Dallas Apartment

After much insisting, (ahem, L) here is where we live! It is way, way better than we expected. 

We really were prepared for the worst. And we almost couldn't believe what we got ourselves into when we turned off the freeway into the most ghetto area. Seriously. Panic and fear and anxiety were on the rise. Then we kept driving and it turns out, we're okay. 

Our complex has a gate which is actually closed most of the time (and a minimum income requirement) and it is right on the corner of a couple nice areas. So we like to think we are pretty blessed over here in our little corner of the world. 

Okay. Enough of me blabbering. Here you go!

Believe it or not, this little door (not even a normal-size) is what constitutes as our "hallway"

Our lovely bed room.

Yes, our bed is a souped-up air mattress. And our 'nightstand' is a suitcase.

We pride ourselves on being pretty resourceful around here :)

 

Please ignore the sock on the floor. We didn't have a bin for them yet.

This is one of 2 closets and believe it or not, it is the smaller of the 2.

My favorite part of the apartment! Our last shower curtain was so boring and old. 

I love all the colors in this one!

Laundry

Kitchen/Laundry from the back wall by the door.

Dining room

 Those green chairs are pretty awesome, huh? I'm still trying to think of a way we can bring them home.

Also trying to figure out a way to get thus couch home. Except I really don't think it will happen.

But it is really nice to have something real to sit down on.

The view out our front door.

BUT, if you want to see some amazing views you should see the lake 2 blocks away from our house. It's got a great trail all around that is becoming a great morning tradition. 

Our trip.

Here's basically how our trip went. (Wyoming is not shown, unfortunately. I think I was taking a nap...)

Utah

 

Fort Collins to see XiaoXiao and Hai

Last night.

We leave for Dallas tomorrow, bright and early. It is kind of exciting and kind of scary thinking about this.

This is a new chapter in our life - no more school. no more living in Provo. moving on to real life with a real job. possibly no more working for me (my chances of finding a job for 3 months with no weekends are quite slim.)

We've both never moved to a place where we would really be on our own. I don't think we have ever taken a trip just the two of us. We have always been with family and friends.

Although I am dreading the long drive, come Wednesday I will be very excited for this new phase of life.

We have LOVED being with family these past couple weeks. Like when the boys were giggling like 6 year olds over funny youtube videos and crying from laughing at home videos. It will be weird to not be so close anymore.

But life goes on. And it is exciting. :)

My biggest fear

I am finished a book at work today about a woman who is diagnosed with cancer and how her family (specifically, her husband and sister) deal with it.

I get sucked into books like any bookworm, living and breathing the stories like they were my own. This is probably why this book is making me cry every paragraph. I'm sitting there at work and I'm having to put the book aside every time I read a few paragraphs because I seriously was about lose it. I was definitely caught wiping a few tears away. (It's tricky answering the phone when you're choked up.)

Why is this book such a tear-jerker for me, you ask? Because it is basically my biggest worst fear that everything in this book will happen to our family (me).

I'm terrified that David will die before I'm ever ready (are we really ever ready?) and that I won't be able to handle missing him. I know that our family can be together forever, but every time we discuss stuff like this (oddly enough, we were talking about it a couple nights ago), I cry. Like a baby. There is no helping it. It just is like opening a dam and letting a waterfall down.

Cheesy, yes, but true. via

This darn book. I'm such a weeper. (Also, I almost cried watching the guy who won American Idol last night cry because he'd won. And I hadn't watched any of this season at all.)

I told you mine, you tell me yours: what is your biggest fear?

Onesies

I made these for Ann's baby shower before they moved down to Vegas for the summer.

I can't decide which one is my favorite. David likes the argyle (which took forever since I had to free-hand the pattern). There are definitely mistakes, so try not to look too closely..... :)

So long, Provo!

The temple just down the street from our house

Last night was our last in Provo.Tonight we are moving out.
We'll be back, but I don't know that we will ever live here again.

Meeting baby Charlee

It's a little bittersweet. We both have such good memories of Provo.

Our new chapter!

