happy graduation!

ahhh can it be true?

although i did not walk for graduation, i did borrow a cap and gown to get some official pictures. brett's so jealous i'm done, and he's excited for me to get a real job. lame.

here we are lookin mighty fine. while brett stayed home and studied i walked around FSU with kyre to take real pictures, which i'll share the best of when i get them from him.

the good ol team freya shirt.

merry christmas to me! hopefully i'll be getting a job in january, the prospects are lookin good! surprisingly.

goodbye school. hello christmas.

today was my last day of school... ever! i can't believe it! this semester was the worst one ever and it seemed like it would never end, but it did, and i survived!

my students were all very depressed that i am leaving and begged me to take my cooperating teacher's job ha. they also told me to get a job at chiles so they could have me again. i bought hugs to hand out to them all as "goodbye hugs" since you're not supposed to hug your students, but they all hugged me anyway. oh well. two girls actually cried that i was leaving? wow.

there was this one boy who came in all the time before school to get extra help (he knows spanish better than english) he will probably miss me the most out of all the students. gave me a little snoopy with candy and a card! he's so sweet.

since i've been looking forward to this time of year so long (cause it meant the end of my internship), i am especially festive. i'm a little christmas elf, so far i've helped assemble/decorate three christmas trees and wrap presents for hours. while i get to watch holiday movies and hang out though, brett still has to study for exams. how unfortunate.

here is our new tree, much better looking than our old one (although we still do have our ghetto tin foil star ha) and fully decked out with our new cool ornaments we got after christmas last year. evan and karley got us that awesome sailboat ornament too!

novem-brrr

november has flown by... thank goodness! (only 7 days left in my internship!) i'm enjoying the chilly weather, except when i have to get out of bed, and i finally get to burn my vanilla spice oil to make my house smell like the holidays!

for veterans day we went down to the beach to visit karebear! we just hung out (i took two naps in one day?) and we helped around the house. i finally got to see her house finished! it's so nice! such a big difference from her little one bedroom apartment.

this is the view from the front door. brett and bill put in those beautiful floors. to the right are two bedrooms and a bathroom and to the left is the master bedroom and laundry room.

this is the view from the back wall. brett's enjoying the new couches. and karen scored that huge rug for only $75 bucks!

last week we got a stationary trainer. it's pretty cool, i wish we would have gotten it at the beginning of my internship since i've been bad about getting out and exercising.

this weekend i was a homebody. we watched a redbox movie last night. then i graded papers all morning, ran, did laundry, and finally did something crafty. i was inspired to make a catch all for the buttons that come with our clothes because i lost a button for my dress! i transformed an altoids box with scrapbooking paper and modpodge. the blog design*sponge has lots of creative ideas for things to do with altoids boxes.

go vols!

my students kept asking me what i was doing for halloween and what i was going to be so i told them i was going to be a tennessee football fan cause this weekend brett took me to my first tennessee football game! i dunno why we chose our busiest semester to go, but it was worth it. it was a lot of driving for one weekend, poor brett. good thing we won or the drive home would have been very depressing. friday night we had to drive through the worst fog i've ever seen in my life. we were driving 30 miles an hour up this mountain just following all of the reflectors on the road. it was very fitting for halloween. on saturday we tailgated our little hearts out and explored campus a little. i felt like a poser in the middle of all those die hard tennessee fans, and i've never seen so much orange in my life.

here we are enjoying some complimentary ut colored ice cream. i love me some dreamsicles.

here's the pride of the southland marching band starting the game off right with the power t.

brett's a serious fan. total concentration.

beautiful checkerboard endzone and the guy cheerleaders doing pushups because we got a touchdown.

cold, wet, but happy. at half time i got some delicious hot (luke warm) chocolate.

we stayed in a little lakeside cabin with brett's dad and stepmom. sunday morning we woke up to find all the ducks huddled in the middle of the lake. maybe they were huddling for warmth?

beautiful fall. i'm ready for fall to start looking like that down here.

{twenty2}

happy birthday to me!

my birthday weekend went by fast, too fast. as usual.

on friday we went to gainesville and spent the night with kim and stace! kim was amazing and had balloons, my favorite candy, and my favorite cake for me. on my birthday we met up with kendal and chris at the temple! it was great! i had been looking forward to going all month. after the temple i got to go to ikea (which is really just a tease since i want everything in the store!) i settled with only buying a few low ticket item "essentials" like my cereal bowls, a dish scrubber, oversized umbrella, and swedish chocolate.

the only problem with my actual birthday was that on our way home from gainesville when we were only thirty miles away from tallahassee, we hit a raccoon! don't worry it happened so quickly i'm sure it was a painless way to go, and i was sad for the raccoon until we saw what it did to our car. i had no idea how much damage a small animal could do at such fast speeds. it cracked our bumper and popped out some accessory pieces of the bumper and bent our radiator which is the real problem because this car is our good car that we can actually take on trips! lame.

