Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July! What do you have planned for the day?

Matt & I will be heading up to a friend's house to hang out with them for the afternoon / evening. Last year these friends introduced us Matt to the excitement of setting off fireworks, so I'm sure the evening will include a few explosions. At least it's legal and the friend we're visiting has 3 acres of land :)

Matt setting off fireworks with our friends last year

Last night, Matt started teaching me how to do the scorebook during a baseball/softball game. I mention that because baseball is American. Anyway, my dad used to keep score when we'd go to games so I've understood the basics before, but never actually filled out a book myself. Granted this will probably mean I get to keep score during our church softball games...but it's a useful skill, right?

Regardless of what you do, I hope your 4th of July is a great one! Want to know more about America and Independence Day? Check out this fun infographic.

Happy Epiphany!

Today (now that it's past midnight) marks the official end of the Christmas season. Yes, I know most people have been done celebrating for days (if not weeks), but since I love the holidays I like to celebrate as long as I can. The 12 days of Christmas actually begin on Christmas and end today, Epiphany. I don't remember a whole lot about it (my years of Lutheran upbringing are failing me), but I do remember that it's been Christmas this whole time despite most people moving on. Sad, I know.

Anyway, this past Christmas / New Year's was really fun. Throughout December, we attended three white elephant parties - my favorite kind! I also got to head down to California for a few days and spend time with family / a few friends. Unfortunately Matt couldn't make it down too, but I was glad I got to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and my mom's birthday with family, in addition to visiting Matt's family and a few friends I still have in the area. Matt's parents came up and took us to dinner the day I got home too - him getting to see them was great, too.

Although I enjoy seeing people more than actual gifts, I was pretty excited about some of the wonderful items I received: Beauty & The Beast on DVD, various SF Giants paraphernalia, a few Wii games (Glee Karaoke, High School Musical Sing It and Wii Fit Plus), and more. 

More than anything, seeing friends and family again made me really appreciate just how blessed I am. There are a lot of people I wish I could see more and spend additional time with. I've been surrounded by fabulous people my entire life - and continue to be included in wonderful groups of friends and family. Thank you all!

Christmas, New Year's and the Move

It’s been a super-long time since I’ve posted anything. Things have been busy! We decided to move to Lacey on November 30 and got our new apartment December 1. After two weeks of shuttling our smaller stuff down to our new place, we rented a truck for our bigger furniture and loaded/unloaded it (with a HUGE thanks to those that were able to help). The day after we moved the big stuff down, Comcast came to set up our Internet and phone, and we drove down to California for three weeks.

While we were in California, we had a great time celebrating Christmas and New Year’s with family and a few friends. I have a lot to say about the last month, so I’ll break it into chunks for your skimming convenience ;)

Dead Laptop
Isbjorn, my most recent laptop, died this past month. Apparently computers don’t work when they can’t find the hard drive. Despite the frustration, a part of him lives on in Matt’s laptop as the battery was able to replace his broken energy source.

Joe’s Crab Shack
If you have a chance to go to a Joe's Crab Shack, I definitely recommend it! We went to the one in San Francisco with a few friends even though I can’t eat crab or shellfish. Their burger was good, though, and the servers dance. Ours even got up on the table to get her groove on! She also convinced half our table to get up and dance with her (and the other servers).

Family Events
We had a great time seeing family for a variety of Christmas activities including:

• Christmas Breakfast at the Claremont Hotel with Matt’s family.
• Decorating Matt’s parent’s Christmas tree to the Oak Ridge Boys.
• Christmas Eve with my family.
• Christmas day with Matt’s family.
• Indonesian Chicken Curry in Woodland with my family.
• Disneyland with my family.
• Traveling through Redding and Portland to see Matt’s grandparents and Moses (our nephew), Cara and Dustin (his parents). Okay, that’s not really Christmas...but it was fun.

Other Fun Stuff
Here are the other exciting activities we were able to experience while we were in California:

• We had a chance to see a few friends in the area that timing worked out with. Activities included Spades (yay team Women!), hanging out in San Francisco, various dinners and watching movies.
• We saw Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. I really liked Avatar, even though I’m not a huge fan of 3-D. I actually forgot it was 3-D while I was watching it. Sherlock Holmes was fun, too, although it wasn’t the best movie ever. I would recommend renting it instead of spending the money on a movie ticket.
• The Browns won the last four games of the season! Even though it was a rough year, ending on a good note was nice.
• We got a free cake for our 1st anniversary! The baker that made our wedding cake included one free cake for the first anniversary, and she agreed that it would be easier to pick it up a month late instead of shipping it to Washington. As we expected, it tasted delicious =)
  

Disneyland
Just for the record, Disneyland is really busy on New Year’s Eve. I’ve never seen lines that long. Especially in the ladies’ room. I really appreciated that Disney knows how to handle crowds, so we were able to get where we wanted to go. That was very convenient. A few more comments about this trip to Disneyland:

• The new dragon in Fantasmic! looks really cool. WAY better than the first one.
• Certain foods just taste better at Disneyland. Like churros. And corn dogs. I’m pretty sure Dole Whip tastes good everywhere, but I’ve only had it at Disneyland so I can’t be sure.
• If you lose an Indiana Jones hat on Grizzly River Run, there is a chance you’ll get it back. It just might not look the same. Chris’ hat decided our raft wasn’t good enough for it and jumped out on a drop...and then sat in the water for a while before Disney mailed it back. Sadly I haven’t seen the recovered hat, but I can’t wait for pictures (hint, hint Chris)!
• Disney’s merchandise this year is really cute! I was very proud of myself for not giving in to temptation and buying something.
• I won a Dumbo! The boardwalk area of California Adventure was completely re-themed to include Disney prizes. We played the clowns running up the ladder game (where the water shoots out of the cannon and you hit the target to make them go) and I won =)

Our New Apartment
We love it! Not only is it bigger than our last place and include a pool, hot tub, gym, sauna, etc...the rent is the same price! As much as I love that there’s a gym on-site, that also means I have no excuses not to use the gym on site. We’ve been really good about going over the past week. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep it up!

We’re also almost completely set up. We have a few more pictures to hang up and need to find spots for a few more items, but all in all it’s starting to feel like home. It’s nice how quickly we were able to get settled. So far the only thing I don’t like about the apartment is the lack of counter space – both for cooking and for stacking dirty dishes. Haha.

Of course, I can't possibly include an entire 3 weeks that were full of activities into one blog post, but that's pretty much the gist of what's been going on in our lives lately.