What have I been up to, Part 2

 Whoops, it's 2017. Happy New Year!

I want to do my annual yearly review, but I feel like I should tell you how the rest of my year went first. So here we go...

September: I did the Big Bang Mud Run again! This year's went a lot better than last year. The run was organized way better and this time I didn't make the mistake of doing the 12k. I did the 7k with my SIL and we finished in 88 minutes!

The whole gang at the mud run

We love our visits to the farm. 

Astrid and her cousins at the cornmaze! 

October: My birthday was pretty quiet this year. I debated inviting a bunch of girls out to brunch or something, but instead I just watched Conference at home and had a friend come over to watch with me. Oh, I also made an impromptu trip back home for Thanksgiving. It was quick, but fun. And Halloween was great! For my friend's Halloween party I dressed up as a witch and did green-face and everything. I love dressing up. And then Astrid dressed up as Cookie Monster and we had so much fun trick-or-treating at the mall, and then doing trunk-or-treat and then doing a quick trip down our block with dad in the evening. It was a very busy day.

On the road to Lethbridge

Cookie Monster! She was so cute! 

November: I got so many nosebleeds this month, it was stupid! I was even paranoid that I would get one at work and start bleeding all over a patient. Thank goodness that never happened. Me and some girls did an art date and it was so fun. It was good to get the creative juices going again, even though it was just recreating something someone else has already done. Ooh, MOANA also came out this month and Joe and I actually went out to the theatre to see it on the second night it was out (we don't go out to the movies anymore because we hate Cineplex so this was a big deal).

Nosebleeds. Blech. 

Arting! 

December: December could have gone so much better. It was still good, don't get me wrong, but with my calling at church and making preparations for Christmas down south, I was so done. Astrid's birthday was a quiet affair. We had originally wanted to do the sleigh rides they had going on just outside of town, but we were in the middle of a particularly cold snap that week, so the sleigh rides had been cancelled due to -40 weather. Yeah. Ridiculous. So instead we had some friends of ours with a little girl Astrid's age come over for cake and we let the girls play afterwards. And then of course we spent Christmas with my family and it was such a good visit. Astrid went ice fishing for the first time, we got to see a bunch of family we haven't seen in a long while, and we alllllmost got to see our new nephew - except we left a week too soon. Bummer. I guess we'll just have to make another trip to see him!

We went sledding just before the cold snap, thank goodness!

Astrid and her birthday presents.

Our family Nativity Pageant. All the second cousins!

Grampa was so proud to have Astrid ice fishing with him. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if we'd caught any fish! 

Halloween

I have always loved Halloween. I love the costumes, I love the candy, I love the dances (back when I went to those!), I love it all! Except the scary stuff, haha. This was my first Halloween with Astrid and now I love it even more!

The day started out with errands because we were nearly out of milk and I didn't think I had enough candy, so off to the store we went. On our way home, I saw a sign for the farmer's market and figured I'd stop by since Astrid was being good and we didn't need to rush home. Little did I know they were doing trick-or-treating at the farmer's market. So as soon as I walked in with baby in hand, people started throwing candy at me despite Astrid not even having a costume. It was awesome. I've learned that people love to give babies candy even though they can't eat it. I also learned that if I'm going to run errands with Astrid on Halloween I should just dress her up in her costume because, a) it's adorable and, b) you never know when people will want to throw candy at your child.

The middle part of the day was fairly uneventful. I spent it prepping the entry for the trick-or-treaters, prepping the Jeep for trunk-or-treat, getting dinner started since the evening was going to be busy, and making sure I had me and Astrid's costumes in order.

At 4:00 we went to the church parking lot for trunk-or-treat and it was so fun! Astrid had a rough start because as I was zipping up her monkey coat I caught her neck in the zipper :( She was pretty unhappy about that. So here I am with a wailing child in my arms and I'm going round to open up the trunk and before I even touch the handle I start getting swarmed by trick-or-treaters. In the 30 seconds it took me to open the jeep, set up my pumpkins and open the candy bowl I had at least 15 kids surrounding me shouting "trick-or-treat! trick-or-treat!! TRICK-OR-TREAT!!!"

Once I got through the first wave of kids, things went pretty smoothly. Handing out candy is so much fun! It's fun to make the kids do things in character to earn their treat. I had a wizard come by so I had him cast a spell for me (he chose wingardium leviosa) and then when I met a ninja I made sure he could do a proper karate chop for his candy. I made a rookie mistake though because at the beginning of the trunk-or-treat I was handing out 2-3 pieces of candy per kid and before I knew it my bowl was half empty with a whack-load of kids still to come. Even though it feels stingy, handing out one piece at a time is necessary. Besides, it's not like the kids aren't going to get a butt-load of candy by the end of the night anyway. I did run out of candy but it worked out because it gave me time to take Astrid around and collect some candy from those who were still left.

