Nate, Erin, Scott & Graham

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Visit from My Girls!

2 weekends ago Nathan and I were lucky enough to have Jessica/Steve and Kasee/Jason come visit us in San Diego! Jessica and Kasee are two of my best girlfriends from college and I always love getting together with them! Not to mention they both married awesome guys who are also great. Both Steve and Jason are doing internships in the LA area this summer - so we all get to be in southern California together! That weekend Nate's parents were out of town for a baby blessing, but they still let us stay at their house with everyone. It was a great weekend! Everyone came down on Friday night and we went hot tubing and stayed up late talking. Then on Saturday morning we woke up and made a delicious breakfast of waffles, bacon and fruit before heading out to the zoo!

Breakfast!

The zoo was fun and never gets old! My favorite was the crazy monkeys. They were so active!

What could be cooler than the metal hippo?

After the zoo we all went to the beach for some relaxing and boogie boarding/surfing. Us girls got in some quality girl talk while the boys were in the waves. Doesn't get better than that!

Everyone!

I joined Nate in the water for the last little bit, but only because I had a really warm wetsuit! After the beach we got frozen yogurt and went back to the house to hang out. Then us girls went to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner and I showed Jessica and Kasee my apartment. We barbecued it up for dinner and had a great time chatting. Then we cleaned up and debated about what movie to watch (for about an hour..) only to have everyone decide on Mission Impossible III. I guess its good we picked a movie the guys wanted to watch because Jess, Kasee, and I "got distracted" changing into our PJs and ended up chatting through the whole movie! Good thing our husbands like hanging out with each other. We even talked after the movie till 2am after our boys went to sleep! Oh how I love them! On Sunday morning we all got ready and everyone came to our church. Kasee and Jess stayed to watch me teach a lesson in Young Women's.

Saying Goodbye!

It was a fun weekend and I can't wait to see everyone again soon!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Virginia

Last weekend I got to go home to Virginia. I took the red-eye out on Thursday night and got home Tuesday evening. I had such a great time! (so great that I forgot to take any pictures) I had to take a flight that stopped in Boston, then went on to DC. When I got off the plane the first thing I saw was a guy wearing salmon-pink shorts and a tucked in button-up blue shirt, how fitting. It felt good to be back on the East Coast! It was really nice to relax and see my family. I miss them a lot and wish Virginia wasn't 3,000 miles away. Nate didn't come with me because he had to stay back and take care of things at work, so that was the only downside - but at least I had something to look forward to when I got home!

Highlights of the trip included:

- My Dad picking me up from the airport and taking me to breakfast
- Talking and hanging out at the house with my Mom, Dad, and Wade (they are the funniest people I know and we love just sitting and talking!)
- Going to the outlet mall with my Mom and taking advantage of the 40% the entire store sales at J Crew and Banana
- Taking Wade to the driving range and getting slurpees
- Looking at all the beautiful greenery and trees I miss so much
- Eating dinner out on Saturday night at Cafe Sonne
- Playing cards (Spades, Pinochle, we love playing cards!)
- Going to church in my homeward
- Making a fabulous Sunday dinner with my Dad (he does the cooking in my family)
- Visiting with Sam and Erin who came up from Charlottesville on Sunday
- Playing dominos with the whole family
- Going back to the outlet mall with my Mom and Wade to return some pants - then helping Wade to pick out some clothes
- Watching girly movies with my Mom
- BBQing it up on Memorial Day

I loved being home! But I was happy to see Nate again - and really happy that I came home a washed/vacuumed car and spotless apartment. What a great husband! I will always be an East Coast girl, never a California girl. Even though there are no cool songs about Virginia girls. I already miss my family, but I least I have a family that is awesome enough to miss, right?

Friday, May 21, 2010

Small and Simple Things

Have you ever read the book "Small and Simple Things" by Marjorie Hinckley? It is awesome! She is such a wise and real women. I love her outlook on life. She always puts things in a way that is so simple, yet so true. These are a few of my favorite quotes from her - I think about them all the time!

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

"The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache."

"We women have a lot to learn about simplifying our lives. We have to decide what is important and then move along at a pace that is comfortable for us. We have to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something. We have to learn to be content with what we are."

I especially like the part in this quote about "we women need to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something." That is so true! It does take a lot of maturity to stop trying to prove something to everyone else. This is something I think about a lot and try and work on. How many times have you heard women judge each other in attempts to try and prove something about themselves? We women judge the girl who got married too young as having no real dreams of her own. At the same time others can't possibly see why a woman would decide to go on a mission instead of getting married. Women roll their eyes at the couple that decides to have kids right away. Then others insist that the couple who decides to wait to have kids is not making the right choice. The girl who decides to have children instead of going to graduate school is seen as wasting her talents. And those who decide to move on to higher education are viewed as selfish. Its so ironic - but happens all the time! Life is different for everyone and it really does take maturity to be content with ourselves - like she said.

