Isaac and Bec

Goodbye...

2010-09-22T08:35:00.001-07:00

Goodbye for now, friends.

Our colors of India...

2010-08-07T18:06:00.000-07:00

When we got married, we had one piece of sit-able furniture in our livingroom - our beloved burnt orange couch. Oh the fond memories I have of retrieving that beauty from the streets of downtown. There we were, biking along on our way home from a game night with our friends, late at night, everything was dark, sprinkles of rain were starting to fall, when lo and behold, Isaac's keen eye ran across the couch sitting on the side of the road a few blocks from my house. The long version of this story would be quite entertaining, however being that this is not the point of this story, I'll suffice it to say that five blocks of heavy lifting, hours of scrubbing, vaccuming, re-stuffing, and sewing later, we had ourselves our one and only piece of furniture for our guests to relax on. A couple months into our marriage, we did make this bookshelf that doubled as a bench of sorts, however to be totally honest, it was a tad too narrow to actually provide a comfortable sitting area for longer than about five minutes.

Fastforward a year and a half, and I am getting quite antsy for another piece of furniture that is a)super comfortable as our orange couch is on the harder side of things and b)large enough to house two or three guests so we can have a dinner or movie night without having to stick our friends on the floor.

Enter this couch.

I can't even believe I'm actually sitting on it in this picture, it was so soiled and narly. Isaac found her at a rummage sale downtown, and picked her up for $25 with a vision of a completely made-over elegant couch in his mind. It fit my qualifications of squishy and comfortable, and it fit Isaac's qualifications of not overstuffed, and interestingly ornate. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we were about to embark on our first reupholstering project.

And it actually went really well! We were inspired by Squint's designs, but wanted to have our own take on it as well. We chose a colors of India theme and off we went. As it turns out, upholstering a couch is basically pulling material super tightly and stapling it. Basically. We started by removing all of the old fabric, keeping track of how it was originally upholstered so we could get an idea of how we would go about putting the new stuff on. We actually kept each old piece and then used the measurements to make the new pieces, which helped erase a ton of what would have otherwise been an awful lot of guess work. Then we laid all the new fabric out on the kitchen floor and sewed all the strips together so we could be working with larger sections instead of one small piece at a time.

Here's Isaac pulling the back into place...

Almost done...

Cushions and detail pieces complete...

Voila!

I do realize that our style is not necessarily the same as other people's, but being that we are quite different from most of the people we know, it didn't surprise me at all when, upon emailing my family the finished pictures, we recieved from all three of them an enthusiastic, "It looks great...if you like all those colors together in your house..." Which they probably would not, but we definitely do. We LOVE this couch! It's the first thing we see when we walk in the front door and it brings such color and vibrance to our little place. And when we have chairs the same shade of teal and an eight foot tall cabinet in the kitchen a similar shade of purple, not to mention scores of green plants all around the house, it's really right at home in our little place.

Alas...

2010-08-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

I have my husband back! He officially went back to working eight hour days like a normal person this week, which means we no longer have to go to bed at 9pm and he no longer has to rise at the break of day (that would be 5am). It's normal for summertime at his work to require overtime to the tune of 12 hour days, six days a week for a couple months, and as always, he took it like a champ. I swear that man doesn't even know how to complain. Which is probably good since I'm quite capable of complaining enough for the both of us. But not this year! I handled his long hours quite well, if I do say so myself. And we made it a point to spend our precious three hours in the evening together as much as possible, which helped stave off my wifey affection needs.

We celebrated our free time tonight by scouting out our future apple trees which we will be bountifully harvesting in a few short weeks. And earlier this week we picked blueberries to freeze and add to our nest of frozen goods for the winter, which so far include strawberries, raspberries, peaches, and apricots. Blackberries are next. It makes me feel so at home and fulfilled when we get to prepare and store our food - which just helps make me all the more impatient waiting until we can have our own property and harvest our goods from our ginormous garden, and raise our little chickies, and frolick among our dozens of fruit trees.

Alas, I shall not get carried away wishing for things we don't have yet, though. For now I'll just look around at my life and see how incredibly blessed we are with what we have right now. Because we really are incredibly blessed.

2010-07-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

I discovered the library a couple years ago. I believe I've mentioned it a time or two. I remember back in college my friend Aaryn came up to me freaking out - literally freaking out - because he had just discovered the public library and could not contain his excitement that so many gazillions of books were at his fingertips free of charge. I mean, it's not like we'd never heard of a library before or anything. It was just that neither of us had ever really been in one, unless it was the university library which we tried to avoid like the plague. I distinctly remember the excitement on his face, him pulling my arm across the parking lot into the library, exclaiming in every section how many amazing books were there that we could just take and read whenever we wanted. In my head, I was like, 'Yeah, it's cool. That's great, Aaryn,' without really catching his enthusiasm. And then I discovered it for myself two years ago and ever since I've had that library-perma-grin that shone so brightly on Aaryn's face that first day.

But this isn't the point of the my story. It's just the little seed that planted my story. You see, ever since the dawning of my personal Library Age, I have immersed myself in more literature than I did in all my growing up years combined, which is saying something because I may have been something of a bookworm growing up. During the past couple of years, I've read a mass of things I never would have thought I'd read, random subjects, new genres, and a plethora of healthy nutrition books. Gotta love those, right? So, I'm reading all these health books, while being married to Mr. Healthy Eating himself, and obviously my eating lifestyle is going to take a change, right? Right. And at this point, two years down the line, you'd think I'd probably honed in on a consistent pattern of healthy eating that I could stick with from here on out, right?

Wrong.

I ended up reading The Face on Your Plate a couple months ago. Have you heard of it? If I recall, it has an adorable little lamb placed neatly in the center of a crystal white dinner plate. And the little baby lamb's huge black eyes are staring imploringly into your face because he knows you're about to slice him open and eat him for dinner. Okay, I could be making that last part up, but just work with me here. The book, as you can probably guess, gave a nice case for Veganism, and while I don't have any moral objections to killing an animal for one's food, I did succumb to the other health and environmental plights made in the book. And it didn't help that we watched Food, Inc. about two seconds after I finished this book. And to be completely truthful, I had been thinking about veganism on and off for the past year or so, but just didn't think I could ever live without cheese. Which is a good reason to not go vegan, I might add. But in my evolution of healthful ways, I decided now was the time for me, so I took the plunge and joined the vegan ranks.

What was Isaac's response to all of this, you ask? My sweet husband just shook his head and said, 'So now you're gluten intolerant and vegan? No one's ever going to invite us over for dinner again.' Isn't he precious? And in case you're wondering, people do actually still invite us over for dinner.

So in light of my new little lifestyle, I've made it my personal goal to learn to bake gluten-free/vegan goodies that taste amazing and have the texture of a glutenous treat. It's one thing to bake gluten-free, and it's one thing to bake vegan, but baking with both is quite the experience. So I loaded up on baking books (from the library, of course) from places like Baby Cakes, and The Flying Apron who are known for baking these kinds of treats, but nothing I baked following these recipes satisfied me. So last night, I had this epiphone. I realized that I knew how to bake, and I knew enough about the properties of g-free flours to experiment, so I tossed all the cookbooks aside and tried a batch of cupcakes made totally from the vast recesses of my mind. And you know what? It was the best batch I'd made yet!

Take that professionals.

That's all I really wanted to share. This ridiculously long story just to let you know that I baked a batch of cupcakes on my own that was better than all the professionals' recipes. But it made me feel so good, you know? So accomplished. And now when Oprah reads this, she'll know I have mad skills and invite me to become her personal baker. Yes, changing the world one cupcake at a time...

Did I mention I'll be in tights?

2010-07-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

I am the sunbaby.
I am the girl who rolls down her window on the drive back to Deb's house in Phoenix in the middle of August...and likes it.
In any setting, anywhere, at any time, I would prefer being hot to being cold.
I hate being cold. In fact, I would easily die a thousand hot deaths before I had to die one cold one. No. Thank. You.
I might possibly have even ran my heater under my desk this past week at work. Did I mention our house does not drop below a toasty 73 degrees at any point during the year? And even then I'm still freezing half the time.

And then today, I noticed the strangest thoughts creeping into my head. Today, a day of perfect summer weather - blue sky, sunshine, mid-seventies, light breeze - and yet there was this little voice in my head whispering how great it would be if the weather would get cool again so I could wear tights with my skirts. And long sleeves. And scarves. And layers. It's been summer up here for a whole two weeks and I'm already imagining snuggling up with my fluffy down comforter and a hot cup of tea. And taking my evening walk with Isaac where there's a bite to the wind and I get to wear a jacket. And maybe there'll even be crispy orange leaves swirling around our feet. And did I mention I'll be in tights? Sigh.

***

Our friends Grace and Peace came over the other night. His real name is Chris, but when I first told Alex about them, she just started referring to them as Grace and Peace, which I thought was the most adorable thing ever, and thus he has since been referred to only as Peace. Don't worry, he loves it. Peace usually frequents our house on our girls' bookclub nights, where he joins in with our collective husbands' bookclub, which is really just an x-box club, but they like to sound refined. Last week, however, they came over for a little game night. As they pulled up, we could hear strains of music coming from the park a couple blocks away, which piqued our interest. On Thursdays up here, the city brings various hippie/funky/oldie bands out to our park and the masses gather around to dance, picnic, and have an evening of hippie-fantasticness. So we decided to investigate.

And, oh my word, were the masses out to play. There must of have been several hundred people, mostly families with dozens and dozens of little munchkins running around. I swear you've never seen so many Mobys in your life. Everyone had one. Seriously. There were blankets spread out, little ones shrieking with happiness, grandmas and grandpas dancing together, dads dancing with their kids, hula hoops. And not your cheap plastic hula hoops, either. No, these were heavy, thick, and wrapped in brightly colored ribbons and strips of cloth. There was even a girl twenty feet high up a tree doing cirque du soleil art, where her legs were wrapped in cloth and she was doing acrobatic poses to the rhythm of the music. And she wasn't even part of the show. I swear, only in Bellingham does one just decide to bring out your cloth, suspend yourself upside down from a tree, and dance in a crowd of hundreds, and everybody thinks it's great. I love it.

We stayed for ten or fifteen minutes, and then headed back to play our game, but I had to share it with you because it was AWESOME. So much hippie. So much fantasticness.

***

Our town is a great place to live. Very quaint, very artsy, very loveable. But I must complain that there are about seventeen-too-many one way streets downtown. I honestly have no idea why the geniuses who thought up were put in charge to begin with because even the veterans who have lived here a while will occasionally find themselves cruising the wrong way down a one way street.

Thus was my experience tonight. I was out running a few errands this evening. Nothing much, just buying a little coconut oil and returning the movie that was now three days overdue. (Whoops, sorry, husband.) I was driving (the right way, mind you) up a fairly busy one way street, when this guy tried to take a free right straight into my car! He missed me by about 3.5 inches, and then quickly realized that he was attempting to drive the wrong way down my one way street, so he threw it into reverse and scooted back into the street he was coming from.

Rather annoying. And slightly terrifying. But I do thank the gentlemen for not hitting me, because that really would have ruined my night.

***

Bookclub is meeting tomorrow at my house! Jealous? You should be. Especially since we're ditching the book and snuggling up to Sixteen Candles. Thank you, Molly Ringwald, for everything you brought to the 80's.

Questions...

2010-07-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

My life is very comfortable. And most days I'm pretty happy with that comfort, but lately I can't help but wonder if I'm too comfortable. I mean, what is it that God is really asking of me? Of my life? Is it wrong to not have literally sold everything I own and given it to the poor like Jesus talked about? Is it wrong to live in the level of comfort that I do just because I happened to be born in America? Is it enough to spend the majority of my day at my job, and then come home to the few hours I have left and try to love my husband in the best ways that I can and invest my time in relaxing and in spending time with a few close friends with whom I am already comfortable? Is that too selfish of me? Am I not giving enough of my time to loving more people who need to know that God loves them? But doesn't God care about the things that bring me joy and happiness? Does God delight in seeing his daughter revel in and enjoy the life he has created for her? Is that enough for him, or does he want more from me? How much of myself does God expect me to give? Does God take pleasure in a life lived if it's lived at a higher standard of living (albeit merely in a materialistic sense) than the majority of the rest of the world will ever experience? Does it please God at all to see me planting wildflowers in my front yard or see the joy it gives me to create a new recipe to bake for my husband and friends, when I could have used that money spent to help feed and clothe one of Katie's orphans? I know he cares about my joy, finds pleasure in it - I know it. But is part of him sad because I bought a new outfit this month when I could have given that money to help someone less fortunate than I? Is it okay to spend some excess on myself? And if it is, then how much is okay? How do we know?

Is there even a formula for it? Or does it change every day? Is it different for every person depending on the circumstances in their lives? Will God's expectations and desires change for me as I enter different seasons, different situations? Or are they always the same? Is he even holding me to expectations to do certain things, or does he just want me to learn to love him more and then whatever flows out of that will be enough? And if that's the case, then does that mean where I am at is enough?

Or are these questions that are permeating every fiber in my being evidence that maybe the season is changing and God is awakening new parts of my soul, parts that have been quieted, that have been resting and being rejuvenated, that are now ready to be given away?

Will I ever know?

2010-07-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

This girl is amazing. Amazing.

In Stitches...

2010-04-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Dinner eaten, sweatshirts on, tickets in hand, we made our way up to campus this weekend for David Bazan's final-night-on-tour performance. We arrived pleasantly late so as to miss a little of the waiting and intro band's show, only to find out that the tickets, which specifically said doors opened at 7pm, were an hour and a half early on the show time. So we took a few minutes to walk campus instead, noting once again how beautiful it is up there. I can't believe it's been four years already since we graduated - does that make us old?? With still another hour to kill, we headed back home for a snack, a trusty Colbert Report, then made our way back to the show - again, pleasantly late. Unfortunately, not late enough though, as we ended up waiting a good 45 minutes before the opener even came out. But we chatted with some friends, and then enjoyed just being with each other while we waited. The opener was good, and Bazan was fantastic. I will admit, though, I think I'm used to Dana Little-esqe concerts where it feels like you're family and she fills the space between every song with personal thoughts and stories. Not so with Bazan, which Isaac knew having seen him perform before, but I hadn't had the pleasure of experiencing yet. He came on, barely said two words before starting into his first song, then rolled right into the second, third, and fourth songs without any breaks. He came up for air twice, I think, during his entire set, where he asked his standard, "Does anyone have any questions?" After a few half-sentence long answers, it was back to the songs, and then away he went before we even realized it was over. But that's Bazan for you. You don't see him for his charm, you see him for his realness, his heart, his music, and his lyrics that are so full of life and struggle that they're swimming around in your head for days to come. Months, if you're in our house because he's often the voice streaming through our speakers.

In short, it was good. Very good.

I just realized I never posted about our Vashon weekend, either - sorry, Han. A few weeks ago, Isaac and I spent a weekend away with Hannah and Mike and had a FANTASTIC time! Lots of windows, trees, geoducks, hot tubs, and exploring. Want to see the pictures? There are way too many to post, but go here if you want the full view.

It was a hard day...

