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Tea Gee Eye Eff.

I love me some Friday's!

Linking up with Lauren today for five of my favorites from this week!

1.) Badminton

My mom bought a backyard badminton set for us to play with this summer, so we decided last weekend we needed to start breaking it in. Namely, just the rackets and the birdies; we didn't mess with the net, or the rules for that matter either. Which is a good thing since we were all over that backyard. 

Case in point:

Things got cuh-ray-zee when shuttlecocks started landing in the tree. And on the roof.

And because I'm a mature 26 year old I used the word 'shuttlecock' at every chance I

 got all afternoon.

2.) Gallery wall.

I finally finished it.

Boom.

I think it turned out OK, no?

3.) Fooshaw

What's fooshaw? Per Doug and Wolf, a local sports talk radio show, it's the thing you say when you don't know what to say. And I totally won a fooshaw t-shirt this week. And I'm pretty dang pumped about it!! I never win anything! 

Yay me!

4.) Financial Peace University

Nate and I officially graduated from Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University this week!

If you've never taken this class or never heard of Dave Ramsey, you should totally look him up, look up the class, look up his books, and his website.

Like, now.

It's one of the best things my husband and I have gone through together; we absolutely enjoyed every week!

5.) Downtown

As I have mentioned before, I work in downtown Phoenix, right across the street from the capital building (pictured above), the Senate and House of Representatives, and some other neat things within the Government Mall. Since the weather's been so nice lately, and in an effort to avoid the office chair for literally eight hours a day, my friend and coworker Quan and I have started taking walks. A couple a day, and I'm totally diggin' them. 

We take a different route every time...and every time I hope to run in to Jan. You know, Governor Brewer..we're totes on a first name basis...but so far I haven't run into her loitering in the middle of the Government Mall anywhere. And why would I? She's probably got her hands full, pissing off someone new at the legislature anyway.

That's just Jan being Jan I suppose.

Quan and I walked over to Wesley Bowlin Memorial Plaza this week and there's a new monument that just opened on the Bill of Rights, and it's easily one of my new favorites!

There's a pillar for each of the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution, and the writing is inscribed in the stone.  

Love.

Love.

Love.

Honorable mention this week goes out to my bro-in-law, as it was his birthday!

If he gets mad at me for this pic, I don't even care. I told him to smile and this is the smile he gave me.

Sorry Dan.

Anyway, Dan was so thrilled about turning another year older that we couldn't even make it through the birthday song before he crashed.

Poor guy didn't even get to blow out his candles.

Just kidding.

He totally did.

A birthday without candles would be a tragedy. 

Happy Birthday Dan!!!

And happy Friday bloggy friends!! 

Weekend-ish Update

I would just like to start this post off by saying...

Black smoke, no Pope. 

Does this have anything to do with what I'm going to write about?

No. 

Do I care about electing a new Pope?

Not really.

Does the word "Pope" need to be capitalized? 

I don't really know. 

Truth be told I just really like the sound of it.

Black smoke, no Pope.

Moving on.

This weekend I became a first-time aunt to Miss Miley Marie, and I'm thrilled about it!

I asked my sister-in-law, Jessica if it would be mean if I didn't want to hold her...you know, cause I'm afraid I might break it her. 

After some convincing, and after I saw her adorable little face, I just couldn't resist...

Granted, I didn't let Jessica go anywhere...I don't dare hold a baby unsupervised.

Good news is I didn't do any damage and Miley is still in one piece. 

...I think I'm off to a good start with the auntie thing.

We celebrated another birthday last weekend too; one of my best friends, Kayla from The Lindholm Life, her daughter turned two with an adorable Minnie Mouse themed birthday party.

 

We got little Kenzie a Minnie Mouse stuffed animal as a gift, and I'm thinking it was a hit after I got this text from Kayla:

I think I may be better at this kid thing that I thought I was. 

I didn't drop my brand new niece, and we hit the nail on the head when picking out a gift for 

a two year old. 

Bonus points for me.

In other news, I've spent the last few months trying to track down a (free) wood pallet, so I could make a cool wall shelf out of it. You wanna know what I stumbled on last week, in my own garage?? 

You guessed it.

A wood pallet.

What's the saying..if it were a snake it would've bit me? 

At any rate, I totally got myself a cool wall shelf now.

Can't wait to get it all nice and decorated!

Lastly, I found a couple tweets this week that gave me a good lol.

Ah Professor Snape, you're funnier on Twitter than I remember you being in the books...

I like it.

Ketchup I

The following series of posts are my attempt to catch up with blogging.

See what I did there? Ketchup, catch up...

Cause if you look at my last post, I'm pretty sure it was like, from the 14th or something.

Whoops.

Don't judge me if I go all the way back to Halloween K?

I'll start with a few randoms.

Girls night with my dear friends Stephanie and Sarahita 

We got together for a night filled with Pita Jungle, Moscato, chit-chat, and as Stephanie calls, "the best worst movie ever," Howard the Duck.
It was indeed one of the best worst movies I've seen.
If you decide to watch it...don't say I didn't warn you.

Christmas crafting with Charlene and Sarah

We crafted for a good a good 9 hours, ate some pizza, introduced my labs Maycee and Gunther to Charlene's golden doodle Henry, and Sarah's lab Joey, and then crafted some more.
It was glorious.

ASU beat UofA in this years Territorial Cup rivalry game
Go Devils!

And that's all I'll say about that since nobody likes a gloater.

I learned how to shoot a bow

Now I'm that much closer to being as cool as my husband.
I sort of sucked my first time out, but with any luck, if I get good enough, I can hunt with a bow instead of a rifle on our javelina hunt in February.
Then my cool factor might almost be on the same level as Nate's.

More Christmas crafting with the BFF Charlene

What we didn't finish during our first round (see above), we finished the following weekend. Which is awesome for two reasons:
1.) More Christmas crafts to decorate with
2.) I got to see Charlene TWO weekends in a row.
That's what I call a win-win.

And last but not least (big sigh)...
I got a Twitter

I'm still on the fence about this one.
I feel a little bit like a sell-out since I was always so anti-Twitter. I feel like, who am I to think that people would be interested in what I have to say? Not that I have a lot to say, but I wanted to get one in order to promote the blog a little more. ...which actually might make me more of a sell-out now that I think about it...but whatever.
I can't guarantee it will be riveting, but you should totally follow me
@MissRiss0409

Remaining Ketchup: Eric Church, Halloween dog costumes and awesome Thanksgiving family photos
Get ready, they're a doozy.