Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Time has been flying by so fast this last fall. I have been busy trying to keep up with work, school, and flute events. At work, I had several concerts including the big musical for the year in December. It is nice to have that done for the year because I feel like I can actually teach this next semester instead of being in performance practice until the end of the year. I have played my first two concerts with the symphony and also been hired out to play two different concerts for a local choral group. I even played in Titanic the Musical this fall! I spent many nights a week playing until 11pm after a full day of work, so I have been quite busy performing myself. This December I was able to organize a flute event where flute players from all over the Tri-Cities and of all ages played Christmas Carols at the mall. I may have some pictures to add later, but it was pretty awesome because there were at least 25 flutists from third grade through adults playing.


Christmas break was quite welcome after such a crazy fall. Anthony and I went up to his Aunt's in Idaho for Christmas. There were a lot of people there and it was nice to see everyone. The kids seemed to have a really good Christmas. The Shimizu's and Katey came up for Christmas this year and I was able to visit them a bit. Anthony and I (and it sounds like many of his family members) got sick with some wacky, no good bug. I guess it would be worse to be sick while working, but it sure put a kink into vacation.

It is getting cold here. I am usually okay with the cold and can even enjoy it, but I am already thinking about the warm days of summer. Right now a detour of Hawaii sounds grand. It has me thinking that maybe I should try going there for Christmas next year...well see though as it will probably be quite spendy.

Since it is the last day of 2012 I thought I should put down some of my goals. Having this blog as something to look back on down the road is nice, so it would be good to see later what my goals were and if I met them...or changed some. For 2013 I want to continue getting healthy. I have lost almost 15 pounds (14.8 on my tracker). I still need to loose 30 more to get back to my fighting weight. If I keep up weight watchers, I should get there! With health, I am also working on my strength and back. I am weaning out of physical therapy and I hope my back pain goes away while playing the flute. I also want to continue working on running. It would be good to actually find and do a 3K race this year. Other goals that I have right now including graduating with a master's degree, staying active and improving my skills as a flutist, spend more time with my brothers, and going on some sort of vacation this year. (Vacation is still on the brain)

Fall in the Tri-Cities

Just a quick post for today! I am busy trying to clean and catch up on the home front now that my exams are over.

I love that all the leaves are brightly colored and falling now. I only wish it would stay like this for a little longer than it usually does!

Summer Fun

I have been enjoying the summer, but it sure is flying by fast! I made a personal goal to be better at taking pictures, so that I can record my experiences better.  I have quite a few pictures adding up from my summer adventures, so I thought it was time to share!

Back in June Katey flew up to visit. She was able to come visit me and see my house. I had just tried making key lime pie from scratch the night before so she was the first to help test the recipe! It was delicious!

During the week Katey visited, I kept hearing what I thought was the local marching band practicing. I live close enough to the high school and sometimes they even have a 5th grade summer band practice at the elementary school too. As I was driving around I realized that it was no high school band, it was actually a drum corp! I realized this as I saw a color guard bigger than I would expect for our high school and charter buses as well. I ran home and looked up DCI on the computer to find that there was a show down at the stadium that night! They do an annual show called Drums Along the Columbia. I had always missed it before. Anthony and I were leaving early the next morning for are Independence Day Vacation, but I convinced him that this was cool enough to stay up late for. We are walking distance to the stadium, so we skipped the parking headache and walked down and saw the show. They had the Blue Knights, Oregon Crusaders, Seattle Cascades, and Spokane's Thunder perform.  The Blue Knights and Oregon Crusaders were our favorites for the night.

The next morning we began heading up to Deer Lake, where Anthony's aunt and uncle are building a house. We drove to Colfax first to visit his grandparents. It is great to see them. It makes me think about and miss my grandparents.  There was an amazing thunder storm that night! A poor baby deer got lost from his momma or was scared enough to run all over the street with his mama hiding on the hill during the storm. At one point it looked like he was about to run into the house and join us! I didn't get any pictures of that, but I did take a few pictures at Deer Lake. It is always fun to visit Anthony's family up there and relax on the lake.

At the lake they do their firework show on the 3rd, so on the fourth I came back home and was able to see the fireworks on the river with Patrick! I did this for the first time last year and I really liked it.

Around the house, Anthony put in a new basement window. This was the last window to be updated. It is a bigger one, so we had to cut concrete to put it in. Anthony's Dad helped him with the saw part and I helped with putting the window in. Once the basement is finished the room could be a legal bedroom if we wanted. For now, it is nice to have more sunlight and views to the backyard. The garden keeps growing and needs more weeding. Always more weeding. The cherry tomatoes are taking off and have been delicious. I can't wait for the romas though. I had my first cucumber warm from the garden the other day as well. There is nothing like fresh picked veggies!