Goodbye...

Goodbye for now, friends.

Our colors of India...

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...

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.

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?

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...

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?

This girl is amazing. Amazing.

In Stitches...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.