2009 in Review

Well here we are at the end of 2009. I can't believe how fast this year flew by!

2009 was a year of very few changes for Luke and me. Sometimes no change is a good thing and I think that is the case for 2009.

It was our first full year as husband and wife and we were still learning our roles as husband and wife. Yes there were times (many times) when I was frustrated with living in this apartment, and yes there are still many decisions we need to make in regards to our future, and I know that those things will all come with time.

This year we had no big purchases, no big revelations, no big job changes, or location changes, or babies, or pets. And even though at times I got frustarted with the fact that there were no big changes I now see that it made for a great SMOOTH year. It was a pretty great year. In fact it was a perfect year.

Here is our 2009 in review.

• I kicked off the year by cutting off all my hair and going back to my natural color. I still regret cutting my hair and I colored my hair about a month later. Clearly it was not the best decision
• Luke and I both turned 25
• We traveled to Red River, Washington DC, and Disney World

• 
  I celebrated with one friend as she gave birth to her first born
• I stood beside another friend as she married her love
• I got to meet several bloggers and became good friends with my Tulsa blogging gals. I now consider them my In Real Life Friends :-)
• I found a love for cooking that I never knew I had
• Luke's band had a great year and did really well in a local Battle of the Bands
• My sister Kati obtained her cosmetology license and became my full time hair person. LOVE THAT.

• We celebrated our one year anniversary with one year old cake
• I started the Couch to 5K plan and surprisingly have stuck with it and really enjoy it. I just might become a runner after all!
• Our church had a great year. Some big changes happened, and we ended the year with an amazing Christmas service and meal that fed around 250 people!

2009 was a pretty smooth year. Luke and I are so blessed to have such amazing families behind us and I realize everyday just how blessed I am to have such a wonderful husband beside me as we continue this journey of starting our own family. In the next year we hope to grow closer to God as a couple, not just seeking Him for answers but seeking Him to know Him more.

In the year 2010 I hope to:

• PURCHASE A HOME
• Cook more (that means less shopping EEK)
• Save more
• Make some decisions
• Become more consistent in my devotional time with God
• Meet more of my lovely bloggy friends

Happy New Year!

The Shoe Wheel

Today I spent a majority of my time creating space out of thin air.

I am beginning to think that God has me in this teeny tiny apartment so that I can learn superb organizational skills and one day open my own company.

Hopefully I will learn these organizational skills soon because I'm ready to kiss the apartment goodbye.

I got all of our Christmas stuff put away and starting playing with our new Christmas 'toy's'

One of the toy's that I received is this lovely shoe wheel:
It should be noted that this little device DOES NOT come put together. In fact that is something that you have to do all on your own.

Doesn't it look so pretty, and inviting, and easy to put together?

It's not.

I will never in my life understand why some companies choose to make their instructions ALL PICTURES and NO WORDS.

I spent a good 20 minutes matching different sized screws to the pictures on the paper trying to figure out what it was and where it went.

It was exhilarating.

I may not know that names of the screws but I could definitely pick out what size screw I need in a series of screw pictures.

After about 2 hours of trying to put together this wheel of confusion I threw myself on the ground and declared defeat.

Clearly I try my best to steer away from being a drama queen.

The wheel and thousands of pictures had become too much for my vacation-ized mind and I couldn't take is anymore.

While on break from work I try not to use too many thinking cells. I don't want to over do it.

Luke attempted to help me at one point but he has been sick for the past day and informed me that he does not like to put together shoe wheels when he is sick.

Which I can't complain because I pretty much don't like to do anything when I am sick.

After what too much time devoted to one wheel of confusion I finally got it put together. It was also around that time that I started feeling sick.

I don't know if I should blame Luke for passing it on to me or the wheel for all of the stress that it caused that most likely caused my immune system to plummet.

I've heard you get sick easier if you are stressed a lot.

I wonder what happens if you are always stressed that you are sick?

I'm not even going to google that one.

I haven't yet filled my shoe wheel because I just realized I don't have the same Pump in 20 different colors.

