What We've Been Up to in January

I'm going to dip into a little bit in December because we celebrated on 4th anniversary on the 29th! Marriage just keeps getting better and better. Austin spent the day working as it was the first day back from our trip but we tried a new restaurant in Pullman that we really enjoyed. We came back and watched some more Lord of The Rings. #tradition 

highlights from the year

We've gotten back into the swing of things with school and work and such. I'm just babysitting a friend's kids a couple of times a week usually but help her out here and there as she is a single mom with three young kids. I still play basketball twice a week with some friends in the community. It's been a great social outlet for me and always a great workout too. 

We went out to breakfast the Saturday before his semester started as a last hurrah! 

He works so hard during the week that Sunday is truly a day of rest for Austin. And wow, I need to water that  plant!

When I'm not doing basketball, I've gotten into Zumba at home with Refit Revolution on Youtube (thanks to Dani for introducing it to me). Once I do about 5-6 of those workouts, I'm sweating like crazy. It could also be that I'm really out of shape. Either way, it's fun because I secretly wish I could dance like BYU Cougarettes and this is about as close as I'm going to get. ;)

BYU basketball and volleyball is a weekly obsession over here. Sometimes we have three videos going on at once because you gotta do what you gotta do. 

We're into Queen of England series on TV right now between "Victoria" on Masterpiece and "The Crown" on Netflix ("The Crown" is much better IMO). I also saw "Hidden Figures" with some friends in the middle of the month and LOVED it. A new favorite. Austin and I also managed to squeeze in "Bleak House" on Amazon prime before his semester started. Also wonderful!

Imagine Dragons song "Not Today" has been on repeat constantly. Don't know why I love it, just do. 

Highlight of this month was getting together with friends in celebration of Ahmad and Marwa's wedding in Egypt in December. We all got together at Salman's house. Well, the women were at Salman's apartment while the men were at Salman's brothers apartment. Salman's family is very devout Muslim and it's in their culture to segregate the men and women when they're not family. There ended up being 5 women and 7 kids under the age of 5! They serve the most amazing food and are so generous. We had some very interesting conversations surrounding the immigration order that was just put out that day. I really feel for these wonderful people. In what ways have you found to best help in this situation? 

Our friends are not refugees but these are their people who are being effective. They really are the most generous, decent people we know and America is lucky to have them. 

That's the cake they serve before dinner. Doesn't that look amazing? And why haven't Americans adopted the eating on the floor for dinner thing? Sometimes it's so nice!

Finally went back to the Temple! It's like letting out a big sigh of relief when we go. I feel more at peace and content with things. It had been almost two months and I noticed when we hadn't been in a while when I was getting so flustered with so many things and I was having a feel of entitlement which is always a cue that I'm not as close to the Lord as I should be. I always feel better once I do go.

On our drive home from Spokane

I'm loving my new institute class on Isaiah. Every time I go, I just come away grateful that we have his words even though at times they can be hard to understand. And I'm noticing that it's not impossible to figure out what he's saying, you just got to do a little more digging. 

As you can kind of see from above and below, I've been into hand lettering. I took an online course through Hand Lettering Design and I really enjoyed it! Just trying to figure out my style and how to do things.  But I love the idea of trying something new and creating a piece of work, no matter how meager it is. 

Austin has been gone a lot with classes, homework, and TA stuff. Not to mention he does IAC volunteer work. One day he left at 4:45AM and I didn't see him until 10PM that night. Poor guy, he's a champ. Having him gone in the evenings is one of the ways I plowed through 12 books this month.  One of my favorites this month is Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin. 

January is usually a hard month to get through. There have been some definite ups and downs. I was trying to be more diligent about getting outside and walking and not caring about my face freezing. I was semi successful with that. But I'm really looking forward to my daily walks (I sound like Margaret Hale there) but really, I love the feeling that Spring is around the corner!

Finally an updated picture of us! Taken during Christmas break. Sure love this guy!