on sunday my family came over to have breakfast for dinner to celebrate my birthday and kyre's. my parents cooked up a storm in my tiny kitchen. there was no room on my tiny counters for the griddle so my dad had to sit on the floor to cook the pancakes. my dad also made us hummingbird cake which was sooooo good! i'll have to steal a picture from my mom who is usually the paparazzi at family events.

here's some pictures i stole from kim because i wasn't thinking and never charged my camera!

i look like i'm hiding behind that big ol bag!

lookin gooood

blowin out my candles at kim's... i dunno where my lips disappeared to?

time to brag on my boo

brett is amazing.

this past weekend i drove my car for the first time in a long time. friday night it was nice. it was so cool outside, i didn't even miss the ac. i didn't miss shifting gears either, although my left foot kept trying to press the clutch. then since friday went so well i decided to drive the focus on saturday too, i just made sure to wear shorts for when the weather heated up.... but i pushed my luck too far. as usual, the focus left me stranded. the ignition has been acting up for a while and it finally gave out. usually when it was acting up you could just keep taking the key in and out and jiggling it till it would turn. i seriously tried for 45 minutes before i would let brett come look at the car. i was too stubborn because i thought i could get it to work as usual. i kept trying until i got a blister on my finger. now this brings me back to my point. brett is amazing. he came and saved me, then we tried to track down a new part. the new ignition was going to be 100 bucks with another 100 bucks per new key. brett said heck no and turned to the trusty internet for an answer. he loves solving mechanical problems he even stopped studying to work on it ha. he saved us three hundred bucks in the twenty minutes it took him to ghetto rig the ignition to like the key again! what a good boo i have and now he's kicking me off my computer so he can do school work. lame.

brett cruisin in his original project car.

p.s. the internship is goin good. i'm glad it's already week 5. i'm teaching three classes now and next week i'll take over all five. my voice is getting tired. tomorrow i get observed for the first time by my supervisor, i'm already nervous!

intern mrs. rudder

i'm finally interning! how crazy! it feels strange to be an authority figure at the same place i was once a geeky little sixth grader. another big breakthrough that makes me really feel the difference between my old deerlake self and my new deerlake self is that now i drive the stick shift car there everday. i'm very proud of that accomplishment, but i know i'm gonna jack that car up somehow ha. here i am on the first day of my internship. i don't look very legit without my name tag and badge. i'll have to post another picture. 

i love my teacher bag (courtesy of target) and i love my monogrammed lunch box (courtesy of kardeesia). there are some other things about my internship i'm not too fond of, but i won't go into that on here... all i gotta say is only 14 weeks left... is it too early to be counting down? dang it.

p.s. i finally grew up and cooked a real dinner tonight. it was really good and really easy (perfect for me, and perfect if you have kids cause they could help). we had a great salad and these awesome pizza bites i got from here on the website ourbestbites.

and p.s.s. i have a cutie pie new neice and i'm soooo excited to go see her in panama city this weekend!

i really need to have a bake sale...

....cause i'm always baking and there are so many baked goods i want to make. here are some of my recent creations.

my high school friends got together and made these penguin cupcakes from the book hello cupcake! i really want that book it's amazing. these were pretty involved with many steps to make them, but if you want to know how just holler at me and i can tell you how it's done without the book.

these cupcakes turned out awesome! they're from the website ourbestbites. the homemade icing was not too sweet and i had fun playing with my new icing tips. the recipe for these cupcakes/icing is here.

the best part is the fun color on the inside. i didn't have the gel food coloring like the recipe called for so the colors weren't as dark as i hoped. it was a little too pastel and while i was working with the batter i felt like i was in the food fight scene from the movie hook because that's exactly the color the batter was.

tonight i made mini cherry pies on lollipop sticks that i found here on bakerella's blog. i started out making them with my niece cariayn, but she lost interest so her little brother was my helper. i was surprised at how helpful he was and how excited he was about helping. i recommend adding sprinkled sugar on top, not using the lollipop sticks because they fall out, and using tin foil on the pan in case they leak out (which they will do). 

and p.s. they look so shiny and nasty in this picture because of the glare on the sugar.

i tri

i survived my triathlon! it was so much fun! it was not as intimidating as i made it out to be in my head (i was sooo nervous right before it started, i kept thinking what did i get myself into?!) it ended up taking me 1 hour 24 minutes and i got 10th place out of the 29 novice females.

here's the play by play.... 

