recap

14 Big Moments of 2014

| cheriarmour

Um.  So 2014 is over?  When did that happen?

So it was a big year, for things both good and bad.  And here, in no particular order, are some of the biggies from 2014.

14.  Coco.  Coco the poodle came to us from a friend of a friend.  She’s an older dog, so she was probably not going to get adopted, so without much thought, we took her in.  It ended up being a pretty sweet deal, because she’s a sweetheart, and a joy to have.  She came to the beach with us, and visited with my mom when she was sick.

13.  We went to Fripp! This was one of my favorite memories. My friend, Kelly, invited me and Austin for a weekend. We drove down to SC, and had a blast of a weekend. One of my favorite memories of the year!

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12.  Snow, snow, snow!  Remember snowpocalyspe that rendered Atlanta crippled?  About two weeks after, Raleigh got a similar storm that left Austin stranded for hours after work.  Melanie, another friend got into a little accident.  And my current boss’s boss had to run home in the storm.

11.  I made this, than caught a stomach flu.  I’m pretty much a straight-up vegetarian, not a pescatarian now.

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10.  I modeled a little bit here and there.  I did some shoots for Headbands of Hope, did two shows for a local boutique.  I’m hoping to do some more jobs here and there to help pay off my student loans!

9.  We bought a house!  Which is kind of a relief, we had a few weird experiences renting, the latest of which was when a man tried to break into the girl’s apartment downstairs in the middle of the night to do her some sort of harm for not calling him back.  

Us the first Saturday when we came to scrub the house.
Us the first Saturday when we came to scrub the house.

8.  A close friend lost her mother to cancer.  The experience was jarring, to say the least, and a really painful reminder that our parents are getting older.

7.   We acquired a foster beagle.  After Mel’s mother passed, an older female beagle was left behind.  We are hanging onto her until she finds a new furever home.  If you’re interested….

Beagle

6.  I saw Stevie Wonder live!   And in good seats!  Stevie Wonder announced tour dates in September of 2014, and I went on the hunt to find affordable tickets, which was no easy feat.  Seriously, the scalpers had bought up all the tickets, and I was lucky enough to find tickets that only cost me about $300.  We had seats on the floor, and I feel like I can officially cross seeing one of the greats off my bucket list!

5.  I ran….far…in Vegas!  My first trip to Vegas was not some drunken slob-fest – rather – I ran an Ultra relay in Vegas with Bondi Band.

4.  I literally got my dream job.  I may have told this story here before, but if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, mother effin’ try again.  I’d had my eye on this job as a Group Fitness Director for over 3 years.  The first time I interviewed for the job, I made it through a few rounds, and didn’t get the job.  I was devastated (and remember, this is all taking place back in 2012 when my ego was already wounded from learning that jobs aren’t super plentiful), and I stayed in bed for days.  A few years, and some more professional development later, the job was open, and it sort of fell into my lap.  It worked out probably about a month before we got married.

3.  My sister got engaged, then married!  Deb and Luigi had been dating sort of on and off, and they decided, in the late spring, that they were going to make it official.  They got engaged, then married pretty quickly in South Carolina.  They celebrated with a reception just a few weeks ago.

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2.  My best friend suddenly lost his brother.  Probably one of the worst phone calls I’ve ever gotten in my life was this phone call.  Austin and I made the quick decision that the weekend of the funeral, we would drive to Philly and back to pay our respect’s to Michael’s brother.  I’ve never seen my best friend in pain like that, so it was hard, and I’m trying with everything in me to support him as best as I can through this really really trying time.

1.  We got married on August 23, 2014.  It was the most incredible day ever, and when I woke up on August 24th, I wanted to keep my eyes closed and bottle the feelings that the wedding gave me.  It was elation, happiness, and the joy of seeing old friends meet new friends all wrapped into one.  If you could shoot that feeling directly into an IV and take it, I totally would 🙂

Exit

Weekend Buzz

| cheriarmour

The weekend was absolutely, without-a-doubt, one of the busiest weekends I’ve had in forevs.  I say that all the time, but I totally mean it this time.

