10 for '10

In no particular order, here is a smattering of the notable things that occurred in 2010.

1. We celebrated our second wedding anniversary on Nov. 1. Hurrah for two terrific years of marriage! We have grown a lot this year as a team (see #3 and #5) and I can't wait to see what 2011 brings.

2. We started (and mostly completed) two renovation projects in our house: the master bathroom and the kitchen. On a not-so-awesome note, due to one thing or another, I completely failed at getting good before pictures, thus making these milestones semi-lame in a blogging sense. We love our new kitchen though and will get pictures up soon.

3. We traveled a lot: Colorado, Europe, Northern Africa, Hawaii and various points around the Southeast. Favorite moments include hiking in the Alps; exploring Malaga, Spain; putting together distribution packets in Guillermo's bookstore; celebrating my cousin's wedding in the glorious Colorado sunshine with lots of family; seeing my sister's ohana (apartment) and new workplace; riding on the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad with Thomas' family in the beautiful North Carolina fall; eating at Spago's and many other amazing adventures.


4. We got to see our little nephew Colton go from a helpless newborn to a crawling, verbal little guy that keeps everyone on their toes.

5. We got a dog that we love to pieces!! Sullivan has been so much fun (and so much work) this year and we can't get enough of his goofy antics. He is right around 70 pounds, a destroyer of plush toys, a shredder of paper and a sniffer of epic proportions. He is the perfect family dog and we are thrilled to have him--except maybe at 5 am when he wants to jump on the bed and "snuggle," aka take up more than 1/3 of the bed with his long legs and force his parents into absurd positions.

6. My parents moved to Charleston! We have really enjoyed having them around and are excited to watch them build a life here with church involvement, tennis of course, and maybe even the successful completion of a short sale. They also love Sullivan, and their help with him has been invaluable.

7. I finished graduate school and got a full time job! Tens of thousands of pages, and probably an equal number of miles, and a master's thesis later, I now have a degree that is still sitting unframed on my desk.Ironically, neither the degree nor the job has anything to do with the other, but I am so happy to be done with commuting and to be a part of such a wonderful environment at PCA that the lack of literature in my teaching position doesn't matter.

8. We deepened friendships, church involvement and neighborhood presence (thanks to Sullivan). We attended and took part in six weddings, welcomed a few friends' babies into the world and generally had a blast hanging out with people.

9. We celebrated two snowfalls in Charleston, one in February and one just a few days ago. Yay! I survived another boiling hot summer. Yay!

10. And most importantly, we enjoyed another year of God's grace, mercy and forgiveness in our relationships and everyday lives. This verse was on our Christmas cards and was a sort of theme verse for the year:
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast." Eph. 2:8-9

See you in 2011! Maybe I can crack 30 for my number of posts next year...

That sunset looks pretty good right about now...

We got to spend Thanksgiving in Maui this year and it was awesome! Thomas and I flew out for a week of fun in the sun with my parents, sister and grandmother. It was a neat chance for reflection since the last time we were there was on our honeymoon, two short years ago! We got to see Hillary in action at work, walk the beach path, shop, kayak, relax and explore. Thomas got a dive in as well and he is thinking about getting certified. The week flew by but it was definitely a Thanksgiving to remember!

Obviously I'm way behind on my posting and in spite of good blogging months in 2010, I am close to falling short of my goal, which was merely to write more posts than I did in 2009. Doh! 2011, however, will be a different story...

Stay tuned for tomorrow in which I chronicle other bits of Thanksgiving, December and Christmas. Not to mention Charleston's SECOND snowfall of 2010.

11.01.08

TWO YEARS BABY!! Also, 11.01.10 looks cool written out.
Anniversaries are awesome.
Thomas is the coolest husband ever.
And thanks be to God for bringing us together and keeping us together.
Hoping for many more anniversaries with this handsome fellow. *

Can't wait to see what this year brings us!!

*fellow: hopelessly old-fashioned and lame or cool and retro?

