason, Rommel isn't too fond of playing in the water at the beach, but whenever he gets on a "good" part of sand, he LOVES to dig and dig...I just hope he gets it out of his system and doesn't try to dig up our yard :) I think its the feeling of sand that he likes so much because we've never seen him go this crazy.

So the weekend ended pretty perfect with this gorgeous sunset! Its so good to have pictures like this of the Oregon Coast so that we can remember the other 9 rainy months of the year that we really do have beautiful summers! Well thats about it for the weekend, you know how you come home from a trip and feel like you need a break from your break? :) Well that's how I am...I think I might just be in bed by 8 tonight :)

Bye for now, have a great week, love you!!!

BBQ & Puppies :)

So we had a really busy but fun weekend. We've been trying to make our yard look a little better and want to build a fence soon so we've been shopping around for all those supplies we need and we also put in some new really cool solar lights in our front yard. We also got to see a bunch of our friends who had different bbq's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday...so we've had enough meat to tide us over for a while! :) Anyway, on Sunday Rommel got to go play with Patton (our friends Ben and Karen's chocolate lab) and they played straight for almost 5 hours wrestling, biting, and chasing each other all over the place. They slept really good that night, they are such cute buddies! We're thankful Ben and Karen have a dog Rommel's age because they are both so little still, they act like litter mates and play so good together. Puppies are so much fun!

Nate and Anne

So...this is going to be a LONG post... Nate and I have been married for 4 years this September! We are originally from Portland, but went to school in Seattle and moved back to Portland after we graduated from Seattle Pacific University. I work at Adventist Medical Center as a nurse in the operating room and Nate is the practice administrator for a group of surgeons/physicians who work for Adventist Medical Center. So we work pretty close to each other! Our favorite thing to do is to be outside enjoying God's amazing creation! We love hiking, camping, snowboarding, and anything that involves being outdoors in the beautiful northwest. All the rain here makes for an incredible landscape and we are lucky to live here and hopefully raise our kiddos here some day :)

Oh yeah, and we LOVE FOOTBALL! We've been going to Seahawk games for the last 2 years and have so much fun! Nate always cheers for the Hawks and I usually do....except when they're playing the 49ers.


We just bought a house on May 26th we got our keys and have been loving being home-owners! Thats my little bro bennie in the left corner of the picture :)




We got a dog the day after we moved in (we are crazy, i know), he's a german shepherd and we named him Rommel. He's such a sweetie and has been trying hard to get along with our two persian cats Tully (brown) and Bruiser (grey). I don't think they'll be getting along for a while....

This picture is when we first got Bruiser when he was 8 weeks old...such a cutie.


This is them both full grown now, they look so chubby, but believe me, its all fur...i vacuum it up twice a week! :)
Here's our puppy Rommel when we first saw him at the kennel, he was 8 weeks old.
And then here's a picture at the beach, he's 4 months old now and has grown so much!

So thats it for now, we are excited to continue to keep in touch with all of our friends and family with our blogs, its pretty fun!

Finally!

Ok, so this is our first attempt at blogging, we love reading the blogs of our family and friends and have been saying we'll start one...well here it is :) We're excited for this new way of keeping in touch with everyone!