Pre-Thanksgiving

For the past two years, Kevin and I have created the tradition of cooking an entire thanksgiving meal. We would start cooking around 10am and race to the finish line and try to have everything on the table ready to eat at 2pm.

It is great fun to try to get all of the dishes done at the same time. In the end we have celebrated that last two thanksgivings together with a spread of food large enough for about 10 people.

This year will be different. Unfortunately I will not be at home during thanksgiving; instead, I will be down in southern California to attend Rendezvous with Adrienne. Kevin and I did not want to abandon our tradition because of this little situation, so we will be making our thanksgiving extravaganza tomorrow (Saturday). We will still have our finish line to cross and will celebrate the day as if it is actually thanksgiving.

I will post pictures of our expansive meal and report back on any and all funny things that happen.

Here's to hoping that our crazy tradition carries on and that we can all be thankful for all of the wonderful things in our lives. :-)

5 years

This past Friday October 22 marked 5 years of dating for Kevin and me. It has been an interesting 5 years....we have had our ups and downs, but in the end they have been the 5 most wonderful years and I look forward to many many more years together. :-)

2005 - The first picture of us....after about 3 weeks of dating

2006 - second picture of us together....we were so cute back then

2007 - Dave and Ruth's Wedding.....we were so skinny back then

2008 - finding an apartment to move to together after college

2009 - the day we got engaged....my big screen TV is so beautiful

2010 - 5th anniversary - 10/22/10 - exactly 1 year until the wedding

......and we are home owners :-D

Wednesday October 13, 2010 we got the keys to our condo that we now officially own. It was most definitely exciting and we had a lovely dinner to celebrate and ate ice cream in the middle of the empty dining room.

We own a home and here it is:






Here's to hoping that we make many wonderful memories in our new condo and that we all enjoy every moment of life :-)

T minus 3 Days

We are just 3 days away from officially owning the condo. I guess in reality it is less than 3 days at this points since they think we will get the keys on Wednesday.

This whole experience has been less complicated than expected, but it has definitely been a test of my patience, or lack of patience. We had our offer accepted on September 3, 2010 and it has just been a waiting game since then.

As the waiting game comes to a close, I am finding more patience within myself because I know the end is in sight. I just can't wait until the keys are in our hand and we can move into our new home that we OWN.

Here's to hoping we are all able to find enough patience to make it through everything. The good things in life are worth waiting for. :-)

Meet my Smartwriter

After quitting the bakery I had aspirations to get my Master's degree but after thinking about it I realized I don't really want a Master's degree nor do I want to pay for many years of graduate school. I decided I would take a fun class at the community college: Court Reporting.

Needless to say I started the program on August 30 and fell in love instantly. Everything about it is appealing to me especially the fact that it is a self pace program meaning I can go at my own pace.

After coming home from school that first day I quickly went online and purchased my own stenotype machine.

So, please meet my Stenograph Smartwriter :-)

My beautiful smartwriter hooked up to my new netbook computer :-)

It is a refurbished machine and it is actually from 1990, but the technology has not changed since then except you can get fancy machines with screens on them now. This is my baby and I love it immensely. It has brought me such joy and is leading me down yet another road in life.

Here's to hoping that we all may find what makes us happy, no matter how many detours we must take to get there :-)

for the first time....

For the first time in a long time or possibly in my whole life I thought to myself as I walked from the bus to class that "If I were to die right now I would be sad because I love my life so much right now. There is so much to be happy about."

Sometimes I forget about how wonderful life is, but today I remembered.

Just some of the wonderful things I love are that we are trying to purchase a condo, I am in school for court reporting which I really enjoy, we are cooking amazing food, and overall life is just wonderful.

Here's to hoping that we never forget how wonderful life is and that if for some reason we do forget, we can find reminders in the simple things in life. :-)

The Finish Line is in Sight

So let us hop into our time machine for what will hopefully be the last time for a while. We are returning to August 7th, just after my plane lands in San Jose. I have finally made it home after the first two legs of my marathon vacation. Kevin picked me up at the airport and we headed back to our apartment. Kevin was already packed so we just relaxed and caught up on some TV shows. We went to bed, because in less than 10 hours we were going to be on the road to Mammoth.