2010-04-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

If I was a stronger, more selfless person, life would be so, so much easier.

if I could learn to swallow my anger, my annoyance...
if I could keep my demons from taking over my life...
if I could see that the needs of others are no less important than my own...
if I could say what I really mean when it really matters, instead of being harsh to protect my damn pride...
that will be when I have truly succeeded.

Two words...

2010-04-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

Two words:
Bikram. Yoga.

My new love. Back in January, while we were celebrating Morgan and Tommy's surprise Christmas visit back from their overseas adventure, Morgan, Alex, and I sweated out a one-week trial of Bikram Yoga classes, just to get a taste of the phenomenon that has been sweeping across the states. We showed up, paid our $20, and recieved a pass for unlimited classes for the next seven days. Now, I've been doing yoga for the past couple of years - mostly in my living room with random video instructors - so I thought I'd be rather prepared for the physical challenge of this class, but man, was I surprised. Basically, you're in a room heated to 105 degrees and you're taken though a series of asenas (postures) for the duration of 90 minutes. It's the same postures every class, for every person, no matter how beginning or advanced you are, so every time you go back, you have a chance to really work on executing each asena with perfection. Not that you get anywhere near perfection in the first ten years, though. That's what makes every class a continual challenge. You are drenched in sweat afterwards, having successfully burned over 800 calories, stretched your muscles in ways they've been waiting for the past twenty five years, and built muscles you didn't even know existed. It's an incredible workout, and a proven way to heal injured areas of your body - back and neck pain from my car accident three years ago, in my case. And it's the only workout I've ever truly enjoyed sticking with, which makes it a rather appealing endeavor for me. After that first week, Alex kept going, but I only started going consistently at the end of February. In short, it's one of the best things I've ever done for myself health-wise - both mind and body, and I love, love, love it! And Isaac and Justin love that they have something new to make fun of us for when we return to our respective houses after class red faced and soaking like drowned rats. Although, I have to say I think Isaac really does like me going because it gives him more time to read and study about investing, which has become a growing interest of his for the past several months. Well, it's been an interest of his for the past several years, but in the past year he's really delved into the study of it - almost like he's in school again. It's fun to watch him in something he loves like that, and makes Bikram a double blessing for our little family.

Well, friends, it's raining again up here. Things were looking so good for an early summer up here that I think I prematurely got my hopes up that maybe we would just skip the rain this year just like we skipped the ice and snow part of this winter. Apparently we shall be having no such luck as the rain has been cascading in some shape or form nearly every day of the past week. Lucky us...

Our little champion...

2010-02-25T09:12:00.000-08:00

I ate seaweed this weekend.
And liked it.

I can't even hardly believe it as I have tried various forms of seaweed in the past and was absolutely revolted, but something about this time was different. Mark, Jordan, Justin, and Alex came over for dinner on Saturday and Isaac showcased his chef skills with an incredible wok full of Thai Green Curry - so good. But he started off the meal with making California rolls, which, in case you don't know, are covered in the aforementioned seaweed. Everyone praised the choice of appetizer, but I was rather apprehensive and slightly desirous of a hot bowl of peanut sauce and rice instead. Nevertheless, I put on my brave face and succumbed to the peer pressure...and found that it wasn't half bad. Isaac says I like things more once I've learned how healthy they are, which may very well have been the case in this experience, but however it happened, I now like it. And, as a side note, seaweed does in fact have many a positive nutrient to benefit one's health.

We finished off our evening with a little entertainment from our...(drumroll, please)...Champion Juicer! If you don't know what one of these is, you should definitely find out. They are AWESOME! They juice anything and everything, but the best part of it is if you freeze bananas or berries, you can put those through and they get squished into the consistency of ice cream and come squeezing out the other end ready to enjoy! Sounds gross, I know. It even looks pretty gross as its coming out (think meat grinder producing sausage), but it tastes so good and takes all of forty-five seconds to create. And it makes for some nice entertainment watching the process. Now all we need is an orchard full of fruit trees producing gazillions of pieces of fruit that we can juice to our heart's content.

Sigh. Someday.

Our unappreciated hippie fantasticness...

2010-02-14T16:13:00.000-08:00

It was pouring cats and dogs outside this morning, a nice February day, for sure. But that didn't stop us from hitting up Old Town Cafe for our traditional Valentine's Day breakfast together. And they had the candlelit breakfast again this year, which is my favorite! Then church, naps, and by early afternoon the clouds rolled out and the blue sky amazingness rolled in, giving us a perfect get-outside-and-be-productive kind of day. So we did. We decided to conquer some gardening areas around our house as they were getting overrun by previously planted flowers and choking out our strawberry plants that we had transplanted at the end of the summer. Not good. PS, not sure if we've mentioned this yet, but we will not be having our garden space at the community gardens this year. As fun as it was last year, we got about seventeen too many calls from the garden police complaining that our beautiful plot was, indeed, not nearly beautiful enough to be seen with the rest of the plots. Apparently they're not much of a fan of the hippie, letting things run a tad wild, exotic type of experience in gardening, which is really surprising considering we live smack in the middle of hippie land. I mean, honestly, our plot was not any less weeded than any of the other jungles around ours, but for some reason they just thought it was necessary to continuously call us and "make sure we were still tending to our veggies," and "oh, did you realize that it was windy last night and parts of your greenhouse came untucked, could you come fix it immediately?" I swear they just had it out for us, and we thought about staying on this year and being a thorn in their flesh just for the fun of it, but we ended up just saying the heck with it. We did, however, take several bucketfulls of our well-fertilized soil back with us to the house for our new little garden in our front lawn. After all, we'd put about a hundred dollars of good soil into the plot to begin with and in no way were going to let them run us off without taking what was ours to begin with. Anyway, that's the story of the garden plot. Someday when we have a couple acres to play with, we'll have a ginormous garden where the weeds can be tangled into the plot as much as our little hearts desire, but for now we're going to utilize the small area of soil around our little rental. Hence, our outside activities this afternoon. Our lawncare is hired out, so I assumed the flowerbeds and decorative plants around the strip where we wanted to garden was put in place by our landscapers as well, but Isaac didn't think it would be a problem to rip it all up and plant veggies of our own. He was pretty sure most of them were weeds anyway. And I scoured the lease and could find nothing prohibiting us from taking lawn matters into our own hands, so we did. Well, we did the ripping out today at least. I will say one thing, it will be really nice to not have to drive all the way to the garden every day just to water things. We also took our blue-mobile out for a little spin since she's been sitting in the cold and rain for the past few months, and she ran like a gem!

I tried my hand at a new gluten free bread recipe today. It was this yeasty rosemary concoction that had been refrigerated for a week (which the recipe clearly said was okay to do). We took a little sniff before it went into the oven and it definitely smelled a tad fermented, but that just got us excited for a potential sourdough loaf. And sour it was, my friends. Sour and disgusting. It was very disappointing as we were pretty hungry and definitely looking forward to spreading a nice chunk of butter onto the bread and feasting before we did our manual labor. Instead, we just about threw up and spent a solid five minutes washing our mouths out with water. Lesson learned? Fermentation does not equal sourdough. Bleghhh. I'm not sure what went wrong because I baked a loaf right after I originally mixed the dough a week ago and that loaf was great. I suppose that's the beauty of being a baker - you win some, and you lose some. Thankfully we'll be winning some in about an hour as Isaac is making a fantastic cobbler-amazingness for dinner tonight. Happy Valentine's Day to me!

On late nights and sunshine...

2010-02-06T16:31:00.000-08:00

It's fun to see Justin and Alex's house becoming more and more their house. I mean, it's already technically theirs and all, but every week more changes happen that give it a more J and A personality. This past week or so has been the painting of the living room and dining room. Well, I suppose even more so this last week has been the complete rewiring of all things electric in their house, but on the asthetic side of things, it's been the downstairs paint jobs. And I got to help this morning! My job was the living room trim, which is seriously one of the only ways I've seen my perfectionism be put to good use. Like for instance last night when I was baking the pie for our little dinner party, I was ridiculously and very unnecessarily frustrated because the edges of the pie crust did not look perfect. We're talking starting to hyperventilate, about to throw the entire pie into the garbage frustration. Over a stupid edge of a pie crust. That's usually the type of benefits I reap from my perfectionism, so it was nice to create something positive with my forces instead. And it was a double bonus getting to hang with J and A (and Stephanie, who's living there for a little bit) while we worked.

So last night we had dinner with a band, aren't we so cool? They're called Transcarlet and are resident Bellingham-ites as well, so we were happy to entertain them. Okay, so they might have been our friends before they were ever a band, and it might have been way more of a just friends get together (especially since J and A were there, too), but it still sounds cool to say we were hobnobbing with a rich and famous band, right? And we met our new friend, TJ, too! Isaac put together some killer enchiladas, I crafted the aforementioned pie (which Isaac saved from being cast into the shadowy depths of the trash can, and which was actually really good, if I do say so myself) for dessert, and we got to spend a few hours talking the night away. I'm actually laughing as I'm writing this, though, because I say talking the night away like we were up to the wee hours of the morning chatting...but in actuality, we lasted until about 9:15pm and then everyone went their separate ways. Which is normal for us, but our guests were mentioning how a normal night for them lasts until about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, which I'm pretty sure I haven't seen since my college days (except when we're with Ian and Savannah, of course :).

Um, post script here...yesterday afternoon when I came home from work, Isaac and I just sat on the porch and relaxed in the sunshine and 55 degree warmth!! In case you missed that, we and Anyway, all that to say we had a good time with those guys last night.relaxed in the afternoon sunshine on the porch! And it's the middle of February here! All the flowers are coming up, trees are blooming, and I haven't warn a scarf for at least a month. Happy early spring to me.

An Alexie and a Beah...

2010-02-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

The house is clean, candles are lit, and the aroma of a flourless chocolate delicacy is wafting out of the oven as it finishes baking. Our Peace mix echos in the background as I open the bottles of wine and put water on for tea. Isaac packs up the xbox, gives me a quick kiss, and makes a run for Justin's before the estrogen overtakes the house. Shortly thereafter, the girls arrive - first Alex, fresh from Bikram, then Grace with her bouncy curls (and Morgs joined us in spirit from the tropical land across the sea). We have a little catching up time before Beth and Stephanie arrive, then the wine is poured, chocolaty goodness is served, and the girl time begins. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have started a bookclub. How very refined of us, I know.

Now, most of you know that I have been extremely hesitant to commit to any kind of extra curricular activity over the past couple of years in my quest for rest and a calmer life, but I have to say this bookclub thing was a fabulous idea. I mean, you can't go wrong with a girls' night to begin with, but add the good food and stimulating discussion of a meaningful piece of literary work that we have just finished pouring ourselves into for the past month and you've got a really great way to spend an evening. January's book was A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah - this month is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. By the way, Lynn-t, I think about you every time I open the book, which has been every day for the past week.

It's a little unfortunate that it's just a once-a-month occurrence, but I suppose that helps ward off the possibility of it becoming just one more commitment that overwhelms our lives. So until next month, ladies, may you spend many a night curled up with a cup of tea and dear ol' Sherman.

2010-01-24T19:45:00.000-08:00

So many things have been happening around here the last few days! I've watched at least seventeen hours of television, made what appears to be a permanent indent in our antique rust-colored couch, felt like I was going to pass out at least a dozen times, writhed with body aches the likes of which I have never experienced in my life to this point, and have not eaten nearly the amount of calories one should consume per day. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's official...I'm sick. But I hear poor Tommy and Mitch are both sick as well on the other side of the world, so I'm most definitely counting my blessings that at least I can lounge around in complete misery in the comfort of my own home with a doting husband who rents me Amelie and brings me ice water and smoothies.

But seriously, it can't be very entertaining hearing about me being on death's doorstep (possibly a slight exaggeration, but...) so here's the real news. I am no longer a blonde. Shocking, I know. It lasted for an entire two months and I loved every minute of it, once we got past the yellow stage into the white-blonde color. But, alas, all good things must come to an end as we were not too thrilled about the every-six-week-upkeep schedule the whiteness required. So I am back to brown, although I must admit it is a bit lighter than my natural brown. Another six weeks and I'll go back in to finish off the coloring and get it a tad darker. I must admit, it's kind of nice being back to a more natural me. Which is a good thing, since I'm planning on staying brown for quite a while now.

***

I actually wrote that part a few days ago and just never posted, so I'm happy to report that I have, indeed, recovered from the grossness of being sick, and in true lovers' fashion, succeeded in passing along the fever and body aches to my dear husband shortly thereafter. Isaac took it like a champ, though, and bounced back in only three days, whereas my recovery took a full four. In celebration of his renowned health, we disconnected our cable for the next six months. Isn't that a great getting better present? We got the cable last fall for (of course) football since Isaac is, after all, a boy, but he promised me when we purchased it that it would only be through the football season and then we could go back to our hippier lifestyle. And even in the three days since it's been disconnected, I've felt noticeably calmer and more relaxed. Evenings when I'm tired aren't automatically spent vegging in front of the telly watching Bear Grylls and Mike Rowe, but instead are spent reading, baking, yoga-ing, and relaxing to the tunes of David Bazan or Rocky. Life seems to pass by slowly and peaceably, like a trickling creek, and every minute is experienced as it's own special mark in the day. I like living like that. Brewing a cup of white pear tea, having a girlfriend over to chat, relaxing with Isaac on a walk around the neighborhood, making bran muffins and granola for the week's breakfasts. I guess all I'm saying is that I have a good life up here, with Isaac. Speaking of which, he's walking through the door right now...

The best Christmas Present Ever...

2009-12-17T08:51:00.000-08:00

So, the other night there were about seven cop cars right outside of our house for several hours complete with searchlights and everything. We peeked out the windows on and off for a while, but could never see enough to actually figure out what was going on...so we chalked it up to some kind of massive manhunt that was taking place. Slightly freaky, but Isaac was with me so I wasn't too worried.

Fastforward to the following afternoon.

I am in the kitchen preparing to bake some fantastic spicy ginger cookies for that evening's festivities and Isaac is in the back room, when we hear a knock at our door. A very loud knock. Now the thing about our house is that there are three doors to enter before you actually get into our apartment. We live in an old house, so there's the external door that leads down a very short hallway and ends with the door of our apartment and the door of the downstairs apartment. If you go through our door, it takes you up a set of stairs where you then reach the actual door into our apartment. Now, obviously the only people who know this are those who have been to our house before, so the majority of our knocks come from the door at the bottom of the stairs. Only people we know come straight to the top of the stairs, but that happens only if we know they're coming over, so they never knock, they just come right in. All that to say, something is not right if there is a loud knock coming from our top door. Isaac asked me to get it, but I was a tad alarmed being that there was a possible vagrant on the loose via last night's supposed manhunt. Not wanting to just open the door to a murderer without Isaac in the room as backup, I called out a friendly, "Who's there?" When no one answered, the churning in my stomach kicked it up a notch so I turned my gaze toward the back bedroom and called for Isaac to come. But before he came out the knock returned, even more fierce than before. I called out again, "Who's there?" and again, there was no answer. Something was definitely wrong because I was only about seven feet from the front door and there was no doubt that whoever was out there could hear me, but was refusing to answer until I opened the door. I called for Isaac again, and then eyed the deadbolt, about to run over and flip it locked, awkward as that may be since they would most assuredly hear the sound of the door locking loud and clear and would know I just locked them out. I heard the deep tones of a man's voice behind the door now and became even more panicked as I racked my brain to try to remember where we had put the phone so I could call the police if necessary. And still there was no sign of Isaac (probably because Isaac doesn't get scared of anything, so I'm sure it never even occured to him that the person at the front door was possibly waiting to shoot me at point blank range once I opened the door). Then, to my horror, I saw the front door starting to open and I knew he was coming inside. I thought my heart was going to beat straight out of my chest and the words, "Don't come in or I'm calling the police," were at the tip of my tongue...

