Family Christmas Letter 2007

***Read to the end for a chance to win a fabulous prize!***

Dear Family & Friends,

If you are reading this, that means that you either got our Christmas letter or you are one of our faithful readers who jumped the gun a bit. Don’t worry, your card is coming soon (despite a snafu that you can read about here). This year we have left our life of spy drama and are now enjoying a more relaxed, less-themed world. Our real stuffed coyote, Henry, still guards us through every season and change of clothing we can stuff him into. We are still living in our gorgeous apartment and are continuing our pledge to be heterosexual life partners. Six years and counting! If you recall the Family Christmas Letter of ’02, you may remember that applications for future spouses were being accepted. Let’s just say that the positions have yet to be filled.

Jessica continues to teach K-5 Special Ed Resource at a local elementary school. When not trying to coax children out from under tables and sanitizing the said tables from booger smears, she spends her time bike riding in hopes of doing the upcoming STP (Seattle to Portland) bike ride with her sister Bekah. They hope to have the following mini license plates: NMBUNZ & TNDRCHX. Over the summer she used her time of to take the youth group from her parents’ church to Florida for the week long National Youth Gathering.

Angie is still working for a heating and cooling company and loves her job! She is also involved with her church’s youth group and absolutely adores hanging out with her group. Some of you have been following the journey of the non-profit that she is a board member of, and you will be happy to know that as of the beginning of this month, the café is up and running. Angie also loves to provide personal catering for her roommate and is helped with her endeavors by a new food processor & stand mixer. (Insert a big giant WOOHOO here for the full effect of her joy).

Thanks for caring and sharing in our lives. Below you will find a 5-minute slideshow of us this past year. You will also find a trivia game. Answer the questions in the comment section of this post and you could have the chance to win a prize from us! The answers don’t have to be correct, just creative. The person that has the best responses will receive an absolutely fabulous gift. The winner (and answers) will be announced on this blog sometime between Christmas and New Year’s.

Love,

Jess & Ang

Trivia Game (cheating is allowed, but make it funny)

1. What do both Angie & Jessica cuddle up with in bed at night?
2. Where are you most likely to find them on a Friday night?
3. How many countries have they each been to? Bonus: name them
4. What are their individual meals of choice?
5. What is the name of Angie's "boyfriend" that grew to full size in only 3 days?
6. What character did each of them dress up as at the Storybook Tea Party?

1.

Amen!

God has 4,235,843 friends on MySpace

Uh, We Lied...

Know how we just got done saying that we had the best Christmas Card idea ever? Well, we were wrong. It looked good online and sounded hilarious when we discussed it, but once we received it, we saw how completely awful the product was. Now that I have just mailed the box back and you won't be getting them, I'll just come out and tell you that they were.... whoopee cushions. That's right people, whoopee cushions! Tell me that's not a genuinely funny idea, especially with our message on it:

I personally was holding out to put "Merry Christm-ass" (please tell me you get that) as the greeting, but Jess vetoed the idea. Granted, I also think some of my relatives might have a coronary if they saw it, so I had to reluctantly agree. But you have to admit it was a brilliant play on words.

So why did we return them you ask? For several reasons, one of them being the size of the writing on the cushions:

Uh, yeah. We could barely read it too (and we have young eyes). We would have had to supply magnifying glasses with our cushions and that would have gotten even more pricey. However, they did come in a nice assortment of colors that were pleasing to look at.

Still, the bold and bright colors did nothing to add to the actual function of the cushions. In fact, not much would. At times when you sat on an inflated cushion, nothing would happen. It was just a hard nobbin of air underneath you. At other times, a gigantic rip-roaring blast would erupt that sounded absolutely un-human. Seriously, if someone emitted a sound such as the one produced by this cushion, I would be afraid that they had just torn apart their butt. Let me tell you... this was no "Bronx Cheer"...

Now we just have to figure out what to do instead. Sigh.

Home Group Girls Sleepover

Last night my Home Group (youth group) girls came to my place for a sleepover. We had a ton of fun with the Photo Scavenger Hunt and the String Game! Check out my pictures of the night at my Picasa photo page. Click on "Home Group Girls Sleepover". If you've never experienced the String Game then you need to look at these pics! Seriously fun.

Christmas Cards Coming Soon

Know how Jess and I always do a "Family Christmas Letter"? Last year we thought we were clever by making you hold it up to a mirror to read it. While a pinnacle of brilliance, that letter was only a small peak next to the Matterhorn that is this year's idea. Jess and I have a history of making ridiculous decisions after 9pm (remember the hideous collage bulletin board?) so when we erupted in gales of laughter and cracked pun upon pun after I voiced my brilliant idea well past our cut off time, we decided to hold off until the next day to see if it still sounded as genius. I have to tell you, it certainly did. It has been ordered and we await it's arrival in a week or two. Let's just say that this year's letter is more interactive than normal and should be more fun than any others you may get. Stay tuned for more updates...

Shopping!

