Building Houses!

We've made a fun group of friends over the last year and half. We have spent many Sunday afternoons at one another's homes eating dinner and playing board games (Yay Cranium!). The Blevins are getting ready to move to CHINA! and so we thought we'd get together for a last hoorah...and make ginger bread houses! Saturday afternoon, everyone gathered at our home: The Hayashis, The Grimmers, The Blevins, and us.

This is the Ashmore creation. I was glad to have Andrew's home building experience on our side!

Another view of the front. I was covered in frosting by the time we finished. If you look closely, you can even see frosting in my hair.

The back view. We were pretty pleased with ourselves.

The Grimmer creation! (In the background you can see the Hayashis and little Ashlyn.)

Here's Amanda Grimmer hyper on sugar. =) I just love the twirly licorice designs.

Hayashi Creation: The Candyland Temple.

And the Blevin's creation...or what's left of it. It actually looked pretty cool before it fell over. =(
Here is Katrina Blevins, brand-new baby Chloe, and Andrew...stuffing his face. =)

Well said.

So...Rachel Meynders, a friend of ours posted the following about the election. I thought it was perfect. (I hope she doesn't mind me passing it on!) It certainly humbled me and changed my perspective/attitude on last night's election results.



Wednesday, November 5, 2008
dont know if you heard,,,

Obama was elected last night. "America has spoken" as McCain said. Now I may not have really wanted him to win (although I did fully expect him to) but I do respect the man and the office he will hold.
If you are still mad/upset about this out come, please:

1)You can not change it, so get over yourself.

2)Be involved in your community.

3)Pray for him. He needs guidance and help just like anyone else does, I mean hes kinda got a lot on his plate. Also, sad to say, I'm sure safety will be an issue for this man, so pray that he will be safe.

Posted by Rach and Chad

I PROMISE, I don't have a potty mouth but...

Here is our camping adventure at Bitch Creek!

Yes, that is the actual name. I apologize to those who just gasped in horror and covered their eyes. I can assure you there will be no more swearing in this post so you can rest easy. Here are our tents in the long grasses. It was in a deep gourge that suddenly cuts through the middle of rolling bare potato fields. It was quite a steep hike to get down there. At the bottom are pine trees and and the creek between abrupt rocky cliffs.

We went with our friends Justin and Beth Avenius a few monts ago. (I'm still trying to catch up on the blogging.) They showed us a good time and were kind enough to put up with our embarrassing lack of backpacking equipment. Here's Beth and little happy Owen.

Why Andrew feels the need to make this face at least once before
we can ever get a good photo I'll never know...

Take Two.
(There's Justin fishing in the background)



Here's Justin's catch of the morning. Cooked over the fire it made for a yummy breakfast. (Believe it or not, it was my first freshly caught and cooked fish ever!)

Barbie and...SpiderMan?

Our good friends Jared and Amanda Grimmer bought us kites a few months ago. We were pretty stoked. Andrew was especially excited that his kite has SpiderMan on it =) (mine has Barbie). On a recent windy day, we went up to the ball fields on campus to test them out. It was so windy in fact, that we had a hard time getting them up in the air at first. I'm sure we looked ridiculous out there running back and forth across the fields, frantically trying to keep our dollar store kites up in the air. By the time we left however, we had a few great runs. And it was a BLAST! We need to go on more dates like this in the future. It was so pretty up there as the sun was going down that I had to snap these pictures.

Check out that backdrop!