Winter is Coming!!!

I don't recall Oregon being so cold last November. This past week we had four days of below freezing mornings. I don't even remember if it got this cold at all last year. 

So this week, Emily and I started our running schedule to prepare us for our next half marathon coming up the 1st of February. Emily has had this nasty cough (doctors say it's allergies, but we haven't been able to get her to stop coughing even with allergy medicine) so we haven't had the chance to really run together yet, but I went running on a few of these cold mornings and I don't know why I have done it more than once. On Saturday it was 21 degrees when I went out at about 7am. I was out there in shorts with no gloves and I was freezing. So what did I do this morning? Luckily I don't have school at all this week so I waited until about 8:30am to run and it was much warmer. Why don't I just put on more clothes when I run and get some gloves you ask? I have been too lazy to find my gloves and I hate running in pants and jackets. The price? Cold legs and cold hands. So far my lungs have been ok. If it gets much colder, I might have to start running at the gym or something.

I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures for this week. Everything has been going well for us and we are so excited for later this week. Emily's mom, dad, and little sister Anna are driving in tomorrow. We are doing the whole Thanksgiving thing with them and some neighbors and friends. Should be a blast! Hope everyone has a nice week and that you get to relax a little bit. Much love!

Catching Up from October...

It's been a while since Emily or I last posted. Even though we have been keeping busy with school and work, we are doing well and are getting very excited for the upcoming holidays! Here are a few pictures from the past couple months.

Emily coordinated a lot of the work put into the Conflict Resolution Week at the University of Oregon in October. At one of the events, we had pizza and I was super excited to get BBQ chicken pizza. I had been craving it for months...

In the middle of October we ran the Runaway Pumpkin half marathon.

Emily did great!

I did well too. We beat our best time for a half marathon by about 23 minutes. Go us!

After the race, we went up to Portland to visit with family and went out for sushi to celebrate.

These were the shirts we got from the race. If you are wondering what's up with the beard, keep scrolling down through the pictures. :D

We had some new neighbors move in below us from Saudi Arabia and they have been so sweet to make us different foods and treats. I don't remember the names of them, but they have been amazingly good!

So I grew out my facial hair for about a month in hopes of it being long enough to braid for my pirate costume. It didn't work, so we cut some hair off of the wig that I wore for part of Halloween (keep scrolling down and you'll see what I wig I'm talking about) and then hot glued it to my beard. Crazy? Yes, but it didn't hurt until I let Garrett and Aunt Tricia try to yank them out at the end of the night. Thinking back on the experience, it was silly to let anyone try and yank out hot glued in hair. For the record, Garrett was successful with his yank and Aunt Tricia was not. :P

So yes, I was a pirate and Emily was a parrot. We had fun dressing up for Halloween but had to have a picture of my parrot on my shoulder... "Polly want a cracker???"

Here is our little cousin Carter with the wig that I wore probably about 5 minutes on Halloween for my costume. After that, I gave up and didn't want to have to bother with all that crazy hair.

Earlier this week when I got to school, there were 5 turkeys out in front of the classroom. I told them they were a few weeks early, but they didn't seem to care.

Anyways, life is good. We hope to be posted more pictures up soon. Much love.

Disneyland and a Sprint Triathlon

Hey hey hey! So I know we have been total slackers with writing posts the last few months. We've been really busy... having fun! We went down to Disneyland with a bunch of family and then the following weekend we did a Sprint Triathlon with more family. Here are some pictures.

Our first treat at Disneyland... Beignets! They were so yummy (and messy too)!

Sweet little Tayla was glued to her Aunty Emily the whole time we were there. 

The three musketeers (Collin, Chase, and Ethan) getting ready for Toy Story Mania!

Enjoying our time on the merry-go-round.

This Disney worker just started dancing with his broom with the music in the background. It was pretty awesome and it just goes to show that you can have fun no matter what your job is!

Emily, Rachel, Jess, Collin, Chase, and Ethan got soaked on the Grizzly Bear Rapids ride.

Tower of Terror picture. We (my mom, Jess, Emily, and I) were in the front and liked our picture. It was Jess's first time on it and she loved it.

The three musketeers again... It's funny how Chase is always in the middle in all my pictures. 

Probably the best Splash Mountain picture I have ever been a part of. It's hard to explain the awesomeness of this picture... I'm regretting not buying it. The look on Rachel's face is priceless. Good memories!

Of course we had to go to the Lego store. I wish I would have got a picture of the Lego set each one got, but a picture with Gandalf the Grey will have to do.