After trunk-or-treat was done we hurried home to hand out candy at our house. This was our first time handing out candy from our own home! Since we've been married we've lived in a basement suite, at my parents', and in an apartment building so we've never had the chance to hand out candy ourselves. I was smart and didn't bring all my candy to the trunk-or-treat and I left one 24-piece bag of candy behind. I had a feeling we weren't going to be a high traffic area and I was right. We had 18 kids come to our door. It worked out though, because it was quiet enough to allow me and Astrid to eat dinner without me having to get up every 30 seconds to answer the door.

At the end of the night my favourite costumes I saw were the little sisters dressed up as Darth Vader (I love it when girls opt for the non-princess costumes!) and the kids dressed as the characters from Five Nights at Freddy's. The game scares me, but they had some good costumes.

My monkey! 

My decorated entry

And that's a fact

I'm too lazy to write up a full, proper post so let's just get into this, shall we?

Fact #1: we bought a new vehicle. Our old car got rear ended at the end of January two days before Joe went back to work. Thankfully it was just him in the car. But unthankfully, the girl who hit him took off and Joe never got a chance to even get her license plate. So there's a lesson kids, if you get in a car accident first check to see that everyone's okay and second, GET THE LICENSE PLATE NUMBER OF THE PERSON WHO HIT YOU!! Anyway our insurance declared the car a write off which was fine cause we hated it anyway, the timing just really sucked. So long story short we got a 2015 jeep Cherokee and we love it. I love the heated seats and Joe loves the extra leg room. 

Fact #2: Astrid is nearly three months old! She is getting so big and strong. When you're holding her she can pretty much hold her head up on her own except for when she's tired. She's started cooing and some mornings I'll have entire conversations with her just saying "oooh?", and "kgoooh" (which you do by making a scratchy sound at the back of your mouth combined with ooh).

Fact #3: oil prices can suck my big toe. Yes it's nice to have Joe home in the evenings more often, but come onnn! We just had a baby, bought a house and now a car and we'd like to start making headway on our payments please! Plus I'd really like to buy some new clothes cause my old ones don't quite fit the way they used to. I found some good deals the other day and got a pair of pants and two shirts for thirty bucks and I still felt guilty for spending money!

Fact #4: I know I'm way behind the times but I've recently fallen in love with Pinterest. I've been trying a bunch of the recipes I found and pretty much every one has turned out great. 

Fact #5: I wrote this post with Astrid in my arms because the poor dear just did not want to go to sleep and now she's out like a light! Let's just hope she stays out once I put her down...

5 thoughts on the 5th

Wow I didn't post anything in January.

I am a horrible person. Please forgive me. To make up for it, I will blog at least twice in February. (Ha! I'm already halfway there)

Let's see, today is the 5th, so I am going to share 5 thoughts with you.

1. I am loving this mom thing a lot more than I expected to. Not that I was dreading it or anything, but staying at home with Astrid and taking care of the house is more fulfilling than I thought. I thought I would be dying to get back to work, but really, I could go without it. Right now I'm just working a couple days a week for a couple hours at a time, but I'm just waiting for them to hire someone to fully replace me so that I'm not needed there anymore.

2. I have zero decoration skills. And my organization skills are lacking. I need to hire my own personal Martha Stewart so I can get my house pinterest worthy. Or at least worthy enough that I can bring someone into a room without saying "excuse the mess."

3. I am sooo done with winter, but it's only February :( I want to take Astrid outside to explore the world! Instead we just have to settle for books and blankets. My toes haven't been warm since before we moved into our house. To cope, I've had at least one cup of hot chocolate or Milo everyday. I'm sure that's healthy.

4. I've started working out again! Hooray! I downloaded the Johnson & Johnson 7 Minute Workout app and it's great to get me started. My push ups are pretty pathetic these days and my cardio is a joke so I've got my work cut out for me. I know I won't be rugby ready for this summer, but I'm totally looking forward to playing some touch at least!

5. My mom and sister are coming to visit in over a week! Now that I have a baby my family wants to visit all the time, it's great! Where was this last year when I was totally homesick?!

And now for the only thing people really care about these days: my baby!

She loves her swing. Thanks, Auntie Katee and Uncle David!

All smiles!

Her lovely church dress from one of my coworkers. 

Me and Astrid!

Supah cute

Following through

I almost forgot!

