Forks and Port Angeles Too!

Lake Crescent. You have to drive around the edge of this to get to Forks, beautiful huh?

Here is Ellie, my BFF from High School. It was so nice seeing her!

This is the Bella Itallia straight out of the book Twilight!

Gorgeous forest on the Olympic Peninsula, sorry we didn't see any vampires running through the forest.

My little sis Julia and I at Lake Crescent.

Grammy and Austin.

Forks High School used to be called Quillayute High School.

Front of Forks High School.

Found this in one of the stores there, hilarious!

Where Bella would of worked.

Whoohoo! Forks!

This is where you go if you want to visit Jacob.

Mike and Margie. Thanks for letting us stay with you!

The view of Port Angeles from the spit (a little piece of land that "spits" out into the water).

This is exactly the dish that Bella ate in the book. Portabella mushroom ravioli with cream sauce. It was so yummy!

Here we are with Steph, it was so much fun to hang out with you!

Here are some of our close friends from PA, it was good to see you. Happy B-day Holli!

For my birthday Mindy took me to visit Port Angeles and Forks. So Mindy, Julia, Austin, and I piled in the van and made the trip. It was so much fun! We got to see a lot of my old haunts from high school, and all the beauty that the Olympic Peninsula offers! Thanks for the trip Min it was awesome! It is funny that I was so excited to go and see Forks since we have spent so much time making fun of it. Forks was the small town that we poked fun at all the time, all the hicks and big hair, now I brag that I went there, how weird!

Family Pics

Here are some family pics that we took with Ben's family. Thanks Bro and Sis King for coming over and taking them for us!

Our 3 1/2 Week Vacation

Grandpa Jones and Austin, in this picture he was being mischievous and trying to run us over in his chair!

The sibs being silly.

The girls table at the family reunion.

G-G Dona and Grammy Mindy at Chico's.

Rachel holding a baby? :) What is going on around here?

Porkchop crawled up the tree, but could not get down, silly kitty!

My goofy, lovable family.

My Handsome husband sporting a goatee.

Serenity and I after our gala fireworks at the Bakers, we love you Serenity, so happy to have you join the family!

The Jones family (first picture with everyone together in 7 years!)

The Page family, we love you!

Goofing off listening to music with my brother.

We had a reunion on the Jones side of the family. Here is Logan, he is a day younger than Austin, it was so good to see you guys!

First time swimming!

I thought that he kind of had the Gerber Baby expression here.

Here is Austin with Ben's brother's Fiance Serenity. We went weddign dress shopping which was so fun, thanks for letting me dress you up!

Austin and I just returned from a 3 1/2 week vacation, I am so exhausted! (We planned this before we were prego, there is no way that I would have planned this knowing that I would have to go through morning sickness the whole time) Ben came with us to Moses Lake for two weeks then had to go home for work. Since we were gone so long I am going to break our trip down into a few post so that I record our trip.

