White Powder, Frozen Water...

Snow! In West Tennessee. In March. Who would have thought?! I never thought I'd be able to make a substantial snowball living here. This is pretty great. It's really cold and wet too, which is not so great with the kind of drivers we have around here. We had to take a picture of the house because who knows the next time we will see it with snow on it!

A Book MeMe

My lovely very cool cousin-in-law, Brooke, has tagged me with what she calls a book meme. It's different, fun and unique so I thought I'd give it a go...

The rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123
3. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people

The closest book to me at this moment is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

But Harry saw him wink at Crabbe and Goyle when Pansy had looked away.
"Settle down, settle down," said Professor Snape idly. Harry and Ron scowled at each other; Snape wouldn't have said "settle down" if they'd walked in late, he'd have given them detention.

I tag:
-Shawna
-Kim
-Dawn
-Kambree
and
-Emily
-And anyone else who wants to do this! Have fun!

Le Furniture.

So very sorry that it took me this long to get some more pictures of the furniture up. You know how it is... work, sleep, other stuff - it gets in the way. I finally charged the camera and got some pictures of what we have so far.

Here's Kitty... she's a little vain. Loves the camera.


This is Kitty's area. We recently got her a new poo box and moved it from the laundry room to near the back door. It's nice cause it has a cover and she can potty in peace.


This is one of the three identical lamps in the great room. Paul and I both picked this out. He actualy picked the shade. I really like these lamps.

This is the love seat and table in the hearth room. The couch is the same as the loveseat, just a bit wider. We bought some huge collage frames for this room but we haven't picked 64 pictures to go in them yet. This will take time.


These are the lamps in the hearth room. There are 2 of them. Paul picked these out all by himself. I love the lamps, especially the shades because when they are not on they look all swirly, but when they are they have a plaid look to them.


This is the red chair. It's a Lane recliner. This particular fabric is no longer in production. We originally saw this chair at a different furniture store and when we went back to get it they had already sold it. Paul called all over the place looking for it and found it in Selmer, TN - 2 hours away. He took his friends truck one Saturday and got it. This is my favorite chair. It's not only beautiful it is extremely comfortable. If you come over I will let you sit in it.


This is one of the paintings Paul and I bought for the great room. I love it because of the colors.


This is the dining room table. We haven't done much to this room yet unfortunately, but it's time will come. I am thinking of doing some sort of shelvery in here.

This is the rug by the front door. The cat loves it. She loves all the rugs.


This is the great room. We don't have pictures in the frames by the paintings yet. We were thinking of putting a picture of each of our home towns in these frames.


Another angle...

And there you have it! We still have a lot to do to make it how we want it but we have accomplished a lot so far I think.

A Proper Send Off

The huzzabus is out of town this week. He left this morning. He is the representative for his company at a big meeting in Arizona. I'm very proud of him and all of his accomplishments. He'll be gone until Thursday. It will be the first time Kitty and I are alone in the house. I'll be at work most of the time though so I should be okay. Night time is hard without him.

This morning I made him a hearty bowl of Kix cereal - kid tested, mother approved - and a glass of OJ with his vitamin. Then we cut his hair, did some last minute laundry, and he finished packing. Then, lunch was made up of a strawberry yogurt, some carrots, grapes, half an orange, and some wild rice left over from dinner the other night.

The most important part of a farewell for a loved one is making sure their love guage is on full before they leave. So, I sat him on the couch and I told him what he means to me, the baby, and kitty. I told him how proud we are of him and how lucky we feel to be his family. Then, we hugged for 15 minutes straight, and with my powerful mind I began filling him with bright, powerful, surging jolts of love. Starting with his toes, up his legs, belly button, chest, down his arms to the tips of his fingers, up his neck to his face and the very top of his head. That oughta hold 'em until he gets back on Thursday.

Pictures Of Our Furniture

... are coming. I promise. The battery on the camera died and I just don't feel like hassling with it right now. I am waiting for a pizza to be delivered. I am sooo hungry.

In other news... I am starving!!!

My awesome nephew Kurtis is getting baptized this Saturday! I just wanted to congratulate him. He is such a smart little man. He always has something very interesting and fun to talk about and we miss seeing him. We wish we could be there with you on your special day Kurt!

Fine Furniture

Today we finally got most of our furniture! The house feels so much more like a house now, as apposed to an empty cave/museum. Everything we picked goes great, we think, and we're excited to decorate and make it our own. We still have a couch set for the hearth room and our bedroom set yet to be delivered.

Kitty loves the new nook table. Here she is waiting for her dinner...

A closer look...
In other news, I have decided to dedicate an entire blog to my baby having experience. It's call "It's Baby Time" and you can see it here. I have also added the link to my list of links to the side. I plan to document my entire pregnancy. Then it will eventually turn into the babies blog.

Life Is Beautiful

You know that list? I never got to it. So I guess I will just fill you in on what has been happening with us.

