A Look Back at 2010

As 2010 comes to a close, here's a look back of some of the fun times we experienced this year.

In January, we got a great head start on working towards our New Year's resolution of cooking two new recipes per month by cooking four new recipes, we had brunch with the Ashers and got to cuddle with Hannah and Charlotte, Corey taught Roxy a new trick, and had dinner with Corey's mom as part of one of her resolutions for us to all get together more often.

February brought Roxy and Moorea together for the first time for an eventful (and tiring) play date, we hosted brunch with the Shawvers and Allens, we had a Superbowl party complete with lots of laughs as our friends tried to fit in Roxy's crate, had a date-filled Valentine's Day weekend, complete with a walk around Discovery Park with Rox, and took Roxy to a Frenchie Frolich play date.

In March, we enjoyed lazy Sundays, a birthday celebration for my dad, celebrated Mark's birthday with the Kels and the Gorden's, and headed off to Maui for my T-Mobile Peak Award trip, complete with a trip to Hana.

When April rolled around, we headed from Maui to the Big Island to spend time with my family, after returning to Seattle, we had Easter brunch with Spence and Renata at The Georgian at the Fairmont, enjoyed more time with Kels, Mark and the Gordens, I went to the ReStore Trash Fashion Show with the girls, and I went to Orlando for work to help with the T-Mobile events for WES 2010.

In May, we celebrated my mom's birthday and Mother's Day in Yakima, my mom and I enjoyed a girls' only weekend in Palm Springs, we visited Spence and Renata in D.C., and celebrated our four-year anniversary since we met.

In June tackled our first big DIY home improvement project, I ran in the Issaquah Tri 5K with the Reeders, celebrated Roxy's 2nd birthday, enjoyed a visit from my family in honor of my grandma's birthday and Father's Day, Roxy wrote her first blog post in honor of "Doggie Daddy Day", spent time with the Reeders and Gossetts eating our way through Fall City Days, I ran the Seattle Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon, and one of Corey's photos was selected as the Olympus User Photo for June.

In July, we spent the 4th in Spokane visiting Corey's dad and saw Grandma Rita for the last time before she passed away later that month, we enjoyed record high temperatures in Seattle by spending time outdoors, spent time in Yakima with the family and cheered my dad on in the Grey Rock Trail Run, wandered around the Olympic Sculpture Park, spent our anniversary weekend in Vegas with the Reeders, and concluded the month with a return to Spokane to celebrate Grandma Rita's life.

In August, I headed to Chelan to help Sara celebrate her 27th birthday, we attended my work team's annual summer BBQ, celebrated Kevin and Jen's birthday with a sailing trip and trip to the Snoqualmie Casino (and found out they are expecting their first child in April).

In September, we celebrated Corey's birthday (here and here), bought a new car and found out that our friends Sandy and Adam are expecting a second child in April.

In October, we entered Roxy's fetch photo into Kiss 106.1's Doggie Duel, where she made it into the top 50 of 1,400 dogs, met Liam, my co-worker Stephanie and her hubby Billy's son, celebrated my birthday several times, announced that we were expecting a baby in April 2011, celebrated Corey's mom's birthday, had another brunch with the Ashers, and celebrated Halloween with our little pumpkin.

November brought the first snowfall of the year to Seattle, we hosted Thanksgiving at our condo with my family and Joan, and we found out that Piglet was going to be a boy, and that our friends Matt and Christy were engaged.

This month, we celebrated Gina's graduation from nursing school, booked our babymoon, partied with my work team at our annual holiday bash, celebrated Christmas with Corey's family, and headed to Portland on our babymoon (more to come on this trip soon!).

2010 has been such a fun and exciting year but we're really looking forward to 2011, with the arrival of our little one in April! (In the meantime, you can check out our year in review posts from 2009 (here and here).)

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a fabulous Christmas and happy holiday season! May it bring you many fun times with family and friends, extra time away from work, yummy food and treats, excitement watching loved ones open special gifts you picked out just for them, and maybe a few fabulous gifts of your own (if you were on Santa's nice list this year).

Love,
The Morans (Corey, Jenny, Roxy and Piglet)

Holiday Party Time

We've had a great time with my work team at the past two annual holiday parties, so we were really looking forward to this year's festivities, which definitely didn't disappoint.

On Friday, we headed down to Tony (my boss) and Linda's house in Puyallup for food, a White Elephant gift exchange, and quality time with my fabulous co-workers and their significant others.

The company was amazing, the food delicious, the white elephant gifts hilarious, the laughs plentiful and all-in-all, a fabulous time was had by all. It was a great way to kick off the upcoming holidays.

A few of the evening highlights:

• Classier Jello shots than last year (no more Dixie cups; think condiment take-out containers, with lids).
• Co-worker Dara cuddling with all three of Tony and Linda's pets.
• Little Liam meeting the crew.
• Quality White Elephant gifts (Big Mouth Billy Bass, ice shot glasses, hammer that doubles as a bottle opener, a GIANT wall clock).
• Eastern Washington winning their playoffs, to Tony's delight.
• Introducing new co-worker Jacob and his wife to our holiday party tradition.
• Realizing that though Tony may be an inch taller than me, he definitely has carnie hands.

Here are a few of my favorite photos; the rest can be found here.

Some tender, loving moments between Dara and the Stout pets.

Big Mouth Billy Bass was a huge hit, that ultimately ended up in Tony's carnie hands.

Honorary bartender and boss man Tony and his adorable wife Linda.

Channel Management team --- Jacob, Doyin, Jenny, Tony, Siiri, Stephanie, and Dara. (Not pictured - Stacy (son got sick right before the party, so unfortunately her and her hubby weren't able to partake in the festivities.)

We heart Linda, not only for hosting, but making all sorts of yummy food and for putting up with all of us crazies!

Babymoon Booked!

We're over halfway through our pregnancy and recently started talking about where to go on our babymoon - our last big hoorah (i.e. child-less vacation) before Piglet's arrival.

We originally thought it would be fun to get out of the rain and cold but prices for flights to sunny destinations - Phoenix, Austin, San Diego - for the weekend we were looking at were out of control. And in order to save as many of my vacation days as possible for maternity leave, we wanted to go over a long weekend, so that ruled out further destinations like Hawaii, Florida and Mexico. We ultimately decided to go somewhere over New Year's since 1) we have never been out of town together on New Year's and 2) we both have a 3-day weekend anyway, meaning less vacation days to take. Given that flights weren't working out for that weekend, we narrowed our choices down to drive-able locations like Victoria, Vancouver or Portland.

Ultimately we decided on Portland based on ease of getting there, the fact that we hadn't been there together and I hadn't ever really stayed downtown before (back in the day, Kels, her mom, my mom and I would go on annual back-to-school shopping trips but always stayed in Clackamus), and figured there'd be more going on over New Year's there than the other locations.

We booked our trip today and are counting down the days until our getaway! We'll be staying at The Nines, a luxury boutique hotel downtown for three nights and are looking forward to its proximity to restaurants, shopping and other fun activities. And on New Year's Eve, we have reservations at Departure, an Asian fusion restaurant near our hotel which has an amazing-sounding prix fixe menu that night. We don't really have any other plans for the weekend, which is exactly what we wanted. We simply want to relax, sleep in, shop (and with no sales tax, we hope to do a lot!), try out yummy restaurants, and enjoy all that Portland has to offer. Good, quality time with each other.

Watch for a full report after we return on January 2!