such a good night...

although i ruined the surprise part of the surprise party (long story, but lets just say that i was extremely annoyed and unhappy thursday night), we still had a great time and an awesome turnout! plus, I got to surprise him with this video our friends from afar helped me put together. 

THANK YOU all so much! he was so touched. (he will vehemently deny this, but his eyes were a little watery... he claims something got in there... )

anyway we had a blast and i tried the wii for this first time. you all are right it is addicting and awesome...i will never buy one for that reason. here are some pictures... 

oh the Pellingers...what will we do when you are far away?? the entertainment and fun you provide is almost too much to handle... see the video below 

oh joel... always ready to hang with the girls... and those boys..they are the best of friends

this was the end of the night..

(ignore my so called 'tennis noises' ...they sound too sexual when I'm sober, but at the time I was sure i sounded like anna kournikova)

RIP

Its been a frustrating week - on the top of the long list of annoyances was when i left work early wednesday to take a nap and came home to a very sick fish. I spent the rest of the afternoon frantically searching for online remedies and finally running all over town to get fishy antibiotics. Unfortunately they didn't help. 

I'm glad he isn't sick any longer though...it was really hard to see him suffer when we can't do anything to help. 

Have fun in fishy heaven little guy...

need something to blog...

this is how i feel almost every day of my life...is that normal??

ok i have to admit something else... i've been saving this cartoon for over a month til I really felt like I wanted to post something, but had nothing to share...i know its sick, but fun so don't judge....

Happy 27th Birthday Bubba!

today grant turns 27! we had a very happy relaxing morning..i made us eggs and french toast and then i FINALLY got to give grant his present. this summer we were at saturday market and grant fell in love with this handmade bamboo flutes. since then i've been scheming to get him one and have had it for the past month. i made a cute little case for it out of specially picked out fabric that i thought grant would like. i'm so very proud and happy that he loved it. here is a video of him opening it... can you tell we are very video happy these days??

easter fun! (warning: this post contains explicit material)

one of my favorite things EVER is dying and decorating eggs... so after we got back from the beach grant and i got all the supplies out and went to work.

(obviously this is grant's creation...ask him for the history here)

(this is me & chou who is in his new tank...much happier)












it might be just me, but i think these are funny...

today we had people over for brunch so i decorated a little...
(i'm so proud of this grass...made from construction paper run through our shredder...genius!)

another beauty at the beach...

we spent yesterday at the beach with John & Kendra. we originally planned the day to whale watch, but we got bored after 25 minutes of not seeing any whales and proceeded on with our day.

it was an amazingly beautiful day (again) so we decided to go to the sealion caves,

tour heceta head lighthouse, head up the coast to yachats for lunch

and then finish our day at devil's churn in cape perpetua.

Celebrity Look-alikes

lol this is too funny...I had to follow in Jenni & Gregg's footsteps and do our look a likes...its just too fun!

war and weddings...

yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the US invasion to iraq. i can remember the day it happened...i was a freshman at UO and learned of it on my mini tv in my dorm room. i was so scared. i remember crying and worrying that a nuclear war would start. i guess at this point that hasn't happened, but we have been in a voluntary war for 5 years and have donated at least 4300 of our citizens to the "cause." this is a little video that is a nice tribute to the soldiers dead and alive in iraq.

on a happier note...today marks exactly

6 months until grant and i get hitched!

we're both very excited, but can't believe how fast time is flying by all of a sudden. we are starting to think and plan more for the wedding and moving to france...it is all going to be here before we know it! a little wedding humor for you...

cake - check!, coordinator - check!, caterer - check!

as you can tell from the post title - this weekend was a whirlwind of wedding madness. it was one of those things where its good because you get a lot done, but its bad because you realize how much more there is to do.

the scenery...

as we enjoyed the beauty of bend we ran from meeting to meeting (usually getting lost in between) and got a lot done. our last stop on sunday was at aspen hall (where we are getting married). we met with the caterer and worked out some details then went to work. our goal was to finalize the layout of the ceremony & reception, as well as finalize the details of the decor. it took a few hours, but we put all the tables in place and carefully measured so we'll know how to make it happen september 20th!

here we are hard at work...

and this is the little video i made for grant so he could get a good visual of what the ceremony area would look like... excuse the gushy stuff =)

hope and i'm out...