I admit it...

...I am a Halloween hater. I love fall/harvest time and all the kitschy decorations that accompany this season. Bring on the pumpkins, the bales of hay and all the warm tones. However, please hold the fake tombstones, spider legs and skeletons coming out of the ground. These I could live without. To prove that my reasons are legitimate, please peruse the following list.

1. I grew up in Colorado, a part of the country that many people assume is the land of ice and snow. Denver actually gets about 300 sunny days per year. However, without fail, one of the non-sunny days of the year was Halloween. No skimpy princess outfits for Colorado kids--whatever we came up with had to be "cold-weather adaptable," aka you could bundle up in one of those snowsuits like the little brother in Christmas Story (incidentally, only one more month until Christmas Movie Month!). No wonder a recurring costume for me was being a bag of dog food.* At least I could wear warm clothes underneath.
2. Halloween brings out the tackiest of tacky. You know what I'm talking about. People who otherwise seem relatively normal seem compelled to find the UGLIEST, TACKIEST, WEIRDEST stuff to put in their lawns/cars/offices/whatevertheycanfind. Case in point, our neighbors around the corner have the following in their yard: a) 2 skeletons in adirondacks with drinks in their hands. b) huge monster eyes in the windows. c) a green-faced witch riding a broom between palm trees. d) a birdcage (wait, what?). e)fake cobwebs, orange and white lights, etc. And last but not least, they tape a little black bird to their street sign every year, only this year they decided to "top themselves" (ha, pun intended) and glue a little stuffed mouse to its beak--WHY, PEOPLE, WHY? Admittedly, these people are over the top for every holiday (inflatables at Christmas, Easter eggs in the trees, shamrocks galore) but they really pull out all the stops at Halloween.
3. Halloween costumes. Coming up with a Halloween costume every year was like a Herculean labor for me. The effort to payoff ratio is poor in my opinion. My husband would totally disagree with this, so it's probably just my bitterness at not being creative in this way coming through. Imagine trying to explain American Halloween to someone from Africa. "Well first you spend tons of money and/or time coming up with a costume. If you're an adult female, you should probably try and look as much like a hooker as possible--pirate wench, French maid, sexy cowgirl, etc. Then you put said outfit on and either trick or treat (this part of Halloween is cool) or attend a party for a few hours. You take some pictures and that's it. wah wah wah.
4. Candy overload, leading to sugar glazed kids and fat adults.

So there you have it, Halloween is a terrible holiday. Glad I have my November 1 anniversary to focus on instead!

*I actually wore this outfit for multiple years. Each time we would have to carefully plan out Molly's food so that there would be an empty bag available. I promise that I did, in fact, have friends, though looking back, it's hard to imagine why! See reason #3 for why I liked this costume so much.

Of travelling and home-ing

Just planned out the rest of the year on the calendar--crazy! October, November and December are going to be fun-filled and hopefully a decent balance of travel and home time. Two weddings, a couple of trips, a few holidays...and a partridge in a pear tree.


Thomas commented a few weeks ago that I was a homebody--an observation that I originally did not take kindly to. But upon further reflection, I decided that he was pretty dead on (yikes, 2 sentences in a row ending in prepositions. sorry folks). I love to travel and do interesting things, but I also love to putter around our house and hang out with the terrific friends that we have in this area. Hosting friends and family is always fun, too. We are truly blessed to have the depth and breadth of relationships that we do in Charleston. It's something that I often take for granted but the Lord has truly blessed us beyond measure with wonderful people.

Lately we have been praying for further opportunities to interact with neighbors and cultivate relationships in our own driveway, so to speak. Thanks to our handsome and spastic dog Sullivan, we find ourselves out and about much more often, thereby gaining further "exposure" with fellow dog owners and others who live in our vicinity. Also, there is a little kindergartner from my school who looooooves coming to see me (and Sullivan and Thomas, of course), which has afforded us the opportunity to interact more with his parents and their friends. Pretty cool stuff.
ps) never was a big fan of Mr. Rogers--although thanks to my good friend KPro (KHouse), I now have a deeper appreciation of cardigans

This one's for you, Hillary!

