Week 1

Welcome to the inaugural blog post of Aaron and Pyper’s mundane (and hopefully some not-so mundane) happenings. Since I’m a perfectionist, of course I want this to be beautifully written, full of poetic prowess and witty anecdotes. Unfortunately, the reality of life is that it will likely not be that way every time (if ever). So stick around if you’re interested in hearing some updates. No promise on the entertainment value of said updates.

Monday

Christmas was fun and awesome and nice to spend time with family, but unfortunately that came at a cost. Some strain of a winter sickness was spread around, and of course I got it and Aaron didn’t. I’d like to think it’s because I’ve also been exposed to a plethora of diseases at the hospital so I was more predisposed to getting it, but considering the fact that every time I’ve been sick over the past few years, Aaron has been just fine, I think the reality may be that Aaron just has a better immune system than I do (and that’s painful to admit haha). Long story short, I spent Monday generally feeling like trash. So of course I took advantage of the opportunity to lounge around, watch some TV, and pretend to be productive. I made quite an extensive to do list (as I tend to do) and maybe accomplished one or two of the items. I suppose I had a completely valid excuse being sick, but feeling unproductive almost makes me feel worse than being sick haha so I had to give it my best effort nonetheless. It was nice to spend time with Aaron though. A couple of our river friends stopped by in the evening (Savannah and Kelly). I guess you know you’re an adult when you don’t need an activity to enjoy being with friends. Sometimes it’s nice to just chat and catch up.

Tuesday

We spent the day running some errands. Found a floor lamp at DI and Aaron ended up doing some modifications with a few extra parts from Hobby Lobby and Lowe’s to make it a little nicer. I think it did indeed turn out quite nice, although I had to step away during the construction process because Aaron’s crafting style is a little too chaotic and imprecise for my previously-mentioned perfectionist brain. Anyway, it turned out looking really good (and was pretty cheap! If you know me, you know I love myself a good deal).

Wednesday

New Year’s Eve!! (Also my oldest brother’s birthday!) In the spirit of the holidays, we slept in. Until noon. I am not a sleeping-in kind of person usually so this was a little disorienting for me, but I’m pretty sure Aaron could sleep for 24 hours straight if he wasn’t disturbed so it was nothing too crazy for him. I got out of bed with a distinct urge to bake (very unusual for me) so we made a grocery run and I made a buttermilk brownie recipe from the new cookbook we got for Christmas from Aaron’s parents. I even made buttermilk frosting from scratch! They turned out quite delicious but I would argue that it is an insult to brownies to call them that. I think chocolate cake would definitely be a more fitting name. Terminology aside, I was impressed with myself. Aaron does not like cake, unfortunately, so he humored me and said they tasted good but I’ve been the only one eating them for the last few days. I’m not complaining though haha. We spent the evening with Savannah and a few other river friends (Hannah Wood, Torg, Tac, Kelly) plus a bunch of Hannah’s friends in Park City. Dinner was at a place called Vessel Kitchen that I was quite skeptical about but ended up being delicious and pretty fairly priced. My dish was called “Hash Hash” and contained sweet potato hash, braised beef, horseradish cream sauce, feta, and pickled onion (yes, sounds a little strange but was really quite good). Aaron had one called “The Med,” with crispy falafel, tahini, sesame couscous, cashew caesar broccoli, pico, hummus, and pita bread. After dinner, we rode the gondola while watching a firework show and then walked around and hung out with friends. Aaron, Savannah, and I went back to our house and watched a movie called “Unstoppable” (an inspiring story about a wrestler named Anthony Robles). We celebrated the new year by walking outside and shouting at the top of our lungs at midnight. It was quite cathartic.

Thursday/Friday/Saturday

The next few days were a bit of a blur. I stayed up all night on Wednesday so I could sleep during the day on Thursday so I could work night shift on Thursday night. That actually got me on a pretty good schedule for my night shifts the next two nights as well. Aaron hung out during the days and we got to see each other briefly when I would wake up to go to work in the evening each day. He was very kind and made some good breakfasts (dinners?) and even packed my lunch each day! What a nice guy.

Sunday

I came home from my last shift of the week just to turn around and shower and go to church at 9 am. Luckily it takes us less than 5 minutes to walk to the church building so I had enough time to get ready, but boy oh boy was it difficult to stay awake during the meeting (especially second hour). I came home and took a nap until 5 pm then Savannah came over to our house for an informal Jesus club meeting (for those who don’t know, we’ve had a pretty consistent tradition for over a year now where we get together with friends on Sunday evenings to eat and talk about Jesus-related things. Sometimes our conversations are very tangentially related to Jesus, but it’s the thought that counts and at the very least, it’s always nice to catch up with friends and have deeper and more meaningful conversations than a typical hangout).

Now we’re here, me with my sleep schedule out of whack and Aaron with the looming reality of returning to work after the holiday break tomorrow morning. This week’s entry was way more detailed than necessary, but I figured it would be nice to start this new habit with a thoroughly wordy foundation. Don’t get your hopes up that every week will be like this, though. I will try my best to resist the urge to spend as much time on each entry as I would on my college English papers (and with the same grammatical scrutiny) and realize that it is, in fact, okay to not have every paragraph polished and every sentence perfectly worded. So here’s to a new year full of resolutions, hope, and the ever-persistent effort to be a little better every day.