Ski Boots

This weekend we celebrated Sean's 24th birthday with a trip to the mountains.  I booked this trip a little while back, and would have loved to have been someone who could keep it to myself until Friday when we left, but secret-keeping isn't much of my strong point, so I had to give it to him at Christmas.  So so much for that :)

We stayed here, which ended up being a decent place to stay, and the food was awesome, but when we got there I was surprised to find that instead of the bed and breakfast, lodge with a fireplace environment that I'd envisioned, that we were staying in a cabin room at the top of a dirt hill (advertised as "mountain view").  It had a bed with a quilt, a shower that was literally a glorified tile corner, a toilet that you couldn't use if you were much bigger than me, and a space heater.  We had to follow 'Jacob' up a sketchy dirt hill in the middle of nowhere to find it.  If you watched LOST, then you know why we were prompted to go ahead and text Lyndsey to let her know where we were staying in case we didn't ever come back.  That said, it'd be nice in the summer and if you were expecting these accommodations, really.  But I wasn't.  Since I'm married to an eternal optimist though, Sean didn't cry, and instead saw the bright side.  This was all he could come up with:  "Do you have the rest of your Nutter Butter?  You should leave it outside to see if we can lure a bear.  You think bears like Nutter Butters?".  Later, when I apologized for my lack of research concerning a place to stay, Sean looked on the bright side with the following:  "But Maria!  If we hadn't stayed HERE, we'd never be able to see a bear eating a Nutter Butter!!".  We didn't end up seeing a bear eating a Nutter Butter.  Or any bears for that matter.  But we did find a fireplace in the multipurpose room above us which lessened the blow.

Aside from this small detail though, we had a great time.  I highly recommend the place to eat or camp.  The food was SO good and the service was great.  And it was relatively close to a lot of things.  On Friday night, we hung out by the aforementioned fireplace with a glass of wine from the resort's vineyard (a nice touch on their part) playing games.  That sounds lame, but I love hanging out with Sean, and it's pretty freeing to be in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception...even if it did start out a little creepy.  We spent Saturday morning at Grandfather Mountain where I spent plenty of time in my childhood, Saturday afternoon and night trying to sharpen some of our skiing skills, and Sunday hiking and shopping in Blowing Rock.

The view from part of our Grandfather Mountain hike

The top of Grandfather.  At the risk of sounding dramatic, I'm not sure what the wind speeds were at the top of this mountain, but I felt like I needed to sit down to keep from blowing over.  According to the weather report from the mountain, they've charted wind speeds at 115 mph and temperatures as cold as -32 degrees F.  Obviously, it wasn't that cold or that windy, but it felt like it to me.

1 mile high suspension bridge at the top of Grandfather.  As a civil engineer, this suspension bridge was pretty much the highlight of Sean's entire trip.  At his request, I also have pictures of the turnbuckles and springs that operate this bridge in a way that Sean would have to be the one to explain.  But I'm just keeping them for us to enjoy :)  He crossed it, but like I said, I was scared.  Even as a non-civil engineer, this is pretty cool.  But I've been here on a sunny day as well, and it's still scary.

Sugar Mountain- the reason for our entire trip.  Hopefully in that afternoon/evening, we've sharpened our skills enough to ski Idaho in 6 weeks, although that's doubtful.

Casualty of the trip.  In addition to Sean's elbow.  Sean is insisting that this "isn't that bad", but he can't feel it, and as long as there's any visible evidence of this catastrophe, then it's "that bad".  Naturally, this wasn't my fault, but the resort's since it was the result of a huge patch of straight ice :)

Sunday short hike to a waterfall near the lodge on the Toe River.  It'd be a good place to swim sometime around July, I'm sure.

This is such a fun place to go, and there's so much to do, especially in the summer.  And it's always fun to spend some time in a place so different from home.  Happy Birthday Sean!  You're such a blessing to me and I hope this year's the BEST EVER!

It's already been a year since we didn't become better people, but it never hurts to try again.

We haven't really done resolutions in that we aren't going to commit to running a set number of miles per week, and we're not going to eat more vegetables even though we should, and we're not going to lose weight (I saw a poster that said that the 20 lbs you gained over the holidays makes your resolution of losing 10 less impressive, and this applies here).  But we do have goals, and one of the few things that I learned from Motivational Psychology in college was that writing them down is a good step towards attainment.  So we sat down and came up with the following "be a better person by next year" list.

