Christmas Spirit

Even though lots of other factors this year seem to be making it feel less like Christmas than year's past, I'm still enjoying some fabulous Christmas/winter music!

• Winter Song - Sarah Bareillies and Ingrid Michaelson
• Hallelujah (Light Has Come) - Barlowgirl (Holiday)
• River - Sarah ah McLachlan
• Face of Love - Jewel
• Shimmy Down the Chimney - Allison Kraus

Merry Christmas.

White Dogs Love Dirt Part 2

Oh Huck, you are impossible.

Guess who else loves FALL?

Little Hucklebear was neutered on Friday the 13th (Nov.). With a heavy heart I took him to the vet and among all the other crying shivering dogs he was a pillar of strength - Mr. Social Butterfly actually - running around tail wagging meeting other dogs. "The bad part (I thought to myself) is when they take him from me...." but when the vet tech took the leash he followed her, tail still wagging, back into the operation room without even looking back!

When I picked him up I anticipated a groggy, nervous little dog - changed from his previously chipper self now that he'd endured surgery, but NOOO, little Hucklebear was happy to see me, ready to play, and hungry for treats. I took him home with instructions to keep him calm as he would still be in some pain for a couple of days.

That night I wouldn't let him play in the backyard unsupervised, but even while I was out there he was a ball of energy. I tried to bring him inside and calm him down a bit. The next day Michael was out working in the backyard and Huck proved he was far from inhibited by his little snip snip! See pictures below.


Anyone who may have been worried can now rest assured that he is just fine. His stitches are healing beautifully, he seems to have no side affects (AT ALL!) and tomorrow we can give him a bath. Thank heavens!

Kids are Destroyers

Again, before I start this blog, we are NOT having a child. I'd hate to fake any of you out again, so let's make that clear. We will have children, just not right now as I write this blog.

I mentioned in the birthday blog one of my presents is a dining room table. We've yet to find one, but it is still 'on the table' and we've started talking about what we want and shopping around. I told Michael last night that I didn't want anything TOO formal because really it's probably going to be used quite a bit once we start having children - our breakfast nook will become too small quickly. This is the conversation that followed (best I can remember it).

M: Yeah, it's really hard to picture us buying ANYTHING nice since we're going to have little kids soon.

N: What? Are you kidding?
(Note: this was asked about buying nice things, not about having kids soon)

M: No, I'm being serious. Kids are destroyers.

N: Well, yeah I guess when they're babies we'll still want to eat in the breakfast nook with the tile floor because they drop food and stuff
(Note: where our new dining room table will go is carpeted right now)

M: Yeah, kids throw things. They don't have a care in the world... the only thing on their mind is -

N: Destruction?

M: Yes! They throw stuff, climb on stuff, think that doors can support their weight and rip things off the hinges...

............... I'm now officially worried about our monster-children. haha

Happy Halloween

Lots of happy in our lives lately with Happy Birthday, Happy Halloween and Happy Anniversary. I guess you see now why I love this time of year. I dressed up October 29th for a work event as a pirate, but October 31st our friends Ryan and Allison (Hey Allison!) in the Engaged and Newly Married Class at church threw a fun costume party! Pics of our costumes below - we won best costume as Popeye and Olive Oyl - my hair is still gray in places from the black hair spray!

See my pirate costume with matching co-workers by clicking this link http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=337303&id=864180073&l=b45a814f9a.

See other birthday and Halloween pics by clicking this link

mailto:?body=http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=340337&id=864180073&l=62ddc47ff2&subject=Birthday/Halloween

Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me

This weekend I celebrated my 27th birthday. It feels older than I thought it would, but things are so great in my life right now! I had a wonderful day thanks to all of the fabulous well-wishes I received! Also with much thanks to Michael! While I was out of town the two days preceding my birthday, he was a busy man!

Friday morning I woke up and Michael had a flower arrangement (that he arranged himself!) in the bathroom and another in the kitchen. He'd been up since who knows when and had already gone to get donuts and Starbucks coffee - that means he made two stops people! I opened present #1 and my card and then headed to the office.

