friends

We bid a fond farewell to one of my most favorite years so far in my life.

I’m extremely satisfied with all that 2008 gave me, but I’m very excited to see what 2009 holds in store for me, my friends & family.  

To ring in the new year, we were a select few in the Seattle area who were chosen to attend a West Coast party with Dick Clark.  

Ok, maybe not the Dick Clark, but our friends…Mr. & Mrs. Dick-Clark.  They’re more enjoyable to be around than The Dick Clark is anyway.

Welcome to 2nd Annual Dick Clark Rockin’ New Years Eve (West Coast style):

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.

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)

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.

I was planning on posting a ‘flashback’ every Monday, but Monday has passed, so today has become Flashback Tuesday.

With this past weekend being Halloween, I thought back to recent years and decided to get out some old photos of my costume couture. I’ve never been one to take the easy route and buy a pre-fabricated costume, preferring instead to use cloth scraps, tablecloths, safety pins…whatever I can find around the house. 

Katie the Ladybug – senior year of high school. my wings has strings with bells so I could ‘flit’ about.

Belly Dancer – freshman year at K-State. the last year I was able to wear a stomach-bearing costume….oh, college, so bad for my waistline.

Statue of Liberty – my mom was the star seamstress behind this masterpiece. that’s right, I was 21 and I had my mom make my costume  it has been my favorite costume ever.  I made the torch from a squirt bottle.  

Pirate – with my fellow Collegian ad designers. (and cute Mindy - can’t believe they have their own little son to dress up now!)  love y’all. 

Magic 8 Ball – easiest and warmest costume ever. I predicted peoples’ futures when they shook me. 

More on this year’s Halloween festivities in my next post.

As I was running by the UW football stadium on Saturday morning, the air was permeated with the smells of bacon and the enthusiastic cheers and laughs of college students who sacrificed sleep for tailgating time.

It made me nostalgic for my days of college football tailgating. While I don’t miss it so much that I want to be out drinking beer and eating burgers with them, it did make me remember all the great memories I made with friends and fellow Wildcat fans during my 4.5 years at K-State. Tailgating was an important part of my college days– behavior I’ll never go back to– but something I have such fond memories of.

I especially recalled the morning several of us woke up at 4:30 am (unheard of for normal college students) to walk to the stadium and wait for an hour behind the barricades……sprint to the stadium gates…..stampede down the stairs to get prime spots….and then wait another 2 or 3 hours for the live broadcast of ESPN’s College Gameday from Manhattan, KS to begin. (yeah, this was back when our team was ranked in the Top 10…not so much the case in recent years)

I’m pretty sure my friends and I never got on tv, but who cares? We were part of a faithful following of crazy fans who devoted our Saturdays to supporting our team.

I went back through my photo albums for some good memories.

Tailgating before the 2000 Big 12 Championship vs. OU.

I was a cheerleader at heart. But I was too tall and about 30 pounds too heavy to make the real squad.

Junior year tailgating with girlfriends.

With my brother in his notorious I Eta Pi gameday apparel.

Hard to believe some of those were 8 years ago.

Eat ‘em up, beat ‘em up, K-S-U!