Still Alive

Yes, we're still alive. Yes, we're still in New Mexico. Yes the kids are still adorable.


You'll have to take our word for it on that last one as we seem to have lost the camera cord in the move (which I would use as an excuse for not keeping you up to date, but I only discovered it was missing today when I tried to post pictures on the blog). You can view some never before seen pictures of Carly's 1st birthday (circa August 2009) on Mahina's photography blog here. Remember how misplacing my camera for a few days around Carly's party was the best mistake I ever made? Mahina had to bring her camera and capture some shots, and then the photographer in her couldn't just give them to me raw, she edited them all pretty and stuff and gave them to me on a cd. We'll show you more of those pictures later, for now just enjoy the sneak peak on Mahina's blog. She's just awesome.

As for my quest to have 100 reasons to love New Mexico by the end of 2009? Well, I'm struggling a bit with that one, so my quest for 2010 is to complete that list. I am slowly adding to the list and hopefully will have another edition of "Loving New Mexico" soon.

We're still loving the new house and still figuring out how to decorate. My parents were here over Christmas and my mom made us awesome curtains I will show you once we can transfer some pictures. We have a lack of furniture and decorations to fill the house, but we are gradually working on the finished product. I'm pretty slow and indecisive, so decorating becomes a long process.

We had a great time with my parents and brother here for Christmas and then we all piled in our van and headed to Arizona for a week. It was great to see family and hang out with awesome cousins. We squeezed loads of lemons and now our freezer is filled with lemon cubes ready to be made into lemonade on the spot. We visited with Baby Bunny and the fam and remembered why we love her so much. We went to IKEA which was fabulous now that we can check Jay into the babysitting place (he thought it was the coolest place ever). We hung out with Grandma and Grandpa Baker, which is just awesome. We even got out without Grandma convincing us to make another quilt this time (she has lots of fabric to use up, and every time Chad and I go visit, she helps us make a quilt). We caught up on our westerns and game shows with Grandpa, and dreamed about having a grocery store in our basement like Grandma. Hopefully we'll be able to visit Arizona more often, and maybe even convince some of them to visit us :)

We have pretty simple goals for 2010. Stay in one place and adjust to our lives in New Mexico. Since we've been married, we have not remained living in one place for an entire calendar year. We've left for summer internships, and moved for jobs. This year is the year of stability (cross your fingers). We should even be staying in the same house the entire year (hopefully, after all, we own it...alright, I know, the bank owns most of it). In 2009, we lived in 4 different homes.

Chad is still studying for the New Mexico bar exam he will take in February. He plays on a basketball team and loves getting a workout doing what he loves once a week. He stills enjoys his job and loves his fabulous family.

I've been spending a lot of time with my new Albuquerque BFF, my new treadmill. It couldn't be more fabulous. I can run during Carly's nap time (while Jay is close at hand playing PBS kids games online), or in the morning, or at night. I'm finally able to get the amount of running I like to do squeezed into my life. I also have some crazy knee issues (read knee caps scraping against bone) that are much less painful when I run on a treadmill. I'm running my 2nd half marathon in April, and hopefully my knees survive. I'm using Hal Higdon's half marathon training guide found here as my guide. Chad and I used the Novice level for our last half marathon, so I'm moving up to the Intermediate level for this race. Even though I'm probably still a Novice (I ran that half marathon 2 1/2 years ago and have only run 1 race since), the intermediate level has more structure and speed training that I'm a fan of. My only goal is to beat my time on my last half marathon, which shouldn't be too hard. I'm super slow, but I'm hoping to be less slow this time around. I'll be doing most runs during the week on the treadmill, but long runs on the weekends will definitely be outside (have you ever tried running more than 5 miles on a treadmill? Quite boring.)

The kids get cuter and crazier everyday, but I'll save exciting kid stories for when we have cute pictures to go along with them.