In my last post I promised to post a picture of my Halloween costume that I wore for the party this past weekend. So here it is:

I went as Buddha. 

I knew I wanted to incorporate my pregnant belly into my costume seeing as I may not have it for another Halloween depending on when I get pregnant with my future babies. So I thought of a lot of different round things before I settled on this one. 

Here's the breakdown of my costume:

- red chinese silk robe (already had this, found at Catholic Charities years ago)

- flowy brown maternity capris (inherited from sister-in-law)

- nude coloured t-shirt (this was the only thing I had to buy! Value Village for 5$)

- gold silky sash (bought at Catholic Charities a while ago as a scarf)

- beady necklace (from Reitmans)

- big wooden hoopy earrrings (gift from a friend so I have no idea where they're from)

A few of my other ideas were a disco ball, the death star from star wars, and an M&M. I think I made the right decision. What do you think??

Hawaii 2014 - the rest

I am not the kind of person to go on a holiday and have every day scheduled down to the minute of things to do. So before we left, Joe and I made a to-do list of all the things we'd like to do while we were there. Then as each day came we'd look at the list and see what we could check off that day.

14/25, not bad! Had to save some things for next time ;)

I think we did a pretty good job with our list! The first half of the vacation was really go, go, go for us and we did a lot of things. But for the last half we started winding down and did simple things like exploring along the beach or exploring the areas around the turtle bay resort. Nice and relaxing, I wouldn't have had it any other way. 

As you saw in the Day 1 post, L&L was the first thing we crossed off the list. After that, we crossed off Shark's cove - which I didn't expect to happen right away. The first morning we were there, we went to Kuilima beach at Turtle Bay Resort to explore. While we were exploring we actually bumped into a friend of Joe's! After chatting for a bit, he told us he was going to go to Shark's cove that afternoon and invited us to come along. We borrowed two pairs of flippers from him and had a great time. We even saw a sea turtle!

Hooray for underwater cameras!

The last thing we crossed off our list was to visit Junior Ah You and eat at his restaurant, Tita's Grill. Junior was my parents' bishop when they were in Hawaii and us kids got to meet him when our vacation rental flooded and we needed a place to stay. He's a super cool guy, plus he played for the Montreal Alouettes in the CFL! And the food at his restaurant is delicious! 

Ah You hungry?

My favourite item to cross off the list was the hike up Diamond head crater. It's a pretty easy hike, but the most difficult thing about it was definitely the heat. Joe and I were smart though and we brought ourselves lots of water as well as a papaya to eat at the top of the crater. When we got to the top though, it was pretty crowded with people, so we took some photos, enjoyed the breeze and made our way back down. We didn't have our papaya until the end and it was soooo worth it. The only thing that could have made it better was if we could have kept the papaya cold in Joe's backpack. Oh well. 

Here we are at the start of the trail!

The trail in all it's glory.

I love how you can see Joe up ahead like, "Are you coming??"

At the top! So sweaty... 

I've considered making a video for this trip like the one I made for my Australia trip back in 2010. If I do, it probably won't be for another month or two... For now, just enjoy the pictures!

Hawaii 2014 - Day 1

We arrived in Honolulu on Friday, May 16th at 2:30 pm. We were exhausted and hungry. Unlike the other airports we'd been in earlier that day, this one was partly indoor, partly outdoor and it was hot and humid. By the time we made it out to the shuttle area, we were already sweating buckets. We both regretted wearing pants for our arrival.

Our first photo in HI! We hadn't even left the airport yet! 

At the car rental place Joe decided to take the $5/day upgrade to a mustang convertible. I was not pleased. Once we had the keys to our car, we started to make our way out of the city towards the north end of the island where our vacation rental was. Holy cow is traffic ever horrible on the H1 highway in Honolulu.

Driving through central Oahu

After we finally made it out of the city and were able to drive the speed limit, our tummies started suggesting we find a place to eat. I knew I wanted L&L. I'd been craving it ever since we started making our vacation plans. So we found the L&L in Wahiawa and pulled in to give Joe his first taste of Hawaii. Mmmm, it was so good.

We got into the vacation rental around 5 and unloaded our stuff. We wanted to hit the beach right away, but we also needed to stock up on food, so off to the grocery store we went. The last time I was in Hawaii with my family, we couldn't visit the grocery store without running into one of my parents' old friends. So it was different to go and wonder if someone knew my parents but having no way of knowing without carrying around a giant picture of them.  

Once the fridge was stocked, the sun had gone down and so instead of going to the beach we decided to go to one of the pools we had access to around the complex. We couldn't get our key to work for the gates and so since no one was around we hopped the fence. We were such rebels. 

