Here's to waiting for 2/14/14...

Happy February 14th! 

Husband and I don't really celebrate Valentine's day and being apart this year made it seem like any other day even more…minus my Facebook newsfeed blowing up with declarations of love and adoration for significant others, photos of flowers, and the occasional haters-of-the-day…

Oh, and I guess my journal reminded me of the holiday, too:

Next year's Valentine's day will be lightyears better than this year. 

Reason #1: I will be living under the same roof as Husband and will actually have the chance to put "yes" under my journal's Q&A entry for the day. 

Reason #2: I won't be living in a building where I share walls with people and hear their dog bark all. day. long.

I'm lookin' at you, #105 across the hall...

(Belated) Re-cap: Christmas, New Year's, Rest of Break

So I realized I never did a post on Christmas and New Year's and the week of relaxation.

Oops.

Looks like I won't be getting to a lengthy one thanks to the chaos that is the current semester…so a compact version it is!

We got back from Punta Cana very very late on the 23rd. Randomly, we decided to give each other the Christmas gifts we'd bought. Husband actually bought mine (a fun kate spade cross body purse with a matching wallet I'd received for my birthday) this past summer so he was off the hook shopping-wise way back in July when I'd picked it out during a sample sale online. For him, I had to do some searching, but I ended up picking out this really cool computer stand to save his neck muscles. Since I'm notorious for being bad at picking out gifts for him without any sort of help or hint as to what he'd like, I was pleasantly surprised to find out he truly loved it! In addition to the stand, he also received a renewed Popular Science subscription good for the next two years. After exchanging our gifts, we spent another few hours unpacking, doing laundry, and re-packing for the next three days of holiday celebrations. I think we stayed up until 3 or 4am just getting everything together…and that was after a full day of traveling!

The 24th we headed to Husband's hometown to spend Christmas Eve with his dad. They ate lobster while I happily enjoyed some fettucine alfredo (there's something about those eyes and antennae that make me lose my appetite…that and the shell breaking and tearing into the insides of the crustacean…makes me almost become a vegetarian). We exchanged gifts, had good conversation, and just enjoyed each other's company for the evening. 

Late that night we drove to Husband's mom and stepdad's home. Once there, we did their traditional sibling exchange and opened gifts with Husband's younger brother, Travis. While Husband's older brother and wife had sent gifts from Maryland, we decided to wait to open those until the next day. 

Christmas day we woke up around 9:30am (it's nice not having kids quite yet so we can still sleep in!) and first took a look in our stockings (another tradition of Husband's family). After that, we ate a wonderful breakfast prepared by Husband's mom and then sat by the table to read the Christmas story out of the book of Luke. Once it was time to open presents under the tree, it was nearly 11am (again, it's nice not having kids yet and take things slowly!). I think it took us about two hours or so to get through everything! The rest of the day was spent cleaning up, making use of our new gifts (Husband received a really nice ping pong paddle from his mom and stepdad and then his mom received one as a surprise, too, so they played for HOURS that day on the table in the basement!). 

The morning of the 26th we drove with one of my three sisters and her family in their eight passenger van a couple hours up north to my mom's hometown to celebrate with the extended family on my mom's side at the church in which she grew up. We've been doing this for as long as I can remember, and as the family has grown, we've slowly moved from celebrating in my grandparents' house, to one of my aunt and uncle's house, to finally the church we've been celebrating in for the past few years. It's always so nice going there and seeing my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins and their kids that I usually don't get to see any other time of the year. We played BINGO with fun prizes, ate way too much good food, and just relaxed the whole day. 

On the 27th we celebrated at the church of one of my other sisters and her family with my side of the family. It was especially great since my oldest sister and her family, who live in Texas, were able to celebrate with us and that day we finally saw snow! Once again, we ate way too much good food, opened presents, and just enjoyed each other's company. 

For New Year's, we rang it in very relaxedly at the home of some of our good friends from church. We kept it low-key with pizza and a movie and good conversation. We didn't even watch the ball drop since they don't have cable so we nearly missed midnight! Luckily we managed to catch the time change on the clock on the wall so Husband and I started off the the new year with a kiss :) 

The last week of break was spent doing nothing in particular in the comfort of our own home. We slept in a lot, watched some movies and television shows together, I worked on the quilt I've been sewing for Husband since this summer (and no, I still haven't finished it…!!!) and did some cooking and prepared freezer meals for the semester, and Husband relished in his free time with video games and pleasure reading. 

Needless to say, it was quite the bummer to get back to reality and head back to school!

Bavaro Princess Resort in Punta Cana = Disappointment

Mmmm vacation…

Earlier last spring, Husband and I began discussing plans to take a vacation either during the summer before he started med school or around the holidays while we would both be on break from school. He and I had been saving basically since we'd been married (approximately three years' worth)  to take a big trip in the future anyway and we'd accumulated a respectable amount by that point. We decided to go through a travel agency in town to get the best suggestions on deals and make our arrangements. This was an easy decision because when we booked our honeymoon on our own, we'd run into major problems thanks to swine flu ravaging Mexico (where all of our cruise's destinations were scheduled) and our itinerary changing from sunny warm weather to the frigid temperatures of Canada without any warning. Husband spent every day after work for two weeks trying to communicate to airlines and Royal Caribbean that (to their surprise somehow?) we did NOT want to go to northern California and British Columbia for our honeymoon despite their offer of $300 onboard credit and that we'd just like our money back since, after all, we bought insurance for everything just in case something crazy like this happened. 

Anyway, we made our plans in June put down our deposit. In the fall, we paid for the rest of the trip and all that we had left to do was wait in anticipation. The generating excitement for our much-needed getaway together truly helped get me through the semester. Each time I was about to break down from stress and the demands of school and life in general while living apart from Husband, I looked at the countdown to our vacation for motivation to keep on going. 