I remember not liking it when I moved here - the mountains were daunting and so unfamiliar to me. After I finally realized Utah was home (here), we had so much fun, met the best people, fell in love and started a new chapter in life. I can't help but think of how much we will miss it.

Beloved stadium

Provo, you've been so good to us.

graduation!

But I am really excited about what the future holds.

Eyebrows

Along with running a half-marathon, I also did something else this past weekend that was new to me.

Got my eyebrows threaded. And HOLY SMOKES the first time (with all of the little baby hairs) is killer. There may or may not have been tearing up for a minute....
Overall (after the pain is forgotten), I'd do it again. Fast, easy, no hot wax, inexpensive, and I like how it turned out. Also, kind of fun to experience....in a weird kind of way.

via Wikipedia

What I've Learned (v3) - Half.Marathon!

read parts one and two here.

1. You really can do it! And it actually was really fun.*except maybe miles 10, 11, and 12. But those are worth it.

2. No one knows why they make you go so early just to wait around. The 3:40 am wake up call is not so fun and don't plan on getting extra sleep when you get up to the start.

3. Bring extra clothes for the wait at the beginning - especially if they have a bag drop.  If not, bring old clothes you're okay with ditching along the way.

4. Downhill courses in the mountains are probably the prettiest ones.

5. Don't try to keep up with everyone running really fast at the start. Save that for when it gets really hard - like miles 10, 11, and 12.

6. You really can run the entire way without stopping at all. It's hard and you'll try to talk yourself out of it multiple times, but just ignore that little voice and keep going. Just tell yourself that slowing down is acceptable. Stopping is not.


7. Drink more water the days before. Also, chocolate gu tastes like frosting, which is okay. The strawberry banana one tastes like banana bread dough. Clif shot bloks are like huge square fruit snacks. 


8. Get the free massage at the finish line. You will need it. Your joints will be super, super sore the next day. 


9. Family and friends cheering you on are the BEST.  Seriously. If Andrew and Laura weren't standing by mile 10, my time would have been a lot worse. And at the finish line, those familiar faces make you realize how great you are and that you really can finish the race.


10. For the next 48 hours you won't want to run again. Then the idea starts trickling into your thoughts and suddenly you find yourself on your lunch break searching for another (maybe shorter, this time... the marathon is still just a thought) race to run in the next few months. 

At the finish!

The little pedometer that is no more.

This is kind of a ridiculous story and I feel really silly writing about it.
But I want to remember it, so here goes.

At the end of last year, I got an email from my insurance about a wellness program where you can sign up for a pedometer and get entered into drawings for giftcards for Amazon (I thought it would just be like $30 or something. Nope, they are like $500 and $750 giftcards. Much more enticing.) and also for a trip to Hawaii. Sounds awesome, right?

Of course, I signed up, got my pedometer in January and I've been wearing it every day since then. You get a "goal" of how many steps you need to take each week and if you meet it, they give you a higher number the next week. I started out around 12,500 steps and now I think I'm at 34,000. You get a bonus if you are in the top 5 number of steps each week. I've been in the top 5, but never been the top person for the week.

Fast forward to yesterday. I went on a short run because I'm doing my half-marathon Saturday (woot-woot!) and LOST MY PEDOMETER ALONG THE WAY.  I was so mad. And then I was mad that it made me mad. It's just a dumb pedometer, right?

So what do I do, being as irrational as I can be? Go out and walk my route again looking for it. Really irrational and silly because it was getting dark and there was a .0001% chance of me finding it.  I might have kicked it as it came off my shoe and it ended up in the grass somewhere. Or someone might have picked it up out of curiosity and then thrown it away later. Or a car ran over it and it is smashed in the road somewhere.

It was ridiculous of me to even try. But I could help but hope I would find it.  And every time I saw a big leaf,  a rock, a hole in the concrete, and gum spot that looked like my pedometer, I got hopeful.  And I'm sure I looked like an idiot staring at every spot for the whole 3 miles. It was a long walk home.

It is driving me crazy that I lost it.
A) It took them forever to send me the first one and I really don't want to wait another month for my next one. Especially when we are moving twice in the next month.
B) I really legitimately thought I had a smidgen of a chance to win big bucks. (Ridiculous of me, I know.) There aren't that many people in the program and they were giving out quite a few giftcards.
C) I was finally going to win this week. With my half-marathon, pre-race runs, and golfing plans, I was bound to have the most steps this week.  Silly, competitive me.

