Whilst waiting for the hubby..

Just sittin here waiting for the hubby to get home from Atlanta/Florida, thought I'd update this ol' thing a tad...

I call it "An Appleton Christmas Story"

Started out the week by having the hubby leave for Atlanta/Florida to help his dad do a job down there on Sunday. On Monday afternoon (and overnight), I headed over to Janine's for a little quality time with her, Jennifer and Marshall.

We went to the motel on Tuesday afternoon (we meaning Mary Jo, Suz, and Mariah) along with Jess, Lana, and their girls. Note the super sweet swimming area (waterslide!) and awesome tv. We stayed there until Thursday morning when I left to go to Gma and Gpa's for Christmas dinner with a bunch of relatives on the Thompson side. That was filled with a rousing game of Apples to Apples for the girls and Dealer's Choice for the guys. Also a lot of awesome food. Note to self: Do not eat 5 christmas cookies at one time ever again. Ever.

Finally today, I met the whole fam in town for a bit o' shopping midst the throngs of people (drive much, idiots?) and got caught up on some laundry.

In amongst all this, there were other random adventures such as bathing the dog and brushing her teeth (due to some "incidents" x 4... which involved a mixture of carpet cleaner and Febreeze. ew.), going for pizza, etc.

It's been a great week! It was doubly great to see Mom, Dad, and Blair again.

Getting back into the knitting...

It's been like 2 years since I've knitted because of all the wedding planning I did last winter (so I didn't get a chance to knit).. so when I went to dig out my knitting this winter, I realized I'd totally forgotten how to cast on and even do a basic stitch.

Happened to find this sweet website that was all free and had all these short instruction videos about different things. It's kind of cool and it has some more advanced techniques too, by the sound of it.

Thought I'd share!

http://www.knittinghelp.com/

365!

Our 1st anniversary today...

Hardly seems like a whole year gone by already. It's gone so fast but feels like we've been together for a long time.

Now, not to get all mushy, but it really has been the best year of my life.
There's no words to express the depth of love I have for Joel and I can't believe my luck to have found a life partner that is not only my best friend, but one that is faithful to the Lord and an encouragement to me every day.

A threefold cord is not quickly broken. :)

Here's to the second year (and many more to come); may it be even better than the 1st!

Our engagement picture used on our wedding invititations

The wedding kiss

Over Thanksgiving this year

All I want for Christmas..

Dont ask for much...

(Thanks, Alaina http://alainareadman.blogspot.com/)

Yay!

So they found my offage in my drawer at work... awesome. Sure'nuff, a stupid mistake on my part. It still counts against me, but at least it's found!

School's done for like 3 weeks... awesome. I got a 100% on the final in the class I care least about (Photojournalism)... so that was ironic. I haven't even checked the other ones.

Anyway, we're up in Wisconsin for a bit, so looking foward to a little R&R.

And thanks for the followship! Double digits!

Life's good.

Good vs. Bad

You know when you're having a really good day... and something bad happens?

The good portion of your day is like 95%... but the bad thing is sooo bad that the good portion becomes about 5%?

My day:
Sleeping. Good. Working. Good. Doing well at work. Good. Almost got some sales. Good. Lunch. Good. Balance. Mistake. Bad. Fixed. Good. More work. Good. End of day at 4. Really good. Almost 5. Good. Balance. Not good. Shortage. Bad. Huge shortage. Really bad. Baaaaaaaaad. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaad. 5:30. Still looking for offage. Bad. 5:45. Still looking. Bad. 6:00. Give up. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

Horrible.

Horrible.

Horrible.

Receive camera from UPS. Good. UPS man put box under shovel in front of door. Cute. Good.

Joel made supper. Good. :)

Meeting. Good. Nodding during prayer. Bad. Fudge afterwards. Good.

Camera's flash doesn't work (or Mariah's not doing something right). Bad.

Bad. Day.

Kisses from Joel.

Good. Day.

Snow driving!

Joel taught me how to drive in the snow a little tonight. We went out to this parking lot by our house and spun around for awhile... me driving!

I finally have a little more of a grasp of it now!

Burned out

So sick of school. One more final.

study study Camera study study study study Canon..

Mmmm... so its late, and I'm still studying (and not concentrating obviously). Darn Photo Journalism, I can't wait to be done with that class.

But earlier tonight I hung out with Lisa at Perkins for a bit and even before that, I ordered that Canon SD880 IS. And I'm groovin' to a Norah Jones song. And eating chocolate chips. Life's good.

Note to self: "Free shipping," "On sale," and "Free 1GB card" from BestBuy.com actually means you'll pay 3x as much sales tax even though its online. Go figure.

Alaska

Anchorage, AK right now:
13 degrees F
wind: calm
feels like: 13 degrees

Waterloo, IA right now:
0 degrees F
wind: up to 21 mph
feels like: -17 degrees

Note to self: move to Alaska.

Rose food

So a while ago, Joel brought me a rose on his way home from grabbing something at the grocery store... it was beautiful, romantic, etc. blah blah

Note to self: Too much rose food preserves and mummifies roses. The rose literally lasted a month and then dried up nice and pretty with all its color and shape... none of that wilted nasty dried rose-ness.

Who's from CA?

My visitor map shows someone from San Diego....

Who you be?

2 Finals and VI!

2 Finals down, 2 more to go.. I have 1 more each on Tuesday and Thursday. Pretty pumped about that.

Those are the hard ones though. Neeeeeeeeed to study. Tonight.



Bunch of ppl from school went out to lunch at Village Inn... kind of our little finals tradition. Last year it was Applebee's.. Had a good time. I thoroughly enjoyed my chocolate shake. Mm hmm.

Introducing... Joel!

Yee haw, he's all mine!

Me

The whole idea of personal blogs kind of elude me... please excuse my rocky start.

So thought I'd start with an introduction. I'm Mariah, married to my super-amazing best friend, Joel.. For a sweet pic of him see my photo blog. He's a construction worker/hardwood floor layer who loves his job* and is more than joyful to spend my student years with me here in Iowa**. I'm a photo student until next May when I graduate, which don't get me started on my elation.

Kind of excited to get done with school for the semester. Or, super excited. That wording works too. I have two finals tomorrow, and then one more each on Tuesday and Thursday.

In other news, I moonlight as a teller at Wells Fargo in Waterloo, which isn't bad and I'm pulling close to 30 hours this week rather than my usual 20. Hmm... I totally do NOT care about finals, eh?

I'm super pumped to get a point and shoot camera... Best Buy has a sale going on now for $250 and if you buy it online, you get a free 1gb card with it. Hmm... Suz and I might get them together next weekend... cept I kind of want gold, and they only have silver on hand.




*Super-loves
**Extra-joyful

Yeah, well, this is where I stop typing now.