Hooray for Black Friday!

We had a really fun Thanksgiving with Ezra’s sister, Casey, and her family in Salt Lake City. We had dinner with them on Thanksgiving and stayed the night so we could go Black Friday shopping in Salt Lake. We hit up Target (Vacuume! Kindle!), RC Willey (Blu-ray player!), Best Buy (DVDs!), Kohl’s (Clothes!) and Old Navy (More clothes!).

I ran another 10 miler last Monday, and tomorrow I have to do 13 miles. I might die.

I’ve been having fun playing with my new kindle as I learn about and use eBooks. I used to be firmly against eBooks but after learning about them at the library I’ve really wanted to use them more, and now I am. I feel like I’m doing research for work, as well as reading for pleasure. I still love my physical books, but really, eBooks are awesome.

We’ve begun pulling out Christmas decorations. I pulled my tree out and decorated it with my many ornaments. The poor tree is loaded, but I feel like the tree represents my life… and now our life. At the very top of the tree is the “Our first Christmas” ornament my mom bought us. Our stockings are hung over the fireplace, and other random decorations are out. We also had a bit of snow today… ‘tis the season!

Friday evening the library had an Author Link event with Christopher Paolini. He gave a 45ish minute presentation about himself and writing, then signed books. I was able to get his newest book personalized and signed, as well as Eragon signed. I've never met such a major author so that was kind of cool.

Ezra officially has his application for the illustration program in and now we play the waiting game. He pulled an all nighter to get his portfolio done and ready, yet he seemed conscious when I saw him the next morning and throughout the day, which I thought was weird. He completely crashed the following night though and he's pretty much caught up on sleep now.We should hear back about the program before the end of the year. We've got our fingers crossed.

Saturday evening after work Ezra and I went to a BYU ballet performance. It was a really fun date (especially since we haven’t been on one for a while), and we got Costa Vida afterwards. Overall, a successful evening I think.

I drafted our first family Christmas letter today. I’m going to let it sit for a bit so I can make any other modifications with fresh eyes. It was kind of fun, thinking back over the past year and all the things that have happened. It’s strange to think that so many major events happened in the space of just one year. I can’t wait to get Christmas cards out and start that tradition. It’s one that daunts my mom every year, and I’m ready to go through the same stress, making sure the major events have been included so that people know what we’re up to.

I can’t wait to get started on and see what I’ll accomplish this coming week. It’s going to be a good one!

Afterthought: If you use facebook at all, Ezra and I have a really good friend who is in a contest. If she wins, she will get her children's book story idea published. Please support her and her story. It's a really fun read. Follow this link, and all you have to do to vote is "like" her story. Please vote and help her out, this is an amazing opportunity.

Thanksgiving

Today, Ezra and I are celebrating our 4 month anniversary. :-) YAY!

This year, I'm thankful for my amazing husband and the fact that he chose me. His kindness, thoughtfulness, and selflessness always amaze me. I married my best friend and perfect match, we are so blessed.

I was going through my phone and deleting some old photos and I came across some from our wedding day. That got me to reminiscing, so I thought I'd share some photos from 4 months ago.

A note left to us by our friends. They decorated our hotel room while we were still at the reception.

We stayed a night in Port Angeles, WA. Naturally, a Twilight themed display.

Must more my taste. Harry Potter all the way!

We also stopped in Forks, WA because we wanted to visit the rain forest. Ezra's ankle was bugging him so we stopped to get an ace bandage... at "Bella's First Aid Station."

Yep, Forks High School. Doesn't look anything like in the movie.

When angry at phone, shoot laser beams at it!

Newlyweds! Honeymoon!

Stopped in Astoria, OR and went to the Goonies house.

That's it! Right where they filmed it!

Climbed to the top of the Astoria Column.

So one night we were just going to bed, and I heard this weird sound. Something was hitting our curtains. I asked Ezra what it was, he said it was the AC (he was half asleep). He shined his cell phone toward the window and we saw this big black spot jumping up and down. Ez got up, put his glasses on and we turned the bedroom lights on. "Allison, get a glass!" He caught it and brought it over to me (I wasn't wearing my contacts). It was huge! We let it go outside, but man did I freak out!

