Family picture

So yesterday we had a Christmas concert with our church which was very exciting! Afterwards, we took a family picture with my side of the family, which is always interesting trying to round everyone up on one spot, then finding someone to take the picture. Anyways, it all worked out and we finally got it taken. It was a lot better than last year when we all went to the mall and got one taken with Santa!

Lauren and I are both looking forward to next week when she has four days off for Christmas. We are going to San Jose for two and then to Orange County, CA for two days. It should be a lot of fun. Oh yeah, I just finished finals too! Woohoo!! Now I've just got to study for the licensing exam in January...

Putting up our Christmas tree

So this year we got a slightly bigger tree than last year. We decided to go with a fake tree so that our cat wouldn't drink the water! As usual, we had a lot of fun with our tradition of putting up the ornaments, drinking hot chocolate, eating popcorn, and listening to Christmas music. Here is the finished product of the tree with some presents already underneath! Below are some pictures of the evening...

curious cat

So one of the small branches fell off of our fake tree and Casey was just loving it. He was going nuts throwing it all around.

putting up ornaments

Here is a few pictures of us putting up some ornaments on our tree. Last year our tree was about 2 feet tall and this year it's 6.5 feet tall!

enjoying hot chocolate

Since our cat can't take pictures of us (yet), we had to take separate pictures of us...

casey sniffing around our tree...

Santa Cruz, CA

This past weekend Lauren and I got to go to Santa Cruz, CA. We had a great time there. Our Church had a retreat for all the marrieds to just "get-away" and spend some time getting some "r & r." We had a great time hanging out with some friends, ate some good food, and got to hear some inspiring lessons on how to remain close in your marriage. It was a lot of fun to getaway from the busy life!

In memory of...

On Friday September 16, 2005, Dorothy Comeau (Lauren's grandmother) passed away. This picture is from last Christmas and she was always smiling and cheerful. Please keep us and Lauren's family in your prayers as we leave here in a few hours to Chicago for the memorial and celebration of life.

more from Hawaii

Up close and personal shot of us...taken by us...as the sun was going down.

This is Lauren and I, our last night there at a fabluous restaraunt named Roy's. If you ever get to Maui, it's a must!

flowers in Hawaii

While we were there, Lauren absolutely loved the colors of the flowers. Here are a few pictures of the amazing colors the of flowers we took.

beautiful beaches!

This is one of my favorite pictures of the beach that I took at about 7am.

The water was so blue there! The visibility under water was about 150 feet.

This was a shot of the beach right as the sun was going down.

boogie boarding...

This is me attempting to boogie board. It was quite amusing for all those that were watching. I got tossed around so much under water that I think half of the beach ended up in my shorts!

Haleakala sunrise

The sun barely over the horizon...

The sun finally rose over the clouds after waiting about an hour!

This was a cool picture that I took looking out to the west on top of the volcano as the sun was rising over the clouds.

So, it was freezing (30 degrees) while we were at the top of the volcano!

This is a picture of a sunrise over the clouds that we saw on the top of a volcano in Maui. We got up at 3:00am to drive the 10,000 feet high to see the sunrise. It was absolutely amazing!

Maui Sunset

This is one of the many sunsets that we saw while we were in Maui. These particular shots were taken right across the street from our hotel.

Summer is over!

Since it has been a while from my last post, this will be an update about what happened this summer. There will be lots of pictures added soon, once we get our DSL working again. We just moved the other day into a new apatrtment and are still waiting for everything to start working! Since July 4th, we have taken 4 bigs trips.

Trip #1 - Oklahoma! (July 28th-July 31st)
This was an exciting time for a family reunion in Lawton, Oklahoma. It was my grandparents 65th wedding anniversary and it was my wife's first time visiting the state and meeting most of my relatives. It was quite a time being there, spending most of the time eating! Lauren and I shared a hotel room with my newlywed brother and his wife...which was very interesting to say the least! There will be lots of pictures posted soon from this trip.

