Just A Few of The Things That I Love About My Husband

I love that I knew today was Valentine's Day because he surprised me chai tea, breakfast, AND flowers. Any other day, he would surprise me with chai tea and breakfast...on a regular basis.

I love that our Undersheriff has told me repeatedly to tell Nathan that he's making the rest of the guys look bad because he treats me so well. See above.

I love that Nathan understands that sometimes I just need to be left alone, but that I really do love having him around the rest of the time.

I love that he will randomly decide to help with the dishes or fixing something around the house just at the point that the mess is driving me crazy. Nathan, you can't know how much that means to me and how much it helps my sanity level.

I love that even if he rejects an idea at first, I can count on the fact that he will actually think about it afterwards and either change his mind or come back to me with his reasons for saying no.

I love that he's gradually teaching me to not take myself so seriously.

I love that he supports me in everything I do, even when he knows that I'm going to fall flat on my face. Because he knows that I am stubborn enough that I have to learn for myself.

I love that he tells me that I'm beautiful even when I've just woken up, my hair is a mess, my eyes are all puffy, and I'm wearing boxers and an over sized tshirt. I don't believe him, but it's sweet just the same.

I love that he lets me warm my perpetually icy cold feet against his legs.

I love that I can't truly get to sleep until he comes to bed.

I love that he doesn't get angry at me for waking him up when he's snoring.

I love that he has hilariously vivid dreams in which he has full blown conversations with me, is 100% convinced that something strange is happening, but doesn't realize that he's completely asleep. I have to talk him into realizing that, yes, he IS asleep and that, no, the wires in our electric blanket are not falling out.

I love that he keeps my feet on the ground while still allowing me to dream.

And lastly, I love that he loves me as much as I know he loves me.

I love you babe. Happy Valentine's Day!

I Heart My Home

On my first day off on Monday, I cleaned my house. It had been messy and dirty since we got back from Portland and it was driving me crazy, but I hadn't had any time to tidy it up until then. After I got done hanging up all the coats, organizing the mail, recycling the pile of newspapers, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, tidying the bedroom and cleaning the bathroom, I was able to bask in the glow of my cleaned house. And I realized, at that moment, how much I really do like our house. It's quirky and needs quite a bit of repair, but it's ours. It's home. After going 4 years without a "home" to speak of, it always feels nice to walk in our front (or back) door and know that I'm home. Not an apartment or dorm room that I will be moving out of at the end of the school year...home.

On a completely different subject, I'm so completely excited about this weekend. Nathan has taken this Friday off and we're getting up fairly early to head up to Anthony Lakes for the night. Who knows if it's going to be good skiing or not on Friday, but one of our friends has graciously let us use their cabin for the night. So if we go skiing on Friday, great. If not, we'll just sit in the cabin and relax all day. Maybe we'll rent some snowshoes and try snowshoing for the first time. On Saturday, we're planning to sleep in, laze around all day, and then head to the ski lodge to listen to the live music they're having that afternoon, after which we will head home.

On Sunday, I think we're going to try out a new church. Both Nathan and I got use to being a part of a relatively smaller church while we were in college. After moving here, we both found it kind of hard to get excited about going to the huge-for-Baker Nazarene Church that I went to with my parents while I was in high school. Nothing personal against people who go there, I just think Nathan and I prefer something smaller and more intimate. We're not sure where we're going to go yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Besides all that, the schedule that is my life is picking up again. Young Life has started again, we're signing kids up for summer camp, and we're getting ready for our Annual Fundraising Auction & Banquet that is on March 14th. SO much planning and whatnot to get done for that! Tonight several of us are getting together to video tape some skits for club that lead up to the skit that we're doing at the banquet.

I'm so incredibly excited to take kids to camp this July. Last summer at Malibu was phenominal, but I have been missing Wildhorse Canyon like crazy! But I can't believe I'm already planning days off in June and July! I have yet to schedule anything in August, but I know it's just a matter of time. I'm hoping to possibly put together a camping trip to Eagle Creek with a group of friends for the weekend of June 13th, but who knows if all the snow we've gotten in the mountains will be gone by then!

On top of that, Nathan and I are also planning a trip for the first week of June, to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. Last year's anniversary was fun, going to a Mariner's game up in Seattle with Nathan's dad. But this year, I have demanded that we take that time just for us, no one else, to relax and enjoy each other's company, no matter where it is. We were toying with the idea of going to the coast, but pretty much everything there is either booked up or rediculously expensive. So maybe Bend...

Days Off

So Lindy, what are you going to do with your two days off?

Oh you know...the first day I'm going to do dishes, clean our ridiculously dirty house, do laundry, that sort of thing, and then go to club. And on the second day.....I'm going to sit through EIGHT HOURS OF TRAINING. Sweet.

Thankfully, I get this entire next weekend off. Nathan's taking Friday off to go skiing with me and one of our friends is letting us borrow their cabin at Anthony Lakes for the night. It will be nice to get away and just relax. I think we're going to spend Saturday lazing around the cabin until 3:00, when a band is going to be playing at Anthony. Then we'll head home and laze around there!

