please please please!

This takes two seconds to do, and really could speed along the process of getting healthy foods into our schools, and in more & more homes across America!

Jamie Oliver (famous chef, and advocate for healthy food around the world) has this show on tv right now (have you seen it?), Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. It's amazing! He's working against the stubborn eating habits we have here in America, specifically in our public school cafeterias..and is trying to educate everybody on how important it is to teach children about nutrition, and how to cook for themselves. It's aweeeesome.

Honestly, I feel bad for the guy. It's crazy to see the persecution he's going through, trying to explain what the food we're eating is doing to us! Lets just say we Americans like our frozen/fried/instant food.

Anyway, we're really at a turning point in the country, where we can shift the scales of what food is available/affordable to buy. If we start taking it seriously, and making it a priority to eat well, the major food companies in the world will start to come around to those demands. This, in turn, will mean better, healthier lives for ourselves and our families. I want that so bad!

So here's Jamie's petition, PLEASE SIGN IT. It's a small step, but a really important one, to change what food we put into kids mouths. This will lower obesity and diabetes in America, it will make healthy food easier and cheaper to buy, it will change the food our kids crave to eat...it will bring about amazing change. Please sign it, and even go the extra step to have others sign it! Click on that little picture down there and do it!

thanks, guys :)

real quick...

I picked up knitting again this past winter, and have really taken to knitting baby hats :) I think I'm really hitting my stride, and are starting these little cuties. I'm kinda shocked at the response I've gotten after making this one, and the instantaneous mini-queue of people who would like them for their munchkins, or munchkins they know!

So my friend, Sayaka, & I are throwing back and forth the idea of opening an etsy shop! We're just mulling it over for the time being...we shall see : )

milestone!!

I ran my very first race today!! It was only about 6K long, and the enormous crowd the entire way prevented us from really running any faster than a jog, but I sure did it!

I'm really proud of myself :) It won't be the last time I race, definitely. I could see myself getting more into running....maybe even someday fulfill that lifelong dream of running a marathon?! It's too early to tell, but it was sure a fun morning.

Ryan also ran (the more competitive leg) this morning! So we were able to see Kristen & Little O for a few minutes ahead of time. they are too cute together!

like I said, an enormous crowd. 15,000 + people really clogs the race route, so some serious crowd-dodging skills were required. (this pic looks like the starting line....dont be fooled. this is halfway through the race, still stuck in a mob of people!)

nelson, amy, me & jon. fun with people I love...here we're on top of the Aurora bridge....what a fabulously beautiful day to be running outside!

and I had to put a picture up of a place Nelson took us to for lunch. Jon & I have always speculated about the amazing Chinese food restaurants that must be hiding in the International district, if we were only savvy & brave enough to try one. Nelson, knowing a thing or two about asian culture, took us to one of his favorite spots. We were more than a little sketched out, walking into this establishment. We were very relieved to find that what the place lacks in curb appeal, they more than make up for in yummy-ness. This isnt your average Panda Express!

enjoy the sun, everybody! spring has sprung!

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 :)

snapshots

Just a few quick photos of some things.

My meager attempts at celebrating valentine's day this year...a cheesecake I baked for Jon. Haha, I overestimated how full to fill the pan. Still yummy!
Henry's Valentine's package for us (please take note that he is writing our names now :) :
Mother nature's valentine's day present to us, early cherry blossoms this year:
and a peek at one of my favorite spots ever. my little yarn shop up the street from us, where a cute little elderly man helps me find all of my knitting needs:
where is february slipping away to? It's almost Spring!

and totally redeemed yourself.

Valentine's Week is like a whole week of Black Fridays for massage therapists. It's straight up awful, being so overworked. Today was no exception, and I left work at 7:30 feeling like I could cry. My body just hurts. I've opened up my availability to work even MORE than normal this week, due to the volume we're getting at the spa, and my managers are still asking me to work more and more. When I put my foot down and say that I physically can't, I feel like I am letting them down. Guh.

So that is the setting of my day. A twelve hour kick in the pants.

But then just like that, the last half an hour has made a whole sad day feel fine again :)
I waited and waited for my bus to take me home, and my bus never came. So I opted to take a different one that gets me almost home, except for the last 3/4 mile.

And I walked my walk home, with my headphones on, and felt a surge of love for my ipod as it spun the hits I really needed to hear. It is WEIRD how sometimes your mp3 player just KNOWS what you need to hear. And just the slightest drizzle brought my body temperature back down from a whole day of physical labor.

I saw two super cute dogs in different parked cars who both nuzzled up to the windows, just to be shown a little affection. So cute.

I walked past a huge garage door with an unusual painting on it, and as I stopped to appreciate the artwork, I heard music playing over the music of my ipod. Taking out my headphones, I could hear a semi-decent "garage band" practicing behind the artistic door, and I just stopped and appreciated it all for a bit. They were having a good time.

I continued on, and the Seattle night skyline came into view, along with St. Mark's Cathedral all illuminated on the top of this huge hill in the distance. I have said a hundred times that I want to go hear the monks sing (every Sunday night at 9:30), yet I never have! I renewed my vow to do so, with more determination than ever. (below is st. marks, on the upper left)

and then finally, right before I got to the sidewalk up to our apartment, I walked once again past the photography studio next door to us. Chase Jarvis photography, a place of mystery & awe that Jon and I always wonder at when we walk by. The owner, Chase, is kinda bigtime. They're always having photo shoots there, we stalk his blog and see that he trots all over the world to shoot things and people, last summer he threw a huge block party that shut down our whole street. Dave Matthews made an appearance, and all we could do was stand five feet up on our balcony and wish we had been invited down to ground level. Haha.

