A Year in Review

Bits and Pieces: Our year in review

January

Got a contact high while watching one of my favorite local artists play. JBoog: our short lived romance was just that: short lived. Also, he's short.

February

Decided it was time to move on from my employment of two years. My favorite post from February: By Night

March

Lived through Tsunami 2011 (#2 for us). Our beloved rat Oliver died. And we both caught the flu.

April (the big cahonna!)

Aaron's family came, Aaron graduated from college, Ben + Carrie got married, my Dad and brother came to visit, I had my last day at work, we moved AND I started a new job. All in 10 days. WHEW.

May

I blogged ONCE in may. It was an uneventful month, apparently.

June

Our other rat (ollies brother) Walter died. My favorite post from that month, and we had some crazy weather during that time as well.

July

We dogsat that sweetest little puppy Riley for the whole month, and spent A LOT of time at the beach. This is pretty much what it looked like.

August

We welcomed a Swede into our family (our miniature dachshund). And I think this post (pre-swede) sums up that month fairly well.

Septemeber

I turned 24. We visited my brother, sister in law, and baby niece Elise in San Francisco.

October

We found a shark in the backyard but still spent plenty of time at the beach

November

All you need to know

December

Well, you're looking at it!

Bring it 2012. I'm ready. Lots and lots of things waiting and ready to happen. I'm looking forward to it. I naturally have a lot of anxiety about a lot of things; and this is the first year in a long while that I've actually looked FORWARD to the future. And that my friends, is a good sign. Right? Right.

Merry Christmas!

Again, apologies for my non blog ness!

When things gets hard, busy, fun, exciting, sad, overwhelming, or anything not BORING I stop blogging. We've had all of the above lately.

CHRISTMAS WAS WONDERFUL!

We went on the Christmas Canoe ride at PCC. It was beautiful and wonderful! I enjoyed it immensely.

We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner at Lei Lei's with our dear Ben and Carrie.

Then we watched "It's a Wonderful Life"

Christmas Day started with 8am church, christmas present opening, a delicious breakfast cooked by Aaron, nerf gun wars (boys vs girls: WE WON), more Christmas movies, a very Cafe Rio dinner, Christmas games, and lots and lots of JUST DANCE 3. l

I have a Christmas hangover.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

me with my neck pillow (yes I asked for this)

In my absence

So sorry for the prolonged absence.

We've been busy.

Then we got sick.

And I'm finally better.

Aaron is still barfing.

Hopefully he's better soon, too.

We are spending Christmas at home, on our island. This will be our 2nd Christmas spent Mele Kalikimaka-ing. It always makes for a good time, although we do miss our families and wish we could spend the holiday's with them; there will be other Christmas'.

Here's what we've been up to when we weren't being sick:

Pick-cha's

A few pictures I just recieved. More to come. I love.

We haven't had 'pictures' taken for over three years, so when the opportunity arose, we took it!

Plus, we have a new member of the family! Don't you love our furry child?

And my husbands furry beard?

Post edit:

Three photographers where involved with this shoot. Click their name to see more of their work:

My lovely dear friend, Chelsea Scanlan of A Bunch of Lovelies (who currently has THE CUTEST picture of my Swede up on her blog right now)

Ashlee DeCaires of Ashlee DeCaires Photography

and

LeeYen Lobendahn of LobLee Photography

The pictures in THIS POST are all courtesy of LeeYen Lobendahn

Like I said, MORE to come from the other lovely ladies.

The Weekly Swede

A mess of images of little swede from this week:

1.Being cute
2. Making us feel guilty every time we leave the house (without him).
3. Sleeping. Please disregard my hair, it was a long, shower less day.
4. Got to be the center of attention at all times. Placing himself conveniently between me and me iPad
5. Guarding his most prized possession (the Christmas tree)

The backyard at dusk

I ventured out of the house with pup in tow to escape the 'i've been stuck at home all day/week' blues because Aaron's been working a lot. In the winter time around these parts, the sand pulls off the shore and exposes the reef. It makes for a nice walk 'on' the water or just a walk on the beach. Just as I was about to make the journey in the water, to my surprise, Aaron popped up around the corner--home early. He scared the ba-jezzzus out of me, as I was sure at first glance he was a homeless man come to kidnap me and eat my dog. Alas, upon closer examination, it was not.

Ah. Bliss.

I carried Swede out, but he swam the whole way back. What a good little pup.

He was a little unsure at first, trying to climb as high as he could to get away from the water:

And completely unrelated: there is a part on the path from our backyard to the beach where Swede becomes the 'gate keeper' and refuses to let anyone pass. He ALWAYS does this, ALWAYS in the same spot. He will growl and charge at you like he owns the place. It's pretty funny. I tired to get a picture of him doing it below, but it was getting dark and was a little hard, but you get the idea.... Here he is taking Aaron on as he tries to pass.

A few pictures from the last little while that make my heart happy

That is all.