I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

I can't believe it's already December. It seems like this whole year and especially this fall just flew by. We are going to Finland for Christmas, which means that I get to have my white Christmas again. It just never feels like Christmas for me unless I'm in Finland where it's dark outside and white snow everywhere. However, this Christmas season is very different from any other Christmas since it will be the first Christmas without my mom. Last Christmas was very special because my mom was going through a bone marrow transplant. It was supposed to be a second chance and the victory over her cancer. My mom spent last Christmas at the hospital and we were there with her most of the time. My dad was so embarrassed as we carried boxes and bags full of presents to her hospital room. My mom was all about Christmas. She would buy Christmas presents throughout the year (so dad couldn't keep track of how much she spent)and decorate the house into a Winter Wonderland. She also had candles burning around the house all the time. I don't think I will ever be as good of a decorator as my mom, but Troy and I have been burning candles in the evenings to bring a peaceful atmosphere and to include mom into our Christmas preparation.

Troy and I spent our first Christmas together with his family. Since I was away from home, my mom made a book with Finnish/our family traditions and recipes. It was a cute present then and now it is truly priceless as I flip through the pages of her ideas and our family traditions. I know you can't really see the picture above too well. It is a picture of me as a 3-year old making some gingerbread cookies and on the opposite page is a gingerbread recipe. It is my great-great grandma's recipe whose name was Evi. My mom was five months pregnant with me on their first Christmas together and when she saw the recipe and her name, she decided that she wanted to name me Eevi.

I can't wait to have my own kids and have them experience the magic of Christmas that I always felt as a child with my mom.

Turkeys, babies and cars

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We saw the movie "Dan in Real Life". I recommend this movie to everyone. Especially if you like the TV show "The Office". We spent time with Troy's parents and brothers and their families. I'm so used to our own peace and quiet that it always shocks me how much noise our nieces and nephews make:) We still love them though:)

Troy and I bought our first car together few weeks ago. We finally got it this weekend and we love it. We already had one car that Troy had before we got married; thanks to his generous parents. We managed to live with just one car for two years; however, Troy is starting school in January and needs to commute between classes and work during the day when I'm at the hospital. So here is a picture of our Scion xA. I even downloaded some new music for my iPod so I could totally enjoy my driving experience in my cute car:)

It's "my car" because I will be commuting 25 miles to Orovalley for my clinical rotation next semester, so I get the fuel efficient car. It's a manual, which makes driving little different. So fa

Another fun experience was "baking" a diaper cake this weekend. One of Troy's childhood friends is expecting a baby so we decided to give her diapers and make a cake out of them. . Troy actually put the diapers together and Barb, troy's mom, and I assembled the layers together and decorated it with burp cloths, onesies and little toys.




It's a cute present idea or even a decoration for a baby shower. So we don't have a baby yet but we still get to play with diapers. (Though, it's nice that they were all clean.)

Head start to Thanksgiving

I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't eat too little over this Thanksgiving break so Troy and I went to In-N-Out for dinner and dessert at Coldstone. For the first time, we ordered from their "secret menu" at In-N-Out. We got double-doubles "animal style", which means that they add pickles, special sauce and grilled onions. They were delicious.

To add to the damage of my fatty dinner, now I am just sitting on the couch and reading people's blogs. I sure love this week and the lack of school work:)

Green green grass:)

We finally have grass on our backyard. It makes me so happy because I am not a big fan of the brown dirt that surrounds my home at the moment. Troy's parents came to help us with it and it sure was a big project. Troy ended up with five blisters from trying to dig through the hard dirt. We are not finished with the backyard yet,Troy is planning on planting trees and building a little wall etc. I really can't take any credit for the work since I didn't get down and dirty there. Instead, I was the good housewife who supplied water bottles, sandwiches and cooked dinner. I never really think of myself as a "housewifey" material since I'm all about making Troy cook and clean and do laundry as much as I do it. My attitude is "whoever has more time to spare should do the house stuff".