As I walked past the studio just a bit ago, I saw the lights were dim, except for Chase himself burning the midnight oil at a huge computer. I decided it was high time I introduce myself, so I walked right up and knocked on the door. (kinda bold, I know. the place was closed and literally gated.) But like Jon & I predicted, Chase is a cool guy! He opened the door, shook my hand, and we shot the breeze for five minutes. I knew from his blog that he just got back from the Sundance festival, so I asked him what Rainn Wilson & Joseph Gordon Levitt are like in person. He said "Joe" is way cooler than Ashton Kutcher. I said Jon and I are huge fans of his work, and I'd love to bring my massage chair over for his employees sometime. It was a fun conversation.

I'm glad circumstances can change so quickly. God knew I needed a break tonight, and he gave me a few in some different forms. Thanks, God.

here we go again.

I tried to find a good layout for my xanga page, before I started a new entry. As it turns out, xanga is a dying breed, and nobody cares much for inventing new layouts for it. I've known this for a while, but I have finally (I know, I've said this before) decided to go forth with blogger to post our updates out here in seattle. it can sometimes give me problems with uploading photos, but we'll just see how it goes.

Two weeks ago marked Jon's return to busy season. It will be the 3rd busy season we go through together, 4th if you count the one in the beginning while we dated. I don't count that one, because neither one of us cared if he worked until 10 or 11 pm, because we stayed up until almost 3 every night anyway, not being able to bear going back to our own respective apartments. Haha, oh dating. How not-real life you are.
(in fact, my best friend is currently going through this infatuation stage with the boy she is in love with, and it's bringing back a lot of memories I had forgotten. Like how sleep moved down a few notches on the basic needs list, replaced by "Need for Time with said object of infatuation." I miss the giddy feeling of this stage, but not the sleep deprivation.)

But yes, busy season. Each return to it has been unique, the first one happening when we had only been married 2.5 months. And that was brutal, I can't lie. It was no coincidence that Jon left PwC after that year, as it took a serious toll on us to rarely see each other, and as I spent evening after evening alone in our apartment for three, four, into five long months. I didn't have a job then, was in school only part-time, and didnt have many friends living around us.

But then we moved to Seattle, packed a couple years of marriage under our belts, and Jon missed the work he had done with that company. So he went back last year, while I had my career to focus on, and more friends to see, and Jon & I having learned many great communication skills since getting married.

And I sit, wondering how this next season will go. I have a job that I truly love, great solid friendships, a cat I love :), some really great hobbies, different activities in the next couple of months to anticipate and prepare for... I'm feeling really great about what could otherwise be a few dreary months. And this is the best part - in order to put a definite end to a season of work that has a tendency to stretch on for as long as you'll allow it (that first year, it was mid-July!), Jon & I have both booked vacation starting May 1st, and we have solid plans to finally take that promised trip to Italy! Such a fun thing to look forward to. We have all sorts of travel books, and I cannot wait to start booking places to stay and define everything a bit better.
anyway, that's me trying to optimistic about very minimal time I'll have with Jon over the next few months, but I'm sure you'll hear me get frustrated in the future...

We've gone through some car changes lately. In short, Jon's beater of a honda is seriously circling the drain and could die at a moment's notice. So while he's traveling longer distances at early & late hours, we think it best he drive my reliable jetta. As for me, I'm trying to embrace true city living by taking the bus the majority of the time, or even (bum bum BUM) making good use of the bicycle I received from Jon for my birthday. This has been the warmest January EVER (mid-50s and sunny every day!), so I dusted off the bike and am living life without a car at my immediate disposal. So far it's going well. Havent tried to bring home a gallon of milk on my bike yet though...

We enjoyed a ten day, whirlwind visit to the midwest in early January. It was crammed full of seeing old friends, seeing even older friends get married, lots of road trips, and great family hangout time. Oh yeah, don't forget the -20 degree temperatures...it was full of that too. (gosh, am I thankful for our mild winters out here.)
I brilliantly forgot my camera's memory card at home, so any pictures I have are all from my phone. haha, here they are:

I can't describe how cold it was out in the midwest, unless you're reading this from the midwest. Here's the view out of our chicago hotel room. The chicago river was slow flowing, as the ice started to pile up on top of it. I'm bummed we didnt get to enjoy our old city, as we spent most of the time huddled indoors.

My chubby little neice, Merian, who is the sweetest little girl ever. Just a laid-back cutie, who loves her older brother, and simply to be a part of things. Just look at these legs!

My sister & her hubby just bought a home!! It's the first time they've had the opportunity to place an offer and go through escrow. So fun to see their new colonial, and exciting to picture what the finished product will look like. Here's Katie next to their first "sold" sign:

always so sad to say goodbye :( I love these kids more than anything.

A good buddy from work had a masquerade for her birthday, so that was fun to get dressed up for :)

I gotta be honest, that dress was working hard. I hadnt worn it since Jon & I first started dating, and I dont have the same body as I did four years ago :P Excited to run the St. Patty's Day Dash here in seattle in a couple of months. It's a nice goal to work toward.
annnd, I'm annoyed with blogger, so I'm going to end this for now. I need to work a bit harder at keeping up to date with our lives out here. Take Care!