So. Much. News!!

WARNING: LONG POST!!

First off, I am terrible about posting regularly-- lately I've been in this state of total lethargy where I couldn't even motivate myself to upload the pictures off of my camera. Luckily, however, the huge amount of things going on have jolted me into action, and after a very long hiatus I am now back to posting.

Tyler and I have been having a wonderful couple of months, that included a long and relaxing break at home for the holidays and a very romantic anniversary weekend out in Spokane and Valentine's day here at home.

Unfortunately, however, I didn't really get any good pictures from our date in Spokane, as I was a total spaz and left my camera (BOTH of them, actually!) at home. However, I did get a few pictures from Valentine's day, which I will include below!

so, after spending all day in the kitchen, I wanted to make sure it LOOKED romantic in our apartment so that I lit a whole bunch of candles and put them EVERYWHERE. Counters, tables, even in front of the tv! Haha

kind of nerdy, but I decided to set our coffee table instead of our actual dining room table because we had a bunch o' crap on and around our table at the moment and I wanted to make sure we had room to spread out with all that food!

For the main dish I made steak with crab and bernaise sauce and herbed sweet potato wedges! I also made a cranberry walnut spinach salad on the side. :)

by the time I finally sat down to eat, THIS is what I was most excited for! And that champagne was yum-my!

now, THIS was a bit of an experiment-- originally I just wanted to make tiramisu but in the end I found it was a lot easier to make a tiramisu bread pudding and turn the mascarpone cream sauce into an ice cream! It actually turned out pretty good-- and mascarpone ice cream is tasty!

Next- the BIG NEWS! Over Christmas break tyler spent a lot of time applying to grad schools for architecture, and over the last two weeks he has finally started hearing back from some of them! Namely, from WSU and the AA in London...and he got into both! Now, AA was Ty's dream school-- it's one of the most competitive and distinguished architecture schools in the world, and so when he received his acceptance letter the other day we both went into shock! I was actually in the shower in the morning when I suddenly hear Ty pounding on my door, so I left him in (thinking he must REALLY need to go to the bathroom) and he says "I got into AA! I got into AA!" and it takes me a second to realize he means THE AA in London, but once I get it I start shrieking and screaming and running around the apartment (still naked of course) until Ty tells me to calm down and put some clothes on because I am sick and I will freeze to death (I was actually getting ready to go to student health that morning because I was so ill. Haha). So I (s0rt of) calm down, but it takes about four days for me to realize what this means-- that Ty and I might be moving to LONDON next year!

At first I thought that it was a huge honor but that Tyler and I couldn't possibly afford to go there. However, over the last few days Ty and I have been doing lots of calculations and trying to figure out whether this might actually be a possibility...and more and more it is looking like we might actually be able to do this! This weekend we've been looking over some of the financial aid information that they sent to Ty, and it looks like they have a few different options to help students with the cost of schooling, including something called a bursary, which helps pay for a semester of school. After looking everything over, and considering our personal finances and loans, I've told Ty that if he gets the bursary, we can definitely go. He's working on the application as we speak and he is going to send it in tomorrow! So please, please, PLEASE pray for us-- this bursary could make the difference between us going or not, so any prayers you can send our way would be greatly, greatly appreciated!

Anyways, I don't know if that's really big news to you guys, but just a day or so ago Tyler and I realized that this might actually happen-- that we might actually be moving to London in September! And honestly-- tyler works SO hard and he is such a generous, selfless person that I can't help but feel that this is his opportunity to do something amazing and I just pray it will all work out. But yeah, in the meantime I have composed a mental list of reasons why moving to London for a year would be awesome that I feel the need to right down to remind myself in case I start to feel like a chicken again about moving to a foreign country. Here is my list, in no particular order:

1) Tyler and I both really, really wanted to do study abroad but never got to as part of our undergraduate degree. I didn't do it because Ty and I were already doing a long-distance relationship and I was worried about putting added pressure on our relationship by going for months and months at a time without being able to see eachother. Ty also wanted to study abroad when I moved out here, but financially it looked like it just wasn't in the cards for us.

2) I need to get a job and work full-time anyway, so why not do it out in London? It would be a great cultural experience even if I was doing something completely unrelated to graphic design, and since it is only for a year it wouldn't set me back very far.

3) If we were living in London we would be the same distance from Paris as we are now from Seattle! We could go to PARIS on the weekends! PARIS!

4) The AA is Tyler's dream school...he would get an AMAZING education and it would make him so, so happy to go there!

5) School starts in September, so Tyler and I could go work and stay with my parents for the summer and not have to worry about moving right away-- we could save some money and look for jobs in London and have a little time to get our ducks all in a row instead of having to find a job right now so that we can move as soon as school gets done in May. I am going to miss my family like crazy if we end up moving somewhere out of state for grad school, so having this time to spend with our families before we have to move is a very serious consideration for Tyler and I.

6) And a BIGGIE - Trish's wedding! I really, desperately want to be able to be there for my best friend during the most special day of her life, and I would love nothing more than to be in Lake Tapps for a few months beforehand so I could be a proper bridesmaid and not have to fly back in forth from say, Arizona or California for the bridal showers, bachelorette party and wedding. Not having to leave until September would give me plenty of time to spend with Trish and the opportunity to be there for all of the wedding events instead of just some of them.

7) Ty and I are young and married, but do not have children yet. I've always fantasized about living in Europe for a year so that we could travel all over and go all the places that would take too much time to do in one trip. An opportunity like this is probably never going to present itself again-- and the timing is perfect. If not now, when?

Anyways, these are some of my thoughts on everything! For the meantime I guess we will just have to wait and see! But please, if you can, send some prayers our way! :)