weekends are made for...

cupcake and art museum dates
morning temple trips
broncos games
movie nights
late night chats with friends
sunday inspiration
laughing too much at game night
snuggles with husbands

 not a bad weekend, I would say.

top ten for san diego

in no particular order:
1. Rekindling my childhood dream of being a whale trainer at Seaworld. I was giddy during the entire Shamu show.

2. Eating delicious Mexican food. 30 miles north of the border, baby!

3. Celebrating Christmas with the Kaisers, complete with my very first pair of Christmas Eve pajamas

4. Getting (intentionally) swarmed by a herd of lorikeets. In a great moment, one even pooped on Andre.

5. Playing on the beach. In December!

6. Baby pandas. And elephants. And penguins.

7. Falling asleep at 11 on New Year's Eve to be woken up for a midnight toast. Also, NYE fireworks at Seaworld.

8. Visiting the beautiful San Diego Temple

9. Seeing Usain Bolt's 100 meter dash world record shattered. By a cheetah.

10. Spending 10 days in a place that is at least 40 degrees warmer than the frozen tundra we came back to.

California, you are good for the soul. Thanks for a refreshing and relaxing trip, Kaisers!

it's been real, 2012

If the world were to really end this year, I think we would be ok with it. Not in the whole post-apocolyptic, everyone dies sort of way, but in a "we ended on a good note" kind of way.

So here it is, our first full married year, the end of the world, 2012 in review:

In January André started LSAT prep and we said goodbye to Saturday mornings and two nights a week together. I got a new calling as Relief Society president and was overwhelmed and excited all at once.

In February we celebrated my birthday, and I dramatically rang in my new year with a new hair color. We had a quiet Valentines Day in, and then spent a relaxing weekend in the "big city" where he hot-tubbed to our hearts' content and ate our weight in delicious gelato. (both exaggerations)

In March our family lost a dear friend, our Camry Spunky Sally. Luckily, we upgraded to our new bff, Rocky. It's true love. André got ridiciously good at getting free things and samples.

André ended the semester for a short break in April and we took the first of our spring trips to Colorado.

In May it was back to Colorado again for Chelsea's graduation, when the Mariners heartily beat the Rockies and I recieved some "friendly" ribbing from the Kaiser clan. We spent a relaxing Memorial Day with the Asian tourists at the copper mine and a quaint picnic in the park. We celebrated André's birthday with a picnic, friends, and lots of delicious food.

June took us across the country for a week of Treasure craziness in Virginia. We kayaked, played, and won Olympic medals. And André got his ears power cleaned out. We also kicked off the great fry hunt of 2012 and took a lovely camping trip.

 

In July we got rid of the title of newlyweds and celebrated our first anniversary. We learned that year old cake isn't disgusting and that maybe all food storage should be in cake form. We also became experts at mini golf and water slides.

August brought us back to school. André quit his job at the MTC and started the craziest semester ever. LSAT prep was still in full swing. We loved every minute of the Olympics and got really into archery and kayaking. Like an unhealthy amount.

September was busy busy busy. I got really sick right before the busiest week ever at work, so that was cool.

October finally relieved us from the pain of the LSAT. It also brought a Kaiser visit for General Conference and a festive Halloween.

We spent November enjoying the fall season, spending Thanksgiving in Seattle, and André spent 8 hours on the phone on election day. Gotta love being a stats major during the exit poll.

In December we boycotted turning our heat on. André survived finals and we rode off into the sunset to enjoy Christmas with the Kaisers in San Diego.

 

Looking back at this year, we feel so blessed for all we have and the great people we get to surround ourselves with. We are excited for new adventures and change in 2013!

some Christmas cheer

We became real people this year and sent out our first Christmas cards and Christmas "letter". But we're cheap real people and only sent out the few cards we got for free. So in case we missed you, here is your official Merry Christmas 2012 from the Kaisers.

things i could blog about, round 2

• andre's first law school acceptance (so proud)
• our favorite Christmas traditions in action
• the fact that finals are almost over, and two weeks from now we will be on a sunny vacation!
• our internal daily battle on turning on the heater (so far we have won, but with high temps in the 20s, the heater may make its comeback soon)
• a Christmas crafting binge
• how heated blankets are the greatest thing ever
• that one time we dominated a small child at mini-golf
• how Andre played a beautiful original composition at church and people cried
• our progression through seasons of "The Office" now that it's too cold to go outside
• this beautiful Christmas song:

a t-riffic Thanksgiving

we had the best time celebrating Thanksgiving in Seattle!

Some highlights, brought to you by the letter T:
turkey (I actually had a couple bites this year and didn't mind it!)
taverns
touring UW's law school
torential downpours
tourist activities (the Great Wheel downtown is wonderful)
Treasure family time
taking multiple naps a day
turning my parents house into Christmas town (or really just making a mess of the Christmas decorations)

We loved having a relaxing few days to unwind and relax with family. Yay Thanksgiving!

when traditions go wrong

We've been good at keeping Halloween traditions this year--hay rides, carving pumpkins, etc. but I wanted to try something new for our little family--enter chocolate chip pancakes for Halloween dinner.

 Well, let's just say it wasn't pretty but it tasted good and Andre gobbled it up. And now we have a whole year to perfect chocolate chip pancakes before next Halloween (let's be honest, it's probably the easiest thing I cook so I don't know what went wrong).

Since our Price is Right costumes from Halloween 1.0 were kind of a bust, we scrounged for ten minutes to find these beauties:

tourists/retirees/eccentric billionaires!
not the most creative costumes at the party, but everyone knew what we were.

happy halloween! now, onto Thanksgiving!