Oh the tragedy of not being a "shoe girl".

Also, for those of you that asked our new camera is a Nikon D3000.

And be prepared to see pictures of just about anything and everything while I learn to use this new thing!

I may even post a picture of my Shoe Wheel all put together so nicely.

Christmas 2009

Well I'm back from my little holiday blogging hiatus! It was a crazy week that consisted of:

• lots of great presents
• a trip to the ER
• lots and LOTS of snow and ice
• a four wheeler
• and lots of TV watching.

It all started on Wednesday when Luke and I hit the road and headed to my hometown to spend a couple of days with my family. We had so much fun just sitting around, eating tons of food and watching lots of TV. Not exactly productive but it was nice and relaxing.

Christmas eve morning it started snowing and didn't stop until the next day. It was crazy and unexpected for Oklahoma. I'm usually a big fan of snow but not when it happens on Christmas and completely messes up everybody's travel plans. No fun.

And I lost count of how many times I fell on the ice. I'm normally a clumsy person, add ice and it all goes downhill.

Christmas morning we woke up and opened all of our presents which was oh so much fun. Then shortly after lunch Maxton (my nephew) was running and fell and split his chin open.

He had to go to the ER and get 5 stitches

Here he is telling me all about the fall:

Later in the afternoon on Christmas day Luke and I realized that there was no way we were going to make it to his parent's house, an hour away, in our little car, so after some arranging we found someone headed that way in a truck and hitched a ride with them.

It was a crazy Christmas day!

We spent the next couple of days hanging with Luke's family

Doing a little of this:

and some domino playing:

and hanging out with these guys:

After a couple of fun days we headed back to my parents house to spend some more time with my family. I of course took about 200 pictures of this little guy

I always forget to take pictures of the other people, he's just so cute!

We were only supposed to be out of town for a couple of days, but due to the icy roads and the cancellation of church we ended up being gone a week, which was just fine with us. We enjoyed every moment of being with our families!

By the way, Luke and I got a new camera for Christmas and pretty much the only thing I did all break was take pictures. Which would explain why Luke started to do this when I pulled out the camera:

It was a wonderful 2009 Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas from The Tree's

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." Luke 2:10-14

Movie and Seasons

Today was the first day of my Christmas break.

I woke up with good intentions for the day.

The plans involved lots of cleaning, lots of laundry, lots of dishes (well putting them in the dishwasher), and lots of last minute Christmas shopping.

I did none of the above.

I did however sort all of our laundry into about 5 different piles so they are scattered throughout our ole APT.

Be careful where you step.

I also got to watch You've Got Mail for the second time in the last 24 hours so I feel extra productive.

You've Got Mail is one of those movie that I LOVE to watch at Christmas time but its not necessarily a Christmas movie.

I thought I was the only person who did this until I read Big Mama's blog today and she mentioned that she loved to watch certain movies every Christmas although others might not consider them a Christmas movie.

So now that I know I'm not the only person who does this I want to pose this question to my readers:

Do you give get a good craving for a certain movie during certain seasons?

Here are mine:

Winter: You've Got Mail

Spring: Father of the Bride

Summer: Pearl Harbor

Fall: Back to the Future

There is no rhyme or reason for my movies with seasons, I just get the urge to watch these movies during these certain seasons.

Little side note: Back to the Future is my absolute favorite movie of all time. I watched it for the first time on TBS when I was in high school and it was as if somebody gave me a nugget of gold. I have been obsessed with them every since.

I own the trilogy and beg Luke to watch it with me every so often.

Does it freak anybody else out that the "future" in Back to the Future is 2015?

That is soon. Really soon.

Where is my Hover Board?