The weird part is that this past week went so incredibly fast that it doesn't feel like I should already be starting a "short week" (the week where I only work Wed and Thurs). With this work schedule, I'm hard pressed to remember what day of the week it is for the rest of the world, since my Monday's and Friday's almost never coincide with everyone else's. The big joke here is, "This is my Monday, tomorrow's my Friday." And every other weekend we have a 'Monday, Wednesday, Friday'. I think I would go crazy if I had to start working an 8-5, 5 days a week shift.

Anyway, I'm rambling. What started out as me just saying this past week went by really fast ended up turning into a whole lot more than you ever wanted to know. My excuse is that it's not even 7 am here yet. Hope everyone else had a great weekend! I'm so glad it's my Friday!

Feelin' a Little Up Town

Talk about some awesome upgrades.

Last week we had our radio guys come in and do a complete overhaul upgrade on our radio systems here in dispatch. So we have completely new radios in our back room.

Today, I came into work to find all new mouse pads...if you had seen how dirty nasty our old ones were, you would understand why I'm so excited about this.

Then our radio guru came in and gave us brand new back up scanners that we can...wait for it...PAGE OUT ON!!! Ok, I know, this is probably all Greek to you but let me try to explain. When our main radios go down (usually because of updates being done) we have to talk to our officers and fire departments on our little backup scanners. It's like going back to the stone age for us. And then, if we have to page out fire or ambulance, we have to use this funky little device that hooks up to the scanners, type in a code, hope that it tones out, and then talk. (Side note, definition of paging: when we want to dispatch fire or ambulance, we have to hit that station's page button which sends out a special tone that tells responders for that station to listen up, they're about to get dispatched out.) Well, with these new scanners, the paging tones are programmed into it. All we have to do is hit a button, select the station to be paged, it the button again, and then talk. It's very exciting!

Oh, and our boss also ordered new chairs for us. Our current chairs get used literally 24/7, and they are so worn down. The one I'm currently sitting it constantly rocks back and forth because the lever that controls that particular function is broken. We have duct tape wrapped around both arms on both chairs because they are so torn up. And did I mention that by the end of your 12 hour shift, you're back is constantly crying at you? The chairs our boss ordered are expensive and very fancy...they should be here in 6 weeks...I'm thinking about making a countdown ticker just because I'm so excited.

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty fancy right now.

I Think Any Girl Would Agree...

Patrick Swayze...

Dirty Dancing.....

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

SUCH a good move!

For Pity Sake...

I have pink eye.

About 15 minutes after getting to work, my right eye started doing this funky half itch, half burn thing, and then started watering like mad. The last time I felt that, I ignored it and ended up getting nasty nasty case of pink eye that lasted for a long time and caused the blood vessels to rupture. I had a bright red eye for about a month! The upside...I was able to scare small children at a single glance.

So I ran to the bathroom, and sure enough, my right eye was starting to get red...oh, and so was my left one.

I left work for an hour to go to the doctor and sure enough...pink eye.

But there's a silver lining!!! The drops that I use to take as a child when I got pink eye at least once a year always stung like the dickens! Well, somehow they made it so that the drops I got today DIDN'T HURT!!!!!!! Woohoo!

It's the small things in life.

And tomorrow...I will be sleeping. All day. I've given myself permission to do that. And it's going to be lovely.

A Long Weekend

So much for staying home and relaxing for the weekend. But when have you ever known me to allow myself to relax for an entire weekend? Instead, we decided to drive Nathan's Nissan over to Portland to drop it off for Kate and Eliot. The weather cleared up on Friday and Nathan was able to get off work at 1:00, so we jumped in the cars and headed out. The drive was clear and easy until we got into the Columbia Gorge, where it was raining hard and getting dark...hydroplaning is always fun!

We got to Portland without incident, dropped our stuff and the truck off at Nathan's dad's place, went to visit is him mom who had just gotten out of surgery, and then met up with friends from college at the McMenamins in Forest Grove. We didn't get home from that until about 2 am, and ended up sleeping in until around 11:30 am that morning.

After a day of lazing around (on my part), doing some random guy shopping (Nathan and his dad), and doing some birthday shopping (me for Nathan), we met up with Johnny and Laura, and headed into Portland for a night on the town. Laura and I met up with several girlfriends, prefunked at one of their apartments and then went to Duke's for the rest of the evening. Nathan and Johnny pub crawled through various bars in search of an open dart board and good beer. After driving back and forth across Portland several times, we all crashed at Nathan's dad at around 5 am. The plan had been to get up early and be on the road by about 8 am in order to get home for Superbowl, but driving 6 hours after 2 hours of sleep didn't appeal to either one of us.

So instead we slept in really late, had waffles, watched the Superbowl at Nathan's dad's place, then finally got on the road at around 7:30 pm...not our best move ever, but oh well. We barely missed the freeway closing over Cabbage Hill (it opened about 20 minutes before we got there), and arrived home without incident at around 1 am. 4 hours later, I was getting up for work. And here I am, much more awake than I ever expected to be...guess all those 36 hours without sleep has payed off in terms of my ability to function well with very little sleep.