Merry Christmas

Another Christmas and was it ever awesome! A drive over the mountains with Dana's folks, Matt and his girlfriend, Kristin led us to a wonderful afternoon with all Dana's family, good food, and some of Matt's very funny memories from their childhood--I don't think Dana's laughed that hard in months.

Christmas morning was another fun surprise with a Yakima White Christmas. Snow has been falling all day. We unwrapped presents (highlights include our 72 hour kit JetBoil and water filter, day pack from Dad Kitchen, sweaters, socks, blue and yellow plaid Sorel boots, more socks, rice bag warmers from Matt and Kristin, a griddle--Dana's always wanted one and I found it for 2 bucks!--and even more socks. After a walk through the muffled snow and a few close encounters with cars who don't know how to drive on ice, we settled in for fondu, Batmas Returns, and a few Hershey's dark chocolates.

Me wearing a strange assortment of presents. I especially love my ode to Michael Jackson's one glove. Ow! Jeff and Jessica gave us Ticket to Ride and the digital photo frame is from Dana's boss, Brad. Dana got about ten pairs of socks to wear with his new Sunday shoes and a polish kit to keep them shiny




 Merry Christmas everyone!

 

Christmas Letter 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

     The world is ending, or so we’ve been told, which is why we crammed as much fun, adventure, and love into this last year as possible.

FAMILY

This year brought many opportunities to enjoy the company of our families. The Sonny and Sue Gailan clan started a new tradition of monthly Monday night dinners which have been a roaring success and provided hours of laughter and good food. The Kitchen Family reunion was held in Salt Lake City over the fourth of July and included a rainy trip around BYU (complete with UTE colored umbrellas. Thanks a bunch Taylor), an archaeological tour of the dinosaur museum, a jaw-dropping trip up the Kennecott Copper Mines (visible from space) and the always popular Hill Air force Base. We even had time to squeeze in a fun filled day at Snowbird, riding down the alpine slide and overfeeding the squirrels. Dana’s favorite part of the trip was getting to golf with the brother-in-laws, even though Fred managed to somehow beam him in the back with a golf ball—Jeff’s seventy foot putt made it all worth it and the Gailans/Kitchens once again captured the tournament prize.

ADVENTURE

When we were students at BYU and then Texas Tech, we always lamented how little of the surrounding state we took the time to explore so this year we made the decision to see as much of this great state of Washington as possible. Our first opportunity came with an invitation for Dana to play in the Idaho Governor’s Cup located in Couer D’Alene, Idaho, just across the border from Spokane. It was our first trip to the far East side and we were greeted by a beautiful sight and the prettiest golf course Dana’s golfed to date. Top that off with a few moose sightings and a day at the beach and life was good. Since that trip was such a success, we made an impromptu jump up to the Bavarian village of Leavenworth for a day of bratwurst trying, island hiking, and taffy eating. Delish!

But the biggest trip of the year by far was Dana’s 30^th birthday celebration—a time to knock items off the old bucket list; we channeled our inner artists and made blown glass candy dishes, dabbled in some new cuisines, tried in vain to find pie (it doesn’t exist in Tacoma. Trust us), and even saw a Zombie or two at the annual Zombocalypse conference going on at our hotel. Yeah, we are so lucky. The highlight was a 50 second, 9,000 foot tandem free-fall out of an airplane. It was awesome!!!!!

NEW ADDITIONS

We picked up a new family member in September and his name is Subbie…or the Sub, we haven’t decided yet. He’s a brand new Subaru Impreza that has quickly stolen our hearts. We took almost two years making the decision about the purchase of a second car but we are so grateful to have him.

As many of you know, we’re also hoping to add another addition to our family in the coming New Year (assuming the world does not end.) This one will take a bottle instead of unleaded. After much prayer and helpful advice from you all, we have made the decision to move forward with the adoption process and in April were approved through LDS Family Services and the State of Washington. We know we have a long road of patient waiting ahead of us but we’re so excited at the prospect of our new little Gailan dropping into the world any day now.