grant and i have been talking a lot this week about how informed we really want to be about what is going on in the world. we have gotten quite into NPR and OPB (really g has and i've followed along) plus he downloads tons of political/economic/news podcasts. we wonder how informed we want to be because it is very depressing and hopeless to know everything that is going on in our country and the world. (especially when there is nothing happy reported on the news)

anyhow, a few things that happened tonight made us feel a little more hopeful about people and restored our faith that good people are out there. we decided to eat at jackalope for dinner (they have the most amazing burgers - for only $5.50!! with fries!) anyway we were sort of chatting with an older couple sitting near us on and off while we ate. they were warning me that i didn't have enough light to do the craft i had brought along (more on that later) - didn't want me to ruin my eyes. anyhow, we were just hanging out after we ate finishing our beer and watching a basketball game. as i mentioned i was crafting - swedish weaving (see example below) - a towel for a wedding we are going to next month. the bartender (a manly man in his late 20s/early 30s) asked me what i was making - i explained and he told me how great he thought they were and that i should sell them. i just thought that was the best compliment (especially since i was sitting in a sports pub with a needle and thread...most would find this weird). i will now be moving on to making this bartender towels... he is nice...

...i'm lazy so i usually only do 1 row of design, but they are still pretty...

then we went downstairs to close our tab and the nice bartender informed us that the people upstairs had already covered us. WHAT?@?!! complete strangers we had barely talked to paid for our dinner! we couldn't believe it. we went upstairs and thanked them. they told us they just thought we were such nice kids and wanted to do something nice for us!

i know its a small thing, but we left the bar with a newfound faith in people...

on that note...i'm headed to bend for a weekend of wedding stuff with the girls! i'll be back sunday with lots of new stuff to report!

yummmm....

grant made these for dinner...you should do the same!

YOU'LL THANK YOURSELF!

honeymoon...check!

i've been in the most frustrating situation with orbitz trying to book our honeymoon! for the past week they've been screwing up the charges to my dad's credit card and to make a long story short i finally just said f-it and went without them.
my dad is awesome and is paying for the whole honeymoon! since we are getting married in the fall we can't go anywhere where there is hurricane danger so we decided on cabo san lucas, mexico.


neither of us have ever been there so we are really pumped! we are leaving the monday after the wedding and staying at this amazing hotel for 8 nights and 9 days. we decided to go with an all-inclusive place so that we don't have to worry about money much while we are there.

i'm so excited to lay in the sun and do NOTHING as a married woman!

Jess' Study on UO Page!!!

check out this link to see a story about a study that jess did for her dissertation! (that is me in the picture =)... hot shorts, huh??)

look at the editor's note:

Editor's Note: The study described above was chosen soon after its online publication by "Faculty of 1000 Biology," an online research service founded in 2002 that highlights top research publications in biology, as a "must read" article for scientists involved in this area of research.

YAY!! Jess...your hard work is paying off!

my brain...

a few weeks ago Sonja asked me to help with some pilot work. it required me to play a game for money in the fMRI scanner at UO. of course i was all about it for two reasons:

1. i would win money ($50) no matter what
2. i would get cool pictures of my brain

these are the pictures from the anatomical scan

this is a picture of my brain activation when anticipating winning $3 (can you tell I'm poor?)

this is a picture of me actually winning the $3


COOL, HUH??

day at the beach...

today was an amazing day! i drove my friend from work, Sonja, to the beach. she is dutch and had never seen the pacific ocean. we also brought along her dogs, whom i love! at ORI people can bring pets to work so I know abby and luka well...it is like they are my co-workers.

we were very worried about the weather, but we were blessed with the most beautiful day! sometimes i forget how close we are to the coast and how soothing it can be. i need to go there more.

we started in florence

and then headed up to heceta head, where we saw sealions and a bald eagle. the only other time i've seen a bald eagle was in the grand tetons when we got engaged!

our final destination was cape perpetua...this is my absolute favorite little place on the oregon coast. there are the most amazing views and TIDEPOOLS. i adore touching all the little creatures.

***i didn't alter any of these images...that is just how beautiful a day it was!***

the business of being born

i SO believe in the message of this movie...i think that every woman should see it, if for no other reason than to see another perspective on the industry that childbirth has become.



it makes me want to be a midwife more than ever before....

now I'm it...

Jenni, the mysterious mystery shopper tagged me so here ya go...

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was loving life as an 8th grader at Rowe Jr. High - we seriously thought we ruled the world. Sadly our school split into two high schools so the majority of my friends went to our rival.

