a day in charleston

charleston quickly became one of my favorite places when i first came to visit ryan after we got engaged four years ago. and it has never gotten old to me. i love the market. i love all the history and old charleston style homes. i love the food. i love the small city feel. i love everything about it. so you best believe we make trips down there on about a monthly basis. we're only about 30 min away so it's not bad at all. 

this last trip we went with kim and another family friend, sarah and decided to try one of the haunted tours. (which definitely is not normally my kind of thing) but i sucked it up and said i'd be a team player. yeah that was until we pulled up to the old charleston county jail where our tour would take place.

yeah...i totally psyched myself out.

we played for the rest of the day because the tour of course didn't take place until it got dark outside. when all was said and done and the tour ended...the outside of the place was more scary than the actual tour. the tour guide told some interesting stories, but over all she was a little crazy. psyched myself out for no reason. we're probably gonna do a different tour next and tour the old houses. 

all in all it was a fun-filled day with good friends and family.

SURPRISE

i don't know why but turning 24 was a hard one for me. i still feel like a 16 year old trapped in a 24 year olds body. i know i'm still young, but i already wanna know where my life went! i think ryan could see my unease for this birthday so he planned a little getaway for us to ponte vedra, fl. he woke me up at 8:00 am on feb 12 and said we've gotta go! pack your bags! it was WONDERFUL.

thank you sweet husband of mine.

the big 2.8.

ryan's 28th birthday was celebrated with familia. i made an awesome princess birthday cake. mainly because it was the flavors that he wanted, but we'll just say it was because he wanted a girlyman cake.
 

who wouldn't love that face?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUSBAND!

happy christmas

the holidays were done SC style. in the warmth of sunshine with some scattered rain and snow. i sadly don't have one picture of ryan and i for that day. but i figured i better mention where we were. i spoke on christmas sunday about mary's perspective and cried through the entire thing. though i wasn't too ecstatic about speaking, i'm grateful i did. it brought about the true spirit of christmas for me and strengthened my testimony of the Savior's birth.

the other aspect of christmas brought me a nookcolor which i love SO much. it's dangerous. now with my card on file, all it takes it one click of a button and my books are right before my eyes for my reading pleasure. i think i've done pretty well thus far all things considered. i've only bought cheap $2.99 or $.99 or free books. that's the joy of it. they might not be the new york times bestsellers, but i've found some pretty decent reads worth the two bucks. here's to my nook! go buy one. you won't regret it.

the cut

it happened. i got rid of the locks. and i've never felt better. the woman chopping it asked if i wanted to donate it and i said, it's dyed i thought i couldn't. she then informed me there was one place that took dyed hair...so to top it all off, my hair went to a good cause. awesome!

this wasn't before the woman cut it, but before a much needed cut from my mother. i cut it shortly after that.

much to be thankful for

i was grateful that for thanksgiving i was able to go see my family. we only had five days, but we packed them with fun, delicious food(panda, rubios, in-n-out, not to mention our thanksgiving meal), youtube videos(to name a few-jack black/scotty on yo gabba gabba, marcel the shell with shoes on, double rainbow...) movies(tangled), and bonding time. i even got to surprise a few people, which made the trip that much more fun. the look on holly and jeremy's faces were priceless.(if only i could have surprised heidi and tom and scotty and april!) 

we missed you, christopher, amy, mikko and stacey! i love my family and am very grateful i have a family i want to spend forever with.

SURPRISE

Apparently i'm guilty of neglecting this blog. so here i am to give a long update of the past four months. starting with october. it was ryan's sister, kim's, birthday and she'd being reminding us for awhile about it because apparently every year her birthday gets over looked-people go on vacations, no parties and so on...so my mother in law and i decided we wanted throw a huge halloween surprise party! sadly...the word got out and it just turned into a halloween/birthday party, but it was fun nevertheless. i even introduced the hayes family to a van wagenen tradition of a powdered donut eating contest. woot! 

The best part of the night was when father in law took one bit, putting the whole donut in his mouth...and won.