A Quick Update

So once again I managed to fall into the black hole of blogging, but I am back to give you an update of the last few months.

October:

The weekend before Halloween we did a little work in our front yard and put some decorative rock in the area between the sidewalk and street. This is the before picture (but after we tore down all the weeds, which were everywhere!!!) Luckily since Matt works in construction, we had connections to get the rock for free. Our friend Wyatt volunteered his 1967 Ford truck to haul the rock from the pit to our house.

Even more impressive than the fact that this 45 year old truck still runs, is the fact that it has a bed that dumps like a dump truck.
Once all the rock was unloaded, the grading began. Matt was at work, so he missed all the "fun", but I'm glad Wyatt was able to help me shovel, rake and grade the almost 8 ton of rock we had delivered.
This was the finished product...well, sort of. The rock had a lot of dust and dirt on it, as you may notice in the picture below. The wet rock is a better representation of what the rock actually looks like than the white rock. Eventually we will be planting 2-3 trees in the parking strip, but that will be sometime this summer.

November:

We celebrated our Thanksgiving a week or so early since my sister Melissa was in town from Arizona. We had a mini Thanksgiving meal that weekend and it was delightful! Since we had already sort of done the Thanksgiving thing, over the actual holiday weekend Matt and I decided to head south to warmer weather and spend Thanksgiving in St George. It was lovely to get above freezing temperatures, especially since the Salt Lake valley was suffering with 10 degree weather as the high temp.

December:

We had a great Christmas this year. We played it pretty low key, but Matt and I decided to start a few traditions this year for our little family.

Tradition #1- Pj's on Christmas Eve ( I know...so original) Here we are on Christmas morning sporting our new jammies! Tradition #2- Having a fresh Christmas tree. Last year we didn't want to bother since we had just moved in, but this year we decided to go for it. Hopefully next year the stringing of lights will be a little easier.

We had a lovely Christmas Eve with Matt's family, and on Christmas day went to my parent's house. Here I am showing off my new Cricut from my brother and sister, which is probably my favorite gift that I received. I can't wait to finally get caught up on all my scapbooking!

Even Mojo got a Christmas present...as if he isn't spoiled enough all year long! :) Here's my dad helping Mojo show it off!

Of course the holidays are always a nice excuse to get together with family, but I was especially happy to see my grandparents who live in Arizona be able to come celebrate with us this year. And of course my brother too, who I see more often than my grandparents, but still only once a month or so!

January:

Two weeks ago we found this little guy walking around our neighborhood cold, hungry, and scared. With a face like this, we couldn't just leave it.

We brought the dog into our house and since it didn't have any tags, we decided to keep it until the next day when we would take it to the vet and have it checked for a microchip. Since it was an older dog, it didn't have one. I quickly fell in love with the dog we affectionately called Amberger (we found her on the way to Burger King and our first meal together was sharing a hamberger.) I would have loved to keep the dog, but the cats didn't like that idea, so that just wasn't an option. I couldn't bare the thought of this awesome pooch going to the shelter and being put to sleep, so I sought out a family to adopt her. When that didn't work out, a friend stepped up and offered to be a foster mom until she did get adopted. And (fingers crossed) she will have a permanent home soon)

And just last weekend, we said out with the old... And in with the new. More specifically a 2007 Nissan Xterra.

We did love the Jeep, but it proved much more hassle than was worth it. We are thrilled to now have a SUV that is MUCH more reliable!

So, as exciting or not as that is, that is what we've been up to for the last few months. Let's hope it's not another few months before I blog again :)

Happy Holidays

Thanks to my friend Jenn I was reminded of the holiday fun of "elfing yourself". Here is the link to our latest family video:
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/nPakZAB9rSxsVTor

Our Song!!

At my friend Jenn's wedding, my other friend asked me if me and Matt had a song. We had been dating for over 2 years at the time, but as much as I wanted to say that we had this ultimately romantic song that summed up our feelings for each other in a perfect way...ultimately I had to say that we did not. "Oh well" I thought, "I'm not in a high school relationship anymore, so no big deal." And...I didn't think about it again...until...

.... a couple of weeks ago Matt informed me that we now had a song. I had never heard the song before, so we pulled the video up on youtube and watched it together.

If you've already pushed play..you know what the video is about. But, I was completely surprised when I saw it that this is what Matt had thought was "our song" and represented our relationship. But...since he had only listened to the song on the radio, he also was totally surprised by the video also..

I think Matt picked a good song for "our song". The lyrics are great and the video is hilarious... and I think it makes me love the "our song" even more.

An Indulgent Post..

I'm calling this an indulgent post because I want to blog about some of my favorite kitty pictures.... I'm calling it.....

"The Top Ten Most Kitty-licious Moments Caught in Pictures"

(in no particular order)

#1- The human and the CatThis is one of my favorites because Stormy hates to be held, and this is a rare picture of her with a human..most importantly...me!!

#2- Kitty vs the Laptop
The newest kitty Ella loves to jump up and chase the cursor on my laptop...she's so curious about everything...I love it!!...even if she does step all over the keyboard and cause my laptop to freak out!

#3-Christmas kitty
Chas is such a good sport to let us drape tinsel all around him for a photo opportunity.

