Diane’s World

Howdy world.

So it’s been forever since I”ve  used one of my top three bands as the song of the day. So, have some Postal Service Good Washington band for my first post from living in Washington again!

So I’m really really really sore right now… I worked out yesterday and got my butt kicked. I feel like such a weakling! So currently I am being lazy on sarah’s tempur-pedic mattress.

Wow, I want to steal this mattress.

No really, it’s amazing. Anyone who has a whole lot of extra money to spare should buy me a tempur-pedic mattress.

Anyways, lots has been going on. I’ve been getting used to living here in Washington. I have been mostly staying at my sister’s house to help out with crowd control and help out around the house.

A few days after arriving, we had Ethan and Patrick’s joint birthday party. As fun as having 9 kids wreaking havoc in a small house can be, the adults were soooo exhausted after this small ordeal.

The theme was star wars.

Yup that was a darth vader piñata. Amazing, I know.

Here’s all four kids in their star-wars related outfit:

And if it isn’t obvious, this is Darth Vader, R2D2, Yoda and an Ewok. I love them.

Anyways, since Sarah now has season passes to the Point Defiance Park Zoo, one day we decided to escape the house and play in the zoo with the little ones.

Here is Spider-Sam.

And Spider-Pat

Little Liam got to just chill the entire time. Isn’t he cute?

Patrick attacked the artwork. It’s kind of tradition to do so.

Sammy the snail.

Sammy the anemone.

Ahh! The Flanagan clan is being eaten by a shark!

Me, Ethan and Patrick riding the merry-g0-round

I wanted to have some fun too! So I did.

Well I’m loving it in Washington. There are some things in life going on that is making life extra happy. I especially love being closer to my nephews

They make life so wonderful for me… most of the time.

Also I’ve been working very hard on my graduate school applications. It’s a pain that they make you pay in order to most likely be rejected. Bah! But I feel like I have a very strong portfolio this year, and I’m very excited and proud to show it to the five schools I am applying to!

Yup, I’m really hoping that this will be my year to get noticed. Despite what happens, I am feeling more confident than usual. Hooray!

I was also the recipient of some absolutely beautiful flowers this week. Just thought I’d share.  They are so pretty!!! And make me smile every time I see them

I have some other pictures on my phone that I wanted to share, but the computer I”m using doesn’t seem to want to cooperate! Sooo… that’s all folks!

Life is going great! All I really need now is to finish grad application and get a job finalized! Besides that, life should be running rather smoothly!

Well I hope you all are having a fantabulous week!

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Howdy world!

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I’m now in….

WASHINGTON!!!

Yup!

It was three days of driving, and I was not about to do it by myself.

So I enlisted this little munchkin to help me out. Doesn’t the corn make her look good? She should consider moving to Iowa. Yes?

I made a few improvements on my own looks as well. I think the country bumpkin life is brilliant on me:

We were at pumpkinland… a wonderful land of pumpkins and corn. And a huge corn maze… it took us about an hour to get in and out of it.

Look Ma! I’m tall! And I didn’t cheat at all! It’s not like I’m wearing 2.5 inch boots at alL!

Anyways our roadtrip started on a Tuesday after I showed Michaele around the wonderful world of Iowa. Here is what our trip looked like:

We decided to do it in three days.

On day one we saw the missouri river in South Dakota. I’m sure Michaele and I have actual pictures of the river, but I think that this sign was much more fun. Uh oh… there are snakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We then took a nice little detour to Mount Rushmore. Once again I am more fascinated by the signs than the amazing scenery… um.. Yeah.

It was a little chilly. Poor Michaele’s ears. Poop.

But we did help out Jefferson a little bit… I bet that booger has been bugging him for ages. Thanks for your civil service, Michaele.

So yeah… we decided to try a self-portrait at the mountain. We had several attempts.

This was our best one:

This is what happens when you let me try to take a good picture:

And this is what happens when a park ranger takes pity on us and offers to take the picture for us:

We didn’t think it was as cool as what we could do. Our photos are the bestest.

In South Dackotah they speelll reall gud.

On our second day, the most memorable pit stop we made was when I saw a sign for a restaurant called “The Purple Cow”. My father used to always tell me this poem:

“I never saw a purple cow

I never wish to see one

But if I saw a purple cow

I’d rather see than be one!!!”

