The last six months have been really difficult but Katie is finally arriving today! I'm so excited! I will be preparing the house for her move-in, while she is hopefully catching up on some much-needed sleep on the plane. Next, we'll be picking up our 3 new furry additions to the house: Coco the chocolate lab, Leo the fighter (my original cat) and Zoey the furball cat. Once we are able to get the animals settled, it will be time to celebrate Katie's independence, our togetherness and the new year!
I'm so excited to share my life with Katie again! There are so many times during a normal day that I'm thinking "I wish Katie could be here doing this with me." And now, she will be able to! There have been so many possibilities/opportunities in my head and now that the day is here, its time to get all of those out of my head and into real life! I'm sure I'm missing important items, but here's my current list of what I'm looking forward to, in no particular order:
* Puppy school with Coco. I hear he needs some obedience training; hopefully I can do better than I did with the Kirsch family's first dog (Autumn) or my first cat (Leo).
* Snowboarding, hopefully lots of it with an alpental pass!
* Studying together (my CS grad program and Katie's evening classes).
* Decorating our new "apartment within a house" basement.
* Being able to take driving and flying trips more readily.
* Exploring mutual homebody hobbies like: watching movies while eating popcorn and making popcorn balls, playing console and computer games, building puzzles, exploring new strategy board games...
* Perhaps some home-improvement things like a fence for Coco, shower-stool, insulating curtains...
* Exploring Seattle together, especially delicious eateries like Crepe De France!
* Putting together a sweet "office" (read: computer gaming room).
* Regulating/normalizing my schedule (and probably Katie's too).
* Going out to social events / parties as a couple.
* Beginning a new exercise plan together and sticking to it.
* Reading together; hopefully we can help each other find books to enjoy and be good about allocating time to do it.
* Cooking together and making awesome old meals like Quesadillas and stir-fry and coming up with some new meals.
* Being able to concentrate on Isilon work again.
* The possibility of creating a computer game in our spare time, with me doing the programming and Katie doing the artwork/design.
* Decreasing my phone usage!
* Starting a new exciting chapter of our lives together!