After a relaxing dip in the pool we went home, changed into some dry clothes and immediately fell asleep. 

Searching for mountains

It's a quiet morning here in the apartment.

Joe sleeps while I enjoy the morning. He's been put on night shift so he'll be down for another couple hours at least. There wasn't any wind last night so that was nice. The other night it sounded like the roof was going to rip right off. But it didn't. Instead it was just a bit of siding, no big deal. I sure am glad we're just renters right now because water has been found in all the suites on our side of the building. That means they're going to have to rip out the walls to get them dry again. If it were my own place it would be my headache, and we would have to figure out how to resolve the problem ourselves and it would cost a lot of monies. But as humble renters we just have to wait for the owners to figure out what they'll do and we'll just do what we're told. I sure feel sorry for them, but at the same time I'm sure glad it isn't me.

I took some pictures from the deck this morning. I've been trying to see if I can see the mountains from our place, but alas, they don't seem to be there.

Let's zoom in to see if we can find any... 

I think it's just a cloud... But I will call it my mountain cloud. 

Tour

Holy crap two in one sitting! I must either really love blogging or I'm not ready to leave the library yet ;)

I was smart before I left my house and made sure to take pictures for you. 

The entryway. And oh hey, that's me. 

My favourite part of the entryway. Joe's danish cross stitch thingy and my tongan disk thing. 

The living room which I may or may not have tidied just moments before taking the picture.

This is the view from my deck. I cropped out the parking lot and train tracks for your viewing pleasure.

Here is le kitchen. 

Here's the bedroom. 

And the closet of said bedroom which leads into the ensuite bathroom. 

And that's about it! There are other rooms too, but they aren't as pretty because I haven't tried to make them look nice. It's just a spare room, the main bathroom and a laundry room. There are a couple more things we need (like chairs for our kitchen table!), but otherwise we're pretty much settled! I would like to put pictures up on the walls, but I can't until I get permission from the landlords. Hopefully they say yes!

Favourite Friday

Do you want to know my favourite thing about my school?


The view.

I'm sure gonna miss it. 

Go ahead and share in the comments what one of your favourite things is. I might make this a regular occurrence on the blog! 

The Month of Change

It's that wonderful time of year again.

October!!! 

My most favourite month for selfish and non-selfish reasons:
a) My birfday. I just turned 23, boo yah.
b) General Conference! If you've never seen it, you should! There are four 2-hour sessions. There were two today and there will be two tomorrow (Sunday) at 10 am and 2 pm. To tune in live via the internet, go here.
c) A billion other birthdays too, including Joe's and my dear friend, Trudy's!
d) Hallowe'en. I love any excuse to put on a costume!
e) It's pretty. I love watching the leaves change colour as long as I don't think about the imminent winter on its way.




This year, however, October is special to me for another reason.

Remember when this happened?

Today is the anniversary of the fateful day I crashed our favourite car. Although it was an awful experience, I am grateful it happened (and more importantly, grateful we came out of it okay!) and it is the reason why I am where I am today.

Did you ever wonder what made me choose to move up to GP this summer? It was this stupid accident. Before the accident, I was completely set against living in GP, even after I graduated. It was just too far away from my family. I wanted to at least move to a middle ground where we'd have family 3 hours away on either side of us. After the accident, I changed my mind. Joe had stayed home for a whole month and given me a taste of what it's like to live like a "normal" married couple. When the time came for him to go back to work, I was so sad that I knew I didn't want to do long distance any more. Initially I wanted to quit school after that semester and move up with him that year, but that was just the concussion talking. Luckily I came to my senses and knew that I needed to finish school before moving up with him. So the next best thing was for me to move up to GP for the summer. And I am so glad I did. My summer there changed my attitude about the city and made me realize there are good things there too.

So for my Lethbridge friends and family, now you have something to blame for me leaving you. And to my new GP friends, you now know what brought me into your lives. I just hope that for future life changes, God chooses a more subtle way to point me where I should go.

Good times

You know, in the past I've had a bad habit of breaking my promises to you. A lot of times I promise to "post pictures soon!" or if I've got something happening I'll "tell you all about it tomorrow!" But a lot of times I don't. Either I don't end up taking pictures of said event or I'm so pooped from doing whatever I was doing that I couldn't possibly get around to telling you all about it.

I've decided it's time for me to change my ways. I promised to tell you how my Canada Day turned out and dangit, I'm gonna do it!

Yesterday was great. It was hot. It was fun.