"The trick is to enjoy life. Don't wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead"

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."

What a great women she was - and still is. I miss her and President Hinckley, but am glad they are finally together!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

A conversation

On g-chat roughly 1 minute ago.

Erica: babysitter is a funny word
Sent at 4:53 PM on Thursday
me: what does sitter even mean
Erica: i was just wondering
me: I also can't stop thinking about how the phrase "were found missing" doesnt make sense
also I think the word "week" looks weird
Erica: also i like the word "bed" because it looks like one

This is what happens when it gets closer to 5 o'clock.

A Week of Fridays

Every night this week has felt like Friday night. I love Fridays so its been awesome! The only downside has been it not being Saturday the morning after and still having to wake up and go to work. On Monday Nate's friend Lee and his wife Becky came into town. Nate and Lee are friends from computer engineering at BYU and Lee is helping Nate work on his big entreprenurial programming project. Those two can talk for HOURS about crazy computer stuff. I get bored with the conversations about C++ and interface modules but we did talk about some cool things like how the Kindle works, why its hard to take pictures in the dark, and how to simulate the flight patterns of lady bugs. On Monday we got dinner with Lee and Becky and then went down to Torrey Pines to check out the red tides. The red tides are a seasonal thing where algae in the water glows in the dark and you can see it when the waves break. We saw the lights in the waves and also noticed the sand lights up when you step on it! So cool! I felt like I was in Avatar. On Tuesday night I got off work, ran to Costco, stopped at home, picked up my friend who is also a young women's leader and made it to the YW activity I was in charge of. Right after the activity I met my friend Molly at Cheesecake Factory. She just graduated and was visiting some family in San Diego before heading off on an exciting trip to India! I had an amazing piece of key lime cheesecake and we had a great time laughing and catching up. After we went back to my apartment and hung out for awhile. You can't beat college friends! Last night after work I rushed home and packed a bag to spend the night at the boat. Nate, his Dad, Lee and Becky sailed the boat over to Mission Bay earlier that day and will be docked there for the next couple days. I parked as close as I could and walked to a spot on the beach to wait for Nate to come pick me up in the dingy. I probably looked really weird standing on the beach, fully clothed with a suitcase.

Me waiting.

Oh hey Nate!

After Nate picked me up we got warm clothes on and went for a cruise on the dingy around the bay (just the two of us!) to look at all the boats and the bridges and such. We saw the sunset and it was romantic and fun :) Then we went back and drank hot chocolate and sat around the boat talking to everyone. It was a great night! Like I said, the only problem was waking up early this morning and having Nate drop me back off at that beach so I could hike to my car, go home, get ready for work and make it on time. Right now everyone is still chilling on the boat. And I'm sitting at my desk. I wish I was there!

Its been a fun week! And best part is I still have the real weekend to look forward too!

Monday, May 10, 2010

Project File Cabinet

Over the past few months "file cabinet" has been at the top of our list of home improvement projects to tackle. When we first got married we put all of the important documents and papers about our life into an "important papers binder". That binder turned into a binder and box of important papers, and more recently a binder, box, and drawer of important papers. Needless to say it was getting out of control. So I began browsing around Craig's list for file cabinets. The most inexpensive filing cabinet from Ikea is $99 - yet in an anti-Ikea spirit I decided to try and find something more attractive. Who says they have to be made of ugly, gray metal and pinch your fingers? I found this wood filling cabinet on Craig's list for $30. It belonged to a nice old man who recently passed away. He collected all kinds of antique things and is donating his house to the city. But they were trying to sell some of his things and after 2 unsuccessful trips of trying to pick the cabinet up we bought it for $30! I thought it had great potential.

Ugly wood and ugly handles - but great structure!

Nate's Dad has an awesome wood shop. Wood working is his hobby so we had access all kinds of tools and expert help for every step of the process! The wood was pretty old and dirty so it took a lot of sanding to get it smooth. Luckily Nate's Dad had an electric sander...

I didn't take pictures of every step of the process but we spent a whole afternoon working on it. It took sanding, one coat of shellac, 2 coats of paint, cleaning the old hinges of the drawers, and lots of other work. It was so fun!

Laying on the first coat was so fulfilling. We bought Martha Stewart paint in the color "egg shell". These pictures don't really capture the color because some of them were taken on Nate's phone but it turned out a nice Robin's egg blue.

We also knocked off those ugly handles and got some pretty ones from Anthropologie with mother of pearl embellishment.

The finished product! I'm happy with how it turned out. It will take the place of Nate's bedside table in our apartment. We also got a piece of glass and put it on top to keep it nice. All and all I think we spent under $100. And got a much cooler result than an Ikea filing cabinet. Now I have to do the not so fun part and fill it up with all our "important papers". Up next is project Armoire...