Family Christmas Photo 2008/Blizzard of Seattle

This is the view from our Kitchen window! Normally we can see across Lake Washington and Mercer Island!! Shem and I have both been out of work since Wednesday because of school cancelations.

Us in front of our first Christmas tree!! We're so excited to have a relaxing Christmas at home, and I'm so excited to see snow!! Normally it only rains in Seattle in the winter. :)

One word sentences up-date...

Work. House. Buy. Maybe. Work. New. Couches. :) Enrichment. Christmas. Bags. Stressful. Grading. Projects. CASL. Ichy (that's how Shem feels). Anyway, we're busy, but still hanging in there until the much needed break!! My birthday came and went and I was blessed with cool new gadgets to play with, so I'm excited to spend more time figuring them out. We just bought our first Christmas tree on Saturday and I just love having my own tree to decorate. I'm going with a country theme which will include putting in some bunches of fake cranberries and my colors will be mostly red and gold. I'm excited! My christmas shopping for my family (except for Shem) is almost done, but we really need to focus on his family now. We might buy a house...we don't know yet and we're trying to talk to the auctionier from the auction that I went to on Monday when I was "sick", now I am really sick, but I can't take work off...unless I hack up a lung tonight I'll be going in still. Well, life is good, we'll post some pics later, oh, and I cut my hair!! It's super cute!

My Wet Hike up Little Si

Shem working so dilligently before getting distracted by the computer. :)


Rock Climbers

The Jungle!

My favorite pic!

Me at the top of Little Si

View from the first look out. I just love the fall colors mixed with the green!

The Yellow Leaf Road! The whole trail was covered in golden leaves, it was very cool!

Work has kept both Shem and I busy lately. It seems like once school gets into full swing our lives go on hold and work becomes all we ever think or talk about. It is quite entertaining to talk about our students and the silling things they do, but sometimes you just need a break. This weekend I didn't bring home any work in hopes of forcing myself not to think about all that I should be doing, and so far it has been great! Shem had to get some stuff done so I hiked Little Si by myself, and I must say that it was a refreshing hike! It wasn't too strenuous, but just the right amount to make you feel like the hike was worth it. It was windy and rainy at the top so I didn't take very many photos, but on the trail it was just gorgeous! Most of he leaves have fallen, but it was still so beautiful!

Nothing else has really been going on, although we just bought a new computer! We love it and we're having fun figuring out all the new features on Vista and Media Center.

Back in School

Well, we're finally both back in school. Bellevue was on strike for many reasons: benefits, pay, and the freedom to use our professional abilities to teach to each student and modify lessons as we see fit. Basically teachers were being forced to teach the same lesson in each classroom for that subject on the same day in all the schools in the district. It wasn't good. Shem went back today and he's still working hard in the living room getting this situated and organized (he's such a hard worker!)

I just started my 3rd week and I'm loving teaching 1st level Spanish classes to freshmen. I'm using a lot of TPRS in my lessons so therefore speaking a lot of Spanish to them already and it's amazing how quickly they catch on!

We both had a great summer and we look forward to the fun we'll have next summer, but we're also glad to being working again.

Labor Day weekend/Ellensburg Rodeo

You don't want to know what makes a horse really mad...mad enough to buck it's rider.


They have to tie the cow up and pin him down as fast as they can.




Shem just being cute while I walk circles around him taking pictures.

My little digital point-and-shoot did a pretty good job at the Rodeo considering that I didn't have rapid shoot 20 frames/sec on my camera or a respectful telephoto lens. I'm pretty proud of these picstures.

My Hobbies/ New Talents and fun stuff with Shem!

My sister-in-law Wendy is just so amazing!! She has all of these cool/crafty card making tools and she is so willing to teach and let others use her gadgets. I made these cards back in August when we got together for a card making night. It was a lot of fun!

Wendy and Shem's Mom have taught me how to cut Shem's hair! I love being able to cut his hair because I know it's saving us at least $20/month and all the $$ we save from his haircuts can go towards mine. :) This is me cutting his hair the day before school started for him after his 2 week strike in the Bellevue School District. I just love being self-suficient!

One of our many food experiements: Banoffe. It really didn't turn outlike we had hoped, but we did get to brulee the bananas on top with a torch!

Vegas 2008

Inside the Forum Shops at Ceasar's Palace

The moving statues weren't as impressive as Shem anticipated, they were just animatronic.


After a long day of walking we took this beautiful pic in from on Paris.

The strip during the day from the skywalk between New York New York and MGM Grand.

Shem in front of the Bellagio. Next time we go I want to stay there! :)


The Lions at the MGM Grand.

Fly away!!! Flamingos at the Flamingo.


Our trip to Las Vegas was a lot of fun! We especially enjoyed our time at the pool in the mornings before it got too hot to risk being outside in the sun exposed like we were. We mostly walked or rode the bus up and down the strip checking things out; there are a lot of fun things to do for free and it kept us entertained. It was just way too hot for us northwesteners reaching highs of about 105 during the day; it was so hot that you could feel your skin burn in the sun!

