Thanksgiving weekend

Happy late Thanksgiving to all! I hope you each had a wonderful holiday with your families or loved ones!
My long weekend did not get off to a great start. I didn't have to work Wednesday, so I was home and our neighbor came and knocked on the door and asked if I knew my car window was smashed in. Of course I did not know, so I went out and looked. My passenger front window was gone, along with my iPod and my GPS (which was safely tucked out of sight in my glove box!). I can't believe someone went through the trouble of breaking into a car for a measly old iPod. Mine is 3 and a half years old! The lucked out finding my GPS. So I spent the morning vacuuming out my glass filled car, then had to skip my class in the afternoon to drive out to the far East side of town to get a new window. I did not appreciate having to spend $150 on that when I am so desperate for money. And I also do not appreciate being without my 2 most favorite gadgets. Doing my job with no GPS is not fun. Luckily Rick added navigation to my phone so I should have that up and running sometime this week. It's not the same as my big one though :(
Having your car broken into and things stolen is such a violation of privacy. I just hate it. I realize times are tough and people are probably even more likely to steal to get their drug money or whatever. So frustrating.
Wednesday night Rick and I braved the traffic and headed down to Salem to his sister Kim's for her annual pre-Thanksgiving party. It took us almost 2 hours from downtown to get to Salem with all of the traffic, but we expected that.
We went to Rick's parents for Thanksgiving, along with several of his Aunts and Uncles, cousins and their little ones. I think we had 23 all together. It was a much bigger Thanksgiving than what I am used to, that's for sure! The food was great, the only downside was no leftovers to take home! I think I'll have to make a mini-Thanksgiving feast here sometime soon to get some more of those delicious foods that I love so much!
Friday I met up with the Widmer/Arnell/Ricker clan for lunch out in Gresham. We went to Wall Street Pizza, an old high school favorite of mine. Yum! So good to see all of you, thanks for letting me crash your family get together!
Other than all of that, Rick has been working very long hours all weekend, and unfortunately his store has not been all that busy. It's funny because they've been doing so well, then all of a sudden on the busy weekend they slow down. I've been spending all weekend working on a major group project for my Organizational Behavior class, due Monday. Tonight I'm headed over to my friend Amber's to chat with the girls for a few hours and take a breather from all the hard work I've been doing all weekend. Finals start a week from tomorrow! I'm just looking forward to having them DONE!
I have a few pics from this weekend so I'll get them up later, but for now, adios!

29!

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I really have had nothing to report, and had taken no pictures! But Saturday was my 29th birthday so I got a few pictures. I celebrated by spending the day studying. Then Rick and I tried to go out to dinner at Toro Bravo because we had a $100 gift certificate for there, from our wedding, but they had an hour and a half wait, and we were too hungry to wait. We ended up just eating at a funny little place called the Bonfire, which happened to be delicious! We met up with my friends that evening at the Good Foot and spent some time, then went to Chopsticks for karaoke, where none of us ended up singing! The night before my birthday I went out to dinner with Brianne and Amy, and went and saw "Twilight". I read all the books, so I was excited to see the movie, but it was a little disappointing. It was definitely made for teenagers. It was still fun to see the book made into a movie, but we laughed a lot of the way through it and it isn't a comedy! So here are a few pictures from my bday!
I have the best husband. Part of his gift were these beautiful 2 dozen red roses!

Preston & I at the Good Foot

Me with a newly dark Megan

Alison, Misty, Jen and Amber, aka JAAM

Megan, Preston, Aaron & Amy

The husband and I

And one last one, Rocco in the car :)

All else is well. My parents are in Hawaii for a month so we are having Thanksgiving at Rick's parents house this year. I always look forward to good food and good company (and a day off work!). Work is horrifically slow so I am back on the 2nd part time job hunt. I've applied at starbucks, Safeway and Fred Meyer and haven't heard back. Everyone is hurting.
School is winding down. Today is my last big test, then finals start 2 weeks from today! I can't wait to have it all over with!
That's it for now! Happy Thanksgiving all!

Stephine's 26th Birthday

Friday was my friend Stephine's birthday. A few of us girls met up at California Pizza kitchen for dinner. I always love when everyone has birthdays. An excuse to meet up for dinner with my friends always makes me happy. And CPK is delish!
Jaime and her cute boy Bryce

The birthday girl and her birthday sundae

Bryce eating the sundae, but not so sure about the whipped cream

The ladies-Lauren, Heidi, Stephine, me, Jaime and our handsome companion Bryce

Heidi and Steph

Cute (and so happy!) Bryce

Me and the birthday girl

And at home...
Penny with a penny on her head, and Rocco looking on

Today we went to Petco and got Rocco a harness and a leash. He is always trying to go outside so we thought we'd take him! It actually went over pretty well. He didn't mind the harness, he was just so overstimulated by outside he didn't know what to do!
Pretty funny!

