one year

Okay, it's been a while.  I can't believe how busy things have been lately!  With my new job I've been working a good 30 hours a week as well as continuing with my full-time classes.  It's been extremely busy and sometimes I feel like I'm just constantly trying to catch up.  But most of the time, I love it.

Sunday was our first anniversary!  We celebrated by staying at an amazing bed&breakfast in Sacramento, going out to dinner at the Melting Pot, eating banana splits, and enjoying bubble baths & cuddles & the like.  I suppose I'm going to use this post to look back on the first year of our marriage.  I can't believe how incredible this year has been, and how quickly it flew by.

In 2012, we:

-Moved to California.  Our first military PCS (what a fun time...) and our first home together!  Spent a good month eating our dinners off of a 1-square-foot end table while we unpacked our lives and bought furniture :o

-Adopted our darling pomeranian Sheba.  We love her so much!!!!!!  She is our baby...we are so obsessed with our little pup.

-Got to know the wonderful area of our new home.  San Francisco is absolutely amazing, and our surburb isn't so bad either. :) Thank you husband, for being amazing and earning his top pick for duty station 0:) My hero!

-Found a wonderful new church to call our home, and new friends who we can grow with and enjoy life together!  So thankful...God completely delivered on my longings for community and friendship in our new city.

-Rick graduated from his tech school and did absolutely amazing!  Through all the stress of the Air  Force, working more-than-full-time while also going to school full-time to finish his degree, and continuing to train like crazy physically for his future job, he still has the time to love me, give me hugs, watch movies and cuddle with me, and treat me like a princess.  And I'm so happy I am here to support him and give him help when he needs it to get through all that stress!  He is awesome.

-On a more personal note, there has been so much growth in our marriage in just a year, and I'm so crazy thankful for it.  I cannot wait to see what God will do with the rest of our lives, if he could do so much in only a year.  I'm so glad God entrusted me with Rick's heart and I love how I can completely trust him with mine as well.  I cannot believe how blessed I am to have such an incredible husband--and to have been given him so early in life, so we can enjoy so many of these wonderful years together.  Life is so good.♥  Here's to the next, oh, 60-70 years :)

♥Samantha

cute clothes & working on it.

Sooooo, I dislike running.  I just get bored so easily.  But it is slowly getting better.

A couple weeks ago I saw some suuuper cute Nike leggings, but feel that I do not work out hard enough to deserve expensive/good workout clothes, haha (I usually just buy them from forever21 or something instead).  I told myself I couldn't buy them until I could successfully run a 5k without stopping, which would mean I was actually making progress.  So Rick and I went home that night and went to the gym, and surprise!  I made it through my goal of 5k.  What the lure of cute workout clothes will do to a girl......

FAIR ISLE PRINT THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  I knew these were going to come home with me sooner than later.  (I earn some nice Brooks shoes at 10k...that's going to take a bit longer!)

It made me pretty excited as I realized that, yes, my body actually is capable of running longer distances, and it is just my distaste for the amount of time it takes, that is making me want to stop earlier.  Haha.  And for the first time in my life I have started to actually enjoy running, and actually find myself wanting to make time in the day for it.  GASP....I thought it would never happen.

I started running more and trying to run at least 3 miles every time I worked out, but then I started having awful pain in a specific spot on my right knee.  I can barely walk on it for the night after and the next day as well.....I suspect that it is some IT band muscle that I am straining or hurting??  One of the reasons for that pain is upping training too quickly, and I basically started running 3 miles (every day or every other day) out of nowhere.  I am dialing back on my distance for a while and working up slowly now, which is a bummer because I just started actually enjoying running for a change.

My goal is to run the San Francisco Women's Marathon (the HALF for me, thank you) next October :):):)  I have almost a year to get from 3 miles to 13......I am optimistic.  I think it can happen.

Any more seasoned runners out there have some tips?  I am quite new to distance running!!

♥Samantha

giving thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family and blog friends!  We had a wonderful day today.  Since we didn't go back to Michigan, I took it upon myself to make every single one of my family's recipes for our usual Thanksgiving feast.  Usually there is tons of food and tons of people to gobble it up.  But.....here in our little home, there was tons of food and only two people. :o

So, we stuffed ourselves very full.  And now we are laying around pretty dead.  Here, enjoy some pictures. :)

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about the things I am thankful for, but no one wants to read all that.  Let's just say, I am so absolutely thankful for God's grace and provision, and the way He is so faithful to us; my incredible husband who I fall more in love with every day; having a family that I genuinely adore and am best friends with; my puppy girl, who kept me from loneliness for many many months this year; a church community that is so from Christ, and finding the most awesome friends through it; an awesome job I can actually enjoy and smile about; etc etc etc.  Plenty.  My cup overflows!  God is good no matter what.

