Our Day of Love

We had a pretty awesome Valentine's Day this year!  That may have been due to our insane amount of decorating...we may have spent more time on our Valentine's decorations than we even do on Christmas decorations!  And they did not disappoint.  Waking up to a house full of hearts started the day off just right...

While these hearts were so much work, they were so worth it!!!  We watched movies as we worked (and Dance Moms...Mark's new obsession ha).  While I wrote my messages, Mark made a matrix of numbers (the different sizes of hearts) and composed a layout of how many of each size should go on each string so they would be perfectly scattered.  He explained his method to me and after 5 minutes I just stared at him like he was explaining the fundamentals of calculus in Chinese.  He is way too smart for me.

So after we finished cutting and writing, he was in charge of standing behind the strings and taping and directing me as to which sizes were going on each string and I carefully selected the colors (perfectly scattered) and held them while he taped.  Seeing the finished product made me ridiculously happy...all those hearts overflowing with messages of love for each other!  Afterwards, we lay on the couch and admired our work, reading the messages and picking our favorites.

The other Valentine's project I took on this year was a homemade card for Mark!  I researched ideas on Hallmark.com and came across this card

The inside message says: I'll be right there beside ya

That's when I had my brilliant idea to make a 3-D hot air balloon card!  I didn't like their message so I researched hot air balloon love quotes until I came across one I loved.  Here is the final product!

I was pretty impressed with my skills since Mark is the crafty one at this house.  Guess I've learned a thing or two from him...

For breakfast, Mark made me Eggs Benedict.  He ate 5 OF THESE!!!  

How he can eat so much and stay so skinny constantly amazes me.  You should see when we make pasta.  The helping on his plate looks like a serving plate for a family of 5 and then he has seconds!!!  Hahaha...he doesn't even work out (sometimes I force him to do 30 Day Challenges with me and we do go running) but never gains a pound!  That boy amazes me.

After a delicious breakfast, we were both stuffed and lazily watched Dance Moms on the couch for a couple hours.  No shame.  Then we headed for the mall to try on my Valentine's present!

My Valentine's Outfit!

I tried on the Nike Dual Fusion Run 3's that I posted a picture of a few days ago and hated them!  They had so much padding on the bottom they felt like I was running in wedges.  They just felt like a separate weight on my feet instead of becoming a part of my feet.  I tried on like 5 different kinds of Nike's and was hating all of them.  Mark asked what was wrong and I told him they were all soooo tight on my feet.  I tossed the 5th pair aside and he picked it up, undid the laces and handed it back to me. What a difference!!!  Hahaha, all their sample shoes were so tight (I always try on the samples out front instead of asking for my size because lucky for me, the sample shoe size is generally a 6, something I learned when I became a shoe model for a day) so I was barely able to squeeze my feet into any of them and once on, felt like my feet were shrinking!  So when Mark undid the laces they were much better!

So once I figured out the tight laces thing, I re-tried on most of the shoes and LOVED these!

The Nike TR Fit 4 Free 5.0

They felt like an extension of my feet!  So comfortable, so thin and light and just so easy to move around in.  I wasn't a fan of the color though (I had my heart set on aqua) so we searched online and I chose these ones!

I can't wait to start running in them!!!  I love them so much, I want more colors!

After shopping, we went to the movies!  I love going to the movies but both of us hate spending money and I don't know if it's just L.A. or everywhere but movies have gotten so expensive!!!  Matinee is like $12 and evening is anywhere from $15-$20 depending on the theatre.  So we went to a $3 theatre (seriously just as nice as any other theatre!) and saw Annie!  I expected it to be pretty cheesy (it was a little) but it was really good!  I only cried twice.  :)

After the movie, we went to our favorite, Cafe 50's.  Except this time it wasn't so good.  We both ordered our usual, cheeseburgers and fries.  There was something wrong with my burger that may have turned me off burgers forever.  In every bite there was some meat that I just couldn't chew, a stringy super chewy chunk that I would have to spit out.  I ignored it for a bit but once I got to the middle, every bite became inedible!  I wondered if I was crazy so I had Mark take a bite.  His face said it all.  He went to spit it out on his plate and I said, "Mark!" and gave him a napkin.  Yeah.  That bad.  To top it off, our fries were soggy and the shake just wasn't as good!  It may have been because we went pretty late or a new chef or something, I don't know but we won't be going back anytime soon.  It's near our old place in Santa Monica anyway so we'll find a new better place near us.