after a little bit stressful morning (running a little late and then hitting stop and go traffic) we made it to fernandina beach 45 minutes away from bill and katie's in jax (we woke up at 5:50 ouch). i got there to set up my transition area and got my race number written all over me. so hardcore.

my orange cap meant i was in the novice wave of starters so i got to watch four other waves go before our turn. i think they really just gave me an orange cap so my husband would cheer louder for me. the ocean was beautiful, and surprisingly not too cold to swim in at 7:45 in the morning. there was a slight current that kept pulling me off course so i really had to focus on where i was headed.

there's me smokin the competition, and in the background you can see the buoys we had to swim around. they're shaped like giant shark fins and this week just so happens to be shark week... eek!

it took a lot to force myself to run to the transition. i was a little frazzled at the transition since i never practiced it before (i put my helmet on before my shirt? ha. luckily it was a v-neck so it fit over). and please note in this picture my cool anklet timer, or is it a house arrest anklet?

this is me finishing the 10 mile bike. i was so proud that i didn't make a fool of myself on the bike or take anybody else out. i mounted/dismounted without falling over. very big accomplishment, since i'm still rusty on a bike. and i passed people with ease (even when there were cars coming since it was an open course) holler!

 i don't have a very good picture of myself running in at the finish so hopefully the course photographers got a good one. brett was the perfect husband on raceday. he tried to help me calm my nerves, held my junk for me, took lots of pictures, and cheered. that watermelon was soooo good, one of my favorite parts of races are always the fruit at the end. 

here's team freya, my cheerleading section. it was great they all had matching green shirts so i could easily spot them. emme was the best team captain. 

and now here's what i've learned from this experience/what i'll do differently next time/and tips for anyone who wants to do a tri:

1. try to train in the real conditions that the tri will be in: the gym is convenient and all, but it's not realistic at all with the ac and no humidity! swimming in the ocean was so much harder than swimming in the pool! and the ocean makes you thirsty unlike the pool!

2. people brought tubs of water to dip their feet in to clear off sand and grass before they slipped on their shoes/socks. i brought a towel and just stepped on it which worked pretty well too

3. don't have your bike on too hard of a gear! for the second half of the ride i made it easier and it made a big difference

4. on the bike try to concentrate on your breathing so it can double as a cool down

5. push yourself on the run since it's almost over anyway! i didn't, i wimped out and let myself jog, how lame

6. wear spandex, your thighs will thank you

7. wear a shirt with sleeves, your snotty nose will thank you

8. if you decide to wear a watch for pacing, actually start it when you start ha

9. make sure you smile and try not to look pitiful anytime you see a camera on the course (tip courtesy of julie)

10. pack everything you need the night before so the morning of you can just run out of the house

one year down...

...forever to go.

i can't believe we've already been married one year! 

how nuts!

time flies when you're having fun!

when we were dating we always joked about how forever is a long time, but now we can't imagine it any other way.

we had a real chill anniversary, which matches our personalities. 

here's our paper goods for our first anniversary. homemade card by brett, and i thought the inside of my card was funny because it says "i've never seen two happier soles". and here's a stack of papers of things i loooove about brett.

since our anniversary was on a sunday, that ruled out going out to eat (but that was fine by me cause the less we eat out the better). we went on a picnic in the park where brett proposed. 

brett with the pick-e-nick basket looking for the perfect spot to settle on down.

¿quieres una piña? brett's fave.

yum.

we set some goals to accomplish in this next coming year of married life, so year two will be better than the first!

....annnnnd most excitingly about our anniversary.... is that we got a new nephew! todd and sarah's little baby james came at 10:00pm! yay! congrats to them! 

peace out

tomorrow is my last day at work. i was excitedly counting down the days all summer, but now that it's actually going to be over i'm pretty sad. everyone i work with keeps telling me they're so sad i'm leaving and i keep telling them that if they could just write me a note so i don't have to do my internship i'd gladly stay. i was spoiled for two years at this job. it was great... except for those times when there was nothing to do so i felt guilty reading and studying, but it was nice to be able to read and study. i also got to work with my dad which was the biggest perk of the job.

p.s. tomorrow after work we're leaving to go to jacksonville for my triathlon! it came so fast! i'm not prepared!

fall creek falls oh nine

we just got back from our yearly camping trip with brett's dad, family, and friends in fall creek falls state park in tennessee

this is a picture of the main falls

here are a couple highlights from our trip:

1. brett and brian (brett's bestie) being ridiculous during the softball games. this includes amazingly good and awful plays like busting in left field, trash talk, and even accidentally pegging your own teammate when you're fillin in on third for the other team ha.

2. the skunk that snuck into camp to eat ruby's dog food. we had to clap at it and make silly noises to scare it off. twice.

3. brett's team winning the rook tournament and my team winning the euchre tournament. 