Even the animals could tell that today was a chill day...

Part of my feast....it wouldn't all fit in one photo.  I was so proud, hehe.  I took all my mom's recipes, including twice-baked potatoes, our wonderful orange jello, apple cider stuffing, crescent rolls, etc etc.....all from scratch, you know how we do.  ;)

 Letting Sheba check out the food.....she almost grabbed it!!

 Then she got her own little doggy feast......she practically inhaled that thing.

Enjoying a wonderful dinner with my best friend.  Definitely the most relaxing Thanksgiving, and it was super fun to make all the food!  Super thankful for my manly man husband who took care of handling all the "gross" stuff (lol) and also cleaned the whole apartment while I cooked all day!!!  0:)  He's the best.!!!

I hope everyone reading this had an amazing Thanksgiving!!  All glory to God who makes all things good.  Enjoy the weekend! :)

♥Samantha

goodbye october.

Happy Halloween friends!

We personally celebrated by sleeping through all our alarms and waking up 20 minutes before Rick had to BE IN his meeting this morning.  UGH hahaha.  But he made it in with one minute to spare!!!  Praise the Lord.

We are not doing anything today, but we have had Sheba walking around in a costume all day.....here are some pics from her costume photoshoot last week :)  We went to the museum on base, where there are a bunch of historic planes displayed, to take her little AF-pup pics.  And because we came up to this plane from a separate parking lot, we didn't realize they were actually roped off and you were not supposed to get that close...oopsie!!  We booked it out of there before anyone noticed us 0:) 0:)

You can see the rope in front of the plane here.......ooopy.

 Reporting for puppy duty.!

 MAKING THE SAME FACE.  I laughed so hard...I love them so much.

In other news I have a job interview tomorrow and prayers would be absolutely appreciated!  We've been praying for financial provision and pursuing getting a lot of things paid off so we can be free of them.  Me being able to bring in some extra cash would help us get this done so much faster!  Hoping it goes well, but who knows what'll happen or how many people they are choosing between.

Here's to a new season.  Also to winter coming, listening to Christmas music, buying lights, and drinking peppermint mochas :):):)

Getting back into this stuff.

Hey y'all, ok.  So blogging.  I inadvertently took a lot of time off from this.  It wasn't intentional, but I just "never had anything to write about."  It seemed like nothing was happening and I didn't feel like there was anything worthy to write down.  Maybe it was a comparison thing, that others seemed to have so much more exciting lives, and here I am just going to classes, doing homework, cleaning, cooking, and spending time with my husband, our pup, and the couple of friends I have here.  Which is PERFECT for me and I wouldn't have it any other way, but compared to others' lives I felt like mine wasn't really "blog-worthy."

Anyway, this morning while zoning out in my nutrition class (I will never understand why everyone so fervently take notes during a review that is literally the exact same information we already learned about) I decided that I am going to commit to writing things down more.  I have gotten into the habit of letting life pass me by, I think.  In constantly getting caught up in everyday things that don't seem very "interesting," the days turn into weeks and next thing you know--it's about time for Halloween, I log on here and see I haven't posted since August 3rd.  So I want to get more out of my everyday days, I want to observe more, learn more, and just appreciate things more.

I am getting back into this stuff by using this cute picture of a craft/DIY journal to prompt me to write something:

Listening; to a group of loud (and I mean LOUD) college kids shout and make a commotion in their everyday conversation.  For about the past hour straight.  Oh my oh my, how is it that at (probably) the same age, we could be at such different stages of our lives...?
Eating; nada.
Drinking; skinny vanilla latte...warm.cozy.happy.
Wearing; jeggings, uggies (as I call them), and a nice warm MSU hoodie.  After this blazing summer I have not really been prepared for cold-weather clothes, so it's a lot of the same every day.
Feeling; a little overwhelmed with school work and house work, while trying to balance things so that I have time to do the crafts and fun DIYs I am itching for.
Weather; overcast and 55 degrees.  Rainy season is starting and I am not really ready for it.  It's hilarious to me to think about how excited I was to have 55-degree days back when we moved here, in contrast to the below-freezing days in Michigan.  Now, a year later, I am absolutely "freezing" at 55, hahaha.
Wanting; to skip my last class and go continue my current read at Barnes and Noble.  But I think I'm going to sit through class anyway.....I feel too guilty.
Needing; to worry less.  God has shown so SO much faithfulness when I choose to trust him, and I need to get into the habit of worrying less & giving things up to God more.
Thinking; about how to hang my pictures on the wall, and create hooks etc on the frames that do not have ones attached already.  Wondering if my biggest frame/photo with the original mirror inside is too heavy to hang normally.  Hm.
Enjoying; texting my husband throughout the day. He is the cutest texter on the planet, especially with all of the Emoji pictures that constantly are a part of our conversation whether they belong there or not.  (Example: in my last text I felt the need to include both a snowman and an eggplant......)  He makes me laugh. :)

Okay, there we go!  Restart time.
♥Samantha

Fill in the blank Friday!