...when two long lost faces peered around the door. It took my frazzled brain a couple seconds to register the intruders, but two seconds later I was screaming and crying as I recognized Morgan and Tommy!! THE Morgan and Tommy who have been gone since September gallivanting around the world and who weren't expected back until the end of March! I know I can't convey our excitement at seeing them, but they're two of our best friends and we have missed them so much since they've been gone. And we had absolutly no idea whatsoever that they were coming home for Christmas. They surprised everyone, even their parents! It turns out, they really had wanted me to open the door without knowing who was there so they could see my surprised face which is why they didn't want to identify themselves. Makes sense, just makes the situation a tad scarier when there are dangerous criminals on the loose. Anyway, I recovered and we got to spend an awesome evening with them...and they're here for three weeks!

As soon as we had calmed down (okay, as soon as I had calmed down) we drove over to Justin and Alex's to surprise them. Isaac and I hid behind the bushes and Tommy and Morgan rang the doorbell and waited. I wish I could have seen Lex's face because all I saw from my vantage point was smiles and waves from Mo and To, and then finally Morgan's exasperated beckoning for Alex to come open the door. Apparently she had just been standing inside staring at them in shock because she couldn't believe they were actually there. So awesome! And then we called Justin up from the basement, but like Isaac, he doesn't react with the drama of us lovely wives. Just a huge smile and hugs all around from him.

Just thinking about it all makes me tear up again. So we have three wonderful weeks to spend with our friends before they head back to Asia for the duration of their expedition. The best surprise ever.

PS, if you're interested in following their journey, you can read about it all here. And they have hundreds of awesome pictures from their travels.

The day we got married...

2009-12-10T17:15:00.001-08:00

Better late than never. We've finally got some of our wedding pictures rifled through and relatively organized into a pseudo-chronological display.

Want to see them? Go here.

Do enjoy.

2009-12-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising by Jean Kilbourne.

So provocative. She found a way to put into words the things I've been feeling for the past decade.

A handful of wheatgrass...

2009-12-01T09:40:00.000-08:00

We live in a rather tiny apartment. One bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. Which means no storage place. At all. No extra closets, no garage, nothing. So for the first year of our marriage, the home for all of Isaac's tools was a gigantic pile on the floor against the far wall of our bedroom. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not complaining because we LOVE our little house, but I was also very thankful when Isaac's next project created a home for all of those tools. He got the idea to incorporate old milk crates as shelves and started the hunt for a broken down cupboard he could restore to fit the crates. A few days later, his project was born. He had to extend the back of the cupboard and fix it up quite a bit as it was a sorry piece of junk to being with. Then he covered all that work with lots of sanding, paint, and varnish, fit the milk crates in and - whallah, we have a mini tool shed. It's beautiful and matches the other cupboards he did earlier this year. And best of all, we have our far wall back.

And then there's his dream (our dream, really) of living in a place where plants rule the roost. Where everywhere you look inside, there are dozens of species of plants living among us. We have tons of plants in pots, but this time Isaac wanted to fully incorporate the greenery into the piece of furniture. So he purchased some old drawers from a torn down elementary school, fixed them up (of course), and then created waterproof indents in the top to house whatever it was we wanted to grow - wheatgrass at the moment.

Next, I want a new bed. He's been drawing up designs on and off for the past year for it, but weather, space, and lack-of-garage-sized-tools has put that little dream off for possibly a couple more years. Until then...

And then we went home...

2009-11-30T12:45:00.000-08:00

One big holiday down, one more to go. We got to have two Thanksgivings this year - one with my family a week ago and one this past weekend with Isaac's family. The first one we rode the train down for, and that was an experience in itself. An extra two hours of travel time each way tacked onto an already long journey left us not quite sure if it was worth not having the stress of driving and traffic and such. But it was fun to at least do it once. We brought our laptop and dvds, books, and cards and spent a solid six hours side by side watching the beautiful fall colors sweep by. Dad picked us up in Vancouver and brought us home to see the star of our little Thanksgiving...Ava Grace! Or Olivia, I suppose, since no one else ever uses her nickname anymore. She's my sister's little daughter and she is cuuu-uuute. Perfect little spiral curls, a smile to die for, and all the adorableness of a two year old learning to speak like an adult. Of course, it was great to see mom and dad and we spent the evenings playing games with Debbie and Mike, but there's no denying we were all most excited to ooh and ahh over the littlest member of our family. Makes me want to have one...minus all the late nights and responsiblities that would come with it, of course. Highlight of the weekend - I taught Olivia to bat her eyes while asking mommy for something. I'm such a good auntie. Okay, so maybe that wasn't really the highlight of the weekend...there was time with the family, mom's amazing dinner she made, and the snow that fell on Saturday, but it's these little life lessons that must not go overlooked. All in all, a very nice family Thanksgiving.

Fastforward three days and we packed our Kia and headed back down south for the holiday with Isaac's family, which coincidentally also made me want to have little kiddos. Still minus the late nights and unending responsibilities, of course, but the little ones romping around the Hurst home are pretty adorable as well. Unfortunately, there were no pictures to document these events, but I will narrate them for you nonetheless. There was unending game playing, Thanksgiving dinner number two, a fantastic waffle party the following day, and unfortunately no snowfall to be seen the entire weekend. I got a treat Friday morning, though, when I visited Jolie at the Beauty School she attends and recieved the most amazing scalp treatment I've ever had (also the only one I've ever had, but nevertheless so nice). Then she ringletted my hair to perfection and I finished off the weekend a very curly blonde girl. We spent the night with Ian and Savannah the next night and got to snuggle and entertain Jayden and Daelyn the next morning. So cute. Then it was home to more games with the girlies, then back in our car for the long drive home. I could eat pumpkin pie every day for the rest of my life. Mmm, mmmm.

Alas, it is back to real life now in all it's glory. Eight to fours, grocery shopping, and no little ones. There is a bright spot on the horizon, though, as this week appears to be the week in which we shall acquire the Hurst Christmas Tree Number Two, which means more pumpkin pie, hot cider, and cranberry and popcorn strings galore. Christmas season? Yes, please.

Phyllo Creations...

2009-11-16T09:10:00.001-08:00

If you're sensitive about your birthday being forgotten, special dates passing unnoticed, and Christmas presents being bought at the last minute, then I'm not the best friend for you. For some reason I can't keep birthdates in my head for anything, no matter how long or hard I try. And by default, remembering anything like an anniversary (other than my own) is completely out of the question. But I am blessed with a couple friends who are incredible at remembering all those special days, who will pop a little card in the mail wishing good luck on an upcoming final, who will send postcards to you while you're out of town on vacation, who never forget a birthday, Christmas, or anniversary. Not that I forget Christmas, but you know what I mean. Dear Morgan is one of those people...the Morgan of the Morgan and Tommy couple who is off gallivanting around Europe and Asia for the next several months. Now if I was taking an extended vacation, especially if it was one that spanned nearly a year's length, I would gladly use that as an excuse to not have to even try remembering everyone's special days back home...but not Morgan. Her brother's birthday was a few weeks after she and Tommy left town and I was emailed specific instructions on what exactly to make for him since Mo couldn't do it herself. And then Tommy's dad had a birthday last week and, once again, Morgan remembered will in advance and asked us to help her make it special for him. Mo and To were in Turkey at the time and wanted us to create Turkish Baklava for Tommy's dad so it could be like we were all there together. Lex took it a step further and made an entire Turkish dinner and we had Rick and Sherri over to Alex and Justin's to celebrate! There was a lentil stew that was incredible (no matter what Justin says), zucchini pancakes that had some other completely foreign name I won't even try to remember, greek yogurt, hummus and pita chips. A-mazing. Then there was the baklava for dessert. The only things that were missing were Morgan and Tommy, but we'll be with them soon enough, I suppose. Happy birthday, Rick!

The other thing you may have noticed is that I am now blonde. Very blonde. White blonde, in fact. And I have to say, I really love it. I won't be blonde forever...probably just a few months to get it out of my system and then I'll be a happy bruntette for the rest of my life. But until then, I shall very much enjoy the new look. You must gotta live a little every once in a while, right?

On cleaning, Little Miss Sunshine, and the wearing of the tights...

2009-11-02T17:38:00.000-08:00

I must say, it's like a world record for me. Three and a half weeks ago I went on a cleaning binge and scoured every nook and cranny of our house. And I mean every nook and cranny. Every corner, every surface, every appliance, every wall...not an inch of the place was left untouched. Then on top of that we put everything that was lying out away, in its place. There were no more random piles of books or papers - nothing. Our house was cle-eeean. Now, it's not like we were total slobs before or anything. We just had little habits here and here that would help clutter our little house before we even realized it was happening. Like it would be two minutes before I had to walk out the door for work and I could find nothing to wear, so the bedroom would consequently be strewn with articles of clothing tossed pell-mell all over the floor as I frantically searched for the perfect outfit. Or we would have cooked an incredible dinner and then been too full and unmotivated afterwards to properly do all the dishes. Things like that. Consequently, our weeks would be littered with multiple twenty to thirty minute cleaning sessions as the mess got too much and we needed to restore peace and order for sanity's sake. So on this glorious Sunday three weeks ago, the house was sparkling like it had never sparkled before and we liked it so much that we decided to reform our messy ways. We challenged each other to see how long we could keep the house clean by putting everything away immediately after we used it, not leaving any dishes undone, just picking up as we went along instead of stopping our lives to clean and inevitably feeling like all we ever did was clean, clean, clean. Plus, we have discovered that I am much calmer when the house is clean and when Becky is calmer, life for everyone else is calmer. Trust me.

So I tell you all this just to report that our house has stayed clean for the past three weeks! I'm shocked, really I am. And my mother's probably just fallen off her chair in disbelief, but we've put our clothes away every time we've changed, done dishes even if it's just a cup or a fork, hung our coats up, put our shoes away as soon as we take them off...it's amazing! The things dear mother tried to teach me during all those years with her have finally rubbed off on me! Anyway, we're pretty happy campers about it all, as you can tell since I decided to dedicate two whole paragraphs to this success...

Halloween has come and gone once again, and I dare say we had quite the good time with Justin and Alex that night. Since they just bought a house and all, they decided it was only natural to stay home and greet the cute little trick-or-treaters from the neighborhood, so we joined them for the evening, ooohing and ahhhing at all the little butterflies and witches who stopped by. Two days previous we had carved these fantastic pumpkin faces to line their stairs with, but unfortunately we took the pictures with Lex's camera so I have nothing to show for it. They were great, though. After homemade potato chowder, pumpkin pie, and Carcassonne, we ended the night with a viewing of Little Miss Sunshine, then parted ways back to our humble abode. Happy Halloween to all.

And for the most exciting news of all...it is officially tights season! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, time for tights, skirts, and boots...my favorite time of year - fashionwise, anyway. I'm not one for the cold weather, but it does seriously help make up for the frigid temperatures that I get to wear tights anytime I want to.

2009-10-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

Raaaawrr. Raaaaawwrrr. RAAAAWWWWRR. RRRAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRRR!

LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN!

Of waffles and other peaceful things...

2009-10-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday morning, rainy and blustery. Perfect autumn weather, if you ask us. We just finished our weekend morning tradition of homemade waffles and now our bellies are full and we're ready for the day. Saturdays are my favorite. We can sleep as long as we want, which I'll admit isn't even that long in most people's books, but at least it's not 6am. When we do wake up, we can take as long as we want to stretch and relax and drowse, talking lazily with each other until the growl of our stomachs can no longer be ignored, at which point we get up and start breakfast together in the kitchen. It's the same routine every Saturday - two bowls, Isaac with his wheat flour, me with my assortment of teff, quinoa, and brown rice flours. I grind the flax seeds for both of us, Isaac melts our honey and butter together on the stove. I retrieve the baking powder, cinnamon, and salt from the cupboard while Isaac collects the wet ingredients from the fridge. We each take care of our respective bowls, but have done this every week for the past year that it's become so familiar, we could do it with our eyes closed and never miss a beat. I tell Isaac he can pour his waffle first, but he never does. Ever the gentleman. As my waffle cooks, I pick out the berries that sound the best so we can start their melting process. Once I'm happily preparing my perfectly toasted waffle, Isaac pours his and lets me start eating mine while it's still hot. It's the sign that the weekend has come, that today is going to be a good day, that the world is going to be alright.

I love Saturdays.

Soon...

2009-10-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

I'll be back. Soon.

Don't worry.

Baby cakes...

2009-10-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

Ummm, so I have to show you how the cake turned out last night. I should start with a little history first, though. I am a baker at heart. I love, love, love to bake. I love to bake like Isaac loves to cook, and that's saying something. I am also incredibly impulsive when it comes to life in general. I believe I've blogged about this before, but when I decide to cut or dye my hair, it has to be done that day if at all possible because I just can't wait another day for what I want. When I decided to pierce my nose, I made the appointment for right after work that day. So it should come as no surprise to you that when I get the urging to bake a cake, I've got to do it as soon as I get home from work. And this would be all fine and good if only Isaac was a cake-eater. Or, more specifically, a frosting eater, which he is most definitely not. So what happens is I bake this incredible cake, eat one piece, and then the rest gets wasted because Isaac doesn't want to eat the frosting I put on it (because, seriously, what's a cake without frosting?) and I don't want to eat any more sugar than the one piece I already had. So my dear husband made a little rule for my impulsive baking about a month ago limiting me to baking only tiny baby cakes if I'm going to make one. Then nothing gets wasted. We headed off to Goodwill and found the cutest little three inch springform cake pans and my baby cake baking days began.

Fastforward to last night's peanut butter chocolate cake that I was pining for. Here are the little guys right out of the oven, and then here's the final speciman. Pretty adorable, huh? The peanut butter chocolate ganache is a little thick, but it still tasted incredible. The funny thing is we brought the cake over to J and A's, all four of us (yes, even Isaac) had a piece, and there was still half the cake left. It was so rich, that's all we could handle in one setting. I can't imagine how much would have gone to waste if I had baked the entire recipe worth! Oh, and I made this perfect cake gluten free and no one would have even guessed.

So if you're looking for the perfect cake to bring to your next dinner party or birthday or something, this might just have been the best cake I've ever partaken in. Just saying...

And no, we're not pregnant...

2009-09-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-09-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-09-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-09-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-09-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

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!

RYD...

2009-08-27T14:58:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is Reclamation of Youth Day. RYD. It's a local holiday up here where the men of the town (or at last all of our friends who are of the male persuasion anyway) kick adulthood in the face and spend the entire day reclaiming the splendor of their youth. Isaac will be there. And Justin. And Tommy. And Jared, Mark, Jacson, Caleb, Zach, Ty...but no girls. Because when you're pretending you're six again, everyone knows you're lying if you said you actually enjoyed the company of girls.

