Come on Christmas!

Although our Thanksgiving festivities are not yet over (tomorrow we'll celebrate Thanksgiving with Levi's dad), we put Christmas lights on our house this afternoon. It was a beautiful day and we were afraid that if we didn't take advantage of it, we might get stuck putting up the lights in the cold. I've also started putting up decorations inside, but will wait to unveil those after we get our live Christmas tree next weekend. 

Sew Cool

I've been working on a huge sewing project lately for a certain little boy's Christmas present and after watching me the other night, Levi decided he'd like to learn how to sew on a machine. I wasn't brave enough to let him work on my project, but I gave him some scrap fabric to practice. He kept saying he wanted to make a sock despite my insisting that those are actually knitted, not sewn. Right now he's just learning the basics, but I wouldn't be surprised if he whips out a sock-shaped piece of material soon. I'll keep you updated.

Starbucks anyone?

Until lately, the fact that Levi gets a free pound of Starbucks coffee or tea each week as an employment benefit hasn't been a problem. However, as of late, the pounds and pounds of coffee and tea he has been accumulating have resulted in quite the stockpile. Since he's the only one in the house who drinks either of them, it takes awhile for him to make a dent in even just one pound of either. We've resorted to storing these pounds of coffee and tea on the top ledge of our cabinets in the kitchen for lack of other storage room. Now it's starting to look like we're starting a franchise in our house! If anyone would like a free pound of coffee or tea, please let us know. We would be happy to share!

Rebuttal:

I don't feel like Emily properly captured the beauty of the equalette in her last post. You see, by taking my cordolette (the thin little blue rope in the pictures) and doubling it up, it makes two loops of cordolette that can then be attached to two, three, or even four pieces of gear using two clove hitches and a figure-eight-on-a-bight. Because the power point is fixed, you never have to tie it while on the route and you don't have to use a figure-eight-on-a-bight. This gives you all the multidirectional advantages of a sliding X configuration but without the scary lock-up effect and with the ability to use more pieces of pro. It also has the lightweight, simple nature of a cordolette anchor, but without the sacrifice in multi-directional capability of a cordolette anchor. It's a win-win situation, you see. 

Anchor yourself

Yes, this really happened. This is what I kept telling myself yesterday when I got home from work and found Levi practicing building newly learned rock climbing anchors ON OUR ENTERTAINMENT CENTER and later on our bookshelf. Now, since marrying Levi I've noticed that he likes to occasionally pull out his climber gear and organize it or practice knots, etc. just because he loves climbing so much. However, this was a whole new level for me:

22 Years Young

Today's been a great birthday. This morning, Levi made me cinnamon rolls before work. Then, my best friend, Crystal, stopped by to surprise me with chai from Starbucks. It has become a tradition to surprise each other with Starbucks the morning of our birthdays and I really love that.

At work today, the office took me out to lunch at Tarahumara's, the best mexican food restaurant in Norman. It was delicious and only took an hour (instead of the normal 1.5-hour office lunches). Everyone also signed a card for me in which my boss wrote: "Happy birthday! We're glad you're here with us. Hey - we're growing old together!" I was a little surprised by her sentiment considering I'm only 22 and there are about 30 years of difference between us.

This evening, Levi took me to dinner at BJ's where I was surprised by a table full of friends. I did not at all expect such a surprise, but it was really great to share today with good friends. Also, Levi finished the birthday countdown today and here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

Birthday Countdown

Here's a picture of the birthday countdown Levi created for me a few days ago. Each day, he pulls off a number and somehow when I get home from work every day, more "Happy Birthday" post-its have found their way to the wall. My birthday is in three days and I'm not sure there's room for 3 more days of post-its!

Emily: I don't think Regis ever ages.
Levi: Yeah, I think he's kind of like a Twinkie.

Belated NYC Pics

Here are a few of our favorite pictures from our trip to NYC a couple of weeks ago. Jake has more on his camera, and once we get those from him I'll post more. If you'd like to see all of our pictures from the trip, check out my Facebook photo album here.

Levi always got excited to see NYFD stuff

Getting ready to go see Billy Elliot on Broadway

The Registry Room where all immigrants waited to hear their fate on Ellis Island.

Big News

Levi passed the Oklahoma City Fire Department physical test yesterday! Now he has an interview with them on November 16 (my birthday). We're really excited and are even more encouraged by the fact that Levi's mom, Sharie, randomly met an ex-assistant chief from OKC named Tony on an airplane and he agreed to help Levi all he could. When Levi talked to him yesterday, Tony made sure he had the correct spelling of Levi's name so he could put in a good word, plus he invited Levi to come over next week for a practice interview. Since Tony was on the interview panel for 10 years, he should really know how to help Levi prepare! While it looks like Levi has a great chance, we don't want to get our hopes up too high. We continue to covet your prayers as we move through this process.

Back from The Big Apple

Levi and I finally made it back from NYC late last Sunday night and I’ve been recuperating from our trip home ever since. If you ever go there to see the New York Marathon, don’t make plans to leave the same day. When we booked our flight home, we didn’t realize Levi’s dad would be starting the race so late. Most marathons start early, about 6 a.m., but since there were so many people at this marathon, there were multiple start times and his dad happened to get the 10 a.m. start. Our flight left at 6:25 p.m. and we didn’t find his dad in the crowd after the marathon until 3:30 p.m. This didn’t seem to be too big of a problem because we had planned to allow two hours to get to the airport, which was only a 15-minute cab ride away from the apartment where we were staying, or so we thought.

When we tried to call to reserve a cab, they said they weren’t reserving them in our area (one block from Central Park) until 7 p.m. that night. We didn’t let that deter us; we just decided to hail a cab. No big deal – they do it all the time in movies. I have to say that hailing a cab in Manhattan after the Marathon ends in Central Park is a nightmare. All but one of the cabs were full shuttling marathoners to their hotels, and the one empty one refused to drive us out to the airport. At this point we started to panic.

It was 4:45 and we had about an hour and a half before our flight left. We decided to take the subway to Grand Central Station because we knew there would be cabs there. Unfortunately, the subway took twice as long to get there because it stopped longer at each stop for all the people. We finally got to Grand Central Station and got a cab to the airport about 5:50. By the time we got through all the traffic to the airport, we walked in the airport doors to the sound of the intercom saying “Levi and Emily Wilkins, this is your final call, please proceed to the gate immediately.” We had no boarding passes and hadn’t been through security. We felt so defeated because we had worked so hard to make it on time. Thankfully, they were able to put us on standby on the next flight, which conveniently still made our connection in Dallas. We finally got home about 12:30 that night after our good friends Ann and Trent picked us up at the airport.

Despite our travel frustrations, we had a great time in NYC. We were able to cram most of the tourist attractions into the short 2.5 days we were there. We saw the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Ground Zero, Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, the famous Wall Street Bull, and got in a full day of shopping on Fifth and Madison Avenues. I’m already looking forward to going back next year when Levi will be running the marathon!