And a Happy New Year

And here's a few fun pics from our New Year festivities. Our cross fit gym was having a little party at the gym, so we went to that and played some hardcore flip cup for probably too long, but it was great fun!

Before we left for Christmas, I finished working at the firm I've been at since the beginning of summer. Tomorrow I start my new job at the University of Washington! This should be an awesome year for us!

Merry Christmas!

A few quick pics from our Christmas adventures! The week before we headed out of town, we went to a whiskey tasting Christmas party with a bunch of friends. It was also a good excuse to get all dressed up :)

Christmas eve we hopped on a plane and headed down to Georgia for the rest of the week to hang out with Ryan's family. It was a full house and we had a great time playing games and eating large amounts of food. Of course Santa came too, so we got some fun things!

Thanksgiving!

So a lot of other things have happened that I have not blogged about, but I feel like it's too late to really catch up on it all. Our Fundraiser happened. I think it raised a lot of Fun, but maybe not quite as many Funds as we would have liked. At least it was an awesome party!

 

A few days after that we hopped in the car and headed south for a thanksgiving in the bay area! We did this 2 years ago too, so we knew what we were getting ourselves into. Since it's a long drive and I-5 can get a little old, we decided to take a different route on the way down this time and jumped over to the 101 once we were in California to drive through all the redwood forests. It definitely extended our driving time, but it was awesome to see all the giant trees!!

 

About 16 hours later...we arrived in Walnut Creek at Kimberly and Jason's house! Needless to say were were pretty exhausted, so after a little sushi dinner we called it a night. We needed to get a few hours of sleep before our big Thanksgiving day which started off with a Turkey Trot! This is the 3rd bi-annual Turkey Trot we've all done together...woohoo! The Walnut Creek Trot offers a 5k or 10k option, so we could choose how motivated we were feeling...or how much pie/wine we wanted to consume the rest of the day ;) I went with the 10k...I like food...and wine.

 

One thing I noticed about the results on this run was that they showed you your ranking as you crossed the start line as well as the finish line. So I finished 170th overall, but I was the 347th person to cross the start line at the beginning. That means I had to pass 177 people. (this wasn't too bad since I started pretty far forward...Jason had to pass 678 people!) My point in bringing this up is that the worst thing about races is that people are stupid and don't understand that faster people start in the front and slower people in the back. They even have pace markers at the start line that show you about where you should line up bases on your probable pace. I figured I'd run about a 7:30 mile pace so I lined up exactly in between the 7 min and 8 min pace markers...as one should. I understand some people aren't really sure what their pace would be, but considering everyone in front of me should have been faster than me...I should not have been passing 177 people, many of which were people walking with strollers and kids holding their parents' hands!! This should not be so difficult people!! That's my Thanksgiving rant! Otherwise it was an awesome run and made me feel much better about my food consumption for the rest of the day/weekend!

 

The rest of the day we spent watching the Lions win...cooking and consuming large amounts of food, and playing games all night...woohoo!!!

 

After a slow Friday morning we hit up the gym before heading over to Lauren's neck of the woods in Emeryville/Oakland.

 

Saturday we watched lots of football! It was potentially the most stressful day of football ever...and so was last weekend! A huge War Eagle to our Auburn Tigers who are now going to the National Championship!! After the games we hopped in the car and drove through the night to get home around 6am and do some serious napping! Can't wait for our next trip in less than 2 weeks!!

 

Adopt-A-20K

So I've somehow gotten myself put in charge of a fundraising event in Seattle. To be honest I was a little hesitant to get involved, mostly because we've been crazy busy lately. In the end, it's a great cause and I got roped in ;) I participated in the Rural Studio program at Auburn University for almost 2 years worth of my time there. It is an amazing program as a student, and an even more amazing program for the people in that community. If you're in Seattle and interested in coming out to the event, please do! See the invite info below. If you're not in Seattle (or you can't make it out) but would still be interested in donating, please check out www.supportruralstudio.com to donate and select Seattle as your donating city!

 

All donations will be going towards building $20K houses. A team of students is given the challenge of designing a house that can be built for $20K (including materials and labor). So far 12 of these houses have been designed and built. Each prototype (besides providing a home for someone in need) serves as an example to the community that they can build a new home from the ground up instead of purchasing a trailor which would only depreciate in value.