I hate shopping, but I love these sites. I'll take one of those, and those, and those...

One Good Bumblebee. Vintage shopping experiences that are amazingly cute. Check out my wishlist for my favorites.

The Modish Holiday Gift Guide. An online directory of such cool stores. I want to just spend hours looking at these places.

Homemade Julz. Gorgeous graphic design rings and necklaces.

BAGS, BAGS, BAGS

If I were to have a single typical female vice, it would be bags. Not purses mind you, but bags. Criteria: large, colorful, and able to hold at least one book. These sites were nothing but pure sugar for me.

Mod Cloth. Who wouldn't love the Paper Airplane Bag, the Lovebirds Tote, or the Owl Messenger Bag.

Gerbera Designs. Sweet messenger bags.

Anne Taintor. AWESOME ironic vintage bags... "Honey, you couldn't handle half of me"

More More More

Here's some more fun links from the past few weeks:

SF has Public Open Spaces that companies create for public use by their office space. There is a group dedicated to reclaiming these spaces. Go to this site and click Paraformance 4 on the right hand column to see strangers playing a game in one of the spaces.

Want to play 20 Questions but don't have anyone to guess your answer? Go to this website and try to stump the computer!

People's Faces and their Shoes. Enough said.

Crafty people posting their projects online. Such great stuff! If you like great ideas, this is definitely the place to look.

How to turn a picture into a screened T-shirt. The things I want to do with this...

A cool design alternative to online invitations. Small selection, but no cheesy graphics.

Hipster E-cards. Completely awesome and funny ways to say pretty much anything.

Designers were asked to share their favorite music. This is hours and hours of listening candy with unusual flavors.

Type in a band or musician and Music Plasma will come up with a web of related musicians.

Pictures Tell The Story

I often find things online that I enjoy and pass on to a few select people. Instead of being stingy with the wealth, I decided to post it for all to see. Below are some of the pages I found today.

The Border Film Project gave cameras to both the undocumented Mexican migrants at the Mexico/USA border and the American minutemen who are trying to stop them. Great photos are turning up. I will admit to a bit of nerdiness by saying that I listen to NPR on occasion and remember a couple of segments on the conflict. I looked them up for you to hear the migrant protest songs and a first-hand look at the border. Incidentally, there is a funny story of students and a principal right before it talks about the border conflict and I find it worth listening to.

Check out the interactive public art that allows people to scratch off parts of the wall. It is called the Hidden Love Song (scroll side to side to see the entire project) and this is a wonderful blurb from their website:
"If we could scan our surroundings with a special love detector, perhaps we would find a lot of hidden love songs, under park benches, in people's pockets, lying in the stomach, and behind their ears where their hair rests..."

Brilliantly done are the human versions of classic computer games like Pole Position (race car driving). It took 6 hours of shooting, 49 extras, and 400 photos.

Because I love photography, I am absolutely enthralled with the galleries at The Morning News. One of my favorites is the cheeky Drop Dead Gorgeous collection. Here and here are the best from the deaths. I also love the humanity in A Day In The Life, especially this and this.

That's all for now, but you can expect more posts in the future as I find them.

Free Sale Party

Premise: Invite a bunch of people over, have them clean out their closets, and bring their junk with them.


Twist: Everyone gets to paw through the combined loot & take home as much as they want.

Conclusion: If there has ever been a party filled with fun & prizes, this was it!

We ended up giving prizes in 4 categories. Judge's Pick went to Bekah for her leg warmers. Most Useful was awarded to Shannon for her towel rack. Jami took home the prize for the Oldest Item, with a book from the 60's. And the most disgusting prize went to Julia for her dog's well loved chewed up stuffed animals-- The Item No One Would Touch.

The food was delectable as well- from a Tomato Leek Tart to Lemon Cake to a Baked Artichoke Spinach dip, there was plenty to munch on. Jess made fun of me for how much I made, but by the end of the party there wasn't much left.

We were pooped when it was all said and done, so we plopped on the beanbag chairs Jess tried to unsuccessfully get rid of. It was a smashing success!

Babes Bedecked in Blazers

Me, Jess, & Lucy making love to the camera

Ever have those vacations where the nothing went right, you had to be with people who were slightly annoying, and it lasted 2 days too long? Well, this was not one of them! My fellow travelers were sublime, our activities were perfect, and our lodgings were more than we could have asked for. From hours spent reading to a trip to the spa to boating on the Sound to playing with dogs to sleeping outside, nothing could have made our time together any better. Below you will find some highlights from our perfect trip to Orcas Island.

We stayed at Jess' aunt & uncle's "carriage house", which essentially is a large guest studio apartment above their detached garage. It was filled with everything we could possibly want or need and provided a peaceful respite for us. The view was stunning and one of our favorite things was to sit out on the deck, basking in the sun by day and marveling at the stars by night.