Conversation from our walk tonight:

Ashley: I think we'll have a hard time picking out names for kids.
Thomas: No we won't. We already have the first one picked. It's the perfect unisex name: Laquinta.
Ashley: (silence, then recovery). Maybe if we do that, then our kid can be the spokesperson for the hotel chain and we can stay there for free for the rest of our lives.
Thomas: Well if we're going to aim for that, then let's name him/her Four Seasons instead.

Bathroom Re-Do, Part One

So, I had a blogging fail early this summer when we started our bathroom remodeling and I forgot to take any before pictures. lame, lame, lame. No wonder my little blog just lopes along.
Anyhow, it has been quite a project--light fixtures, faucets, paint, window treatments, art and last but not least: the floor. I scored some sweet deals; my mom and I sweated through some painting projects; Thomas did lighting, plumbing and pretty much everything else (because he is awesome).
Here is a picture of the bare floor (some sort of mortar-covered base level....obviously I am very informed about these things...). Thomas, my dad and our friend Kevin ripped up our old ceramic tile with crowbars. It was manly. It was sweaty. It was awesome. It took them about 4 hours. I did important things like making sure that Sullivan did not get crowbar-ed and that no one died of thirst or hunger.
I look forward to bringing you the second installment of this post: our awesome new stone floors, as well as the story of how we acquired the stone in the first place. whoa. I know you're all pinned to the edge of your seat.

Craigslist: welcome to the 21st century

This week marked the completion of our first successful Craigslist sale! The turn around time was less than a week between the original post and the envelope o'cash. What an amazing age we live in! Giving out your address to a random stranger on the Internet who happens to be "interested in your table" does take some faith though, and I made Thomas come home early one day to be here when Jane Doe* showed up. She was completely not scary of course, and even brought along two cute kiddos.

Thomas in particular shed a few (metaphorical) tears over the sale of this set--it was one of his first "adult" purchases, and we certainly have a lot of fun memories of meals, game nights, etc. It was part of his "furniture trosseau," aptly named by a friend in light of Thomas' unusually huge inventory of stuff, and boy am I glad that he has good taste!

It was fun having two dining room tables for a while and made hosting several large group gatherings much easier. It is nice having our front entry way back though...

*name changed to protect the innocent

I'm back!

Because my husband is the awesome-est, I now have a revived will to blog! He made the header himself (drew those b.a. penguins from scratch!) and used a picture from the last time we went skiing in Vail.
Seriously, if our kids (and this is NOT an announcement of that) are half as cool as he is, I will be thrilled.

Playdates: How to realize you have no control over your dog

I know that I have a huge trip to update you on, but our pictures are still a jumbled mess (835 at last count), so that blog post will have to wait.
Yesterday a woman riding her bike zips past Sullivan and me out on our morning walk and then proceeds to turn around for a quick chat. Turns out she has a newly adopted ten year-old dog in desperate need of some doggie company. She manages to hold her composure when I tell her that Sullivan is five and a half months old and bravely does not rescind the invitation.
So, at 9 am on the dot, after a longish morning walk (in an effort to wear out the puppy so he doesn't kill the geriatric), Sullivan and I trot over to this house. Two things run through my head first:
1. Is this normal? I thought only kids had play dates? What happens if Sullivan claws this dog's eyes out?
2. Holy cow, this house is on a pond. A big one. And my dog is obsessed with water. And swimming--despite the fact that Thomas had to jump in the water at the dog park the other day b/c Sullivan likes to "swim" vertically.

