Garden

So excited that my garden is coming right along! Everything is coming up at least a little bit other than the sweet red peppers. I planted another round of green beans, peas, zucchini and gave the peppers another shot. Can't wait until I can harvest it!

Budha

I love that my kittie thinks he is a real person and sits like this ALL THE TIME. He cracks us up.

I made it to the gym today and put in 5 miles on the treadmill for the 3rd time this week. Hopefully if I stick to it, my pants will be back to fitting normally in a few weeks!

I spent 2 hours in a meeting at work this morning where everybody just argued about how everybody elses ideas are stupid. Nobody thought of any replacement ideas though. Very productive.

Shrinking Clothes

Last week I could have sworn that the dryer shrunk my best pair of black work pants. I couldn't remember having to suck it in to button them up before. This week another pair of my work pants shrunk--except I haven't washed them in quite some time! Oh well, hopefully this is the motivation I need to get back into a regular work out schedule. I am more tempted to just go buy bigger pants but that would just be the easy way out. Lucky for me I have pants in a slight range of sizes so at least I won't be needing to wear sweats to work for the next few weeks!

On a related note, work has been pretty stressful lately. The past few weeks I've been in a pretty grumpy mood by the time we get home (according to the husband). I thought that this shirt is quite telling of today's mood:

I just need to go to bed and hopefully wake up with a better attitude in the morning!

This is the first year that I have attempted gardening. Ryan built me two 6'x4' boxes in our back yard and 2 weekends ago I planted: tomatoes, broccoli, peas, snow peas, red peppers, jalapenos, green beans, zucchini, basil, cilantro, mint and rosemary. I have NEVER even been able to keep a plant alive, so imagine my happiness when I woke up to some new sprouts! I planted some of the seeds a little too deep and we used a really loose compost so we weren't sure if anything would even come up so I was ecstatic about my new little growths! :)

The front one is a green bean and the back two are zucchini

This is one of my rows of snap peas

Future Children

Inspired by my friend Jen, I decided to see what mine and Ryan's children would look like.

This is our little Jack

This is Sophia. Sophia looks exactly like Jen and Brian's daughter, so I'm wondering if something fishy was going on! I will for sure be talking to Ryan about this one!

30 minutes later...

After looking into it a little more, this is what mine and Brian's daughter would look like. Her name is Bristol (both a merger of the names Brian and Crystal AND after Sarah Palin's daughter):

And this would be Ryan and Jen's little girl, Ryenne:

Now I'm not really sure what to think.

Moving back to Taiwan

My recent job situation has got me thinking about moving back to Taiwan. Ryan said that he is open to moving somewhere, but isn't quite set on Taiwan for sure. We both really enjoyed living there before (for the most part). The only thing really holding us back is that we have made some good friends since we have been home and my parents live nearby. But they could always come visit us in Taiwan :)

Here's to the good ole days.

Our apartment in Taiwan. Up on the 7th floor

One of my students, Tina. She was so adorable.

Our rescued street kitty, Puma.

Yep, that's my husband wearing a bikini and hula skirt. The things a guy will do for his students :)

They always wore face masks while driving scooters.

A typical Taiwanese cemetary.

Some street parade.

Squid on a stick. Actually one of my favorite things to eat.

Thousands of lanterns flying in the sky for Lantern Festival.

Riding on our scooter.

Celebrating the New Year (year of the dog)

Parenthood

Getting kittens has been so much fun for Ryan and I. I thought that I would share some of our adventures.

They LOVE to play in the water. They are freaks.

Nap Time

You can't be productive when you have such snuggly kittens around

After coming home to this for the 3rd time we finally started hiding the toilet paper.

Ryan's best picture

In an effort to keep up my blog but not knowing what to write about today, I thought that I would share my favorite picture of my dear husband. We had been surfing for several days in Indonesia and Ryan's nipples were raw from laying on the surfboard. Here you can see the bandaids that he used to cushion them the following day. Unfortunately I do not have a good picture to show the tan lines resulting from the bandaids.

My first blog

I figured that since I'm a stalker of other people's blogs, I should probably start my own so that I can at least feel a little better about it. It looks like fun and I'll give it a shot, but I am thinking that I'm probably not disciplined enough to keep up with it.

So a little bit about me...

My name is Crystal.

I am an only child.

I am addicted to coffee and chewy lemonheads.

I have been married to my amazing husband, Ryan, for 5 1/2 years.
I'm a Husky alum.

I'm working on getting my CPA license right now.

I don't like cheese on my pizza.

Kids.....someday I hope. But for now we have 2 adorable kittens that keep us busy!

Here is a picture of Ryan and I on our wedding day:

And here's a picture of us on top of Mt. Sinai in Egypt a few years ago (still one of my favorite places):

So if you are reading this blog, you should at least follow me publically so that you don't feel like a stalker :) I am guilty of getting way too intrigued by people's lives who I don't even know (or don't know very well) so feel free to do the same here!