DIY Nativity Advent Calendar

Last year I successfully eased (pressured) Ajay into embracing the novelty of a Christmas tree. I won’t highlight the shock I felt at the realization that such an altercation was necessary, because all that matters is that my once-scrooge husband has now given leeway for the emergence of Christmas traditions into our home.

Multi-Sport with Urban Rec

Since September, Ajay and I have been part of an Urban Rec Multi-Sport league. First off, if you’ve never heard of such a thing I assure you that neither had we.

Camp One at Anvil Island

As always, it comes and goes in the blink of an eye. Despite the lack of sleep, less than ideal weather most days and the incessant uphill walking that goes along with camp, my week at Anvil has long been and continues to be a highlight of my year.

My Administrative Happy Place

Not to toot my own horn, but I’d say that I’ve built up quite the resume in this past year: Ive been a tea salesperson, a bread and pastry baker, an elementary school tutor, and at of the close of the semester, I’ve started my latest role as an administrative assistant at a plant nursery.

Friday Night Infomercials

I. Love. Infomercials. Call it a guilty pleasure, but there’s something about watching an ordinary human being having their life ruined by a horrendously menial everyday task that cracks me up. All I want to do is peel my potatoes but I can’t stop hacking my fingers off. Whatever shall I do?

And as is so often the case, I decided to take my passions (in this case, my passion for terrible television) and outlet them on our unsuspecting youth group. That’s right, friends: last night at West Richmond was our first ever infomercial night! With a Mary Poppins bag of everyday objects, a list of loose parameters, a handful of technically inclined twenty-somethings and a group of creatively minded young people we were able to come up with the following ground-breaking sales pitches conveniently compiled into two minute visual presentations. Please enjoy.

Maui

Sitting on our nearly seven hour flight home under the incessant flow of cold air from the ceiling vent and the shameless stare of the middle aged woman adjacent to my seat, I sought to compose a short list of the activities we completed during our six night stay in Maui. I quickly jotted down the days of the week and then drew a complete and dramatic blank. I don’t know how to explain it, except that I felt like I was trying to recall the events of a vacation I had heard about from a stranger. It wouldn’t have taken much work to convince me that I was doubling back after an hour layover instead of returning home after an action-packed vacation.

I know my dad will get this far and roll his eyes at my round-about way of explaining things, so for him I’ll put it this way: our trip to Maui was a total blur. But luckily, I had ample time during our flight to play back videos and scour photographs on my phone to help jog the old noggin. Did I mention our plane was TV-less?

I hope this prepares you to proceed with a new appreciation for the effort with which I bring before you this update. But to spare you the play by play details, and because I’m still not convinced that I’ve recalled everything correctly, I’ve decided to group our events into trip highlights. I hope you enjoy!

Edmonton Visit

This post has been way too long in the making, and I could attribute that to my strenuous efforts to wrap up the semester, but that would be a lie. Truth be told, as I was putting together our Maui video I was also putting together a collaboration of all the videos I took of Henry during our day long layover in Edmonton. Since then, I’ve tried to upload it about five times. Each attempt was unsuccessful, but not before wasting two or three hours of my time waiting to see whether it would publish to YouTube. Today I finally succeeded, and in my opinion, it’s well worth the wait. Ajay and I have watched it probably four times together and it never fails to make us smile! Here’s hoping this little munchkin has the same effect on you:

Maui Video

Planning a trip to Hawaii two weeks prior to the end of the semester sounded like a great idea at the time. After all, I could come home rested and fired up to rip off finals like a band-aid. But lets be real: that has obviously not been the case. In all honesty, I’ve been tending far more to my Maui withdrawals than I have to catching up on last week’s lectures, but I can’t say I feel all that bad about it because really. I spent last week in Hawaii.

I started a post with highlights of the week but got sidetracked into compiling all the videos we took into somewhat of a Maui highlight reel. There’s nothing quite as strong as the urge to spend post vacation days wallowing in the memories you collected on your travels. But I’ll hide behind the fact that, by making this video, I’m able to include whoever watches it in our vacation in some small way! So hey, come enjoy Maui with us 🙂

The Belated Wedding Gift

It may have taken my bridesmaids a year and two months of my marriage to compile their wedding gift to us, but against all odds it was most definitely worth the wait. Behold, our very own personalized children’s story where the lead characters are – you guessed it – US!! Morgan insisted that I video a read-aloud to send to her, and that gave me the idea to trim up that video and share it with you, my faithful blog audience! Enjoy.