2. Five things to do/did today?

1. pipetted urine
   
2. spent 3 hours perusing marthastewart.com (and using Google Notebook)
3. drank my favorite dutch bros coffee
4. made appointments to meet with caterers and bakers in bend next weekend
5. ate banana bread for dinner

3. Favorite snack?

lately it is a tie between an iced nonfat vanilla latte from dutch bros and samoa girl scout cookies

4. What would I do if I were suddenly a billionarie?

pay off our school debt, travel, buy a house on lots of land near a city/town we love, buy TONS of craft supplies and time/skill to do them all, share it, buy clothes....oh man lots of clothes

5. Name 3 of your bad habits.

1. always assuming the worst
2. hoping for time to pass more quickly/not living in the moment
3. letting those closest to me bear the brunt of my moods/emotions
   

6. Five jobs I have had.

1. research coordinator at ORI
   
2. human anatomy lab instructor at University of Oregon
   
3. office assistant at Roehl & Sittner financial advising
   
4. grocery checker at WinCo in Springtucky
5. stencil painter for city of milwaukie (SUCKED...i had to wear an orange reflective shirt all summer and drive a utility truck...one day our assignment was to clear brush from a water reservoir and i stepped on a bee hive...first time i got stung and it was 9 times...there are so many more stories)
   

7. Five things people don't know about me.

1. I've lost 8 pounds in the past few months
2. I have a tattoo and used to have a nose ring and bellybutton ring
   
3. My mom has 11 brothers and sisters (HUGE Irish Catholic family back in Boston)
   
4. I danced for 14 years (tap, jazz, ballet, etc)
   
5. I never thought I would get married...

Now it is YOUR turn: Lindsey, Leslie, Sarah, and Burton

seriously???

ok i know last week i was banging on (a favorite British expression of my friend Kendra ha!) last week about my LOVE for google, but I have to further express my appreciation. First of all...if you have any respect for cool companies that make free stuff go here and look at some of the things they have made.

I will share some of the new discoveries I have made this week in an attempt to persuade you to appreciate the amazingness that is GOOGLE!

1. Google Calendar - I've known about this for quite sometime, but what I love is the newly released ability for the google calendar to sync itself to outlook. This is awesome because my work calendar is difficult to access from home. Now I can set google to sync itself to outlook however often i want!
2. Google Transit - This is what inspired this post...SO COOL! Have you ever tried to use public transportation and you wanted to shoot yourself in the head?? Suicide is no longer the only option! You just type in your start and end point and what time you need to be there by and it will figure out all the connections! This also has huge possibilities for travel because they are set up for public transport all over the world.
3. Google Notebook - This is a handy little thing that allows you to take snippets from websites and save them in electronic notebooks. I can see this being very handy for recipes, wedding ideas, and craft ideas! OOO and also photo tutorials.
   

DO YOU SEE WHY I HEART GOOGLE??

....you also may have noticed that i learned this week how to make pictures of my computer screen...it is soo fun and easy. Who knew there was a button on the keyboard called 'print screen' ?

ideas worth spreading...

i have to admit my favorite thing about being a blog lurker is that it leads me to other amazing resources, webpages, and.............. other BLOGS!

well yesterday i watched the tuesday talky on rosie o'donnell's blog (i know people think she is annoying, but i love her...) and she told me about TED.com i told grant about it and he informed me that he heard about it from rick, but hadn't looked at it yet. then today i checked this blog and there was mention of it...now i have to check it out.

apparently it is just an amazing little site with short videos of 'ideas worth spreading' it features presentations from a conference held every year that invites 'the worlds greatest thinkers and doers' anyway... since i'm a blog whore and I didn't know about this site i thought i should pass along the gains of my many hours online. hope you enjoy!

....can you tell i like to add hyperlinks?? you know it is starting to get out of control when you search for words you can link to other places.....

project website

I've been working on updating the website for the project I work on at ORI.

Today I finished it and I am VERY proud of how it turned out! You should click on stuff... all the links work! I used an html template and then altered it for what we needed. Ever since I took a computer information science class at UO I've loved to do simple web design, but never really have a need. I also did some design for this project.

ACSM Northwest

We spent the weekend in Seattle for the annual ACSM Northwest Conference. We heard a few good talks and stayed in a great hotel. If you ever go to Seattle and need a place to stay look at the Inn at Queen Anne...it was awesome!! Kitchen in the room, inexpensive, character, wine and appetizers in the afternoon.

The highlights were listening to the student talks and the cowbell that the conference organizers deemed appropriate to warn people they were going over time. Funny thing is the most prestigious of the speakers was the only one to get cow belled... WOW!

Here are a few pictures...


this is the boy presenting his poster...



taking a break...