We have been so very blessed this year and want to thank you all for being a part of our amazing journey through 2012. We know the Lord has been watchful of our family and yours and we are grateful for the most precious gift we have been given this Christmas season—the gift of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We hope your homes are filled with his sweet spirit this season and we wish you a most heartfelt Merry Christmas.

Arboraria

Christmas is just around the corner.
Usually we know the 25th is getting closer because people start to get that crazed I-only-have-how-many-day-left look in their eyes but this year we made a goal to get our shopping done early so we could enjoy Christmas the way it was meant to be enjoyed--stress free. So far we're sort of stinking at that, but part of our goal was to do more festive events together. In honor of that, we drove to Yakima Arboretum tonight to enjoy their lighted Arboraria. It was basically a one mile path lit by bags with tea lights. Along the way trees and other buildings were lighted too. We enjoyed a festive walk with hot cider and cookies and we bumped into a few families from the ward as well. It was a great way to spend the evening.
Had to throw this one in for fun. All my young women at our Young Women in Excellence night. They were Value Super Heroes  No idea what the sombreros are about:)


Giving Thanks

Our Thanksgiving this year was very low key--just Dana's parents and his brother, Matt--but it was sort of a momentous occasion for me because it's the first time we've ever hosted. Part of that is due to this little beauty:

Earlier this summer, we found a great deal on a beautiful expanding mango (yes, mango, how exotic is that?!) table. We want to start having families over and our old table got us through law school but was barely big enough to put four plates on it at once, let alone any food:) This table has been amazing so far. There's an adorable bench on the other side and a leaf folds out in the middle making it a table we can grow into.

Since Matt was working on Thanksgiving day, we postponed dinner until Friday. That meant Dana and I had Thanksgiving all to ourselves. We went to see the amazing new Bond movie and then tried to find a restaurant that was open (nope) so instead we headed off to Wal-Mart for a quick hamburger (yeah, real festive, we know) and a few last minute items I needed for dinner. Funny enough, we forgot that Wal-mart was having early black Friday so when we showed up at 7 there were people EVERYWHERE! Seriously. We had to fight out way through a grumpy crowd in the freezer aisle just to grab ice cream. Then we had to find our way through a maze of boxes to get to the checkout line. People are crazy. Then on Friday, we had Dana's family over for a laugh fest and delicious food. I was too busy double checking the turkey (and cursing my thermometer which did NOT work) to take any photos of the finished table, but our new furniture held up to it's name. It was all delicious and we are so grateful to have family around to share this holiday with.

Saturday we took a spontaneous trip to the tri-cities where I may have finally found my elusive boots (long story years in the making) and then we settled down to put up Christmas decorations.
Dana and the tree. Nice how he positioned it in front of the TV for the really important part of the Thanksgiving holiday:)


We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and an early Merry Christmas. We're so grateful for you all in our lives and so grateful for our Savior and this time of year to remember everything he's done for us all.

30? Uke gotta be kidding me!

It's official--Dana has left the 20s for the much more mature, awesome 30s (at least he keeps telling himself that). After his whirlwind birthday trip in September, his actual birthday on the 15th was a bit more subdued. NOT! As luck would have it, Dana's birthday landed on the day of our tri-ward combined young men/young women activity. The Moxee ward was in charge and they awesomely decided to have a ballroom dancer come give our youth much needed instruction. And even though it was his birthday and dancing isn't exactly his favorite, Dana was the first one out on the floor twirling me around to foxtrot and waltz and even a little swing, baby.
Playing a good sport when they dragged him to the center of the circle for a rousing  rendition of 'Happy Birthday'. (He thought they were asking him to do a solo dance at first and was none too happy about it, but he perked up when he realized all he had to do was look cool. Easy.)


Some of our youth tearing it up. Best match up of the night--the short deacons with my tall MiaMaids:)


 We were so exhausted when we got home that we decided to save the birthday pie for the next day. So, on Friday, out it came along with three brave little candles and one surprise present.

