Bring on 2012

Happy New Year!

2012 rang in very ordinary. It was a pretty low key fiesta. The Miles' stopped by, we ate some carry-out Thai food, watched a movie (which I surprisingly didn't fall asleep in), and watched poor Dick Clark count down to the new year. New Years eve morning was spent at missionary coordination and I went and played football with a bunch of guys from the ward and surrounding areas. I shouldn't have went to play because both Lesley and I have bad colds. Now I still have my cold, and a very sore body. We didn't make it the whole way through church today because of a major booger blockage in my face and course sandpaper in my throat. Hopefully our energy comes back and we are 100% tomorrow. Luckily we both don't have to work.

Anyway, Christmas went really well, aside from being the off-year for my family. Lesley's family came in from CA, UT, and Hong Kong. It was fun to see everybody and their fun and growing kids. Santa brought spoiled Lesley a new surfboard. Yes, the 6-month pregnant lady wanted a surfboard. What momma wants, momma gets. If she doesn't ride it, I will help her break it in....or it will be a really expensive wall decoration.




(Pip in his sweater thong)


Ginger excited for her new toys! Adorable!

Lola: "seriously!?!"



Santa brought me a lot of cool stuff. My favorite was a Kregg Jig. It is a pocket hole jig so I can build stuff out of wood. I think I found my new hobby. I hope to build some cool projects. My first attempt at woodworking is an antique work bench for our home. It will go at the top of our stairs to fill some empty space and possibly be a place to put some pictures and to store some baby toys. The workbench took a couple nights after work. It was so much fun. It is all sanded and ready to be stained and assembled. Here is a pic of the bench dry fit and unsanded. It is one sturdy and heavy mo-fo. Lesley had doubts that I could do it, but is now excited to have it in the house. Plus she's also excited to get her parking spot in the garage back (at least for a couple days till I find a new project).


(I got the free plans from http://ana-white.com/. I'm probably the only dude to visit the website, but it is awesome!)

I look forward to a new year. Our little boy will be born around April 4th. We are growing excited and nervous at the same time. I was telling Lesley today as I rubbed her belly that it feels like I'm holding on to a present that I can't open for 9 months. Lesley said we will have our hands full if our boy was anything like me as a child. If this is true, he will spend lots of time in his room kicking holes in his door and filling it with marbles while screaming "this isn't fair, it was Sara's fault". Maybe I'll build a little "time-out" bench that I saw online. Crisis averted.

(As of today)

Lesley's belly is big. She is getting more and more uncomfortable every day. She has a hard time sleeping. Our bed is filled with 20 gazillion pillows to support every part of her body. I am still lucky to have the 1.5 foot strip of our king size bed. Since she wakes up 18 times per night, she wakes me up each time to tell me to roll over and stop snoring. Thus my sleep has been horrible lately. I'll probably be cuddling the dogs soon in the extra bedroom.

Well, I better run. I need to activate my xbox live account so I can battle Chanse online in MW3.

Sunday November 27, 2011

The last few months have been really busy with all the exciting changes we have been experiencing. I really like my new job in medical sales. Learning all the foot anatomy, surgical procedures, and products has been a little overwhelming, but it is starting to sink in. It is a fun job where no two days are the same. I love being out and about and building relationships with the doctors. I also like the challenge of going out and finding business. Leaving corporate America was an awesome decision and it would be hard to go back.


(This is what our products look like in a patient)

We closed on our house and moved in on September 30th. It has been so fun making the house a home and trying to figure out how the heck to decorate it. Since moving in I’ve been busy building the fence and gate to keep the dogs from running the neighborhood. I guess I did a good job, because they haven’t got out yet. After a couple coats of stain and the fence looks awesome. Buying and hanging blinds was the most enjoyable of all the projects [insert sarcasm here]! I’ve also installed some overhead shelving in the garage and made easy access to all of our camping and surfing stuff. Lesley and I painted two bedrooms and my office. We are still in the process of filling the dead space on our walls. We need more cool pictures on the walls.





We have learned that buying and filling a first home is stinkin’ expensive. Everywhere you turn there are more things to buy to barely be functional. I have also learned that you can’t have everything all at once. It comes over time and as the budget permits. Luckily we had enough $$$ to fill the house with new furniture, or we would still be sitting indian style on the floor to watch TV.

