I cannot believe that it has already been a year since we moved to Portland.  We love it here and still speak often about how happy we are that we made the decision to move.  It does make our time in Arizona extra special as we don't get there nearly as often as we'd like to.  We were able to make a quick trip down over St. Patrick's Day.  We hadn't seen the family since Thanksgiving. Some of Ryan's family made a trip up to visit which made it even better.

St. Patrick's Day was a blast, as always.  My Dad was playing this year so after the first part of the day at the Dubliner, we headed down to a bar in North Phoenix.  It is so cool to watch him do something he really loves.  He and the band played mostly Irish music (obviously, it WAS St. Patrick's Day!).  I got to 'win' some free St. Patrick's Day flair and the day is never complete until I do so.  I have a hat... I don't know if you all know this, it's a green hat. I won it MANY years ago at a bar in Vegas.  I wear the hat every year and every year, I get compliments.  I will never part with this hat... unless I find an exact replica. Two years ago, a girl offered me $100 to buy the hat, I said 'thanks but no thanks', she said, 'it's your loss' and I said, 'nay, I believe the loss is yours'.  The year before that, the hat came in handy when I 'borrowed' some St. Patty's Day decorations from an Irish bar in Vegas that could neither be called A) Irish or B) a bar.  They were serving NO Irish beer and were playing NO Irish music; the only thing they had were some sad looking decorations.  My hat happens to have a hole in the top, it's the perfect place to put things if you don't have a purse... it was also the perfect location for some decorations that I use in my home to this day.  St. Patrick's Day is a fantastic holiday.

We had a great time with Auntie and Uncs and got some quality time in with Josh and Brody. Brody and Cooper do SUCH a good job of tiring each other out. I can't wait to see them together again.

We also got to have Friday Night Party Night.  The clan is ALOT bigger now with 6 kids running around. It's also a lot more work for the big kids who now call themselves parents to the little ones, have I lost you yet?  Joshua, Dad to Brody; Colette and Jake, parents to Waylon and Toni; Courtney and Jon, parents to Connor; and us, parents to Cooper and Olivia.  Back in the day when it was just Josh and me and Courtney and Colette, it was so much easier!!! Now, when we try to take pictures of the group... we get something like this.  I don't know why we can't get 6 kids under the age of 5 to sit still for us to take 100 pictures of them... weird.  Our time together is never long enough!

It was so great to visit everybody and it was also great to be home, back in Portland.

Here are some pictures from the trip!

~Ahna