Archive for November, 2008

I meant to post this on Thanksgiving Day, but we’re without Internet at our new place until next week, so I had to wait until I could get access elsewhere today.

I count my blessings everyday, but Thanksgiving just seems to be the day we all set aside to express our thanks.  This year….Wow. This year has been both a whirlwind of life changes and also a year my heart is overflowing with thanks.  I can’t even begin to list them all, but I feel that I should at least publicly share 3 of the most important ones:

1. Marriage.  My husband. I love him so much.  And while we can be so different in our unique personalities, I can’t imagine my life without him. Certainly there are times of struggle and stress, but the joyful times and experiencing married life together are far more significant.  It is a bit odd to think that at this time last year, we weren’t even engaged, and now here we are enjoying our 76^th day of marital bliss.

2. God.  I was baptized this year on Easter, and we are so blessed to have a wonderful support system in our church, especially our young adult small group.  We’ve developed honest & caring friendships with so many of them.  And while I still have lots of spiritual growth, I feel like I’m finally at a point in my life with God where I’m not struggling to keep my head above water, but I’m swimming with the current and living in Jesus’ love.

3. Family & Friends.  For their continued love, support, and overall health.  I can’t fathom as to where I would be in my life without every single relative, friend, and most importantly my parents, brother and sister (in-law).  I am who I am because of my wonderful family.  I don’t express my thanks for them as much as I should.  And friends from all stages of my life, all different from each other, but each one important to me in their own special way.  New friends close by and old friends far away.

This year for Thanksgiving, Todd & I stayed here to enjoy a quiet day together. Our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife, just the two of us.  While spending it with our families would’ve been ideal, that wasn’t possible this year so we made the most of our holiday in our new home.  I told him not to have very high expectations.  I couldn’t easily convince myself of the same thing—my memories of Thanksgiving with my family are filled with love, fun, and lots of delicious food.  I had very high expectations of myself for my first Thanksgiving dinner attempt as a wife. 

A turkey would’ve been too big for the two of us, so I stuffed a whole chicken with veggies and finished off the meal with my own version of green bean casserole (homemade crispy onions on top too- none of that unhealthy French’s canned stuff), mashed potatoes, and gravy.  I finished the feast with yummy pumpkin pie and real whipped cream.  I wanted to do as much of the food from scratch and with fresh ingredients as I could find. 

A Homemade Harris Thanksgiving

Disclaimer: the pie crust and canned pumpkin were from Whole Foods and the gravy came premade from Trader Joe’s, but other than that….all homemade.  I’m not brave enough to attempt gravy just quite yet.

I think I exceeded my own expectations. 

thanks for the flowers Mom & Dad!

We tried a new Washington wine— Holy Cow Riesling— to go with the meal and decided that if we couldn’t be with our family and friends, how better to spend the evening than watching every FRIENDS Thanksgiving episode?  Oddly, season 2 didn’t have a Thanksgiving episode, but we laughed our way through the other 9 seasons.

Today we woke up early to walk downtown for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (Seattle’s day after version) and came back home for some buttermilk waffles and Home Alone.  

Here comes Seattle Santa!

A nap sounds good, but we have to finish moving a couple last items out of our old apartment and do a final cleaning.  Great way to burn off the past 24 hours of yumminess.

i’ve been m.i.a. from blog posts recently because we are in the process of moving into our new townhome and shuffling back & forth between our two places trying to get everything transitioned before the end of the month.  

i’ll be sure to post some pictures when we get all settled in.  it’s bittersweet— we’re losing an awesome view (bye bye sunsets, space needle and Olympic mountains), but gaining more space and quietness (sayonara tiny kitchen and obnoxiously loud recording studio)  i we finally get to start unpacking and using some of our wedding gifts instead of keeping them piled up in the closet!!  i’m excited about that beyond what any exclamation points can say.

well, i better keep on packin’—these xbox games aren’t going to box themselves up.

I read a LOT of blogs.  Between my two Google Reader accounts I have close to 100 blogs that I read on a regular basis, and am frequently subscribing to newly discovered ones.  Some I just skim through, but others reel me in and provoke me to find out more about their causes and inspirations.  

Here’s a recent blog, One Dollar Diet Project, I discovered about a San Diego couple who decided to go for one month of eating on $1/day each.  Check it out, it’s an interesting read about how they succeeded and raised awareness for the billions of people around the world who live on $1/day and don’t have the option to resort back to spoiled eating habits.

It made me realize that we unconsciously eat and eat until we’re full, and we throw food away when it’s only a couple days old, and don’t even think twice about paying $3 for a latte.  I’m just as guilty as anyone. Part of the reason why I run and exercise is so that I can eat whatever I want and enjoy eating out at restaurants or fixing the more expensive/less healthy pre-packaged foods at the grocery store without the worry of gaining weight. 

And to think that there are people around this world, this country, this city who have never had the ‘worry’ of eating too MUCH food or not having organic food available or concern over gaining weight. They’re more concerned about getting any food to eat and not dying from starvation.

Makes you think twice about the food we eat.  I’m not sure yet where I’m going with this whole dilemma, but I think I’ll start by being better at making more foods from scratch instead of buying them.  Being in charge of our budget now (and the one who does the grocery shopping), I’m challenging myself to reduce our food spending and reducing waste.  

I’m pretty certain that Todd would resist doing any $1/day food diet (and I honestly wouldn’t want to either, with not being able to enjoy fruits the way I like to), so I’m not thinking of doing anything that drastic.  Just starting with small steps and moving forward from there.  We’ve already made changes to our coffee and dining out habits since I’m not employed right now, but I know there’s so much more we can do.  We’ll see where I can go with this.