 A SHINY RED UKULELE!!! Dana's wanted one forever. Can you tell he's in love. And please forgive the pjs, we were still tired on Friday so we forgot to eat the pie until almost ten, right after we'd taken a mid-evening nap (see the awesome hair he's sporting?). If this is a sign of the 30s fatigue we are so in trouble.
Since his birthday, Dana's uke has had quite the adventure getting restrung at the music store with not one, but two sets of strings (don't ask) and falling in and out of tune as it comes to grips with said strings. Dana, meanwhile, has mastered several strums and almost five chords. Watch for him at the next ward talent show! Happy Birthday Babe!

Spontaneous Leavenworth

I have the best husband. Seriously. Last Saturday he woke me up with a surprise trip to A) Don's Donut shop and B) Leavenworth! It's this cute little Bavarian town up near Wenatchee that we've never been too but they usually have cool festivals and beautiful fall colors. So instead of loafing around the house, we took a drive. When we left (with donuts in hand), this is how the mountains greeted us. Yikes! Don't worry, that's not a fire like before. It's fog--which is kind of our thing in Yakima lately. It was fun to drive through and even Leavenworth was sporting some clouds. The funniest thing about Leavenworth is that even the generic retail shops like Safeway and Walgreens look Bavarian. It's pretty cool that the whole town gets into it.

When we arrived, Dana did a sweet parallel parking job and we headed off to find what Bavarians are apparently famous for--sausage. I opted for potato soup instead but Dana tried two different sausage sandwiches. We're pretty sure one of them had some veal in it which I was pretty sure was baby cow. Is that right? If it is, don't sick PETA on us. We're sorry! And Dana said it wasn't his favorite anyway.

We spent the whole day wondering up and down the cobblestone streets, peeking in shops and trying on various funny hats. We tried a variety of mustards and olive oils and even visited an old fashioned candy shop that was making salt water taffy. We're not sure what flavor this green concoction was but it sure looked cool.

Lastly, we left the beaten path and took a long walk down by the riverfront over crunchy red and gold leaves. And because he's Dana, somehow we managed to walk passed a golf course:) It wasn't open but still I think he just likes being close to one. Strange man. After Dana finished his second sausage sandwich and I warmed myself by the fire vent things, we packed up and headed home. Great day. Thanks for the surprise babe!

8th Annual Gailan Carve Off

Small. No fuss. Fabulous. That was the theme of our Gailan Carve Off this year (mostly because October still felt like September in Yakima...yay 70 degrees!). We had the Hoopes and Jones families over this year and it was quite intimate and fantastic. We even went ultra low key with our pumpkin. Can you tell what he is?
No? Yeah the pictures were kind of a bummer. How about now?

He's on the far left and he happens to be a very happening mustache pumpkin with sunglasses. Soooper cool. Even cooler, Joni showed us a trick to carve from the back instead of cutting off the top so our stem didn't cave in. It totally worked. Unfortunately, then our back caved in. Ahh well. Live and learn. The carving in full swing. That little guy is Joni's son, Caleb. He has taken a liking to Dana and even came to church wearing a bowtie. Needless to say, Dana loves the kid. They're going to have a Wii play date later in the future:)



30 before 30 continued!

Sorry for that delay, folks. I know you're all dying to find out about the rest of our trip so strap in cause we're going waaaaay up in the air.

FRIDAY
This was the big day. Why? Because somewhere in all our crazy planning we decided it would be a good idea to jump out of an airplane. No, I'm not joking you. We got a lot of 'are you guys crazy?' looks when we told people but honestly it wasn't that scary. The place was over in Shelton, WA (basically a small town in the middle of nowhere, which is perfect if you want to jump out of a plane but not so much if you need, say, food).
The shop was a rink-a-dink metal hanger with hard core looking jumper types lounging about, playing hackey sack and generally joking off. Probably the best place to work ever unless you love money:) We arrived, signed 2 tons of paperwork indemnifying the company from any injuries (yes, they even had a clause saying you can't sue them if you die, Dana checked). Then we suited up, me in fashionable purple, Dana is manly blue, and watched as another group stole our plane.

