Random things on my mind:

I have probably visited www.etsy.com and www.theknot.com 10,000 times in the past month. It's becoming a HUGE obsession..

This recipe for Oreo Balls is taunting me. Has anyone tried these before? They sound very yummy!

In the middle of my second winter in Oregon now...and I still love rain! I think my 23 1/2 years of living in the desert makes me REALLY appreciate how much moisture we get here.

I got a really warm, huge blue down mummy Marmot sleeping bag for Christmas (that was a lot of adjectives at once! probably not grammatically correct...oh well) so now I really want to go camping and try it out. Kory got a new backpack and we both got solar-powered flashlights, so we need to go try out our new gear soon.

Kory and I are attempting to make his grandmother's famous turkey soup tonight and I'm SO excited! It is delicious :)

We got Toy Story 3 and Inception for Christmas gifts...two VERY different movies, but easily my two favorites from 2010.

Meditation

I recently read and watched Eat Pray Love and really enjoyed both the book and the movie! Michelle and Rachel both recommended the book, so I knew it had to be good. This story (and Michelle) have really got me thinking about meditation as a spiritual discipline.

"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
--2 Corinthians 10:5

This scripture keeps popping up in my mind as I think about meditation, particularly the phrase "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." I certainly do not feel like all of my thoughts are controlled, much less obedient to Christ. This is really my focus and motivation now--to take control of my thoughts and to think more on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.

So, I have attempted to meditate several times now. As I expected, it's really hard to get my mind focused and not jumping around to all kinds of random thoughts. My friend Sarah that is in my small group gave me a Yoga video and I've been doing it in the evenings. It has a few minutes of relaxation at the beginning, then about 15 minute of yoga (very basic--it's a beginners video) and then ends with a few minutes of meditation. I'm trying to do the meditation for longer, but I keep getting interrupted by my phone or Mr. Sir or having to go to the bathroom, so I haven't been very successful so far.

I'm very interested in hearing what other people have to say about this topic. Michelle, have you done any meditation since finishing the book? Do any of you meditate regularly?

Rachel's Trip to Oregon

I had such a great time with Rachel this past week! Here are some pictures of our trips to the coast (Bandon, OR) and to Portland for the weekend.

I really love this picture of Rachel and baby Beckham in her belly :)

It was really foggy on the beach, but it was still fun to play in the water and the sand.

Saturday Market is one of the best things--so much to see and eat and do!

Waiting for the MAX for one hour...ugh. Poor 7 months pregnant Rachel--not a great situation.

We got this picture taken in Powell's...notice our names on the marquee board. It's not a very good picture of either one of us, but at least we got cool books!

Many more pictures can be found on my Facebook page.

AND now on to some other random thoughts...

Kory and I watched the Dark Knight last night. I really love that movie! When the movie first came out, there were several people who told me that this was my dopple-danger. Any thoughts? It's always hard to tell if someone looks like yourself, I think. I guess I can see a little resemblance...

My parents will arrive on Thursday and I'm very ready for them to be here! We'll be making lots of fun trips to the coast, the Redwoods, Crater Lake, South Umpqua waterfalls and hopefully there will be some time at the river in there also. It's supposed to cool down quite a bit the end of this week, so hopefully they'll get to experience some beautiful Oregon weather.

It has been brought to my attention that a few people I know have been in Oregon recently and not called me. This practice is unacceptable!! :) For reals though, if you're anywhere near me, please let me know. I'm willing to make a trip and go out of my way to see friends/family if at all possible.

Running is still going really well. I'm currently going 2.5 miles...and as I type that, I have a hard time believing I can really run that far. Granted, some parts of the run are at a snail's pace and I'm barely moving my feet going up those hills, but I am moving and that is the important part!

I have a picture in my cubicle of Rynn, Kecia, Sara and I eating in Rosa's right before I left to move to Oregon. That picture is awesome, but it has some food/drink on the table, and it taunts me every time I look at it. As we speak, I am craving some Rosa's more than life itself. Oh I want it so badly! I know there is one in California, and some times I consider driving the 8 hours or whatever it is to taste that queso.

Everybody's Fine

Kory and I watched Everybody's Fine this weekend...and it is the most misleading title of any movie ever! Everybody is NOT fine! I won't ruin it for you if you haven't seen the movie, but it's SO depressing! I cried through most of the movie and continued to feel sad for quite a while after it was over. I haven't cried that much in a movie in a very long time. Even Kory kept talking about how depressing it was afterwards and how it put him in a sad mood. I enjoy a good crying movie from time to time, but this was too much for me. Too sad for too long!