Needless to say, I think I built the trip up in my head as the months of waiting went by. However, I don't think it was completely unrealistic. I dreamt up holding hands on a constant basis with Husband, sipping fruity drinks on the beach, squishing sand between my toes, the warmth of the sun flooding my face, ocean waves crashing in the background everywhere we would go, eating (pre-paid = "free") meals provided for us whenever and wherever we wanted, watching some fun entertainment at night before retiring to our air-conditioned room and sleeping in each day… 

However, in reality, our trip was actually not very glamorous. Husband wrote a very long post here on his blog outlining and detailing everything that went wrong during our stay (which, unfortunately, was a lot). While he reassured me several times during the trip that he would pay all the money I felt we just wasted just to spend time with me, I admit I cried on at least three different occasions, lamenting about what a disappointing and anti-climactic vacation we had both been anticipating for so long. 

Bottom line, though - at least we got to go on a trip at all. I am so grateful to at least have had the finances and the chance to travel with Husband to another country to relax and enjoy what we did during the week. While the overall trip could have gone a lot more smoothly, I will look back on the good memories we did have with fondness (and hopefully / probably laugh about the bad stuff in time). 

Here are a few of my favorite (unedited) photos we took during the week:

FINALLY...an update post! And more to come...

Uhh…sorry for the silence over here…

I definitely did not intend to completely ignore the blog during holiday break. 

It just sort of happened. 

BUT school starts back up again next week (insert cries of agony and revulsion) so I figured I better get my tush back in gear and update with a recap of break before it's all said and done. 

In a nutshell?

- Exams

- Vacation

- Christmas celebrations

- New Year's

- Week of catching up

However, there is so much more to it all than that. Due to the lengthy and detailed descriptions I plan to write about each topic, I think I'll break it up into a few separate posts to be written over the course of the next few days…

I'll start with exams:

Going crazy...I believe the text I wrote to Husband when I sent him this was, "Filling my stomach...and my brain...yikes"

Exam week really threw me off. At the beginning of the year, I was originally scheduled to have three exams - one on Monday, another on Tuesday, and the last of them on Wednesday. Perfect, right? Well, it all changed when a new schedule was released with my Tuesday exam moved to Friday. The last day of exam week. Meaning I had to push back the start of break from Wednesday to Friday. Meaning I would miss out on two more days of break. Now, I realize that to most people this doesn't seem like a very big deal, but to a student who has been counting down the days to break since basically the start of the semester, it was true heartbreak. Not to mention Husband's last exam was on Thursday morning so really it pushed back the start of break for the both of us together by a day. However, cries of agony and sobbing aside, I sallied forth and tackled each exam with what little strength and shreds of knowledge I had and finished the semester crawling to the finish line. Seriously. I was so out of it by the time I slapped Friday's completed exam in my professor's hand and I skipped out of the lecture hall that I nearly fell over out of pure exhaustion on my walk home. 

Selfishly, since Husband was scheduled to complete all of his exams a good 24 hours before me, I had requested he not call except to say goodnight so as not to break my productivity streak during the final hours of studying for my last exam. You can imagine the unadulterated joy I expressed as I nearly screamed into the phone on Friday exclaiming my excitement over FINALLY being done with the semester and that we could thus begin our break of three whole weeks together. At that, Husband packed up and headed home for our much-needed-and-anticipated break that would be uninterrupted by anything academic-related. 

Turkey, Vomit, Eleanor, Cookies, etc.

Yikes, it's been a while…

Thanksgiving break has come and gone and while it would have been an opportune time for me to take lots of pictures of food and blog for memory's sake, I fully indulged in my time away from school and anything academic and just chilled. 

What exactly did this entail for about four days straight?

I crocheted this headband.

I began a sewing project for my family's annual homemade Christmas gift exchange. 

I discovered this television series….and wish I had more time to continue! (that's what Christmas break is for!)

I decorated Christmas cookies with my mom-in-law.

I sat through half of a musical and walked out at intermission - something I've NEVER done in my life…mom-in-law and Husband and I were THAT unimpressed by it… 

I played lots of WordSeek on the iPad.

I ate my weight in food. 

I chased my little chocolate labradinger (labrador / golden retriever / springer spaniel mix) of a dog around the house several times each day. 

One thing I (luckily) didn't have to do was clean up vomit. Very close call, though, as explained by Husband here. He was feeling more than a little under the weather for a lot of the weekend, and the poor thing always made it to the bathroom just in time. What a champ. 

And now here's a random assortment of photos over the last couple of weeks to give a small update on life:

Eleanor officially became part of our family last week! Husband also ordered me a ridiculously cool custom license plate, which I will take a photo of and feature in about 2-3 weeks when it arrives! We have a fun for for somewhat matching license plates in the future once Husband's done with school...

She also got some new car seat covers since the interior was a little beat up due to the previous owners having two kids and two dogs = minor disaster central. It looks clean and sleek on the inside now, though, with a Yankee Candle air freshener in my favorite scent (pineapple cilantro, in case you're curious…which I'm sure you are…) to boot!

I made this fun card for some people to congratulate them on their pregnancy. Needless to say, creating this was a nice study break!

Mom-in-law's and my wonderful cookie creations made for a fun, relaxing, and bonding time for the two of us on Saturday :)

Now I just have to survive another week and a half of classes and three final exams and then it's a week of vacation time for Husband and me in Punta Cana (SO. FLIPPING. EXCITED) and another two and a half weeks of break for the holidays!

CAN.

NOT.

WAIT.

!!!!!