Four Random Photos and their stories

Okay, so this is totally random, and I am probably weird because I decided to take a picture of it, but what looks like just a bowl of yogurt with granola and fruit is actually the first yogurt that I ate entirely with fruit from our garden! All of the strawberries and blueberries in the picture were picked fresh from my garden before they went into my breakfast. Also, I am now eating plain yogurt with fruit and granola instead of already sweetened stuff.



Roxie LOVES carrots, and she loves them to the point that anytime we are making anything with carrots (in this picture he was grating carrots for carrot cake) she sits near us in the kitchen staring at the food in hopes that we will give her some (and we usually do). I thought it was so cute I wanted to share.



Sorry this is blurry, but it officially documents me joining more of the trendy world of fashion with my first pair of skinny jeans. I think they look pretty good on me, even though I was super nervous that they would make my legs look too long. This is thanks to my mother in law who (at my request) got me a ton of clothes for my birthday, and I think she has good taste (don't worry, she doesn't wear the young stuff, she just knows how to tell what looks good on people).



My girl cat Lily's favorite place to be right now is the sink. It is a trifle bit annoying if you were hoping to use the sink that she is currently laying in, but then you think AWWW how cute... and you use another sink.

My Wonderful Husband

I always love my husband, and I know that he is a wonderful guy, but there are some days that he blows me away with his thoughtfulness!

Today Blake and I were crossing paths because I had a class from 4-6:30 and he goes to the gym at 6:20-30 ish because that is when he is scheduled for his personal trainer. I was a bit bummed about it, and when I got off early, I hoped to catch him, but alas I didn't.

As I was leaving my car, I sent him a text saying that I was bummed I missed him, and then I walked in and saw this:




He had made dinner for the two of us, cleaned the kitchen, bought me a bouquet of flowers and wrote me a note saying that he was sorry that he missed me, but he was looking forward to seeing me after the gym.

I love him so much!

Garden's setback

I have been fairly faithful about taking pictures of the garden, and in some of the last ones I showed how some of our plants are already growing, and we would have produce soon.

Well... we will have to wait a bit more on the produce.

We had probably about 5 peppers growing, one or two big enough to pick, and in fact we had planned a meal around using our first peppers from the garden this week.

Even more exciting, we had some cucumbers getting ready, I would say about 4, and they were already 5 or 6 inches long, and just needed to fill out a bit more first.

But today when we came home from church, we walked into our backyard and saw that one of us had left the garden gate slightly unlatched, and our lab got into the garden, messed up the sprinkler system AND sigh... ate our first produce.

She was very thorough, not a single pepper survived, although thankfully the plants are still intact, and a few even have flowers on them so more are coming. Also, none of our cucumbers made it, but again, the plant is still alive. Guess she was excited she found some tasty little veggie treats.

We were both extremely frustrated and disappointed about losing the produce we were so excited about, but we are counting our blessings that no plants were completely destroyed, they will all be able to recover and bear produce again. Its just a setback.

Tying this post with the other one I wrote today, my friend Emily doesn't even have most of her plants outside yet, much less bearing produce because of how cold it is in Oregon, so just the fact that I still have happy, healthy, tall plants enjoying the sunshine already is a good thing... even if my produce takes a bit longer.

She's a dog, she saw an opportunity for more food, and took it, I don't blame her (anymore), I am just learning patience in yet another area of life. :-)

Trip to Oregon

On April 5th through 7th, I went to Oregon to visit my oldest friend Emily. Incidentally, she married my cousin, and so she is also my cousin in law.

Even though it was my first time flying alone ( I know, how did I make it to 25 without doing that before lol) I had a wonderful time. We hadn't seen each other in over a year, and hadn't talked that much in between visits, but from the time we greeted each other in the airport to when she left me to do security check, it was like old times, and there were no awkward moments or pauses.

