Hikes, Floods, and Thanks Anyways

Rusty gets a lot of great suggestions of fun things to do in the address from the people that he works with. This is how we have found some of our favorite things! For the fall, one of the things that was suggested was the Mountain Highway Loop. And because I'm getting pretty big we thought it would be a great way to get out but easy for me to do. It's a drive with some fun things along the way, do we could do as many or as few as I felt up to. First stop was hiking at Old Robe Trail. The weather was beautiful and sunny (what's all this nonsense about it ALWAYS raining here??) and the hike weaved through forests of moss covered trees. We didn't know anything about the hike but it ended up going down by a river. It was really pretty!

There were a bunch of horse tail weeds and Rusty was absolutely ENTHRALLED with how tall they were.

Like seriously.

ET!!!

We continued the beautiful drive and stopped to drive up to Mt. Pilchuck. This home is really intense and takes all day, but you can drive up to the trail head and see a view over the whole Snohomish valley.

We drove through some old, small towns and ended up getting some hot chocolate and later stopping for dinner. At the Mexican restaurant, Rusty want really hungry so he got a taco salad and I was starving so I got a huge burrito. The lady brought out our food and just assumed I got the salad. It was a little embarrassing to reach out for the giant burrito but hey, I'm pregnant. And honestly I would have ordered that when I wasn't pregnant too so oh well. :)

Something a little less exciting also happened. One night really late, around 2AM, I woke up to Rusty jumping out of bed and running out of the room. I was certain I was going to due because there was a murderer in the house. I got out of bed and peered out the doorway and saw water coming down from the ceiling in the kitchen as if it were raining. Our apartment was flooding! So we both stated grabbing towels and bowls and puts and pans to try to learn the damage. Rusty canned the people upstairs and it turned out that a tube for their sink bring and water was just pouring out. It was a pretty big disaster. ~As an just, they had to tear out the entire ceiling and put awful, giant fans in everywhere to try to dry it out. We didn't have a ceiling again until January.

There is a town called Leavenworth that we visited when we were here for Rusty's internship. It's all Bavarian themed and so cute! It's on the other side of the mountains too so the weather is hot and sunny. It is a great place to look at fall colors. We went with some of our friends and it was so much fun to walk around the town, look the colors, and eat at a legit German restaurant. I think it was the best Reuben I've ever had!

November was also spent with us being sick a lot. Like almost the entire month, and especially me. A low immune system due to pregnancy and 24 little germ carrying machines are mostly to thank for that. We spent a lot of time at home sleeping, drank a lot of hit water with lemon juice and honey, and read a lot of books. It wasn't fun to be sick all the time but it did force us to relax and take it easy.

I also finished my big capstone project called the Teacher Work Sample and turned in my last assignments of my undergraduate career. Woohoo! I will be officially graduated in December. Student teaching continued to go well this month as I taught full time again for the entire month. I really am so blessed to have the class and mentor teacher that I have. I am learning so much and loving it! This month we had our Gingerbread Man Play. It was so adorable! I love those kids!

This year we went to Colorado for Thanksgiving. We spent time with Rusty's family and looked through family pictures which I loved because it gave me a chance to see more pictures of Rusty growing up and what our baby might look like. We went to his Granddad's for dinner and had a ton of delicious food! We also did some exploring around Boulder where we were staying with his sister and brother in law. They explored Park Street one day when I stayed home not feeling well, and we also went on a Celestial Tea tour and visited a cool park. Colorado is a really fun place! I love visiting family there!

Or beautiful attire for the tour

The second trimester of pregnancy is so much better than the first! I feel a lot better, although I am starting to get a little uncomfortable because I'm getting pretty big. I love being able to feel him move! He is getting so big that we could actually see my belly move all over from him kicking so much. :) Love this little guy.