#4-Chas exploring the pantry
In our new house we have a nice big pantry...which Chas loves to hang out in and climb all over the shelves. Luckily he hasn't broken into any of our food while exploring.

#5-Stormy and her kitty tent
My mom bought the kitty tent for my cats at IKEA and Stormy especially grew very fond of it. This is one of my all time favorite pictures of Stormy...she's so cute!!

#6- Chas in the hamper
We got Chas when he was just a little guy, full of curiousity and spunk. He obviously was jealous of the time I spent with the laundry, so he thought that he'd better get in there so he could get attention too!!

#7-The one and only

Until 6 months ago, we just had the two cats Stormy and Chas....this is the only picture I have of the two of them together...precious!!

#8- Chas with eyebrows

Boredom is a dangerous thing...as illustrated by this picture of Chas..with eyebrows drawn on by Matt. Hilarious!!!

#9- Toilet training

I think this is a sign that Chas is ready to toilet train!!

#10-pure excitement

This picture was taken at the adoption fair where we got Ella...the excitment on Matt's face tells it all!!

Halloween

I've never been a huge fan of Halloween. Of course I've never had anything against the holiday, afterall, I've got no complaints with a holiday that gives free candy to children...or at least I didn't have an complaints when I was the kid getting the free candy.

Since it was our first Halloween in our house, we decided to dress up and have a mini Halloween party of our own. I dressed up as a rocker chic and Matt dressed up as...umm..I'm not sure...but it was pretty scary! Here we are in our outfits...

...and here is a close up of Matt's face in all his scary glory! Unfortuately he didn't keep in his outfit very long since the wig made him want to itch his face...which doesn't work too well when covered in face paint!

Our friends Daniel and Dominique came over...along with Daniel's brother Steve.

Here we are all just goofing off! Steve-the crazy gun nut (And don't worry---it's not loaded), Daniel-the escaped prisoner, Dominique-the old-time bar maid, Matt-the guy in the Avatar wig, and Kristin-the rocker chic!!

We had a great first Halloween in our new house, and we had a lot of cute trick or treaters show up for free candy...despite the rain!

Birthday Boy

It was Matt's birthday on October 14th. This year he turned the big 29!! The age actually isn't too significant, except for the fact that I kept giving him a hard time by telling him it's the last one before hitting 30!!

Since his birthday was on a Wednesday we didn't do anything too elaborate or exciting to celebrate. I did leave work early so that I could decorate the house before Matt got home.

I put up a "happy birthday" banner in the mud room since that is the first room in the house he goes into after work. I put balloons and his present on the table.

He was a little confused about what would be in a bag of that size that would be for him.
But was quite impressed when he saw "Fine Jewelry" printed on the box.

It was not a decoy box, but rather contained a titanium bracelet for him. And boy did he like it!! He's so afraid that he will damage it if he wears it at work, but the minute he comes home he is thrilled to be able to put it on. Of course the present isn't the most important part, but I'm glad he liked it and I'm glad that I have such a special person to celebrate their birthday...because that is the most important part!!

The Tour: Part I

As promised for quite some time, here are some pics from inside our house. If the pictures don't quite do it for you...feel free to visit and see it in person. Upon walking through the front door you will see a picture timeline of the progress of our house construction. I got all the frames from the D.I and painted them to make them match, but keep their uniqueness.
As you continue to walk in the staircase to go downstairs is on your right, as is our huge Eiffel Tower canvas. This was quite a task to hang up, and Matt almost fell off the ledge and down the stairs. Stormys favorite spot in the whole house is to sit on the ledge. It gives her a great view, plus keeps her from getting to close to the other cats.

This is the guest bathroom. It's hard to get a good picture since because of the size..but you get it...afterall its just a bathroom.

Here is our kitchen/dining room area. We love the openess between the living spaces.

The view from the kitchen into our living room. As you can see, Matt did a great job of haning the television and surround sound sans visible wires.

The view from the sliding glass door looking towards the living room.

The view from the hallway looking back on the living room and kitchen.

The cats feeding area.

And possibly my favorite room...the mud room! This room connects the kitchen/dining room and the garage. Not only do we love having a washer and dryer, but we love having a buffer zone where Matt can shed his muddy shoes before entering the rest of the house.
Well that takes care of the "common areas" of our house. I will work on getting pictures of the bedrooms up soon.

Priorities

We were very overwhelmed with all that was on the "to do" list upon moving into our house. So what did we do???...prioritize.

Our #1 priority...television.

Finally, since we weren't in an apartment we could hang our tv on the wall instead of just having it sit on our tv stand. Matt took upon himself to complete the task, and I was there to document it. step #1: drill holes for the box

Step 2: Using the drilled holes as starting spots, cut the box using a jigsaw.
Step 3: Attach the green boxes into the drywall. Now you have places for your cords to connect to your devices. Step 4: After finding the center of the wall, mark a level line parallel to the floor.Step 5: Use the parallel line as a guide for where to attach the mounting bracket.Step 6: After bracket is firmly attached, lift the television and attach it to the bracket on the wall.

Ta-da!!

Now comes the really fun part...running the wires through the wall!! But first you've got to figure our which cord is which!