How Do You Know...

...if you chose the worst movie option for Christmas Eve?

Oh, believe me. You'll know.

Longest 1 hour and 56 minutes of my life. I have never been in a movie theater praying for the credits to come sooner. Or for temporary vision/hearing loss. Terrible, terrible movie.

Christmas treats

I discovered this yummy idea from the adorable Holly, over at Zucchero, Zucchero. I knew I had to try it when it involved some Reeses doppelgangers. I was really excited last night to make these yummy Peanut Butter Cups, since possibly my #1 flavor combo is chocolate & peanut butter. I mean, what's not to love? Not saying they're any healthier, but at least I hand picked all the ingredients myself (from my pantry) so I know what's in 'em :) And let me tell you, they are quite delicious! For whatever reason I didn't really monitor the portion size, so they kind of turned out more like King-size Reeses. Whatevs.

Up next, sugar cookies!

p.s. I am totally fighting off a pre-Christmas cold too, boo. I kind of just want to be in bed, but I have quite a bit more baking to finish...and one more day of work to get through. Oh the holidays :)

Dear January 7th,

via

Please arrive faster. Thanks!

Love, Michelle

Merry Christmas...

from The Gwinn Family!

From L to R: Jeff age 33 & 13, Kevin age 25 and 5, Michelle age 30 and 10.

Yes, that's right...my awesome family decided to re-create a Christmas photo that we used 20 years ago for the family Christmas card this year. I also thought my Dad purposely tried to make it look kinda old school with the design (i.e. 80s fonts & gingerbread men), but no he actually just picked this one for real. We even called the people who moved into our old house (in Walla Walla) and asked if we could take our picture in their front yard! Since they are super nice and know that our family lived there for 25 years, they are very understanding to let us do weird stuff like this.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! My fiancé and I are having a date night tonight...thai food and seeing hopefully one of the Golden Globe nominated flicks...hmmm, so many good ones to see! UPDATE: We're seeing Black Swan! Excited!!!

p.s. I almost cut those sweet bangs again to make the picture look more realistic. Almost.

Annual Girls Christmas Breakfast & Gift Exchange!

On Sunday we gathered at Kim's house to do our annual get together before Christmas where we have breakfast and do a gift exchange, typically with the gift theme "Accessories". Usually this event follows our annual Holiday Party, which sadly took it's first year off since 2001. Noticeably though, everyone was much more alert/awake, punctual, more put together and did not smell of booze. Alas, we are now in our 30's.

Coffey & Marge practicing some poses for Coffey's upcoming Maternity photo shoot next Spring.

The gifts!

Getting ready to begin the casual gift opening, which will be followed by the not-so-casual, actually quite frantic, LIGHTNING ROUND!!!!!!!!

I got stuck by these two crazies apparently!

Now they are displaying other ways to wear headbands...

All the friends who could attend this year!

(& twins Emma & Avery)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Hello! It has kind of been a busy couple of weeks around here! Aside from basking in our newfound engagement (which has been quite awesome, I must say) we have been all over the place celebrating! I have had more wine in the past two weeks than I had probably had the entire year before, oops.

First up, Thanksgiving following Snowmagedden 2010. We welcomed the chance to get out of the house after a couple of housebound days to celebrate Thanksgiving with my Mom, brother Kevin, his girlfriend Kate and her family.

Then on Saturday we headed over to the family compound, Anderson Island where another Aunt & Uncle have purchased a beach house. It's quite fun now that my Mom's brother and sister have houses next door to eachother. And it's only about an hour away, which is really nice to have a little escape so close by. I got to do a lot of snuggling with my cousin Elliot's* kids, Finley & Reed.
*sidenote: Elliot may be on Oprah today...she skyped with his Tacoma bookclub for today's episode and he isn't sure if they will make it on the show or not, but if you watch Oprah he may be on today!

So last year we were super cute and got our tree at this adorable tree farm and had such a festive experience! A perfect cold sunny day, drinking cider and picking out our tree... This year...not so much :( The weekends are jam packed lately and we couldn't find one where we could go cut down our tree (hard when daylight is over at 4pm, gross) so we had to settle for a tree lot down the street in Kirkland and a guy who put our tree in a garbage bag to get it home because it was sopping wet from the rain. Sad. I pretended our tree was not in a bodybag for 10 minutes and set up little DeForest and I must say he turned out quite handsome!

I hung our stockings on the mantle...this is our first Christmas living together in the condo, so I felt like we needed matching stockings. These are kind of temporary though, because once we have kids I want to get cute embroidered ones with names like I had growing up. For now, Target stockings will have to do :)

Apple Cup time! This year we had 10 friends over to watch the big game on Saturday afternoon...sadly our Cougs could not pull it off, therefore sending the hating it Huskies to a bowl game. Gross. Regardless we had a great time and as much as I was worried about having a gathering in our condo (which you can see is not large) it actually worked out quite well!