Hopefully this will prompt you to think about your own eating/spending habits and make changes of your own.    

Our good friends Ryan and Aubrey recently went on a European cruise and had a wine night this past weekend as a thank you for being their chauffeur to/from the airport and for helping out while they were away. But mostly, just for being cool people.  They brought back 2 red & 1 white Italian wines to share with friends.

And unfortunately, I don’t recall the names of any of them, except that they were pretty much the best wine I’ve ever had.  Between the six of us, we knocked off those 3 bottles and finished a couple more (not so tasty after you’ve had Italian) bottles they’ve had sitting around, as well as about 50 pounds of cheese and cookies.  

Good friends and good wine—doesn’t get much better than that.  Some 3D glasses were discovered, which we felt necessary to use for modeling purposes and we ended the evening with a game of FRIENDS Scene-It.  Girls won. Of course.  (the competition wasn’t too fierce)

In preparation for the Seattle Half Marathon in a couple weeks, I ran my longest run of the training this past Saturday.  I’d looked at the forecast and it called for rain most of the morning, so I figured I’d sleep in a bit and start my run at 9:00, being that I’d get wet no matter when I left.  

I. got. soaked.  

I knew it’d be wet, but silly me forgot to wear a hat, so I feel like I got extra soggy sopping up all the rain via my head.  I’d mapped out my route, choosing to torture myself with a start up Capitol Hill and then run the last 6.5 miles as the same route the half marathon will run (except for the finish).  Despite the rain and soppy shoes, it was a lovely run and by the time I reached Lake Washington, the sun had broken through the clouds and the rain had stopped. It was lovely.  

Not so lovely was that I managed to find what I’m pretty sure is the steepest hill in Seattle at about mile 4.5. I had to walk up it.  I will be certain to avoid that on any future runs.  All-in-all, it was a great run, I held a good pace and ended up running just shy of 13 miles in 1:53:55.  

Check out that elevation change.  Perfect for turning quads into Jell-O. 

I’m feeling good for the half marathon, being that this time was slowed down due to rain, traffic lights, and stopping to take some pictures on my phone.  Also enjoyed a quick chat with my mom during my run  I think she thought that was odd, but my husband insisted that I carry my phone with me.  Though I’m not convinced that he would even be awake to answer it if I needed to call him.

As I’ve gotten older, so many things have left a huge impact in my life.  Family, college, work, marriage, friends….  I was thinking back how my hobbies and activities and lifestyles have came and gone.  I tend to have favorite activities depending on which phase of my life I’m in and what resources are available.  

But the one activity that has been a constant in my life and became a huge part of who I am— is running.  (well, except for that year in college when i was in physical therapy for severe shin splints and couldn’t run. shockwave therapy….aaaagh!) What started as little 8 year old me wanting to be like my mom— signing up for fun runs while she ran her races— turned into a competitive school sport and now an ongoing passion for me.  

While going through some boxes getting ready to move, I came across my box full of running treasures. Medals, bib numbers, t-shirts, course maps, random stuff that I hold on to for sentimental reasons.  All of my old junior high & high school cross country and track medals are back home at my parents house, except for one.  My senior year of high school state cross country medal.  I keep that one with me wherever I go.

Such fond memories.  I loved loved loved cross country.  Loved the adrenaline, running on grass, through the mud, over the hills, the team unity. I loved our coach.  Most of all, I loved my teammates.  While some people thought we were crazy for running long distances, we had so much fun together.  I could write a book about our adventures.  I miss them all.  And I miss being able to run a sub-13:00 two mile pace

1999 Kansas 4A High School XC Championship

SHS senior girls

(Just be thankful my cross country scrapbooks are back in Kansas, otherwise I’d go overboard with the pictures.)

(today’s title NOT to be taken literally)

ooops, got a little delayed in posting Halloween pics. I better do as promised now, in order to free up subsequent blogs for other fun events and randomness coming up.

our friends Davey and Kristen hosted a Dead Man’s Chest murder mystery party loosely based on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  Everyone was assigned a character and given fact sheets and bits of info to clue us in to the evening’s events.  My character was Elizabeth Stanforth, the ‘highly desirable’ British Governor’s daughter.  I was excited because I’ve dressed as a pirate before, so this year I got to be the pretty princess type girl.  

(sorry for the grainy image, but this was the only full body shot we got and it was from Todd’s phone)

I fashioned my costume from hoop skirt, brocade tablecloth, wire (couldn’t seem to find any needles and thread…), and a lace corset top I found at Value Village.  My pirate medallion was pieced together with a gold necklace and my state cross country medal. Total cost was approx. $30 (and 2/3 of that cost was the hoop skirt).  

I did not win for best costume, but was told I lost by the flip of a coin.  Oh, also, I was not the murderer, nor did I figure out who the murderer was, nor did I manage to play the game right and get on a ship off the deserted island….obviously, I am not good at those types of games.  ’Tis okay with me, I enjoyed being all dolled up for the night.  

Probably the most fun of the night was that Todd’s character was a Spanish aristocrat who my character was engaged to, but despised, so he was wooing me while I got to act like I hated him.

He did an excellent job as ‘Don Inigo de Velez y Contrera’, but it was refreshing to go back to loving him after the game was over.  It was hard work pretending not to like him.

Some other photos from the evening:

Oh, also I was assigned to bring Brain Cupcakes (LOOK like brains, not MADE FROM brains) so after the very time consuming and messy frosting job, I just had to take a picture of my handiwork.  Helping my mom frost thousands of cupcakes and cookies while I was growing up paid off somewhat, though I’ll never have the skills she has.  Next time I’ll use red velvet cake mix.