We didn't let that ruin our night though!  On the drive home, we listened to an audiobook I've been listening to at night called, "The Sh!t No One Tells you: A Guide to Surviving Your Baby's First Year".  It is HILARIOUS!!!  While listening to it at night, I frequently laugh out loud and sometimes have laughing fits and worry I'll wake up Mark.  Seriously, I don't even have kids but I have a feeling if you did or are a new mom, it would be even funnier.  Honestly, it's kind of terrifying me to have kids but I'm expecting everything is a bit exaggerated and if not, then here comes an adventure!

So that was our Valentine's Day!  Pretty long day (or that's what it felt like to us) but we both loved spending every second of it together.  Maybe next Valentine's we will have a little one celebrating with us! :)

Valentine's Week!

Happy Love Week! This is my third Valentine's Day with the love of my life. The last two years Mark got me flowers & chocolate and took me out to dinner. Typical Valentine's! This year I requested new running shoes in place of the flowers (flowers are ridiculously expensive and while they are sweet I am in more need of running shoes than a few days of flowers). I have my eyes on these...

Mark and I started running together 3x a week in the New Year but then we both got sick and it rained here (excuses, excuses) and we haven't been as good about it. I'm hoping these babies give me newfound motivation!

I have no idea what I'm going to give Mark this year. I can't remember if I ever got him more than a card the last two years but since he's getting me an actual present instead of flowers, I feel like I should. I spent all day yesterday making him his card and I love how it turned out! I'll post pictures after he opens it!

This year Mark and I attempted a Valentine's craft project that turned out to be much bigger than I had anticipated. I saw this on Pinterest

And fell in LOVE!!! I immediately knew we had to do this for our house. So this week Mark and I have been spending a few hours each night cutting out hundreds of hearts!!! At first we were overwhelmed but after we started making real progress it became a fun project and now I'm going to miss it when we're done! We are about halfway done but I am confident we will be finished before Valentine's Day! (We're leaving this up through March hah.)

We also baked lemon squares this week (although not really Valentine's treats but still just as delicious!) We will be going out for dinner on Valentine's Day (not sure where but I'm thinking P.F. Changs!) and I am so excited to spend the day with my love!!!

I will try and be better at taking pictures, I promise! Pictures are the best part of blogs anyway, I just need to get in the habit. Next Disney trip is going to be a picture trip! I'm bringing my professional camera and everything :)

Lucky

I've been feeling so blessed lately and finding new things to be grateful for that I normally take for granted. Seriously, what did I do to deserve such a wonderful life? I was born into a blessed home with the love of the kindest, most selfless mother anyone has ever had. I have an amazing, loving father who has always treated me like a princess, a brother and sister who mean the world to me and a huge extended family that is also full of love and kindness.

Growing up I had a wonderful childhood full of innocence and happiness, never wanted for anything and had the opportunity to live all over the U.S.! I have the love and support of a family friend who bought me a brand new car, paid for all my dance lessons growing up and took me all over the world. She taught me to read and be an independent thinker and then paid for me to attend one of the most prestigious universities in the country to study things I'm passionate about. Before graduating from college I met and quickly fell in love with the best person I have ever known. Mark is everything I never knew I wanted and needed and is the best husband I could ever have gotten. He treats me like a Queen and makes me feel beautiful every second I'm with him. We have been married for a year and are (finally) getting ready to have a BABY which makes me happier than I can describe.

We both have jobs we love and are good at and, most importantly, have plenty of time to spend together every day. We never want to leave each other's side. We look at other married couples we know who often do their own things on the weekends or sometimes we will see one but not the other. That is never us! Wherever I go, Mark goes and vice versa. He even drives me to all my princess parties all over LA and waits in the car while I go play princess and make little girls' dreams come true. All so we can spend every second together and hold hands the whole way there. We have a beautiful apartment with beautiful furniture (that we got a super good deal on because Mark's old mission companion owns a furniture store), live in one of the coolest cities in the world and get to go to Disneyland whenever we want!!

Yes,  I am one lucky and grateful girl.

Happy 2015!