Anyhoo, so Friday night, I taught a Zumba ® Fitness party with two other fancy ladies, and we had an absolute blast.  I mean, I completely overdid it in the cardio department, but it was so nice to catch up with the other teachers.  The last time I saw them was at my wedding in August, so SO worth it.

After that, I headed home, and Austin and I decided to call it a night by watching a Disney movie, so we caught The Hunchback of Notre Dame on NetFlix.

Can we talk for a second about how screwed-up that movie is?

To be fair to Victor Hugo, the book ain’t no binder full of knock-knock jokes, but that is one screwed tale, and I’m not sure how or why my parents allowed me to watch it as a child.  A few highlights?

  • Referring to someone as a hunchback in general is not really encouraged.
  • When Frollo murks Quasimodo’s mother and then tries to throw Quasimodo in the well.
  • When the crowd tortures Quasimodo.
  • When Frollo is racist the entire movie.
  • When Frollo gets creepily obsessed with Esmerelda and sings an entire song about simultaneously wanting to have sex with her but feeling conflicted since he’s so racist against her people.

Those are just a few highlights.  But seriously, go back and watch it.  It’s SO creepy.

The craziest, then funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life…

So Saturday night, I was able to convince my sweet husband to take me out to sushi, and then we met some friends for drinks.  Driving around downtown, we saw this Santa bar crawl – so a TON of folks dressed up as Santa, drinking and roaming the streets.  In this one particular group, there was a young woman in a wheelchair also participating in the crawl.  Her friends were like, drunkly pushing her around, and they’d almost made it completely across when they hit the curb and she went flying out of the chair.  I made sure she was okay first (she was) before I lost it.  I have never, in my 27 years of life, seen something like that, nor have I ever laughed so hard.  To be clear, I am NOT a bad person, and I was not at all amused UNTIL I knew that the drunky monkey in the wheelchair was fine.

Following that, I went for a trail run in which I was still intoxicated from a holiday party the night before. Because the trail was actually pretty challenging, I fell (which means it was a real good time), but managed to not break my nose.  Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, because if I were to break my nose, I could get a free nose job and get a nose more like my sister’s.

Now, how was your weekend?

How was your weekend?

| cheriarmour

So for your personal enjoyment, I will share with you a few of the pics me and Kimmy went through after my brother’s graduation on Thursday night.

photo 2We were very active kids.  Animals in fact.  There were like two other pictures of us doing things on the swingset that are not OSHA approved.

photo 3That’s me in the mask,  I had a sore throat when my brother was born, so I had to wear this so I wouldn’t get the baby sick.

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Preciouso.

photo 5And lastly, my brother as a sheriff.  How cute right?

Anyhoo, so this weekend was really good.  I was not as productive as I would have liked to have been, but I got a ton of rest, and woke up Sunday morning almost at 10.  I have not done that literally in forevs.

Saturday, I went and checked out a performance of Marcus Anderson, a pretty sweet saxophonist (did I spell that correctly?!) The really cool bit about him is that I’ve been watching him for like 4 years when he came down to regularly perform where I worked in graduate school.  I have semi-fangirled him over the past few years, and now he’s playing with Prince.

tumblr_mi2qao3J2M1rdnvweo1_400Prince guys.

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I need to get my life together.

From there, we headed to Buffalo Wild Wings in Cary where the female server treated us like garbage. But the dranks was poppin!

And from there, I had a semi-lazy Sunday.

We started the day off by binge-watching 3 episodes off Orange is the New Black, and then I cleaned, and topped off the day with some time in the woods on an almost 4-mile trail run.

photo 1And since you asked so nicely, here’s a pic of my poodle.  We were in full-cuddle mode, which includes me talking in strange voices.

How was your weekend?