So I made sure to take full advantage of this kodak moment.

In Montana, my dearest Chimichanga hit 80,000 miles! And we were going 80 at the time! How amazing is that? We even made sure to sing “Happy Birthday” to little Chimi. I’ll buy him new Washington License plates in honor of this event.

On the last day of our trip, we stopped at a scenic outlook somewhere in eastern washington.

I wasn’t really paying attention to it though… I think I was really sick of just being in a car by now.

And I think Chimichanga was sick of traveling too.

The only way to cure this problem? Ummm…..

I claim insanity.

I got home to finding out that I have no clue how to turn off my parent’s home security system, and it ended up in me having to explain to a pair of cops what I was doing in a house that doesn’t belong to me. Eeek.

I politely asked them not to arrest me. Hooray that they didn’t!

Anyways, it’s late, and we need to sleep! This is our first night in a long time that we don’t have to wake up early!!! Woopeeeeeeeee! And I still have to unpack the car tomorrow. Rar.

Have a wonderful week everybody!!!!

The Deedles

(and Michaele )

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Howdy world!

Just a quick update on one small thing:

I’ve been continuing with my new hobby… yarn dying, and I thought I’d show my last three attempts!

Attempt #1: Wanted to make a “fall” theme yarn. Used red, brown, yellow and gold dyes. Everything went well… except that the “brown” dye really was a deep olive green. Poo! here are the photos for that one!

These yarns were kettle dyed, which means I put the yarn into a pot and poured the dyes strategically over the yarn.

Result? Something rather amazing. I named this one “scarecrow”

I gave this one to a resident in my nursing home who is learning how to knit.

Attempt #2: David Lammers, a friend from college, decided to come by and see how my yarn dyeing goes. Being under the stress of being closely supervised, I kind of fumbled through a second attempt of dyeing.

Color choice: Yellow, blue turquoise. I made a bad mistake though, and threw it into hot water when finished, turning the entire skein…

green. Wah wah wah.

And being dumb and not using gloves, my fingers turned…

green. Poo.

And then I got it tangled, and david got to spend a few hours being unsucessful with untangling it

Yeah…so it’s still tangled so there aren’t very good pictures of it.

Wanting to have some kind of success today, I did attempt #3…

Sarah chose out the colors: red, gold and yellow. Instead of using a pot this time, I thought that this kind of dyeing would be better in a skillet.

I was absolutely amazed with how beautiful this yarn turned out!

looks kind of like a nectarine! Now i’m craving peaches, darn it!

Anyways, i’m so tired. I had to work 3am-2pm today, and I’m still really wiped out from it! Have a wondeful week, folks, I’ll update again soon!

Love, the deedles

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Hey world…

so I realized in the past month that a lot more people read this blog than I thought.

so this is me updating.

Hello.

The song is Glee’s version of “Take a bow” by Rhianna.  Glee is a new show.. that’s awesome. It’s the funniest show I’ve seen in a long time.

So… wow. Was July 10th really my last time updating? I don’t even know where to begin with my life since then.

Like I started a really fun vitamin regime:

Yup. Those are all my happy pills. They are supposed to keep me healthy. I’m so tired of getting sick.

Most impressive thing, though? I can now take all these pills in one gulp:

I know, be impressed.

I also have temporarily stopped running. This makes me somewhat depressed… I miss my endorphines. Really.

How did this happen?

Well, I was stupid. While I was already experiencing severe shin splints, I decided to run my first road race – a 10k. Though I managed to finish in only medium pain and a sub-hour finishing time, the next day a severe pain started in my lower calf / front ankle area.

So I’ve been doing lots of tape, ice and heating pads… but I’m saddened to announce that I am most definitely out of the marathon this year, and am having to put it off for next fall.

To cheer me up though, and as an investment into my recovery, I now own one of the most amazing shoes ever created: the Nike Lunarglide+.

I have never seen a shoe get as many good reviews as these babies… so I’m so excited to start a new relationship with them .  I ran a mile in them the other day, and was impressed with how stable yet how lightweight they are.

Not much going on in Iowa. I work a lot. And I hang out with some coworkers.

Random thought I had the other day: While packing to come home to visit Washington, I was amazed at how many products I’d have to pack with me to look like I normally do. This is what it takes:

Yes, my teenager au-naturale self would be dissappointed.