Here's a sneak peak from a couple years ago. Do enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXK1W_yoi1A

*OFFICIAL RECLAMATION OF YOUTH DAY ITINERARY*

6:00am - Ride bikes from _______ (house TBD) up to Arboretum for Poetry, Monologue, Sunrise.
7:15am - Breakfast at Ranch Room. Flying 'V' w/ Roman Candles on Holly St.
9:00am - Ride to Westside Beaches for Tree Fort, Pipe Throw, Bomb Shelter Challenge, Dam Building.
10:45am - Arrive at Broadway Park for Wiffle Ball (8 teams of 4 - tournament) and Ultimate Frisbee.
12:45pm - Drop bikes off at _______ (house TBD) and get into cars.
1:00pm - Boulevard Park for Amazing Catches, Bike Jumps.
2:30pm - 7-11 for Slurpees, Snacks.
2:45pm - Whatcom Falls Park for all sorts of Buffoonery.
4:15pm - Tommy's House for Biggun, Kayak Stands, Flyer's Up.
6:00pm - All-Access BBQ. Kites, Calvin & Hobbes, Volleyball, Buck-Buck.
8:15pm - Dairy Queen for Dilly Bars
8:45pm - Dodgeball Tournament at Northwest Baptist Church
11:45pm - Charge Up Hill of Youthful Tranquility
12:00am - Plant Flag, Drink from Chalice, Declaration of Youth. Huzzahs all around!

I'll bet right about now you're wishing you were a boy (ahem...man) in the 'ham, aren't you?

It was only three poles...

2009-08-24T20:59:00.001-07:00

I am FREE from the clutches of the deep, dark chemistry that has sucked away practically my entire existence these past four weeks! Ha! I actually thought it would never end, but Friday was my lucky day. 10am final...check. Work the rest of my day...check. Come home, pack my bags, drive off into the sunset with my love, Justin, and Alex...check. And no, my love is not Justin and Alex. There were four people in the car. Do the math. We rode off to a campground up by Baker and spent the weekend doing what Bellingham couples do - camping in the great out of doors. Isaac and I were rather excited because this weekend marked the debut of two recently purchased incredible items. First was our orange beauty of a tent that we purchased earlier this year. Jealous? We pulled into the campsite that Morgan and Tommy had so selflessly been holding for us all the livelong day since they don't have to work anymore and immediately the boys took off again to go russel us girlies up some firewood so we wouldn't freeze, so it was left to Alexandra and me to put up our new tent. Easy enough since it only has three poles and Isaac and I had put it up in our living room right away when we first bought it. However, despite all my incredible skills at life, I still managed to put it up wrong and my knight in shining armor had to redo it all in the dark once they got back with the firewood. It was fine, though, because that just means I need my man to help me survive in the big woods, right? A mere three hours later I was debuting the second (and arguably more incredible) item on our trip. My fleece insert for my sleeping bag. I have never ever been warm when we've camped outside and with the new fleecie, as I affectionately refer to it, I slept like a cat in the sun all night long. The peak of comfort. Isaac had gone out and bought it for me with my birthday money right before we left and, I'll tell you what, I couldn't have picked anything more amazing (thanks, mom and dad!). And don't even think I won't bring it inside once the weather starts turning and our house gets cold, because I will.

Morgs and Tommy are leaving in a week to travel Europe/Asia/Africa for the next nine months, so this trip was our last hurrah for our little group because we will miss them oh, so much. Aren't they cute? Also cute were the boys being manly and chopping up ridiculously huge pieces of tree. We were very impressed. Also cute was how the boys insisted on cooking their food on this sheet of steel that Justin had procured from his work and scoured 'clean.' They actually refused to eat Lex's bread unless they could cook it on the metal like true men. Also cute was the fire that Alex and I built by ourselves! Morgan's been building fires ever since she was a girlscout, but Lex and I haven't necessarily, so you can imagine our pride when we got it flaming on only the second try, just in time for the boys to return and be very impressed with us.

Speaking of impressed, can we please talk about how much we harvested from our garden yesterday? Yes, this was just from yesterday. One day! I mean, it's not like it's been this much fruit since day one, but the last few weeks have been bringing in the bounty. Our poor little cucumbers didn't take the first two times we planted them, so the third time, Isaac laid a ton of them down just to make sure at least a few would come up and, of course, every single last one of them decided to come up. We have cucumbers coming out of our ears, as you can see. Not to mention we'd just given away a dozen cucumbers earlier that day. But we're not complaining, don't worry. We just happen to have a ton of cucumbers growing fatter every day.

Umm, did you notice that our blog looks a little different? Yeah, I was tiring of the same old blog background, so I spent hours searching for a new one that was the perfect blend of artsy without being too girly, but had no luck. Then my artsy husband reminded me that he could easily just make us a background (it's amazing how quickly I forget these types of things), so I contracted his skills and he designed and drew this one up (by hand!) last week. I LOVE it! Simple, but very Isaac and Becky. Thanks, love!

I stole his day...

2009-08-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

Twenty six years ago yesterday a cute little baby with rockstar hair made his entrance into the world. He thought August 17th would be his special day forever. And it was...until I decided to make my infamous entrance on the same day exactly one year later. Ha! Sucker. Now it's our day and he has to share it with me.

The day started out rather normal. It could have started out awesome if Isaac had let us open presents right away, but the man has no sense of curiosity whatsoever, and I'm pretty sure it actually brings him joy to watch me suffer in agony over the anticipation of having a surprise that I have to wait for forever to find out about. My ceaseless begging over the past several days appeared to have no effect on him, and we headed to work as usual, planning to celebrate together in the evening when we got home. In the morning, I had my chemistry class - nothing new there. Except that this happened to be the most horrific chem class I've had thus far. It's just a terribly complex section and after listening to the prof for two hours straight, I was way more confused than when class had begun, and positively convinced that I was now going to fail the final that loomed a mere three days away. Stuff like that stresses me out, so I headed out of the classroom trying not to cry, and trying not to be furious that my birthday had been ruined by stupid chemistry. But do you know what I saw as I opened that classroom door? The sweetest faces of a Morgan and an Alex, waiting for me to wish me a happy birthday. And they'd brought me a love fern! It was the best thing that could have happened after that miserable class. Things started looking up after that...I finished out work, went to dinner with my love, opened my beautiful gifts from Hannah. And then finally I got to open my gifts from Isaac only to discover that he'd gotten me the first season of I Love Lucy, which just might be my most favorite show of all time! So then we got to watch a couple episodes, I did a little chemistry and got every problem right (God must have been smiling on me after all), and Morgs and Tommy took us out for ice cream to finish out the night. It was a good day. A really good day.

Happy birthday to us!

The Art of Wooing

2009-08-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

We're going to Bastyr tonight. Bastyr!

So I can woo them into accepting me to their Master's program.

Good luck, me.

Where the switchbacks are...

2009-08-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

I have found the place I want to live forever and forever. It's perfect. Beautiful rolling hills amongst a forest of evergreens and leafy greens. Country driveways...the kind that are mostly dirt with patches of grass growing up through the middle section of earth between the two tire tracks...snaking away from the road deep into the trees. It's an island, surrounded by the most beautiful water you've ever seen. Just a small population of people call this island home, which makes it even more perfect. And those who do are largely hippies and artists, content with living life slowly, uninfected by the rush that so often defines the lifestyles of mainlanders. Isaac and I biked onto the ferry to Orcas Island this weekend with Tommy, Morgan, Justin, and Alex and spent the day riding through the land to the tune of a perfect 75 degree day. The whole ride to Eastsound, I couldn't stop shrieking about how incredibly beautiful everything we rode past was. Apparently I was 'being a girl,' but I couldn't help myself. Isaac, Tommy, and Justin decided to tackle riding up Mt. Constitution in their cute little biking outfits for fun - yes, fun - but us girls opted to stay in town and meander through the farmer's market and cute little shops. Mt. Constitution, I should mention, gains about 2000 ft. of elevation over a 'short' 8-mile stint of switchbacks, so once you start up, there's no relief until you hit the top. And nothing short of dying from a heart attack would make these boys stop to rest before conquering the mountain. So they pedaled up the entire thing while we cheered them on from sea level. I even bought the most adorable dress ever in one of the shops to celebrate Isaac's great feat! Unfortunately, Isaac said we can't live there because there would be no jobs for us. Which is true, but still...sigh...it would be so perfect. It was so perfect. Maybe someday, huh? I suppose if I can't live there, though, where we live right now is a pretty good second, so I should probably stop complaining, but still...

Me on a skimboard...

2009-07-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

Highlight of the weekend - the boy and I bought ourselves some skimboards, headed up the land of Canadia, and showcased our mad skills in glorious 79 degree weather on the sands of White Rock. I was decent, Isaac was amazing. Okay, I wasn't even that decent as I have never set foot on a skimboard before, nor am I very talented with the whole balancing coordination thing, but I was very impressed with my efforts nonetheless. Isaac's apparently been skimboarding since he was a kid, so he didn't have any problems picking it up again. Not to mention, of course, that Isaac is naturally talented at anything requiring physical coordination and athletics. Even though I still haven't technically stayed on the board 'skimming' for more than 2.3 seconds, it was a lot of fun and perfect weather for the adventure. And Isaac was gracious enough to assure me that it's a tougher skill to acquire so I shouldn't feel bad. What a nice guy.

Other highlight of the weekend - we continued further in Canadialand, booked ourselves a room in a very chic and modern boutique hotel in downtown Vancouver and made the weekend a little 'get away from life and relax' weekend. We watched some crazy fireworks on the beach with a backdrop of the biggest, awesomest, craziest, lightning storm we have ever seen. HUGE bolts of lightning literally every 10-15 seconds for at least two hours straight. And a tangerine sunset covering the sky for at least 45 minutes. It made sitting in the rain for an hour and half with only a thin sweatshirt on, freezing to death, almost worth it.

Other, other highlight of the weekend - we're driving out of the ridiculously large city of Vancouver on our way home Sunday morning, getting all geared up to go home and clean the house or some boring thing like that, when we pass Playland, a little theme park right next to the highway. So what do we do? Most definitely find a place to park and go ride roller coasters and the ferris wheel until we're sick to our stomachs like a pair of seven year olds. Definitely awesome!

Then we finally got back into the States and found that our friends Justin and Suzanne were visiting from Seattle - making the weekend even awesomer - so we finished out the day hanging with them and catching up. And picking 28 pounds of blueberries.

Now if only I could have remembered to record these highlights on film...(okay, I found one of us on the beach and that's it).

We're like professionals...

2009-07-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

Really! All of these hot, sunny days have paid off and our little garden is flourishing. Aren't we a cute little aspiring hippie couple? It's cool to see our food grow from the tiniest little seed into a huge green plant, and then be able pick the fruits and vegetables from that plant and have homegrown lettuce, peas, and radishes on our dinner table. Here's a little slideshow of the fun...

Lettuce, carefully planted from seed in little pots in the house, cared for diligently by Isaac, and then delicately transplanted into our garden when they were a couple weeks old, hoping the shock from the transplant wouldn't kill them. Good job, Isaac...

...Peas, with a Morgan and a Tommy behind them.

Tomatoes, but they're still green. We have eleven tomato plants with everything from cherry to beefsteak tomatoes and amazingly enough, they're all looking like they're going to produce a nice harvest. We've gotten to eat a couple of the cherry tomatoes and they are better than any tomatoes I've ever had! Isaac's been saying that would be the case all along, but (as usual) I had to see for myself, and (as usual) it turns out that he was right...

...Here's a view of a bunch of things. Potatoes in the very front, Walla Walla sweet onions poking up directly behind, strawberries in the middle row with a rosemary bush on the very left, and the lettuce in the back. Like the tomatoes, the strawberries we've grown taste better than any strawberry I've tasted before. No surprise there.

And last, but not least, the cucumbers. We had to thin them out, which was slightly painful because we'd worked so hard to make sure they all grew (having had to replant them three times), but Isaac did the dirty work while I harvested a bowlful of snap peas so I didn't have to watch. He's definitley the man in this relationship...

There it is, friends. Our little garden. Someday, we'll have a few acres of land with a ridiculously huge garden and an orchard with every kind of fruit tree and berry bush imaginable and we'll look back on this little garden affectionately as the start of one of our dreams. Someday.

When I was a Goose Dancer...

2009-07-10T09:48:00.001-07:00

Holy cow, it's halfway through July already! Okay, maybe not halfway, but I swear time flies by faster and faster all the time. Camp was...amazing. As always. There's nowhere else I'd rather be than at Morrow for the week, hanging with my girlies, soaking up the sun, sliding in the goose grease, attempting my skills at disc golf, kicking Darrin's butt at carpet ball (sort of), sneaking out of the activity with my girls because it's 110 degrees outside and we're too exhausted to play. Ahhh, yes. It doesn't get better than that.

Here's a fun story about that week for you. As this was the longest Isaac and I were going to be apart since we got married, Isaac had planned a bunch of boy stuff to do to keep himself occupied (since he was going to miss me ever so much). Apparently he had an entire week of festivities lined up, so you can imagine his slight frustration when all his plans came to a screeching halt on Sunday afternoon, a mere two days after I had left, because he nearly broke his ankle playing ultimate frisbee. Now, if you know Isaac pretty well, then you know that 1. He never gets hurt. Ever. He could be doing the craziest things with a group of people and every single one of them could get hurt, but he'd be fine. Seriously. And 2. He hates going to the doctor and would self medicate till the day he died in order to avoid having to go. Ha! I finally got to call him on Thursday morning (which was the first I'd heard of any of this because I didn't have a cell phone with me) and found out that he had indeed gone to the doctor because his foot was so bad he thought it was broken. He ended up on crutches, which is an adventure in and of itself as we live on the top floor of an old house with rather steep and narrow stairs, and on top of the stress and pain of his foot, I found out his work had been so busy that he'd been putting in 11 and 12 hour days all week long! Poor Isaac was so exhausted by the end of every day and his foot was so bad that he would just get off work, come home, crutch up the stairs, and go to bed for the night. And of all the weeks this could have happened, it all had to happen the one week I was eight hours away and couldn't be home to take care of him. Not exactly the fun-filled week he'd had planned. Good thing we at least have some good friends up here who stepped in to get him the essentials until I got home. And then, of course, once I got home the next weekend, he was loads better and not needing to be taken care of anymore :) Go figure.

Oh yes, also, I may or may not have been a part of the best act the Talent/No Talent night of camp has ever seen. My fellow Goose Dancers and I interpretive-danced to an emotionally stirring rendition of You Raise Me Up, and I tell you there was not one dry eye in the house. It was beautiful.

To Robin, Victoria, Indigo, Megan, Melanie, Savannah, Carina, Kimberly, and Kimmie...my loves, if you're reading this...I miss you all and had an amazing week with you!

Nicole and Pete! Nicole and Pete!

