Snapshot Sunday: Turkey

Here are some pictures from the Turkey portion of our trip. I'll be blogging more about the trip, like our itinerary and what we did later this week!

Tourists, picture taking in the Hagia Sophia

The underground cisterns

The Blue Mosque

In the spice bazaar. I loved this place

The Ferry Chimneys in Cappadocia

Hello, friend

Walking and picture taking

Love scenes like this

 Bike riding on one of the Princess Islands

In the old seminary building on top of the Princess Island

Just us!

Snapshot Sunday: August 12th

I'm back in Texas for the wedding of my brother-in-law & sister-in-law. They just started dating before our wedding & we were there for their engagement (for which I made this cheesecake) in April. I couldn't be happier for them! Here are the pictures of my week. 

This precious girl rolled over this week. It was exhausting.

We got this sign in at work, I appreciated it.

This little man is a delight. 

I think he may have been saying "no water in it" (it being his mac and cheese)

I love the library.

I brought my brand new sister-in-law coffee this morning of her wedding (Friday)

It may have been weird when the barista called this out....

Two of my favorite people: (Grand)Nana and my other adorable niece (Rahel)

The fantastic groom's cake at the wedding (like his actual van)

Breakfast this morning with some cousins & an uncle! I love family

I'll leave you with this gorgeous picture of the bride & groom. Love them 

Sunday Snapshots

I finally came up with a title for my blog posts. Thoughts?

Sunday: Start of the Amadeus Festival (classical musical week in Whitefish)

Free concert in the park. 

Monday: Best morning ever. 22 mile bike ride into Glacier with a stop for a latte :)

Tuesday: French Toast for my husband. 

Wednesday: homemade pizza

Thursday: doodles when I needed to be creative

Friday: watching the Opening Ceremonies with my favorite little man

Saturday: my excellent garage sale find. I'm so excited.

The view from our hike on the Highline!

Weekly review

Monday: violently ill. maybe heat stroke. this was my view for much of the afternoon.

Tuesday: heaven in a bowl, homemade chocolate peanut butter ice cream

the only thing I ate other than toast

Wednesday: coffee cupping. more to come on that later. 

Thursday: breakfast on the porch. I love having a porch.

Thursday: accessories. 

Not sure what day, but a note I found in my library book. I hope Naz got his sheets upstairs.

Friday: day trip to Missoula & wine cubes in Target

Saturday: my sunflower is the on on the left, its losing but at least its alive.

Sunday Funday Pictures

One of my favorite bloggers (Tracy from shutterbean.com) does a "my life in photos" post that I thought I would try once in awhile. Basically you'll get to peek in at my week in pictures. I'm not the greatest at weekly posts but we'll see what happens. 

(My sleeping and adorable niece)

(Blueberry popsicles for the 4th that need some work)

(Clove face from my baked beans)

(Fancy water spread for the ladies while the men work away,

with some nephew hands creeping in)

(Contraband from GNP on our hike today. Don't tell anyone)

I'm late, I'm late

My fantastic husband and I just celebrated our one year anniversary (5 days ago, hence the title...). I can hardly believe it. Honestly it feels like way more than a year ago that we were driving overnight from Lubbock to Mesa for our wedding week, then flying to Cancun, then driving home. We've crammed a lot into a year. Now we're in a completely different place, employed in part time jobs and our belongings are in a box in Seattle. Life is just bonkers sometimes.

Anyways, I wanted to share that for part of our date we went KAYAKING! I wish I could have taken my camera out on the lake with us but bottom line it rained on us. My pants were soaked and it was awesome.

Things I Learned While Living In Lubbock

I cannot believe that almost two years ago I was writing this post about moving to Texas! In reflecting on our time here I began to really think about what I've done in the last year and a half. It made me realize that this post could also be titled "Where I Became An Adult," because in all honesty Lubbock is where I first lived totally on my own. So here is a list of things I learned while living here:

• Appropriate use of the term "y'all" and how to say it in everyday conversation
• How to be a nurse
• Getting my own car insurance
• Having a budget
• How to plan a week of meals
• Two words: health insurance
• Another word and an acronym: Roth IRA
• How to be a wife (which is in progress)

It is really hard to believe our time is almost over so we're going to make the best of it for the last weekend we're here!

(photos courtesy of my husband)

A little change

A few weeks ago I watched a documentary called "Forks over Knives" on Netflix. Here is summary from the website:

"FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods. The major storyline in the film traces the personal journeys of a pair of pioneering researchers, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn."

