Tessa and Logan, Lacey’s sister and brother, have been staying with us since last Thursday.  Totally fun (but beside the point).  Tessa was supposed to fly out this morning and of course the airlines give no indication that anything will be cancelled until you drive all the way to the airport, check in your bag, and start walking to your terminal.  At least that was Tessa’s experience.  Lacey and I were almost back to our house when she called us with the news.  So we turned around (grabbed some Starbucks first) and headed back to the airport.

I love driving my big blue truck in the snow.  It’s amazing in the snow… invincible.  Well, almost.  On the way back from the airport, about two blocks from our house, I decided to take them on a little alley tour for funsies.  Unfortunately, as we came to the cross street I slowed down to check for traffic and sunk down into the berm right before the street.  Doh!  The best part was that I had literally just finished reassuring Lacey that we couldn’t get stuck in the big blue snowbeast.  After an hour of digging out the tires repeatedly and making progress little by little, a guy stopped and helped me realize I wasn’t using the hub-locks quite right for the four-wheel drive.  I thought you had to lock the hubs after you got it in four-wheel drive.  I had taken it out of 4-High to put it in 4-Low, and had unlocked the hubs in the process.  My thinking was that I then needed to get the truck in 4-Low before locking the hubs.  Wrong.  I was informed that you leave the hubs locked and just move the shifter.  So anyway, once we locked the hubs I went right into 4-Low and drove right off, as I knew I would.  I simply couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t going into four wheel drive!  But I had a lot of fun digging myself out of my neighborhood offroading, it felt like the good times I had with Jeremiah and Becky last winter getting their Jeep out of Rocks of Sharon, a place outside of Spokane we went snowshoeing.  The difference is we had tow ropes and we were in the backcountry, not a city street…  But honestly it kinda feels like the backcountry out there today… I saw someone cross-country skiing down the alley just a few minutes ago so…

The rest of the lumberjack photos are here.

We went to the famous market.

And down to the piers.

We saw ugly sea creatures at the aquarium.

We ate ugly sea creatures at The Crab Pot.

And we listened to sweet a cappella outside the original Starbucks.

I also took Lacey into Ye Olde Curiosity Shop on Pier 54 to check out the mummies, the shrunken heads, the two-headed calf, and all the other freaky things hanging out in there

Luckily we encountered lots of freaky things in Seattle (including a guy who popped his eyeballs out of his sockets as we walked by) so we were prepared for Derek’s freaky bikes.  Haha.

All the Seattle photos are here.

There were two shortcomings in the driveway screaming to be fixed.  First, the part next to the street had a big upside down speed bump.  Second, the cyclone fence blocked about half of the driveway, making it real annoying to drive in to.  But now it’s all fixed and looking great!

More photos are here.

They’re already litter-trained, which is totally sweet, and so far they haven’t even caused too much trouble!  They adapted to our house almost instantly, a little too much of course so we had to plug up a few holes.  Behind the oven, behind the piano.  We’re trying to teach them to stay off the table tops.  They love their little toys we got them, Washington especially loves this big furry thing on a stick, he acts like he’s captured a big bird and runs around with all the feathers sticking out all over.  Haha.  They are very entertaining to watch them pounce on each other and do all the things that naughty kittens do.

More photos are here.

The photos are here.

Once we got home, we had a couple days to rest up and pack for our honeymoon.  We opened a bunch of sweet wedding gifts, unloaded the U-Haul, received our marriage license, and even organized everything in the house!

A few weeks before the wedding I remembered that our flight to Maui was from Seattle, not Spokane, so I hastily searched for cheap flights to Seattle, but of course cheap didn’t work out.. so we decided to add another leg to our driving journey.  (Is leg supposed to make sense?  I think of a leg extending from a hub, not from an endpoint.  Shane, help me out with this one).  So, exactly a week after our wedding, we jumped in the car (at least not the U-Haul anymore) and drove to Seattle, while intensely listening to a book-on-tape called The Honeymoon by James Patterson.