One of the best parts was that it was a really relaxing trip. We didn't do anything that spectacular, but we did go shopping, have coffee, walk, talk and play some board games together. It was wonderful simple bonding time.

I have the few pictures that I took from the trip, but I did mess up and failed to get a single picture of the two of us together lol. Oh well, guess I'll save that for the next trip.

Our Weekend in Morro Bay

We had a wonderful weekend in Morro Bay for my mother in law's 50th birthday.

We drove up on Thursday, and had a nice dinner with everyone Thursday night.

Friday morning was our bicycling tour to do tasting at the vineyards. It started out fabulously. I hadn't ridden a bike in a few years, and so I was nervous about doing it again, but the phrase "it's like riding a bike" is an apt phrase, because it really was easy to pick up again.

It was exhilarating to be riding in the fresh morning air around all of these beautiful vineyards, and it was fun hanging out with everyone during the tasting times too. The trips to the first few vineyards were just fun. Then we had a 5-6 mile stretch to get to the place where we were going to have lunch, I was getting rather tired by this point, but I pushed through and made it.

Although the stretch to lunch was tiring, it also was a moment where I was extremely proud of myself for making it, and so the tiredness was worth it.

We had a very pleasant lunch, and then the next stretch was 3 miles or so. What you have to know about this point is that Morro Bay has crazy winds that pick up in the afternoon. Every day we were there these afternoon winds appeared, and made our activities that much more difficult.

So at this point, I have already been biking all morning, and am already tired, then the wind was blowing against us making every pedal that much harder. There was one point where my bike was on the absolute lowest gear it could be, and I was still exhausted. My thighs were BURNING, but I kept pushing through because I wanted to finish the whole bike ride. I did, with Blake's encouragement, make it to the next vineyard... but just barely lol.

I got there, and I was waiting to see where to park the bike, but it was hurting just to stand, so I just handed it to Blake. Then I sat... but my legs were still hurting, so I just laid down (I know... pathetic... but I was so tired, and my legs hurt so much, that was the only way I felt comfortable at that point.) After resting for a bit, I did feel better, and was able to sit and join the rest of the group. Meanwhile... Blake seeing how entirely exhausted I was at that point put my bike on the van that was with us on the trip (for those who didn't want to do all of the riding, but still join us at the tastings), and made the executive decision that I should be in the van for the rest of the trip.

Some people might be offended if their significant other made this call for them... but I wasn't. If he had asked me, I might have still tried to go on, even though I was exhausted, just to prove that I could, or to not look like a wimp to him. But since he made the call, I knew that he wasn't disappointed, and he also reassured me that I did great, and that he was proud of how far I was able to go (about 15 miles total to that point). The other thing was that he was way holding himself back staying with me, and I felt bad about that, so I was kind of glad that he could continue without going slow for his less in shape wife.

Turns out, there was only one other female in the group that went past the vineyard that I stopped riding at, and she had been training for two months to be able to do the whole ride (unlike me and the other women who trained... none... and we were done lol). Even though there were about 20 of us that started the ride, only 6 people finished the whole trip... and Blake was the first to finish. It totally wasn't a race, and it was made more even because we all stopped at the vineyards, and left them at the same time to keep us together, but I am still extremely proud of him for finishing, and for finishing first of the 6 that completed it. Especially since if we had done this bike ride a year ago, I doubt he would have ridden past lunchtime, and even that would have been a struggle for him.

But I digress. The first batch of pictures are of the last vineyard we were at (and I remembered to take pictures) and of some of the last 6 taking off, Blake is the one with the white shirt and black shorts. Isn't it beautiful there?

That night we had my mother in law's dinner, which was nice, but probably not my favorite meal of the trip because it was much more formal than all of the others, and I think I felt more myself at the informal dinners than the formal one.

Saturday morning started with a hike to the kayaking place, and it was a beautiful hike, and I regret taking only one picture, because it is only such a small part of the beauty that was around us.