Random Catch-up

• December is the fastest month ever
• I have not seen my husband before 8:00pm once this week
• I'm not complaining - Luke has been busy getting ready for our big Christmas service at church
• God is really moving in our church and I am anxious to see what He is up to
• I am on Week SIX of my Couch to 5K
• I did not run today, it was my first day to miss on a weekday (I have missed a couple of Saturday's)
• I do not want to fall behind during the Holiday's
• I am off of work until January 4th. Hello sleeping in. I have missed you.
• I finally saw The Blind Side. It was great!!
• Right now I am thankful for my Christmas tree because our ceiling light has gone out and nobody has taken the time to change the light bulb
• I believe this is a man's job. My husband hasn't been home much this week, therefore the glow of my tree is my light this week
• I mean that literally not figuratively
• I am in the process of labeling all of my blogs (to fill that space on the left that says "Pick a Topic". After going through all my blogs I have to say: I blog about some weird stuff. I can't believe anybody reads this thing, I mean I'm glad, but just surprised.
• Did I mention I'm on Christmas break?!?! I love my job, but we all need a break from time to time. Can I get an Amen?!?!

Christmas Card Carousel 2009

It's time for the second Annual Christmas Card Carousel. My good friend Faith started this last year and I had SO much fun going and looking at all my bloggy friend's Christmas Cards.

I am so excited to share our card with all of my friends.

Here is our 2009 Christmas Card!

In case its hard to read it says: Oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas!

I ordered our card through Notably Noted, and I was beyond pleased with the result. If you have any card/stationary needs you should check them out. Seriously, it is CUTE stuff!

In fact, it's so cute that I will be hosting a giveaway in January featuring a Notably Noted product! Stay tuned........

Merry Christmas from The Tree's!

Head over to Faith's blog to join in on the fun!

Our Christmas Apartment

Last year Luke and I were celebrating our first married Christmas and we were living in a little apartment There wasn't much room for Christmas decorations so we just had a small tree.

Fast forward a year later. We are still in that same apartment.

I am currently in the process of working on not being bitter about that little fact.

So going into the Christmas season I told Luke that I didn't care if we were in our teeny tiny apartment I was buying a tree and all the Christmas fixings.

So without further ado, here is our humble abode decorated for Christmas:

First is the wreath on our tree. It's not very Christmassy, but it had peacock feathers and I fell in love and had to get it:

Right when you walk in you see our tree, I went with a red, black and silver theme. We don't have a tree topper yet:

Here is another shot of the tree and you can see the wall piece that Luke's mom had made to match our tree. I just love it!

A close up of the wall piece:

Like I've mentioned before, I LOVE getting Christmas cards. Our apartment has this big piece of ugly fake wood that is usually empty. But during Christmas time I spruce it up a bit with cards and stockings, at the end of the season it is full of cards. I JUST LOVE IT!

Here is a close up of that cute santa on our countertop. And my New Moon cup. Yes, I set it out as decoration. Yes, it's Luke's favorite piece of decoration.

This is our little 4ft tree that we used as our main tree last year. It is pretty pitiful but I wanted to use it to keep all of our sentimental ornaments. Each year my grandma gives us an ornament and everywhere we travel he buy an ornament so they are all on this tree. I hope to fill an entire tree very soon with sentimental ornaments.

It's such a pitiful little tree, but holds such meaningful ornaments!

This is the Christmas wreath that hangs above ole pitiful

This table is next to the Christmas Tree and holds one of my very favorite pieces. The Willow Nativity Scene. Last year I wanted a nativity set so bad. I specifically wanted the Willow set but knew I probably wouldn't get the full set for a few years.

Then some friends very graciously gifted Luke and I with this set for our wedding/Christmas present.

I was beyond thrilled. I cried when I got it last year and totally cried when I set it up this year.

Sometimes it is hard not living in the same town as our families, but then I remember that God has blessed us with great friends in this town and I don't want to take that for-granted.

So now I have this beautiful set! Nativity sets are so precious to me and I can't believe I have this beautiful set.

Underneath the nativity set is the first piece in our Christmas village. I hope we get more to add to our town this year!

Above our guest room/computer room/music room is this little sign and then these cute stockings that my grandma's friend crocheted for Luke and me.

And last but not least this little Santa cookie jar in the kitchen. I hope to collect santa figures in the future, this is a good start:

So there it is, our little apartment in all it's Christmas glory.