 



 

Here's an example of one of the amazing $20K houses. This one is the only one that is 2 stories. This one is also extra special because my handsome husband was on the team of students to designed and built it!

Outdoor Adventures

As it's turning into fall, we've been trying to get in a few more outdoor adventures while the weather keeps up all this sunshine and warmth (sort of)! A couple weekends ago, we went on a lovely day hike in the Cascades. We had actually done this hike once before, but the last time it was super foggy so we weren't able to get a great view at the lake. This time it was perfect!

This hike was a lot more strenuous than I remembered, and this time we were able to hike up above the lake and get some great views!

The next weekend (which is now several weekends ago) we joined some friends in renting a house in Port Angeles for a weekend and doing some mountain biking. There's a weekend long event called Biketoberfest that has mountain biking events all weekend. I joined in on the Saturday ride which was a 20 mile cross country ride. 20 miles didn't seem so bad on a bike...but then you put that bike on a mountain! 4 hours later we were pretty beat! It was an awesome ride though and they set it up so there were 4 stations along the ride where you got a playing card. At the end of your ride you got your final card in your poker hands, then the best hands won prizes! How fun is that?!

Here's Ryan and I along the ride ;)

Pickens Time!

 No this has nothing to do with picking apples or pumpkins or any of those fall favorites. This post is all about my sister...who happens to be a Pickens ;) Lauren came up for a last minute visit to Seattle last week/weekend. Unfortunately I still had to work on the Thurs/Fri, so she entertained herself wandering around Queen Anne and getting sat on by the two puppies...(we were puppy sitting for a couple weeks). Friday morning Lauren got to join me for a Crossfit class...so excited she's into Crossfit now too!! As if our arms weren't sore enough from Crossfit, we decided to hit up a rock climbing gym Friday night. I had a feeling it would be something Lauren would enjoy, and of course she caught on super fast and had a lot of fun with it!

Saturday we may have been a little bit of bums. We watched the football game and Lauren read her book. We had thought about going out for the evening and checking out another neighborhood, but we were enjoying our relaxation so much that we finished off the evening in that style. Queen Anne has a local video rental store...which I had never actually been too and assumed most other people hadn't either. Turns out it was pretty happening, and it had the movie we were looking for! I can't remember the last time I rented a physical movie from an actual store! I might have to do that more often now that I'm signed up for an account! We spent the night watching 'Seven Psychopaths' followed by 'The Secret World of Arriety' accompanied by delivery sushi. Awesome lazy night. Also, Lauren had to be back at the airport at 4:30 the next morning, so it was probably a good thing we took it easy ;)

 

In other Pickens' news...my brother-in-law (Lauren's husband) is working on boosting financing for his company which produces resin for 3D printers. Check out his fundraising page and all the cool things you can get your hands on if you donate some money!! They've spent a lot of time figuring out the best chemical combination to make the highest quality resin to print with. I don't have the slightest idea how they do it, but it totally prints and looks better than other resins out there!

 

Whistler

Somehow we've been really busy lately but without any major things to blog about, so I'll share a few pics from our trips to Whistler. We did a weekend trip there 2 weeks ago that was a bit of a bust because it rained most of the time. We just got a brand new Tiguan and had a hitch installed on it and bought a bike rack to fit in the hitch so we were all excited to be able to transport our own mountain bikes! We had been trying to stuff them in the back of the car or having friends with trucks bring them for us. We got all the way up there with our bikes then lost all motivation to ride while it rained the whole time. Luckily whistler is awesome anyway just to hang out at and relax in the hot tub and walk around the village/parks.

Ben also enjoyed cuddling in the big hotel bed.

This past weekend we went up to whistler again. There have been a lot of good living social deals for hotels there lately so that has motivated us the make all these trips. This time it was much nicer out. Saturday was a little overcast, but Ryan and his buddy Glen hit up the mountain for some downhill riding.

I waited till it was nice and sunny out on Sunday to get my riding in. It was a nice simple ride that was just challenging enough for me. I definitely think I'm getting better each time!

The ride home, although long, is super pretty most of the way.