Aside from the heat we loved eatting out and we both agreed that eatting out and trying new food was the thing that got us most excited about being on vacation. We ate at our favorite restaurants like Chipotle, Wendy's, MacDonalds (which I've decided that their salads are always old and moldy), Outback, and for our expensive meal we ate at Wolfgang Puck at the MGM!! The meal was divine! Shem and I had a chopped salad that had so many yummy and zingy flavors in it to start, then Shem ordered Roasted Lamb Panini and I had the Baked Penne pasta. It was so yummy! To finish off our meal we took the plunge and went for dessert and got the Banoffe Tart! It was heavenly and we could not stop talking about it after we left and I've found a couple of recipies that I'm trying, so we'll see how it turns out tomorrow! The bruleed bananas on top were just incredible to eat!

Thompson Family Reunion 2008

Shem playing some ping-pong.


Sunday evening we went on a walk with the kids to explore some old Batteries where guns and amo used to be stored.


Beautiful sunset, although the sun is too bright in this picture.

The family reunion was a lot of fun! We stayed a Ft. Flagler on the Olympic Penninsula at Camp Wilson. It was great to have the whole family together to hang out and play games. Shem and I enjoyed being child-less because it gave us time to play with all of the other nieces and nephews; although waking up to toddlers running down the hall at 6:30 am was hard. :) We played games, discoverd that we're all ping-pong stars, stayed up late, talked, and ate a lot of yummy food!

Date Night Dinner!!

I came home yesterday from running some earands around 4:30pm and I really wanted to make something new for dinner; something fancy and yummy! After making our banana pops, picking our recipies, shopping for obscure ingredients like grape leaves and fish sauce, cleaning while Shem watched the Avatar, and then cooking we ate dinner around 10:30 pm! It was totally worth it and a lot of fun! Shem and I like to cook together. We made Pork Satay, Vietnamese-style beef in grape leaves, and Greek Rice and Herb Salad! We decided that we probably could have gone out to eat for the same cost of the ingredients but then we wouldn't have had the pleasure of making a mess in the kitchen together!

Backpacking in Oregon!

On our 2nd day we left camp and there was so much snow on the ground that we lost the trail! This is Shem's happy face after finding the trail! :)

At about 4,000ft there was still snow! The cause of us loosing the trail.

My cool Gortex boots keep me nice and dry while crossing streams. :)

Our last day; leaving camp and the hike out. Amy, me and Shem

My happy face after finding the trail!

Mt. Hood

Pretty flowers

Tunel Falls! You actually get to walk behind the falls!

Lunch break by the stream. We took the time to cool our feet.


Shem, Amy, and I went backpacking on the Eagle Creek and Ruckell Creek trails in Oregon just east of Portland last weekend. It was my first experience climbing almost 4,000ft with a 33 lbs pack on my back, but it was a lot of fun! We camped, ate good food, got lost, played in the waterfalls and hiked about 25 miles total over 3 days!

Sunday walk: The Attack of the Killer Mosquitos!

Every once in a while Shem and I like to go for a walk on Sunday, well today we went to Newcastle beach park to check it out for the ward picnic Shem is planning. It's a great park with a beach front on Lake Washington and a nice nature trail. We decided to take a walk on the trial and about 2 minutes into the walk we were swatting mosquitos off of us left and right! They were everywhere!!! It was so bad that we decided to run through the rest of the trail! Little did I know that I would get a healthy run in on a nice Sunday afternoon! It was a great speed workout! After running from the mosquitos we ran to the car, made sure we didn't have any bugs on us, and started to drive home. I noticed that something smelled like dog poop so Shem pulled over and sure enough during our frantick run out of the mosquito infested trail Shem had stepped in a pile of poo! We put his shoes in the trunk and he drove home barefooted. :) It was the most unsatisfying Sunday walk we've had to say the least. :)

Tigers vs. Mariners: Tigers won 8 to 4! :) (they lost the next day though :))

Shem and I went to the game with Liz and Zaron and our nephews: Corban and Liam. We had a lot of fun and the weather was perfect! I was suprized to see so many Tiger's fans at the stadium, but it was nice to cheer on my team with my fellow fans. Everyone else was cheering for the Mariners of course. I guess if Shem and I stick around her long enough I'll have to add the Mariners to my favorite team list as well. :) So, being as prepared as I could be I made sure to grab the camera (this is a new thing for us; to not forget the camera when we go places because we always forget it!), it was in the car but I was so distracted when we were getting out of the car by the big puddle that I had to jump over that I forgot the camera in the car and never put it into the bag! So, after the game Shem was nice enough to drive around the stadium so that I could get a picture of the outside for our blog! He's the best and always willing to go above and beyond to meet my requests. :)