It takes a lot out of a person to move into a new place. Thank you to our dear friends Misty & Michael for helping us move. We do not know what we would have done without your help.

We LOVE our new house. We've been in it now for a little over 3 weeks. We still don't have any furniture in the house - other than our old couch, 2 fold out TV tray stands, our mattress, and our plastic foldout table with 2 foldout chairs - but we actually purchased all of our new furniture on Saturday (no interest, no payment for a year!), and most of it will be here on the 26th. It has taken us about 5 months to find the furniture we wanted.

I truly had no idea how many little things you have to pay for when you own a house. Thankfully, Paul and his Excel spreadsheet have it all figured out and he has assured me we are doing fine. Of course our bills are more than they were with a one bedroom apartment so we are trying our best to turn off lights, get only what we need at the store, and Paul is up to his old thermostat games. This is a typical evening on the couch due to the cold environment...


Paul thought this was pretty hilarious. Even kitty needs a blanket!

The neighborhood is nice and quiet and our neighbors are really nice. We live right around the corner from the city animal shelter and a recycling center - I thought that was pretty darn awesome.

Work is going well for both of us. I start my 12-hour/8-hour shift this week where I will be working two 12's and two 8's a week with one day off. Starting February 4th - after the Giants win the Superbowl - I will be on call once a month. It shouldn't be too bad.

Kitty loves the new house. Especially the stairs. She also trots like a horse around the kitchen/great room/dining room and loves to play tag because there is so much room. It is often you will find her on top of the cupboards or in a drawer somewhere.

That's about it as far as announcements.

The only other thing is this...

Yep! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! September should be a great month!

Pondering

I can't believe it's January 11th... excuse me the 12th, and I still haven't posted a blog. There really are so many things I could write about. I should probably write a list and then spread each topic out of the next couple of weeks. Yeah! That's a good idea. So that is good for today. I'm off to write my list.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

We hope everyone has a fun and peaceful holiday season. We're off to New York for Christmas with Paul's side of the family, then it's back to Tennessee to close on the house. God bless you and your families! Thank you for your friendship. Merry Christmas!

Our First Gingerbread House

Paul and I thought it would be fun to decorate a gingerbread house for the holidays! Something different and fun. They have some fun little gingerbread house kits at Walmart for $9.

Behold.... our creation!!

P.S. Happy Birthday Aubrey Kay! We Love you so much!!

P.S.S. A Blog about our trip home to Utah is coming soon. We got some awesome pictures and we had so much fun. We haven't had much time with going back to work and getting stuff ready for the house.

I Am Thankful For Vacations

Paul and I are heading home to Utah on Saturday!! We'll be there for a week and I am extremely excited. I love going home. I wish we could do it more than once a year. This year we almost decided not to go with the house stuff going on and with me still being in training at work, but things worked out!! I am so excited.

Unfortunately, we can't take kitty with us. She'll be staying at PetSmarts Pets Hotel for the week. It's a pretty good deal. She has 24-hour care, 2 play periods a day, good food, warmth, and the attention we think she needs. Oh, and since it will be over Thanksgiving, she gets a special kitty treat on that day. We were going to have some friends stop in on her but we didn't want to burden anyone with that task. All of our good friends work full-time and/or live kind of far away. She'll be fine. We plan to take her blanket, her favorite toy, her treats

Anyway - we hope to get some good family and friend time in. We are staying with my cute sister, her scrumptious baby and awesome huzzabus... I am going to get some good baby holding in so I can get my hormones going.

Ethan Allen Etiquette

Currently, in the area of furniture, we own an ugly brown couch, a mattress, a few cheap put together bookshelves and a desk from Walmart. So, as part of our preparation for moving into our new house in December, we've been doing a lot of furniture shopping. We've been to several furniture stores in the area, as well as one down in Mississippi and Selmer, TN (by the way - it's definitely NOT "worth the drive" - that's their logo), and we pretty much know what furniture we are going to get.

My specialty - design and quality. Paul's specialty - leather and making sure the furniture doesn't wobble or shake. The first thing he does to ANY piece of furniture we see is shake it.

Yesterday we decided to check out Ethan Allen. Mostly just to look because we knew beforehand that the furniture there was in the area of ridiculous when it came to price. We knew we were in smug city when we drove up to the building. Along the side of the building were parked a plethora of white and silver BMW's, Audi's, Honda's and Lexus cars. Our dirty green Saturn didn't quite mesh.

This place really had some nice looking stuff. It's hard not to think everything there is beautiful because it really is. I don't know what it is about places like that though... they seem to bring out the smugginess in us all. Upon entering the store we were greeted by Patty, a professional design consultant extraordinaire with an unusually soft, yet stearn voice...

"Welcome to Ethan Allen! I am Patty. It would bring me great, immense pleasure to help you make your home what you want it to be. It's my life's work to help couples and families, like yourselves, design a home that really displays their personalities and dreams."

