We finally are on our “babymoon” vacation up in the San Juan Islands in Washington on Orcas Island (four hour drive from Portland and one hour ferry ride from Anacortes). This place is amazing and can’t really be described in words or pictures.


It’s so relaxing and the pace of everything is slowed down. The house we are staying at is truly one of a kind. It’s called the gnome house and it is just that, a big amazingly handcrafted woodwork gnome house. Really, just think the hobbit houses from Lord of the Rings but on a scale big for us humans and with little gnome creatures all around.

We got here when it was still daylight thanks to a little luck catching the ferry last minute, so we got to check out the place and meet our new friend, Cedar! He was sitting at the door to greet us after we’d settled in for a few. The owners of the house live right across the dirt road so he just runs around free. We did meet the woman owner, Meg, at their touristy shop in Eastsound “the town on the island” and got a nice rundown of the history of Orcas island, her and her husband have lived here for 35+ years.

We have been relaxing a lot, eating fruit, reading and doing a bit of site seeing. Went up to Mt Constitution yesterday, it was beautiful. Went to this observation tower built in the 1930’s as a memorial for some guy named Moran. The state park the mountain was in is Moran State park, the 4th largest state park in Washington.
We leave tomorrow, I just had to come into “town” to find wireless internet today and complete a quiz for my psychology class, which I totally should have done before vacation, but I procrastinated.

And I wanted to leave the best news for last, but certainly not least, we are officially engaged! Brandon asked me yesterday and of course I said yes! We have been talking about getting married, even before baby Hunter was in the picture, but now Brandon asked me for real. There could not have been a better time or place for him to ask. I’m SO excited to be spending the rest of my life with such a wonderful man.

X-Men Action!!

We got a chance to sit down the other night and play a board game at our new table. We decided to play a game Brandon got from his grandma when he was a kid but had never played.

The Uncanny X-Men Alert! Adventure Game

It took us about a half hour to read the rules and understand the game, but we got off to a good start and we passed learning just the basic game and went to the advanced version. Brandon was kicking my butt at first with his team of X-Men: Team leader Beast, Gambit and Cable.
Then I beat him by killing off Evil Mutants in a few good battles with Iceman using his Freeze Attack. My X-men team was Team leader Archangel, Nightcrawler, Iceman, and Banshee. I had two X-Men with wings and Nightcrawler who all could join in on battles at any point during a battle, Brandon was stuck with X-men who were wussies and left their teammates hanging.

I WON!!!!

It was a great game, even Chopper was hanging out with us and enjoying the fun.

The Garden Adventure

Crystal has been wanting to get a garden started in our gigantic back yard. This entails doing a few things and a little building too. So last Sunday when we decided to take a day off we decided to take an evening trip up to Home Depot in Sherwood. Which by the way we now go to way to often. We go up there so often I recognize the workers and know who is working which shift. I hang out with these guys more than my friends.

So anyways, on our day off our goal was to get the materials needed for building raised garden beds. Crystal had done a good amount of research online and knew what we needed to build them in our backyard. We grab a flat bed cart and begin grabbing lumber, our lumber haul consisted of 12, 8 foot 2x6's and 2, 8 foot 4x4's.

Having transported a good amount of trim in Crystal's Hyundai Elantra we figured if we could fit 8 foot pieces of trim in her car, we could fit all of the above lumber with no problems.

Oh how wrong we were. Not until checking out and actually getting out to the car do we realize how truly screwed we were. I had serious doubts about getting it all to fit. After about 20 minutes of twisting and turning, two individuals walking by and laughing, we finally got all of the wood to fit. Although it wasn't an ideal situation, we were able to make it home. Needless to say it was a little cold on the way home.

On the way home Crystal at one point forgot that the lumber was sticking out of the passenger side window and looked at me like I was crazy for having the window down. She even had her hand on the window control for my side and was about to roll it up.
A cold ride it was, but we got it all home in one trip!

Wood Floors, Round Two!!!

It's amazing how fast as a person I forgot the hard work that went into re-doing our new hardwood floors. As we prepped Crystal's old place and made a list of what had to be done, we came to the question of the hard wood floors. Her old floors had seen 7+ years of foot and paw traffic and needed some kind of work. The only question was, would we do it ourselves or would some kind of allowance be offered to the potential buyer?

Needless to say with some of us being doers and us wanting to do anything to increase the chance of selling we decided to do it. Here is what we started with.

This next shot is after a good hard weekend of three people and one hot pregnant lady sanding.

We still have yet to get a shot of the floors fully stained and protected as we discovered this Monday that one more coat of Varathane (think protective clear coat) needs to be applied.

Tons of hard work went into getting the floors to the point they are at in the above shot. A huge debt of gratitude is owed to the people in this shot. Momma Teri a.ka. the cord holder/electrician and my Dad a.ka. "I just need to hit this spot one more time" Case. Without them both of these floor projects wouldn't have been possible. Their know how and drive to re-do the floors and do them right. Their sense of humor. But most of all their all around support. you two rock and I'll never be able to put into words how much I appreciate you both.

Oh and don't worry Crystal and I did some work too.

It's a girl!

We found out on Monday that we are going to have a girl! Of course they do tell you it's not always 100% accurate, but our ultrasound technician seemed quite confident of her assessment. We've decided on Hunter Marie Case for her name. Hunter is of course my last name so she'll have part of me and then Marie is Brandon's grandma's middle name so he'll have part of him too. And his last name too I guess. :)

Here are some ultra sound pictures. We were upset to find out we are having skeletor, but we'll still love her with all our hearts. Just kidding, that's just the black areas in her brain. Flip it over and you have her face... We think...
Here's her little foot and part of her butt. She's going to have giant feet like me!

And here is her profile. I'm hoping that the picture was just shot from a weird angle.