good things

 -fall is coming! the weather here is showing off its best self and the leaves are just starting to change. . . . i love, love, love north carolina fall.
-every day i feel like i'm more getting into the swing of things. our apartment is not in shambles any more, i'm getting used to running errands with the carseat and diaper bag, and dane is getting on a pretty regular eating schedule. (it helps that he's still sleeping 90% of the day.) even though i don't leave the apartment some days, we're learning how to be normal, functioning members of society again.
-after years of searching and trying many, many different recipes, i think we've found the WORLD'S BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe. hallelujah! and we have an entire batch of cookies here for our enjoyment.
-i bought a giant amount of fresh fruits and veggies at the grocery store and we're actually eating them! we are eating so healthy lately (except for the hundreds of chocolate chip cookies), and i feel great about it. one of my recent goals is to only snack on fruits and veggies (although it's mostly fruits, let's be honest). i went to the library and checked out a ton of cookbooks too, just to get ideas and break out of our boring food slump. i was really inspired by this one for great ideas for new and exciting lunches.
-tommy's parents and two younger sisters are coming to visit this week. we love having visitors, especially family, especially the leiningers. and we can't wait for them to meet dane! although we don't have any fun plans for while they're here. . . . we need to get on that. and then we're having dane's baby blessing in church next sunday, which should be awesome.
-tomorrow is the big day: 10/12! okay, for those of you who don't remember this, it's my 24th birthday. and tommy's going to stay home, and we're going to have a picnic, and organize several problem areas in the apartment, and buy ourselves new running shoes (my main birthday wish), and make gyros for my birthday dinner, and get cheesecake (to go) from the cheesecake factory . . . or any combination of those things that dane allows us to do. i am excited.
-i went to the grocery store by myself several nights ago, and tommy sent me this picture text:

 i love you mommy!

now, you can tell me that babies this young don't REALLY smile, and that this is just a fluke (or whatever), but i will not believe you. no way. this picture just warms my heart right up--it's now the background on my phone and i've been pulling it out to smile at it many times a day.

happy, happy day!

fall

fall surprised us this year.

last thursday, it was probably around 85 degrees and humid, like it's been all summer. and then on friday, overnight, it dropped about 20 degrees and rained all weekend. i walked outside and realized that i might need a coat. and just like that, it was fall.

i love fall as much as anyone else in the world, and i'm not the world's biggest fan of the southern humidity and heat that we've been existing in all summer. but i do hate the transition back to coat weather that comes along with fall--i don't want to have to lug a jacket around everywhere i go. and i'm already regretting the shorter days and earlier nights that are on their way--every afternoon i am shocked when i see how early it still is compared to the sunset outside. i want it to stay light until 8:45 still! don't get dark so early!

i LOVED this summer and i don't want it to die. but it'll be back next year, with all of its humidity and bug bites and cockroaches that will make me wish for fall to come . . . and so it always goes. i'll be more resigned to the seasons changing once the leaves outside our windows start changing colors again.

oh, yes. i do love fall.

thanksgiving partay

two great things i was thankful about this past week:

1. my great cousin scott and his even greater fiancee kate came down from CT and VA to our first official duke basketball game with us. it was awesome. and clearly duke crushed colgate . . . probably due to their humiliation from the ridiculous toothpaste-based jokes all the students had on signs throughout the stadium.

2. my familia came for a week. needless to say, it was very much appreciated to have my mom here to help with a very wonderful thanksgiving dinner (we found a to-die-for stuffing recipe) but it was even better just to have them here visiting and getting to know our place here. we took them to see nc state and duke and took some family pictures of us all wearing gear from those respective schools. i don't have very many pictures (most of them are on my mom's camera) but here is one of us in front of the (closed) raleigh temple, and of the three thanksgiving pie masters.

dallin and tommy were very proud of their pies and very competitive as to whose was better. luckily, they were both excellent (although i am partial to dallin's banana cream chocolate pie myself--but don't tell tommy).

such a wonderful break to have them here. now tommy and i are trying really hard to finish our final papers and projects before we leave in ten days to go to utah for melissa's wedding and christmas! (no big deal.)

harry and hermione

and REALLY, the great thing about these costumes is that we're all ready for the midnight showing in a few weeks. (and we're not kidding about that.)



happy halloween.

asheville, NC

fall break.

it's a novel concept that byu apparently has no idea about. tommy and i celebrated our first mid-semester break EVER by going to asheville, about four hours west of durham, in the blue ridge mountains. maybe we were feeling a bit homesick for the mountains of utah. maybe we just really wanted to see that fabulous appalachian fall foliage we kept hearing about. maybe we were trying to escape our sunbeams on sunday (okay, NO). maybe we just wanted to escape school.

whatever our motivation, it was an awesome, awesome trip. ever since our cross-country road trip, we've thought a lot about road trips and where we can go. asheville was originally our second choice (to charleston and savannah), but i'm so glad we went there. we continued our road trip tradition of listening to long series of books on tape and borrowed all seven of the chronicles of narnia from the durham library and listened to four of them. (tommy had never read them. can you believe that?) it was magical, to say the least.

but anyways. this is what we did:

we camped.

(and cooked a gourmet dutch oven meal and made smores.)

we hiked.

we drove. along the blue ridge parkway. for hours.

and as we drove, we looked.

we also drove a few extra hours to go to murphy, NC (population 1,568)--because we HAD TO. and took a bunch of ridiculous pictures to commemorate it.

we visited the biltmore, the vanderbilts' little family cottage getaway.

we stayed at a cute cute bed and breakfast the eve of my birthday. (for free--thank you hotels.com)

we ate president obama's favorite asheville bbq at 12 Bones.

and we celebrated my birthday yesterday by driving home, making carly's white bean chili (love that stuff, car, seriously) and bruschetta, and working on the 1000 piece north carolina puzzle we bought as a souvenir from our trip.

good times.

p.s. thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone. i love you all.

biophilia

in the geography of bliss, eric weiner talks about the phenomena of biophilia. latin 101 lesson: bio = life, phil = love. so biophilia is love of life, or love of nature. he discusses a study testing hospital patients' response to having trees outside their window vs. having a blank brick wall outside their window--and the "nature patients" had shorter recovery times and needed fewer painkillers and antidepressants. he says: "proximity to nature doesn't just give us a warm, fuzzy feeling. it affects our physiology in real, measurable ways. it's not a giant leap to conclude that proximity to nature makes us happier."

i think my response to biophilia has been made more extreme because of my growing-up years in irvine, a wonderful place to live, unless you're an animal or a tree. actual "nature" doesn't really exist in irvine. this is one of the reasons why north carolina was so appealing to tommy and i--because of the TREES here!

i also think biophilia is one of the reasons why tommy and i are so happy about our apartment. we didn't think we'd like it because it's around the back of our building and actually pretty hard to get to. but it is all okay because we look out of our window and can see this:

i mean, it's not a great picture and all, but there is quite literally a forest right in front of our front door. a much better view than the parking lot we WOULD have had if we had gotten our way.

biophilia is also the reason why fall, with the beautiful colors of the trees and falling leaves, is my favorite season. it's the reason why i always wanted to go running in provo canyon and on the provo river trail, and why we are now so grateful for similar trails (minus the river) that we have here in durham. and it's also the reason why we're going to asheville in a few weeks. asheville is one of the best places in the world to go see fall foliage and we'll be there over our fall break weekend (and my birthday). can't. wait.