We also got new bookcases from Ikea that we put in our den. We had painted it dark brown few weeks ago and wanted to accentuate the dark color with white furniture. As you can see, we need more books. I absolutely love reading; however, I am a regular at the Tucson city library so my own collection of books is not very big. Troy tells people that I act like a kid on a Christmas morning when I go to the library; that is how excited I get about reading good books. Yes, I'm little nerdy:) However, I keep finding GRE words for Troy from my books, so hopefully that will help him on his test. He is desperately trying to learn some of the vocabulary, which for most people is very difficult. I absolutely hate those standardized tests. I think they are evil!

We also had some "new" people over tonight. There are so many fun people in our ward that we haven't had a chance to hang out so finally tonight we had Camille and Birch and Emmy and David over.

Also if anyone wants a running buddy, let me know. I am thinking of training for San Francisco Marathon(august 2008). Though, we all know how successful I was about my half-marathon training. So we'll see...

ABC Tag

A- Attached or single: Attached
B- Best Friend: Troy
C- Cake or Pie: Pie
D- Day of choice: Fridays(when I dont have a class and Troy is off)
E- Essential Item: chapstick
F- Favorite Color: green/pink
G- Gummi Bears or Worms: gummi bears
H- Hometown: Tampere, Finland
I- Indulgence(s): reading magazines and blogs, candy
J- January or July: January in AZ and July in Finland
K- Kids: none yet
L- Life is incomplete without: my family and the gospel
M- Marriage Date: September 10. 2005
N- Number of Siblings: 3
O- Oranges or Apples: Apples
P- Phobias or Fears: failure
Q- Quotes: what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger(nursing school is sure doing that to me)
R- Reason To Smile: when I can make someone happy
S- Season: Spring
T- Tag Three: I don't know who to tag
U- Unknown Fact About Me: I used to snore like a old man when I was little, my tonsils were taken out to stop the snoring.
V- Vegetarian or Meat Eater: both
W- Worst Habit: picking my nose
X- X-Rays or Ultrasounds: ultrasounds
Y- Your Favorite Food: too many--good steak, burgers, SALADS, mexican food....i love to eat
Z- Zodiac: Aries

As I mentioned on my first post, I am trying to be more spontaneous and adventurous and learn and try new things. So today I had my first golf experience Troy has wanted to go to the driving range for a long time and we finally did it this morning. While he was hitting the golf balls, I ran three miles and then met up with him at the driving range. Unfortunately, he got a blister on his index finger a half way through his bucket of balls, so we decided that I would attempt to hit some balls. I only missed once and I actually liked it. However, I had just run three miles and though it wasn't that far, Arizona sun definitely takes the energy out of you quickly, so I hit about ten balls and then we headed home.


Troy was so excited about hitting some golf balls.

I was pretty lazy for the rest of the day. I read for few hours, took a nap, went through some blogs and prepared for tomorrow's Visiting Teaching conference. Oh, I do have to mention the fact that I have been shopping a lot lately, which should be mentioned since I'm not usually a huge fan of shopping. Tonight I bought a cute dress and some lotions when I was just supposed to buy a birthday present for my friend.

candy candy candy

Everyone is posting their Halloween pictures on their blogs and I have to admit that Troy and I were lame this Halloween. Maybe we are just little boring because I didn't feel up to doing anything nor did I care about the fact that we didn't do anything:) I'd like to think that it's the fact that we don't have kids yet. We had a good amount of kids coming to our door and I hope they liked the twizzlers that we were giving out. I absolutely love candy so Halloween will be dangerous time in our house once we have kids because I have a feeling that I might steal their candy. I can eat tons of it and I have been eating quite a bit of candy lately, which does not make me feel too great, so I decided to give it up until we go to Finland for Christmas. So I will try to be healthy and exercise more and eat less sweets until then:)