Trip #2 - Orange County, California (August 5th-August 7th)
Unforutnately, this trip wasn't a planned as Lauren's grandmother was rushed into the hospital for an emergency operation. She made it through the operation and is currently recovering. Please keep her in your prayers as she is still recovery. It was a lot of fun to be able to spend time with Lauren's family as her brother was just getting ready to leave for New York to start law school at Columbia.

Trip #3 - San Jose, California (August 19th-August 21st)
This trip was a lot of fun as it was for our annual church conference entitled "Defying Gravity." It was a great spiritual time to get lots of teaching about how to live as a New Testament Chrisitian with everything that we have going on in our daily lives. Lauren and I got to take part in teaching a class for the middle schoolers in the church which was a lot of fun. There were about 120 middle schoolers there! We had a lot of fun though being down there and getting time to spend with a lot of friends as well.

Trip #4 - Kihei, Maui (August 30th-September 6th)
This trip was obviously a lot of fun! We went back to Maui where we had our honeymoon. We stayed in the smae resort hotel and had a blast! Most of the pictures that will be posted will be from this trip. It absolutely amazing being there. We experienced jet skis for the first time...which was a great time! We also drive up to the top of Haleakala, which is a dormant volcano that is 10, 026 feet high. We drive up for the sunrise (left our hotel at 3am) which was amazing seeing the sunrise above the clouds and other Hawaiian islands. We also got to snorkel again which was a lot fun, seeing amazing fish and sea turtles. the visibility in the water was 150 feet! We played tennis, spent lots of time on the beach, ate lots of great fish, did lots of shopping, and generally just had a great relaxing time. Hard to come back to moving!

That's about it for now. Lauren is back working in the ER and I start doing hearing screenings on preschoolers in the morning. Summer is officially over...but it was a summer to remember!

Happy 4th of July!

So it's the 4th of Jluy and time to BBQ! Lauren and I will be going over to a friends house to have some good food and then head off to the dinner and the movies with my parents and my brother and sister-in-law. Not sure what movie we are going to see yet... Besides that, basketball has been huge around here. I am coaching a middle school team this summer for our church and on Thursday night we had over 70 kids come out for practice!! It is pretty overwhelming, but a lot of fun. I am also playing in an adult league and we won our game yesterday 48-30, which was pretty exciting. For more info on our league check out: http://sfnet.cc/sections/events/2005/basketballx.htm That's about it for now..

Alcatraz!

pretty cool shot of Alcatraz on the boat ride on the way out visit the island

recent picture of Lauren and I (last Christmas) at my parents house 

here is a recent photo of Lauren and I and Ken & Jenny when we were at Alcatraz a few months ago with San Francisco in the background. It was quite cool to tour "The Rock" 

Wanted to post a picture of Micah and Marilyn's wedding back in April. This is the best one that was taken... 

First year is done!!!

So for those few and and far between that actually check this website, we are both done with our first years! Lauren just completed her first year of Residency at Oakland Children's Hospital and I just completed my first year of gradaute school at California State University, East Bay. It has been a busy year for both of us, but we have enjoyed it for the most part.

I am done with school for the summer and working full-time at Lindamoodbell Learning Processes teaching kids and adults mostly with dyslexia and hyperlexia. We have a few fun trips planned for the summer which should be great. The first is in July; we are going to Oklahoma for my grandparents 65th wedding anniversary. It will be Lauren's first time out there so that should be interesting.... We are also planning on going whitewater rafting sometime early August with friends from our church which should be a blast. And at the end of the summer we are planning to go back to Maui for "2nd honeymoon." Hopefully Lauren will not get sick this vacation and we will be able to go! (She has been sick every vacation this year) That's about all that's new, and I plan to post more in the next few months as I have more time now!

Vic Stewarts

So, I know that it has been a while since anything has been posted here on our blog, but this one I just couldn't pass up! Lauren's parents have been in town this past weekend which has been a lot of fun and the other night we tried out a new restaurant and it was awesome!! The name is Vic Stewart's and the only one is in Walnut Creek. It was probably the best steak that I have ever had. You can check out there menu at www.vicstewarts.com If you are ever in Walnut Creek, it is worth trying!