At 8am Sunday morning, we headed out, we had packed up 2 suitcases, 2 sets of golf clubs and our 2 mountain bikes. It is quite amazing what can fit in the back of a fit. We headed out for what we thought would be a 4.5 hour drive and even laughed at googles estimate of 5 hours. Needless to say we were wrong; it ended up taking nearly 6.5 hours to get there. We drove behind every slow car known to man all of which were red trucks. Needless to say we were quite glad to get to the condo in Mammoth and get out of the car for a while.

Vista Point at Yosemite - Pictures do not g

We unloaded the car and after a short rest we headed out to hike up to Mc Leod Lake. Needless to say we all know how out of shape I am, I don't deny it, but I felt even more out of shape on this hike. I thought it was just my body failing me, but then Kevin's dad reminded me that we were at about 9000 feet elevation which means thinner air. It made me feel a little better, and the seeing the beauty of the lake made it all worth while. We hiked around the lake and Kevin tried to skip rocks with a boulder. It was a great start to our Mammoth vacation.

We made it to the lake!

Monday arrived and we had lots of fun things to do. We started off by going to the fish hatchery. It was awesome to see all of the trout, but it was even more fun to toss in the fish food and watch the fish go crazy. The fish were jumping out of the water and splashing about trying to get the few pieces of food. Definitely my idea of a good time.

Look at those fish! They were so excited about the fish food.

The good times continued when we headed up to see the earthquake fault. It is kind of funny that they call it an earthquake fault since they have signs that explain it was caused by fission and not an earthquake. Regardless of this fact, it was still amazing to see this huge chasm into the earth.

I was super excited to see the fault. :-)

We couldn't stay at the fault too long because we had to head over to the driving range and get some practice time in before we played golf that evening. It was the first time I had golfed on a real golf course with longer holes, and it kind of showed off how bad I was, but I still had a great time. I even got to drive the golf cart which is kind of addicting. In the end I came in last out of our group, but I was well under my goal of 100 with a score of 86. Pretty proud of myself, and I will just blame my high score on being distracted by the beautiful scenery around the golf course. It clearly distracted me and hurt my game. Regardless of how we all did, we had a wonderful time playing golf.

The view was so beautiful.....clearly it would distract any golfer :-)

Tuesday arrived and we had the morning to spend together before Libby and Akeel arrived. We all loaded into the car and headed out to Rock Creek Lake. It was quite a drive up a windy road. It seemed like there was no one around, until we reached the parking areas. Every spot was taking and after circling around waiting for a spot we just decided to head down the hill to another lake we had passed. While there we were able to see a truck from the fish hatchery stocking up the lake. We sat and enjoyed the view for a little while before heading back to the condo. We arrived at the condo at the same time as Libby and Akeel. We helped them unload their car and we headed out to go on a mini hike around the creek near the condo.

Group picture (minus Kevin's dad) on our creek hike.

We finished up our fun creek hike and then headed to Lee Vining for dinner to celebrate Kevin's parents 30th wedding anniversary. While you might expect it to be a fancy dinner to celebrate we in fact ate a restaurant called Whoa Nelly! Deli. It is a fun little restaurant in a Mobil gas station. They make amazing gourmet food in a very casual setting. Everyone had a wonderful night and enjoyed the delicious food. We ended up back at the condo that night playing boggle. All of the youngens teamed up against Kevin's parents and we shockingly won the boggle game; a rare feat considering they are boggle masters.

After a fun filled vacation, Wednesday arrived and it was time for Kevin and me to head back to Campbell. We went out for a delicious BBQ lunch and then hit the road. It was a great vacation, but it was definitely good to be home and get back into my normal routine.

Here's to hoping that we all have fun adventures with those we love. :-)