I have broken my streak of weekly (or daily for a while) blogging but it's mostly because now that the holidays are over, I never feel like there's anything worth blogging about.  Oh to have kids and have every day be an awfully big adventure!!!

Although Mark and I felt like we had a kid for a few weeks...except we skipped a baby and had a teenager!  My gorgeous 17-year-old sister came to live with us for two weeks while our parents were both traveling in different foreign countries (Brazil and Guatemala) and since she was here so long, it actually felt like we had a child, haha.  We ran the dishwasher double the amount of times we normally do, went through twice as much toilet paper (although that may be due to one of my New Years resolutions to drink 8 glasses of water a day...which I have actually been keeping since January 1st!!!), and basically just felt like we had a little family of 3 instead of 2.  Not that we didn't enjoy having her here, it just made me realize how much the dynamic changes when you have a third person and how it's going to be after we have kids.

Anyone who knows me knows that all I think about lately is having a baby!  I have been asking all my sisters-in-law about parenting book recommendations, the scoop on breastfeeding, finding the right doctor, and the list goes on and on.  For Christmas I got 8 parenting/pregnancy books and I can't wait to start reading them!  I'm not letting myself start one until we're at least trying though because I don't want to forget everything by the time the baby gets here.  So if I am so excited and anxious and impatient to have a baby, why aren't we trying yet?

That is what I ask my husband every day.  We have given ourselves a date to start trying and as much as I keep trying to push it up, he insists we need to wait because we are simply not ready to have a baby as soon as I would like.  That is mostly due to living in Los Angeles where everything is outrageously expensive so we would like to have more money saved before we need to start buying everything for baby.

We are actually entertaining the idea of moving to Houston, Texas in the near future!  My dad found a possible job opportunity for Mark within his company but then it fell through because H/R decided it wasn't fair because Mark would be indirectly working under my dad.  We were so excited for the 24 hours it was a possibility though.  Haha.

Both of us want to eventually end up in a small town, like Kingwood where my family lives.  It's just so much more affordable down there!  When we visited for our early Christmas, Mark and I were driving around looking at houses and the majority of houses were between $180-220!!!  These were 3-4 bedroom, two story houses with pools and in gorgeous neighborhoods!  Basically, those prices don't exist in Los Angeles.  Here little 2 bedroom one story houses in the ghetto start at half a million dollars.  It's insane!  Mark's brother's family just bought a 3 bedroom home in Studio City that is beautiful but about the same size as my parent's house in Texas for nearly 1,000,0000!!!!!  My parent's 4 bedroom home with a pool cost around $230!!!! Hahhaa it just makes me laugh it's so outrageous.  So basically, unless Mark becomes a millionaire this year there is no way we could ever afford to buy a home out here and I do not dream of raising a family in an apartment so at some point, we WILL be moving!  Until then, we will just have to suffer out here living in Los Angeles, haha.  Okay, so it's not all that bad, especially now while we have no kids or really any responsibilities.  We got annual Disney passes this year so we are excited to be using those!!  We went with my sister last Saturday and we are going again this Saturday to California Adventure because Mark has NEVER BEEN THERE!!!  OMG it's going to be so fun and exciting!!!

Hopefully I will remember to take pictures but I am making no promises.  TTFN (Ta Ta For Now!)

Christmas at the Rawlings

I'm writing this with Mark's arm draped over me, nestled up to him with my head on his chest and a cozy blanket over us, next to his parents' breathtakingly beautiful Christmas tree and surrounded by three Nativities, garland and Christmas lights everywhere with soft harp Christmas music playing in the background! I treasure moments like these...

Christmas at the Rawlings was pretty different but just as awesome as Christmas at my house. They have such cool traditions and it's really fun to have so many people there on Christmas morning and to have SOOO many presents to open! His whole family wasn't even here but there were still 16 of us! There was Remi and Chip (Mark's parents), his brother Birk and wife Al with their two kids Jake and baby Sam (barely a month old!), his sister Esther and her husband Jacob, his other sisters Marja and Charity, his brother Duncan and his roommates Yosh and Brycen (crazy bunch), Aunt Merla (Remi's sister) and Mark and I. We were missing his brother John and his family with our two beautiful, precious nieces, Faye and Norah and his sister Emily and her husband Bryan.

One of the Rawlings family traditions is that every Christmas Eve they act out the Nativity. This year Mark and I were angels.