Such a silly thing to be mad over, but that little pedometer drove (is still driving!) me crazy. I know I can still run my half-marathon and that I probably wasn't going to win anyways and I'll eventually get my new pedometer, but the irrational part of me is still super frustrated that I lost it and that I couldn't find it after looking for it. I'll chalk this one up to the vortex too. (Ask me about it sometime - and where all the socks, hair cutting scissors, David's old electric razor, and other missing things are.) 

It is weird to wear my boots and not have my rubber band on them anymore.
Also, I can be so irrational sometimes. 
But, hey, now it doesn't look like I've stolen every pair of shoes I wear.

San Francisco - Sunday/Monday

Sunday
We woke up early bus out to Fisherman's Wharf/ Alcatraz. It's a fairly quick ride to Alcatraz where you will be told hundreds of times that it is a National Park and to leave the birds alone.

Alcatraz is a touristy thing to do, but it is seriously awesome. The audio tour they have there totally makes it worth it. You walk around the prison listening to stories/the history from guards who worked there and prisoners who were inmates and people that lived on the island. It's like walking through a movie.

View on the way back to SF:

The dock on Alcatraz:

We got off the ferry back at the wharf and found out that we could see some of the people David taught on his mission (we tried to meet up with them on Saturday but lots of different things complicated it.) We ran to meet Sasa and Eric downtown.

We actually beat them to the meeting place by a few minutes, so we got to walk around this farmer's market with all these crazy stalls. There was a hummus one that looked good, lots of fruit and even a raw meat stall. When Sasa and Eric got here, we walked over to Japanese cherry blossom festival (which had a surprising lack of cherry blossoms!). There was a small parade with a few floats, and groups of people. One group was just lots of  people dressed up as cartoon/anime/videogame characters.

After the parade, we walked back to the downtown area and got some amazing Thai food. I think it was called King of Thai Noodle and it was right near Union Square. I got the lemongrass soup and it came in this HUGE bowl. It was so, so yummy. We had so much fun with Sasa and Eric - despite me knowing about 8 words in Chinese (except all the words to this song - go watch it; it has subtitles), we had a great time. I'm pretty sure we laughed all through lunch.

We met back with Laura and Andrew and their family at fisherman's wharf. We walked around the shops, saw the sea lions, and were the definition of tourists. Then we caught the F train back down to the financial district, and the mall where we bought our pre-dinner snack. (We take our food vacations seriously around here.) It was this HUGE piece of deep-dish pizza. One piece filled the 4 of us up.

Then we tried to walk to Chinatown to get another Quickly. We missed it again - we got there like 2 minutes after they closed. So sad. Then we saw the missionaries at the bus stop and David got to talk to them for awhile, which turned out to be better than getting a Quickly.

We walked to the bottom of Lombard St.

We went to dinner at Drabar Indian (polk and pierce). We got so much food. Lots of roti and naan and rice. It was really good food and it was really cheap. We were impressed. Everything was so good.

Monday
We got up early  to check out. When we went to return our hotel keys, we woke up the desk worker. He looked so out of it haha.  On our way back to Provo, we took a detour to Lake Tahoe.
SO incredibly gorgeous and so much bigger than I imagined. It was completely worth the hour detour.

We hopped back in the car to Reno for lunch. We ate at Grimaldi's. (In case you didn't know, it's my favorite.) Their pizzas are big. And we ate 3 of them. Every worker in the restaurant made a comment to us about how much pizza we ate. (We ordered regular, pepperoni, oven roasted red peppers. All were wonderful.)
On our way back to the freeway, we realized we were at outlet malls. So, of course we pulled back in and went to the adidas/nike stores.

Then back in the car, dinner at Mcdonalds, and home at 11:30 pm. It was a LONG day in the car.

I have a pedometer I wear with "goals" to meet each week. This past week it was 31,500 steps. After we got back from SF, I had 66,400. That's a LOT of walking.