Go Me

I just realized I completed one of my goals last year! I updated my blog at least once per month. Well yay! Go me. We'll see if I keep it up this year, too :)

I think this will probably be a short post. As much as I enjoy blogging, there just doesn't seem to be the time as more and more activities are added to my life. The good news is we're officially house hunting now! Tonight we got to spend some time actually looking in houses with our realtor, so that was fun.

I've also been trying to make it to crew more regularly. I did pretty well for a few weeks before things started getting busy again, but we're back on the water on Saturday - extra motivation to make it!

I still haven't gotten back into TV shows - I haven't really watched TV since before Christmas! It sounds much longer than it feels.

I think that's all the energy I have for tonight. I should probably go to bed (we'll see if that actually happens).

A Stream of Thought

Apparently this is one of those nights where I stay up instead of going to sleep. No, I won't make it to crew in the morning; 3 hours isn't enough sleep for me. Although at this rate I still might not get a full night.

I'm doing pretty well with my goal of at least one blog post per month. I know I don't have the most readers, but I still enjoy writing every once in a while, even if it's about nothing in particular. Besides, I'm pretty sure I have a couple of loyal readers that will read almost anything I write - my parents are dependable like that ;)

We've been pretty busy the last couple of weeks. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, we've been pretty busy the last couple of months. Work has been insanely busy. The good part is we've been having a lot more clients come in. The challenging part is simply getting everything done. We did bring someone new in a few months ago, and she's been working amazing. That definitely helps!

But besides work, December is just always busy with getting ready for vacation, visiting friends/family in California (we had a blast, by the way), and then returning from time off. I feel like I'm finally starting to get a handle on things again - more than a week after getting home. Is that normal?

The good news is I've realized my priorities have totally shifted in a good way. I'm giving God the credit for that one, by the way. While we were in California I started seriously consider if I'd be able to make it back to crew after about 3 months off this past fall. I decided I wanted to do it, and despite being swamped with playing catch up, I've been able to make it to practice twice so far! Yes, I'm skipping tomorrow to give myself a few more hours of sleep, but I'm confident I'll be back on Saturday.

With spending more time working, adding crew back in, and taking care of various other tasks (weekly events with church, writing newsletters for a couple of different organizations in my free time, etc), I started trying to figure out what I would let go. As it turns out, that's a decision God seemed to make for me. I've lost pretty much all motivation to keep up with TV shows. Don't get me wrong, I still like my shows, but I'm not driven to watch them the same way. I'm happy to just wait and get to it if I get to it. Instead I'd rather spend the time doing things around the apartment, reading a book, hanging out with Matt or going out with friends. I'm still me, though. I seem to find ways to keep myself busy that don't include doing the dishes, housework, etc. Go figure.

We'll see if this shift in priorities lasts. I'm enjoying it while it does, though. I recently found a cute new photo album and printed out pictures from when we moved to Washington in 2009 to this past trip to California, and I'm almost done putting it together. I've also been wanting to eat food at home that's more healthy, although I haven't wanted to cook anything for a long time. It's more convenient if the healthy eating goes with a cooking phase...

The Craziness of June

This month has been busy. Really, really fun, but busy.

Weekend 1
It started out with the regular busyness: working 40-50 hours/week, rowing, church, small group...add a Sunday School teacher meeting, Matt coaching youth baseball, and me anticipating the busy month ahead and trying to work ahead a little bit...and it was busy.

Weekend 2
I knew I was taking a half day on Friday the week leading up to this weekend, so I tried to work ahead a little bit this week as well. Of course, I still managed to work about 50 hours in addition to attending our weekly small group, having dinner with a family new to the church (a fun couple with two really great kids) and trying to make it to crew practice.

So why was I taking off early on Friday? Well, one of my best friends is getting married in August, and her Bachelorette Party was this weekend...PLUS another best friend was flying up from California to attend! I got off early on Friday so I could pick up her up from the airport, get a few last minute things for the party, eat dinner with another local friend, and make cookies for everyone (also for the party). Of course, the actual party was a LOT of fun, too. I love the bride (she was a roommate for 3 years in college), and I like her friends - those from college that I'm friends with, and those from high school that I've only seen a few times. We had a lot of fun hanging out in Seattle - from dinner and a show to karaoke. Plus we all stayed in a hotel together and got brunch the next morning. All in all, a really fun weekend!

Everyone at the Bachelorette Party

Weekend 3
I knew I was taking half days on the Thursday and Friday during the week leading up to weekend 3 (more about that later), but this also happened to be the week Common Ground was in town! Last year was the first time in 15 years I didn't get to see their show, so I had to make it to one of their Washington concerts. Plus my brother is one of the sponsors - I wanted to see him, too! The night we ended up going, they were staying in host homes anyway, so Matt and I took my bro home with us so we could actually get to see him for a while. We went for pie at Shari's on the way home, and then hung out for a little while before hitting the hay. The next day Common Ground was coming back south through Shelton, so we decided we'd rather drop him off their instead of driving all the way back up to Auburn, so I took a few hours off to grab lunch at Daddy O's before heading out to Shelton. I had SO much fun seeing my brother, and I'm SO glad it worked out for him to stay with us :D

NOTE: I totally spaced and forgot to take a picture with my brother while he was here...so the above is a video he created (along with a few other talented individuals) for the show!

