Thanksgiving Week

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. I got a lot done surprisingly but it was a nice and relaxing weekend for me.

The Ramptons, Miya (my sister), Dean and I decided to get take out from Cracker Barrel for Thanksgiving. We also picked up some Pumpkin Supreme Pies from Village Inn. Such a classy Thanksgiving, I know :) The food was great and loved not having to clean up the mess.

The next day, my sister and I went and got a pedicure, and saw Skyfall. On Saturday, Dean got me a really cool piece of furniture! (And by that I mean, I saw it at the store, wanted it really bad but felt guilty because it was a "big purchase" for me. So I went home and talked and talked and talked about it to Dean. Dean got sick of listening to me wanting this awesome piece of furniture that I felt too guilty to get. So he went to the store with me and paid for it so I didn't feel like I paid for it...even though the money is still coming out of the same bank account....) It's this bar cabinet but I'm using it to store all of my art supplies. And it's definitely a versatile piece that I'll get to keep forever.

My friends Amber, Caytlyn, and I worked on our Christmas crafts on Saturday. And I put up my advent calendar on Sunday!

Cracker Barrel's Thanksgiving packaging was surprisingly cool. 

The Ramptons. Travis looks really classy.

We read Jingle Babies. Highly recommend it.

Plaid Bananagrams with Jude. We had to be characters from the Toy Story all night. Jude was the Real Buzz (see Toy Story 2 for reference). Creed was Bullseye. Travis was Woody, Buzz's best friend. Lindsay was Jessie. Dean aka Dinx was Mr. Potato Head (no I was not the Mrs.) I was Evil Dr. Pork-Chop. And Miya was Rex but was demoted to Lotso. 

Halfway through the night, Jude or the Real Buzz decided that we were going to switch roles. So Miya became Ayumi and I became Miya. And Travis who was Woody became Woody's best friend. 

Crafting on Saturday with the girls. 

Advent Calendar. Dean and I will be leaving each other notes every day.

I stuck letter stickers on the clothespins spelling Merry Christmas. 

Oh and here's my new purchase. Isn't she lovely?

Halloween 2012

So I know this is late but I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of our costumes from Halloween (if you haven't already seen them on FB or Instagram).  For my work party, I dressed up as Max from Where The Wild Things Are. I where my Max costume that my mom made me every year. But this year, I decided I wanted to make a metal crown and a scepter. So I did just that!

For the actual Halloween day, I was Suzy as the raven from Moonrise Kingdom while Dean was Sam Shakusky. LOVE that movie by the way. I quote Suzy's lines all the time and I make Dean quote Sam's lines. Hahaha. I'm quite proud of the way our costumes turned out if I may say so myself. It was really fun making them. Something I'm realizing is that I enjoy making Halloween costumes a lot.

Sorry some of these are blurry. Dean does this thing where he keeps taking photos one after another without me knowing he's still taking pictures. But I like how the one of me turned out! Happy accident!

Sunday Date with Dean

Dean and I decided to go drive the Alpine Loop today for a Sunday date. It was so beautiful! I also love Aspen trees. I immediately fell in love with Aspen trees when I first came to Utah. I love everything about them. The trunk is skinny, tall and white. The leaves are like little circles that dance in the air. And I love the noise the leaves make in the wind. Only if I could plan Aspen trees in Austin and have them survive....

When we got back from the scenic drive, we made sushi! So yummy. But I forgot to take pictures because we were starving. Hahaha.

5K accomplished!

Yay! I did it! I'm so proud of myself. I ran a 5K without walking. But let's be honest there were hills that were killing me. And I didn't realize that a small increase in elevation makes it harder to breathe. But I did it!

We bought the necklace my sister is wearing as a reward. She is pretending that it is her gold medal. Dean of course didn't even need to get ready for the 5K. He just got up and ran it like it was no big deal. And the last time he even ran at the gym was back in May.

Also, this means that I get to cross off one thing off my "30 before 30" list. I still only have 20 things on my list. So when I come up with ten more, I will post it here! 

