And no, we're not pregnant...

So, life has been changing a little as of late. Okay, a lot. And no, we’re not pregnant, as that is the first question out of almost everyone’s mouths as soon as I start to say anything. Isaac and I have been doing a lot of talking and thinking and we decided a couple weeks ago that I would not be going back to school to pursue my Master’s anymore. There are a lot of factors involved in that decision with stress and quality of life for me being very near the top of the list, so the short of the story is after evaluating all the aspects involved with our life, it’s just better for us to follow our original dreams of saving, buying land in a couple years, building a house and eventually having some kiddos. Eventually. I think I was in shock for the first couple days after we made the final decision because I had set myself up to just be continually stressed out for the next four years and I didn’t know how to handle the freedom of coming home after work and getting to do whatever I wanted. But no need to worry as I quickly adjusted to the slower pace of life and have been thankful every day since that we have chosen this route. Now I can just sit and home and bake things to my heart’s content, like this chocolate peanut butter cake that’s on my hit list for this evening.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/08/chocolate-peanut-butter-cake/

Ah yes, the simple life is the definitely the life for me.

Because it's a competition...

Yes! We won, we won! Justin and Alex bought a new house and all, so Isaac and I helped them move into it last week and then spent all weekend covering ourselves in paint and getting permanent crooks in our backs purely to get the title of "better friends than the Lingblooms." And it worked! Eat your collective heart out, Tommy and Morgan. Hope gallavanting around Slovakia was worth it. And I hope I spelled Slovakia right.

After like a year of deliberating about potential colors, Lex finally decided on green, yellow, and blue. Green and yellow to pay homage to the great Ducks and blue just to add one more pretty color. It took everything we could do to hold Bob back from painting a huge 'O' over the front door. Isaac, Justin, and Mark got roof duties since they're the young men and all and I got to do the trim in honor of Morgan's absence. And much to my surprise, I discovered that I very much enjoy the challenge of trim work without any tape to make a straight edge. It really is one of the only positive things that has come from my slight perfectionist tendencies. And speaking of my perfectionist tendencies, please note that the light paint under the sill that I am working on is NOT yellow paint from my trim work. That was primer not yet covered up by the green, thank you very much. Jerry, Larissa, and Jackie were all there, too, so it made for a real party on Saturday...and Jerry didn't even fall off the ladder once!

Now it is Sunday evening, most of their house is painted (as much as we could get done in three days, anyway) Isaac's off to help at youth group and I am sitting here on the couch doing absolutely nothing, which feels incredible, by the way. And I don't even feel slightly guilty about it. I am a little sad that tomorrow is already Monday, but it keeps me in good spirits knowing that Justin and Alex now owe us something very cool in exchange for our graciously donated labor. I'll let you know when we're finally even, J and A, don't worry.

PS...Morgan, Bob tried to paint "Morgan's Door" onto one of the baby basement windows since you're so short and all, but I wouldn't let him. Rude, Bob. Rude.

PSS...I didn't put up a picture of the whole house yet because it's not quite done yet, but we'll put one up after all the trim gets done sometime in the next few weeks for those friends and family who know J and A and care about things like that.

A weekend with our friends...

We just got back from an awesome weekend at the beach with my best friend from forever ago, Hannah, and her husband Michael.

Things we learned this weekend:

1. When you cover wooden skimboards with old wetsuits, they work nearly as well as a $200 one from the store. I actually stayed up and was rather decent, for once, and both Hannah and Mike stayed up, too, even though it was their first day! Isaac and me, yes, we heart skimboarding.

2. Yurts are nice, even though it may not be classified as 'real' camping to some, because some nights it just pours and pours down rain and being in a tent in that kind of downpour could potentially make one slightly crabby.

3. Raccoons in campgrounds have absolutely no fear of mankind and will just stroll across your campsite towards your stash of food, or in Micheal's case, right into the open trunk of his car, in order to feed their hungry bellies. Could be due partially to the fact that certain unnamed campers threw the raccoons several fat marshmallows for their enjoyment, but no guarantees here. We may never know for sure.