Spiritually:  

Truly pray for the people that we say we will pray for, and write it down so we don't forget.  I hate it when people use the phrase "I'll be praying for you" or "you're in my prayers" because while well-meaning, that's a lie and what they mean is "I'm glad it's you and not me and that makes me feel sorry for you".  I am certainly guilty of confusing the two sentiments, but they're not the same thing.

Create goals within the groups that we lead at church to improve the preschool  and elementary school ministries, and follow through with them.  Sean would like to add here that he's going to "keep doing what he's doing".  I guess Meredith Lamb needs to humble him a little in the near future.

Read the Bible every day.  "Quiet Time" is something that we both struggle with and could do much better holding each other accountable in.  There have been times that we've been much better when we have a more structured plan, so that's something that we need to reinstate.

Consider leading an e-group in the fall.  Either for young married couples or for high school/middle school.


Relationally:


Make being uplifting towards Sean my biggest priority.  One of the most eye-opening things that I have learned about marriage this year is that you should pretty much be in a good mood, or at least act like it, all of the time.  People don't normally give that as advice because it sounds unrealistic, unattainable, and "fake".  But that doesn't mean that you can't have a bad day, just that you can't use that as an excuse to be a jerk.  I'll say that I think that I do a good job with this, but it's still my biggest relational goal of the year.  Sean makes fun of this saying that I'm basically saying "I'll just keep doing what I'm doing because I'm great at it!" but I've reminded him that he's lucky to be married to someone that he can't argue is great at being nice :)  And I can improve in uplifting him.

Sean says that he hasn't bought me flowers in a while.  Does that count as a goal?

Sean also expressed some sentiment that he wants to make sure that my needs and wants are a priority to him, citing that it's easier to tell me no than people at work...or in e-kids...or his parents...or Mogatu (who's a cat).  I'm not totally sure how to take that, but he smiled when he said it...

And then he expressed some concern that this is public on my blog, and thus the end of our relational goals.


Professionally:


Be involved in some professional organization or team through the NICU outside of general staff nursing.  I did a lot of different things within and outside of nursing at Clemson that I enjoyed,  but since starting work, have felt like a pretty mediocre asset at best and could probably do better.

Do and feel comfortable doing NICU admissions.

Sean wants to get better and more relied upon to communicate with clients.


Financially:


Stick to the budget that we have set.  Our budget is set in a way that encourages us to live a lifestyle that would afford me the ability to not work full time when we have children.  It's not particularly difficult, but I am guilty of spending money keeping in mind that I have an entire income instead of in a way that respects a budget really is set to ultimately benefit me.

Give on a level that requires faith.  Recognize the difference between a tithe and an offering and show that recognition in our giving patterns.

Other:


Put curtains in our living room (I realize how shallow this sounds).

Redonate our dining room table and get a new one.

Sean wants to attempt to dispell the notion that he's a crazy cat guy.  It's not helping that his goal earlier in this blog was to prioritize me over the tabby.  Or maybe it will help.

I refuse to reminisce about the past year unless it's in a "best of" format.

I'm not so much a fan of the "how far we've come" reflections, mainly because I keep this blog for that very reason, but in a best of format, I don't mind.

January:  I got my job offer.  It snowed enough for Sean to take an early day off of work and make soup and grilled cheese.  I took a cake decorating class.  I spent most of my time doing crafty stuff.  We celebrated Sean's 23rd Birthday.


February:  We went to a cooking class.  We celebrated Valentine's Day with surf and turf.  We spent a weekend at a hotel in Uptown Charlotte.  My mom finished her "bad chemo".


March:  I started my job at the beginning of this month.  We visited my family in San Francisco.  I learned to sew.


April:  We spent most of this month looking at houses.  We celebrated Easter in Charlotte.


May:  We bought our first house.  We celebrated Jake's graduation in Hilton Head.  We started our new roles at Elevation.  We celebrated the marriage of Dallas and Liz in Beaufort.


June:  We spent most of this month settling into our new house.


July:  We celebrated the fourth of July at the whitewater center and had a full date weekend.


August:  We celebrated our one year anniversary.  We adopted two cats, Aurora and Oliver.  I went to night shift.  We spent the majority of the month in an effort to restore the health of our adopted cats, and sadly lost one.  I started a young women's Bible Study with Holly Furtick about marriage.  I have learned SO much about our relationship from this study.


September:  We celebrated Labor Day in Hilton Head with Sean's parents, Nick, and Lyndsey.


October:  We went to New England to see the leaves in North Conway, NH and ate lobster in Maine.


November:  We celebrated Thanksgiving in Charlotte with Sean's family.


December:  I turned 24.  We celebrated Christmas in Charlotte, in Greenville, and in Alpharetta.

We have been abundantly blessed.