Terinati's & Adam's Mario Brothers Party & Updates

So, this is way past due, but here are some pictures from Terinati's and Adam's Mario Bros. themed party. Anna and I were a little rushed putting it together (two busy girls = difficult time making plans, etc.), but it turned out to be pretty fun! Well, it wasn't just us who helped. Saudi, Kyriel, and Miguel were also pretty helpful. :)

Kyriel and Miguel arrived early and helped us set up streamers. Aren't they cute next to one another? :)

Anna spent a great deal of time in the kitchen making muffins, which were supposed to be the little evil mushrooms . . . but we didn't have much time to decorate them. :}
And, I spent time helping with other crafts, like cutting out these cute flowers and putting together the yellow chocolate coin boxes. :)This isn't a great picture, but you can see that we got the boys to wear shirts! Voila! Mario and Luigi!

Here are some fun videos of the event . . .

And, the final, epic nerf battle! :o

In other news, I haven't gotten to play with all the gifts I received yet (yesterday afternoon, I suffered so badly from an allergy attack that I ended up resting rather than doing homework, so I got up at 5:30am to finish one of my assignments and turn it in), but two major items that I'm probably going to use the heck out of are WiiFit, which I got from Terinati, and The Fitness Challenge game, which I got from my Dadoo! Amazingly enough, these two games will be able to work in unison! HA! I'm not putting it off a single day, either. I have already attached the Fitness Challenge to our refrigerator, and Jesse and I set up the game to play against one another. See? I'm orange player 1, and he's purple player 2:

To summarize, this game lasts for 8 weeks, and Terinati and I will earn points for exercising individually. Each day, we put down points we earn. At the end of the week or at the end of the game, there is a wager book at the bottom of the board. In our case, each wager book is made up of 15 cards from the game. If I get 40 points by the end, Terinati will have to do everything in my wager book, and vice versa. Or, we can go weekly. At any rate, I have a feeling that with our competitive spirits, we'll probably tie. Or, Terinati may win, just because he has more free time. We'll see, though! Equipped with WiiFit, which gives me the change I needed in my routine, and also with Kyriel looking for a walking partner for her fitness regime, perhaps I will have a good chance! I'll keep you posted. Wish me luck! :o

Happy Birthday to me! :D

Yesterday was my 27th birthday! WaHOO! It was super-awesome, too. It started out with me waking up at 4am after having a dream about my grandmother Francis, who was an artist, and then spending about half an hour drawing a picture in real life of the picture she had shown me in my dream! With pretty awesome success, I may add! I've never done that before with pictures, but I've woken up at 2am to write down lyrics to songs I'm working on, and I've always adored what I come up with that way. Anyhow, I took this picture as a gift from my grandma, who has passed, and I am thrilled to continue working on touching it up and adding color and then putting it in the Kitty Island souvenirs for the wedding, so keep an eye out for that coming up soon! (By soon, I mean in the next several weeks... :} )

I had a total blast at work, too. I got this sweet card that was signed by just about everyone in the office (my boss picked it out, and it's adorable), and my friend, Temple, took me out to lunch at Tako Grill (YUM) and gave me two side Harry Potter books ("Quidditch Through the Ages" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), and then my boss got me TWO cakes (my stomach is hurting a little from yesterday... :o ) and was just so happy to make me happy. It was really, really sweet. She even made Temple and Erica serenade me before we ate the cakes together with the rest of my co-workers. :)

The rest of the day was really good too. There was some nice, kharmic comeuppance that I got to observe (at long last!), and by the time I was on my way home, I was just plain giddy. Oh, and did I mention all of my very sweet friends giving me well-wishes on the Kitty Island forum? :) Thanks, guys!

When I got home, I got so spoiled! I can't even go over the list of things that Jesse and my family and his parents did to celebrate my day in total because there's just so much. To make things all easier, the assignment that I had been working on (it was challenging, but I was kicking its butt, I was!) was determined too difficult by a collection of professors at Argosy, so they extended the due date until Monday, so I was able to actually enjoy my toys yesterday and look at things with a relaxed mind instead of rushing to get the assignment done to turn it in this morning. And, yay! I got to talk to Dadoo and Valerie, which was awesome! It's nice to get in touch and catch up on things! It's a luxury I don't have often because with studying and work, I'm pretty swamped, and my parents are busy themselves! The conversation we had was so fun and happy that I think I liked it better than my gifts, truly. :) Nothing is better than that happy, bubbly, loving feeling you get from people who really care about you. =^--^=

So, yeah! I wanted to share my happy! :) And, it's not even over yet! :O Tomorrow, I'm going out to get my nails done with Anna and Kyriel, and after Kyriel and I have plans for watching Gilmore Girls, eating ice cream (which I get for free as the b-day girl!) and pizza! Wahoo!! GIRL time! :D

And you know what? I won't even be sad when this is all over. I feel like this is just the stage setting for what an amazing year this is going to be. I'm going to enjoy it to the fullest! FTW!!!1!!

