Update

We had a great Christmas and New Year's with family and friends. Lots of short day trips to Portland and Corvallis. After a nice break we are back into our daily schedule and routines.

Please keep Paul's family in your prayers. Paul's grandfather, his mom's dad, passed away in his sleep on January 6th. This was a bit unexpected and they could use your prayers as they begin to plan for his service and life without "Papa".

At the Hynes house in Gresham; all the siblings.


Christmas morning at the Spence house in Corvallis; love these guys!

Merry Christmas

Although it was a bit stressful, almost all of my (Ashley's) family has arrived to celebrate Christmas. My cousin was suppose to come in from California on Saturday, but after two canceled flights drove up and made it yesterday. Paul picked my aunt and uncle up at the airport yesterday (their flight wasn't canceled and on time!) and it took him about 10 hours to get up there and back. My older sister and nephew are scheduled to come down from Canby tonight, hopefully they will make it fine. We are celebrating tonight with games, food and movies at our place and then celebrating tomorrow at my parents house in Corvallis. On Friday we will drive up to celebrate with Paul's family. "It's the most wonderful time of the year!"

Snow Days

Duke and I are sitting here drinking some coffee and catching up on the daily news. The schools are closed for the second day and I am trying to keep myself busy. I would much rather be teaching then staying home by myself, especially since I had such cute holiday things to do this week! But I can't complain too much as I am sure there are many who would like a random day off. We tried to get some good pictures of Duke playing in the snow, but it is a bit too cold for him and his bone inside seemed like a better idea. I had my best girlfriends from college and sister (see picture) over for a Christmas party a couple weekends ago so our place has been decorated for Christmas for a while now, but the snow is such a beautiful addition!




(I can't get the pictures to change spots, but the last one is our attempt to play outside and then the second to last picture is what Duke really wanted to do)

Early Christmas present...

Meet Duke, our beagle/yellow lab mix bundle of joy. He is one year old and we brought him home with us from Portland this weekend. We picked him up on Saturday and he rode around with us until we finally got home on Sunday evening. Duke is a very good boy although we have found him to have good jumping skills :)

Living the dream...

or that is what Paul tells me after a long day of work, "Baby, we are living the dream". He is at worship practice and so I am sitting at home trying to be productive. I brought home some papers to correct, but typing a blog sounded like a nice way to procrastinate. I just fixed some cheese sticks (you know you are out of food when the only thing to eat is unhealthy frozen food that has been in there for a year because you usually don't eat that stuff) and tried to put up some curtains. It is nice owning our own home, but you need so many more tools that you didn't need when renting (like a ladder and drill). I was all set to put the curtains up, but can't find the part to change out the drill bit so I gave up on that idea. We bought the movie Elf (my favorite Christmas movie!) so I think I will just retire to the couch grading papers and watching movies. Perhaps when Paul get home we can put up the curtains, but we are going to 5:15am spin class tomorrow, so getting to bed early would probably be a good thing (but I really want to get our curtains up!).

Oh and we are thinking of getting a dog! I have wanted one for a while now. My family has always had a dog and I think I have finally softened Paul's heart to the idea. We found a great one up in Portland (short hair, quiet yet active), but someone else got to her before we did... but we are continuing to look. Paul is very much on the go and doesn't like too much responsibility to tie us down, but I am hoping we will find a dog that can tag along on those adventures with us. Ever since Massaro, Yutaro and Nate left our house has been a bit too quiet for my liking and I think a dog is a great compromise!

God Bless.

Konichiwa

Wow...we have had tons going on. We celebrated Paul's birthday up in Portland, ran back to Corvallis to meet up with friends, Paul rode 100 miles on his bike to celebrate his birthday, back up to Gresham to welcome Kristi and Darrin's baby boy and to see Tiffany Maddox who was visiting from California, to Gaston to listen to Paul's dad preach at a small community church, back to Corvallis for a wedding, and then back to Gaston and Gresham again this weekend. We try to limit our trips, but we wouldn't want to miss all these good things. In between that we had two Japanese boys stay with us for a week. They came last Thursday and left today. Masaru and Yutaro are 11 and 12 and came with their school for a visit to the states. The school Ashley works for has an exchange program and we were blessed to host these two boys. We had so much fun together; it was really hard to see them leave today. Below are a few pictures from their visit.

25 big ones!

We are off to P-town to celebrate Paul's 25th birthday. His actual birthday is tomorrow, the 11th, but he and some friends are riding in a century to celebrate on Sunday and didn't want to be up too late the night before. With Ping Pong, Scrabble, Phase 10, friends and a pony (?) it is guaranteed to be a good time!

Well I am off to meet a friend in Salem, hopefully to get a warm cup of coffee (for the next nine months I will be nothing but cold...did I mention that I love summer?).