New Refrigerator!!

 It's here!!! The new refrigerator! I totally should have taken a picture of the old one, then before and after photos of that back corner it was in. SO GROSS! I vacuumed, dusted, mopped and wiped down everything in that back corner so that it was clean for the new appliance. I've very happy with how it turned out. :-)

Had to decorate it with all our magnets. I finally got out all of my magnetic poetry.

Ezra has been dying for me to make these gingerbread cookies. Today I finally did. :-)

10 Miles Later

Don't let the time and calorie count fool you, the time resets at 100 minutes and the calories reset at 1000. How did I survive this run? I watched two episodes of Dr Who on my mp3 player. Small screen, but it kept me going!

This morning was kind of a big deal, at least to me. Last week I ran 8mi on Monday, today I ran 10mi. Way back when, when I sort of ran regularly (ha ha), 5mi was my max. On my long run days I would hit 5mi and be done. Today I doubled that! I was scheduled to run for 115 minutes, just short of 2 hours. In those two hours I ran 10 miles, which is about 11:30min/mi. It’s not a very fast pace, but the point is I kept going.

Some things that happened today:

*Ezra gave me one of his Indonesian sports jerseys to wear while running so I don’t have to wear my cotton shirt. Chafing was becoming a serious and seriously bloody issue, no chafing on my upper body at all today! I was thrilled! It’s my new favorite running shirt!

*My feet aren’t so lucky. I really need to get some synthetic socks because cotton is killing my feet. When I was preparing to start my running training I kept hearing “cotton is rotten!” and I now understand why. Going from a cotton to synthetic shirt was wonderful, but my poor blistered feet aren’t as lucky. Synthetic socks are just so darn expensive! I can by some nice cotton socks, 3 pair for $3-4. But running socks? The good ones that will save my feet? $8-15 PER PAIR! That’s ridiculous! And yet, an investment I will be making soon. My poor feet can’t handle another day like today.

*I ran out of water. I run on a treadmill at the Provo Recreation Center (since as a city employee I get in free, and can take a friend too! Anyone want to come?) so I’m not far from the drinking fountain, but if I pause the treadmill for too long it resets, so at mile 9 when I ran out I figured I could survive till the end, and I did (obviously). Still, I’ve never downed my whole water bottle in one run before.

For the next two weeks my runs decrease a bit. I won’t be pulling another 10 miler until the end of the month. I’m sort of happy about that. Today was killer, and my poor body needs a break. My longest run next week is 6mi, which compared to today will be a piece of cake. Maybe I can work on increasing my speed. Fingers crossed!

Hello November! So thankful!

Refrigerator: We’re getting a new refrigerator! It’s going to be delivered on Wednesday this week, and we are so excited! It’s brand new, from RC Willy, just down the road from us. It’s the same place we bought our bed set back in May and we’re really happy with them. Best part? It’s free! To us at least, the land lord is paying for it, thank goodness.

Plumbing: So a while back a plumber came to fix a leak for one of our neighbors. Right after that we noticed there was water springing up in our back yard. Literally, springing up, directly outside our bedroom window, it sounded like it was raining. Ezra looked at it that night and sort of touched it and it stopped springing, and started just sort of flowing out, as though a sprinkler head had broken. We assumed it had something to do with what the plumber was doing earlier and let it go. One night about a week later I came home and the water was off. I found out that our local manager didn’t know about the leak in the yard until one of the other tenants told her. The water was turned off so they could do a quick patch job while they waited for the real part to come in. It came in this week and they fixed it… but suddenly the water pressure in our kitchen sink was shot. I emailed the manager again and when she let us know about the fridge, she told us the plumber was coming back on Tuesday to fix the water pressure issue. YAY! Next week is going to be so awesome!

