Off...again!

I came up to hang out with Luke and his family again after Christmas. Sunday night Mark, Luke, John and I went to the Family Fun Center to use up some tokens they had left before they move!

John, Mark, and Luke racing!

Luke and I got pretty good at ski-ball!

Christmas Day

Our Christmas breakfast table, we love setting up!

Mark and Cindy joined us for our traditional breakfast! Mom made special eggs Benedict, bacon, her braided fruit bread and country potatoes, with cranberry champagne.

We used up the ketchup in the pretty glass dish so Mark insisted that we "contaminate" the prettily set table with the big plastic bottle. Of course we had to record the moment!
These are the mysterious presents Dad brought home one day! They had no names written on them and we had no clue what was inside!

Ta-da! Night gowns!

Val had trouble getting hers on!

My Christmas had a sort of color scheme going on. I was working on this green shrug, and everything else from lip gloss, clarifying lotion, thank you notes, and my calendar had this nice pink and green theme!

Christmas Eve

This Christmas Eve we celebrated two events that were long awaited. We celebrated the birth of Baby Jesus AND the debut of my hand knit, long in progress, purple Fitted Knits sweater.

Haha Valerie got coal in her stocking!What?! No bears?!

Brown Paper Packages...

tied up with bows.

I have recently started wrapping presents with brown shipping paper and grocery bags! The plain paper is so simple and the bows are so bright and festive! I love it! Makes me happy!

Christmas Party

We took a quick break from final's prep and went to a Christmas party at Mikey's house. (Mikey is my good friend Destinie's boyfriend, both pictured below.)
It was a good chance to catch up, have fun, and drink peppermint hot chocolate! YUM!

Beth, Katie, Me, Valerie, and Destinie

Me, Destinie, Valerie

Thanksgiving Week

Some of my classes the Monday before Thanksgiving got cancelled so I took the chance to head up to Phoenix, OR (between Medford and Ashland) and celebrate an early Thanksgiving with Luke's family! I made it just in time for their annual pumpkin smashing!

Luke, Mark, Jay

John, Neola, Mark, Luke, Me, and Jay on the day Luke and I were departing to meet up with my family in Fresno! We spent two nights in Fresno, Luke came with me to one of my night classes and I took him to Quilter's Paradise, the quilt fabric shop in Clovis, to make up for all the time I spent watching football at his house! As you can see in the picture below he found ways to entertain himself and have fun!

Then we (Mom, Dad, Val, Luke, and me) made our way down to the San Diego area for Thanksgiving. My parents picked up Aunt Audrie along the way and we sort of stopped in on Matt (my sisters boyfriend) in La Jolla. Matt took us on a fun tour of UC San Diego and we all met up in near my Aunt Kim and Uncle Alan's place.

Seated@tableL-R: Aunt Audrie, Dad/George, Mom/Sue, Matt, Valerie, Aunt Kim, &Uncle Alan Luke and I stood in the back!

My dad thought wearing his hat backward was youthfull? :)

We spent a nice time at our hotel working on puzzles, and playing games!

Mom and Dad got a head start wrapping presents!

Aunt Audrie witnessed the maddness!

On Thanksgiving Day we went to our hotel's buffet for dinner! I gave up on the idea of overloading on turkey when I saw the heaping bowls of shrimp, cocktail sauce, and platters full of smoked salmon! It was so good!
Our waitress took a picture of our table...and included the people at it as a bonus!

Val waited in line for the meat and so she decided if she waited in line she was going to get a plate full of it! My dad took a picture to record the carnivore. For the record, she did share with us!

Our hotel room looked right out onto the last holes of the golf course. Very convienient for Luke!
The tee markers were softball sized golf balls! I thought that was cool!

On our way back to Fresno, we stopped at UCLA to watch my cousin Taylor's play against them in volleyball, the game didn't end the way we would have hoped, but we enjoyed seeing Taylor and my other family.

It's About Time...

I get back to my blog! It has been too long! I also figure since my parents included a link to my blog in their Post Christmas Card I should probably get back on top of things! A LOT has been going on and I'm going to start from around Thanksgiving and work my way to the present! I'm currently at Luke's house and he just found his binders full of baseball, football and hockey cards so we've got loads of time, since he's very much preoccupied!

I'm Not Chicken...

...to try new recipes! Haha, I know, bad joke...I was trying to come up with a clever title and that one made me laugh! Anyway, on Saturday night we (my mom and me) were brainstorming for dinner in honer of my sisters boyfriend being in town (well actually, you're special Matt, but we needed an occasion to have an exciting meal!). My mom was planning on a cranberry chicken dish with rice but I was rallying for something else. I wasn't sure what "something else" was, but I thought I'd start browsing the internet before we rushed off to the store.

Im a sucker for Better Homes and Gardens, as I love my happy plaid cookbook, so I went to their site, and found a link for "Quick and Easy Chicken Dinners." We went for the adventure of Maple Glazed Chicken with Sweet Potatoes, followed with a dessert of strawberry and peach sorbet and oatmeal raisin cookies! I must say, I really enjoyed it, and the company we got to eat it with! The other exciting element was that we got to eat it of the Lennox Pine China. That always makes events feel special to me!

Broomball?

On Friday night the NFC college group and friends (we had a lot of other groups join us as well and we were glad for the company!) went to one of the skating rinks in Fresno for a night of Broomball!

