day 149

happy 2011!

don't you just feel like this is gonna be such an awesome year!? well, i do. and what better way to start it off than with our friends the rice's. heather and jake were so kind as to invite us to stay with them for new year's eve and day. they even made us dinner. my favourite part of the trip though was watching "america's test kitchen" on new year's day for seven straight hours. i'm not kidding. it inspired me to cook good food again. 

(driving down to sunnyvale)

(our personal chefs)

(of course you must have excellent new year's snacks)

(blake trying out the wii)

(my favourite heather)

(courtney sleeping in, of course)

(my favourite person! xo)

day 147

to: courtney

merry christmas!

from: the gap

the best christmas present i could ever ask for came 5 days late this year. it arrived on december 30th and came in the form of a final paycheck. hallelujah! i no longer work for the gap. although i only worked there two and a half months, it felt like two and a half centuries. two and a half centuries of dealing with snooty new yorkers, old ladies who talk to you on the phone for almost an hour about their daughter who was cheated on by her husband but got a boob job to console herself, rude people screaming at me on the phone because i can't make the fedex truck go any faster to deliver their package, and so on.

that being said, i'd like to publicly thank the gap for the amazing 50% off discount they gave me. blake and i now own some very cute clothes. 

day 123

i love bragging about my husband. he's awesome. just in case you weren't aware, though, here is reason #4962 why blake is cool:

the american society for engineering education chose blake's master's thesis as one of the papers to be presented at the annual conference held in canada this june. uh... say what!?!?!? yeah, that's right. i married a genius. just in case you'd like to read his thesis and learn more about the influence of diaphragm flexibility on building design through a comparison of forced vibration testing and computational analysis... go here.  :)

day 112

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

there's nothing like waking up at the crack of dawn to go volunteer on thanksgiving morning. this year blake and i signed up to be volunteers at run to feed the hungry. we were too poor to sign up and run ourselves, but still wanted to be involved with the festivities. 

when we showed up to volunteer, the group in charge gave us the fun job of cheering people on as they ran. we were given some cool signs and told where to go. i was stoked. blake took a little more time to get into the groove of things (it was SUPER early and soooooooooo cold!), but eventually he was yelling as loud as me as people ran by. not to brag or anything, but we're kind of the best cheerleaders ever. everyone was smiling and laughing as they ran by listening to us yell at the top of our lungs funny cheers and words of encouragement (except for those few die hard runners trying to finish the 10k in under 35 minutes). although it was tons of fun, by the end of the race, all we wanted to do was sit in front of a hot fire with blankets wrapped around us as we snuggle and munch on turkey and HoCho. i can't wait until we do it again next year!

day 108

blake and i got a calling in church today- primary! haha! you can never spend enough time in primary. we are teaching the 11 year olds and we couldn't have a cooler group. 

first up is roland, our wise-cracking, prankster.

he's followed by the other boy in the class, the one and only jason. a man of few words, but full of wisdom. 

next, we've got allie. spunky allie who wears the same size shoes as me and loves to talk. 

always by allie's side is kayla, our sweet, long-haired observer.

lastly is daphnie, our primary's fashionista and the one who always provides sister roskelley with gum.

i stinkin' love these kids. 

day 107

c'est mon anniversaire aujourd'hui!

yes, today i am TWENTY-EIGHT years old! that is only 2 years away from being 30. which is basically 40. so i may as well be retired with grandkids who laugh when they find out blake and i already have our cemetery plots picked out.

a little extreme? perhaps.

but today was a fabulous day. i don't really remember what i did except that it was fun. i got a collection of awesome gifts from blake (he's the bestest) and my dearest friend, mrs. jenjamin long, sent me a PIZZA box with a round table gift card inside. um, she is the best and she knows me too well. my mum is making me fajitas this weekend for my birthday dinner and my in-laws got me the best snuggie ever. the good kind, not the janky kind. i kinda feel like the most popular person in the world with all the FB comments and emails from companies like homedepot.com or 1800flowers.com wishing me a happy birthday. birthdays are kinda great. 

(modeling my new snuggie... monk style)

day 106

finally! harry potter and the deathly hallows! although it wasn't my favourite of the HP films (cue the weird cartoonish scene with harry and hermione), it was still enjoyable. now only 238 more days until part 2...