a sure way into your mother-in-law's heart

This is coming a little late, but I'm still going to post it because I love to run!

I never thought I would say that. haha. 

I've truly come to enjoy running as an activity that is not only good for my health, but also as a way to clear my mind and free myself from the stresses of life. I love to run, but I wouldn't consider myself addicted to running. Well, maybe borderline addicted. It also makes me feel good and well...invincible. There is something about accomplishing a run, or a race, that energizes me, invigorates my mind, and continues to fuel my self-confidence that I can do incredibly hard things. Let's face it, how many people do you know actually like to run? And then how many people do you know who hate running? Yeah, it's pretty imbalanced. Running is a hard sport. I was never one to go with the crowd anyway, so I guess I found my niche.

the best decision I ever made

Caleb is by far the best choice I ever made. I am grateful to be married to him. He is the perfect person for me. Pretty sure I've said that a billion times. maybe two billion. :) You can learn more about him on my Bio page. Anyway, we celebrated his birthday the day I got back from my trip. We kept it pretty chill. I invited friends to the park for a game of ultimate frisbee and birthday cake (but not really cake, because Caleb doesn't like cake). I only took one picture of him on his birthday, here it is:

Those are his hands. :) I wish I took a picture of the fruit tart before we started cutting it. This was my first time making it. It was pretty easy. If you want to impress people, just make one of these and arrange the fruit nicely. I won't share this recipe though because I want to find a better one. But anyway, this is really called a fruit pizza, but I put it in a shallow pie dish so then it became a fruit tart.  Fruit tart sounds way more sophisticated than fruit pizza, don't you think? If you're thinking that I was smart for making that change, well, hate to bust your bubble but I'm not that smart. haha. Even though I wasn't a big fan of the crust, everyone told me it was very good. 

Here's a pic I took of Caleb the day after his birthday:

He got this t-shirt as a birthday gift from Josh and Shannon. If you can't read it, it says, "Never trust an atom, they make up everything." Pretty sure I made a valentine for Caleb that said the same thing. Doesn't he look great?

So you all must be wondering what I gave Caleb for his birthday. Well, I thought long, and I mean very very long, about a gift. I had some ideas, but I kept going back to this one gift idea that well, made me hesitant, and yet I knew he would have so much fun with it. In the end, I bought it for him, even though it goes against my very nature. I bought him a computer game. hahaha! I really don't like anything to do with video games or computer games because I feel like the majority of them are time-wasters. However, I do understand that people need to have some gaming fun once in a while. It just gets problematic when they spend too much time...I'm sure you have seen how easy it can be to get sucked into a video game. However, the game I bought for him is somewhat educational and you need to use physics to do well in the game. HOW NERDY CAN I GET? Well, I guess I'm not the real nerd here. The game I bought him is called Kerbal Space Program. It was created in collaboration with NASA. You basically need to design and launch a spaceship into orbit and plan your trajectories to ensure you will fall into the right gravity wells (what's a gravity well? dunno, that's just what Caleb told me) so that you can explore whatever asteroid/moon you need to reach, get data, and take it back to earth. You still with me? I'm not. Pretty nerdy stuff in my opinion. You're basically planning space missions. And I was right, Caleb is totally loving the game right now. He is definitely sucked in. At least I can feel somewhat good about it since he has to use his brain. :)

Overall, I think he really enjoyed his birthday. His parents took him golfing and to a Michigan football game at the Big House a couple days earlier. So he definitely had some fun, and our neighbors even had him over and sang him happy birthday!

Fall is here! I think Caleb's birthday was officially the first day of fall. We are blessed to have a beautiful maple across the street from our house. I love the changing colors.  

Happy Fall!

~Jessie~

hitting lots of birds with one stone

So I just got back from another trip. Yeah, I know, I keep going on all these trips. This year has just been an exciting year for people close to me. I went to San Diego for a wedding reception of one of my best friends since 5th grade. It was quite the event. I wasn't planning on going, but then when I found out our other best friend from 5th grade was going, I reconsidered. It has been years since we have been together, so I figured what better reason to get together than a wedding? It will probably be another long while until we are reunited again.

Dawn befriended me in 5th grade. She was a new girl. And she invited me over all the time. She lived just down the street from me.

I got these old photos from facebook. She somehow found them and posted them years ago. 

It was the beginning of an awesome relationship. Pretty sure this is 5th or 6th grade. I wish I had one of Mariana too, but you'll see her in a second.