Thought Provoking

In the past couple weeks, I have seen two movies and read one book that all made me really think! I'm still contemplating what I can learn from each of them...love this type of media.

Movies, Books and Groceries

I have seen several good movies in the past couple weeks: Star Trek, When in Rome, Sherlock Holmes and Dear John. Loved them all! When in Rome was pretty cheesy but I expected no less from a romantic comedy. I heard everyone say that they really liked Star Trek even though they never liked the show, but I, of course, didn't believe it until I saw it myself. I don't think I ever saw a trailer for Sherlock Holmes but I like Robert Downey Jr. and Rachel McAdams so I knew it had to be good. Dear John was pretty much exactly what I expected-- a good cry with the chance to look at Channing Tatum. I love him because he was in She's the Man and that movie is one of my all-time faves.

I'm almost finished reading New Moon and my co-worker let me borrow the book Dear John today, so I've got a lot of reading ahead of me. I've also stayed on track with my Daily Bible reading so I'm really happy about that. I'm excited I've got back in the habit of reading. Hopefully I can visit the library soon and start getting books from there.

This weekend was a pretty productive one for me, which always makes me feel good about starting the work week. I got all my dishes, kitchen and laundry clean as well as buying groceries. I do not enjoy grocery shopping because I am really bad at it! I know it seems like something you can't really be bad at, but I am. I don't know how the store is laid out and I end up walking around in circles for a couple hours. This weekend I didn't even have a list so I just tried to find things as I thought of them. I was there for a couple hours and seriously went down every isle at least twice. It was ridiculous! My lack of cooking/food knowledge doesn't help either because I don't know where to find some foods...like pickles! I looked for them for like 10 minutes and couldn't find anyone to help me. If someone would go buy my groceries for me, I'd eat whatever they bought and just make it work to avoid having to do the shopping myself.

We started Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University last week at church. I really like the course so far and am excited to go to our next class tonight! I'm not really reckless with money--I don't have any credit card debt or student loans thankfully, but I'm also not very good with saving, so hopefully I'll get better at that.

Birthday Weekend

**WARNING: Very long post ahead!**

I logged into my Gmail account yesterday morning and had 88 new e-mails! Yikes! It was exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Of course, I hadn't logged into my e-mail all weekend and it was my birthday, so that explains most of the e-mails: Facebook notifying me someone wrote Happy Birthday on my wall. Regardless, it is still fun to feel popular.

So, speaking of my birthday, I just had the best birthday weekend ever!! It was so fun! Kory did an awesome job. This was my Golden birthday--turned 24 on the 24th, so the stakes were high :)

Friday night I got home from work to find a bouquet of roses on the table, surrounded by a delicious supper Kory had cooked for me! It was one of my very favorites--Alice Springs Chicken. It's a dish from Outback that Kory makes, but I actually like his version better. He made it in my brand new skillet/frying pan...not sure which it is because I'm not sure what the difference is. haha Anyhow, I'm pumped because I had a really crummy old one and this new pan is awesome!

We had mini eclairs for dessert which were incredible. I had an eclair our first day in Paris that was seriously the best dessert I've ever had in my life. These mini's were a pretty good replica! After dinner we rented The Invention of Lying. I didn't love it--basically the whole premise of the movie is that God/religion is the lie upon which all other lies are founded. There were funny moments, but it's not something I'd recommend.

Saturday morning, I got to sleep in and then Kory gave me my next gift. It was this super cool soccer ball. Although I loved it, I was a little confused about why I got that as a gift...he told me to look at the features on the back of the box and this note was attached:
In case you can't read it, it says, "Do you think the beaches at Bandon are nice enough to kick this around today?"

So we took a surprise trip to Bandon for the day! Bandon is a cute little tourist town over on the coast that I have been wanting to visit for a while now. The weather was so great! Everyone warned him that it would be cold and cloudy and rainy/windy, but it was sunny and almost warm. It was a beautiful day--especially to be January. I got REALLY sick on the way to Bandon. I think it was just car sickness but I have NEVER felt that bad in my entire life. I kept making Kory pull over so I could get out and walk around/see if I could rid myself of this sickness. When we arrived in Bandon, I started to feel a bit better until I got a whiff of all the fresh seafood and that made me even more nauseous! Kory had a delicious lunch:
and this was my gourmet meal:

Luckily the 7Up and crackers did the trick and I started feeling much better. We walked down to the water and then saw some huge waves crashing in the distance. We went off in search of the huge waves and found this awesome beach!