With a nod to our previous Orcas vacation pictures involving a rope, we chanced upon some brilliantly red blazers at a thrift store. By a sensational miracle, we only had to pay $2 total for all three of them! We wore them hither and yon, even venturing into public upon occasion. Man, we looked hot.

Growing a Boyfriend- Day 3

Well, my boyfriend did not grow to the great expanse that we had all hoped for, but he grew nonetheless. His three day flowering period is over and he is now "full size". In fact, a 600% increase in mass. While not all that I had wished for in a boyfriend, I did decide that he at least deserved to be named. World, meet Hans. Hans, world.

The birth of Hans.

One foot is oddly larger than the other.

Holding hands (his were kind of clammy).

For some reason, he's really just not doing it for me.

Not a great cuddler either.

Growing a Boyfriend- Day 2

Day two of the boyfriend farm has produced results that aren't exactly thrilling, but not quite disappointing either. The yet-to-be-named bf has absorbed some extra water, but still hasn't achieved the girth I was so hoping for. Here's to hoping that Day 3 brings my wildest dreams to life...

Growing a Boyfriend-- Day 1

Such a difficult task this growing your own boyfriend is. It's been 24 hours with hardly any progress. Sure, his arms have grown longer (freakishly so) and his legs are somewhat spongier, but he just isn't turning into the man we thought he'd be. Stay tuned for daily updates as we track the progress of my boyfriend.

Pre-water bath. He's doing some gymnastics moves on the salt and pepper shakers.

His watery home.

Please don't let the gestation period go beyond those three days... I may have to give up hope at that point.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Jami and Chermaie hosted the raddest party we'd been to in a while! There was delicious cake and beautiful decorations. The highlights of the night were the rounds of M.A.S.H. we played. Praise the Lord that I'm marrying an underwear model! Until then, I can be content with the "Grow A Boyfriend" that I received as a loving gift from Jami. Wasn't that just so thoughtful of her? Katie and I were just so thrilled to be the recipients men that grow in just 72 hours. While initially disappointed that the results would take that of long, Adam pointed out to us that it took him years to grow up. A great thing to keep in perspective. I think my face in the group picture is just so amazing. That was a moment that I am so glad got caught on camera.

Smidge Sad, Abundantly Joyful

All we have to say at this moment is PTL! We are done watching the entire series of Alias. No more spy drama, no more ridiculous Rambaldi, no more cloning. WE ARE DONE! After spending three months with our weekly dose of Netflix discs, the arduous task has been completed. As the picture illustrates, we are only a tiny bit sad to say goodbye to the show, but for the most part there is great rejoicing inside.

*Insert Hallelujah Chorus here for full effect*
(It's even better if you sing it at the top of your lungs... I promise)

Final Late Tuesday Concert

Sadly, the time has come to say goodbye to one of our favorite bands, Late Tuesday. Jess and I trekked up to Bellingham for the final concert and met up with some of our Camano Island friends: Luke, Nate & Andy. It was great to see them again and to catch up on the latest gossip from one of my favorite places.

Luke, Nate, Jess, Me, Andy

The concert was lovely but extremely late, so we didn't leave the venue until nearly midnight. We spent the night at Lucy's house. (Side note: She's one of our best friends and adds to our collection of friends whose real names are Jessica but have been assigned a different moniker to differentiate which person is actually being referred to. In my college career, I lived with 4 Jessicas-- no joke!) After a wonderful Avellino coffee treat thanks to Andy, us girls had lunch with an old roomie, Katie. We had such a relaxing retreat to Bham. As we were driving around the city, Jess and I realized how even though we love the 'Ham, we love where we live more. Bellingham will always have a special place in our hearts, but Puyallup is home.

Jess, Lucy, Me

Revival

I just get chills thinking about God and what he's doing in this area. I talked to a friend tonight from Bellingham and we both feel a revival coming. Bellingham is so close. The crack is widening and there is going to be some upheaval there. God is astounding us with his works, both here and there. Rise up people of God!

Cookies Galore

Our place is currently filled with the delicious smells of baking cookies. Do you ever just need to bake? That was today for me. I had the most wonderful afternoon of measuring, mixing, and creating.





I was having so much fun with the first batch (Toffee Chocolate Chip) that I made a second kind of cookie (Butterscotch Oatmeal) as well. After all, I have to maintain my reputation as Jessica's private chef.

Good Ol' Abe

This is amazing. Seriously, that someone would take the time to do this...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2116425712378771695&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en

Snow

Anyone else hate the snow? Anyone? Anyone?

Play Me To Sleep

Jess and I have been listening to this song every night for the past week as we are preparing ourselves for bed. If you haven't seen this video yet, you need to check it out. An amazing project!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo

Soup Monday

This past weekend our parentals and selective siblings came over for feasting and conversation. We all had a grand time and enjoyed a myriad of tastes on the tongue as well as inappropriate jokes. The soup Jess made grew to larger than expected proportions, so we hauled out the big stock pot. Unfortunately, she has not been gifted vertically so she was forced to use the method below to finish the soup.