The dogs run around together for a bit and the older dog is surprisingly spry. Sullivan's goofy uncoordination is evident and hilarious. After about 4 minutes of happy playing, both dogs BOOM are in the water. I scream like a fishwife on shore for about 15 minutes as Sullivan ignores my crazed shoutings and swims like a champ while running in and out of the water. So we take the dogs around front to play. Of course, 30 seconds later they have returned to the backyard for some more aquatic expeditioning.
The play date came to an abrupt end when both dogs, out of the water for once, were tearing around the backyard and due to an unfortunate aligning of positions, Sullivan bodyslammed the older dog into a palm tree. Lucy took it like a champ but it pretty much freaked out the two dog moms. After a quick shower together (oh my! on the first date!) the dogs parted ways.
I suggested my pondless, fenced in backyard for the next one, though my gauge of "how much of a disaster was that?"may be malfunctioning.

This sealed the deal for me on puppy training classes. I'm especially interested in the commands:
"Sullivan, get out of the pond right now" and "Sullivan, stop humping a dog old enough to be your great great grandmother"

Piccolo Spoleto, Boba Fett and everything in between

For the last few weeks, Charleston has been hosting the Spoleto Festival and its companion event, Piccolo Spoleto. It's a pretty neat thing and worth reading about if you a) don't live here or b) if you are like me and were guilty of not taking advantage of these opportunities before.
My parents, being the jet-setters they are, moved here in March and promptly set out to take advantage of all the cool stuff here in Charleston. This means that by the second day of the Spoleto Festival they had surpassed the number of Spoleto events that Thomas and I had collectively taken advantage of in the combined eight years we have lived here. Shame on us. Way to go, Mom and Dad!
Last Wednesday, at their prompting, we attended the One Man Stars Wars Trilogy show in the American Theater on upper King. The venue was pretty awesome in itself--a revitalized art deco room with lots of old movie posters. And the show was hilarious, if you are familiar with/enjoy knowing too much about Star Wars. To our amazement, a few people in the audience had never seen a Star Wars film, meaning that the performance to them must have been nothing more than an hour of mouth noises, strange storylines and bizarre names. It felt like that to me, too, but fortunately I could sequence everything together and appreciate the guy's sheer talent (if this is the right word) for imitating R2D2's noises, jabba the hutt's mouth and best of all, mark hamill's whininess and hilarious 80s hair. So, if you ever get the chance to see this show--the dude makes his living travelling around and performing Star Wars and Lord of the Rings--you should jump at it.
Following the performance, we walked over to the gelato store on John Street. Given the store's teeny tiny size, we were in close proximity to the other customers, and the kid standing behind us in line piped up with a "hey! You sat by us in Star Wars!" in a cute, "r's turned into l's," New York accent. He was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt and was super excited to tell us that he was destined to like the trilogy because his middle name is from Star Wars. We start throwing out names--Luke, Han, Leia ("no way! I'm a boy!"), Lando--but we can't figure it out. The kid proudly informs us that his middle name is Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who captures Han. He's the sort of character that if you took a bathroom break, you may have missed his entire performance in the movies.* The dad, somewhat sheepishly, confirms the truth of this by saying that it's printed on his son's birth certificate. If you're ever put in this situation, I think it's best to remain positive--"wow, that's so cool! I'll bet no one else has that for a middle name!"--while inwardly you wonder WHAT THE PARENTS WERE THINKING. Were they in a galaxy far, far away when they were picking baby names?
Can't you hear the high school graduation ceremony now? Or see the wedding program? The resume header? The college roommate letter?

*strangely enough, Boba Fett has a huge cult following

Litterbugs

I never realized how much people litter until I started walking Sullivan every day. Said dog is the ultimate magnet for trash--I can almost hear his little doggie mind producing thoughts like "oooh a beer can! oooh a gum package! delicious trash!"
Trash is, of course, second only to his actual favorite thing to pick up while we are walking: poop. Bird, beast, bug, it doesn't matter. It's all delicious defecation. Usually I attempt to steer him away from those tasty treats, but I have determined it's impossible to prevent all ingestion.
The picture was obviously taken on the beach and Sullivan is dominating (or attempting to dominate) some seaweed. Note the batlike ears, the ferocious look of determination, the crooked tail (ultimate sign of happiness) and the muscular stance of this goofy animal.