Our new ward is awesome. We have been called as ward missionaries and are excited to be apart of the work again.

To change gears, Lesley and I have an announcement to make. Lesley is PREGNANT!!! All of our family and friends all said “It’s about time!” We are so excited to expand our family and raise children. Lesley is 22 or 23 weeks pregnant, so a little over half way. We found out a few weeks ago that she is having………….drum roll………..a boy!!! Yes, a little Parker to run around and stir up trouble. Lesley is excited to have a boy first because she wasn’t quite sure how she’d raise a little girl. We don’t have a name picked out yet, but Lesley has some in the works. I have limited veto power if the names get too funky. Anyway, she is due on April 4th.









Well, the only other exciting thing is I finished school. I finished my last class for my MBA on October 11th. What an awesome feeling to be done and no longer have homework. Boredom has hit me pretty hard and my pacing the floor is driving Lesley nuts. I have been thinking about what hobbies I can pick up to fill my time. I know I need to continue to read books and scholarly material to keep fresh. It is the wrong time of the year to find an outdoor hobby because it is always rainy and pitch black at 5pm. So we’ll see what I’m inspired to do. Let me know if you have some good suggestions. One thing’s for sure, I have more time to keep up on the blog. (We’ll see if that happens ☺)

Last but not least, my little bro Chanse returned home from his mission in Argentina. We're excited to have him back!

Sunday August 28, 2011 7:07pm

So it has been since April's Hawaii trip since I updated the blog. We have been on lots of little weekend adventures and a big Utah trip. In addition to fun trips, there are also a lot of changes going on with our jobs and living arrangements. I will get to those shortly.

There was a time that we went surfing every weekend for three or four weeks. We found a new surf spot at the very tip of Washington State called Cape Flattery, Neah Bay, or "Hobuck." This place has a nice clean beach void of huge driftwood (compared to La Push). The waves are typically more clean and predictable than other places on the WA coast. I can't wait till the Winter, hopefully the surf will be a lot bigger. The only downside to surfing there is that it is about four hours away from home. It is a beautiful drive along windy roads on the coastline. A couple weeks ago, we camped out of the back of our car and had a fun trip. Other than that, we haven't busted out the tent to do any other camping. We may go camping with some friends the weekend after Labor day.

In July, we headed down to Utah. I was able to take a couple days and spend it with the folks. We went to the cabin for a couple days and were accompanied by my sisters family including my two cute nephews. It was awesome to be at the cabin without any worries in the world. It was fun relaxing and playing games. I also enjoyed playing with my parent's dogs.







The second half of the trip was spent at Lake Powell with Lesley's family. The weather was beautiful (hot and sunny). There was a lot of driftwood in the water because of all the runoff from the melting snow. The water was higher than usual and rising at about a foot per day. The funnest part of the trip was wakeboarding and tubing. My wakeboarding was not as good as previous years.





On the flight home to Seattle, it made me realize how blessed they are in Utah to have so much sun. Immediately upon flying into Western Washington, there was nothing but clouds. We had to fly through thousands of feet of dark rain clouds until you pop out of the clouds with just enough time to touch down on the runway. If I had my choice, I would have turned around and gone back to Utah for another couple weeks.

As far as work goes, three months ago Lesley got a full time job working in Tacoma as a radiation therapist (what she went to school for). She has made some good friends and is able to work with a lot of the girls she went to RT school with. I have recently changed jobs as well. I was working at UoP as an enrollment advisor. I now work as a sales rep for medical implants (not boobs). I was given the opportunity because of a close friend from my mission. His brother runs a distribution company specializing in lower extremity implants such as plates and screws. I will be mostly working with podiatrists as they use our product and I sit in on their surgeries. It is something completely opposite of what I was doing previously. I never thought I could stand there and watch a surgeon cut somebody open and watch them drill and saw through bone. Believe it or not, I have not passed out and consider myself very comfortable with being able to be a short distance from the action. My first day on the job was a conference in which doctors lectured each other and practiced procedures on cadaver feet and ankles. One of the LDS docs who I met previously literally handed me this foot and told me to do the procedure while he instructed. It is a wild job and will be a good experience for me to practice the principles I learned in business school. I am now self-employed and am loving the fact that I no longer have to sit behind a desk from 8-5.