Oh yeah! I did a whole sprint triathlon in my Hawaiian board shorts!

This was the last part of the race... the 5k run. As you can see, we were having fun!

Well, we went not thinking we would set any records, and we didn't. However, we (Courtney, Emily, me, and Aunt Tricia) can all say that we have completed a sprint triathlon (500 meter swim, 12 mile bike ride, 5k run). Wait, except for Emily...

About three miles into our bike portion, Emily got a flat and we forgot to bring stuff to fix it in such an occasion. Although it was frustrating and a little disappointing, she got a ride back in a truck and met up with us for the running portion. I'm sure we will be doing another one of these things soon.

Well, expect more fun pictures next week. We have the Bobs, Emily's dad and Anna coming to stay with us for about a week. Until then, enjoy your week! Much love!

My Mother-in-Law Is...

I (James) could never understand why people didn't like their in-laws. Well, this last weekend we had Emily's parents over. I think you can all see where this is going (and maybe some of you don't)... We have had an absolutely grand time (seriously, they are grandparents now)! I love them so much and am so thankful for all the awesome memories that we were able to create this weekend. Here are some pictures to highlight some of the the fun times!

Thursday night we went out for Teppanyaki at Kabukis for my father-in-law's birthday.

As you can see, we had a great time!

On Friday, we went out to the coast to Florence. This is my awesome mother-in-law (the Grandbobs) and my amazing father-in-law (the Grandpops) waiting for food at Mo's Seafood.

We had all sorts of yummy food... Like fish tacos!

And clam strips! and some other things like clam chowder, chili, and hot shrimp artichoke dip that we didn't get pictures of this time. But it was all delicious!

We also walked up and down Old Town Florence and looked at a bunch of shops. Like the hats?

We made it to sand...

And took some artistic pictures!

We walked out to the ocean.

Had fun taking pictures.

That's a beautiful flower created by the wonderful Grandbobs!

Emily and Grandbobs having fun jumping at the beach. It was just so exciting!

I really have no comment here.

Had a jumping contest... 

Looking at these two pictures, you can guess who won.

On Saturday, we went and ran at the Roaring River Run. The Grandbobs and Emily ran a half marathon while the Grandpops and I ran the 10km.

Emily tells me they had lots of fun.

And took plenty of time to take pictures at the 10 mile mark and other fun activities.

One of the cool things of the race... They had door prizes at each mile marker. I won't go into too many details, but we all got extra shirts which was just fun.

The weather was as perfect as one could hope for in February  in Oregon. Not too cold, no rain, light fog. We had beautiful scenery out in the countryside.

After the run, we decided to let our bodies rest and stayed home to play Settlers of Catan and watch Groundhog Day.

 Today, we are celebrating my father-in-law's birthday eating brownies, beef stew, chicken ole, and other yummy stuff. It has been a pretty awesome weekend packed with lots of fun festivities. We are sad to see them leave tomorrow morning, but are so happy to have had them stay with us for the weekend. We hope that this post finds everyone in good health. Much love from Oregon!

Of Shoes and Sunshine

Just a quickie check-in today. James and I had another very busy week. School and more school is keeping us pretty busy. James has now applied for three out of the four graduate programs he is applying to this year. The last application will be in this week and then we will PARTY! 

Actually, whether or not the application gets in, we are going to party this week. My parents get in from Utah on Thursday night and on Saturday, we are running our half marathon (for the brave - read "ridiculous" - ladies) and the 10k (for the men). James and I have been hacking up a lung for a week now, so we might not be as prepared for this run as we had hoped, but we will survive. And I got these babies to encourage me to work harder for the next run. Thanks for the Nike gift card, Dad!

James and I spend a couple hours at the outlets in Woodburn on Saturday and had a fun time walking around. The weather was surprisingly sunny for a few minutes (!), so I snapped a photo to look back on in the months of rain ahead. I must admit, there are some days when I get a horrible homesick ache for Hawaii...ahhh, someday. Until then, we are so lucky to be close to our Portland fam bam. They are the sunshine in our lives right now.

And so is this little ray of sunshine that decided to grace us with HIS (!) presence in the middle of winter. This is Michael and Sarah's baby - the first grandbaby on my side of the family. He is adorable and we are so happy for his mommy and daddy. Can't wait to hopefully see him in person soon.

And on that note, I am going to take a warm bath before Monday decides to hit full force. Have a great week everyone!