Now, does anybody have an available storage unit cause I have NOOOO idea where I will store all of this after Christmas! :-)

Happy

So I didn't really mean to stop blogging during the month of December but thats sort of what has happened.

It started with my new computer which I love but has changed my blogging-sync. For some reason changing to a different computer completely messed me up in the blogging area.

Then my batteries in my camera went dead and I haven't taken the time or energy to change them.

So put those two things together combined with the fact that we haven't had too much going on, and the blog gets neglected.

I planned on posting pictures of our Christmas decorations tonight, but after going through the entire house looking for double A batteries I realized that it just wasn't going to happen.

I didn't find one double A battery in the whole house. Not even in remote controls, they are all triple A. So weird.

I have a trip to the grocery store planned tomorrow so I will pick up some batteries and then post some pictures.

Until then, I was tagged by two bloggy friends Samantha and Katie to list 10 things that make me happy.

So here we go:

10 Things That Make Me Happy

1. My cute nephew. Here he is in all of his cuteness in front of the Christmas tree. Can't wait to spend Christmas with him!

2. Christmas Cards!! I love getting them in the mail every day. It's just SO exciting!!

3. Christmas movies. Especially Home Alone and Christmas Vacation.

4. Scarves and Uggs keep me happy cause they keep me super duper warm.

5. Sour Patch Kids, because first their sour then they are sweet.

6. Christmas decorations. Stay tuned tomorrow for some pics of ours.

7. My TWO WEEK Christmas vacation. LOVE working for higher education.

8. My super cute hubby. Christmas is a crazy busy time for him, but he always remains positive, and finds time to uplift me during this time. God knew what he was doing when he brought him to me. Thanks Big Guy Upstairs!

9. A good home cooked meal

10. A good book!

A Desperate Attempt for Warmth

As I have mentioned before, I HATE being cold.

To me, it is one of the worst feelings ever.

During the winter months I feel like I can never get warm.

And yes I understand I sound like a whiner considering I live in Oklahoma and not Antarctica.

But it’s my blog and I’ll whine if I want to.

Well my office is located in a very old house.

I’m talking real old, like built before the Titanic sank.

I like to pull out my random Titanic knowledge from time to time.

I was obsessed with Titanic information before, my love, Leo starred in the hit movie.

And then my love for Leo began after that.

I will never let go, Jack.

I digress.

So anyways, I LOVE my office, but that ancient house doesn’t hold heat.

As soon as the heater goes off my office goes back to somewhere around 32 degrees. Give or take a couple of degrees.

Meanwhile the other people in my office are about to go crazy cause I can’t get warm enough and I continue crank up the heat.

Like I said, the hot people always win.

For the past two years that I have been in the office I always suffer during the winter time. I have been known to sit at my desk with my gloves on, and icicles hanging from my hair, shivering just to keep my blood circulating.

Some of that was exaggerated.

Well last week I was talking to a friend and she told me that she brings a blanket to work. Thus my brilliant idea was born.

A blanket with sleeves.

Of course somebody else already thought of this brilliant idea, this invention is definitely one of those that I sit back and think “why didn’t I think of that?”

So my brilliant idea was to pull the ole Snuggie out of my closet and bring it to my office.

Seriously, it was like the inventor thought of the Snuggie just for me. I can get my work done ALL THE WHILE staying nice and toasty.

Now that I’m warm I’m an all around much happier person.

I get grumpy when I am cold.

My cute hubby can testify to that fact.

Here I am working hard, totally NOT posing for a picture.

Ridiculous looking or not, I am a fan of Snuggies!

And for once I am the winner in the Hot vs. Cold debate.

Weekly Weekend Update

Well, I figured out some of my computer issues. It turned out they weren't that difficult. Sometimes things just require time and patience.

Imagine that.

Every year our group of college friends gets together for a fun filled reunion weekend.

I look forward to it all year. Luke and I get together with several of these people throughout the year, but it is hard to get us all together at once. So this weekend is always a special one.

Some of us kicked off the night on Friday night with dinner and cupcakes. I proceeded to "stick my foot in my mouth" during dinner. This happens often and is just a way of life at this point.

