Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The best holiday ever...

The cool weather is here, the leaves are starting to turn (not really here in Vegas, but I like to imagine they are) stores sport large crates of pumpkins, the candy isles are SPILLING over the brim with all sorts of unhealthy delectibles, Blockbuster's isles are stocked with all the spooky movies your heart could desire and adult sized costumes can be purchased at any local department store (hersheys kisses to the obscene). Yes, you guessed it, it's time for Halloween. Jon and I are really excited for the Holiday-it's totally my favorite. I just LOVE all of these different aspects of Halloween. Plus it just seems like it's the kick-off celebration for the Holiday season. Things get cozier, we spend more time thinking about fun celebrations to have with eachother...it's just a great time of year. Anyway, after MUCH debate, I'd like to announce my final pick for my own tribute to the Holiday--I am going to dress up as.......



So, I would like to issue a challenge to all you non-Halloweeners to embrace your inner child, carve a pumpkin, roast the seeds, make some Halloween cookies and dress up as ANYTHING! That's the beauty, you can be anything you want for a day-what a great Holiday.

ps, for you Felicity fans, yes, Jon and I have been watching it lately and yes, I am copying Felicity Porter, Freshman year.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Oh, miss Laaady Maam

Introducing...Lady

Monday, September 22, 2008

Halloween Party!

I sent e-vites to those of you in town, but thought I'd post it here as well...And of course, anyone not here in Vegas is welcome to come if this tickles your fancy and you don't mind making the trip!

Come join us for a fun evening of Tricks and Treats with the family. (Oct 25th at 5pm) We thought it would be fun to do pot-luck finger foods/treats. So, bring your favorite holiday snacks/treats to share with the group. Jon and I will provide entertainment for the youngins. Here are a list of activities we thought would be fun:
  • Bobbing for Apples
  • Spook Alley
  • Fortune Teller
  • Pumpkin Carving Contest (BYOP)
If you have any ideas, or can contribute anything to our party, feel free. We need all the help we can get to make this party a hit-we'd like it to become a tradition. Costumes are MANDATORY! Hope you all can come! Love you!

Friday, September 19, 2008

UP DATE!!








Wow! I am pleasantly surprised at how often you guys ask me to update my blog! I didn't know I had such a fan base!

We've had a lot going on lately (actually, it seems like it's pretty much been non-stop hard work for a while now between new house, school, new business, and our new addition).

House-Everybody's #1 question is always, "how is the house coming?" I guess it's coming along pretty well. I've been telling people that we are pretty much unpacked except for a few boxes. However, the more I say this, the more I realize that we are NOT as far along and I think we are...in fact, we have quite a bit of work left to do to really be settled. We do have a few boxes still sitting in our main living area-which is the only thing I seem to remember when people ask, but then, I go into the master bathroom and realize that I still need to finish painting the walls, paint the cabinet and the towel racks and scrub the whole bathroom again to get it clean. Then, I remember that the ONLY tub we have inexplicably does not run hot water, then I remember that the two extra bedrooms are not painted, floors not painted/sealed and there are tons of boxes and mish-mash in them, then I remember we don't have a dryer so I can't really do laundry, then I remember that the outside of our house looks like it's abandoned and yucky...the list goes on. So, basically, the list is MUCH shorter for what we have done, than what we don't. It's still relitively fun though. I mean, I am mildly sick of going into the master bath in the middle of the night and tripping over buckets of spackling and paint, but at least I'm doing that in my own house. And it is a little annoying when I cook to only have 3 butter knives, 2 steak knives, 2 forks and 5 spoons. (our box with all of our silverware and knives is missing) But, it's all good b/c it gives us a great feeling to see little improvements day by day.

School-Jon is doing well in school-although he's been so busy with everything else, that I think it's had to take somewhat of a back seat, thusfar this semester. He's looking forward to being able to spend more time on it and really absorb the info. I think he likes most of his classes pretty well since they are almost all business related now.

New business-For some reason, I don't think I've really told many of you fans out there about this...Jon's left his job at the bookkeeping firm (a little sooner than we would have liked) and has started his own business detailing cars. We've been wanting to do this for a while, b/c of the flexibility he has in his schedule, you can make pretty good money, and most importantly, once Jon hires a couple employees, he can work less and make more. Like I said, it's an mobile auto detail business, that is founded in green principles-yes we are riding the green wave that is sweeping the world-he uses a product we researched online called Eco Touch that is a waterless system made of natural products and (obviously) conserves water b/c its waterless. So, we've spent the last two weeks rushing around forming the company, getting business licenses, opening bank accts, buying products and marketing to get business. So far everybody that we've talked to and that has seen his work has been really impressed and seems excited to sign up for an acct with us. We have prayed a lot about this b/c of the difficult time our economy is having right now, and have felt really good-like this is what we need to be doing, and that Heavenly Father is using this business as a tool to help us acheive our family goals-ie having kids at some point. So, it's been good. Anybody want their car detailed??