His dad narrates the story and everyone else plays a part. This year Duncan was the King and he was hilarious! A lot of people memorize their parts so it's pretty cool (and really funny) how into it everyone gets.

The best part of Christmas was watching 2 year old Jake open his mountain of presents from all of us. He is precious! Also, I'm pretty sure he loved ours the most because when he was done opening all of them that's the one he wanted to play with! We have the advantage of living practically next door to him so we knew exactly what to get him, a Thomas the train book complete with a playmat of the train station and a bunch of little Thomas & Friends trains! He loved them!!! :D

Mark and I were pretty spoiled by his family. We got hot cocoa from Duncan, along with a book for Mark of 1,000 Things to Do in Los Angeles and a desk calendar for me of the most powerful women in the world (like Catherine the Great). Charity spoiled me rotten with a combination of both birthday and Christmas presents. She got me a beautiful multi-colored scarf, a gorgeous beaded turquoise headband, skin care products (she's an esthetician), a head towel wrap, eyeshadow, an eyelash dying kit, and my favorite Jane Iredale lip stain! I loved it all!!! Remi made me an apron and it is so lovely!!! It looks just like this one from Anthropologie I wanted but couldn't afford!

I don't feel like going upstairs and taking a picture of mine but basically it looks exactly like that! Remi is a Wonder Woman and does everything in life perfectly (no joke) but sewing is her expertise!! She made two of my sister-in-law's wedding dresses and would have made mine if she hadn't been in Finland. Anyway, so she can sew anything your heart desires and I love my apron so much!!!

Mark's dad got us a book by his friend, Elder Holland, with tales of comfort. Excited to read that one together.

Marja made everyone a book of Rawlings family memories with all kinds of cool stories about their ancestors and hilarious stories about all of the kids. Marja is sick and so she is in bed a lot and spends so much time doing family history work and genealogy that this gift was right up her alley!

Esther had everyone send her funny face pictures and made everyone a Funny Face calendar. It's awesome and hilarious! Each month is a different couple or sibling's funny faces and all our birthdays have our picture on them! So thoughtful and cool.

Al made me an emerald and gold necklace and Birk gave Mark a Monty Python card game. I didn't play it but I witnessed all the boys speaking in accents during the whole game (part of the rules) so that was pretty awesome. Mark's English accent is pretty terrible, love him to pieces. Haha

Normally, I get post-Christmas depression but this year I didn't. Maybe it's because we had three of them, haha or because I already have the best present I could ever ask for and I get to keep him all year round :)

I'm excited for the New Year and a new start for 2015! It's going to be a great one!

Christmas in California

This year Mark and I had our first Christmas where we exchanged gifts by ourselves in our own home. We opened them on Christmas Eve morning since we were going to his parents later that day and staying there through Christmas.  The morning felt so magical, just like Christmas at my house feels! I could imagine our own little family traditions being born and can't wait until we have kids!

We gave each other some pretty awesome gifts! The best ones were all homemade, of course. I made Mark a mug with the lyrics to our wedding song.

I also made him a date night jar! He actually helped me paint the sticks but didn't know what they were for!

They are color coded, silver sticks are free dates, gold sticks are moderately expensive and black sticks are big and elaborate dates. There are 130 dates total!

Some of my favorite dates for each color are:

Silver - Picnic in a meadow, Explore a nearby forest, Eat a dinner consisting of only free samples, Build a fort and play games inside, Visit an animal shelter, Go to Hollywood and people watch, Have a Disney movie marathon & work on a puzzle, and Make s'mores on the beach!

Gold - Go on a food crawl (that's where you go to different restaurants for an appetizer, entree, and dessert!), Take the bus and get off at a random stop and explore, Go to Michael's and pick a craft to do, DISNEYLAND (which is not black because we will have annual passes! It's not silver though because of gas), Go to a movie screening in the park, Make and fly a kite, Go get ice-cream & pick each other's flavors & toppings, and Play laser tag!

Black - Go to a ballet, Take a road trip to Hearst castle, Go to the San Diego Zoo, Spend the night in Catalina, Rent a sports car for the day, Go to a professional sporting event, Go scuba diving, and my very favorite, Go to the airport and select a destination!! Then play everything by ear when you get there :)

I also made Mark a bucket list for our life! This was homemade because I painted the frame gold. This was an all-day project, let me tell you. Never again!! But I'm really happy with the list :)

Mark made me the best gift of all! He drew me a picture of where he proposed to me!!! I cried when I saw it! Isn't he the sweetest???