We all rode with Val to the ice rink.(After stopping at Starbucks of course!) L-R Katie, Matt, Valerie, Luke, and Me.

We were on the blue team! Yay, go blue team! Don't we look vicious?

Here we have green team!

The teams are good sized but were much bigger by the end of the night! It was a well attended event and fun was had by all, even if we will all have bruises on our knees, butts and wrists for the next week! (Yep, I fell a lot.)

I finally got to wear my funny hat with earflaps and braid ties. One of the girls there had a cool one with a yarn Mohawk. Of course we had to take a picture. (I'm on a roll taking pictures of/with stranger or new people. We saw my Dad's stranger twin at Starbucks today and said "hi" for the record! Making friends!) There's a knit version of her hat that I would like to try to make! You can see it here.

Harper sisters take on the green team! (Our eyes turn red when we get really competitive. Oh wait maybe it was because we were up WAY past our bedtime!)

Crafty Coat

While looking for skirt patterns, I came across this cute fleece jacket pattern! I have always been entertained by fleece, finding the fuzziness and potential warmth captivating. I thought, this jacket would be the perfect, justifiable way for me to buy (and use) fleece! I went with this bright royal blue color, because at work we have these lovely blue polo shirts that we have...I mean get...to wear. Now that the weather is cooler, It has been asked that our sweaters and sweatshirts be the same color as our shirts so that we will be easily recognizable on the playground or in a full classroom. (Me? Blend in with kids? Oh don't get me started ha ha. ) Having already gotten tired of my sweatshirt and wearing it with the non jeans that we are required to wear I thought this jacket would be a cute, dressier alternative! I'm pretty pleased!

Two Cities Marathon

Last weekend Fresno county hosted it's first marathon (ever or in a whole bunch of years I cant remember which. It was called Two Cities Marathon and a Half. The event surprisingly ended up filling my weekend. On Friday night I went to an event sponsored by the Women's Studies department. Katherine Switzer, the first woman to officially enter and run in the Boston Marathon was speaking. She was in town for the two cities marathon to be a motivational speaker for the people participating (running or walking) but Fresno State invited her to come to more specifically address the area of female involvement in athletics, empowerment, including more Women's Events in the Olympics, and taking the marathon to women in other countries! Pretty interesting.

Saturday afternoon there was an organizational barbecue for all the volunteers. We got our shirts and were told more about where to be and what needed to be done.

Sunday morning, I reported to our water station at 6:30 am. For those of you who have read or heard about my troubles waking up on important mornings, my mom hid two alarms in my room the night before. I did wake up. At our water station we filled over 2,000 cups with water for runners and walkers! That's a LOT for Fresno. I think I read that around 3,000 people were signed up to participate! It was quite the event to see and help with! I'm glad I volunteered! (Even if it was for the extra credit!)

Here you can see the runners coming down the road!In the bottom left corner you can see the cups lined up on the table! I was still filling cups to keep the table stocked. Being a person holding out water is risky, especially with the runners, because they don't want to lose momentum by slowing down to get the water they sort of grab and throw hoping some of the water lands in their mouths. Other runners just take a gulp, and spit it back out! Yep, filling cups was safe!

Another cool part about Sunday was that I got to see my friends Randy and Luke running! Yay! You guys are troopers!

In the Bag

Many of you may remember this bag from previous posting.

Its made out of bags I recieved while shopping in Idaho!

Well, I've been back at it.

This is a bag made out of SaveMart bags. I tied a fold at each end of the mouth of the bag to help the bag keep it's shape and better hold whats in it!

The bags are pretty thick and squishy acting as a good protector for the things in it. I thought I'd try this out by making a sleeve bag for my laptop. This one may be a little tight but it works well and this would be good for quick and simple transport of my laptop! I used blue and white bags from Paul's (the grocery store we went to in McCall, Idaho and for the stripe I used a few, okay more like five, of the Target bags I'm saving for Christa. Sorry! It needed a stripe!

Thanks to Cindy and my mom for saving bags for me! If you have an inclination to save bags feel free to donate to the cause! If you live in an area that has interesting, or pleasantly colored grocery store bags I'd love it if you save them for me! I've been missing the green bags(included in my first attempt) from Moscow, Idaho!

Whee Halloween!

Halloween weekend was fun! Here I am with some of my girlfriends at a party some of our friends were hosting! L-R is Amanda, Me, Destinie, Beth, Katie, and Kassy! Yay!

I was a more contemporary Marian the Librarian.

So I called it a night relatively early, and went home to sleep before my CSET test the next morning at 7:30. I set my alarm, got my stuff all ready, and then woke up the next morning at 7:32! Two minutes after the test started! Augh... I missed it. When I woke up in shock my mom told me she heard me talking in the next room and heard stuff going on. I didnt talk to anyone, so it all must have been sleep talking/incorporated into my dream. The worst part is something similar happened two years ago when I was supposed to take the CBEST test. I'm scheduled to take the CBEST in December. You'll all have to call and make sure I'm actually awake! Ugh. I can't believe it.

On Sunday when the college group was meeting at Starbucks for Sunday School a man walked in. I wasn't the only one to do a double take thinking that he was my dad!

Here is my dad maybe 5 years ago with slightly darker hair.(He often wears his boots, and also has a hat, I couldn't find the picture with the boots.)

And here is the man we saw at Starbucks!

Worthy of a double take?