Regardless it was so much fun. I don't think I have laughed that hard in awhile!

Here are the girlies:
Can we talk about my hair for one moment? THIS is why I don't wear it wavy very often. It is bad. Real. Bad.

The next day Saturday we just hung out all day and consumed a ton of cheese in the form of queso. What is a good party without leaving feeling like you just consumed 10 lbs of cheese?

The whole gang. We had a few less people this year, but still had such a great time.

And the yearly girls picture:

Such a fun time. I am thankful for good friends.

In a State of Confusion

Going from a PC person to a Mac person has proved to be tricky.

Luke has had a Mac for several years, and while I use his from time to time, I primarily used my PC for all of my blogging, twittering needs.

You know, basically the necessities of life.

So while I am unbelievably grateful for my expensive gift that my husband got me, I am utterly irritated with it.

I don’t know how to do anything.

I had 3 blog posts in my head that I was going to whip out last night.

However, they are still in my head because I spent 3 hours trying to figure out how to freaking get the pictures on my blog.

Excuse my language, computer problems cause me to use words like freaking.

I am ashamed to admit this but I have always been annoyed with people who are technologically incompetent.

When people would ask “dumb” computer questions, I would often wonder to myself “why don’t they just problem solve???”

I am eating those words.

I tried to problem solve for three hours last night which then made me cry and try to hide it from my husband because I don’t want to seem ungrateful for my gift.

I am grateful I have just never felt more dumb in my life.

Except for when I play Words with Friends. Nothing screams “I have the vocabulary of a 5th grader” more than playing “scrabble” with 20 friends on your phone and getting beat by all. of. them.

So for now this is all you get.

You don’t get my weekly weekend update with pictures full of fun times, You don’t get a post about how the workout room in the apartments uses WINDEX to disinfect and you sure as heck don’t get pictures of me working hard in my office wearing my Snuggie.

I know you are so bummed.

After work Luke is going to walk me through how to use my Mac. Which should be interesting since he is not a blogger and does not understand the blog lingo. He will probably show me how to import a song into an email which will help me in no way.

Until then I will be working on my vocabulary. I have 20 friends that I need to beat.

Static Electricity

Winter is a hard time for me.

See, all year long I have heightened senses. It is really crazy.

I have the nose of a bloodhound. I can smell something from miles away. Believe me this is not always a good sense to have.

Have you ever noticed that popcorn smells like urine? Because that is all I smell when eating it.

In fact I blogged about it here. Not the popcorn, the crazy sense of smell.

Aside from my impeccable smell I also have a crazy sense of hearing. Which has got me into trouble from time to time.

Well usually my sense of touch is perfectly normal, until winter comes along. During winter my sense of touch seems to go up and I get shocked approximately 60 million times a day.

Every time I touch something I get shocked. It does not matter what I touch I get shocked.

Now, I know I'm not the only person who gets shocked in the winter, but I seriously get shocked constantly.

I'm like a walking ball of energy. More so than the average human.

And it makes me very nervous. Anytime I go to touch a light switch I do this weird thing where I will tap it about 5 times quickly to get rid of all of the built up energy that is about to shock me.

It doesn't work. I still get shocked. And I still jump and scream out every time.

But last year I found a solution.

It is my trusty ole humidifier which has become my winter-time best friend.

So when I pull out my Christmas ornaments, Santa collection, and beautiful Nativity set, I also pull out this bad boy.

He has become the staple of my winter-time sanity.

It's just not Christmas time without the humidifier up and running.

Another Christmas item I look forward to pulling out is my book full of Christmas cards.

Receiving Christmas cards is one of my favorite parts of the season. I know that people spend time and money putting their cards together and I can't stomach just throwing them away, so last year I put together a book of all of our cards.

I bought a scrap book and then put fun Christmassy type paper on each page and then filled the pages with all of our fun Christmas cards we received.

I used number stickers to put the year, 2008 at the top of the first page. I think it will be so fun to go through and look at the cards each year.

