i find rainboots silly

I'm not sure who started this trend but I'm fascinated by it. I like to tell myself it's only happening in Seattle because it does indeed rain a lot during the winter here. However, I doubt this is true. Besides, it rarely rains hard enough to make significant puddles in Seattle, making rain boots slightly less necessary than the trend would suggest.

Some of these boots are cute. For me they are too cute. I appreciate a pattern now and then, but sometimes rainbows and polka dots are simply to much for me. If I HAD to wear rain boots, like say, if I was in 3rd grade and my mother made me, I would probably pick out some cute ones. Maybe even colorful stars patterned ones like these.

However, I cannot for the life of me understand this new development in the trend that I noticed. It started with the cute ones, but now suddenly I'm seeing boots that in my hometown were often referred to as s%$&-kickers. This I do not understand. Seriously consider the two pairs of boots below:















One of these pairs is from Farm & Fleet, price $21.99. One is from Norstroms, price $98. This is craziness. They're both ugly. Waterproof yes, but fashionable?

I think I'll just stick to getting my feet wet. It happens about twice a year so I don't think I need a special shoe for it. I don't even remember to grab an umbrella when it rains, much less change my shoes.

P.S. If you plan to try this look, be sure to tuck your jeans under the boots. It would be silly not to.

lazy hazy crazy winter days

Adrian and I spent our winter break flying around to see family and friends. We figured we'd have at least one airport mishap, and I think we got our fair share.

Flight 1: Canceled flight, fly standby an hour later.
Flight 2: Uneventful.
Flight 3: Snow in Chicago forces plane into holding pattern. Land in Columbus, OH to refuel. Call Meghan for backup plan to get to Chicago. Arrive in Chicago on plane 3+ hours late.
Flight 4: Serious x (turbulence+nose congestion)=unhappy Ana

So those are the flights, what happened in between?

We spent two days in Chicago. We stayed with my friend Kristin from undergrad, in her cute apartment furnished entirely with IKEA (she works there). Her apartment was right by the El, so in the morning my "snooze alarm" was the trains. I'd say to myself, "I'll get up after two more trains go by." While there, we hit the Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum. We loved the train exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry (especially because it modeled Seattle). The Field Museum had a map exhibit that I wanted to see. It was pretty great, but then again I absolutely love maps. Other than museums we mostly just wandered around the city on foot, bus, taxi, and train. We went to Lou Malnati's for pizza with Kristin, Brad, Mike, Laura and her boyfriend. The pizza was amazing and Brad and I ate ourselves sick.

We spent a week in Pittsburgh at Adrian's aunt's house. I had a lot of fun meeting all his aunts and uncles and cousins and their significant others. An insane amount of people managed to find a place to sleep and enough hot water to shower and didn't even threaten to kill each other doing it. I enjoyed the time together eating, drinking, playing cards, watching movies, and shooting nerf objects at each other. We managed to get out of the house a few times. I was able to go to Walmart twice to enjoy the smell (I love that place!). Also a bunch of us went ice skating, which was fun though painful. I felt very welcomed into the whole crazy ordeal.

me in the tunnel we built

The next week was spent with my family in Northwest Illinois. The best part, according to Adrian, was the weather. Stockton had a ton of snow, and the weather was considerably colder than what we get in Seattle. Adrian was really excited the night it dropped to -1 deg. while we were driving home. I think the high for the week was in the low thirties, the day we left.

My favorite part was probably sledding with my siblings. We went out at my grandparents house and climbed the "poop-out hill." My sister was ready to quit after the first walk to the top! It's pretty exhausting. We brought the wood toboggan and a sled designed to drag a dead dear (that's all we could find to buy). The snow was really light and fluffy making for a fast and blinding ride down the hill. The sleds practically disappeared under the snow on the way down. It was great.

Jake, Vanessa, Ana, Meghan, Drew, Adrian

Most of our time in Illinois was lazy and relaxing. I did get to see my mom's side of the family, my friends from my old job at cf+a, and my best friend, Malisa. On our down time we alternated between playing in the snow making a sweet fort and warming up with movies and hot chocolate in the house.

As proof that I'm getting older, my favorite part of the holidays is seeing family and friends and not just getting presents. I would love to get to do that more often. I did get some fun presents (like my sewing machine and knife for my key chain), but I'd gladly give up all my presents for a few more days off during the year to see the people I love!

Classes started this week. The workload isn't overwhelming yet, so that makes me happy. Tonight we're celebrating Adrian's birthday (which was Thursday) by making lasagna and having some friends over for dinner.