2009-06-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

Pete and Nicole's wedding was beautiful! Nicole, Isaac's older sister, got married this weekend down in California, so we flew down to take part in the festivities and we had such a good time. As most of you know, Isaac's family is rather large, so his dad rented a ginormous motorhome and they all roadtripped down to Orange where we met up with them and stayed in the beast for the weekend. We weren't down there for long and, unfortunately, June Gloom was in full swing, so we didn't get to enjoy too much of the sunny California weather, but Pete and Nicole got married anyhow and we had some good times with the family. One of the highlights (of the non-wedding part) was that they had dozens of orange trees growing all over the RV Park we were staying at and we were free to pick as many as we wanted. So our breakfasts were mostly fresh oranges just picked from the trees, which is ten times better than any store bought produce. A highlight from the wedding...there was a huge inflatable jumping world for the little kiddos to play in at the reception. We turned away for two seconds and looked back to find two rather large 'kiddos' playing in the jumpie. Yes, Michael and Isaac were in fact in the bouncehouse with shrieking children all around them, having the time of their life. It was pretty ridiculous and hilarious to watch. Another highlight from the wedding...Pete somehow managed to finagle one of the five original BatMobiles as their get away car! Everyone was shocked, but as Isaac quickly reminded me, we were smack dab in the middle of an extremely wealthy part of So Cal, so if the BatMobiles were to be finagled, this would be the place to do it. Another highlight of the wedding...they had dancing for a few hours, which I only like if I'm in the right mood and I wasn't really in a dancing mood that night. As a result, I sat out a lot of the dances with Isaac's sisters and talked with them, but towards the end, I joined Isaac out on the floor and there were three of the most adorable little kiddos - two girls and a little boy - who danced with us for the rest of the night! It turned out to be a lot of fun and I think I have a crush on the little boy. He had to be only three or four, but was just precious. Sigh. Someday we shall have little ones of our own, I suppose.

As for present happenings, strawberry fields are blooming red right now so Isaac and I helped ourselves for ten pounds of fresh strawberries, picked by our own hands, last night. And we're going out for more in the next couple of days. And I leave for camp on Friday, which I am beyond excited about! There truly is nothing that I love more than Camp Morrow. Except Isaac, of course.

For the fruits and roots...

2009-06-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

Building, creating, designing, crafting...these are the things that Isaac loves most. It makes me smile when the weekend comes because I am beyond excited if we have nothing planned and I am free to lie around in the sun reading a good book all day, but not Isaac. He isn't fully satisfied unless he has a project he can work on, and being that we haven't purchased any land yet and therefore have no house to be building, he is relegated to smaller-scale furniture projects for now. Here's his latest from this past weekend...a new shelf/cupboard/storage space for our fruits and roots. Isaac can do anything when it comes to building - he can work completely from scratch, design things all on his own, or take a run down piece of junk and remodel it into something beautiful. The latter was on the docket for this project. We found a pretty hideous old shelf from the re-store, complete with pink floral shelf liners and pepto bismol paint and Isaac went to work. I know I've said this before, but it amazes me the vision that man has. I see something hideous and cannot for the life of me imagine how it could be resurrected into something I would like to have in my kitchen, but Isaac can see hope for the ugliest of ugliest things. Case in point, this pepto bismol shelf. And every other piece of furniture that is currently in our house. Step one was to completely dismantle the thing so he could sand the pink off and then apply a stain to the wood so it could be displayed in its natural beauty. Then he brought it inside to our paint room (aka, the kitchen floor), reassembled it, stained it again, then put several coats of white onto the outside. Then in went the original visionary elements - three old stainless steel locker baskets - and she was complete! Who would have ever guessed the pink shelf was even related to this beauty? The best part is now when I open our cupboard door, sweet potatoes and tomatos no longer come rolling out onto the counter! By the time we actually do get land and can build ourselves a house, at least we know we won't have to spend copious amounts of money building furniture since it will all have been build during the years of waiting...

Um, this is exciting. Isaac Daniel and I are going to the Log Show this weekend! The Log Show! I mean, how much more hick can one get? And the best part is that Isaac's even excited about it. I think he's probably not as excited about the hick part and more excited about the fact that one of the events involves chain saws that have been built with ATV and motorcycle engines, but whatever gets him there is fine with me.

Fitness Fanatics...

2009-06-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

To live in a city that actually values health above the almighty dollar...yes, that is very near to heaven on earth if you ask me. We hung out with the Morgan and the Tommy on Saturday and they had seen this exercise group advertised in the paper earlier that week, had tried it out Saturday morning, and gave it a rave review when we saw them that afternoon. Apparently there is a group of certified fitness trainers who graduated from the technical college up here but still wanted to stay together and train throughout the year, so they started Fitness Fanatics last year in an attempt to accomplish those goals. They get together at various parks four times a week and take whoever shows up through an intense cardio/strength work out for 30-45 minutes...all for free! And it's awesome because it's open to anyone, any age, and any fitness level, and you just come and do as much as you can. I gave it a shot this evening and went with Mo and Tommy and it was most definitely an intense workout. There were about ten of us there, from college age up to a couple women in their forties or fifties. We basically had to run up this hill and as we walked back down it, we had four stations of heavy strength exercises to do, then when we got back down to the bottom, we just turned around and did it all over again. Over and over and over until the head guy called time. I really did think I was relatively in shape since I eat a pretty healthy diet and bike to and from work every day, and I suppose I am relatively in shape, but apparently I'm nowhere near as in shape as I could be. By the end of it, all I wanted to do was either throw up or pass out, or maybe throw up then pass out. But ten minutes later, I was feeling good, like I'd just done something really great for my body. My arms are rather sore from the copious amounts of push-ups we did and I ate an uncharacteristically large amount of dinner tonight, but other than that, my body is exuding the Ahhhh, I'm so glad I worked out so hard post-exercise feeling. It just makes my heart smile that these trainers would give so much of their time freely just to help us live healthier lives.

Now, if only I can just stay motivated enough to keep going every week...

PS. Although it says at the bottom that this was posted by Isaac, don't be fooled. It was indeed not. My beloved husband is one of those people who is just naturally fit and he therefore does not need to exert himself unnecessarily just for the sake of exercise. Lucky. He does bike to work every day and loves to do active things, but even if he didn't do those things, he could pick up and run four miles at any point in time no problem. Not so with me, my friends. Not so with me.

And there were radishes...

2009-06-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well, regardless of the fact that we haven't written a word about our garden for several weeks, it is indeed coming along nicely! The 75 degree weather and constant sunshine we've had for the past two weeks has really made it come alive, and we've determined that we indeed have not failed at gardening. For a while there, we weren't sure at all about it because there was a later frost and some of the seeds just weren't coming up. But we kept at it, replanting with different methods, soaking the seeds previously so their little tails sprouted, mashing bags of compost into the clay soil until finally, success! We have peas, strawberries, onions, potatoes, garlic, radishes, tomatoes, and rosemary all healthy and loving being alive. The cucumbers and lettuce were the two seeds that were really struggling, so we've started the lettuce in a bucket at our house so we can acclimate it to good soil and sunshine before we transplant it into the not-so-good soil at our garden plot. As for the cucumbers, the third round of them were planted about a week ago after two failed attempts, and these are coming up! They're just little babies, so we're ruthlessly murdering any slug we see so they don't eat them all up before they can grow to greater maturity, but we do have great hopes for the little guys! And you can finally see our revamped green houses, too. Not sure if I mentioned it, but apparently our larger greenhouse was blocking our dear neighbor's raspberries from getting full sun, so Isaac kindly accommodated her. Now there are two cute little ones instead of one big one, and due to the sunny weather, they may come down altogether here pretty soon. Here's a picture of the whole community garden, so you can get a feel for where we are. The two plastic greenhouses in the middle are ours and if you click on it to make it larger, you can see Isaac off to the left of the greenhouses watering the other end of our plot.
After our nightly watering yesterday, we harvested our first bunch of radishes, ate a couple when we got home, and plan to use the rest in a salad tonight at dinner. Ahh, the sweet hippie life...gardening barefoot in the mud, getting dirt under your fingernails, and harvesting fresh vegetables that can be stored in your fridge in leafy green bunches instead of the plastic wrap type you get from the store. I will take that life anyday.

In other news, I am three days away from being done with Chem 121! My final is Monday morning, but I'm not too worried as I have studied myself crazy all quarter. Okay, well maybe not crazy, but I've definitely put my time in, that's for sure. I'm taking Chem 122 this summer, but lucky for me it's being offered in an intensive four week period during August, so I have about six weeks of relaxing until then. I'll probably pay for all that relaxation and then some during those four weeks, as I'm sure the stress of shoving nine weeks of material into four is going to be rather high, but looking from this end of things, I'll take the six weeks. Alright, summer vacation...here I come!

The cutest farm ever...

2009-05-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

This is definitely my new favorite of Hannah's creations! A farm with little animals!

Check out her other ones at hannahshomemadefavorites.blogspot.com

Our locals...

2009-05-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

We went for a walk last night, about 9:30 or 10pm, just a stroll in the evening because we weren't quite ready to go to bed yet. As we got closer into downtown, we started hearing strains of live music coming from the outdoors somewhere. It was beautiful, like a huge orchestra, stringed instruments everywhere coupled with some drums. We wandered around a few more blocks, thinking it might be down by the water, and surprisingly walked right past the open door of a tiny little art studio which was most definitely the home of the music. Expecting to see a band, we peeked around the corner to find two guys - one on a drum set and the other holding only a guitar that was apparently making all those orchestra sounds. They invited us in and we joined two other women in the small room as they explained that this was the tail end of an art gallery showing from that evening, and would we care to look around? The lights were dimmed as the guys went back to jamming, completely improvising in the way laid back musicians do, and Isaac and I wandered around the tiny gallery observing the guy's art. When the song finished, the artist (a guy named Dana) came over and struck up a conversation with us and we sat down and chatted for the next few minutes, in the course of which Dana found out Isaac played guitar. As soon as that came out, Dana gestured to his set up of pedals and wires and invited Isaac to go jam. This is what I love. We've never met this guy before tonight, and yet five minutes after stumbling onto his little gallery, we've heard all about what brought him up here, he's heard about our lives and talents, and he's offered Isaac full access to several hundred (if not thousands) of dollars of his equipment. It's like we were his best friends...and not like he was faking it so we'd buy some of his art. He was genuine. So there Isaac goes, up to the 'stage' area, straps on the guitar and starts fiddling with the pedals, volume, making music up as he goes along. And then another guy there jumps on the drums and all of a sudden they're jamming together. The other two girls and I sit ourselves onto the floor to enjoy the show while Dana grabs his camera to document the event. After taking a few pictures, Dana then grabbed his trumpet from behind the drums and started adding his own music to the jam. It was so awesome. So laid back. So friendly and warm. And what's great is that this picture would not be an uncommon one for the 'ham. Our locals are great, truly kind. It's just another day in Bellingham.

I thought I loved you then...

2009-05-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

I could listen to Brad Paisley every day for the rest of my life...love the guy. And I am thrilled to find that he has just outdone himself with his latest single, Then. I mean, I didn't think it could get better than Little Moments, but I am here to tell you that it just did. I may or may not have been listening to this song on repeat for the last two hours while I've been waiting for my love to come pick me up from work.

Now, if only dear Brad would ever make it up to Washington...

In the words of Alex...

2009-05-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

We're headed out this afternoon, over the mountains to the east side cars stuffed full with frisbees, sleeping bags, $300 worth of food, Justin and Alex, and seven high schoolers. Isaac and Justin and their small group are heading up the junior/senior retreat for this year and Alex and I get to go along as the female staff. It's great because it's a small group and we're all really good friends...and we've got no plans. There's a cabin, a lake, plenty of wilderness and wildlife, and lots of sunshine waiting for us and we plan to take full advantage of it. Hiking, swimming, ultimate frisbee, rock climbing, and smores over the fire. Mmmmm, yes please. This is the first youth event I've been on in over a year, so that will be refreshing for me to be able to hang out with my girlies again...and two thirds of the boys' small group(meaning our beloved Ryan and Chris) are graduating this year, so it's kind of a last harrah with them, as well. Unfortunately, it does mean no Sounders game for us this weekend, but we're doing our best to cope with that.

In other news, my third Chem test is today. Like always, I feel like I know the material inside and out, unfortunately, I've felt like that for the past two tests and was unpleasantly surprised to discover my work is apparently only worth a B average. Let's see if this week proves any better. There is a ferocious curve however that's applied at the end of the quarter, and with the D average most of the rest of the class is holding on to, by the end of this I might just come out with a ridiculously high A. Ha! Take that Chem tests!

Well, in the words of Alex, Ciao.

Yes, please...

2009-05-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

Every Saturday afternoon from about 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock, we are soccer players. Isaac's really good. I also am really good, just at different aspects of the game. While Isaac can perfectly control the ball from half way down the field all the way to the goal, I can perfectly laugh, shriek, cheer, and keep team morale high. A bunch of us started getting together to play for fun a couple months ago, and it's just been drawing more and more people in each week. It's awesome because there are people of every skill level (which is obvious since they let me play) and usually there are a handful of girls in the mix as well, so that helps to keep the competition amongst the men reined in a little bit. It's just some good, quality fun that we look forward to each week. The only bummer is when it's an amazingly sunshiney day, and only five of us show up to play, as was the case today. And not only was it just the five of us, it was me and four really good players of the male persuasion. Well, I know my limits. No way was I going to play some scramble of two on three with skill levels as high as they were. My solution? Suntan on the grass for two hours while the boys kicked it amongst themselves, eventually settling on some soccer tennis. Mmmm, spring days in the 'ham. Yes, please. By the way, last week, Mark went to kick a ball exactly like he is kicking this one, only I got to it a split second before he did (which I almost never do purposefully because I prefer my leg bones to stay intact), resulting in a rather large and tender ankle bruise. He does get bonus points, though, for looking ferocious.

Feeling alive...

2009-05-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is what I love.

7:30am, dressed in capris and a tank top, pedaling away from our beautiful house with trees blossoming all over the lawn, headed the four miles into work. The sky is a soft, light blue with the wispiest white clouds spotting the expanse here and there. The sun is peeking up over the buildings, shining that perfect hue of goldenness. The street is dark grey and the buildings of downtown are brick and classy, little hippie shops strewn left and right meshing with the tall, old corner office buildings. Trees are everywhere, blossoms exploding like the ones at our house. Then onto State Street. Warmer and pedaling hard to make the lights in order so I don't have to stop. The bay is on my right the whole way in and on days like today, it's exquisite. The darker blue of the water against the bright blue of the sky, shining where the sun hits it, purple mountains backing it. I see this through the strip of thick green, leafy trees, and green grass two feet high because this is, after all, the northwest. The wind is cold on my skin, but I have warmed up inside, so it's the perfect blend. The breaths I inhale are crisp and clean, the way air is supposed to be. I can feel my heart running laps in my chest, the blood flowing through my body even though it's still early morning. I feel so alive.

Of course, not every day is like this. Take yesterday, for instance, when I arrived at work dripping like a drowned rat that had just ridden through a car wash. But even those days I'm learning to love as well, because they make me feel alive, too. Like I'm out in nature, experiencing nature, soaking it up...the way maybe it was intended to be experienced.

It just feels good. I feel good. And I like that I get to start my mornings out this way.

Enchantingly good looks...

2009-04-27T15:06:00.001-07:00

I'll never give up my impulsiveness, but I will admit that flying standby can be rather stressful and inconvenient at times.