Hope everyone had a good weekend!
Lauren

Halloween

We were invited to 4 parties this year and ended up not making it to any of them! So our creative outfits (me-Sarah Palin, and Rick-tourist) never even made it from our brains to fruition. Oh well, there is always next year! Rick's good friend Jason that lives in NYC was in town so we opted to spend Halloween with him.
When Rick got home that evening, he came in with a big box with these inside:

I love them! Thanks baby for the nice gift! He claims they are early birthday presents, but I know Rick and I will have something to actually open on my bday.
Some of Rick's friends from high school were nice enough to have us over and make delicious Thai dinner.
Rick at Dave June's with the grossest hat/wig combo

We later met up with Phil and Kaitlyn for awhile to hear one of Rick's DJ friend's spin at Bo Rista Bar. I had never been there but they had it good and decorated for Halloween. I couldn't believe some of the people in there though. I saw a girl with a skirt so short that her full on butt cheeks were showing! So tacky :(
Pirate Kaitlyn & Rick

Rick & I

Kaitlyn & Phil in their fun costumes

We met back up with Jason after he picked his friend up from the airport later that night. She is South African and lives in London and had never been to the Pacific Northwest. She got a great dose of American culture on Halloween seeing what it was like. We even got to see 2 drag queens have a full on fight in the street AND we saw Tony Parker that night getting in a cab (after the Blazers played San Antonio)! What a night! Nikki and Jason are in town all this week and weekend too. We met up with them Tuesday night (election night) and I think it was really cool for her to get to witness that amazing moment in history here in America too. It was like New Years Eve at Midnight downtown! People yelling and honking and and all out feeling of joy and happiness. I've never really experienced quite anything like it. It still makes me tear up to think that in our parents lifetimes they have seen segregation and to now have a black person be President? It's just amazing. I know there are a lot of angry people because of the choice of President, but I hope that everyone can just look at the amazing leap Americans made by choosing a black man as President. It's one of those days I'll never forget. I was a crying mess in the bar we were in :) I don't know if I was ever as proud to be an American as then.
Anyway, enough of that! Here is one more picture for you!
Penny and Rocco sleeping. Aw, cute!

Happy weekend to you all! I am going out to dinner to celebrate Stephine's bday tonight, and meeting back up with Jason and Nikki before they leave tomorrow. Who says I don't have enough time for my friends?!

a few of my favorites...

I thought I would share with you a few of my favorite pictures that our (lame) photographer did. I will at least give him credit for doing a beautiful job on the pictures. They really did turn out nice.

Hilarious!

I stole this from Tiffany's blog. I laughed out loud at it. Man SNL is coming up with some hilarious stuff lately.
Becky, this is for you!

Friendship

Friendship is a topic I have been thinking a lot about lately. I have said on here many times that I have the best friends ever. Some of those great friends are found spread across the country and found in Boise, Salt Lake City and Chicago! Sometimes I wonder how life would be different if some of those great, true friends lived closer.
I feel like I've learned a lot of great lessons in my short 28.9 years of life, and one of them is that people aren't worth keeping around if they can't put into relationships what you yourself put in. Now, that may vary at different times over the friendship. it can't be equal all the time, but during the overall life of a relationship both people should be working equally as hard. To me, there is nothing worse than being "called out" by a friend for not investing enough when they aren't investing enough either.
I feel like every couple of years or so I have to take "inventory" of my friendships and examine them and decide if they're worth keeping.
Recently I felt like I was being made to feel guilty about not attending a get-together with some of my friends. I decided not to go, then got a bunch of grief about it. I feel like my friend wasn't even trying to understand why I wasn't going. She said I don't make enough time for my friends. I am taking some time to look at that and decide if I feel like that's an accurate accusation or not. 2 weeks ago I texted every single friend in town that I have, that doesn't have kids, to come hang out. Not one person would come out. Last weekend I went to Misty's birthday where I spent time with a big group of friends. This weekend I spent time with Rick's friends from out of town, and went to a concert with Brianne and saw our friends the Dimes. When I really think about if I make time for my friends, I think I do. I would hope that anyone who is my friend would know that if they needed me for something, I would drop whatever I was doing and I would be there. I am just asking for some understand in that I work a lot, I go to school full time. I have a LOT of homework. I have a husband that I like to come home to and spend time with. I have a house that needs a lot of work inside and out, and I have chores to do too. My life is no different than anyone else's. Just don't forget that other people have stuff going on in their lives and don't give them grief if they decide to stay at home once in awhile instead of getting together. I have spent too much time in my life being made to feel guilty about my decisions. I don't want to waste anymore time letting other people make me feel bad about what I feel like is best for my life. So, I am going to take some more time to examine some of these friendships to see if I really feel like they're worthwhile or not. Life is too short to waste on people who don't love you the way they should.