The lengthy review
Wow, I haven't updated in almost five months. It's funny though, because I do visit LJ daily... I just don't take the time to post! Since I've not updated in so long and I am sure most of you don't remember exactly what happened througout the year that I did mention, I'll tell you about the year in general.
We made an offer on a house in December 07 and it was accepted. It was a new home that was still being built and we visited frequently and took pictures often. We had a whirlwind experience that was not so great and ended up deciding not to buy it. We had put $15,000 of my parents' money down on the house and were originally going to take our own money out of an account but there was a lock on some of it. For some reasons that aren't really important to this update, only some of it was available to us. So we were in fear that we were going to lose that money when we decided not to buy the house. We got a lawyer and eventually ended up getting the money back after about 2 months of waiting and refusals on Centex's part. Apparently the lawyer was convincing enough - thank God for that! We had moved into my parents' place to help save money and both of us started going crazy. All of a sudden I was a child again and I hated it. My mom even wrote us a chore list at one point. When we decided not to get the house, we moved out fairly quickly. We are now about 20-30 minutes away from them and I was really relieved. I love my family, but my parents can be overbearing at times. Wanting to visit, wanting us to help with house projects, wanting us to pick up my brother from school. We have solved many of our frustrations by being a little farther away from them. We were living only about 5-10 minutes from them the first two and a half years of our marriage and sometimes my mom would just show up at our place and I honestly didn't like that. I'm just not that kind of girl. I love, love the area we live in now.
Maddy died right after moving into our new place. My parents didn't like her being inside and dealing with the litter smell so I finally let her be an outside cat for the last few weeks living there. She ate rat poison while wandering around outside at someone's house and we found out too late. There was no way to save her. We adopted two sweet kitties and they are fun to have around... I'm still learning to live without Maddy. She had completely stolen my heart in a way that other animals have not.
Visited Jesse's family in Oklahoma in May. Good times spent with them. We met Phillip's new girlfriend, Taryn.
We went on a family vacation with my family to Hawaii in July. An amazing and wonderful trip! Occaisionally stressful at times with having everyone in close quarters for two weeks, but fun nonetheless. I got to go body boarding, sailing, surfing, scuba diving, snorkeling, kayaking, and lots of swimming and relaxing and shopping. I will always have wonderful memories from that trip! I really enjoyed it.
I turned 26 in August... I am afraid of the impending old age. hahaha. :P
I continue to knit frequently and started getting back into scrapbooking because my sister started getting into it again and there was constant talk with her and my mom about it. I finally started scrapbooking pictures of Jesse and me. I hadn't made anything with us before, even though we've been together more than 4 years now. I have made some awesome stuff!
Jesse and I started taking day trips and we visited Alcatraz for the first time. Can you believe I grew up near SF and have never visited? They cancelled the field trip when I was in elementary school and we never went. I am glad I finally got to go. We've also taken day trips to other parts of SF, Monterey and other areas. I've fully enjoyed it!
I started the Editing sequence for a certificate from UC Berkeley in September. I've been looking for editorial jobs with not much success. The one job that looked very promising didn't pan out because I didn't have the know-how that I should. I knew that I needed to do something to improve my skills in the competitive career field. UC Berkeley has a good name and I am pretty sure that it will help me. Even if having the actual certificate won't help that much, having the knowledge will help, I'm sure. I'm about to start my second class out of four. It's overwhelming and rewarding and after my first class, I still feel like this is the direction I want to go.
Jesse went out of the country for 2 months. He has been wanting to go back on a boat and I agreed to this short term volunteer trip because it wouldn't be too bad since he would get to be home and hopefully get it out of his system. Well, I was right. He doesn't want to go back on a ship anymore. He remembers it being amazing because he was single in the past when he had to do it, except for when we were engaged. After being married and being used to living with someone, it wasn't the same! He found out he missed me and our life at home too much in comparison to life on the ship. Yay for that! His time here is almost up and he had to put in a wish list for where he wanted to go and he originally put only ships on his list. Thank God he didn't get any of those because we both would have been unhappy about it. The time without him was not too bad overall because I kept a positive attitude about it. After he got home, it felt like he hadn't been gone.
Went to Disneyland with my mom and little brother (who is not little anymore, but taller than everyone else in my family) and some of his friends and their parents. I mostly spent the time with my mom and one of the other moms. We had a lot of fun riding on rides, shopping, and taking in the entertainment.
Spent Thanksgiving with my family and without Jesse. He was supposed to be home the day before, but the ship broke down in the ocean and he couldn't make it home on time. It was nice, but not the same as usual. We didn't play Spoons like we usually do!