Anyway, I'm going to get back to work now. Studying waits for no one, especially when you have to read three chapters in a week on top of doing assignments. :} Thank you, to everyone who helped make my day brighter! =^--^= You guys rock!

Updates! Random Topics!

So much has gone on since my last blog. I don't even remember my last blog.

I had my first real nightmare about things going wrong with the wedding. Despite what most people think, I'm not truly worried about other people screwing up the wedding. I'm pretty sure that Jesse and I are the only ones who can do that, either by not being prepared or by being moody, which would just be a silly thing to do on such a happy day. I'll never figure out why people expect me to get mad at them all the time. Probably something to do with second-order realities mis-matching. :}

I survived my horrible Statistics class with the worst professor I've ever had to date (there's really only two others that I didn't like in my college life, which isn't too bad really), and I managed to get an A- despite her inability to teach! So, HA!! I WIN! 3.93 in Statistics isn't bad when you're teaching yourself everything. I'm very proud of that. That's also my lowest grade thus far, so SNAP! I'm feeling pretty good about school again (Statistics really had me down there for a while).

Now, I'm taking Physiological Psychology, which is exciting! My professor called me yesterday and when I told her how much I loved our text book, she was surprised and told me that most people hate physiological psychology. =^o0^= HUH?! WHY?!! It's so interesting!! Learning about the different parts of the body, what they do (or at least, the various theories for some parts), and how it impacts our behavior! That's important stuff! This isn't just learning about other people, it's learning about ourselves!! How can you not be interested in something that will teach you things you didn't know about yourself?! Baffling! Unthinkable! This class is my most exciting course to date. I can't wait to see what more I can take from it (I'm already almost a week ahead, because I was worried about the hurricane coming this weekend taking out our power).

The wedding stuff has been slow and hard to work on. We're getting down to the finite details now, and that requires time, which I didn't really have for the last several months. I'm behind in a few things, and apparently it's getting to me otherwise I wouldn't be having nightmares about it. But, Terinati's working weekends this month, which means I'll be less distracted during that time and probably get more done. Hooray? :} I'll miss my Sweetie, though.

Speaking of important people in my life, Kyriel successfully moved out here, lived with us a while, got a job, and moved out on her own to a most awesome basement in a most awesome place just a couple blocks down from some stables! I'm really proud of her, and I'm sure she's glad to have her own (sort of) place again. :) Having a full apartment made it seem like I was really busy all the time too. Not sure why, in retrospect. It's nice to live near her again, though. I had forgotten what it was like to have someone who knew my past as well as my present. It's kind of comforting, like having a living, breathing validation that all those things really did happen and aren't just imaginary lore.

As you can see, there have been tons of things on my mind. I can't even blog about just one thing today! But, I think life is good.

It's two weeks until my birthday, and I feel like I've grown so much in the past year. I'm really happy with my progress. It's something I definitely plan on celebrating. Parts of the last couple of years have been hard, especially realizing who my real friends are and learning to be happy that the ones who aren't real friends are gone. The harder part of that is realizing if they crawl whining back (like some of them have before) to not let them. Forgiveness is okay, and I do believe people can change (I've certainly changed a lot!), but I also know that those folks in particular have this view of me that is totally wrong (seems to be fear/paranoia-related, from what I can guess), and they throw it in my face as though it's fact (even though they have absolutely no support when I ask) when they don't get something they want out of me. And, I don't need that in my life. I don't need to be busting my butt to convince someone else that I am who I am! :} That's silly! So, a lot of emotional garbage (and physical garbage too!) has been removed from my life, and it's so peaceful now. Not to say there aren't hard things in life, 'cause there always is, but I feel like I'm more in balance with it. No more crap. It belongs to whomever creates it, now. As they say, "I don't have to take it." So, I won't. Ah, the gift of being able to let go. An important lesson that's taken way too long to learn.

So, that's that. I'll be my crazy self, continuing to worry about doing the right thing, being on time, and finishing stuff in such a way that it's efficient and appropriate for everyone. Wedding, school, work, and so on. I get this feeling that change will be coming my way soon, but I'm prepared to roll with whatever's gonna come. Hopefully nothing dreadful in the hurricane! I hope everyone has prepared out on the east coast! And now, I'm going to go home and daydream about relaxing, happy things! :) Take care, everyone!