Anyways.

I suppose this would be the appropriate time to make this announcement:

I’m moving.

To Washington.

At the end of October.

And I’m scared.

With my sister getting married off and me no longer having any real ties to the corny state of Iowa, I figure it’s time to get serious about life and move back where I might actually have potential to thrive.

I’m really really sick of moving. I’m ready to just stay in one place for a while… the past 5 years of my life has been me jumping from one place to another. I forgot what it’s like to have a hometown.

So I’m moving back in with my parents until my life stabilizes a little. It’s gonna be a struggle because I’ve become very strongly individualistic since moving out. And having to figure out life

I could use prayers. Lots of them. Long ones. Feel free to throw in several flowery adjectives and pronouns.

To prepare for my move, and in order to prevent very inevitable burn out at work, I decided to take a 10-day vacation back to Puyallup to enjoy what little summer I have left.

I’ve been staying at my sister’s house and have been enjoying being surrounded by the wonderful things that are my nephews:

(that’s them in birth order – patrick, samuel, ethan and liam)

Tonight I found my old “Mr. Yuck” stickers, and passed them out.

The results were entertaining to say the least:

Besides having silly times with those little guys, I’ve had one of the busiest vacations ever. I did manage to get in sometime to go out to coffee with a few good high school friends, Hilary and Charissa:

And got to go to the fair with family and friends:

And a trip down to Portland, OR with my dad and brother, where Jonny bought an Organ, my dad did some bounce research at the Nike Store, and I survived the world largest canker sore. *ouch!*:

I even had a little time to pick up a new hobby: Yarn dyeing!

My sister, Sarah is quite the hand-crafty guru… and she often buys yarn that has been hand-dyed. We decided to give this process a try, and my very first attempt turned out brilliantly! I wasn’t expecting such beautiful, rich results on my first try!!!

This is something I would love to continue doing, so hopefully I’ll start making even nicer yarn in the future.

I guess the next step is learning how to crochet, but the idea of knitting or crocheting doesn’t sound very appeasing to me.

I’d rather dye.

Hahaa.

Anyways. There is so much going on in life… work, figuring out this moving thing, figuring out grad school applications, trying to manage money to afford the both, apply for new jobs… and my brain hurts and I’m exhausted and stressed out.

Hopefully things will be going well in the next few weeks…. I will be moving home the week of October 17th. I’ll make sure to post again before that. Going 2.5 months without a post is pretty bad. I guess I’ve just not been in the mood.

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Ok… so, I’m adding two songs of the week. The first is Iron&Wine’s “Boy With a Coin”. It’s a good song. You should listen to it. Sarah, you might even like it. It has a great music video… with dancers. Woopie! I want to learn how to dance, and I’m trying to convince my brother to take swing dancing lessons with me.  Here’s the video:

If  you still aren’t convinced, the second song (“Another Saturday Night”) is per my sister Sarah’s request, because all she listens to is oldies and celtic music. Now you have something to listen to. I sing this song to the old folks all the time… usually met with the response “Ohhh… it’s not good.” Yep. I definitely don’t have the vocal skills of my mother and two oldest siblings. Darn. I have a feeling that I’ll survive.

Anyways, it’s been quite an eventful few weeks!

Let’s start with the painful part: I got a really really bad sinus infection. I had to run 6 miles anyways, and felt like I was going to die the entire time. Yeah, it was that bad. I became quite fond of Sudafed.

I went to work the next day, and I felt my eye growing redder and redder and pus-filled. It was nasty. Yes, ladies and gents, I contracted a wonderful case of pink eye. Wanna see?

And this picture was after it had healed for two days, so this is really REALLY  good compared to what it used to be!

Here, have another picture!

The nice thing though is that the redder my eyes are, the greener the iris looked! So hooray, I had extra green eyes this week!

Well I was dying from pink eye, I decided to take a day off from work, so that I wouldn’t infect my elderly friends. Then I got this crazy idea to cook a really nice meal for myself, my sister Rachel and her fiancé, Alex.

I made… Beef Stroganoff (I found a really good recipe if anyone wants it! And I made it without mushrooms, per the request of Rachel. And me too, I guess! Yukkus!):

a delicious cucumber, onion and tomato salad with homemade dill vinagarette (this is an actual picture of it! Be proud!):

And a great Blueberry, peach and blackberry fruit salad with lime juice (also a real live photo! Woopie!):

So yup, I’m all being gourmet and everything. I was spoiled growing up with a wonderful cook for a mother, I only hope to be half as wonderful as she is!