4. They don't do small there, very well.

5. Oysterville is the cutest, quaintest, most picturesque little town ever.

6. Isaac and Michael are manly. Okay, I already knew that, but it was merely enforced when they insisted on making the fire with pure nature. And then they pulled out their plastic lighter from Target. Love it.

7. Old lighthouses are cool. So are the old men who stand in the top of them and barely even take breaths in their eagerness to spew as much knowledge about the lighthouses and anything remotely related to you as an onlooker. So are the old women who take the admission fees at the door who are positive I don't look a day over 17. As we left, she (no joke) shouted after me, "don't forget to grow up." Charming.

8. Hannah's obsessed with slugs. And snails. And large mushrooms with slugs and snails crawling on them. Apparently those things are a rarity back where she's from.

9. There is a horseshoe game manlier than the actual horseshoe game. It's called, "Throw the metal rod used for horseshoes in the air and see who can get theirs to land perfectly upright in the sand." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it does appear that Michael is about to lacerate himself in the eyeball with his rod.

10. Waikiki is more fun than Long Beach.

11. Hannah made a great choice when she married Michael. He's a keeper, for sure.

12. Anything tastes better roasted over the open flame. Especially fire burritos. And marshmallows. And hot dogs. And chili. Although Mike's breakfast of champions on Sunday morning did give those dishes a little competition.

13. Apparently our anniversary is more important to other people than it is to Isaac and me as both of us completely forgot it was even our anniversary when we woke up Sunday morning, and Hannah was the one to remind us. But at least he did his hair for me. That was nice.

14. There are some friendships you make that come and go, and those bless your life for sure. But there are some friendships you make that will last until you're old and gray, sitting on the porch, rocking in your rocking chairs right next to each other, and that is the kind of friendship I have with Hannah. No matter the time that passes, the miles that are between us, the different lives we both lead, we will still call each other several times a day, know what the other is thinking before they even say it, and love each other 'till the day we die. Touching, I know.

Did I mention there were hills?

We're presently in the middle of taking our very first little family vacation, just me and the boy. It's partially to celebrate our upcoming first anniversary but also it's just a way to learn how we best vacation together for all the years to come when we will most surely be taking lots of family vacations together. We both worked Tuesday this week, then took the rest of the week off with plans of an overnight camping/biking trip to Lummi Island as our main adventure. We awoke to lots of rain on Wednesday, unfortunately, though, so Lummi was postponed as I was rather unexcited about traversing 20 miles through a dirge and then adventuring our way around an unknown island in search of a camping spot that would surely not protect us from said dirge. Thus, we moved Lummi to Thursday and headed out for a nice hike a few miles from the house. We have found through trial and error that we definitely enjoy our vacations more if we have adventures to go on where we can get out of the house and experience/accomplish things instead of just lying around watching the minutes pass by, so a hike sounded great. And while we weren't excited about a super long bike ride with gear in the rain, we're always down for a wet hike. Well, Isaac's always down for a wet hike, and I'm always down for one as long as it's relatively warm outside. Which it was. We chose a trail I'd never been on and set out the four and a half miles to the lakes it led to. It was beautiful, dark green everywhere, glistening water droplets on all the foliage, and at times, rain just pouring down onto us. We only passed two other hiking couples the whole trip, so we enjoyed the solitude and togetherness for adventure number one of our vacation. Here's me getting some bark out of my shoe proudly displaying the ever-so-fashionable drowned rat look. So attractive, I know. We got back around 7pm or so and I basically fell asleep for the night pretty soon thereafter, like the trooper I am. We awoke Thursday with plans to ride out to the island since it was forecast to be a perfect 70 degree next couple of days, but spent the morning first redoing our skimboards to add some cush rubber for better gripping. We went out again a few days ago and met a couple guys who skimboard all the time and, of course, have the way expensive boards and can do way cooler things than we can do on our little ones. So Isaac and his little inventor mind studied the material on their boards and concocted his own much less expensive version with some old wetsuits he procured. Pretty awesome. We'll try them out next weekend and let you know how it went.

