Happy Birthday Kim!

Well, it's no secret that Kim Olson turned The Big 50 on March 21st. Courtney surprised her with a trip to New York City to celebrate. When the two of them returned home, the celebration continued with a trip to Silver Lake, Oregon.

Cody and Chelsea took Friday off of work and made the 5 hour drive to spend the weekend in the most remote area Chelsea has ever been! First Chelsea learned that there is no lake in Silver Lake...the so called "lake" has been dried up for years. The town consists of a mini mart, tavern, diner, gas station, a pet friendly motel (with a total of 5 rooms),a post office and absolutely no law enforcement. We spent the weekend at Crack in the Ground, exploring Derek's Cave, geocaching, hiking around Fort Rock, and eating the best meal ever at Cowboy Dinner Tree. After working on the house the past several weeks, it was a much needed getaway for Cody. It was a fun, relaxing weekend full of adventure.

PICTURES...
Our fist geocaching experience on Friday ended up being a bust but we tried again on Saturday. Right about the time we were about to give up again and go 0/2, Kim starts yelling "I found it, I found it!!!!" There it was, hidden under one of the hundreds of trees in the open field:


Roxy thrashing through Crack in the Ground:

Roxy getting a little help from Dad and Grandpa:

Loren, Cody and Chelsea (and Roxy too):

We finally wore the dogs out:

There are two items on the Cowboy Dinner Tree menu: Steak and Chicken. Loren and Cody ordered the steak (a 27 oz steak that is!) and Kim and Chelsea ordered the chicken (a WHOLE chicken!). It was such a delicious dinner, nobody left hungry:

Home Projects

We have been busy working on the house. We recently just finished painting the inside of the house. We picked some pretty bold colors but we absolutely love all the color in our house. No more white walls and no more blue race car room!! Cody installed a stair skirtboard, wired in and installed a ceiling fan in the master bedroom, and now is in the process of ripping out all the carpet to get ready for new laminate flooring. We also ordered new appliances for the kitchen but Sears has had some issues delivering them to us! Chelsea is going a little crazy with having the house torn apart but keeps telling herself it will all be worth it in the end!

Cody's love message with paint primer. It was finally time to paint over the blue race car room:

Skirtboard:

Removing carpet in the living room:

The living room from another angle after all the carpet was removed:

Goodbye carpet:

Our First Geocaching Experience

For Christmas this year, Santa brought Cody a handheld GPS. This weekend we put the GPS to good use and tried out a little geocaching. Roxy came along and we made it a family event. It was only about a mile hike in before we found the hidden geocache but we hiked through snow, ice, water, and mud along a sheer cliff. Although Roxy had a small altercation with a couple of not-so-friendly Chocolate Labs that nearly sent her over the cliff edge, we all made it out safely and had a great time. It's something we look forward to doing together more often.

Christmas 2009

This Christmas marks the second year in our new home. This year was a little different from last year though because we were actually able to get into the Christmas spirit and decorate the house. Cody and his buddy Kramer spent an afternoon hanging lights outside the house and Chelsea decorated the inside with the few decorations she had purchased last year during the after Christmas sale. Together we hung lights and ornaments on the tree we picked out and cut down at the Bryant Family Farm.


Once the house was decorated and Christmas was near, we headed south to Eugene to visit both families. We spent Christmas Eve with Cody's extended family. We ate an excellent meal, opened a few gifts and then us "kids" snuck out of the house and headed to the nearest tavern in town. Since we were out in Veneta, our options were limited and we ended up at Crazy Al's. We always seem to have a great time when we get together with the Blooms!



We spent a couple hours Christmas morning at Cody's parents house and a couple hours at Chelsea's parents house then got both families together under one roof for Christmas dinner. What a great way to spend the day.

Honeymoon

The week leading up to the wedding is when we really realized the necessity of the honeymoon. The wedding planning was so stressful that we both needed a vacation to get back our sanity! We were so fortunate to spend a week in Aruba for our honeymoon. Here are a few things we learned about the beautiful island:

1) Aruba has the second purest water in the world
2) The island in almost 20 miles long and 6 miles wide
3) Aruba is known to have "perfectly predicable" weather (This means the weatherman in Aruba has a cake job!)
4) The island natives may be some of the friendliest natives in the world but they are horrible drivers!
5) The local language is called "Papiamento" which evolved from Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and French
6) There is no such thing as being late it Aruba. Everyone is on island time. (This includes bus drives that are reqired to transport newlyweds back to the airport for their flight home!)

The amazing sunset our first night in Aruba:

The view from our room:

Sunset Sail:

Baby Beach:

We rented a jeep one day to tour the island ourselves. Cody took us on an offroading adventure!


There is no shortage of iguanas in Aruba!! Chelsea had a chance to feed them herself too! Although, this may be slightly frowned upon:

The south side of the island is very tropical with Palm trees and never ending white sandy beaches:

The north side is the complete opposite. Very desert like:

Wedding

We spent 15 months planning the wedding and when the day came, it flashed by in what felt like 15 minutes. Although it went by so quick, there is nothing we would change about the day. Absolutely everything was perfect. So, now that we have said our "I do's" we are ready to take on the world as Mr. & Mrs. Olson!!