3-day weekend = FINALLY

The final semester of grad school has finally taken its toll on my health and sanity...I feel exhausted and stressed all the time and I think it is starting to really annoy my family. Nevertheless, they invited us up to the cabin for a 3-day getaway weekend. Little skiing, lots of eating.
And NO schoolwork.
Surprisingly, I felt quite prepared and ready to go for this entire week - which is a treat in itself, as I was feeling a bit guilty for not picking up a book for 5 days!!! Guess that is what I needed and I hope that I can regain my composure for a couple more weeks of craziness and then -SPRING BREAK! (Which for me, will entail moving back home and trying to complete my thesis....fun, fun)

We did our best to whoop it up for my Dad's 55th birthday...although truth be told, he did prepare his own birthday dinner (but who can compete with his incredible culinary delights!?!) And pictured above is the greatest next-best cake to my Mom's delicious desserts = a Snickers cake.

Just your average 2300 calorie meal with my family :)

Valentine's Day!!!

Last week was Valentine's Day. We decided to have a relaxing nite in - so he made a delicious dinner for us and we watched the best movie I have seen this year... "Once". I hope everyone can check it out! The music is simply perfect * Click on the link above to see a music video of my favorite song...

As tradition permits, I gave him a few cutesy gifts, cards and lovely tokens of my affections...and he gave me a "description" of his gift... He was so upset and disappointed that he couldn't finish my gift, but just hearing about the work in progress made my eyes blink away happy tears. "The Gift" is incredible, but I'll wait to post what it is until I can take a picture of it and describe it on here. ---Oh, but until I receive that gift - he also gave me a gorgeous bouquet of hand-picked flowers (see above).

busy bees

I haven't had time to update on here in almost a MONTH! Sorry to disappoint the few supportive readers of this blog :) So, while my parents took a vacation to Las Vegas, Dustin and I were in charge of beginning the remodeling of my Dad's barber shop. What a process! I have never done a 'renovation' project like this before - so I guess I haven't anything to compare it to - but this was waaaaaaaaaay more work than I thought possible. Though Dustin did most of the heavy lifting types of tasks - I tried my best to keep the working area clean and got to assist in laying a few tiles and helping hang the sheet rock. I feel a little bit "sheltered" saying this, but I really learned A LOT from this experience! [And I realized just how handy my boyfriend really is!!!] The shop is still a work in progress at the moment...but I will surely post final pictures within the next week when it is complete*.....
Getting to this point (below) took approximatley 30+ hours...