Adorable Amelia in her Coug sweatsuit and knitted apple cap. This kid is seriously cute!

Brad gets so nervous watching the Cougs that he kept getting up from his chair and "taking a knee" on big plays! It was seriously cracking me up! I love his love for the Cougs :)

4 years, 2 months and 3 days later...

...the Gwitos are officially going to become The Zitos :) Brad and I are engaged!

After being kidnapped from work, blindfolded, and driven to an unknown location by an unknown man (later to be discovered was a hotel chauffeur). I arrived to a suite at The Heathman Hotel and saw tea light candles everywhere, a perfect song choice playing and a proposing boyfriend in front of me. I was in complete shock! He captured my face as I walk into the room...I couldn't believe that he had pulled this off and completely surprised me! I had previously been at work waiting for my ride (aka Coffey) to come pick me up to head out of town for the weekend. Little did I know my night was about to become a little more exciting!

The first pic of us as an engaged couple!

The site of the proposal

My ring!

I.can't.stop.staring.at.my.hand.

I love you Brad and cannot wait to begin this exciting journey with you!

Visting Baby Owen

This weekend Brad and I went home to Walla Walla to meet my precious little nephew, Baby Owen. And he is just the sweetest ever, I love him so much! I am counting the days until I can get back there to snuggle with him! Here are a few pics I took...

He really LOVES to sleep :)

My Mom & Dad, excited 1st time Grandparents!

Uncle Kevin & Aunt Kate

Aunt Michelle

My older brother Jeff, the new Dad!

New mom Rikki & Grandma Patty

Brad and I after cheering on the Cougs...we're getting closer to actually winning!

Any day now...

Halloween-Jersey Shore style

The Gwitos made pretty good Guidos at the Jersey Shore Halloween party we attended this year!

Owen Rhys Gwinn

Today I became an Auntie!

My little nephew, Owen Rhys Gwinn was born at 8:23am, weighing in at 7 lbs on the dot. Just a little peanut. Hopefully I will get some good pics when I go home to Walla Walla next weekend. SO happy.

(photo from my dad)

Vacation!

Yippee! Brad and I just booked a vacation for right after the new year and I couldn't be more excited! We decided to try somewhere that neither of us has ever been, and somehow stumbled upon Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Mostly because of the little gem of a hotel I found, Casa Cuitlateca. If it lives up to it's near perfect reviews on Trip Advisor, we are in serious luck! I can't wait, T-minus a little over two months! Here are some pictures I *borrowed* from Google images...hoping to take some good ones myself in January!

The infinity pool...yes please! I am a sucker for infinity pools :)

A likely spot you could find me reading my book. A bed in a palapa? Serioulsy a dream...

The view from our room's deck! I finally get a hammock on vacation, yessss!

This hotel/B&B only has 5 rooms so it's sure to be a quiet/peaceful escape for us this winter. The countdown is on!

Inn at Langley

Almost two weeks ago, Brad and I headed over to Whidbey Island for a relaxing weekend at the beautiful Inn at Langley to celebrate his 30th birthday. Unfortunately, I may have picked the rainiest weekend of 2010. Didn't get a lot of great pics, as it was seriously a DOWNPOUR all weekend long.

Adorable downtown Langley.

We grabbed lunch, ducked into a glassblowing studio & a bookstore before heading back to the room to start a fire and drink wine :)

My rainboots got a LOT of use this weekend!

The "view"...quite lovely, eh?
We turned the weekend into a cozy, "indoor" weekend at this point...

It did stop raining for about an hour and we sat outside and drank a bottle of wine we had been saving for about 3 years from a wine tasting weekend in Walla Walla.

A sliver of blue sky even came out!

Our usual self timer pic (please excuse what I looked like, I had been caught in a downpour!) :)

We had dinner at Prima Bistro just down the street from our hotel, and it was SO good! I serioulsy think it was the best chicken I have ever had! Also I believe we ate TWO pounds of mussels, or something crazy like that.

The Inn at night

Babies

The word "babies" pretty much sums up my week! It is my Netflix movie for the weekend & who I spent multiple days with this week.

The ever-so fashionably late Kocher girls, finally made their appearance into the world shortly after 5am last Saturday morning. I had the pleasure of meeting them when they were barely a day old last Sunday.

Avery (left) Emma (right)

They are the teeniest little things, you honestly feel like you are holding only a blanket!

Last night their bff Charlotte came by to play for a bit. Weighing in at barely 11 lbs (still so tiny at 4 months old!) she appeared to be a giant next to these two!

Avery (awake, left) & Emma (asleep, right) was pretty much how these two stayed throughout my visit last night! That Emma sure loves to sleep! She might take after her Auntie Michelle ;)

The adorable Kocher fam!

Congrats on your new little twinnies, they are absolutely perfect! :)