As I told you, I was going to be in the GP Canada Day parade with the rugby club. So in the morning we got together to decorate our float. I ended up being made float captain and was put in charge of decorating the thing. It turned out pretty good! I had a truck; 102 pink and white balloons; pink, green and white streamers; 4 mini bill boards from our sponsors; and a pack of green paper plates. I used my very best Macgyver skills and came up with a pretty sweet float for us. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the finished product, but trust me, it looked great.

It was a hot, hot day out so by the time we were finished the parade I was ready to take my clothes off and jump into the first body of water I saw. Lucky for everyone, I am too self conscious to go streaking in public, so I waited until I got home to strip down and take a nice, cool shower.

The original plan was for me to go out to some of the festivities with my housemates when the parade was over, but I was too darn hot so I cooled down at home instead.

It was still a great day though! I got to hang out with some good folks and have some fun in the sun. I even got some tan lines going and this time I have a picture to prove it!

Wahoo! Look at me go!

March Catchup

Hey guys!

Did ya miss me?

Sorry about not blogging for a month. They don't call it March Madness for nothing...

March got pretty crazy with big assignments due in all my classes that month. Not to mention a huge group presentation I had to prepare for with my group. Though to be honest, it was one of the more fun group projects I've had to do. We had to make a video as part of our presentation and we did a Bill Nye video! I had fun editing it and bringing it all to life.

To be honest that Bill Nye video sucked up a lot of my attention. And poor Joe was even home during crunch time, so I hardly paid attention to him. He's such a good sport though. But hey! I spent waaay too much time and effort on that stupid thing not to share it with everyone. So check out our video and have a laugh.

Part 1: http://youtu.be/aa3JhTkjI18
Part 2: http://youtu.be/sTZrTmPlvQ4

Not much has really happened to me besides that... Sad, I know. Though this past Wednesday when Joe went back up to work he took a small load of things up with him in preparation for our move up there this summer! I'm starting to get excited about it. It'll be a good change I think.

Oh and I posted this photo to facebook the other day with the caption, "We've got a bun in the oven!"

It was April Fool's day to be exact. And I had a lot of people fooled into thinking we were pregnant, when really, all we had was a literal bun in the literal oven. So technically I wasn't lying or trying to fool anyone, because with this photo taken out of it's cultural context, all it is is a photo with two people who are excited about a bun in an oven. 

Wow, I just got way too scholastic for this humble little blog. I should stop writing now... 

My head is filled with a ball of wire.

Yesterday while I was working I was introduced to a comedian named Mark Gungor via youtube. And in the video I watched he talked about the differences between men's and women's brains.

This is what I learned from him:

Men 

• Men's brains are filled with boxes. And within each box is a subject. When a man is having a conversation he pulls out a specific box and discusses the contents of that box and only that box. When he is done he closes the box and carefully puts it back, making sure it doesn't touch any of the other boxes. 
• It is very important that none of the boxes touch each other.

Women

• Women's brains are very different from men's brains. We all know this, I'm sure. Unlike men, women's brains are filled with a giant ball of wire in which everything is entangled. 
• This means that when women have conversations they have a tendency to jump from one subject to another. And by the end of the conversation they're asking themselves, "How did we get to this???"

I have a woman's brain, indeed. 

The other night Joe and I were having a conversation as we often do. He asked if I was going to play with the rugby club in Grande Prairie while we're up there this summer. 

I said: "Mm, maybe, I'll have to see when I'm up there." There was a pause. "Did you know the Cheesecake Cafe is closed?"

Clearly, my husband is used to my abrupt changes in subject because he did not miss a beat. But later I had to ask myself how exactly I'd gotten onto that train of thought. And I'll tell you.

Start: "Are you going to play rugby while we're in Grande Prairie?"

First I thought of the possibility of me playing rugby in Grande Prairie which led me to think that I'd have to dig up my cleats and bring them with me if I choose to play. 

Thinking about finding my cleats made me think that I'll probably have to buy new cleats anyway because the ones I have are starting to get torn up. 

Thinking of buying new cleats made me dread spending a ton of money on something I probably won't use very often. So then I thought that I would just have to wait for a good deal on cleats. 

But then I remembered that we have a store credit at Sportchek and so I could probably use that to buy me some cleats. 

Thinking of our gift card made me think of my aunt who had a 20 dollar gift certificate for the Cheesecake Cafe, but now she was frustrated because she wouldn't be able to redeem it now that the restaurant is no longer running. 

Which made me wonder if Joseph knew they were closed because he'd recently mentioned how we needed to go there soon for dessert.

Finish: "Did you know the Cheesecake Cafe is closed??"