Diverse Washington

I've only worked at Target for barely a week and a half now. And here are the languages I've heard being spoken while I cashier:

Russian
Indian (I'm guessing Hindi)
Japanese
Mandarin
Vietnamese
Spanish
Korean
Italian
French

Oh, the other day I was able to practice my sign language when I found some co-workers signing. They were patient with my awkward signs since it has been a while!

So if you ever want to have an international experience, just apply to the Target store in Issaquah.

We're Employed!!

Finally the both of us have jobs!! 

Chris is working at the Children's Hospital in Seattle. I just got a job with Target down the street. We're both very thankful that we got these positions. It will give us a chance to save up for graduate school hopefully in the future. Until then...yay! we're employed!!

Summertime 2008

Here we are halfway through summer.  To entertain ourselves we have engaged in a myriad of activities.  We went gold panning a couple times over on the the raging river.  While we didn't strike it rich, we did find a couple specks of gold.  Katrina and my younger sister, Hayley, had lots of fun in the water trying to catch fish in the river.

Other days have been spent looking after my garden (including corn, pumpkins, zucchini, nappa cabbage, bok choy, beans, peas, peppers, onions, cucumber, ect.), playing with Hayley's chickens, ducks, and goats and going on walks.

Eric, Sharn, and Sharn's sister Sarah came up for the Fourth of July and we ended up hanging out with them and the Wan's going around Seattle and eating.  We had lots of fun.  We also celebrated my birthday, a little late, with mint chip ice cream cake.  Yum.

And just this weekend we went to the Bon Odori in the International District.  We got in and did a couple dances with fans, ate some yummy food and took in the atmosphere.  This was our second year attending and we hope to continue making it our tradition.

Oh Woe is our car!

It's time to get a new car I've decided. I am very grateful for the car that we had for the first year and nine months of our marriage, but lately its been acting weird. Last September, right after we arrived in Utah for school it died and cost about 650 to fix. Now just recently (and within a year), we've had to have it towed twice in one week and the mechanics are estimating about 500 for this repair. I don't really trust it anymore and it seems to be very pricey to fix it whenever there's a problem.

Chris and I are already researching for a good car to have. With gas prices going insane we are thinking about getting a car with better mileage. So far we're thinking either a Toyota Corolla or Honda Fit. We need to go test drive them first though!

Denise and Tyler

On June 7th 2008 Denise, Chris' sister, married Tyler Folkman in the Seattle LDS Temple. It had been raining really hard all week, but luckily it was just cloudy that day. It was a very beautiful wedding and a fun reception!

It was my second time as bridesmaid. The colors were pink, orange and red. I was the red bridesmaid and had a really cute dress made by my mother in law! My hair was also funky!

Even though it wasn't raining, it was still pretty dang cold! Especially since it's suppose to be summer already!! Here's Hayley trying to stay warm. She was a flower girl.

Denise and Tyler were super cute and super happy together!

This is the dollar dance (where you pay to dance with the bride to help pay off their honeymoon). Chris was only able to dance with her for a couple seconds.

Garter toss!!

Trying to stay warm while waiting for our photo ops!

Since both the Nye and Folkman family have been in the Issaquah area for years, it was a very popular and crowded reception! There wasn't enough seating for everyone. The food was catered and was great. Chris and I were assigned to pick and be in charge of music for the reception. Besides trying to keep the music going we still had time to let loose and dance the night away! Everyone said they liked the music selection but I think that's probably the last time we want to DJ. The whole wedding was very beautiful and elegant, mad props to my mother in law and the Folkmans! We are really excited for the newlyweds and wish them every happiness!

Japan! へようこそ

After two weeks and vast amounts of money we have returned from Japan.  Not only did we go lots of places and eat lots of delicious food, we saw cool places and bought lots of stuff.  We had our Japan Rail passes which allowed us to take the shinkansen anywhere, which we did (Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Nagoya).

We made trips to the Nagoya aquarium, (hence the penguin topiaries), Miyajima (one of the most scenic places in Japan), and Kinosaki-cho (home of seven famous hot spring baths).  

This is the Nagoya Bento which Katrina had for dinner one evening.  Inside was unagi, black miso cutlets, onigiri with shrimp inside, and several other tidbits of Nagoya specialties.

This is Gosho-no-yu, one of the bathhouses we went to.  It had an outdoor section where you can view the surrounding nature and waterfalls.

This is the entrance to Fushimi Inari Taisha (the place with all the red gates lined up in a row).

Katrina next to a ginormous wooden paddle found on Miyajima.

We're in Seattle!

We were going to leave for Seattle originally May 15th. Since then new developments popped up so that we were very fortunate to be able to leave for Seattle May 6th (Tuesday morning). However, Monday evening, Chris and I found ourselves desperate to get a head start to Seattle and decided to leave at 7:30 o' clock at night. After hanging out with Maria and Liz and having them help out clean while chatting we said out goodbye's and headed on the road.

Chris was insane energetic (I guess the Mountain Dew helped) and drove until three in the morning. By that time we had barely made it into the Oregon border. We found a rest stop and slept there for three hours and then headed back on the road by 5 in the morning.

We still pretended that we left Tuesday morning. We were only twenty minutes away from Chris' hometown when we called his mom and said that we barely got into Idaho. She got a big surprise when we showed up 10 in the morning in the parking lot of her work.

Now we've taken naps and are feeling a lot better. We're sooo happy we're here safely!