I was totally inspired.

As a medical professional I work in a hospital where most of our "curative" efforts consist of giving people a new pill for every new complaint they have. Unfortunately due to lack of time/resources/education most people accept this and go on and generally don't make any lifestyle changes. I find myself getting endlessly frustrated with our medical system (although sometimes it's the individuals or doctors or myself) because of this. In the documentary they feature several doctors that help people with reversible diseases (like hypertension, heart disease, diabetes type II) stop and even reverse the disease itself with diet and exercise.

And last week I finally picked up a book called Anti-Cancer by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber. (It's been on my book list for months & don't worry, you'll get full review when I finish it). The author was diagnosed with a brain tumor and ends up researching ways to help our bodies and modern medicine fight off cancer (and prevent it) with diet, habits and lifestyle changes. I'm about 50 pages in, but I'm also completely inspired by this as well.

I've thought about changes I need to make for awhile. I'm pretty consistent with exercise, I do the gym thing most days a week and try and do some yoga at home, but I've always been challenged when I think about what I eat/put into my body. Bottom line here is I think I'm going to move away from eating processed food and I'm going to cut down on my intake on animal products. At this point I doubt I will ever be 100% vegan (lets be honest, I had bacon on my breakfast burrito today) but I've started drinking soy milk (which is actually really good) and trying to eat less animal products. We'll see how it goes.

There is a lot more I could expound on related to these topics, but I'll leave it at this for now. I'm still processing and learning most of this myself and I'll have to see where this goes from here.

2012

I think I've just now had some time to realize we are in a new year. Last year I had some major changes in my life and this year may be no different. I spent some time this morning reflecting on where I'd like to be by the end of this year and here are some goals I've come up with to get me there.

o Read 25 books (8 of which are fiction)

o Work out most days a week for 1 hour each day, do yoga once a week

o Evaluate purchases before I make them

o Successfully grow an herb

o Watch less than an hour of TV a day & spend more time outside

o Volunteer

o Devote myself to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Colossians 4:2

o Figure out what it means to invest in relationships

o National Chemo Certification course

o Apply for grad school by 2012

I have more, which I don't feel like sharing, but these are some of them. Also, not all of these goals are well written (they don't have a time line, or aren't specific enough). oh well. Now here's to a new year!

2011

A look back at my goals/year:

1) Get married! - DONE. Best day of my life.
2) Refinish 5 pieces of furniture - Not done, at all. I did 1 though.
3) Get chemotherapy certified at work - DONE
4) Join the local Oncology Nursing Society chapter - DONE & I joined the national ONS
5) Give more random gifts - Sort of done, I can think of a few I gave randomly.
6) Embroider some stuff - DONE (a pillowcase & handkerchiefs for my bridesmaids)
7) Move into my first place with my husband and make it our home - DONE
8) Make some new traditions for our family and continue old ones - Sort of done
9) Travel to Cancun (helllooo honeymoon!) - DONE
10) Read 24 books (12 for fun, 12 to better myself) & write them down! (since i have a terrible memory) - 17 for fun (i.e. fiction) & 8 non-fiction = 24 total, 1/2 success. I'll count it .
11) Start saving for retirement and possibly going back to school - DONE.
12) Take more pictures - DONE?
13) Get involved in a church in TX - DONE, we're Members at Redeemer Lubbock, co-leading a gospel community & have made good friends
14) Keep my blog updated with things I'm doing- DONE

I also oriented people at work, traveled to San Antonio, Austin & Fort Worth, knitted some, did other random crafts, camped & backpacked with my husband for the first time, cooked a bunch, made some really good friends & was generally very happy with my life.

If I wasn't super lazy & on vacation, I would make you links to the blog posts related to these, but lets be honest, you've already read those (hi, Mom!).

Happy Day

Granted this day was several weeks ago, but look what I got in the mail!


Our wedding album! Hooray! The amazing Kimberly Jarman took our pictures and as part of our package I color corrected our images so I have all 1,024 images on my hard drive. I actually used a Groupon for My Pic Tales to make it. There's something about holding the book that tells the story of our day that makes me incredibly happy.

Wish List

It's my birthday in a few days...cough, cough...Thursday. Feel free to get me any of the following:

1)A scarf hanger - SO HANDY!

2) This adorable towel from House 8810
3) This super cozy looking blanket also from House 8810
4) A gift card to Amazon so I can buy all the books on my "to read" list, which is now super long.

P.S. I'm kidding you don't have to get me anything :)