We had so much fun playing on the jetty, walking on the beach, climbing rocks and running away from the tide.

(There are a lot more pictures on my Facebook)

After we left the beach, we went back into town to look in some of the shops and see the sights. We spent quite a while in this cute little bookstore where I found this HILARIOUS book:

Even though I enjoy Twilight, this book made me laugh so much! I would have bought it but I already have several books I have started and not finished, so I don't need to add another one to the pile.

We also got some yummy fudge and went to sit down by the water to eat it and soak up some sunshine. We headed to Coos Bay next since we had dinner reservations there. It was closer than we realized, so we had some extra time to hang out there by the ocean as well. We went to Coos Bay one time last fall, and we found one of my all time favorites spots there. There is a place with hundreds of sea lions and seals that are laying on rocks, swimming around, playing with each other and being very entertaining. I just love watching them!! Supposedly you can see whales there too, but we haven't spotted any yet.

Dinner was at Benetti's, a fancy little Italian place in Coos Bay. We were feeling adventurous since it was a special occasion, so we both tried escargot! It was covered in garlic, so it wasn't that bad. I have never even seen it before, but this was definitely not what I was expecting. You put it on bread, so you really can't taste the snails at all, mostly because of the garlic. However, at one point I bit down on something crunchy (shell??) and I about lost it. If you aren't aware, I am not an adventurous eater and I have a very sensitive stomach (read: I throw up/gag really easily). Kory begged me not to cause a scene in this very nice restaurant, so it took everything within me to keep my calm on the outside while internally really wanting to throw up and gag and make disgusting sounds. I thought I did great--Kory said I did decent.

You got a free dessert for your birthday and we knew this because there had already been two birthdays that evening. Kory scored me a free dessert minus the singing, so that was great! It was SOO good! I wish I could remember what it was called...but just trust me, it was awesome.

We drove back to Myrtle Creek after dinner. Sunday morning we got up and went to church together. We only had a few kids in class so we treated them all to donuts. I got all the donut holes they had in the shop for my b-day! :) So yummy! The kids sang Happy Birthday to me...a bit rough sounding but very sweet. The preacher also decided the entire congregation should sing to me before services were over, so that was a good time :) It's great to be loved though, so I appreciate it.

I got my final gifts when we got home from lunch. I got a pair of Toms shoes from Kory and a new iPod Nano from my parents! I love them both and am so excited to use them :) I had a pretty lazy day on my actual birthday. We laid around and watched Food Network, Extreme Makeover, Man vs. Wild and What Women Want. So I ate and watched TV/Movies all afternoon and evening. That is my kind of day! Kabie cuddled with me on the couch during Extreme Makeover, which is a huge deal. We're trying to teach her to love people and to enjoy being held/cuddling, so it's exciting when she will do it and not run away from you. I like to think that was her birthday gift to me.

SO...if anyone actually made it through this entire post, you can see that I had a magnificent day! I'm excited about 24. I actually feel like a young adult--not a college student anymore. Not that anything in my life will really change, but I do feel older now!

GREAT Weekend

The concert on Friday was awesome!! That band is so incredibly talented. Kory and I were both SO impressed! Unfortunately, we didn't have a great turn-out of teens, but the ones who were there really enjoyed it.

My Saturday was pretty close to my idea of a perfect day. I woke up late, took a nap, watched a movie while cuddled up on the couch, decorated my apt for Christmas and ate dinner and hung out with Kory that night. I rented My Sister's Keeper because I knew I really wanted to see it, but I wanted to watch it at home where I could cry as much as I wanted with no inhibitions. I laid on my couch under a blanket, eating popcorn, drinking a Dr. Pepper, enjoying a chick flick and just crying my little eyes out. PERFECT!! I know guys will never understand why you'd want to do that, but females will totally get it when I say it was a healing cry.