May

Well, I have a more substantial post in the works--or at least one that does not chronicle my continuing infatuation with our little beastie.
But it will have to wait for another day.

Here is our furry son in all of his long-legged, big-pawed, shiny-coated glory. What have we gotten ourselves into...

Talk of the town

"Your dog is hot."
-random skateboarding friend-of-neighbor kid.

Misunderstanding him, I responded with something to the effect of "I'm taking him home for some water right now." He clarified with, "no, no! I mean he's really...attractive." Staring at him, I mumbled something like "thanks?" The kid was embarrassed when he figured out that Sullivan was a boy, but I kept the compliment anyways. Apparently Sullivan is a huge hit in the neighborhood--I have talked to more neighbors in the last two weeks than in our entire 9 months here.

Obviously Sullivan is "hot"--he is handsome and well-proportioned. So there.
I look forward to our next encounter, skateboard boy, when you make more awkward comments about my dog's attractiveness.

Introducing...

Deep within my soul, I yearn to be spontaneous. But everywhere else, I vacillate between obsessively planning things out and lazily letting things go as they will (NOT the same thing as being spontaneous in my opinion).
So yesterday, when Thomas sent me a message on gmail-chat from work about a posting he'd seen regarding an 11 week old black lab puppy who needed a home, I immediately thought "yes! A chance to be spontaneous! To be free spirited and whimsical!" Thomas and I had been talking about getting a dog for a few months, but we wanted to wait until the timing was better. Well, lo and behold, the timing never got better--our summer trip was pushed back a week further into July, school starts in August, etc. So I figured that the only way a dog was going to happen would be if it were a spontaneous, random and joy-filled moment (To some extent, I feel the same way about kids, by the way).
And yesterday was that moment! In the span of about 8 hours, we went from hypothetical dog people to actual dog people. We spent absurd amounts of money getting him shots, a crate, a toy and some food. We chose between the names Samson and Sullivan (the latter won out).
Now he is curled up next to my desk chair, dreaming the day away and putting out the delightful odor of SlightlySweatyDog.
And we couldn't be happier.*
*please remind me of this in a few months when cleaning up accidents and saying "NO!" has become less enjoyable and more overwhelming.

Charleston is pretty in the spring.

In which I ponder various things

Item #1:
Thomas never remembers his dreams, so when he woke up this morning and told me that he'd had some strange dreams, I was instantly curious. He then related a semi-coherent narrative, the essence of which was that he had dreamed about turning in his thesis late and then failing it.
Wait a minute...
I wrote a thesis, not Thomas! I instantly felt guilty that my stress over the last month(s) about this silly document had somehow translated into a series of stressful dreams for my poor husband. Moral of the story: when I get stressed and/or selfish (sometimes they seem to be one and the same), it affects Thomas, which is something that I should be conscious of since I'm sure that future situations (CHILDREN) will only exacerbate this tendency.

Item #2:
I am currently taking a boot camp class sent up through my church that consists of 4-5 women and an instructor. One woman this morning shared that her youngest child (of 4) is graduating from college in two weeks and that she is getting divorced after 25 years, leading to a progression of "do I still have value" type questions. Her purpose in telling us this was not to garner pity or emphasize what a strong woman she is, though obviously I do a) think she is strong and b) wish that the situation were different. Instead, she said that she is telling every young mom she sees to not completely forget about herself and her own interests while she is raising kids, b/c someday they will be grown and gone. She emphasized the importance of investing time in your husband, even when the kids are around and life is chaotic. While her advice is not directly applicable for me or my current situation, I appreciate the spirit it was given in and also imagine that she knows what she's talking about. It's food for thought, anyways, and I am going to try to remember to say a few prayers for her.

books and such

A spectacular Jeopardy question for the category, Great Works of Literature in Haiku. We keep a daily calendar of Jeopardy questions (in the can, of all places) which are alternately encouraging (hey! I do know something!) and discouraging (am I really that dumb?).