We first went to Moses Lake and visited with Ben and I's family. Ben has not had his whole family together for 7 years, so that was kind of a big deal. He has five siblings, so as you can imagine it was really busy, but really fun. I always had someone to hold Austin which was a welcome relief since where we live we do not have a lot of family. We also met a lot of new people. Ben was the first to get married in his family almost 4 years ago and about a year and a half ago his older sister Stephanie got married to Justin. It was really fun to get to know Justin more and spend time with them. But what was really entertaining and fun to watch was all the other siblings, the three of them were all dating a particular someone while we were there. Cell phones, and dates and hanging out, it was so much fun to watch so much young love blossom. Ben's next oldest sibling Jacob is engaged to Serenity, they will be married next spring some time she is wonderful and we wish them the best. Then the next two sibling Warren and Becky had there special friends come and hang out with us, they also have picked some great people to date, good job guys! You have good taste! It reminded me of everything that Ben and I went through while we were dating, and how lucky I am that we are now sealed in the temple and can concentrate on our family. It was really fun to watch our family go through some of the same experiences we did.
Ben's family also had a reunion on the Jones side all but one of the seven siblings were there! Aunt Martha made it really fun with her superlative awards. We received 'traveling the farthest' and Austin was given 'the happiest family member'. We went bowling, had really yummy food (thanks Aunt Sarah, Aunt Lorraine, and Aunt Rachel), and did a lot of visiting.
We also visited with my family. My parents have two new kittens that Austin adored and a new Corgy puppy that adored Austin. My brother Trevor came up for the fourth and we had fun having the whole family together. My little sister Julia is growing up so fast and it was fun to see how much changing she had done in just a few short months from when we saw her last. My Dad and Step-Mom have been busy finishing the remodel on their house. We had a lot of fun taking Austin swimming for the first time, playing cards, and watching Austin try and crawl. Great Grandma Dona and Great Grandpa Vern were there too, and it was nice to hear stories from long ago. Mindy, Julia, Austin, and I went to Port Angeles. That was so much fun!!!!! I have not really been back and visited in 4 1/2 years so I had a ball looking at all my old haunts from High School. We also visited forks, but that will be on my next post for all of my Twilight friends out there. We BBQed, and hung out on the porch and Mindy made me whatever I wanted, and took me to get my hair cut (I was so spoiled!). Thanks Mindy, love you! Over all it was a really fun trip, but we are glad to be home!

We're Having a Baby!

Baby number two is on it's way. Our due date is Feb 16th, and we are so excited! The babies will be 1 year and 6 weeks apart. We will be so busy, but are excited to have another addition to our family!

So much going on...

So a lot has happened since our last post:

• Austin has his two bottom teeth. At first nursing was no fun (owwch!) but he has the hang of it till the next set of teeth come in...


• We took Austin to the zoo. He was really grumpy that day and did not like to get his picture taken (look at the ape picture).
  
  
• We found out that Ben will be getting surgery on his shoulder on July 30th. For our Courtyard Friends that were at that one fated night of flag football, we are finally going to go and fix his arm. It is not going to be fun for Ben but we are relieved that we were able to find a great Dr. (operates on Olympians, and Lakers) that will probably be able to fix it orthoscopically, so there will be less pain.
  
• Austin can roll all over the place, he is not crawling yet but I am guessing since he has figured out that he can move his body by himself he will be crawling in no time! I have already started baby proofing and have figured out what type of safety stuff we have to get.
  
• Austin is eating rice cereal and baby food! Yeah! He seems to enjoy it. He has also taken his first drink of water out of a cup (for all of you moms our there you might think that I am crazy, but he actually did a really good job of it. I got the idea from the book What to expect the First Year.)

We are preparing for a long visit to Wa. Ben will be going with us this time, we will be gone for two weeks together! Then I will fly down with Austin to Boise for a week. It will be a long trip but we are so excited for it.

Twilight update

I know that I am not the only on out there totally stoked for the last book... I might be going to Forks when we go to Wa and definitely to PA! Whoohooo! I will post pics.

Twilight Rules

Okay, I know that some of you out there have been reading Twilight, so I decided that I would hop on the band wagon. I love it, in all it's choppy dialog, and melodramatic glory! When I first started reading it, I was considering putting it down but once I was caught up in Edwards character I just couldn't stop. The book was finished in a day (needless to say that no dishes were done that day!) and the next day I went on-line and ordered the next two books. another part that I loved talked about Port Angeles (PA). I graduated from PAHS, ate at the same restaraunt that Edward and Bella went (Bella Itallia) and have eaten the same entre that was mentioned (Mushroom Ravioli....mmmmm) and I worked at the department store that was mentioned (Gottschalks). I also knew what book store Bella was looking at (I used to go in there all the time). PA is a great place and I really enjoyed reading about it. I have also been to Forks High School, the description is amazingly accurate. So is the fourth book the last one? Does Edward continue in the rest of the books? Aaaahhh! I cannot wait till Tuesday when I get the next ones. And I hear that there is a movie coming out as well.....

For those of you who have changed your blog to private no fair (The Straussburgs...)! We would really like to be invited...if that is okay! Our email is benandcortney@gmail.com.