December 2012

New Year’s Eve

by Jessica on December 31, 2012

in Food, Holiday, Local Food, restaurants

No superlatives here, just a fun end-of-year meal at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant. Pho and a super spicy marinated pork with rice.

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Neil’s on-call this evening, so we are sharing a quiet night at home. I’m actually really looking forward to it, as we’ve got games and fun snacks planned, and plenty of new snow to enjoy

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Have a safe and wonderful evening!

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We spent a good part of this weekend saying goodbye to a friend from CrossFit. She has graduated and is off to Miami to start grad school and a new adventure. We’re so excited for her, but so sad to lose her all the same. She is truly one-of-a-kind, and if you ever hear the phrase “sunshine and rainbows,” it fits her perfectly, right down to her socks.

She’s the picture of adventure, optimism and how to magnify happiness in life’s little moments. I wish I’d known her in my early twenties, when I used to worry about every little thing enough for ten people.

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We did a fun little WOD as a send-off. A 4-round “Fight Gone Bad” style workout with three stations. The first, cartwheel burpees, is not a legitimate CrossFit move, but something Kaitlan would totally have us do in one of her signature warm-ups. The second station was squat clean thrusters, a simple squat-clean from the ground into an overhead thruster.

The last was a move that our trainer said was legit, but it seemed a little too weird to be true at first. Inverted burpees. Starting on your back, you roll onto your feet, and then over against the wall into a head/handstand push-up. Weird right?

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Needless to say, two of these stations left us a little dizzy and seeing rainbows ourselves. We take an awesome photo don’t we?

I feel so fortunate to have had some of the most amazing people come into my life this year in a time when I really needed a fresh new start, lots of inspiration and the reassurance that I’m worthwhile and valued. I hope to pay it all forward in a big way next year. More on that soon.

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Friday Link-Up

by Jessica on December 28, 2012

in Friday Link-up, Holiday, Weekend

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Family holiday photo outtake. I’m special…

It was so nice to relax and catch up with my Google Reader over the holiday break. It has been the unfortunate victim of my travel and work schedule, and has had the dismal “1000+” sitting next to my “All Entries” for far too long. Having around 500 RSS subscriptions probably doesn’t help, but I just can’t bring myself to un-subscribe from anyone.

Here are some fun links I came across:

Food

DIY

Other Reads

Have any big weekend/New Year’s plans? This weekend we have some client work to do before we jet off to Springfield for New Year’s Eve. Well, scratch that. As I was writing this post, Neil realized he was on-call and we’re now home for New Year’s. Any suggestions on fun ways to make a relatively quiet New Year’s at home special? I definitely think all his favorite foods will be on the menu. What a bummer!

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Happy Holiday

December 27, 2012
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Hello! I hope you had a wonderful holiday, however you celebrated. Is it just us, or did it go way too fast? I feel like I didn’t do half the stuff I normally like to do and everything just felt so rushed. That aside, we had a wonderful holiday with my side of the family [...]

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Denver in December

December 20, 2012
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I’ve been playing massive amounts of catch-up this week, but it was all worth it because I got to spend the a long weekend in Denver this past weekend! My best friend Patrick graduated from engineering school and was chosen Outstanding Fall Student (valedictorian). As we’ve been friends since high school, I’ve been around for [...]

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Paleo Flax and Raisin Breakfast Bread

December 13, 2012
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I have a hard time motivating myself to do a lot of Paleo baking. I know I mention this every blue moon when I actually bake something, but it’s something I really want to improve for 2013. Yes, I’m already thinking of my New Year’s resolutions. Next year promises to be a big one and [...]

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A Boastful Roast

December 12, 2012
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I achieved pure cheese on that title didn’t I? Haha. I am running around like a crazy person today. My coworker is coming into town for 24 hours to work on a project, and since I never have people over, I tend to go a bit overboard when it comes for preparing for their arrival. [...]

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