The marathon training has been going really well! I love to run, and I look forward to my runs everyday! This Thursday my Nike+ came in the mail and I got to try it out for the first time!

I finally bought some new running shoes!!! Meet my new friend: The Air Max Moto+ 7, Livestrong editions! Aren’t they PRETTY??

Nike claims that they were made specifically to “take a beating” and feel something like running on a cloud! In the 24 hours after buying them I ran a total of 16 miles, and had no more knee pain, my arches were no longer swelling, my mile times were speedier, and I stopped a whole lot less often. They are amazing. I’m in love.

And plus, 100% of the profits went to the Livestrong foundation (go Lance!), so I can feel like I did something good for the world.

Also, this Thursday my Nike+ came in the mail! I tried it out for the first time, and I am absolutely in love with it as well.

My first run with it was a 6 mile run. Here are my stats for that run, according to the nike+:

Yup yup! If I’m running 8:41 minute miles like it says, I’m standing pretty good for a pace… in fact in marathon terms I need to slow down a bit so I don’t die by the end of the race! So that’s happy stuff.

Anyways, the Nike+ has an option where you have a “power song” – a song that when you are having trouble being motivated during your run  you push a certain button, it will play your “powersong” to help you be motivated. I’m still deciding on my own “powersong” but here is a list of possiblities. Anyone want to add to the list?

Also what happened in the past few days is the 4th of July weekend! (dang you are all getting spoiled…)

There was a cookout at Dave’s house. He had fun blowing up bottles with fireworks. Here’s Dave:

Here’s a video of Dave trying to kill everybody:

Yeah. It was great. Kind of scary, though… here’s Jeremy hiding behing his blast shield aka the garage door:

And then another friend who has keys to Dordt’s science building got us on the roof, and we watched fireworks from one of the highest points of sioux center.

And then we went back to my place and lit up Rachel and My bonfire pit:

Yup. So it was a sucessfully fun 4th of July weekend.

Anyways, I plan to finally choose and register for the marathon next week! I was for a while deciding between the Sioux City and Des Moines marathon, but I think I ultimately chose to run the Des Moines Marathon. It’s a much higher quality and organized event, and even though it’s 4 hours away, and… I now have a new motivation!

And that is… I have someone who wants to go and support me! Dave called me up and told me that he’d take the days off of work, drive with me to Des Moines, and be there at the finish line for me! I am so excited to run now that I know there will be someone who loves me at the other end!

Hooray for having such a wonderful friend! I can’t wait to road trip with him!

He’s been really supportive to me the past few weeks as I’m coping with a few personal issues. I feel like I’ve grown a lot (emotionally and spiritually) the past few weeks, and I hope that the growth continues.

ALSO a huge shout out to my BFF Michaele! Who I don’t have any pictures together with! Which is really sad! If my phone bill is really high this month, she’s the one to blame!

I bought this book on her suggestion:

Apparently she thinks my problem is that I’m too nice when it comes to relationships. So I have to learn how to be more of a …. *achem*…

Oh and I also bought this book while I’m at it:

So I’m excited to get reading. I’ll let ya’ll know how good they were once I’m done with them.

Finally (yes I’ll wrap up this post, finally)… I rearranged the decorations in my room. Yes, this is a big deal to me. But I realized I hadn’t posted any pictures of the inside of Rachel and my new house, so here are a few for those who haven’t visited us!

In the living room looking into the kitchen (I love my table. And you should too):

In the kitchen looking into the Living room:

My room from Rachel’s Room:

and from the other direction:

My germany paintings look really nice all framed and positioned together. I’m so glad that I made them:

Anyways, I officially feel like I’ve been talking for two years. I feel like there are enough pictures that some of you just might have made it this far. Congratulations if you are one of them!

So yes, life is good. I feel great.

Or as my brother would put it:

Honestly there aren’t too many things I would change about life right now. I think all the running I am doing is pumping in a very high level of endorphins into my system. So that is good. I like it.

I hope all of you are having good weeks… I’d love to hear about them if you have the time!

Much love, The Deedles

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