Other than the new jobs, we are set to close on a new house mid-September. We have been waiting for the right time to buy and now it's here. I was up late one night searching the internet for houses close to where Les and I will be doing most of our work. I found a killer deal in a place called Gig Harbor. It is a beautiful area and the house is in a new neighborhood. It has been a learning experience as we have worked through all the loan details. If everything goes according to plan, we will close on September 14th. Once we close, I'll send out the address so you can all come visit.

Other than that, I will be finishing my degree on October 11th. Hallelujah!!!!!! I can't wait to be done with school. The timing couldn't be more perfect because my brother will get home from his mission in Argentina almost a week later. We will head to Utah to hang out with him. He has done an awesome job and impacted many lives, including his own. He is training a greenie right now and enjoying the responsibility.

On another note, Lesley and I will celebrate our 3rd anniversary Sept 12th and General Conference is just around the corner!!!

Hawaii 2011

4/3/11 9:18 PM

Hello again family and friends. I wanted to quickly update you on what’s been happening with us over the last few months. Nothing much has changed with me. Still working at UoP in Tacoma by day. I’m still a student by night. I’m half way through my masters. I finish in November! I’m so excited to be done with school. I can’t even begin to explain what a great day graduation will be.

Lesley is getting bored at home all day. She is getting a little stir crazy. Her Friday per diem job has been very slow and have not even needed her on some of the Fridays. She needed a vacation very bad. So I got a text on a Thursday telling me that we were going to Hawaii in a week and a half. She left the coming Tuesday and I left on Saturday. I love her spontaneousness. Lesley set up all the flights and accommodations. We stayed a majority of the trip at her old roommate Michelle’s house in Laie, about 5 minutes from the Temple and PCC. I got to fly out to Hawaii first class!

Here are some of the things we did:
Surfing at Waikiki, Castles, and Turtle Bay (where I caught the biggest wave of my life to date)
Ate at local places like Hukilau Café, Surfing Tacos, Rainbow drive in, Ted’s Bakery, Haleiwa Eats
Attended the Laie 3rd ward and the newly renovated Laie Temple.
Snorkeled Wimea
Hiked S@cred Falls which is against the law due to all the rock slides that killed lots of people.
Hiked Diamond Head
Punchbowl Cemetery
Pali Highway
Did lots of homework ☹
Went swimming in a shark cage
Watched big wave surfers at Pipeline

Overall, it was an awesome trip. We hope to return soon!
















Also, while there, my mom called with the bad news of Tammy Ballard’s passing. Tammy was like a second mom to me growing up. Her and her family were very close family friends ever since before I was born. She was always fun to be around. I blame her for my love for Coke. She would let me take sips from her mug before I could even walk. She told people like it was and didn’t hold back, which always made me laugh. She has a wonderful husband and kids who are the most sincere and serving people you will ever meet. She will be greatly missed.

General Conference was amazing! I loved the messages from our Prophet and Apostles. I am energized by their messages!

Parker

To see more pics, click here!