Okay, not really. But we were the second group to go so this is us (and their wives) watching them head off into the really tiny plane that I'm pretty sure we couldn't get Mom Kitchen into even if she was being chased by a swarm of bees.

After the other group jumped, we took a truck out to the landing site to meet up with our tandem experienced jumpers. Dana's guy. Umm...are those jeans? And is Dana wearing a collared shirt? We keep it classy no matter what.

In the plane. Yes my guy is in shorts. Don't you love our bullet helmets? 

I went first because Dana had a videographer capturing the whole magical event. We had two other guys with us, a father/son duo. The Dad has over 6,000 jumps. What!! The son was getting licensed so he has close to 100 jumps. They pulled the big door open and just stepped out like it was no big thang. I scooted on my butt in a much less graceful fashion and then sat on the edge for a second staring down at the earth thinking, well this was dumb. But...too late. AHHHH!!! Honestly, not scary once you jumped. It felt like the drop of a rollercoaster and then like you're getting hit by a thousand fans at the same time.

Dana's guy showing him the altimeter. Dana not paying attention:) Had to put this one in. Neither of us was paying attention when they pulled the chute so it was jarring to say the least

Here's me! My tandem guy told me to stand...I chose to sit. You'll find out why later.

The 'I'm so happy you aren't dead' hug. For me this was the 'I don't want to ruin your video but I'm gonna hurl in about a minute so make it snappy love of my life' hug.


What a rush! Honestly, it's impossible to describe how cool it was. Not scary one bit. Dana was so hyped up for the next hour. I was...less hyped. Unfortunately I let my tandem guy go a little wild on the loop de loops when we were free floating and paid for it later when I threw up most of breakfast on the gravel outside the building. The rest I threw up right outside of the car (Not the car, screams Dana!) when we stopped for lunch at a Panera in Olympia. Dana tried not to laugh and for the most part succeeded, but I was seriously pathetic. I will probably never jump again because of that but it really was worthwhile for the memory. And, hey, we survived! Dana actually liked it okay and said he'd go again if someone else wanted to experience it so check your calendars. Watch Dana's full video if you want the real experience. (For the record, no we didn't get to pick the music.)

 

After an unsuccessful attempt to feel better even at Panera, we threw in the towel, skipped black light mini-golf and went back to the hotel in Tacoma for me snooze for a few hours. Poor Dana was a trooper, suffering with nothing to do but watch the Ryder Cup. Man that guy has a rough life:) Thankfully, I was up and raring to go by 6ish so we headed back down to Olympia for dinner at Fujiyama, a hibachi style restaurant. Basically, you sit around a giant griddle and get dazzled by the skills of your chef, if you have a good one. We had a GREAT one! Making the rice. He did this cool trick where he tossed a raw egg in the air and cracked it right over his knife

Holy flaming tower of onion rings, batman!

 It was such fun. And because the Gailans know everyone, of course we sat next to a woman and her mother who are from a town called Montesano, right next to Aberdeen where Dana grew up. Yup, Dana figured out they knew about ten of the same people. So random. Welcome to my life with the Washington Gailans. We headed back to Tacoma in hunt of pie, but sadly no. Ah well, maybe the next day.

 

SATURDAY

Before



 

After

Let me explain. One of the funnier things on Dana's bucket list is a desire to have a really manly shaving experience at an authentic barber shop (yup, they had a red and blue striped barber pole and everything). In anticipation of this awesome event, Dana decided not to shave all week. The Before photo is what he looked like Saturday morning--pretty scruffy, not exactly my cup of tea. That all changed with one quick trip to the Supernova Barber shop for a very intense haircut, shave, and style by this guy:

