Saturday, January 22, 2011

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 :)