One of our youth group girls brought me a 4 ft Christmas tree and a table to set it on. She is very sweet! I put lights and ornaments on it and got it all decorated Saturday afternoon. I drank some egg nog and had a grand ole time. It's a pretty small tree and it's nothing grand or fantastic, but it makes me happy so that is all that matters. The only other decorations I have are some place mats, kitchen towels, candy bowls and the wreath, but they are all out in full force. I'm thinking I'll probably try to buy some more Christmas decorations when they go on sale right after Christmas Day.

I'm trying to be pretty thrifty right now and save my money since I don't know how long I'll have a job. That is the main reason why I didn't just buy a tree. My temporary positions ends in January and I will hopefully interview for the limited duration position in the next few weeks, but I'm in the waiting process right now.

We ate at Olive Garden in Eugene last night. Gosh I love that place! Neither of us had eaten there in a year or two, so we made the trip to do some shopping and eat there. I could eat my weight in those breadsticks dipped in alfredo sauce. Yummy!

It was COLD COLD COLD this morning when I left for work! Yikes! Everything was frosty and it looked like we had a light dusting of snow last night. I get to leave work at 3:00 today to head up to Albany, OR for a 3 day training. I am not entirely sure what the training is about, but I think it's an orientation to basically teach me to do the job I have been doing for the past 5 months. Should be fun :) I am excited to get out of the office and take a trip though. I'm sure Deb and I can have a good time while we're there.

Post-Thanksgiving Update

Thanksgiving break was so fun and relaxing for me! I can't really explain why, but for some reason, Robby and Lynsey's one-year old daughter, Anna Kate, thought I was the coolest person ever! Of course, I loved the attention and the fact that she was always looking for me, letting me hold her, sitting in my lap and giving me the goofiest smiles ever. The second I walked in the door, she walked up to me and held her hands up for me to hold her like we'd known each other for years. She has the cutest little fake smile she would flash at me every time we made eye contact. We laughed at her "stranger smile" many times during the weekend.

We went to see The Informant the day after Thanksgiving and I wasn't really impressed. It doesn't really have a plot and isn't too entertaining, in my opinion. It's based on a true story and it's really just setting up this very quirky character the whole time. It's also really hard to follow and I spent almost the whole movie just trying to keep up. I did enjoy New Moon, however. I know it's corny and geared towards teenage girls, but I am a sucker for a love story. I can handle a little cheesiness if it is a happy ending :) I'm definitely Team Jacob. After seeing him, Edward just seems like a pale, skinny, old guy without much of a personality. Yes, I'm totally shallow and Jacob's good looks don't hurt either.

My wallet went missing about a week ago. It was such an ordeal because basically my money was trapped in my bank account and I couldn't access it. I had a hold put on my checks and went ahead and canceled my debit card just in case. I had other checks so I tried to use them, but nowhere will accept a check without picture ID. My driver's license was in my wallet so I had no picture ID. I also couldn't withdraw money from my account at the bank without picture ID. So, I figured I could just get another Driver's License and then be able to get money out. Well, you have to pay for a DL and they don't accept checks, so I couldn't get money to pay for that! Ugh! Anyway, hopefully it is all worked out now, but it's been such a mess. Luckily, my wallet was found and hadn't been stolen, so no money was gone at all. It was a good way to not spend any money for about a week or so at least!

It's Civil War week in Oregon! That means that Oregon State University and the University of Oregon are playing each other in college football this Thursday. People have been talking about it for months and I'm getting really excited for it. Of course, I'm a Ducks fan and hope they win. We'll go over to watch the game and eat pizza with a very fun couple from church. They are a divided family--she loves the Beavers and he is a Ducks fan. Should be interesting!!

I just realized I haven't taken any pictures in quite a while...so this blog is probably boring you all with just stories. I'll try to take some pictures and post them this week.

Ambigram Genius

If you haven't seen Angels and Demons yet, you are most definitely missing out. Get thee to a movie theatre immediately!

One of my pet peeves is when people watch a movie based on a book and then complain because the book was better. Well of course it is--get over it! They are two completely different mediums and I wish people could appreciate the movie as a movie and quit comparing it to the book. Yes, the story was altered a little for the movie, but it was done very well. 

It was awesome seeing so many places in the movie that I recently got to visit. I also re-read the book a couple weeks ago so it helped that the story was fresh in my mind. 

There are so many things I could say about this movie, but I will only say this. If you enjoyed the movie, you should read the book! It is fantastic in an altogether different way :) It is lengthy, but SO worth it. In fact, I think you should read all of Dan Brown's books because he is just that great.