The wedding was beautiful!  I don’t have any real wedding photos yet.. but I have a few from the rehearsal that Marshall took.  I opened a Flickr account hoping it might be faster so from now my photos will be there.

The best part of the wedding, besides the whole getting married part, was having all our family and friends there with us.  Thanks to everyone for coming and for all your help and for enjoying it!  (Assuming you did we’ve heard good reviews though).

I worked from home this week so we’ve been together non-stop now for almost three weeks.  It’s going to be hard to leave her next week to go in to the office.  I love being with Lacey, it’s my favorite thing.

The rest of the photos are here.

Spokane Valley is burning down, work has been ridiculously hectic this week, I just discovered Google StreetView, and Lacey is all the way over in Venice, Italy!  What the apocalypse is going on!  Ok, things are not that bad but good grief when it rains it pours.  Yeah, wishful thinking for the people losing their homes.  Six so far.

But let’s get back to poor me.  My fiance is so far away!  I don’t get to talk to her for two weeks!  Come on, feel sorry for me.  And she’s living it up on some fancy shmancy cruise ship where a butler (probably named Gustav) serves them whatever they want.  *Finger snap*  “Hey servant, fetch me a blueberry pie and a steak and a cool damp towel folded thrice to place abreast my febrile forehead.”  Sigh.

To dampen all these shenanigans, I decided to post a photo of Lacey with her engagement ring!

I asked Lacey to marry me on a quiet Saturday morning in my house after a beautiful and totally delish french toast with blueberries and strawberries and whip cream and syrup washed down with coffee breakfast.  To set the scene, we were sitting together in the reclining chair with Ben Harper’s album “Burn To Shine” playing on random and the ring in its box hidden in my pocket.  Ready to go.  All I have to do is wait for the right song to come on… it’s on random so it’ll come up at some point right?  Sigh, not so much.  So we sat there and talked and song after song the right one wouldn’t come up.  And then, Lacey starts getting texts… from her friend… and the song isn’t coming up… the texting stops… the song is still not up.  Fine!  So I get up and go get the controller and force the song to come on!  No more waiting!  Haha.  I didn’t prepare a contrived speech so I just started rambling about how I love her and how I know we’re supposed to be together and will you marry me and love me forever.  She said, “yeah I s’pose.”  Just kidding, she said “yes of course I will marry you and love you forever!”

In the aftermath, she called her sister and her brother and her parents and friends, and I called my parents and friends.  Then, get this, she had to text her friend back to say, “yes, he did it right after you texted me!”  Oh. My. Word.  Right?  Diana’s last text was ”did he ask you yet?”  And, guess what, I had seen the text!  I thought, you gotta be kidding me!  Apparently, Lacey had mentioned to Diana that she thought something might go down that weekend because of a few hints I’d dropped on the phone.  But Lacey had been real careful not to assume anything so if it didn’t happen she wouldn’t be let down you know.  But of course Diana had to send that text literally right before I did it!  Haha.

We had our hot engagement date in the Palm Court Grille at the Davenport Hotel that night, in a private spot I had reserved.

K, so I’m supposed to be having a conversation with you about why marriage makes you more of a man rather than less.  But I’m starting to realize something funny about maturity, that once you make a breakthrough in your maturity level, everything before that point quickly becomes moot.  Let’s see if I can explain that.  In my case, everything before the moment I knew Lacey would be my wife was preparing me for that moment.  And now that I’ve passed that moment, I’m ready to move on.  I think what I’m getting at is that once you reach each point of maturity, it soon becomes boring to discuss things in your previous realm of maturity.  Now that I hit the maturity point of feeling and acknowledging true love, I totally understand that it makes me way more of a man to get married than to stay single.  Simple as that.  If you haven’t hit that maturity level, how am I going to convince you of a feeling you haven’t felt?  If you have hit that maturity level, what is there to say except yep you get it.

It’s funny to read about maturity while looking at that photo isn’t it?  Haha.