The plan was for me to fly out of Seattle in the morning, for Hannah (my very best friend from all the way back in fourth grade) to fly out of Portland at the same time, and we would both reach Arizona around 2pm if all went well. If all went well. At SeaTac, I found out I would most definitely not be getting on any flights out of there that day, so (to make a long story short) I ended up driving all the way down to Portland, meeting Hannah, then killing five hours doing chemistry while she read until the 5:30pm flight left from Portland. It was definitely nice to get to spend the afternoon with Han and then get to fly down together (especially because this was Hannah's first time on a commercial flight), but it made for a rather exhausting day. However, seeing Mike, Deb, and little Ava when we got off the plane made up for it. She is one cute little baby girl, I'll tell you what. And it was in the 80's, even though it was 8 o'clock at night!

Saturday was great, full of sunshine on our faces, relaxing, playing with little Ava, hanging with Mike and Deb, walking around town, lying in the backyard. Just a perfect 82 degree day of doing nothing but having fun. I know I will always live in the northwest, but the constant sunshine is a vacation I will never tire of, that's for sure. Due to scheduling, Saturday was our only full day down there, and we were ready to head back home on a 7:30am flight Sunday morning. Before we went to bed, Deb checked the flight status and found that the flights (all of them for that day) were all of sudden completely booked with several standbys on each of them already signed up. This has never happened before for me flying standby, so I wasn't expecting not being able to get a flight home, but there wasn't much we could do except go to the airport in the morning and hope a bunch of people missed their flights so we could have their seats. Turns out, a bunch of seats came open the next morning (we think God pulled some strings), so we got on (sigh of relief), said our goodbyes to Arizona, and came home. Of course, I had to fly back into Portland instead of Seattle since my car was there, so I had to drive all the way back home from there, which meant that I was completely exhausted, rather crabby (okay, really crabby), and in dire need of sleep by the end of it all, but I suppose thus is the life of a vegabond. Or maybe it's just the life of an impulsive, last-minute, standby trip down to Arizona. Well, no matter...Deb, Hannah, Mike, Ava, it was an absolute pleasure to spend the weekend with you! And Ava, thank you for assuring me with your enchantingly good looks that yes, indeed, we have great baby-making genes on both side of our little family. Jayden, Daelyn, and Ava are quite possibly the three most adorable little girlies I have ever seen. The cards seem to be in our favor, Isaac Daniel.

I've been told I'm rather impulsive...

2009-04-21T10:05:00.001-07:00

Like, the minute I decide I want to cut my hair, Saturday is too long to wait for an appointment with Jama (even though she's my favorite), so I'll spend all afternoon calling around to every salon in town trying to find one with an appointment today because it just has to be done immediately. And the morning I decided it was time to get my nose pierced, the work day could not go fast enough, and when it finally dragged to 3:59, I was out the door so fast on my way to the parlor. If it's time for a new sundress, it must be attained that day if I want to avoid major disappointment. Go figure I married a man who could contemplate a potential purchase for weeks, making sure he has researched all possible qualities and types before finally (and painstakingly slowly, if you ask me) making the purchase. If he even wants it anymore by that time.

I like to believe my impulsiveness has brought a nice breath of fresh air into his life.

My latest rash plans have set the stage for an incredibly fun weekend. I've been wanting to go visit my sis down south at some point this summer, and last Friday, amidst trying to find a date that worked for both of us, I realized this coming weekend was relatively open for me. Turns out it was open for Deb as well, and with her working for the airlines, she booked me a quick spot on a plane coming down Friday. Then we got the bright idea to invite my best friend and Deb's other 'little sis' Hannah to come as well. Kind of crazy since we would be giving her about five days notice, she'd be flying on her own from a different airport than I was, and we're both flying standby so Deb will have to be coordinating everything if either one of us gets bumped to a later flight. But what the heck, we said. Let's give it a shot. So we called her up and, after recovering from the initial shock, Han agreed, so we're all set to go. Just three more days!

So, upon reflection of my ways, I have concluded that I shall not relinquish my impulsivity lest I take away the fun I can have flying by the seat of my pants. Take that, world!

2009-04-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

There is a place in Oregon that sits on the edge of a lake, land covered in thousands of green trees, trails, dirt roads, and rustic buildings. When you breathe, you're inhaling the smell of dry pine needles and fresh, country air. It's one of the few places in my life where I can go and as soon as I turn off the main road onto the property, I am completely at peace. I am home. I grew up going to this summer camp from third grade all the way through high school, began working on dish crew as soon as I was old enough, graduated to cabin leader the summer of my ninth grade year (for the younger kiddos, of course) and spent the rest of my high school summers ditching paid jobs to volunteer as many weeks as I could cabin leading out at camp. I lived though the school year counting the days until summer came and I could go back out to camp. I just loved it.

It's the kind of camp that is pretty small-town, so there were a lot of the same staffers there every year, and we just became family. I started with little girls as my campers in 4th or 5th grade, and got to see them grow up and mature and become cabin leaders themselves. Some of them are even on staff currently! There's a large part of my soul that will always belong there.

And now I finally get to go back. I've been away for several years, after I went off to college as staying up here in the summers meant I needed to be working, which meant less opportunities to make the trek back to camp for a couple of weeks, and I just kind of moved on with my life. But a couple weeks ago the calling back to camp was stronger than I've experienced yet in all the years I've been gone, so I started researching possibilities that I might return once again this summer, and the (very) short story of it is that it all miraculously worked out! I'm going back to cabin lead for a high school camp this summer! I actually had a dream about it last night, I've been so incredibly excited.

Ah, camp. Where I've french braided endless amount of girlies' hair. Where hundreds of geese fly every summer just to poop on the playing field. Where Jo, Kayla, and Amanda were once my little campers. Where I taught volleyball for two years, even though it was never one of my sports in high school...ha! Where I started my first (and only) forest fire. Where I almost beat Alex in a fuse ball tournament...almost. Where counselors hide in trash bags inside the already-full dumpster regularly for counselor-hunt. So gross. Where Jack imparted years of wisdom to us all and showed us how to love well. Where the cup game is definitely not allowed to be part of FOB time, but my cabin does it anyway. Where some of my best memories, times, and people are.

I'm finally going back home.

Words for my heart...

2009-04-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

Isaac and I drove out to the docks to watch the sunset a few days ago. It had been a perfect blue-sky day, and white, puffy clouds had rolled in just in time to accent the sunset with brilliant golds and purples...it was one of the first days that really seemed like spring had arrived. It was really just a regular day, nothing out of the ordinary, just work, then home, dinner with the husband, then a sunset stroll on the way to the store. But sitting in the car on the dock, watching the sky, I felt God talk to my spirit. There are people, probably the majority of people I would guess, who never feel like they experience God speaking to them, but for some reason I've always known when God was talking to me, always been able to recognize when the thoughts in my heart weren't originating from myself. And it's always with a total surety that the voice is the Lord's. That's just how I was made, I guess. Out there on the docks, God told me that my year of rest, my sabbatical of sorts, was coming to a close.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about resting. I was stressed and overwhelmed with a number of things; I had molded my life in a way that entailed non-stop giving of myself, my time, my support to others, and I just didn't have anything left to give anymore. I was empty and exhausted, consumed with my own struggles that at times threatened to take over my life...literally. I ended my time volunteering with the youth up here at church, I declined any and every invitation to serve in any sort of ministry opportunity, I did nothing but work my eight hours, then come home free of any responsibilities and relaxed, read for fun, took walks, played with friends. I just enjoyed existing, free of any guilt that I wasn't giving enough to others, and concentrated only on making it through each day. I knew God had released me freely into that sabbath of sorts, and in the same way I can feel God speak to me, I knew he would let me know when he had filled me up enough to be able to give to others again.

That's when he met me on the docks the other day. I hadn't even been thinking of anything related to the resting at the time, but all of a sudden I just knew that my year was coming to a close - and not that it was coming to a close whether or not I was ready for it, but that it was coming to a close because God had restored me and calmed the year's raging seas to the point where I was full enough to once again have something extra I could give to those around me.

It was kind of like my rainbow after the flood. Not promising that floods will never come again, but just shining color onto me as a celebration that these flood waters had receded and new life was appearing once again.

Not that all my struggles are gone, not by any means. Not that I am done resting and am planning to jump back into intense volunteering right away. More like, I'm just ready to begin to look outside of myself again and see people around me that I can love.

And I am so ready for that.

Chemistry, as I've decided...

2009-04-06T16:35:00.000-07:00

Chemistry, I've decided, is not as hard as I've always dreaded. Which is nice, because if you've heard me loathe sciences at any point during the past twelve years, you know that I've seriously dreaded anything that involves a lab. However, I'm convinced that this time around my 'nerd adult-student' card should get me through quite nicely. I swear I study more now than I ever did back in college when I was taking a full load. Oh, the irony.

So, last week we planted our garden! Peas, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, swiss chard, two kinds of onions, potatoes, strawberries, radishes and garlic. Tomatoes and cucumbers will come in a few more weeks when the weather's gotten a little warmer. It's great to be done with the bulk of the manual labor with the garden and just get to sit back and wait for things to spring up. I'm still amazed that so much food comes out of one tiny, little seed. And whole trees come from those tiny little seeds! Speaking of amazingness, we learned in Chemistry today that if you set all the atoms present in one gram of Chlorine side by side, they would stretch all the way to a star outside of our solar system and back. Holy cow! My mind can't even comprehend that...and that's just in one gram of Chlorine! Prepare for this, my friends, I shall be spouting fascinating facts from my newly learned mind from here on out in these posts, I'm sure. Be forewarned.

Anyway, I think I have pictures of the planting of the garden, but really, it looks no different than the last ones we put up since they're all underground, so I'll post more when it looks interesting.

Happy sun!

The mullett...

2009-03-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

It was 80's night at youth group last night. Ha! This is Dan, the youth pastor, and Isaac, the mullet king. So gross.

Of coffee shops and books...

2009-03-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

I am on vacation. Yes, a vacation. One where I have absolutely nothing planned, nowhere to go, no one to see. Just three free days of no class and no work. Of sleeping in and lazing around. Of biking around town just for the fun of it. Of coffee shops with good books, and baking until our cupboards are bare. Of Sweet Home Alabama and thick down comforters to snuggle in while I watch. Of cleaning house, and gardening. Of rest.

This, my friends, is a very nice thing which I plan to enjoy to the fullest.

Calling a spade a spade...

2009-03-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

First things first, I have completed my first quarter back to school! And with flying colors, I might add. Nine weeks of going straight from work to class, then straight home to homework and the Nutrition class online. But alas, the end has arrived...for a mere ten days, albiet, but nevertheless, it has arrived! And we've brought in my vacation from school with style - a nearly completed garden! (I do apologize for the farcical amount of exclamation points in this post thus far, but I must confess these happenings are extremely exciting to our little family.) So without further ado, may we present our garden...

Saturday, 1pm. There she is, looking like she hasn't been touched for months, cold, neglected, piled with an array of garbage and rusted, old tools. But she's ours.

Being that we most definitely do not live south of any border that would ensure us warm sun throughout the summer, and also being that I am married to a man who eats tomatoes like they were candy, we decided we would be needing a greenhouse to foster our many tomato species we are intending to grow. Now while procuring a greenhouse may appear to be a rather large and complex endeavor for some of us, let's just remember that my husband is a creative genius and a jack of all trades. Put that together and we've got ourselves a homemade greenhouse assembled in about an hour! Man, I love that boy.

Saturday, 1:48pm. It starts with spading, which is the fancy term for digging up and turning incredibly wet and muddy soil using only your bare hands and an old fashioned shovel. I did that sweaty deed while Isaac used his muscles to pound the pvc pipe stakes into the ground. Okay, he might have helped me a little bit.

Saturday, 2:23pm. Up goes the frame...just pvc pipe all connected together at the top to a straight piece of pipe with little parts that the 'walls' fit into.

Saturday, 2:35pm. Next is the plastic, first on the ends, then a big sheet over the entirety of the frame. These are held on by those black clips that are actually just pieces of washer pipe that Isaac cut and slit so they would fit snugly over the pvc. Genius.

Saturday, 2:51. Then the real work started, shoveling (spading, if you will) the remainder of our plot. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but our plot is 400 square feet, which may not seem that big, when when you are the one who gets to till the soil by hand...let's just say we were glad we only got the two plots instead of the four that we originally thought about. We didn't take any more pictures of our handywork on Saturday, but ended up shoveling for another hour and a half or so before heading home. Then today we came back to finish the job. I came out for an hour or so while Isaac was leading middle school worship and started the spading again, gaining about another five feet I'm proud to say. After lunch, Isaac joined me back at the plot and we rolled up our sleeves to show nature how it's done.

Sunday, 1:45pm. Isaac starts by finishing up a door on our trusty greenhouse while I...any guesses here? Yes, took up spading once again. Apparently that's all one does when one has a garden.

Sunday, 2:13pm. Isaac built us a nice little fence so our friends, the deer, don't come munching on our produce. I, of course, continued spading. You see, I'd gotten so good at it after the past three hours of it...

Sunday, 3:49pm. And there, ladies and gentlemen, is what we had to show for our hours of physical toil. I say 'we' because after he finished the fence, Isaac grabbed a shovel and came to help out and to my relief, he turned out to be twice as fast at manual labor as I am. Imagine that. Also, I must point out that, although we neglected to take a picture, this was not our finished soil. After the spading, we went back through and hoed it to death into teeny tiny pieces, lest our hard work go uncredited. And with the clay-tasticness of our soil, I'm sure that wasn't the last time we'll be hoeing up that dirt before we can plant.

3:53. There she is. Our beautiful garden.

3:54. And there we are. Beautiful newlyweds. Tired, but happy. Well, at least I appear to be happy. Isaac is to, I promise. And with these parting words, I do want to add that the spading turned out to be quite enjoyable. There's something about tilling your own soil, putting your sweat, time and energy into working the land that will, in the end, feed you. We loved our time spent on our garden these past two days, as I'm sure we'll love the subsequent days this spring and summer continuing to prepare, plant, weed, and harvest our garden. And someday, we'll have a garden four times as large and on our own land.

And what a glorious day that will be.

I promise...

2009-03-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

My thoughts will be back soon.
Love, Bec

My 8 hours

2009-03-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

This is Isaac. I have never posted on this blog before, though I am in theory 1/2 of it's subject matter. The reason for this is that I seldom have the desire to display my musings on the internet to be read and misconstrued by family and friends. Today I am sharing part musing, part tour. I used to be a campus tour guide at WWU so hopefully I haven't lost my touch. You'll be touring my work, so you can see where I put my 8 hours in. Most of our family and friends know that I am a graphic designer and that I design and supervise the production of planners. Now you can also see where it happens.

If you click on the image it will get larger, but undoubtedly you can see already that I work in a land of cubicles. The sun is fluorescent light and the earth is light blue stiff carpet, and the trees and cliffs are padded beige cube walls which are aligned in a predictably linear fashion. The good news is that there is plenty of fresh water in this professional environment, and trips to the community water hole almost always ensure interaction with other inhabitants.