Kayaking was a ton of fun. This was just Blake, I and my father in law. Blake and I were in a double so that even when I got tired paddling (which was often lol) he was able to keep us with the rest of the group.

We got to see a bunch of wildlife on the trip like an otter (who came within 3 feet of one of the people kayaking with our group), a bunch of harbor seals, birds, etc. We even spotting the fin of a small shark out in the distance.

We kayaked to some sand dunes in the middle of the harbor, and many of the pictures are of us on those dunes, and one of them shows us in relation to Morro Rock, which is what the bay is named after. The wind made the trip back difficult, and Blake and I really had to work hard to get back to the dock against the winds, and also against getting into too shallow of places where your paddle hits mud as you try to go.

That afternoon we went to Hearst castle, and saw his gardens and got to look out over his extensive properties. I wouldn't want to live in such an extravagant place... but I sure wouldn't mind having his views!

Before going back to our hotel, we stopped at an elephant seal viewing area, and got a bunch of pictures of these very large vocal sea animals.

We had a fantastic informal dinner Saturday night at a pizza place in town, and the younger portion of the group (Blake and I, his brother and girlfriend, and a college age son of one of Lori's friends) played a bunch of the video games at the pizza parlor. One crowning moment was when first my brother in law's girlfriend beat him at the arcade game, and then I was able to beat Blake the next round... it felt very victorious!

Our room at the hotel had a jacuzzi on the balcony, and we invited the younger group to our room for a jacuzzi party, which was a great time of hanging out and joking around until it got late.

Sunday we drove back home.

Overall it was a really fun vacation, and it made me want to do more of those kind of outdoor activities at home (kayaking, biking, hiking etc.) without waiting for the next vacation to do them again.

Launching Garden 2009

This Saturday was all about the garden.

First, we went to a pepper and tomato show. It has tons of different varieties of peppers and tomatoes! Too bad we had already bought and planted almost all of the tomatoes and peppers that we needed. I did pick up one more tomato than we needed, mostly because I liked the name: Elfin. It is also a small tomato on a small plant, like an elf! I know, strange, but I liked it.

My dad, who loves to buy plants, and is actually the reason why we have a pepper farm on our lattice, bought 50 different varieties of tomato plants! And no... his backyard isn't that big, he just fills it with plants! Although, two of those were ones I asked him to grow for me. One was called Lisa King... and who can resist buying a plant with their name in the title. The other one was White Beauty (I think) and it was a white variety of tomatoes, and it sounded interesting.

After we bought our 6 plants, we went home, and ran various errands for the rest of the day, including a trip to Lowe's to buy some rose plants for our front planter.

When we got home, I put some of those 6 plants in pots, while Blake dug out the sago palm that was in the front planter, and then we planted three rose plants in its place.

The rest of the pictures above are of the garden currently. Blake took more earlier, but he took them all from farther away, and I prefer chronicling our plants growing with a much closer view. The best things happening lately are our first green bell pepper growing, our first tomato growing, and probably the best looking strawberry that we have ever had (already eaten, and it tasted as good as it looks!).

I love seeing all of our plants grow from day to day, and I cannot wait until summer so that I can pick all of our fresh produce!!! We are planning on being more ambitious this year than previous years with making our our pasta sauces, pickling peppers, making cucumbers, and drying both pepper and tomatoes, and overall trying to make sure that we use all of our crop (some got wasted last year), and extend how long we can enjoy the produce.

I intend (though we will see how well this goes) to keep up with posts about the garden, because I truly take a lot of pleasure in seeing the growth and looking back on where it was before.

Life

So... I created this blog to keep tabs more or less on myself so that someday I can look back and see what life was like at this time in my life.

It isn't a very productive tool if you only use it every blue moon. Sigh.

I have meant to post for forever, but I just feel like I have nothing of importance to write, to share, because I feel like life is the same as it has been for the last few years, and it is just the daily grind, and the exciting future that I thought I would be having by now, is not here yet.

