Mom, Kelly (Champ), and Rachel

Me and Mel (one of the “downthestreets”). Her baby is due the week after Champ. Crazy times! Tim’s baby is just a food baby. Lucky Tim!

These are my favorite!

Hold on! What's this?!?!? There's a baby in there!

Regrettably, I did not think to take a photo of the whole group and most of the photos of me opening gifts don’t have me actually holding up the items so you can see how cute it is. Thank you to everyone who came! We have so many lovely things now and we’re beginning to feel more prepared for little Champ’s arrival in March. It was great to see everyone and I’m thankful that folks were able to make time during the craziness between Thanksgiving and Christmas to spend time with us.

We got up Friday morning, picked up Jojo and headed to the historic downtown trolley:

A & K on the trolley

C & J on the trolley

 We had some delicious lunch, then wandered around and looked at little things in shops. Because I was (and still am) a little freaked out about the idea of wearing maternity clothes, we all went together to try them on. Here we are (just to clarify, I’m the only one who needs them, but who wouldn’t want to try on a fake prego belly with your friends?)

Joanna=not pregnant

Carrie=not pregnant

April = not pregnant

me in three months time!

We didn’t buy any of the clothes, but we had fun! THEN we went to Chuy’s for dinner!

Queso bar in the back of a cadillac? YES PLEASE!

Mmm. Queso!

Thanks for dinner!

We went back to Toby and Joanna’s that night where I saw one of the creepiest sculptures ever:

Saturday night we went to Plano and partook in the hot air balloon festival. It was great AND I tried fried pickles! They were excellent. Nice and salty and delicious.

Sunday we went to church with April and Toby and Joanna and then got to go to the mall and see the miniature basketball player!

and the ducks and turtles with the volcano style fountain:

On Labor Day, my brother and I and some friends ran the Super Jock & Jill 4+ fun run for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. It was pouring outside the whole time, but it was really fun, here are some photos of the fun:

Erik, Kelly, Christi, Michael and Brenda

Here’s Erik comin’ round the bend on what we thought was the final turn. He broke free from our little group early on and well, killed our time.

pretty rainy!

and a few minutes later, here we come:

Somebody's feelin' like Rocky!

After the race we headed back to the McPherson casa for some brunch and warm beverages. It was pretty chilly. Oddly enough I’d selected the race because of the likelihood of sun and nice weather.

We finished!

This past Saturday, Megan and Katherine participated in the Iron Girl Seattle10k. David, Jonathan and I were there to cheer them on as they ran! The course is basically two laps around Greenlake park, so we got to see them twice!

Here are some photos from their big finish:

Megan approaching the finish line

Erin & Garrett at the Garage

These two winners are getting married today and I KNOW it’s going to be beautiful. Not only do they have two sweet musicians (Jonathan and Carrie), but they are fulfilling God’s purpose for their lives. Erin and Garrett both work with me at CN, but I’m just going to be honest and say I hang out with Erin much more than Garrett. Erin is one of those people who always looks pretty and has super cute clothes-the type of person and when I first met her I thought she would never want to be friends with a lowly admin staff member who pretty much doesn’t have the same caliber of fashion sense. Surprisingly, Erin has become a dear friend to me because not only is she super cute, but she is amazingly kind and one of those people who will listen when you need it and suggest happy hour when that’s the best way to resolve an issue. I’m so thankful that we’re able to be part of the big day where she and Garrett exchange wedding vows! I’ll post more about the wedding next week after we’ve actually attended, but here are some fun photos of our sweet bachelorette weekend at Seabrook.

There was some really, really good food:

Hashbrown quiche which was accompanied by orange ricotta pancakes and bacon. Mmm.

Delicious thai peanut chicken with a yummy salad

Juje baked us cinnamon rolls Sunday morning. They were warm, sweet and hit the spot!

And we had FUN:

I flew a kite at the beach

Erin and Kelly ready to take down their opponents on the badminton court

Riding bicycles through "town"

Yay! Erin's getting married!

We’ll see you at the wedding and we are SO HAPPY for you!

