Babysitting and Birthday

I had a wonderful week in Washington, babysitting my 16.83 year old brother. [And yes, he needed it. I mean check him out.] I loved spending time with the moms and ma dad before their San Francisco trip :]. 
So many days in my mom's garden, picking peppers, tomatoes, zuchinni, cucumbers all around the pumpkins! Thomas, +Peggy, +Brad and I saw Prisoners which is AMAZING. And I just loved spending some much needed time with Becca, Bryce and their three perfect boys!

One of my Vancouver days was just so miraculous: Mom and I noticed a new Panera that hadn't officially opened. Walked up to the door, found out they were having a trial run before opening day, and they gave each of us $15 dollars for all the Panera we could get! Uhmayzang. I love fall in Washington! Doing crafts with my mom and my gram was really fun and helped me feel the fall spirit... considering we won't be having that here in Florida :[. 

+Peg came back a day early to see me off. See's came with the parting gift of course :]. We ate our last dinner at our local and hipandwithit bistro. NW, I miss you. See you at Thanksgiving.

As soon as I got back to Lakewood Ranch the party for +Zane began! On Saturday, we had a very simple slash awesome gathering with close friends filled with volleyball [of course] and pumpkin cupcakes [yes they were amazing]. The recipe: one box of sugar-free yellow cake, one 15oz can of 100% pumpkin. I added some walnuts to half of the batch. THAT'S IT!

Sunday was the big birth day! And also... Fast Sunday hah. I had planned on making Zane his favorite breakfast, which has now turned into his favorite lunch :]. We had an amazing dinner and dessert, full of our traditional favorites: Homemade Carrot Cake and Roma Spaghetti Squash. Our squash dish was FULL of veggies from my mom's garden [yes I packed my suitcase with produce], and a couple from Costco's garden :]. +Malori saved the day for me today! I was making Zane's Carrot Cake and I realized I had zero carrots. Minor detail. I called +Mal and low and behold she had the perfect amount. +Malori FTW! 

I love my husband and I love when I have an excuse to [force him to] hang out and shower him with food and little nothings.

Cheers to my favorite 27 year-old :] 

Postscript: EGG NOG IS BACK!!!!!!!

For Zane :]

Just in case you were wondering, I love +Zane. :]. And I love him for so many reasons. 

We had just the best 2nd anniversary a little while ago, and it made me realize what I was celebrating!

He is hilarious. Aaaaand he lets me attempt to be hilarious, too :]. 

He can bust a sweet move or two. 

Don't tell him that I told you, but he's a bit of a cuddler. 

He sees the big picture, especially when I can't. Which is always.

Um, yeah. The obvious one. He's a babe. And a half.

He is my best friend. 

He is the most selfless person that I know. He goes through crap with me. And somehow he sticks around :].

He is brilliant and is the definition of dedicated to his work.

He lives for family, he loves family, and he is my family.

He is taking me Home to our Heavenly Father :].

He writes me the sweetest notes... too precious for this blog anyhow :]. This will be my little note to him.

I love my +Zane, and I got to make sure he knows it.

The Best and Last Summer

And now we bid farewell to the summer of '13. Life has been CRAZY! Best summer we've ever had. There is way too much to write about. Incase no one has noticed during the past 22.8 years, I am always copying my sister haha. She is perfect in my eyes and is everything that I want to become :].  +Catherine pulled some brilliance and made a video of her NYC trip instead of just photos. I realized that that is a much better way to preserve the memories you've created and to show them to your friends and family. I'm not able to upload the two videos on my blog; go to my Facebook to watch them :]. Zane and I went to Utah to visit his family, send his sister Emily off to her London, England mission and to be a part of +Sarah's wedding. It was jam-packed with VOLLEYBALL 24/7 [which we are addicted to], adventures in the mountains and the lake, and card games of course. Washington was aaamaaaayyyzaaang.  We traveled all over the state, from the San Juan Islands to Seattle and Vancouver. Amazing food, Snoqualmie falls, Mt. Hood, USA soccer game and Red Sox game, 4th of July in the Fort, need I say more?!  Since we've been back in Florida we've spent as much time as possible with our closest friends; +Zane starts his second year of med school tomorrow, which means that social life is over. My dad, +Brad, came to visit us for the third time! We had a blast at Downtown Disney; we are so blessed that my dad gets to travel all the way across the country and find time to see us :].  A few days ago we had a CRAY CRAY adventure at Chick-fil-a. Way too much to type to fully express the awesomeness. Basically, we won a year of free Chick-fil-a. Sorry for the kajillion pics, but they're worth a glance :]! After a great day at church today, we had a potluck at Jenny & Josh's with our best friends! Great food, wonderful Sabbath and a perfect way to end our best and last summer. 

 


Bring it on, med school. 

Disney World: To perfection and beyond!

This video accurately displays our excitement as we packed up for the best Disneyness ever. 

DISNEY WORLD!!!!