But there was a song on my ipod that I FORCED myself to listen to today, and it helped me decide that I should post something about my life here and now. It was the country song "You're gonna miss this." Basically, it follows a girl's life, as she complains about being 18 in high school, her mom reminds her she'll miss it later. Then she is just married, and looking forward and talking about her future with a house and kids, and again, gets reminded that she's going to miss the time she is in. Then it fast forwards to when she has a couple crazy young kids running around, and she has everything going wrong at the house at once, and then someone whose kids are already grown reminds her that she is going to miss this too. The chorus is "you're gonna miss this, you're gonna want this back, you're wish these days hadn't gone by so fast, these are the good times, so take a good look around, you may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this."

I guess what I am trying to get out is that although I definitely look forward to kid time, and I sometimes focus too much on it, I need to enjoy the time I am in now... because once we have kids, I will miss this time of just us.

Highlights of the year so far:

- In September, I started attending Joyful life for the first time. I have talked about going for years, and I always have attended church, but this is a Bible study with homework, but then after the study the group meets and talks about our homework for the week, and prays with each other and generally hangs out.

I am really glad that I made the decision to finally join. The regular group at our church is on Friday mornings, and I had always talked about how once I had kids, and wasn't working, I was going to start going. But at some point this summer, I realized that I shouldn't delay doing this group till then when they have a Thursday night study specifically for women like me who work.

I have gotten to meet a great group of women who all love the Lord, and who I get along with really well, and I have made a point of going to all of the extra dinners and events that the group has outside of Bible study too. Definitely a great new thing that I am currently doing.

- Other news this year: Blake has gotten in shape. I have to get a new picture on here, but he really looks incredible. He is down to 163 and only 10% body fat!!!!! For reference, he started at 240 with 26% body fat.

A part of this is that we have become faithful gym goers. I go every Saturday and Sunday morning, and most Tuesdays. He goes Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays and some Saturdays. He has a personal trainer, but more of it is that he has been eating much better. I really am enjoying my Saturday morning class, even though it is torture too! It is called Body works plus abs (at LA fitness) and oh my goodness do I feel the workout! But I also feel like I am really getting stronger too, and so I keep dragging myself there on Saturdays, which is a big deal because I used to only go when Blake went. I still weigh about the same... but its definitely still the healthy range, so that's fine with me.

- My class this year is the hardest year EVER! In my past three years, I tended to take care of all discipline problems within the classroom, only involving the principal in extreme cases. This year, I feel like I have a child in there every day. (More than literal the last two days, between today and yesterday, I have had three kids in to talk to him).

I have been finishing my BTSA program and will finally be able to say its done in May, and I am soooo thankful for that. I have made my focus this year on behavior for obvious reasons, and overall, I think I have made huge improvements in my class. All the same, I am looking forward to summer.

-Blake has embraced working outdoors (a nice side effect of his weight loss is that he has a lot more energy and drive to do things around the house and in the backyard), and our garden this year is looking like it will be even better than last year's, and I am sure I will have a lot to post about it later too.

We have a lot more different plants, and a lot more varieties of plants that we had last year like tomatoes and peppers. We also are adding to what trees we have. We have already added a blood orange, and we are soon planning on adding an avocado tree and a citrus salad tree too (its a really cool tree that has a bunch of different citrus fruit trees grafted onto the same tree, so that it produces some of all sorts of different fruits! See the video below if you're interested)



We have a couple blueberry plants too this year which is new as well. Blake even extended our "garden" space to on top of the lattice on our patio as too. (Picture to follow in a future blog).


Heh... I guess I had a good amount to write about. And plenty more updates to come on how our garden is doing, and on my two trips in April, my birthday coming up... there is a lot going on right now... and life really is good.

Sometimes it takes writing out what you have going for you to realize it for yourself. Now I just have to get it from my head (my logical side), into my heart (those pesky emotions).