kiss a reindeer

I failed. I wanted to kiss it but I freaked out last minute. Tanner is a brave, supportive husband!
He kissed Ernie, the reindeer, for me. :)
Sunday we went to the Reindeer farm in Palmer. It was pretty fun!
Did you know Santa's reindeer are females??

two years

Monday equaled two years of marriage to Tanner.
It was great to spend the entire day with Tanner. All to myself.  It has been quite a while since I have been able to wake up with Tanner, get out of bed with him, eat breakfast with him, leave the house together, get lunch together, play together, eat dinner together. We had fun, we laughed, fought, held hands, kissed, all the goodies! Tanner wanted to do something special and different than ordinary and I tried to explain to him that we didn't have to do anything particularly "special". It's hard for us to do the things we enjoy most in unpredictable, rainy weather. I just wanted to be with my husband and I am very glad I was able to :)

The photo I added is an old one from Hawaii. I don't have any recent photos of us!

book4, book5 & book 6

I've been trying to keep busy, using my hands & brain to create. I am sort of limited to what I can do at the moment and am DYING thinking of projects to do, eventually... For now this will have to do!

One of my favorite book binding is the Japanese stitch. It is one of the fastest ways to bind a book but the whole process- measuring, tearing pages, and gluing- takes some time. They are so adorable & cute looking! The red & pink books are a stitch called 4 hole Japanese stitch and the yellow book stitch is the hemp Japanese stitch. I'm really loving the color combo I chose for the yellow book!

furry friend

Can you spot the little, gray, furry, mouse-rabbit looking friend?
Thursday we went on a little hike up at Hatcher Pass and kept hearing chirping little noises that obviously was not coming from a bird... It took a while for me to see one due to its camouflage abilities. According to my research they are called collared pikas! Cutest ever :)

We got to play in snow in the summer! Pretty cool.

nighties

 source

how do you guys like to sleep? this may be TMI but I like sleeping in my undies. but when you have guests over or are being a guest and you need to run to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or grab water or something... it's the most annoying thing EVER! i always search around in the dark for whatever I took off before I climbed into bed and always end up with tanner's shorts and tshirt. So I've been thinking of different things that will work for me as sleepwear. Especially during summertime... While we were in Texas Tan & I always wore our undies vs when we were in Idaho we wore our flannel pjs. I'm trying to stay away from silky stuff. My mom gave me a cute little skimpy silk "gown" that is cute as heck, but I think I'll save that for special occasions ;) Plus it's not breathable. So of course I've turned to pinterest and made a sleepwear board! Im looking for comfy & cute ideas to show my mom (so she can make it for me!)
If I'm lucky my sister April might have the patterns shown above in her pattern collection!

i love you.

 

Life is so fun but it doesn't get any better without you.

There's so many things I want to do but you must be there, next to me. 

I need your hand to hold, and your lips at service for whenever I desire. 

I never knew this could happen, and I'm glad it has. 

I'm crazy for you. 

Even when I yell at you for the stupidest reasons, and hang up the phone and screen your phone calls. 

I love you. And I'm incredibly scared that I do. 

Scared that my pride will be stabbed, scared of what you can do to me. 

but I hope it only becomes more magical.

I hope we can become so much more. 

this was "mysteriously" emailed to tanner last week (from my mother's email)

& he texted me while he was at work to check his email to see what my mom had emailed him. haha. 

As I read the email I knew these were my words. I had written this, somewhere, not sure if on a piece of paper or what.

Well today I thought of those words and decided to check my memos in my itouch. there it was!

I had written this love note while I was on my way to Alaska about a month ago hahaha. 

I might have scheduled it to email him a month after I wrote it... And well my mom gave me her

itouch last year & I guess it still is connected to her email account hahaha 

But that settles the mystery of how my mother "wrote" a love letter to my husband.

Saturday

Saturday Tanner and I woke up earlier than most Saturdays and headed out to Anchorage. We walked around Saturday Market and were impressed with these biggo zucchinis! We also took some family pictures- not sure if we want to share just yet. They seem perfect for Christmas cards...

Afterwards we decided it was pho time... I fell in love with Vietnamese pho noodles last November while in Seattle and have been craving them ever since! I am so glad we found a pho noodle place in Anchorage and that Tanner now loves them too.

book3

my most recent book.
it's a cute little Coptic book with 5 signatures, 80 pages.
 

Alaska Lately

Remember my Alaska to do list? Well we have been working on it. Not quite sure if I am going to get to hug Sarah Palin…. 

 

1. family cabin at least 4 times (3)
2. hug Sarah Palin
3. see a bear
4. cook in the dutch oven at least 4 times
5. go fishing
6. hiking at least 4 times (1)
7. kiss a reindeer
8. pick blueberries
9. make 4 books (2)
10. ride the 4 wheeler up to the cabin :/- not looking forward to that one.... Tanner said I have to


 Yesterday we all went to Winner Creek (Heather, Greg, Steele, Trey, Tan & me) and hiked. Tan & I drove up in a separate car so we missed out when the family got to see a cute grizzly snacking out in the open on the mountain. A few hours later we stopped by the same spot in search of a bear. We waited & waited for about 25 mins and I started whistling... Finally we spotted a cute little nose peeping up at the whistles. We hung out in the 60 degree weather for maybe 30 mins?? just staring at the nose. Silly me, I forgot my 55-250mm lens (LOSER) therefore, you can only see a tiny dot(grizzly's nose) in my 35 photos I took (couldn't zoom in enough..). Sad day. I definitely want to see a bear again.... 

zoomed in on my computer you can see a soft cute bear

Last weekend we spent a night in Talkeetna at the family cabin. Tanner bugged me about swinging like everyone else. I totally climbed up the tree and was "stuck" up there for about 30 mins hahaha. I never did end up swinging off! 

Milano

Leaving Rome was bittersweet. We were exhausted from all our adventures and knew once we left for Milan we would only have 2 days left in our trip. Making our way to Milan was a little chaotic. We left our apartment later than we planned and therefore our train tickets were later than we planned= arrival in Milan would be waaayyy later than we planned. We told our our host we would be arriving around 7 pm and ended up arriving at 2 am.... This was the only time I felt like we needed a cell phone in Italy. (besides the time both of our mothers freaked out because they hadn't heard from us in a day) Luckily our host and her husband were super kind and they didn't make a big deal about it while staying with them.

Our time in Milan was so short yet we were so exhausted. We took it easy. It felt so good to sleep in our last two days and just walk around the city with no particular plan. By the end of the day we got caught in a rain/hail storm and ran into a crepe cafe and ordered a delicious pistachio crepe and a Nutella crepe!

This floating girl has some skills! I stood next to her watching her for about 20 mins. I was so tempted to crawl under her and see if she really was floating... Tanner eventually got bad watching her so we left to watch some guys jumping and doing flips. 

It was nice ending our trip with Milan and taking it easy. There are some things we missed out on though, like The Last Supper... Hopefully next time!