My part of this beige land is right here. I actually have 7 or 8 other desks too. I dont' work on all of them at once. In the summer our work gets so busy that I hire 7 or 8 more people to help. The other desks are for those people. I have an invasive species of paperwork that always tries to have it's run of the place. I spend time every day weeding and pruning it down so that it is manageable.

Next to my desk I have a window through which is see another place, a green, fresh world that is alive, organic, and raining. When my eyes tire of the computer screen I turn and gaze at this world. From my window I notice inhabitants from my land straying out into the sodden landscape, they cluster in little groups and stand smoking and shivering. Occasionally other inhabitants emerge from the woods. I don't know where they come from. Do they live in the woods? Once I saw one trying to hide a large knife in his sleeve. I don't go in the woods.

Occasionally I go out into the organic world to take a walk. When I do then I often wind through a neighborhood and take a friendlier trail which is well traveled, beautiful, and has no evidence of inhabitants with sharp objects. It takes about 15 minutes round trip and I return to my beige environment feeling much warmer then when I left.

I enjoy my job, and the place I work is very pleasant, but I'm often struck with the rigid gray structure of modern work environments, and contrasting that with the terrestrial was my aim in today's post. Thanks for reading, -Isaac

What a glorious day...

2009-02-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

Weather-wise, that is. And I would, of course, not be talking about today as it is rather dull and gloomy in the out of doors this afternoon. But a couple days ago it was glorious indeed! Glorious enough to hit up our summer stomping grounds with Mo, Tommy, and Cody. We still had to bundle up but the sky was perfectly blue and the sun was beaming down on us the whole time! It's technically a beach, I suppose, but it's more like a long stretch of rocks to climb and trees to explore around, all with the most incredible view of the sound you've ever seen. The boys started bouldering immediately while Mo and I just sat and soaked up the sunshine...until our legs about froze off and we headed back to our warm houses because, after all, it is still winter up here. Speaking of winter, we had this schizophrenic snowstorm day before yesterday completely out of the blue, dumping several inches on us and then melting all away the next day. I am officially done with snow and ready for summer. No more scarves, hats, and jackets in order to go outside and enjoy the earth.
I made something cool today...granola! Isaac and I both love granola, and we had tried to make some a couple months ago, but the batch didn't end out that well and we haven't gotten around to trying again. But I acquired that secret stash of gluten-free oats a few weeks ago and have been craving a good granola like crazy, so I searched and searched through recipes, found one that looked fairly decent, and succeeded in making the best tasting granola I've ever eaten! I suppose that could partially be affected by my monstrous granola cravings since I've been deprived of it for nearly a year, but Isaac attested to its goodness. I think the key was using a little bit of several different natural sweeteners...honey, maple syrup, molasses, and cane sugar, which gave it a full-bodied flavor instead of being overpowered by one alone.

We're off to Saturday soccer, another little reminder that spring is right around the corner!

Up, and up, and up, and up....

2009-02-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

I married a very athletic, outdoorsy man. I also love the outdoors, and enjoy being active, but my level of athleticism doesn't even hold a candle to Isaac's. I'm fairly positive he could just pick up and run five miles easily, even though he's not a runner. I, on the other hand, take a while to work up to being in shape. It's just not fair that guys (from my observance) can take a week or two break from working out and then pick up where they left off no problem when girls (me, in particular) stop working out for three days and seem to be right back at square one. Not fair. Anyway, my point is that these days I don't get that much exercise due to the long hours of class and studying in the evening, so I'm not in the best shape I've ever been in. But we wanted to go snowshoeing on Saturday, and I figured I could man up and keep up with the boys. It was Isaac and me and our friends, Brian and Robby, and God gave us a gloriously blue-sky, sunshiney day for our adventure. Brian and I were the rookies at snowshoeing, but it's not hard to catch on to...really, it's just like hiking but with big pieces of plastic on your feet. It's actually really fun, and I came prepared to fully enjoy the day despite 20 degree weather and freezing cold snow. If you recall, I don't do well in the cold, so I had thick wool socks, spandex, snow pants, and three more layers under my coat. About 20 minutes into the hike, I realized that was about three more layers than I was going to need. I had no idea the day would ever come when I would be at the top of a mountain, covered in snow, with super low temperatures surrounding me, and I would be too hot. Never in a million years. But let me tell you, we were shredding layers quickly as the incline got steeper and steeper.

So, I thought we were going to this well-known hiking spot that seriously everyone you talk to has been hiking at, so I wasn't thinking it was going to be that difficult at all. I mean, if all these other people do it all the time, I could do it no problem. It's something I definitely have to keep in mind because I knew these guys were all three in really good shape. I thought I had my bases covered, but the trail just kept getting steeper and steeper and I began to wonder how out of shape I must really be if I am getting out of breath on a trail that everyone hikes. Little did I know...It wasn't until we reached to tippy-top of the pass that Isaac casually informed me that, no, this actually wasn't the hike I had been thinking of. It was all in the same area, but he had decided to hike this specific mountain instead. Funny man. I don't even think this hike made him that out of breath.

The end of the story is that is I didn't die, although I may or may not have felt like I was going to pass out a couple of times because my heart was beating so hard. And with any hike, once you get to the top, it's an easy trip home! And it strangely feels like it was totally worth it once you heart has a chance to regulate again. This is us at the top, although I am aware that it doesn't look very high at all from this picture. Yes, looks can be deceiving. It really was fun and we had a great time together. Happy Valentine's Day to us!

My glutenous desires...

2009-02-15T17:16:00.000-08:00

I'm baking bread again, and it smells amazing. It's been so long, too long, since I've made a loaf and I've been in withdrawls. I'm actually making two kinds today. We got a sourdough starter from Alex who got it from an island local nearby, and it's amazing! Lex has been trying for quite some time to create a sourdough starter that produced the perfect sourness, but this is the first one that's seemed truly authentic. She was nice enough to pass it along to us, so Isaac's been 'feeding' it every day and our first loaf is rising as we speak. I can't eat it, of course, but I did sneak the tiniest bite of Lex's loaf that she made because it smelled too good to resist. There's a loaf for me presently baking in the oven, a rustic seed bread, 100% gluten free and made 100% from scratch. My mouth is watering just thinking of it. Some people say their desire for bread just diminishes after a few months of no gluten, but it couldn't be more opposite for me. I keep waiting for that day, but it's been nearly a year and I still crave almost daily a thick slice of fresh, warm, homemade bread.

Speaking of homemade, or at least homegrown, our bucket garden is flourishing! Way to go, baby! The right is lettuce, the middle are radishes, and the left are carrots, growing taller and stronger every day. We tasted a little bit of the lettuce this morning and it was so good, delicate, fresh, just like a young lettuce leaf should taste. We fear a little bit for our carrots and radishes, as they started out with not enough light, which made them grow tall and skinny really quickly, so they might end up pretty long and narrow instead of short and fat. But if that's the case, we'll just try again. You can even see one of our radishes! It's fun to see it grow more every day. And it still amazes me that our food all grows from the tiniest little seed.

Our little jungle is flourishing as well. We only have one good sun-window in our house (in the kitchen), so our plants tend to end up clustered around it so they can get their vitamin D, too. We affectionally call that spot our jungle. The newest addition is a pink rose bush from my dad for Valentine's day...thanks, Dad! It adds a good brightness among all the green. This afternoon the sun was streaming in through the jungle, lighting all the plants up, looking so beautiful, and making us excited for the day when we get to build our own house with as many south-facing windows as we can stuff in there. Yes! Yes!

Mmmmm, can you smell the bread yet?

So, remember all the birthdays? Yeah, I forgot one. Chris turned 18 yesterday! He's a real person, finally. We went over to Chris' to celebrate with him and partake in a Deborah-feast, which you don't ever want to miss if you get the chance. His mom is a fantastic cook and his birthday meal was a spread of different Ethiopian foods...so good! African peanut stew, rice, lentils, chicken, so many dishes. Here's Chris, by the way, with his beautiful girlfriend. We ended up playing the same game we played when my old small group was over, and it was hilarious yet again.

I'll tell you what, it's really nice to be able to find a way to balance studying time and fun with friends time. The nights out are especially nice so I don't end up spending my entire life with my nose in the books.

Ahhh, yes, the bread has come out of the oven. It is presently steaming and soaking in some butter. I am complete once again.

2009-02-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

Our friend Brian had a birthday last week! And we had a party. Birthdays have been happening like crazy over the past month, by the way. Both Isaac's dad and my dad, Molly, Alexandra, Morgs, Tommy, Kristina (whom I never called to wish happy birthday, by the way...sorry, friend), and now Brian. Isaac made a feast of Pad Thai and the friends rolled in. Brian's the one on the left, by the way, in the picture with Isaac. This was the first time we've had that large of a crowd over to our little apartment, but it turned out to be the perfect blend of size and coziness. The first couple of hours were filled with our friends from college, old roommates, fellow youth workers, and just about the time that group was heading out, our old small group kiddos (who aren't kiddos anymore) were heading in. For those of you who don't know, I used to lead a small group with Brian and his older brother Stephen a couple years ago through our church. We took over the group when the students were sophomores and juniors and saw them through graduation, so as you can imagine, we're pretty fond of them. We lived a lot of life together and were a pretty tight knit group. Now they're almost sophomores and juniors in college, and a lot of them stayed around here to go to school so we still get to see them around. As the sappy girl leader, I can say that I'll love those kids forever, even if they have grown up to become adults now. Anyway, about 8:30 or so our old small group rolled in and we had ourselves a hilarious evening of craziness and laughter. We played this game that's a mix of Taboo and Guestures, and oh did it bring me back to Monday nights at the Conovers. Here's a little slice of our life...

Jake Carlson, ladies and gentlemen...

This is Becky, the other Becky, whom I love...

And Katy, spelled with a 'y,' whom I also love. Little known fact: Katy knows every Starbucks barista in our town. Every single one.

Dustin exists to prove that white men can dance....

Remember that one time you guys put the sardine's in Becky's car??

The photoshoot ended after this one because Jake split Dustin's lip open with this move. And Nat's the guy in between Jake and Brian, in case you were wondering.

Happy Birthday, dear Brian!

My dilemma...

2009-02-01T08:40:00.000-08:00

I woke up today to a really cold house. This might be no big deal for some of you, but being cold is really hard for me...as in, it makes me crabby, irritable, and uncomfortable. You might even say it's physically painful for me to be cold. During our dating, Isaac quickly adopted Justin's long-time manta of, "Warm wife, happy life," and it has followed us into marriage, equaling to a house that Isaac lets me keep at 70 degrees (which, believe it or not, still feels cold to me at times). So you can see what a bit of a shock it is to my mood when I awake to a furnace that has apparently stopped working again...yes, again. This is the third time it has broken in the past month and a half. The first time was in December when we finally discovered it was leaking ridiculously high amounts of carbon monoxide into our house, so it got shut off for two weeks while they replaced it with a new one. They brought in space heaters, but let's just say space heaters are slightly more expensive than our old furnace was. As in gouge my eye out more expensive. Then a few weeks later, the new heater stopped working as well and we were without heat for a couple days while our landlords fixed it. That was a mere two weeks ago.

Fastforward to this morning. Isaac had gotten up and left early to go snowboarding, so it was just me when I woke up in the iceberg. I mentioned I hate being cold, but I really hate waking up and being freezing cold with no way to get warm. I fiddled with the heater again, but to no avail. I actually almost started crying, I was so frustrated that this was happening again to us. Or to me, more specifically, since Isaac doesn't mind the cold nearly as much.

So here I am, sitting on our bedroom floor next to the only wall heater we have, waiting for our landlord to bring us more space heaters once again, and I have a dilemma. My first inclination is to be annoyed at our landlords for not fixing the heater well enough last time and even more annoyed because it's really their heater that keeps breaking down, and we are the ones who have to pay the extra heating costs. But I also hear this small voice inside me whispering that having heat is a blessing, and the words spoiled American keep coming to my mind. What about the millions of people, both in America and around the world, who are cold constantly in the winter months because they can't afford a constant heating system like we have? Or maybe they don't even have a roof over their heads to give them shelter from the freezing temperatures. There are so many who go without basic needs, and here I am with all of my needs met and most of my wants met as well, complaining because my heater went out and I have to be colder for a few hours. Sure, we pay a little extra this month for heat, but at least we have heat, and we have landlords who immediately bring over space heaters, even if it's Sunday morning and they're not working.

I suppose the dilemma is a simple one - be thankful for what I have and how I've been blessed, or be angry because I'm spoiled, slightly inconvenienced and think I deserve better.

It's tough trying to live unselfishly and joyfully sometimes. Ooope, there's the doorbell...

Did I mention that it's cute?

2009-01-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

If you hate children, this post is not for you.

I work at a church, which in and of itself means I am surrounded by lots of people with adorable little kids all the time. Plus, there's a school for babies through fifth grade in the church as well during the week, so I get my fair share of cute children romping the grounds. But I have two favorites that I must share. The first happens every morning when this precious little girl named Gabriella walks through the doors with her daddy on the way to the school. Every morning, without fail, she stops outside my window, waits for me to open it, stares up at me with her big, shy eyes, and says "Good morning" in the cutest little three-year old voice, usually followed by lots of giggles. Then if I'm lucky, she'll follow with, "Do you like my pretty dress?" as she twirls around for me. Like I said, she's precious.

And then there are Wednesdays, which are mostly for my boys. There's a Bible study that happens at the church Wednesday mornings, and Andrea brings her little crew of kiddos that she watches at her daycare so she can go to the study. Every Wednesday her big van pulls up, the doors open, and her kids run pell-mell into my office, shouting, "We're going to see Becky! We're going to see Becky!" It's funny because I don't even know half of their names, they just know I give hugs, so they run their cute little pudgy faces in to see me before they go to the playroom. The past few weeks have been especially cute because with all this rain, Andrea has them all in little rain boots...one pair of crocodile boots, one of ladybugs, one in bright pink, one pair of fireman's boots, most of them inevitably on the wrong foot.

It's just cute.

Just like the Lovemelons...

2009-01-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

I miss working with the youth at church. Winter retreat is this weekend for them, so I saw them all off after work on Friday and I really just wanted to jump in the vans with them. It's the same with my girls from The Dalles...once they're my girls, they're always my girls and a part of my heart will always miss being with them. Sigh. Isaac went with them, though, so at least half of us got to go. (Here's a picture of our beloved youth leadership team from the Red Carpet Night...I can't find any with my girls at the moment) I, on the other hand, have spent nearly all of last night and a good chunk of today learning about how our body's metabolism functions as well as learning how complex conjugates of imaginary numbers work. Thrilling, I assure you. I did get a 98% on my first pre-cal quiz last week, though, which is rather encouraging.

I took a little homework break today to go celebrate Mo and Tommy's birthdays, which are both next week and let me tell you, we were definitely the neighborhood's entertainment. We met with Mo's family on a nearby field and played a rousing game of kickball, but the best part is that we came in style! Back in college, a bunch of our friends played intramural sports together on such teams as the Lovemelons, and Team We Won That One Time, which began a long-standing tradition of playing in ridiculously colorful sporting outfits. And today was no exception. Here's a pic of the gang. Mo's brother Mitch would flex and give off low-picthed growls to all the random people who would pass. So awesome!