He wrote me a very sweet letter on the back that made me melt. This boy is seriously so romantic and I love it.

We also got each other clothes, he got me lots of parenting books, and I got him Vans and new running shoes (much needed). OH and he got me the most adorable ring ever!!! I squealed like 10 times!

Oh and another awesome present he got me was a Day Designer!!! It is an organizer's dream!!! The best planner on the market.

The beginning has a bunch of worksheets to fill out about your dreams, goals in a bunch of categories (family, financial, career, spiritual, and personal), values, passions and strengths. After you fill them out, you have to prioritize and choose the top 5 of each of them and input them into a Venn diagram to figure out your mission statement and purpose in life, which helps you make your yearly and monthly goals fit around your main purpose and the things that are most important to you.

The daily planning pages look like this:

I LOVE the layout!  I am a person who plans out my day from start to finish so the time slots are a necessity and then I love the side where you can just put all your important things to do, your top three to do's, and all the other little boxes. The Download section is for any thoughts you have floating around in your head that you need to put down on paper so you can sleep better. And I love the Daily Gratitude!

Well, this entry is so long I will write about  Christmas at the Rawlings in another entry! Almost as good as our own :)

Christmas in Texas

Mark and I had two Christmases this year!  Last year we went home to my house in Texas for Christmas because Mark's parents were still serving their mission in Finland but this year they came back so for the first time in my entire life I wasn't at home on Christmas Day!  BUT Mark is the sweetest husband ever and he knew I would be homesick and miss my family if I didn't have Christmas with them so he surprised me for my birthday and took me home for a week to have an early Christmas!  My parents knew (so they could have presents for us ready) but my siblings were surprised!

Wish we had a picture of Steph's face.  My mom told her the missionaries were coming for dinner (even though it was 9 and I'm pretty sure that's their bedtime but Steph didn't seem to notice) and she told her it was one of the missionaries' birthday because she had bought birthday balloons and confetti!  Hahaha, my sister didn't even second guess it.  But like most teenage girls (or maybe just in our family) entertaining the missionaries by yourself while mom gets dinner ready is pretty awkward so when we got there, mom said the missionaries were here and Steph grabbed a slice of pizza and beelined for her room.  What she didn't know is Mark and I were hiding at the end of the hallway before you get to the stairs and when she walked by we both jumped out and screamed.  She shrieked, nearly dropping her pizza and then started laughing saying, "OMG I thought you were the missionaries scaring me!"  Hahahaha, we should have gone with our original plan and hidden in her closet wearing a clown costume! Or I was going to knock on the door with a ski mask on and a fake gun...okay that one might have been a little extreme but I LOVE scaring people!!  One of my simple pleasures in life...

We had a great time at home, did lots of shopping, went to a gourmet Chinese restaurant for my birthday dinner, watched horror movies and Christmas movies, I forced everyone to play games with me (no one in my family likes games for some reason!  Well they do, but they never feel like getting up to play one but once I finally convince them all to or just bring the game wherever they all are sitting on the couch on their phones, then everyone has a good time), and Mark and I took sweet Xela on lots of walks and she LOVED it!  She got so spoiled she began demanding walks by the end of our stay and hanging outside our bedroom door every morning before we got up, ready for her walk.

For Christmas my parents got us so much stuff but our biggest gift was money towards Annual Disneyland Passports!!!  We are soooo excited!!!  I can't believe I've lived in southern California for over 4 years without one!  I love that place so much.  Mark and I have only ever been to Disney World together, not Disneyland so I'm super excited to go with him!!!  My sister is coming to stay with us for two weeks in early January while my father travels to South America and my mother goes to Guatemala to visit her family for the first time in 25 years!  So we are taking Steph to Disneyland and it's going to be so fun!!!

Steph wants to be a photographer and she's really good!  She took Christmas pictures for Mark and me and they turned out so beautiful!  She is so talented and I am so lucky that I have my very own family photographer! :)

I will blog about Christmas in California in another post.  Hope everyone had as wonderful of a Christmas as we did!