jimmy

April 18-21 NASCAR made one of it’s two annual stops to the Phoenix International Raceway. Several weeks prior, Lesa mentioned she had to go to the race that weekend for work and invited me to come down and spend some time with her. For those of you who don’t know, Lesa works for gomotorbids.com, a company that runs an ebay style website devoted entirely to motors memorabilia. I flew in Wednesday evening after her big meeting and we spend several hours in the garage at the track Thursday and Friday. Because of airfares being higher on Sunday rather than Satruday night, we didn’t stay for the Saturday night race, but there was still a lot of cool things to see and I think i got a picture of all the big name drivers.

after a few trips to the midwest to meet my soon-to-be-family-in-law, it was time to make the trek up north for her to meet my family. we had several gatherings of church folks, family friends, old coworkers, volleyball buddies and whomever else wanted to stop in.

the main purpose of the trip was to meet my parents and get down to business about planning a wedding. but secondary was so she lesa could see little of my old home town. we got to santa’s house, the north pole, around fairbanks, the alaska pipeline and she even took a little flight-seeing tour with my dad in his plane.

much was accomplished including some awesome homemade food (mom’s pizza), a wedding week outline and some much needed sleeping in. and now that everyone has meet it is all systems go for getting the lesa/jimmy wedding train steaming down the tracks.

my friend tyler’s birthday was last night and he invited a few of his friends to tag along with him to watch his beloved A’s play the Mariners. One of his friends, not present at the game, works for the Mariners and got us some pretty nice seats.

after watching the gators knock off the buckeyes for the national championship, again, i went out to take a walk. i noticed there was a full moon so i went back and grabbed my camera.

for weeks lesa and i have been talking about and planning out our wedding, but it was kind of awkward because weren’t engaged and we weren’t going to be until she met my family. or at least that’s what i told her.

she planned to come out to seattle march 15-20 and go to portland to met my sister then off to fairbanks for easter to meet mom and dad. but she was wanting to plan and get going our our wedding planning so i decided to move up the engagement.

weeks ago i pulled aside one of our p-i photographers, josh, and asked if he wanted to be a part of my engagement plot. he agreed.

on friday march 16 i had josh staged at gasworks park at 10 a.m. with us to follow soon after. lesa and i arrived at gasworks and as i began walking up the hill to the meeting spot i saw josh and knew everything was going to be ok. we got to the top and walked past him to the view point. lesa and i talked for a bit and then josh approached her.

“i’m here talking a few pictures of the city and would like to have a few people in my shot. so would you mind being in the picture?”

lesa said yes. josh backed away and began shooting. after a few short stories i turned to lesa, grabbed her hands and told her i brought her here for another reason. i got down on one knee. reached down and grabbed the ring and she began to realize what was about to happen. i presented the ring and asked her if she would marry me.

i don’t remember much after that. there was some crying, some kissing and some hugging. while we were kissing she realizes josh is still taking pictures and asked me if i knew this guy and i then introduced lesa to josh. josh took a few more shots and left us. we stayed they for a few minutes soaking in every detail. it was the most perfect day.

and she did say yes.

On Feburary 17, Brady turned 13 and I flew back to help celebrate with his cousins and thier parents and two other friends, Jalen and his sister Cameron. We went to a place called Power Play. It’s a huge building with go-carts, laser tag, dozens of video games, lunch buffet and soon to be adding bowling. It was a pretty amazing place to have a birthday party. Everyone gets to have fun. Then afterward the boys had a some heated nerf hoop battles and a fan favorite, dunk contest in honor of the NBA dunk contest that was going on that night.

After 7 weeks of e-mailing, text messaging and phone calls, i finally made it to Kansas City to spend time with Lesa. For those of you who don’t know, my friend Robyn, whom i knew at Liberty and who’s family i lived with when i moved to Seattle in 2000, has been tryin to set me up with her good friend, Lesa from liberty, since i moved here. My reponse was always something to do with the fact that Lesa lived in Kansas City.

Well we finally met in in the fall of 2005, and then again in early December of ‘06. Well she was too tough to resist the second time. We feel pretty hard imediately. But due to work schedules we could see each other for awhile. Finally after 7 weeks without spending any time together i flew back to Kansas City to see her and meet her family.

I had pretty high expectations and the trip exceeded every one. I had a great time meeting everyone, so much so, that the whole place felt like home. It was a great week and i can’t wait to get back and send some more time with her and her family.

as many of you now my sister and i take tons of pictures. well finally, thanks to her boyfriend victor, we are hooked up with a web site (it’s actually been around for awhile but i’ve been to lazy to figure it out) to show off all our good stuff without loading up everyone’s inbox with e-mails.

my sister and i also get togther randomly and take pictures of ourselves. i’m not nearly as good of a portrait photographers as she is, so if she looks bad in any photos it’s my fault and if i look good in any of my, it’s her fault. she and victor drove up from portland martin luther king jr weekend and we went out to gas works park to put our cameras to use.