I hope you guys are having a wonderful weekend. Yesterday was a pretty lazy day for us but today I got my clean on in preparation for a visit from my best friend in Washington on Thursday. Can’t wait!

steph

First of December, packages started arriving in the mail…I didn’t have time to put on shoes! Present!

I bought my first pair of snow boots. Anytime I came across snow before, I had to barrow someone’s old, worn in, straight out of the 70s boots with odd length shoes laces. And trust me, the length of shoes laces matter. Size matters.

What was the first thing I do in these boots? I shoveled snow for the first time. Sweating in 20 degree weather doesn’t feel right.

Ryan let me open my Christmas present early. I know my finger isn’t on the shutter button this is THE moment it came out of the box. Pre-instructions knowledge.

I walked to the park with my new shiny camera and took pictures. Although this was a quick shot with my phone. You can check out pictures I took with this camera here and here.

Instead of a tree, we had a Christmas nook.

I am happy to announce that I got a job!! I work at Ryan’s office; his boss offered me an assistant/office manager position. I like that we have a lot of lunches together and go visit him whenever want. It’s lovely. And we carpool, which is amazing because we currently only have one car. Here is the view from my room.

For the first Christmas ever, I mailed out holiday cards. I bought them from Wit & Whistle. It was cute with an Owl on a tree and said “hoo hoo hoo”. Anyway…they were a hit.

Right before I left, I visited the salon. I love my hairstylist and salon. No after pictures, but hey, you know what I look like.

I packed the best rolly of my life. I fit so much crap into my new pretty carry on! I wanted to take to make a list but found time didn’t allow. But it would have won awards.

The morning of my flight, I woke up at 4am, to walk into a fresh 8 inches of snow to the bus stop.

Later that day, I flew in a 13 row plane to Missoula Montana where I sat in a window seat with a piece of garbage window. It made for a shitty picture. Exhibit A:

When I arrived, my aunt made fresh almost roca and I got to devour the crumbs. Best part of my trip.

Lastly, I enjoyed my charismatic nephew playing (sort of) the piano.

steph

I love data. I enjoy scouring Google Analytics and not to over analyze the number of readers I may or may not have but I like to look at graphs and percentages and pie charts, and interpret what they mean for me and my blog and my readers. Here are some numbers for 2011 (although not really since I only installed Analytics in June of last year).

Demographic//

Location-Country:

• United States 64.01%
• Canada 4.44%
• United Kingdom 4.11%
• less than 2% for the remaining countries

Location-City:

• Seattle, WA 8.01% (my hometown-ish)
• Orange Park, FL 4.84% (Ryan’s family-ish)
• Glendale, CA 2.87% (where we lived for 3 years before Denver)

Behavior//

New Vs. Returning:

• 71.92% New Visitors
• 28.08% Returning Visitors

Technology//

Operating System:

• Windows 55.23%
• Mac 26.94%
• Linux 10.28%
• Mobile 7.48%
• Playstation 3 (WTF?) .07%

Browser:

• Mozilla/Firefox 36.69%
• Chrome 25.91%
• Safari 20.30%
• Internet Explorer** 14.26%

Traffic Sources//

Sources:

• Google/Organic 44.14%
• Direct 18.30%
• Cameron Plus Whitney 11.95%
• Feedburner/feed 5.64%

Search Keywords: growling steph, interesting tattoo, yann black, post secret, barcelona album, game of thrones chart, books of adam, 30 days of lists

What do your numbers look like?

steph

**If I know you personally and you’re using IE, please tell me and I will help wash away your sins.

But, the ones that actually turned out were indeed all posed pictures. The candid ones were either blurry, or dark, or didn’t look good to me for whatever reason. It’s obvious I still need practice with indoor photos.

This picture is my favorite. I accidently double exposed it as it was the last frame on the film. One is a posed picture and the other isn’t with a beautiful stream of Christmas tree lights. I love it.

This was my best action shot. My older cousins were taking turns throwing the little cousins on the couch. Tthey loved it. As you see in my cousins face here.

On our way from one Uncle’s house to another on Christmas Day, we were asked to grab some vodka. The only place that was open was a little local tavern. While my uncle ran in, my aunt and I ran across the street and trespassed onto some lady’s property (that was inside her house near a window but didn’t see us) and ran onto her small dock to snap a few pictures of Flathead Lake. Because we jumped out of the car in a panic, when we go to the dock, I didn’t think to adjust my shutter and/or aperature before snapping pictures so these photos got way too much light.

To be honest, I’m not even sure what I did wrong here. This was right in the middle of a strand okay pictures. Although I kinda like it.