Of course, all of the above meant I still had a lot of work to do before taking off early on Thursday afternoon. Matt's parents happened to win a week a timeshare of their choosing at an auction through their church, so they picked one near Long Beach as it was about equal distance from us and from Matt's sister in Portland. So on Thursday, we packed up all our stuff and headed out to Long Beach to hang out with the in-laws. Of course, I still put in a few hours of work in on Friday (yay for Internet access everywhere and a boss that's really understanding!), but it was still a really fun and relaxing trip!

Matt and our nephew at the beach

On Friday we wandered around Long Beach, played cards and enjoyed [some of] the Ole & Lena jokes Matt's dad was reading from his new Ole & Lena joke books. On Saturday, Matt's sister came up with our adorable 3-year-old nephew! Over the next couple of days, we went to the beach, went swimming in the hotel's pool, and just hung around enjoying each other's company. One activity I really liked was seeing the pictures Matt's parents took on their recent cruise to Alaska. It was fun seeing what it was like - from life on the ship to their excursions of whale watching, flying over glaciers, dog sledding, zip lining and kayaking - and really inspired us to want to go on a cruise (we'll see if that happens within the next few, or 20, years).

Our nephew playing with bubbles

Weekend 4
The week leading up to weekend 4 was actually a bit quieter. I actually had 5 full days to work, and was even able to get a little housework done, too! Yay for clean dishes and clean clothes that are actually put away :) Of course, I've had a lot of work to get done this past week, too...and I also got to go to dinner with a friend from college that was in town visiting her sister.

One perk from this weekend is I actually got to sleep in on Saturday. I usually get up at 6am to row (yes, I'm a crazy crew kid that rows instead of sleeping in every weekend), but practice was cancelled this morning since half the team was already at the regional regatta down in Vancouver (more on this in a minute).

Anyway...after sleeping in on Saturday I got to go to lunch with a couple of good friends from college, which was super fun. I always love seeing good friends! After that they took me over to Shari's and a teammate picked me up so we could head down to Vancouver for the Masters Regionals regatta at Vancouver Lake.

Talk about a big regatta. I don't remember the numbers, but over the course of the weekend there was something like over 1000 races...? There were a lot of crews there from all over the region - even one as far as Los Gatos, CA. Our team's guys were already down there since their race was on Saturday; all of our women's races were Sunday. Saturday night was fun. I always enjoy hanging out with the team, and steak fajitas/tomalito from Chevy's never hurts, either (guess where we ate dinner). Anyway, I was in two races on Sunday, and I felt like both went well. We didn't make it into the final for either race, but I felt like we had a strong showing and we hung with the rest of the pack. We were only a few seconds away from making it into the finals, too, so that's encouraging. Now we have even more motivation to train for next year!

Vancouver Lake

So after we were done racing Sunday afternoon, we packed up the boats, stopped for lunch, drove back up to Tacoma, unloaded the trailer, and got home around 5:45. Just in time to start getting ready for the youth BBQ. As it was our last meeting of the school year and the first week for new 6th graders to come, we fired up the grills at our apartment complex, ate hamburgers and hot dogs, and played on the basketball and tennis courts. It was really fun, despite being worn out from the regatta (leaving the hotel at 5:30am, hanging around in the sun, 2 races plus moving boats around really takes a lot out of you). Again, I always enjoy hanging out with people.

The Rest of June
So it looks like the last few days of June will be a little bit less crazy...last night we went to dinner and Super 8 with a friend, and tonight I finally had a chance to sit down and play online for a while plus talk to a good friend from California for a couple of hours on the phone. I'm looking forward to getting back to our regular amount of busyness as opposed to being just insanely, crazily busy.

A few other random items of note:

• The Giants have been doing well, despite all the injuries. That makes me happy (the doing well part, not the injuries part).
• We downgraded back to dumb phones (as opposed to smart phones...), and the transition has been amazingly smooth. I miss browsing Facebook from my phone sometimes, but actually prefer calling and texting from a regular phone...and ultimately that's the point, right? 
• My mom is awesome and sent me a couple of really cool items in the mail...don't want to give away the surprise for when I pull them out, but if I'm ever invited to another white elephant / ugly sweater party I'll be prepared.

CBRC Regatta (plus a few random updates)

Today I had the pleasure of participating in my first regatta in 6 years. It was really fun! This was the first regatta I've been able to make it to since I started rowing again a few months ago. Matt was kind enough to come out, cheer us on and take a few pictures:

Approaching the finish line

Crossing the finish line

We're the boat you can barely see by the orange buoy

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun.

Another exciting part of today was the Giants beating the Phillies in Game 1 of the NLCS. It was torture to watch (of course) but had the sort of outcome I like :)

No other HUGE news around here, although I did finish Battlestar Galactica and really, really liked it. I'm also super excited about the Sound of Music Sing Along coming up later this month - we're planning to go on the 26th. It should be fun! We've been working on putting our Halloween costumes together, too...I'll post a few pictures once they're complete (as long as they turn out the way we expect them to). 

On that note, a couple of new pictures: 

The mountain looked gorgeous as I was driving to dinner, so I pulled out my camera and took a quick picture while at a stop sign.

The clouds looked so cool as we left the apartment on 10/14! This was taken around 6:15pm.

The oars lined up, waiting to be used.