4. the box of nabisco treats that brett's dad's friend brings every year since he works at nabisco. even though now we all feel sick of sweet snack food

5. when brian was chasing the frisbee in a beautiful open field then he slipped right before he caught it. what did he slip on barefoot? dog poo

6. me and brett beating brian and papa bear in tennis

7. hiking in chacos

more pictures to come

"but it's my burdday weekend..."

i heard this all weekend from brett

"can't we drive the cruiser to dinner? no? but it's my burdday weekend?"

so we drove the cruiser.

"can't we get queso at los compadres? no? but it's my burdday weekend?"

so we went and got chips and queso. 

it was fun spoiling brett this weekend and the most fun was planning the birthday morning surprises i had for him. afterall, he turned 25 that's kinda a big deal. 

here's his breakfast in bed on sunday morning (since i knew he'd want to sleep in on the actual day of his birthday, monday, and i'd be at work by the time he woke up)

he also got sung to in primary on sunday and even got a special happy birthday pencil from primary

we celebrated brett's birthday sunday night at my parents' house. brett was very happy that he got to see cooper on his birthday weekend (cooper is our nephew who looooves brett and brett looooves him)

celebrating birthdays at my parents' house means: playing hot and cold for your presents, getting a thing of nuts as one of your presents, mom wrapping one present in tin foil, and singing/cake. those are all pretty normal traditions right? ha i don't even know how they started, but i know i'll never grow out of em. 

brett was very excited to get the guess who greatest hits cd from mom and dad and it will live in his car cd player till next birthday i'm sure. 

dad had already baked and iced funfetti cupcakes when we got there so i slapped on some golf stuff and grass. i labeled the golf course gaither because it's the cheapest course in town (so brett plays it a lot) and it's also a little shabby and our cupcake course wasn't very smooth either. cariayn (our niece) was very helpful decorating and making sure brett didn't sneak over to see our creation. 

all fired up. 

i'm glad the paper gaither sign didn't catch fire.

brett couldn't handle the 25 candles, but then again i don't think he really tried very hard to get em all in one breath. 

monday morning, the big day, i woke up extra early to set up the surprise and decorate the house. my surprise was 25 gifts for his 25th birthday. he kept begging for a birthday eve present, which i normally would have caved, but it would have ruined the surprise (also he did get a birthday eve present from my parents, duh). most of the 25 presents were things we'd normally buy like his favorite gum and coke and such. the presents started out small and got bigger and hopefully better? ha. i had banned brett from our guest room so i could wrap and prepare for the big day. it took forev

i free handed the numbers i cut out and glued them on poster board circles made by tracing a cup. it was surprisingly fun. it's been a long time since i've done anything crafty. this is as close to crafty as i've been. i need to get crackin.

here's brett opening present number 2. hopefully i get to share with him!

it was hard to think up 25 presents without breaking the bank so i made him a "coupon book" (i printed out coupons and hid them in his biggest bio textbook) and i also made him an origami kayak so i could say i got him a kayak. he didn't appreciate the joke too much tho and thought he got jipped one present. ha 

happy birthday decorations

i filled up our room with orange and white balloons for when he woke up.

i hid cheesy signs all over the house for him to find throughout the morning. 

i forgot to take a picture of his car, but i put a sign in there too and wrote on his back window in orange.

happy birthday to the king of the house enjoy your day -love, your throne i made this choose your own adventure story so brett could decide what he wanted to do for his birthday. sadly he was a little too excited about opening presents to fully appreciate the book. better luck next time.

unfortunately, none of the plans he chose out of the book really worked out. he didn't choose to go to the michael jackson tribute at the moon! shucks! ha. but really, we tried to bowl, but the lanes were all reserved. lame! why does bowling never work out! then we went to coosh's to eat so at least he got to eat at his favorite place. then we tried to go to amc to see a movie, but i forgot the adventure book with the movie times at home so i forgot the movie we wanted to see there didn't start till 10 and it was only 8. lame! next we got some hot nows, another of brett's favorite things, while we killed time for a movie, but decided to try movies 8 instead. when we got there we didn't realize that now it's six bucks for two people and they only take cash! what! alright... then we went around the corner to redbox, but there was nothing we wanted to watch. you gotta be kidding me. luckily there was a blockbuster across the street so we perused the shelves before deciding we didn't want anything there either. dang it! everything worked out though because we went home and played cards and cathedral which we never do anymore so it was much more fun than a movie.

this collage is us in hurricane force winds. ha

yes we wasted two bucks and chilled in a glass box of wind for a minute.

we were a little dejected that nothing was working out so it seemed like a good idea at the time? ha but it also was laaame. at least it was funny 

happy birthday to brett! 

dubbya!