Christmas in Utah 2010

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Hello family and friends. Life is good in the Sadler world. We had a lot happen in the last few months. The holidays went well. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. Thanksgiving was an adventure for us. A couple days before the holiday we got a really bad storm, according to Washingtonians. It snowed a few inches and completely shut down everything. I was commuting by bus and ferry then. It took me 6 hours to get home. Me and a couple co-workers waited for a bus for 2 hours and realized it wasn’t coming. So we walked a couple miles in the snow to the airport and caught the light rail to Seattle. While on light rail, the interstate was a frozen parking lot. There was an inch or two of ice on the roads and it was fun to watch all the near miss accidents. Luckily I was able to catch the ferry and was picked up by my father-in-law who has a 4-wheel drive Tahoe. We got home and the power was out. It was out for about 24 hours. On Thanksgiving day, the water pump to the city lost power. We spent another 24 hours without water. We chipped holes in my in-laws pond and bucketed water to the house to flush the toilets. The day after Thanksgiving warmed up a little and the pond started thawing. Lola, our intelligent and fearless dog, decided to walk on the frozen pond. The next thing I hear is Lesley screaming that Lola had fallen in. What a horrible sight to see Lola trying to pull herself out of the frozen pond. I ran out the door and grabbed the canoe sitting on the bank of the pond. I dragged it around the pond and jumped in. I started paddling over with my hands and within a few seconds she had pulled herself out. We gave her a warm bath and she’s fine. During this whole fiasco, Ollie had got scared and ran off. We figured he ran down the driveway and would be back as had happened a couple days earlier. Nope. I was wrong. A day went by, then two. No Ollie. We put delivered “Lost” signs to the nearby neighbors. Luckily they called us every day with Ollie sightings. He was too scared to come up to people. So he just wandered in the woods for many days. We put food out for him every day at the neighbor’s house because we couldn’t lure him back across the street to our house. Finally we built a ghetto trap and baited it with steaks and tuna. We would sit a ways off in the bushes and pull a rope when he entered the trap. Finally after 10 days of him running off, Lesley caught him. He was very skinny. He has since fattened up to normal and is now not let out in the yard without a leash.

We were able to spend Christmas in Utah with my family. We road tripped it with Lesley’s parents and our doggies. It was so nice to be home for the holidays. It was great seeing all my grandparents and my new nephew. Between Christmas and New Years, Lesley and I went snowboarding at Brighton for 3 days. The knee-deep powder on the second day was amazing. New Years was fun even though I fell asleep at 10 o’clock. Lesley woke me up for the ball drop. We had to leave on New Years because the weather wasn’t supposed to be good and didn’t want to travel on bad roads. We made it home just fine and didn’t have to stop overnight and wait out any storms.

Since being home, I was able to transfer my job to the Tacoma campus and I no longer have a ridiculous commute every day. I can now sleep in till 6am and it only takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get to work. It has cleared up so much time that I can now be home with the family every night and have really good workouts with my new weight set.

Other than that, Lesley is doing great. She is getting stir crazy being home so much. Her work is really slow and she really only works on Fridays unless they call her in during the week. She would like to work more but their patient count isn’t high enough that they need her every day. She works per-diem as a radiation therapist (treating cancer patients with radiation). She is hoping to pick up more work at her current clinic or another hospital in the area.

Speaking of Lesley, I better go hang out with her because she has been sick with flu-like symptoms today.

Here’s a link to more of our Christmas pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=597343&id=720885537&l=b8eb420e04

Parker

2 year anniversary

10/3/10 5:48 PM

As usual, I need to apologize for not writing in many months. I’m hoping to blog more when school is done. So there is a ton to update you on so I’ll get started.

Last time I wrote, we were possibly getting another dog. It happened. We adopted Yo Yo (now Ollie) from a place out of California who rescued him from an elementary school in Taiwan. He is such a good dog. He and Lola were instant BFF’s. Ollie loves other doggies and is really timid around me for some reason. He loves Lesley and will only listen to her. I’m assuming he had a bad experience with men over in his homeland. He has adjusted well and is now starting to understand commands in English. He and Lola run each other till they are exhausted. It has been good having two dogs.

I started my MBA the same month as I graduated my bachelors. I will graduate in November of 2011. So far the classes have been intense. I am learning a lot and liking school. I will also like to be done!

Lesley has finished her school and clinic requirements. She is a licensed Radiation Therapist. She worked really hard and spent a ton of time. She was offered a position before she even graduated. She got a job at a clinic in Poulsbo, WA. It is located about an hour and a half from Renton where we used to live. Yes, we moved again—for the 2nd time in two years. It is located across the Puget Sound from Seattle. We moved to Poulsbo, which is a really cool old Scandinavian town. This also happens to be where Lesley grew up. I will be commuting and going to school at the same place—University of Phoenix. It is an hour and 15-minute drive or a couple hours if I take the ferry. We plan to live here for a year and then hopefully buy a house somewhere. Lesley really likes her work. Since moving, we have obviously been released from our callings in the EQ and YW’s. We await new callings here.

During the summer we were able to go to Utah and stay with my family. It was so fun to see them and my friends. We drove down there and took our dogs. They loved being around my parent’s dogs. It was a bit of a mad house with the gang of dogs running around. I’m sorry to report that my parent’s dog Cooper got really sick and passed away a week after we were there. It came quickly and unexpectedly. He was only one to two years old. He was buried where he was most happy, at the cabin.