Ah, we have finally arrived to the tale of the Lummi Island vacation extravaganza. Thursday early afternoon, we pack up our bikes with all the necessary camping gear, feeling quite outdoorsy and adventurous, and set off to catch the ferry to the island. I had no idea how long the bike ride would be, but I generally enjoy bike rides, so I wasn't too worried. Of course, Isaac is invincible and could probably ride to New York if need be without getting tired or giving up, so on trips like these, my stamina is the main concern. We were fine on this ride, though, pulling into the ferry dock in a little over an hour. Not bad for a twenty mile ride. Then comes the fun part. See, we have never been to this island before. Our dear friends, Jim and Peggy, used to live out there and were kind enough to give us some tips for our travels, but other than that, we were exploring a new place really having no idea what the island held for us. Our goal was to find a place to camp for the night, which we knew would prove rather difficult as most of the land is privately owned and there are no public campgrounds to be found. But there's lots of forest covering the small island, so really, we thought, how hard could it be?

We turned off the ferry dock and headed towards a bay at the end of the island that was our first potential camping ground. It was probably about 3pm or so at this point and yes, we had just ridden twenty miles with rather heavy packs on our bikes, but we were still energized and excited for our island exploration. So we rode, ooohing and ahhhing at the gorgeous countryside that we would be oh, so fortunate to ever get to possibly live on someday in the far future. And then we came to the hill. This same hill was later referred to us as that 'big a** hill that you feel like you're going to die riding up it as soon as it comes into your view' by a local who couldn't stop laughing in utter ridiculous awe that we had planned (and at that point accomplished) to bike around the island to this bay. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. I do hills fine on a bike, but I had already been biking for quite sometime and I most definitely do not do hills like this one. It was almost straight up, I swear. But with no option left to get to the bay another way, we pressed on and walked the bikes up once I could pedal no longer. Maybe that would be the only one, we thought. After all, it can't get worse than that, could it? Ha. The hills just kept coming, like we were headed up to Everest's summit or something. A local happened upon us walking our bikes up what turned out to be only about halfway up to the top of the hill and graciously offered to give us a ride to the top where we could from there continue onto the bay. Ahh, the bay, I thought, as he dropped us at the top of a logging road that would supposedly take us to our destination. Let me interject a quick thought here...the one that was constantly running through my exhausted body as we got further and further up this hill. We had planned to have dinner at the little cafe by the ferry dock - the only eatery on the island, mind you - which meant that once we got to our camping spot and set up our tent, we would have to turn around and ride back to the ferry for a much needed dinner, and then turn back around and make this unbelievable trek back to our campsite, without the help of the kind soul who gave us a lift. And in the dark, at that. It didn't even seem physically possible to me at that point. So we head down this logging road and discover that it indeed is going down, and down, and down until after a mile or so it clicked that in order to reach a bay, we would be traveling all the way down to sea level again. Yeah right. Not happening. Although it had mostly just happened, but we turned around right then and there to salvage any elevation we still had in order to make the trek back up to the main road we had been dropped on. So we pushed our bikes laden with camping gear up another hill way too steep for me to ride until I thought I was about to die. Highlight of the trip thus far - we got to ride down the monstrous bull of a hill on our way back toward the other side of the island in search of a more palatable camping spot. But that was about the only highlight my brain could register at that point because I was so tired. The short of the story is that we rode a few miles to the other side of the island which was thankfully not quite as hilly and found a field Jim had told us about...and after all that work, it really was a perfect field. We set up camp in a grove of deciduous trees that were felling their leaves around us in the most picturesque way and finally headed back toward the ferry for some well-earned dinner. And, thank the Lord, we found a shortcut -a nearly obscured back woods trail that got us back to the ferry dock in a third of the time the main road would have. Dinner eaten, we returned for our night in our pretty little tent in the middle of the woods on a beautiful island. Resting and contented, we went to sleep and awakened to this most beautiful view of the fog rolling in over the field looking oh, so perfect and welcoming us to another brilliant blue-sky, sunshiney, fall day. The ride to the ferry docks was rather easy this time, having had the last eight hours free from being atop a bicycle, so we made it in time to catch the 11 o'clock ferry back to the mainland and then proceeded to engage our muscles one last time for the twenty mile stretch home. It was invigorating! And tiring, of course, but once we were home, I definitely settled on invigorating as the best descriptor. A very adventurous camping experience, my love! Good choice, and happy (almost) first anniversary, Isaac.