French Bread Pizza Soup: Best thing ever! On Thursday I was flipping through my cookbooks trying to decide what to make for dinner. I kind of wanted pizza, but didn’t have enough time to make the dough for the crust, and I didn’t want to order out. I decided that soup sounded good and so was looking through the soup section of a newer cookbook I got. For one reason or another I kept vetoing the soups I found, and then this little gem showed up. French bread pizza soup! It was so easy! A couple cans of diced tomatoes, a couple cans of tomato soup, red pepper, green pepper, garlic and spices. I cooked it on the stove, then ladled it into oven proof bowls (that we got for our wedding!) put a slice of French bread in the middle then sprinkled mozzarella cheese over the whole thing. Broil it until the cheese is melted (just a couple minutes) and that's it! It was so good! And healthier than regular pizza! Ez said, and I agree, we have to do that more often than order regular pizza, it’s so much cheaper, better, healthier, and makes so much more!

Minor news: It snowed last night. Just a bit. It was all gone by the afternoon. We went to BYU’s Divine Comedy taping Saturday evening. BYUtv might give them a TV show so we were there for the filming of some of the skits. It was a lot of fun. J

Yep, that’s the news. Looking forward to what’s coming this next week. Later!

Run for your life!

Halloween is just around the corner and I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing in terms of costume. I think I’ll probably go as Hermione again this year. I’ve got the costume, so why not? Ezra wasn’t big on the idea since I did it last year. He might be going as Charlie Chaplin again though, so I don’t feel too bad about using last year’s costume again.

Anyway, I thought “Run for your life!” was an appropriate title for what I’ve been doing lately. Running. And doing a lot of it. I decided a while ago that I wanted to be able to run a marathon, so I’ve begun training. Assuming all goes to plan and I don’t have any injuries or setbacks, come February I’ll be able to complete a 26.2 mile run all in one shot. My hope is that I’ll be able to stay in marathon shape throughout the summer so that I can register for and compete in multiple marathons. 2012 will be the year of the marathon!

When Ezra and I had first decided to get married and were discussing how we wanted to raise our family, we agreed that we wanted a healthy family. We were both overweight as children. Ezra lost his on his mission, I lost most of mine when I came to college. We want to have an active and healthy family and I feel like this is a good step for me to become the athlete I need to be.

I also really love watching the Biggest Loser. Their end of the season challenge is to run a marathon, and I figured, if these people who were so unhealthy before can end up running a marathon, so can I!

Welcome!

The most astonishing words came out of Ezra’s mouth the other day.

 “I want to start a blog,” he said.

“About what?” I asked.

“Us,” he said.

Confession: I love stalking my married friends and reading their blogs. For a while I’ve toyed with the idea of making our own, but I didn’t want to be at it alone. Now that I’ve got the Mr. on board (and he thinks it’s his idea!), I think we’re ready to start.

The Mr. (Ezra): From Washington. Studying art at BYU. Served a two year, full time LDS mission in Indonesia. Works 40 hours a week between the PCL (Provo City Library) and the HBLL (Harold B Lee Library). Enjoys drawing, rock climbing, and building things.

The Mrs. (Allison): From Oregon. Graduated from BYU with a BA in English. Studied abroad in England for a summer term. Works +30 hours a week at the PCL. Enjoys reading, writing, and doing wifey things (though I’ve discovered I’m a terrible housekeeper… working on that).

As a couple:

*Nerf gun wars and sword fights. I hope our neighbors don’t hate us.

*We love Doctor Who, so much in fact that the TARDIS was the top of our cake at our Washington reception.

The TARDIS, bike tire, book

wedding cake, designed by Darby Harris!

*We’re okay with sitting, staring at each other and making faces.

*We love our little home here but it has a lot of quirks, such as the refrigerator that we’re defrosting again (3^rd time) tonight, the bathroom that has no ventilation, the front door that sticks, and the humidity that likes to migrate to the bedroom and warp the books in there.

*We talk to and play with our stuffed animals as though they were our children.

*The Mr. is a furnace and the Mrs. is a block of ice. Together we’re a normal temperature.

*We love rain and miss the wet and green northwest.

Stay tuned!