It was the best Disney trip I've ever had! After being to Disneyland Paris, Disney Tokyo and Disneyland [1872 times], I can officially announce that Disney World is the best park. Seriously it is beyond amazing. It's huge. Felt like it was bigger than Tokyo Disney, which is like twice the size of Disneyland; Disney World is 46 miles long! It was perfect weather. [I totally italicized that buisnaz for a sort of palmtreesswayinginthewind effect.] Everyone had a lot of phooey things to say about Orlando, like "Oh it's so humid it's inland, it's so hot, there's nothing out there, it'll be the worst weekend to go, it's too far, yada freakin' ya." It was only a 1.5 hr drive! Considering that +Zane and I have always had to FLY to Disneyland, this was perfect. It was not humid at all! We had lots of perfect breezes [relating to the previous italicized verbiage] and even some crazy rain! And perfect sun :]. We went Memorial Day weekend; one of the craziest weekends to go. It was ALSO Star Wars weekend and Disney Summer Kick Off weekend! It was really the only time +Zane and I could go. It was an amazing deal too [how many times have I used the world amazing? don't cur] ; $129 for FOUR DAYS AT DISNEY WORLD. Like what?! There are four different parks [not including extra things like Downtown Disney, those are in another part too]. We focused on two parks; Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom. Hollywood Studios is very similar to California Adventure. Same design, similar rides, but this park is more focused on mind blowing shows and the history of Hollywood with Disney and old school Hollywood in general. The hotel we stayed in Friday-Sunday was awesome. It was pretty cheap and had a free shuttle to Disney World! Friday was probably the craziest day. We got to Magic Kingdom at 5pm after I worked and the place was packed. It was really the only day that was packed. It was 6am-6am Friday! Saturday we went to Hollywood Studios. Entertained the entire time. Like 8am-11pm. I was worried that we wouldn't have enough to do, considering there's only like 3 main rides. But zip-a-dee-doo-dah was it wonderful! Unfortunately, my wonderful brain explosion has left me as the worst person to go to parks with. Poor +Zane haha. I get so sick so easily and I'm a huge scaredy cat [who came up with that phrase?]. But it was still kind fun :]. We went on a CRAZY roller coaster called Rock 'n Roller Coaster. Google it.  It's like Space Mountain because it's indoors and really dark, but has a lot to look at during the ride. It's dedicated to Aerosmith! When we walked into Hollywood, these nice random girls gave us their Fast Passes for Toy Story Mania! We were like waaaahhh?!?!?! Yay! The wait was 180 minutes for Stand-by! We had a blast [pun originally not intended, but I changed my mind and now it is intended]. 
We went to so many awesome shows like American Idol for REAL, which is starting the new season at Hollywood Studios and we voted! Sunday was Magic Kingdom again, so we could do all of the rides :]. Again, when we walked into the park, some random guy gave us his Fast Pass for Splash Mountain! Not too crowded at all on the day most people arrive for Memorial weekend. We did the 5 most popular rides in the first 1.5 hours! We were rocking it on the Fast Passes. We went to this hilarious Monster's Inc. stand up; they chose +Zane to play Randall and he was so funny! It was a perfect day. The buildings and rides are so much bigger than I was used to at Disneyland. There are so many details that go into every nook and cranny there [ew, that phrase is naystay]. Disney World just doubled the size of Fantasyland! There are so many different rides and restaurants! There are multiple castles. Our main focus on Day Four was eating at Be Our Guest. Wow. It is gorgeous and so realistic in relation to Beauty and the Beast. The food was deelish. Each day at the park we brought our own food; we forgot our million dollar bill and therefore could not afford to eat in that World :]. But after we saw this restaurant and castle on Sunday... well we just had to give in. +Zane was especially excited :]. We ordered quinoa salad with potatoes, veggies and salad, along with braised beef and julienne green beans, yummy mashed potatoes and lots of veggies. We shared the dishes :]. We didn't have to go into too much debt :]. Every day we were so amazed by the castle. There's a suite in there and a beautiful restaurant! In the FRIGGING CASTLE. We saved the best ride for last; Peter Pan :] I left out so many details.... I would be writing for a week if I didn't :]. There are too many pics to post; check out my Facebook to see them! 

Busy, Busy, and Busily Beaming!

Ow do!

[Southeast Londonese for: hello. [explain that?]]

Okay, I officially have no idea how people blog with work and life. Blogging was much easier for me when I was simply a student. And then, I decided graduate from Neverland [i prefer to be pictured as Wendy, and not Peter. thannnnk YOU.] [speaking of which... totally going to Disney World tomorrow.] You see, thinking is required to blog and I  therefore have no time for said blogging any more: 5:45am wake, work, 4:30pm home [aka work at a smaller building], make dinner, gym, clean dishes, do laundry, make lunch for tomorrow, bed 9:00pm. And this is sans an additional human! I wish I had time to woo you with attempted witty remarks, but alas, I have 3.5 minutes to post this. 

I have decided to declare that Chipotle is the best burrito establishment to ever be established. 
end scene.


Zane and I got hooked on Raising Hope [do I say this literally or figuratively?]. It's hilarious. 

We've been bbqing and beach volleyballin' with our spare time and we love it! We absolutely love our complex. Our beach volleyball court is right next to the Tiki Bar, which is right next to the gym, which is right next to the basketball court, which is right next to the billiards room, which is right next to the computer lab, which is right next to our apartment, which is right next to the pool/hot tub. And that's only one side!

HUGE art piece at Lido Beach!

Zane and I finally found time to go to the beach! So beautiful, the most amazing sand and the perfect water. We got to beach it with our tradish group a few weeks ago, followed by Coldstone and Mud. If you have not seen Mud, YOU GO NOW. It is amazing and I guarantee it will get the noms next February :]. At Coldstone, none of our gift cards [still have like 136 of them from our wedding] worked, so they gave our desserts to us for free! [I just realized that stressed is desserts backwards. yep.] 

Zane has finished his first year of medical school!

What better way to celebrate than a trip to the most magical place on earth [well, on the east side of the earth [yes, america is the earth]]. Stay tuned for the next post, padawan. [which will hopefully come to fruition before 2014 :]]