Family Reunion for Nay's Birthday- Part 2

Basically this post is just all pictures from our trip :) Enjoy!

From L-R: Andrew, Tatay, Aunt Nor, me, Nanay, my Mom, and Aunt Precy

Favorite cousin! We're only two days apart...I'm older

Tay and Craig- past body builder and current body builder :)

Hanging out at Snoqualmie Falls

The birthday party!!!!

Plenty of good Thai food

Birthday cake!

Happy birthday, Nay!

The photo booth

Hanging out by the water the day after the party

Beautiful weather in WA

Feet :)

Cute polaroid picture thanks to Tammy

Looking at Nay's photo album

It was so much fun to spend the weekend with family and I cannot wait until our next reunion!

My cousin Patrick took some amazing family pictures with his professional camera (photography is his hobby) and they turned out great! Check out my FB page to see some of them!

Family Reunion for Nay's 90th Birthday- Part 1

Over the July 4th holiday weekend Craig and I flew out to Seattle, WA for my grandmother's 90th birthday! It turned into a mini family reunion for my mom's side of the family. Family members flew in from Pennsylvania and California for the special occasion. The only one that was missing out of the four siblings was my mom's older brother (his family is coming out in August for a wedding). It was so much fun hanging out with my whole family! Everyone made sure to arrive before the big party on Saturday, so by Friday night everyone had arrived. All in all we had 18 total. If my uncle's family was there, we would've had 28!

Growing up, we all lived in different cities: Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego. But we all started out in Spokane, WA, which is the city my grandparents chose to live in when they moved from the Philippines. Even though we all lived in different cities, our parents made sure we spent quality time together. I have so many great memories of visiting my cousins and cousins visiting us during the summers. We have the incriminating home videos to prove how much fun we had. As we've gotten older our relationships have grown and we're all still really close. I know we'd all like to see each other more often, but we definitely make the most out of the time we do get to spend together.

While we were in Washington we stayed up late every night talking, laughing and sharing so many great memories (I don't think we went to bed before 2am all weekend). And if there's one thing we all love to do, it's eating!!! It was a constant stream of food everyday.

Overall we had an amazing time and I'm so glad Craig got to spend time with my family. I feel so blessed to have healthy grandparents that have lived on this earth for 90+ years and an awesome extended family that I love so much!

Cupcake Royale: One of the first cupcake bakeries in the Seattle area

We tried one of each!

Best burger in Bellevue according to the 520 Bar and Grill...it was pretty good

Red Hook Brewery Tour....can't beat a $1 brew tour where you get to try 5-6 different beers and stay in the same room

The girls! There are only three of us and the rest of the grandchildren are boys (7 boys, 3 girls)...we gotta stick together!

Cousins: From L-R: Shella, Patrick & Paul (brothers), and Camille (Shella's sister)...please excuse the blurriness

Craig and I at the brewery

My Google+ is not cooperating right now and won't upload all my pictures. A part 2 post will be coming soon when things are up and running! More to come!

Seattle and Vancouver

Belated Happy Fourth of July!!! Craig and I had a great day taking Laney to the park for a swim and then had an indoor BBQ with our friends, Aaron and Abby. 

Tonight Craig and I will be leaving CO and heading to Seattle over the holiday weekend. We're having a mini-family reunion for my grandmother's 90th birthday (which is today!)! I'm so excited to see everyone!

In honor of our upcoming trip I decided to post some of the pictures from our visit to Seattle back in March. We decided to go out for a long weekend so Craig could meet my grandparents. Craig has also never been to Seattle or Vancouver, so we got to play tourist too!
I never had a chance to post this pictures on Facebook and I figure they deserve a place to be displayed :) All pictures are from my iphone.

The Space Needle

View from the top of the Space Needle

Seattle sky line

Pork bun at Pike Place Market

The infamous gum wall....gross

The Pike Place Fish Market...where they toss the fish to each other!

The first Starbucks

Pike Place Public Market

Sushi! I forgot the name of the place, but it was really good!

FROST Donuts on the way to Vancouver

Maple Bacon Bar....soooo good!!!!

Japadogs in Vancouver...delicious

Lemonade beer....sounds weird, but tasted really good

Poutine...sounds even weirder, but it is amazing...wish I could get it in the US

Candied apples in Vancouver that were from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory...imagine that haha

Snoqualmie Falls in WA

We had a really great time exploring Seattle and Vancouver with my cousin Patrick. If you can't tell by the pictures, we basically ate our way around both cities. The weather was great and we can't wait to go back!

Be back in a few days!

DIY Door Wreath

Since Craig has been so DIY lately with his furniture building, he inspired me to do a DIY project. When I was a kid, I loved going to Michael's to find some new craft project to try. I attempted cross-stitching, crocheting, water color painting and a bunch of other random crafts. To be completely honest, I never completed any of the projects that I started, but I loved the idea of it. As I got older, I lost interest in crafting due to other competing interests, but now it's starting to make a comeback.

For my first reintroduction into crafting I decided to try my hand at a door wreath. I found an easy DIY wreath on this blog: Front Porch Sittin' with the Fentons. Here's the Link.

I used the blog post as a base and put my own spin on the wreath. Here's how it turned out:

Materials:

1 grape vine wreath

Silk flowers

Wooden letter

White craft paint

1 sponge brush

Small hot glue gun

Michael's has a large assortment of silk flowers. I picked out a branch of tropical yellow flowers and a branch of white berries. I was really happy with how the combination turned out! 

Gluing the wooden letter was a little tricky since the wreath isn't flat. I used a few layers of hot glue before I got it to stick. I also glued each flower/berry in place to the wreath to ensure that it didn't blow away...it gets really windy here in CO.To attach the flowers/berries I cut them at the individual stems, put hot glue on the stem and then put it in the wreath.

Welcome to our home!