First, yeah, we saw the tattoos. Second, if you look really close you can see his amazingly trim and long beard. Third, that's not Dana:) I know my hubby may have a baby face but c'mon guys that kids like 2. But otherwise this is the authentic experience he had. The floors were hard concrete, the men tattooed with serious beards. All very manly. Until they pulled out the hot towels and shaving lather but by then who cares about looking manly...ahhh...hot face towels...must fall asleep in chair...
Suffice it to say Dana LOVED his new look. The shave pulled a little because he let it grow so long so next time (yes, I said next time) he won't do that, but otherwise it was the epitome of manly pampering--hot face towel wrap, face massage, a sharp knife blade inching its way up your face:) The guy asked if he wanted to keep his mustache and he debated but wisely said no. I would have stepped in at that point. My guy is a clean cut type, thank you very much. He also really liked the haircut. He thinks it looks very Don Draper from Mad Men. I think it looks like George McFly from Back to the Future. Both could be good, right? Sadly for him the look requires an inordinate amount of pungent pomade to keep in place so the next day his hair relaxed back into it's usual casual D-child style (close one!). Now he's getting ideas for our boys...hmm...

 

Anyway, our next stop was the Tacoma Glass Museum which had a lot of cool sculptures and a workshop where they make art pieces all day long and then auction them off online to help support programs. This guy was working on a piece where you fuse a whole bunch of tubes of glass together and then shatter them. We're not sure what they did with the shards after that because we had to leave but it was probably awesome.

The best part of the museum was these guys. They have kids clinics for the local school where they can come draw creatures and then the artists will make it out of glass. Super funny.   

Lunch was pizza at the Rock Wood Fired Pizza Grill and then it was off to my favorite part of the trip--the zoo!! Yes, I know it's not a bucket list thing but I just love zoos and aquariums. The Tacoma zoo is actually amazing, probably the best I've ever been to. Here are some photos of the fun friends we made along the way.

Are you taller than a Polar Bear? Sorry babe...nope


These are Puffins. Really they were just disgusting molting birds but I liked them because of the movie Elf. Goodbye artic puffins...


We made it in time for a seal show. They can make some amazing noises



Okay, had to throw this one in. Can we all just say AWWWW together? This little guy was in a room full of stuffed animals and I swear when we walked up you couldn't tell which one was real. Then he lifted his head and me and about four other ladies just went awwww. (The guys were like, uh, yeah, cute, I guess.)

Finally, the day had to end so we headed back to for the night to try out the sauna and try not to laugh at the zombies. Oh, I didn't mention the zombies before? My bad. Apparently as luck would have it, I chose the one hotel in Tacoma hosting the 2012 Zombpocalypse, which bills itself as a preparedness conference to help you survive the inevitable zombie uprising. Uh...riiiiight. Totally. Zombies. Scary.

Really it was just an excuse for grownups to dress up as zombie brides and zombie bikers and steal our parking spots. Breakfast was interesting, to put it mildly. The best part was when we came down the elevator which is glass on the back so you have a view of the Tacoma done as you ride. I glanced down at the sidewalk and saw a guy dressed in black fatigues with SECURITY written on his vest sporting what looked like an AK-47. Dana pointed out the orange tip on the gun which I guess is the universal symbol for 'I'm a fake gun owned by a crazy person'. Anyway, it was funny to watch how seriously they take it. We got invited to come to a couple classes but politely declined:) So if that zombie uprising thing does happen don't come to our house because we are happily unprepared!

 

SUNDAY

We knew it had to end but it was still such a bummer to pack up and head out of Tacoma. We stopped at a church in Renton and because the Mormon world is just so hilariously small of course we sat by the Bishop's wife who just happened to be the Aunt of Dana's old visiting teaching family:) After church, we changed into jeans (is there anything more uncomfortable than changing out of a dress into jeans and then having to walk down the halls at church? I feel like I have to keep apologizing and explaining that we're on a road trip...honest...we're not bad people...). We stopped for lunch, picked up our art pieces and hit the road. I knew we were close to home when I could see the dirt ploomb hoovering below the mountains. But even with the smog (which has cleared up finally) we're always happy to get home. Hope you enjoyed the trip, babe and I hope you know what an amazing man you are and how many truly spectacular things you have done so far. I know we'll do so many more before the next big b-day.