Yellowstone

Where does the time go? I am so amazed with people who keep up with their blogs. Before I show Yellowstone photos, I have to tell you that I can now run 5k! Yesterday, my sister and I ran it. Let me tell you, the last 1/4mile almost killed me. And today, I did it again! I am now ready for Saturday.

Dean and I went to yellowstone with our friends Ashley, Marti, Collin, and my sister Miya. It was unbelievably beautiful and humbling. I want to go back there next summer.

While we were there, we kept seeing this guy with a full-on beard who was biking everywhere. On our way back to the campsite from one of our adventures, we saw him struggling to go up this huge hill. He had his thumbs up while wobbling on his bike and barely making it. Dean and I decided to give him a ride. It turns out that he had just graduated from law school and decided before he started his full-time criminal law job, he wanted to go on a big trip. He had biked all the way from Canada! Can you believe it?

Of course we saw a bunch of bisons!

There were a TON of cool textures to be found.

Old Faithful

I bought this cool stamp to put in my National Parks Passport

Can you see the bear waaaaay in the right back corner?

Colorado

Colorado was so beautiful. We just spent most of the week driving around the mountains. And I loved their mountains. It was such a nice relaxing week. We went fly-fishing, hiking, and enjoyed the fresh air. 

We drove to Denver to visit some family friends. During the day though, we decided we wanted to visit the Butterfly Pavilion. Unbelievable. I thought I was dreaming. We had a few butterflies land on us and that was super exciting. It turns out though that we weren't supposed to touch the butterflies at all. We just thought you couldn't touch their wings...woops! 

We also went to the Denver Art Museum and saw the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit. It was just amazing! And Dean was such a great sport letting me stay as long as I wanted to, even though I could tell he was kind of bored and didn't really get the exhibits. Yves Saint Laurent has always been one of my favorite fashion icons. I didn't realize what a big deal this was at the time, but when I was in elementary school, my grandma would buy me Yves Saint Laurent clothes. I just always thought the YSL monogram logo looked cool. I certainly didn't deserve to wear them. 

One downside to the week was that there weren't a lot of food places that were open because we went during its off-season. But we found this amazing food cart where they sold all kinds of crepes. And they were huge too. Dean's favorite was the pizza crepe. Can you tell by his smile and his thumbs up?

Moab

Dean and my summer started with our one year anniversary trip in May. My parents graciously gave us their timeshare and we decided that we wanted to go to Breckenridge, Colorado. Since we both love road trips and plane tickets are expensive, we decided to drive there. How we ended up at Moab was actually a happy accident. I happened to see where Moab was on google map, 15 minutes before we had to take the exit to get there. We decided that we might as well stop by. AND since it was National Parks Week, we got in for free!

Moab was amazing. Pictures do not even do justice. You just have to go there. I definitely want to go back soon. And yes, I did get my National Parks Passport stamped!

Goals...

At the beginning of this year, my family decided that we needed to individually come up with 3 goals (spiritual, physical, and general) to work on throughout the year. My goals were:

Spiritual: Read the Book of Mormon (Bible study) more regularly.
Physical: Do some consistent, physical activity regularly. (I hate to work out so I refused to call it work out).
General: Be happy at work!

I will talk about my Spiritual and General goals more later. For now, I have a big announcement about my physical goals.

I started the year off by doing more Yoga but quickly decided it just wasn't making me feel like I worked out. Just Dance was going great until repeating all the dances started to get boring. And then, I found Pilates with Lara Hudson. BEST THING EVER. I will talk about that more later. But the big announcement is that I will be running a 5K at the end of this month!! "WHAAAAAAAT!? NOOOOOOO WAAAAAAY" is the reaction you should be having right now if you know me well. I unofficially vowed never to run "long-distance" after doing cross-country in high school. But when I found out that there's a charity/fundraiser 5K run for a girl at my church who's fighting cancer, I felt like I had to. And to be honest, I have been secretly wanting (but not really wanting) to do a 5K for awhile. I haven't paid yet, but I started couch to 5K and am confident that I will cross that 5K finish line running (or jogging) and looking good in my LaraHudson-trained body.

I will keep you posted....

this time, for real.

PS. A sneak peak of my summer updates that will be coming soon as well.....