In other news, we bought a garden! Well, sort of, anyway. Our parks and rec has three community gardens available with plots for year-long renting, and Isaac got us two plots for this coming spring...something like 120 square feet, which is much larger than last year's little backyard garden we had. Which means we're going to have a much, much larger crop of fresh vegetables this year! Here's what it looks like right now...I'll admit, very dismal in the dead of winter, but once we get a chance to do a little work on it and make it our own, she'll be looking quite homey. It's perfect for us because in our little rental, there's no land around it to garden in except for a strip of dirt about four feet long and one foot wide, which now we can use for a little flower garden. Oh spring, do come quickly.

Technically adorable...

2009-01-18T12:01:00.002-08:00

It's Sunday morning and I'm sitting in the back of the middle school youth group room at church watching an incredible show put on my Isaac and his band. He's been leading worship at middle school youth group (as well as high school, and main service, but middle school is consistently every week) for the past few years and it's about that time in the year where he's got to start raising up some of the younger ones to be on the team as the older ones will be in high school shortly. So last week he had worship 'tryouts' just to see which of the kiddos had any musical interests or talents, and much to our surprise, there was quite the turnout of aspiring musicians. This morning's worship is the first week that some of them are incorporated and it is very fun to watch. I would use the word 'adorable' to describe it, but in all fairness, these are teenagers, or at least almost teenagers, so they probably wouldn't appreciate that description. There's Jess on the bass, standing a little above four feet tall, looking very cool with his sweatshirt hood pulled up. I think his guitar is about as long as he is tall, but he's rocking away. Gina's doing a great job singing with a musical voice I never would have thought she had. Riley, who comes up to about Isaac's elbow, is singing as well and is oh, so enthusiastic. Gabe's on the keys, Ian's on the drums, Nate's on the electric - these three have been at it for a while, so they're holding the team together. And there's Isaac, in the middle of all of them with his guitar, leader of the band. It really is adorable, even though I know I'm being girly. It's pretty awesome to get to watch Isaac love and invest in these students through this worship team. These kids love him and look up to him so much, and they love that he gives them the opportunity to practice their instruments on stage, even if they're not always perfect at it yet. It makes me so proud of Isaac to get to see his impact on these kids' lives.

Ha! Now they're having a dance-off as their game! Guy against girl. Hilarious! I love middle school.

Our Day...

2009-01-14T15:31:00.000-08:00

We haven't had much of a chance to edit our pictures yet, but here are a few we wanted to share with you anyway.

Cantankerous...

2009-01-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got my first canker sore...ever. I say this not to gross you out but only to help set the backdrop for my stressful Tuesday.

Scene one: work. My beloved partner in the office, Tina, got another job last Friday and is leaving by the end of this week. Together we administrate the entire church, as well as individually administrate for six pastors on staff. It's a big job, and one I cannot do alone, yet I will be doing it alone for at least the next month while they decide about who to hire to replace her, or if they're even going to hire a replacement. Needless to say, things have been pretty crazy around here, my workload has doubled, and I am going non-stop from 8-4 every day.

Scene two: school. So, I am loving what I'm learning in school, but I have to say, it's taking an awful lot of time to be a student. I get home at 5:30, eat dinner, and basically study for the next four hours every day of the week (except for Saturdays, my Sabbath, and my saving grace). That being said, it takes some good planning ahead for me to be able to participate in a social event on any given evening as that would cut away my necessary homework time. It doesn't happen often, mostly I just don't hang out with anyone except for Isaac during the week, but our couples' dinners have been going on for a year and a half so they are my one social event that takes priority. Plus, yesterday's was at our house, so there's not much of an option for me except to host and do homework later. I knew this couples' dinner was coming a week ahead of time, so I worked really hard this weekend and Monday night to get ahead in my studies. I got all my Nutrition reading done that I would have had to do on Tuesday, and I did the two hour math assignment that would have been assigned as well...which actually turned into more like a three hour math assignment since I did it before we got the lecture on it. So, I was feeling pretty good as I drove to the college yesterday, trying to recover from the stress of the work day. Then, much to my dismay, my professor was still sick from this weekend and instead of cancelling class again, she found a sub which is the worst thing that can happen in a math class. He did his best, bless his heart, but no one understood anything he was trying to explain. Then he topped it off with giving us a completely different homework assignment then what had originally been assigned! I felt like crying. A total waste of a class, then a two hour homework assignment based off a lecture that made absolutely no sense to me, and all this after I had worked ahead so I would have the evening free for couples' dinner. Sigh.

Isaac says canker sores come from stress. And no wonder. I was able to make it to bed by 11:30 last night, which is late for me, but not the end of the world. And we did have a really relaxing time with our friends during dinner. So the day was not a complete loss. However, this morning I awoke with a new goal in mind...no more stress. I'm going to take one day at a time, every minute at a time. Slowly, enjoying where I'm at, not stressing if I have a lot left to do, just taking it one step at a time.

Hold me to it, friends.

Hydroponic sweatshirts...

2009-01-11T14:34:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned that Isaac's an artist? Okay, just kidding. He and Justin put their creativity skills to the max in their Christmas creations for their small group boys. They screen-printed cannons onto sweatshirts for all of them, and I must say Alexandra and I were very impressed. I'm not sure if we've told you guys about the infamous cannon, but let's just say it's brought deeper joys to that small group than anything else. One of the projects a while back together was to build an air cannon out of pvc pipe and they've since spent their time seeing how far they can launch whatever things they find into whatever things will create the biggest boom. So fun. So their gift to Ryan, Chris, and Tim were custom-designed sweatshirts, which they all loved and will, from here on out, simultaneously wear anytime they are together. How cute.

Isaac's also experimenting with growing plants hydroponically. He read a lot about it and discovered that plants don't actually need soil to grow in; soil is just the medium for getting the plant the nutrients it needs to survive. But if you can get the nutrients to the plant in another way, the you can grow things without the soil. So he built a planter set up to continuously drop water down the tube, sprouted some wheat grass, 'planted' the seeds without any soil in the tube, and let it grow for a week to see what happened. And it flourished! Technically, the way we did it will only work for wheat grass because it grows so quickly that it can get really big even if it isn't getting any nutrients outside of the water. I think when we try to grow another more complex plant hydroponically, we'd have to find a way to get it more nutrients, but the wheat grass was a fun experiment. Then we juiced it and drank it, and it tasted so much sweeter than any commercial wheat grass I've had.

Hinds' Feet...

2009-01-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

So, I've been reading this book as of late called, Hinds' Feet for High Places. It's one of those classics I've heard about for quite some time but never read, probably because I had no idea what a hind was, thus the title made no sense. Well, I finally got around to reading, and I am glad I did. That book has spoken some deep truths to me this past week. It's about a little girl named Much Afraid and her journey to go live with the King of Love on the High Places. It's very obviously a Christian allegory, which normally would turn me off pretty quickly, but for some reason this book was different. I guess sometimes it's the seemingly obvious truths that are the easiest to forget, and therefore, the most important to reinforce, and I needed them reinforced in my life. I wanted to share a few quotes from the book with you...

"Every circumstance in life, no matter how crooked and distorted and ugly it appears to be, if it is reacted to in love and forgiveness and obedience to your will, it can be transformed."

"That is the only really satisfactory way of dealing with evil, not simply binding it so that it cannot work harm, but whenever possible overcoming it with good."

"So remember this; as long as you are willing to be Acceptance -with-Joy and Bearing-in-Love (forgiveness), you can never again become crippled, and you will be able to go wherever I lead you. You will be able to go down into the valley of the world to work with me there, for that is where evil and sorrowful and ugly things are which need to be overcome."

Buckets and love...

2009-01-06T18:13:00.000-08:00

We have a bucket garden! Isaac had wanted to start one for quite some time, and we finally did. Lettuce in one, radishes in another, and carrots in the third. And they're already sprouting! The hilarious thing is that Isaac picked up a handful of radishes when we were at the store this weekend and remarked that our entire crop worth would not exceed the amount he was holding in his hand, but no matter. We're doing it anyway. And as I write this, Isaac is sitting next to me on the couch drawing up the plans for the next stage of the bucket garden. From the scrawlings so far, it appears that he is creating some kind of watering system...or maybe it's a lighting system. Yes, a lighting system for sure. They won't grow without light and unfortunately our scarce amount of winterized sunshine is not adequate for our little babies. Genius. I'm sure we'll have a picture of the actual invention soon to share.

In other news, this was day two of school, and yes, I'm still confident that I can handle the load. I get home at about 5:30 each evening now, and tonight I came home to my dear husband, who, having cleaned the whole house, was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on our dinner. Sigh. What love.

No problem....

2009-01-06T08:34:00.000-08:00

First day of class, piece of cake. My prediction is that I will be able to finish out this quarter relatively stress-free. Any wagering enthusiasts out there ready to agree with me? One day down, only 89 more to go.

The Other Christmas...

2009-01-03T21:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was our turn for Christmas with my parents since they were in Arizona for the real Christmas. They drove all the way up here on Friday to spend the evening with us, just for a few hours since they had to go back home Saturday morning. They arrived just in time for the feast Isaac had prepared for them...a whole salmon baked with wild rice and asparagus! Have I ever mentioned before that I married a fantastic chef? I feel like in most marriages the guy gets super excited because he has married a woman who loves to cook him great meals all the time, and he has never before eaten so well. For me, the reverse is true. Isaac is the cook in our relationship and I eat like a queen every night. I can cook a meal, don't get me wrong, but what takes me forever following a recipe to the 'T', Isaac can make in no time at all without any kind of recipe in sight. And it always turns out a perfect blend of flavors. Mmm, mmmm, mmm, I am a lucky woman. Besides, I'd rather bake than cook any day; that's my area of expertise. But back to my parents...they got to see our house all put together for the first time and got to eat their fill of Isaac's cooking. Then we opened presents and hung out for the rest of the evening. One of our gifts was curtains for our bedroom and kitchen that my mom made (she loves to sew), and they turned out perfect! Here are the bedroom ones...the kitchen ones are a sheer yellow material and will be put up shortly. Thanks, mom! Speaking of being thankful to a mom, thanks to Mom Hurst as well...the raw milk cheese is soo good. It's been wonderful getting to eat cheese again.

Our white Christmas...

2009-01-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

Despite the snow, freezing cold, and rumors of 30 mile-an-hour freeway traffic, we made the trip down to be with Isaac's family for Christmas, and it was well worth it. We were greeted, as we always are, with kids all around, lots of hugs, laughing, shrieking (mostly from Melinda), and more energy than I encounter in a week of work in the 'ham. The first couple of days we just hung out with everyone, playing in the snow (more Isaac than me, as I don't enjoy being cold as much), playing LOTS of games, and getting shot continuously by James and his nerf guns. Everyone in the family was home for Christmas, which is something that hasn't happened for a while with Reuben over in Japan, so that was extra fun. In the evenings, and well into the mornings for the younger night owls of the group (not Isaac and me), us older siblings and the wives of the group went to Ian and Savannah's to hang out and play the Wi. Did I even spell that right? And thanks to Jolie's superior snow driving, we made it there with no problem. I've never met Reuben before (except for the brief webcam meeting from our wedding when the poor guy had to sit through the whole ceremony while doing nothing but staring at a computer and a bunch of faces of people he didn't know for three hours while he was in Japan...kudos to you, Reuben), so it was nice to get to finally meet him, and I'd never gotten to see him and Melissa together either, so that was enjoyable as well. And Nicole got to fly up, too! Sadly, Pete wasn't able to join her, but we're counting down the days until we get to go down to California and see those two get married. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Christmas is quite the experience with the large size of Isaac's family. Having grown up with just one sister, most holiday gatherings in our family were fairly small, so Isaac's are quite the contrast. On Christmas Day we went over to Grandma's house for Christmas dinner and the family gift exchange. With so many people, everyone just picks one name and that cuts down on cost and confusion. Genius. James started us off with some Christmas songs, and then the party began. Paper everywhere, toys for the little ones, games, treats, it's quite the craziness. And there's little Daelyn, the newest addition to the family, opening presents on her first Christmas. Pretty adorable, huh? The day after Christmas we went to dinner at the House of Dreams with Isaac's other grandparents, and that is a tradition to remember as well. Grandma and Grandpa spend the months leading up the Christmas finding all kinds of treasures to give to the kids at Christmas, and it's always a lot of fun to see what they've picked out for each of us. Grandma wrote and read several of her poems, celebrated Isaac's and my marriage, celebrated Isaac's parents' anniversary and birthdays, and then celebrated Christmas with all the gifts. And all that in a span of just a couple hours. Then the 'santa clauses' don crazy hats and get the task of handing out the piles of gifts under the tree. I don't think I've ever met someone who is so excited about Christmas as Grandma Olsen is, although the smile on Melinda's face is coming in at a close second place. We used their tree for our first married Christmas picture backdrop. We had the rest of that evening with the family, and then headed back home Saturday morning. Isaac has all of this week off of work and I took last Monday off, so we got to have three more days of vacation together before normal life started up for me again. My parents went to Arizona to spend Christmas with my sister and her family, so tomorrow mom and dad are driving up to our house to have Christmas with us, too. We're excited for that! And then on Monday I start school! I have a PreCalculus class at the community college in the evenings and then a Nutrition class online. I'm glad I got to enjoy all this fun, relaxing hang out time these past couple weeks because I have a feeling I'll be kissing the vast majority of my free time goodbye once Monday comes. Full-time work, 10 credits of school, plus a house to take care of and a husband to be a wife to. Yep. That's going to be a busy life.

The Great Net of the Inter...

2008-12-31T08:26:00.000-08:00

Hoorah! We're finally getting internet in our apartment so I'll be able to blog again, hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Yes, yes, yes!

A Whole New World...

2008-12-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

Last night, we got a fun call from Mo and To asking us to join them at a local coffee shop for what promised to be a hilarious musical performance by our friends Caleb and Pat. Before I tell you about the performance, let me give you a quick plug on the coffee shop. It's a non-profit coffeehouse smack in the middle of downtown. They've been here for a couple years now and their sole purpose is to invest into the people of this city, building relationships with them, encouraging arts and talents, offering classes on a whole range of topics, things like that. The owners practice loving like Jesus did, a lot of the baristas volunteer their hours to support the coffeehouse, and any profit over and above their bare living expenses is donated to other non-profits in the area. It's just a great, homey place for people of all different walks of life to come in, get a warm cup of coffee, and feel like they belong and are loved. Such a great way to devote one's life.

So it was at this coffee house that we got to experience the treat of Caleb and Pat's musical talents. I actually don't know Pat (although the rest in the group did), but I know Caleb and I think I can accurately describe him by saying he is a large, 26ish year old, manly man with some soul. So you can imagine our entertainment when the first song they played was a touching rendition of Stand By Me. And the night only got better after that. I tell you what, these guys could hit some high notes, and they sang with the emotion of all the past American Idols combined. Our favorite was a beautiful version of Aladdin's A Whole New World, which Isaac couldn't stop singing this morning as we got ready for work. They even had a little Justin Timberlake in there because, really, who doesn't love a little JT every now and then? I don't think we stopped laughing the whole night. It was a great way to spend the evening.

Originally I was going to do math...boring. Instead, we got ourselves some high class entertainment, thanks to our boys from college.