1931
Everybody Wang
Lung tonight and
The Buck stops here.

I didn't get the answer because I immediately started singing the song that brought to mind, but my brilliant husband did. We then proceeded to argue/have a spirited discussion about The Good Earth. Thomas claimed it as "the worst book ever," which I disagreed with since I just finished listening to a Jodi Picoult book called Vanishing Acts--truly, the Worst Book Ever. I actually found myself shouting at the characters as I drove.

this modern life

The Men's Health magazine left on the desk next to me at the Mt. Pleasant library bears the following headline in big, bold letters:
CARS!
BEER!
BREASTS!
AND NINE OTHER THINGS WORTH LIVING AND DYING FOR.

Thanks, Men's Health, for explaining to me what is important in life. I'm so glad that a magazine devoted to men's health feels the need to discuss breasts.

My students are funny

I'm worried that this student is a little too into Twilight.
"I think that Edward and Bella are the perfect couple even though they are different. Some vampires can train themselves to not eat humans and yes there will always be those vampires who can't but in our culture there will be some bad people. Overall I think it is good that vampires are becoming more interactive with humans because it will create a cycle for future generations and they will eventually adjust to their diet."

SO, everyone should be aware--vampires move among us AND they may not always be on a diet...

One of the 31.1 million who watched his memorial service

Ah, yes. Student papers, the font of blog posts.

Just when I thought that everyone my age and younger considered the King of Pop a strange and troubled man with occasional moments of musical genius, I came across this paper...

"I have been and always will be a Michael Jackson fanatic; his music is the cure to any bad day. There have been days when I devote a solid eight hours to watching Michael Jackson music videos, documentaries, and listening to his music. I will admit that I was "the crazy fan" when he passed away last year, I cried throughout his memorial service and mourned his death for a few days. In addition I am proud to say that I own every CD and DVD he ever released, I saw "This Is It" the day it was released in theaters and bought it the day it came out in stores. I also have his posters hanging up in my room...needless to say I am a bit obsessed. "

So, do we admire this 18-year old fan who was two when the first charges of child sexual abuse were made against him? A fan who embraced him well past the good years of the Jackson 5 and Thriller? A fan who bypassed the traditional boy bands in order to devote herself to Mr. Neverland himself? For me, the jury is still out until I find out if she can moonwalk.

SNOW

This is the tree in our front yard. Those are snowflakes falling in front of it. Having snow fall at our house was tremendously fun, and we enjoyed it to the fullest since it may never happen again! To all the weathermen that I doubted last Friday, my deepest apologies. You weren't just fear-mongering or starting a false buzz of conversation. However, news stations, the pictures of "adorable snowmen" and winter fun are getting old. Let's keep it real here people: a couple of inches of snow should not be the headline news for most of the following week. Instead, all local news coverage should be switched to The Olympics, a second source of recent happiness.

mountains!

Putting aside the lame positioning of my arms, consider the awesomeness of this photograph. Alpine village, check. Spectacular mountains, check. Sunshine, check. Snow, check. Awesome hat, check (it has a tassel).
This was from my abroad experience, 4.5 years ago. It is hard to believe that it has been so long! Thomas and I are hoping to make it over to Europe this summer to do some gallivanting in areas just like this one. I am longing for mountains, especially around this time of year. Well, really, it never goes away. I absolutely love Charleston and our life here. But there is something about mountains that marshes and beaches just can't touch.

This is not a recent picture obviously, but I love it nonetheless!
And since "all" of my readers have been "clamoring" for an update, here it is!

We have a nephew now, Colton Eli. He is very cute, and almost four weeks old! We are excited to see him and his parents again in early Feb.

My parents are moving here in March!

I am buried under mountains of schoolwork but am confident that I will emerge unscathed in late April. phew. Looking forward to that day for sure.