Jesse came home, we didn't do much or anything very memorable before we left for Oklahoma to spend his birthday and the holidays with his family. They all had work during the day, so Jesse and I spent a lot of time at the house waiting for them to get home. We got to have quite a few lunches with his brother Phil since he works close to his parents' place. We should have rented a car so we could do a little more, but didn't want to spend the money because of Christmas gift buying and such. We did get to share Phil's car with him a little bit. Phil got engaged to Taryn just before Christmas so that was the biggest highlight of the trip. She is a very, very fun girl and I'm so excited to have a sister-in-law. Jesse's family is all guys (except for his mom, of course)... so it is going to be awesome to be a little more even on the girl's side. He couldn't have picked a better girl. She's sweet and fun but is sassy and sarcastic. I love it! We are already making fun of each other and it's nice to have her as part of the family. I got to meet her family too and her older sister is just a little younger than I am... she is very cool too. They told me I was already an honorary Sheehan sister (that's their last name). There's one other sister too, who's younger and also fun. A very cool family indeed.
We had a nightmare of a time getting home from Oklahoma and spent nearly two days at the airports in OKC and Denver. Wow. What fun. We got bumped from five different flights as standby passengers. I hate Frontier now and will never fly with them again.
Jesse went back to work today and found out his orders. In July of next year we will be Seattle residents! I am really excited about this because Sarah, one of my two very best friends lives there and has lived there since starting college - what is that, like 7 years now? I haven't seen her on a regular basis in that long and I grew up seeing her all the time and us spending the night at each other's houses frequently! It will be soooo wonderful to see her again all the time. I can't explain how excited I am about that. I'm also looking forward to living somewhere new and expanding my horizons. Honestly, I don't feel like Seattle will be that much of a change from what I'm used to. If we had moved eastward, I think it would have been a bigger change. I did kind of want to go out of my comfort zone a little and grow up some more and I don't think Seattle will stretch me like the south or the east coast would... but Seattle was at the very top of my list for places to move, so I am ecstatic! From my experience, it's goregous up there and we will be moving with enough time to appreciate the summer and the then the autumn. I'm looking forward to experiencing fall there with all the orange and red trees - beautiful! Outside of San Francisco and New York, Seattle is an excellent place to be for a publishing career. What a blessing that is! I'm very much looking forward to the opportunities there.
I can't wait to see what 2009 brings! It's already started off just right with the news of Seattle. Hopefully this year is amazing! :)
We made an offer on a house in December 07 and it was accepted. It was a new home that was still being built and we visited frequently and took pictures often. We had a whirlwind experience that was not so great and ended up deciding not to buy it. We had put $15,000 of my parents' money down on the house and were originally going to take our own money out of an account but there was a lock on some of it. For some reasons that aren't really important to this update, only some of it was available to us. So we were in fear that we were going to lose that money when we decided not to buy the house. We got a lawyer and eventually ended up getting the money back after about 2 months of waiting and refusals on Centex's part. Apparently the lawyer was convincing enough - thank God for that! We had moved into my parents' place to help save money and both of us started going crazy. All of a sudden I was a child again and I hated it. My mom even wrote us a chore list at one point. When we decided not to get the house, we moved out fairly quickly. We are now about 20-30 minutes away from them and I was really relieved. I love my family, but my parents can be overbearing at times. Wanting to visit, wanting us to help with house projects, wanting us to pick up my brother from school. We have solved many of our frustrations by being a little farther away from them. We were living only about 5-10 minutes from them the first two and a half years of our marriage and sometimes my mom would just show up at our place and I honestly didn't like that. I'm just not that kind of girl. I love, love the area we live in now.
Maddy died right after moving into our new place. My parents didn't like her being inside and dealing with the litter smell so I finally let her be an outside cat for the last few weeks living there. She ate rat poison while wandering around outside at someone's house and we found out too late. There was no way to save her. We adopted two sweet kitties and they are fun to have around... I'm still learning to live without Maddy. She had completely stolen my heart in a way that other animals have not.
Visited Jesse's family in Oklahoma in May. Good times spent with them. We met Phillip's new girlfriend, Taryn.
We went on a family vacation with my family to Hawaii in July. An amazing and wonderful trip! Occaisionally stressful at times with having everyone in close quarters for two weeks, but fun nonetheless. I got to go body boarding, sailing, surfing, scuba diving, snorkeling, kayaking, and lots of swimming and relaxing and shopping. I will always have wonderful memories from that trip! I really enjoyed it.