New addition-The rumors are true-we have a new addition. Her name is Lady. She has sandy blonde hair and green eyes and one of her favorite pass-times is to bite our feet (sometimes drawing blood) while we walk around the house. We have been wanting to get a little friend for Nacho ever since we thought about getting our own place. Now, I know the question you are all wondering is why we didn't just take Jack with us--to tell you the truth, I'm sort of wondering that now myself-but, our thinking was that Jack and Nacho aren't really playmates. They tolerate eachother but are not buddies. Plus, Jack really has a hard time adjusting from house to house and he's just been moved one too many times. So, we decided it would be best to get Nacho a little girl buddy to play with while we are away at work/school all day. We've looked around quite a bit for somebody suitable, and this week, we found Lady. She's a 8wk old Golden Retreiver. She is VERY feisty and playful and so far Nacho has HATED every minute of having her in our home. :( In fact, our week has even included a trip to the vet to get lady's ear stiched up b/c he bit her. This has caused a lot of stewing in our household over what to do with Nacho and the puppy. We have to keep them separate b/c we are afraid Nacho will do something else to her. We are not decided yet if we are going to keep her, him or both of them. We are looking into a personal dog trainer -aka a dog whisperer-really- for Nacho, actually for us I guess. After talking to her yesterday, I think we are going to give that a go and see what happens. She suggested that we keep the puppy separate from Nacho, until she can begin training US. She is confident that we can learn to be the pack leaders in our home so that Nacho will be comfortable with us and the puppy and any circumstance that he is in. We'll see what happens...

I know this is quite an espistle, but you asked for it, you begged for it and here it is! Enjoy! Love you all!


fyi, the pic of the cookies isn't totally random--I just wanted you to see that I actually baked cookies to give to our neighbors. THey are mom's yummy Christmas cookies, just havne't frosted them yet!

Monday, September 1, 2008

Growing up is Hard Work!

I never knew how much work growing up is!! Last Wednesday evening Jon and I FINALLY got the keys to our house! We feel like such growups now. Sorry it's taken so long to post this exciting news, but we've been buried in work since then. We have had lots of people come to help us out in our quest to get our little nest into shape. We've been painting, scraping ceilings, mopping, scraping floors, replacing faucets, toilet seats, garbage disposals and ripping out carpets. Thank goodness for all the help we've gotten from both mine and Jon's family. Now Jon and I are suffering from a little bit of delirium/exhaustion. We were planning on moving in on Saturday, then it moved to today, now the move is on for next Saturday. It's taken much longer to get everything up to snuff than we thought. I don't have very much energy to make this entry exciting or witty, so this will have to suffice for the moment. Look at these fun pics--love you all, thanks for your prayers!

BEFORE...

LIVING ROOM

MASTER BEDROOM




AFTER



DINING ROOM






MAIN BATHROOM



MASTER


Friday, August 15, 2008

Waiting...waiting...waiting...

Well, Jon and I found out that the mortgage company approved our new offer! (those who may not know, we had to make another offer on the home as our appraisal came back about 20k less than the asking price) So, great news-we are going to pay 20k less for the home!


We are just waiting now to find out if our loan docs will really go through and then we can close. If all goes through, we are supposed to close Tues/Wednesday this week.


I'm just so excited to finally be able to get into our new home. There is a lot of work to do-first things on our list are 1. take pop-corn ceiling off (a HUGE mess and job we've heard) 2. paint EVERYWHERE (there is really yucky dirty paint on the walls right now) 3. rip out the old carpet in the bedrooms and stain the concrete underneath 4. replace garbage disposal 5. fix a couple minor structural probs with the house 6. move in 7. keep going on our list of things to do...So, needless to say we've got a lot of work to do. I'm not sure how long it's going to take us to get to the point where we can move in--(mom and dad-you don't mind having us for another month, right?) Jon's only got a week until he starts school full time and will be working full time too-so we are on a bit of a time pinch here. We'll probably move in this weekend and just keep going with our renovations a little at a time.


I'm getting really excited to start on this stuff though-in fact, it's pretty much all I can think of at the moment...

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Fun in the sun and scorpians

Today was such a fun day--with a mixture of emotions as you may guess from the title. We had the home inspection first thing this morning at the house. Despite the fact that the inspector gave us a list of about a million things that needed to be fixed, he seemed to think that the home was in really good condition for its age. It was so much fun to spend several hours just walking around the house, talking about what we can to do fix it up, clean it up and make it ours. I know that we won't have the money to do everything we would like to immediately, but we'll just do a little at a time and I know it will be so cute. So, inspection down, appraisal to go...We are supposed to have the appraisal on Monday and be ready to close by Wednesday.
After we got done with the inspection, we took Bradley, Gracie and Nacho to the Colorado River by Nelson's landing. We packed a little picnic and hiked down to a lagoon where we splashed around in the sun. We jumped off a little cliff (don't worry Amy and Gina-it was only about 10ft high and Jon jumped in first to make sure that it was deep enough), and skipped rocks. We ate our lunch on our towels on the shore. Once we were done, Gracie and I blew up our pool rafts and floated around on the water, and just as I was saying to Gracie what an amazing day and how fun this was, I felt a little tickle on my left ear. I reached to swat away what I though was fly or a bee--to my surprise, I pulled a scorpion out of my ear!!! I wildly thrashed around the water to try to get it off my finger. Too late, it had already stung the inside of my ear!! yuck. The rest of the day was not the same for me. Although I did manage to jump off the cliff a few times.

Nacho also had a really fun time--he swam all over. He even followed us out to the cliff. Every time he was on shore, he would run up and down and bite the incoming waves. He was SO CUTE!