Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes!

     For those of you who are friend with me on facebook and/or instagram, you've already seen my big hair change recently. I chopped it off into a pixie cut that I absolutely love. My fabulous friend Mari Lanae has been doing my hair since high school (before all her professional training) and has never disappointed.  I've always played with the idea of super short hair in my head and decided to just go for it. And I love it. So win win.

    ALSO Tanner and I are going to be moving at the end of March! I'm pretty ecstatic, when we went to see the apartment my heart was so happy and just felt at home there. It's about 5 minutes away from where we live now which is perfect commute-wise for us. An old beautiful building, it has hardwood floors, big windows with tons of sunlight, white painted trim (and walls that we are allowed to paint omg), and a CLAW-FOOT BATHTUB, I repeat, a CLAW-FOOT BATHTUB. That was pretty much my selling point. Not to mention it's a two bedroom with a three season porch and tons of storage space. Still in a cute little neighborhood in St. Paul, it kind of just fell into our lap and all the details worked out perfectly. Oh yea, did I say that we can have pets there? Dogs and cats! This means that the Swenson family will probably be expanding soon (furry babies- not human babies yet). So that's the exciting news in our lives. Other than that life has been pretty steady with work and Tanner's school and keeping up with friends and whatnot.

Currently reading: A Feast for Crows (4th Game of Thrones book).

Currently watching: We just finished American Horror Story Season 1, and are simultaneously watching the Office.. again... for the third time now for me.

Currently working on: recovering our pillows for our couch once again. Messing around with patterns and colors. Also working on my yoga. I've joined LA Fitness and have been attending multiple yoga classes a week there along with the once a week yoga class I already take with my mom. I feel stronger and more balanced already. I also enjoy doing Zumba there, but I have yet to try other classes. Work has been pretty busy for me lately.

Currently excited about: (well other than the above mentioned) warmer weather and not having to worry about cars starting/getting stuck in the snow/-50 windchill readings. We've had a harsh winter this year, as everyone across the nation seems to have had also. I love outdoor activities and the peace of snow falling on a cozy day-off, but when you have a job that requires you to be there despite the weather conditions it adds a little more stress.

    Alright, I'm going on a rant here. I'm really tired of reading posts that a bunch of "free-spirited" 16 year olds probably wrote about their philosophy on modern society and how freaking easy it is to just let everything go and not worry about a pay check and travel the world with no looking back. It's not that simple. It's fun to dream about these things, but unfortunately we don't really have a choice in how modern society works. At this point there's a very slim chance that we'll ever all just go back to a system without money or corporations and live completely off the land in a house that we made with our bare hands from a tree freshly chopped from the forest. It's a beautiful dream, but money or the concept of money has been around for quite a while and it does indeed make the world go round. I'm not saying that you can't be adventurous and create beautiful memories all around the world, but someone's gotta pay for that plane ticket, and hotel, or even hostel. If you happen to have friends all around the world that you can stay with, that's cool too, but someone is still paying money to cover your head at night. If you want to do big, beautiful things, you are going to have to do some hard work. That's life. Even back in the day when there weren't 9-5's, people worked probably even harder than many of us do today to sustain themselves and their families and have a roof over their head and a fire in their hearth and food on their table. We still have to do that, but in a more round about way. Also, there are rewarding jobs out there that some people actually enjoy doing! Imagine that! So now we have a couple of options. You can work hard and make your dreams come true and quit freaking complaining, you can quit your job and "not worry about a paycheck" and see how long that lasts (also if you've seen Into the Wild you may realize that sometimes we are not as competent in nature survival as we'd like to think), or you can sit in your cozy home on your fancy computer and make entitled posts about it on tumblr and facebook.

End rant.

Annabelle, 6 months

     If you think I'm bad with posting pictures of my niece, just you wait until I have my own kids. Here's our little pumpkin of a niece at 6 months old. 

Silver Bay

     Our mini winter vacation concluded with a little road trip up to the North Shore. We stayed with Tanner's grandma up in Silver Bay (as we do almost every year), a beautiful little town nestled in amongst the snowy bluffs and Lake Superior. It ended up being extremely cold while we were up there, most of the days were -10 below and colder. So as you can imagine much of our time was spent inside, which was actually quite nice. Lots of HGTV, mexican train dominoes (which I WHOOPED Tanner at) and so much delicious food. Most of these photos were taken during the commute to or from there, out the car window. 

 It was hard to capture the majesty of the lake on camera, but it had steam rolling off of its waves.

Sweet deer right out side the house!

The marina.

Lukewarm car ride there and back.