In dreaming of my plans for my 30th birthday celebration, I somehow got the great idea to run a half marathon. Jonathan planned to run with me, but during one of our training runs in January, it was quite evident his knees would not permit him to participate as planned. I pressed on with training, running toward my goal of completing that half marathon without stopping. My only intention was to run the whole thing. My brother Erik decided he’d join me for the fun! Sadly, his desire to train wasn’t as great as mine. His longest run before race day was four miles. FOUR MILES. I was concerned that he would sustain an injury or hate me by the end…

Time to make a run for it! Traffic isn't moving!

After running toward the Qwest events center, we arrived inside in time to get our numbers and goody bags and yay! we were ready for the race! This picture is a bit blurry, but it’s the best we got:

It's official!

I spent most of Thursday and Friday monitoring my water intake to ensure hydration for Saturday and Erik, well, he ate a bunch of peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

We got up early Saturday morning and hoped for the best! And then, another hour of jammed up traffic!

Not again!

And there were, of course, more people running on the side of the road:

He's ready to run! He's already running!

We were finally able to exit the freeway, then about ten minutes later, we decided to just get out and walk-that was around 7:20 and we’d been in the car for an hour and a half. We walked/skipped/ran to the start and just jumped the fence into the nearest starting group. We crossed the start line at around 7:40 though the event officially began at 7:00. The first five miles went by very quickly and were very enjoyable. It was a great day to be out running! The weather was beautiful, the bands were great, there were cheer groups from area high schools cheering us on and the general atmosphere was up beat and fun! We even saw a bald eagle in a tree right along Lake Washington!

Here are some photos of us finishing the race (from the race photographers, you can see more photos here):

Really happy to cross the finish line!

We planned to cross the finish line together, holding hands:

and we did it together!

As we were crossing the finish line, we could see Mom and Jonathan and Katherine and then Carrie, Brenda, Christi and Holly with their signs cheering for us as we finished! It was so wonderful. I was just really really happy that we did it and made it without injury. I think Erik was mostly happy to be finished and rather tired. We got some water and a banana, bagel, bag of chips (seriously! Sunchips were SO GOOD at that moment), a bottle of cytomax and then we stretched out and I got chilly so I wrapped up in a mylar blanket. It was fairly easy for us to find everyone at the family reunion area. 

And Erik is displaying his granola bar

Christi, Katherine, Brenda, Jonathan, Holly and Mom and I'm guessing Carrie is taking the photo.Thanks for being there to cheer us on! It was great to have such a crowd there for us! We love you!

He's a winner!

We were also able to miraculously find some of our friends! Here’s our friend Christi, who finished much faster than we did, but will still be my friend! Great job Olsons!

Christi and I get a photo together before we head out!

Thanks for being excited for us and for your encouragement!

After all the photo nonsense and some talking excitedly, we had brunch at the Portage Bay Cafe where I topped my french toast with every type of fruit I wanted at their toppings bar. Please excuse Jonathan’s elbow in this photo. He didn’t know how excited I was to take a photograph of my food.

Yummy french toast

We were all delightfully full after brunch and headed home where we cleaned up, skyped with Rachel and I took a nap in the yard then moved inside to take another nap in my bed. We had some Freshway Pizza for dinner and watched “Run Fatboy Run”. All in all, a very enjoyable day indeed.

That was such a fun time, I think we’re going to do another one! Anybody want to join me for the Super Jock n’ Jill half marathon on Labor Day? Looks like this one starts at Redhook in Woodinville, heads up to beautiful Bothell and then back down to Woodinville on the Sammamish River Trail. It’s going to be fun!

Big thanks to Jonathan who encouraged me to train and helped me find time in our schedule and did things like take me out to buy running gear and didn’t complain when we ate sandwiches for dinner on long run nights and is generally encouraging and wonderfully wonderful. Kelly and Erin, thanks for listening to all my random questions about running and for giving me a training plan and for offering to run with me even though we never found each other on race day! Carrie, thanks for being my friend and for being excited for me! And Mom, thanks for taking the bus early on a Saturday to see us cross the finish line! Wendy, thanks for your tips from afar-move back to Washington so I can have a running buddy (oh and the schools here are better and it’s not so hot and all that too).

