can we have february back, please?

oh my goodness, I can't say enough how thankful I am for the winter we had this year. I can not even count on two hands how many sixty degree days we had, and I can count two fingers how many frosts I saw all winter. However, all good things must come to an end, and we've dropped back down to cold & rainy. I'm not liking it one bit!

I took this picture at Golden Gardens beach in mid-february, sitting on a blanket with my buddy Sayaka and her pups. I personally think God gave me the gift of a good winter, because I've been bus bound for the last few months. It's been fabulous walking around the city in the sunshine!!

Our schedules have stayed consistently packed, and the future looks to be no different. We celebrated Jon's parents birthdays (love the family time down in the Claw!), spent awesome evenings at Kristen & Ryan's watching little O grow long and chubby :) Jon has definitely been logging in his fair share of hours at work (I might be underexaggerating that by just a little, but I'm trying to stay positive. Busy season is nearing the end!)

But I have fabulous friends that I've loved spending time with. Every Tuesday has been Lost night at my place, where the girls gather for intrigue & junk food. Some buddies from work and I have been working our way through the Lord of the Rings trilogy (haha, lame, i know...but you should just HEAR our witty commentary the whole way through. hilarious).

I've been trying semi-furiously to get into running shape for the St. Patty's Day fun run that's taking place this coming Sunday. Even if I bring up the tail of the race, it should be a fun time!

Amy & I are signed up to take introduction to conversational Mandarin starting in a few weeks! I can't express how excited I am to start learning a language again, especially a language that is so far out of my comfort zone! I've never attempted a language outside of Latin origin, and without the normal alphabet....and I'm excited to try communicating with a bunch of people I work with. We'll see!

Jon has surprised me by signing up to be a mentor in the business department at Seattle Pacific University! I am super excited about this, because Jon truly has the spiritual gift of business. (is that a thing?) He is so wonderful with interpersonal relationships, and has really loved helping underclassmen in this area in the past, so I am pumped that he will have an outlet soon, to hopefully take away some of the staleness he encounters in his field.

Jon doesnt know this part yet, but I signed him and I up for a trapeze class. Hahaha, you read that correctly. Trapeze. Like, at clown school. It was a Seattle Daily special I had emailed to me, and I just thought, "What the heck! Why not?!" We have through December to redeem this, but don't fret. There will be photos when it happens.

And finally, Jon, Amy, Brian Howe & some other great people went to a benefit dinner for the International Justice Mission two nights ago. It really shook me free of my daily life, and opened my eyes to something I never thought was going on in the world, or at least to the magnitude I discovered. IJM is a human rights agency that's dedicated to the mission of abolishing slavery & injustice worldwide. The number of men, women & children who are held in bondage to slavery, prostitution, violence, and fear is staggering. We were told that there are more slaves in the world at this very moment, than all four hundred years of the African slave trade combined. It was immensely saddening to hear about, yet gave so much hope to know there are so many lawyers and law officials who are giving their lives for the cause of the persecuted. I'm still mulling over everything we saw and heard that evening, and starting to read a book called The Good News about Injustice, but I really have this burden on my heart to get more involved somehow for this cause. I'll keep you updated on that.

A couple shots of amy & I dressed up. a rare occurrence for us :)

real mature, I know.

and finally, I met Juan Valdez on the way to work the other day! I said, "Hola." And tried to explain that I love his work, but he didnt answer me. I could have sworn he spoke spanish.

these are my updates, and I'm sticking to them!

oh wait, two more!! my favorite niece on earth! Merian's getting so big & cute! Katie got her ears pierced a few weeks ago, and I am in love with her little girlie ears :)