But I'm also a Christmas card-crazy.

I can't wait to add to it at the end of this Christmas season!

Christmas Cards and humidifiers.....Some of my favorite things!

Trouble waking up

This morning when Luke woke me up for the day my very first thought was "when is this going to get easy?"

I mean its normal for a high school, or even college student to have trouble getting out of bed, but I thought for sure by my mid twenties (oh my gosh am I really in my mid-twenties) it would be easy to get out of bed.

Yeah, not so much.

I have never really been a 'morning person' but I would think a 25 year old with a full time professional career could pull it together enough to drag herself out of bed.

Luke has to wake me up at least 5 times every morning and there have been times where I have told him to just pour water on me then I will be forced to get out of bed.

My mom tried this tactic several times in high school and it worked like a charm.

The bed isn't as comfy/cozy if it is all wet.

However,the reason that I'm not able to get up in the morning might have something to do with the fact that it is 11:00pm and I am sitting on the couch hanging out on the computer.

Not really doing anything productive, just enjoying a little computer time. Because I obviously don't get enough computer time sitting at it all. day. long.

I have never been good at time management.

One of my new years resolutions might be to become a morning person. My goal is to get up at 6:15 ever morning.

Speaking of goals.....I am currently in WEEEK FIVE of my Couch to 5K program.

People, it is blowing my mind that I am still doing the program and I am actually enjoying it!

I have never been much of a runner, but I want to become one and this program seems to really be helping.

Half Marathon, here I come!

I need to go to bed now, I don't want to have to ask my husband to dump cold water on me in the morning.

That was a weird sentence.

Lasagna and Wrapping Paper

I just titled this post Lasagna and Wrapping Paper.


Clearly this is going to be one of the most exciting posts I've ever written.


First let's talk about the lasagna.


Today I was craving lasagna so I went to Pioneer Woman's website, found her super yummy, super easy lasagna recipe and decided that is what I would prepare for dinner.

After work, with the help of my cute hubby, we prepared this yummy lasagna. Luke claims he did it all the work because I just read the recipe off of the website and told him what to do. But I like to think of it as a team effort.

The recipe made a ton, so we will be eating on it for a few days, but it was the best lasagna I have ever had.

Definitely beats Stouffers!

However Luke is in this new 'kick' where he counts ALL of our calories.

He uses the Lose It application on his iphone and anytime I prepare a meal he stands over my shoulder entering EVERY calorie of EVERY ingredient of EVERY recipe into his phone.

It's not annoying. At. All.

I'm not a big fan of calorie counting.

I like to eat food blindly. If I know how many calories are in it, all the fun is taken out of eating.

So tonight before I was about to dive into that yummy lasagna Luke thought it would be the appropriate time to inform me that this meal contained more calories than any other meal I have prepared since he starting counting calories last spring.

I pretended I didn't hear that piece of knowledge and enjoyed every single bite.

After the lasagna I figured I would burn some calories and wrap some presents.

I was a little too excited when I opened up our wrapping paper and realized that the friendly wrapping paper manufacturers printed lines on the back of the paper for easy-straight cutting.

Look how cool:

I was sort of flipping out with excitement.

It made my wrapping paper experience much more enjoyable. I usually dread this part of Christmas.

Has anybody else mastered wrapping gifts? I am horrible at it and typically I'm embarrassed by my presents.

Also, I like to color coordinate my wrapping paper with my tree. Even though Luke and I are typically the only people who see our tree.

The ole APT doesn't fit too many people and when you add a tree space is limited.

Our tree is black, red and silver so our wrapping paper is black and white and red and white.

Here is a pretty bad pic of our tree. I will show more later but I wanted to give you the black,red, silver feel.

I took this picture from my phone while sitting on my couch.

That's just how many calories I'm burning tonight.

So that was our night in a nutshell. Lasagna and wrapping gifts.

We live a very exciting and on-the-go lifestyle.

I have become the person who color coordinates their wrapping paper with their tree and gets excited over a good lasagna recipe.

And oddly enough, thats ok with me!