I turned 26 in August... I am afraid of the impending old age. hahaha. :P
I continue to knit frequently and started getting back into scrapbooking because my sister started getting into it again and there was constant talk with her and my mom about it. I finally started scrapbooking pictures of Jesse and me. I hadn't made anything with us before, even though we've been together more than 4 years now. I have made some awesome stuff!
Jesse and I started taking day trips and we visited Alcatraz for the first time. Can you believe I grew up near SF and have never visited? They cancelled the field trip when I was in elementary school and we never went. I am glad I finally got to go. We've also taken day trips to other parts of SF, Monterey and other areas. I've fully enjoyed it!
I started the Editing sequence for a certificate from UC Berkeley in September. I've been looking for editorial jobs with not much success. The one job that looked very promising didn't pan out because I didn't have the know-how that I should. I knew that I needed to do something to improve my skills in the competitive career field. UC Berkeley has a good name and I am pretty sure that it will help me. Even if having the actual certificate won't help that much, having the knowledge will help, I'm sure. I'm about to start my second class out of four. It's overwhelming and rewarding and after my first class, I still feel like this is the direction I want to go.
Jesse went out of the country for 2 months. He has been wanting to go back on a boat and I agreed to this short term volunteer trip because it wouldn't be too bad since he would get to be home and hopefully get it out of his system. Well, I was right. He doesn't want to go back on a ship anymore. He remembers it being amazing because he was single in the past when he had to do it, except for when we were engaged. After being married and being used to living with someone, it wasn't the same! He found out he missed me and our life at home too much in comparison to life on the ship. Yay for that! His time here is almost up and he had to put in a wish list for where he wanted to go and he originally put only ships on his list. Thank God he didn't get any of those because we both would have been unhappy about it. The time without him was not too bad overall because I kept a positive attitude about it. After he got home, it felt like he hadn't been gone.
Went to Disneyland with my mom and little brother (who is not little anymore, but taller than everyone else in my family) and some of his friends and their parents. I mostly spent the time with my mom and one of the other moms. We had a lot of fun riding on rides, shopping, and taking in the entertainment.
Spent Thanksgiving with my family and without Jesse. He was supposed to be home the day before, but the ship broke down in the ocean and he couldn't make it home on time. It was nice, but not the same as usual. We didn't play Spoons like we usually do!
Jesse came home, we didn't do much or anything very memorable before we left for Oklahoma to spend his birthday and the holidays with his family. They all had work during the day, so Jesse and I spent a lot of time at the house waiting for them to get home. We got to have quite a few lunches with his brother Phil since he works close to his parents' place. We should have rented a car so we could do a little more, but didn't want to spend the money because of Christmas gift buying and such. We did get to share Phil's car with him a little bit. Phil got engaged to Taryn just before Christmas so that was the biggest highlight of the trip. She is a very, very fun girl and I'm so excited to have a sister-in-law. Jesse's family is all guys (except for his mom, of course)... so it is going to be awesome to be a little more even on the girl's side. He couldn't have picked a better girl. She's sweet and fun but is sassy and sarcastic. I love it! We are already making fun of each other and it's nice to have her as part of the family. I got to meet her family too and her older sister is just a little younger than I am... she is very cool too. They told me I was already an honorary Sheehan sister (that's their last name). There's one other sister too, who's younger and also fun. A very cool family indeed.
We had a nightmare of a time getting home from Oklahoma and spent nearly two days at the airports in OKC and Denver. Wow. What fun. We got bumped from five different flights as standby passengers. I hate Frontier now and will never fly with them again.
Jesse went back to work today and found out his orders. In July of next year we will be Seattle residents! I am really excited about this because Sarah, one of my two very best friends lives there and has lived there since starting college - what is that, like 7 years now? I haven't seen her on a regular basis in that long and I grew up seeing her all the time and us spending the night at each other's houses frequently! It will be soooo wonderful to see her again all the time. I can't explain how excited I am about that. I'm also looking forward to living somewhere new and expanding my horizons. Honestly, I don't feel like Seattle will be that much of a change from what I'm used to. If we had moved eastward, I think it would have been a bigger change. I did kind of want to go out of my comfort zone a little and grow up some more and I don't think Seattle will stretch me like the south or the east coast would... but Seattle was at the very top of my list for places to move, so I am ecstatic! From my experience, it's goregous up there and we will be moving with enough time to appreciate the summer and the then the autumn. I'm looking forward to experiencing fall there with all the orange and red trees - beautiful! Outside of San Francisco and New York, Seattle is an excellent place to be for a publishing career. What a blessing that is! I'm very much looking forward to the opportunities there.
I can't wait to see what 2009 brings! It's already started off just right with the news of Seattle. Hopefully this year is amazing! :)