Farewell by impalement...

Our house smells like fall! I've decided my very favorite thing about summer ending is that fall comes right after it. I'll always be a sun baby, but every year I feel like autumn becomes more and more enjoyable. In fact, I think I would even go so far this year as to say it's my favorite season. The adorable sweaters get to come out of the closet, cute jackets and tights, incredible orange and red leaves falling all around you, stews, and the fragrances of pumpkin spice, cloves, hot apples, and cinnamon. Nothing beats it. Being that it's September 1st and all, we had our first fall adventure this afternoon and it got me so in the mood. We got home, made some dinner, harvested another thousand cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from our garden, visited J and A, then headed out to a park on the edge of town boasting five or six apple trees free for the picking. We got out our bags, Isaac climbed the nearest tree, and off we went collecting our bounty. There were tons - golden delicious, red delicious, and whatever the kind is that's in the middle that are both reddish and greenish. We filled a paper bag to the brim with the first two trees and then ran around to each of the others marveling at their beauty. One bag was enough for our purposes, so we frolicked a little more and then headed home and made our first batch of ginger cinnamon applesauce! I've never made applesauce before and was amazed at how simple it is...and it makes it even better since our apples were all free. The house smelled incredible and the applesauce tasted perfect. Happy fall to us.

Oh, the other fall-tastic news is that Isaac's friend from work brought his food dryer to work today to let us borrow for a couple months so we can dry the heck out of as much fruit as we can get our hands on. Last weekend Isaac set his trusty hands to making us a homemade food dryer (did I tell you this already? I can't remember) out of cardboard and foil. And it worked great, except for the fact that it's a slight fire hazard being that it's made completely out of cardboard, so we could never have it on unless we were in the house. Not too much of a hardship, except that food takes like six hours to dry, so that left using up the six hours between work and bedtime to dry food without ever leaving the house. It just wasn't that ideal, but it was pretty fun that it worked. This one's way better though, because it lets us have it on all day and all night long. We'll be drying more apples than we care to count and we've got access to a pear tree and five plum trees, one of which is right outside our front door. We're like little squirrels storing up their food for the winter. It'll be great, though, because dried fruit is a perfect snack and this way, all this great fruit won't go to waste if it doesn't get eaten in the next couple weeks. Plus, the dryer adds to the fall aromas in our house, bringing lots of joy to my heart.

Speaking of joy to my heart, here's something that does not bring joy to my heart - Morgan and Tommy left for Europe this morning...for seven whole months. Fun for them, but their dear friends in America are going to miss them. Their send-off on Sunday consisted of a couple hours spent at a fantastic rope swing out on the lake. The boys had the time of their lives while the girls spent their time trying to ignore the fact that there were monstrous sticks all around the swinging path just waiting to impale one of their husbands. In one of the jumps I thought for sure Tommy was going to get stuck by one straight through the heart, but he dropped his feet into the water just in time to slow his swing enough to avoid it. I swear I didn't stop shaking for a full ten minutes. Sounds like the perfect way to send Morgs and Tommy off, huh? It really was, the boys had a blast. Here's Tommy right before we all said goodbye. See you in April, dear friends!