Lesley and I played on a co-ed softball team with one of Lesley’s friends at school. We played double headers every Thursday night. We had a good season. We went on to win the championship. It was awesome.

We went surfing a few times. We went camping twice.

We just celebrated our two-year anniversary on Sept 12th. We went on a western Caribbean cruise for a week. We stopped in Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Roatan, and Belize. We did excursions at each of the stops. We went to Stingray City in Grand Cayman, Mayan ruins and beach in Cozumel, Beach in Roatan, and cave tubing in Belize. It was a beautiful trip and we had so much fun. I’m still peeling from my sunburns. When I rub my hand along my shoulders, it literally looks like it’s snowing from all my dead skin.

Rather than copy all our pics into the blog, I’m including the link to my facebook page that you can go see them.

Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=528153&id=720885537&l=b85b57f93b

Love,

Parker

Hot off the press!

5/4/10 6:16 AM

Hawaii seemed so long ago. It was a great trip! We were there for a week. We spent a lot of time on the beach and eating great food. We were able to do some surfing and stand up paddle surfing. We went whale watching, drove the road to Hana, and watched the sunrise from the highest mountain on Maui. It was really hard to come home. I’m ready for another vacation.

Lesley and I have barely seen each other over the last one and a half months. We have been so busy with our church callings and school. Lesley is the Young Women’s President and I am the 2nd counselor in the Elders Quorum. Our callings involve lots of meetings and activities. School has also been crazy for us. Lesley continues to do well in class and is commuting to Olympia three days per week. Olympia is past Tacoma. It works out to an hour of driving each way. I’ll be glad when she’s a little closer to home. We don’t know yet where she’ll be assigned for her summer clinical.

I have been doubling up on classes at school. Typically at the University of Phoenix students take only one class at a time. Students will go to class one night a week. Instructors will give enough homework to keep them busy throughout the week. I, however, just got done completing two classes at the same time. It nearly killed me and was a huge source of stress. Long assignments and fast approaching deadlines plagued my life over the past five weeks. I’m glad it is over. These were the last classes required for my Bachelors in Business Management. I am trying to start my MBA with an emphasis in Healthcare Management later this month.

Lesley and I celebrated our birthdays in April. She got me a really cool HD Flip video camera. I can now take video and upload it to the blog so you can watch all of our fun weekend trips and see how beautiful it is up here in Seattle. You will most likely see more videos of Lola because she is so fun and crazy to watch.

Speaking of Lola, we could possibly be adopting another doggy. My mom had sent me an email with a cute little dog in California that needed to be adopted. The dog’s name is Yo Yo and he is 7 months old. He is a Yellow Lab Whippet mix. He is the cutest little dog. We have filled out the application to get him. Our application has been accepted. We are now waiting to hear from the “foster” owner and I guess somebody needs to come check out our apartment to make sure it is suitable for dogs. The people at the shelter said that it is necessary to have another dog in the house if they are going to let us have him. Lola will love to have a playmate and somebody to cuddle with when she’s not cuddling with me. Hopefully the adoption works out and we can get the dog soon. We will have the dog flown here from Los Angeles.

Other than that, we had a great surf trip last weekend. The weather and the waves were perfect. It was the best day of surfing I have ever had. Lola got to run around on the beach and swim in the cold ocean. I think she accidentally ran into the waves and got tumbled a little bit.

The days are getting long with light and the weather is getting warm. Camping season is upon us. We plan on taking as many weekend trips as possible. If anybody wants to go camping with us, let us know and we’ll make some plans.

Well, that’s all for now! It is now time for me to go home and get ready for work. I have been here at the church since 5am this morning doing “seminary security.” For those of you who live in Utah, early morning seminary is when high school students take seminary at 5:30 and 6:00am throughout the week. I’m very grateful to have been able to live in Utah and go to seminary during the day. The challenge with Utah seminary was not sleeping in, but taking an extra long lunch.

To see our pictures from our recent surf trip, visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=416316&id=720885537&l=1f6c51a6d8

Much love,

Parker