Erik, I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t think you’d make it-but you did it! I’m impressed with your determination and your fierce love for me that made you brave the pain I know you were feeling on race day. Thank you for being such a great brother and good friend to me. I promise for my 40th birthday we’ll do something less intense, like maybe we’ll hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon or go fishing in Alaska or something easy like that, okay? Love you!

The time we found a baby carrot shaped like a witch’s finger:

And the time I convinced Christi to come with me to Starbucks and spy on Carrie and her blind date. Then we tried to take photos like we were real spies. Here is Carrie’s date. Not Dan Potter:

And here we are playing in a wheat field near Walla Walla.

We’ve had some great times as roommates and I’m continually thankful that the Lord brought you into my life Carrie. Thanks for being a wonderful friend to me always!

Jessica is the resident cooking genius and happens to have Martha Stewart’s Cooking School cookbook, which was the source for our recipe. We made both potato gnocchi and ricotta gnocchi and they were delicious.

First, we assembled the food mill, which started out looking like this:

Carrie is a parts assembly master so she finished up:

Then we milled the potatoes:

While the food millers milled, Erin got started on the pesto:

Once all the potatoes were milled up, we put them onto the (clean) counter and began the rest of the recipe:

We kneaded this until it was doughy then made snakes or ropes:

(Carrie is in the background working on the ricotta gnocchi)

Then we cut them inot pieces and shaped them with a fork:

Then, we boiled them:

The feast!

Everyone was very polite, even though we were rather hungry by the time we ate!

mmm.

Thanks girls! I’m really glad I have friends who can share a fun night of cooking and laughing!

It was a long series of flights and more than 30 nearly sleepless hours of travel. Along the way, we were regaled by a chorus of crying children in the row behind us, and the airline managed to lose ALL THREE pieces of our luggage, IN DIFFERENT PLACES. Now any old airline can lose luggage, but let’s take a moment to recognize South African Air and United for their unique ability to carefully distribute a single group of bags, checked in together, to locations around the world. Bravo!

(As an aside, if you’ve never flown internationally, it’s actually quite nice. You get actual food–meals, not three smashed pretzels and a watered-down ginger ale that ensures an awkward visit to the lavatory–and your own personal entertainment device that allows you to watch any of dozens of movies, or the entire first season of Prison Break, for no extra charge.)

It’s wonderful to be home.

Our house, which sometimes feels small, felt palatial. We have so much.

Our bed is so comfortable. Kelly put flannel sheets on it right before we left, and I have never been so thankful for a horizontal place to sleep.

We are incredibly grateful for our friends and family here. We missed them. And they made us cookies.

And it’s Christmas season, for real. There’s just a smidge of snow on the ground, and the forecast promises more. We went out last night to fight the jetlag and hunt for a Christmas tree, and we had success on both fronts. The McPherson clan flies in on Sunday to join us for a week of Christmas festivities.

Thank you, again, for all of your prayers and support on our trip. We’re really looking forward to celebrating the holidays and sharing stories with everyone. Merry Christmas!

We all went to have our hair/make-up done at Aveda

Did you know they set your hair? They do. Ever want to look like your grandma did every week of her life, go to Aveda!

Then we went back to Carrie’s place for some lunch and hang out time before the wedding. Oh, and to see Frankie.

We headed out to the church and got Carrie all ready to see Dan!

My Momma was there. She made dozens of beautiful arrangements (with help from Mrs. H-Hey Mrs. H!)

Before the ceremony, we had some time to kill, so we took some photos of our “classic” poses/faces.

And pretended to be JLo and Posh:

Then it was time to be serious and get these kids married for good. The ceremony was beautiful. Carrie was radiant, I only cried a little and Dan only almost caught on fire-good thing he felt that candle flame warming his arm-April and I were ready if necessary though!

And we sent them off together:

Headed for marital bliss!

Now they’re in Hawaii. I hope they are eating pineapple and coconut and maybe see a volcano!

Hooray for Dan and Carrie Potter! Praise the Lord for bringing you together in such a lovely way!