"Thank you Patty" - I responded. "Right now we're just going to look around but we will let you know if we need anything."

As we proceeded to stroll through the store, and as Patty watched us, we saw some really awesome stuff. Not just furniture but accessories... like a miniature glass globe for only $45.00. Oh and that vase with fake flowers for only $238.00. My dream couch - only $2,500.00. Yeah, I know.... pocket change.

I suddenly noticed myself saying things like...
"This table is exquisite"
-or-
"This would look amazing on the mantle, wouldn't it darling?"

My pinky... I just got the most uncontrollable urge to lift my pinky in the air.

When we finally THOUGHT we were alone, we sat on a $5,000.00 couch and started whispering about how I could stitch the design on the $500 pillows over there myself. Or Paul could weld or glue together some metal rings to look exactly like that $300.00 lamp.

It was settled. We could get some great ideas from this place, but never actually buy anything. As we stood up and headed toward the front we ran smack into Patty. She had just been right around the corner the whole time, not more than 10 feet from where we had been sitting... and whispering.

Did she hear us??!! I felt so violated... and then Patty said,
"Oh, I forgot to mention we have microphones hidden in all of our furniture, and cameras everywhere.... we heard everything you said"

Just kidding. She didn't say that, but I thought it. Out of slight panic that Patty would discover we didn't own a BMW, I quickly asked her for her card and she ran off to get it and a $25.00 catalogue for us to look through.

As we left Paul said, very loudly for all to hear....
"Except for those three shakey tables this place is divine. It's absolutely fabulous."

He didn't say "divine", but he did say "fabulous" and the way he said it, he should have cause it would have fit.

Speaker

This morning Paul and I were playing with the cat and watching VH1's top 20 countdown, and we noticed something. A lot of the band names today seem to be named after objects or things someone might see in front of the them. Some examples are:

Silver chair

Nickelback

Matchbox Twenty

Fall Out Boys

Velvet Revolver

So we thought - what would we name a band according to what we see and have in this room at this very moment? Here are a few of our ideas....

Metal Chairs

Jumping For Fish - Kitty has a fish on a string toy and she jumps for it

Lyrical Elliptical

Wooden Words - we played scrabble last night and forgot to put it away

Paper Shredder

Scratching Post

Speaker

Starting Up

Shutting Down

Power Strip

Messy Wires

Circular Plastic - a cat toy

Couch Cover

Fur Ball

We decided to name our band... "Speaker". Check out the new cover to our CD:

Now all we need to do is come up with some tunes. Rock on!

Tagged

Becky tagged me. Here we go:

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago:

1 - Attending Salt Lake Community College where I majored in going to lunch with Shawna and minored in social dance because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
2 - Eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.
3 - Sitting in awe as NASA launches the Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn.
4 - Singing along to such tunes as "You were meant for me" by Jewel, and "I Believe I can fly" by R. Kelly on the radio.
5 - Got my first credit card! Yikes!

5 Things on my To-Do List Today:

1 - Go to work (check)
2 - Update my blog (check)
3 - Make dinner (in the process)
4 - Go to the park
5 - Elliptical for 20 minutes and then pilates.

5 Songs I know the Lyrics To:

1 - "Angel" Sarah McLachlin
2 - "Heaven is a place on earth" Belinda Carlisle
3 - "Hey! Baby" Bruce Channel
4 - "Lovefool" The Cardigans
5 - "Kiss Me" Sixpence None The Richer

5 Things I Would Do if I Had One Million Dollars:

1 - Build a solar power plant in the Arizona desert with my husband and provide power to millions of people.
2 - Get my legs and pits lazered so I never have to shave again.
3 - Hire a personal chef, and a massage therapist, ooh! ooh! and a maid.
4 - Travel more. Hmm, I don't travel much now... so travel period.
5 - Work part-time so I can travel more.

5 Things I Will Never Wear Again:

1 - Baby clothes
2 - Velcro pants
3 - Scrunchies
4 - Turtle necks
5 - A thong - why in the world would someone want something crammed up there like that? On purpose???

5 Favorite Toys:

1 - My paints
2 - My handheld sudoku
3 - My Ipod
4 - My keyboard
5 - Paul

5 People I'm Tagging:

1 - Shawna
2 - Kim
3 - Kambree
4 - Misty
5 - Emily

Kitty Castle

I have access to free boxes at work so Paul and I thought it would be fun to get the cat a couple. Well, it turns out she LOVES boxes!

She also loves to be wrapped up in blankets...

So, we got a couple big boxes and built her a 3-story, kitty castle. She loves it!! We cut holes in the back of the first level so she can hop up to the second floor. Then there is a hole in front for her to get to the roof where her bed is located.

She spends many-a-minutes sitting on the front porch, just watching time pass by.

Life is sooooo good for this furry feline.