It's finally Friday, yey!  Rick and I are celebrating by going to the gym soon.  The joys of having an awesomely in-shape husband is that I get healthier by association...haha :)

These are from thelittlethingswedo.blogspot.com, and I always mean to do them, but get too busy to get them done on Fridays.  And you just can't post a Friday post on the Sunday you finally remember it exists :o

1.  I am proud of  our cutie pup Sheba!!!  She is learning tricks lately and so far she can do "turn around," "stay," "shake," and my personal favorite, "slam dunk"!!  She is intelligent :)

2.   This weekend I will   be waking up without an alarm, going to enjoy breakfast at The Original Pancake House with my hubby (yumm), going into San Francisco for a little shopping and a good coffee shop to study at, and going to church on Sunday.

3.  A secret dream I have is   to start a bakery whenever Rick retires and military moves are over.  Either that or to franchise a Biggby Coffee...if they don't have it where we live I'll MAKE it be where we live.  Hahahaha.

4. I can't handle    when military girlfriends etc. liken their relationship to the movie "Dear John."  Umm, think about what a "dear john" letter actually is, look at what happens at the end of that movie, and then we'll talk.  I don't have many pet peeves but this is a big (and very specific) one.

5. The most annoying thing in the entire world is   bad traffic, especially when you've actually got to be somewhere....eeek.

6. The most relaxing thing in the entire world is  BUBBLE BATHS with Lush bath bombs, while watching House Hunters.  Haha.  Probably while also drinking a Biggby iced chai...I haven't had one at the same time before but I assume that would just put the whole thing over the top in perfection.

7.  I think everyone should  eat yummy things.  We should definitely also keep our bodies healthy, everything in moderation, making good choices and staying active, but also...life's too short not to enjoy what you eat.  Things can be pretty healthy and also delicious :)

New things.

I really enjoy new routines.  Things that start just as something you decide to try out, then become part of your everyday, your "thing."

Thankfully, putting on a pot of tea has become one of my things.

  Thanks to wedding registries I got all I needed last year.  Shout out to my sister for the teapot and my old college roommate Amanda for the DISHWASHER SAFE teacups....now that's what I'm talking about.

I am a devoted coffee addict, and while I always enjoyed a good cup of tea every now and then, I never really got obsessed with it until I started drinking the loose-leaf stuff.  You know, the fresh stuff, that hasn't been sitting in the grocery store (in a little bag inside a little box) for who knows how long.  That boxed stuff was okay, but when I started drinking loose leaf tea is when I really got hooked.  I used to load my tea up with milk and sugar, and now I love it so much nearer to its original state, because that original state is already so so good and flavorful, it hardly needs improvement... (okay...I still haven't kicked the sugar.  But a couple teaspoons for a whole pot of tea isn't awful, I don't think.)

I mostly get my teas from Teavana, which is in basically every mall in America.  A little overpriced?  Yeah, a little.  Overbearing store associates pressuring you to buy more and more?  Oh, definitely.  But the flavors are just SO good; and it's accessible.  So Rick and I recently headed out to stock up on new teas.  And, yes, we did leave there having spent $20 more than we originally planned.  Whatever, Teavana. You win this time.  Jerks.

But really though, a pot of tea goes for every occasion.

I just woke up?  Tea for breakfast, and Scripture.

It's 10 o clock at night?  I'll just put on some tea, and we can unintentionally finish the whole pot 0:)

Dinner time and it's still 85 degrees inside?  Well how about I heat up some water, and by the time the air conditioning kicks in good, we'll have some nice hot tea to keep us cozy...

Finished the first pot?  Well I better make another and put it in the fridge, everyone loves iced tea...

One would think that with the amount of tea in our lives right now we would not be drinking as much coffee.....unfortunately that's not the case.  Still spending hours on end in Starbucks and the Huv a Java on base, still giving the lovely Keurig its money's worth......it's not that easy to kick an addiction.

But at least I am able to add to it!

 Sorry girlie, it's not for you :o