Overall, being in Montana for 9 days was too many. I love and enjoy my family’s company but there was a point where I didn’t want to be there any more. I wanted to sleep in my bed, lounge on my couch, watch my television. The flight from Denver to Missoula is only 1 hr and 45 mins so I am eager to fly up there for 3 day weekends more often instead of one 9-day trip in almost 2 years.

Also, we went skiing and I filmed one of my runs. It’s almost 9 minutes long so I want to cut it down before I show it you. I haven’t been skiing in years and I felt like it came back pretty quickly. Like riding a bike.

steph

steph

I usually don’t do New Year’s Resolutions but I would like to set some goals for myself instead. Here’s a list of goals I’d like to accomplish for 2012:

1. Blog more – I don’t blog regularly or often and I’d like to change that. I’d like to get on a schedule and stick to it. I have a moleskin laying around that I’m going to turn it into my blog post ideas book. Last year I posted 111 entries and I’d like to surpass that this year.
2. Exercise regularly – Before I started my new job {oh ya! I got a job!! More on that later}, I exercised 3 days a week and went to a yoga class one day a week. Since starting work, I love sleep too much to exercise in the morning and too tired and hungry to exercise at night. But I got to fit it in there somewhere. Not to mention that my back has been killing me daily, and exercise will help that. I haven’t felt 100% since the accident and I’d like for that chapter in my life to be over with (it’s been over a year now…).
3. Cook and Bake more – I cook sometimes and I bake even less. I’d like to get in the habit of cooking meals more regularly and trying new recipes at that. Baking takes me a long time because I’m slow and precise but before anything is even in the oven, my back hurts. Which leads me back to goal #2.
4. New blog design from scratch – I feel like I understand HTML pretty well and CSS only enough to make things look nice. But I’d love to learn how to create code from nothing.
5. Visit family & friends – Last year, I didn’t really visit anyone. We stayed with Ryan’s parents for those two months during the summer before moving to Denver, but I wouldn’t call that a visit, more like an extended stay. I did drive to Las Vegas to spend time with my Aunts and cousin for a girls weekend. But I think that’s it. Oh, I almost forget I spent last week in Montana. So that’s 2 trips to my family and 1 to Ryan’s. I don’t think that’s enough. More trips!

Here is a picture I snapped with my phone while I was out skiing with the family. Here is my cousin and me on the chair lift.

steph

It was successful in that it was unsuccessful and I’m learning from my mistakes.

First off, none of the pictures from inside my home turned out because I had the aperture set to N instead of B. Apparently, N doesn’t stand for night time, quite the opposite. B is for night time and N is for day time. So all my pictures inside were too dark and didn’t turn out at all. Huge bummer.

However, some of my outside pictures are quite beautiful. Another lesson I learned was to advance the wheel properly, or remember to advance the wheel at all. As you probably suspected, I had a lot of double exposures and even one triple exposure. Sad face.

Some of these were taken in our backyard and the rest were taken at a park close by.

steph

There was a time where I was feeling depressed and frustrated with my situation back in December of 2007 (4 year ago, yowza!). I decided to take a week off of work and drive the 8 hours from Seattle to Missoula by myself to spend time with my grandma Betty (on my Mom’s side). She told me the whole story of how her and her soul mate met, which I’ve only heard referenced but never got to hear the whole thing.

My grandma went to college in Whittier, California and this was during the war. Only one friend had a car where her family got gas coupons sparingly to regulate gas use. The day that they received the gas coupons, her and her friends piled into the car and went out on the town. One of those nights, through some friends, she met Lloyd, the man she would love and marry.

They dated a while then he asked her to marry him. Of course she said yes and they were engaged. Fast forward to the end of WWII, Lloyd was driving her home after a evening of celebration when their car was hit but another car full of drunken sailors. Lloyd was okay with a few bumps and bruises but my grandma was in terrible condition. She was in the hospital for quite a long time. She missed too much of that quarter of school, so her mother asked her to come home and gain her health back. So she went home to Montana, and she never went back to college, or to California. After several months, my great grandmother demanded to send the ring back. And she did.

She finally recovered and life went on. She met and married my grandpa Herb and had 3 girls. Many years later they divorced and she was by herself for a while. Around 1972, she ran in to Lloyd in Montana. Like her, he married and had children as well. Also like my grandma, he was divorced. They rekindled their love and finally got married. They lived happily ever after until he died at an early age in 1983.

She has his love notes on her nightstand and wears her wedding ring to this day. She loved him very much and she said they were lucky to have that time together.

This story convinced me that I deserved better and I decided to get out of the relationship I was in. I knew I could find someone to be with where love transcended time. And I am so glad I did because I truly believe I have that now.

steph