When I got to the office there were roses, that Michael also arranged himself and dropped off on Thursday while I was out of town! I had some jealous co-workers. :-D The receptionist (who seriously loves Michael already) told me "Your sweet husband has such a great personality and he is so cute. He is the whole package sweetheart - the whole package!"

Friday evening I arrived home to open present #2, a vase from Pottery Barn - Michael is so great about remembering things that I've been looking at! Present #3 - I think this is my favorite - was when Michael told me I can now officially go shopping for our 'grown-up' dining room table!!! I'm already picturing my new place mats and napkins on this new table with all our friends sitting around just having the best time - oh the food that I am going to cook!!!

For dinner we went out to eat with a few friends for Mexican food at Gloria's. The funny thing about this is that it was EXACTLY the sort of thing I was planning for Michael's birthday which is in November... guess I'll be on to plan B!

Anyway, I had an absolutely fabulous birthday only to be followed up by a fun Halloween and a Happy Anniversary :)

Our Trip to Virginia and North Carolina

October has been a bit of a whirlwind so it's likely that my procrastination in writing will be cause for shorter posts with more pictures - maybe some of you will be grateful! Mid-October we took our 1-year anniversary trip and flew out to Norfolk, Virginia. We drove into Duck/Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and stayed there at a resort on the beach.

Though the weather was unseasonably cold and rainy, it wasn't TOO rainy for us to get out and see the sites. We were still able to check out the sandy dunes and beaches, visit the Wright Brothers museum, eat some delicious sea food, tour the USS Wisconsin (in Norfolk) at Nauticus and - my personal favorite - go hang gliding off the sand dunes in Kitty Hawk!

Neither of us had ever been to this part of the country and it was lovely even with the nasty weather. They say the BEST time to go is September so we missed that by a few weeks, but it was still lots of fun to get away just the two of us.

Pictures are posted in an album on Facebook but you should be able to get to them from this link below (if you can't, please email me because I know some of our readers don't have Facebook accounts but may want to see pics): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=333468&id=864180073&l=a20e47a30e

Below are the two videos of each of our first flights at Hang Gliding School. Because the winds were coming out of the North and Northeast due to the storms coming in the instructors would run with us holding a leash to try and help us get more air - ideally the winds from the West are best but because of the bad weather we didn't get any of those so we made the most of it and still had a blast! Our instructors were great and I would totally recommend Kitty Hawk Kites where we flew - they do all sorts of other cool stuff in the Summer months including para sailing that wasn't available when we went.

J&A and the Aggies Weekend

Admittedly, I am a little behind on my blogging, but it seems like all the blogs I read lately start with that "I'm sooo behind"!

The weekend of October 3rd and 4th Michael's oldest brother Jonathan and his wife Ashley came into town for the A&M and Arkansas game played at the new Cowboy's stadium, otherwise known as "Jerry World".

J&A flew in Friday night and we picked them up at the airport and headed to Fireside Pies for some delicious pizza. Saturday morning J and Michael went for a 6 mile run (!) and Ashley and I went for a nice walk through the neighborhood. The boys timed it right and brought us some Starbucks right as we were wrapping up our walk, we got cleaned up and headed to the Original Pancake House for breakfast. After that, the boys hung out at the house for a while and Ashley and I did some shopping.

Then it was off to a meal that none of us were really hungry for at Papasitos - we had to go at like 3:30 pm to be ready in time for the game. And this is where the pictures can pick up...

ABOVE: There were TONS of Aggies walking toward the stadium as we tried to find a place to park and lots of cute but impractical girls wearing those Aggie sundresses even though it was PRETTY cold outside.

ABOVE: The view when you first walk into the stadium is pretty overwhelming. This place is ridiculous huge. Here are Ashley and J ready for the game.

ABOVE: Michael and Natasha at the entrance of the Cowboy's Stadium.

ABOVE: This is the view from our seats. Our Seats were about 10 rows from the very top of the stadium, so the hike up was kind of scary, but it's hard to deny that for being such "bad" seats they were still pretty good! The screen in the middle of the field the size of my house helps!

BELOW: J&A and Michael and I both ended up with these flip flopped pictures where one of us was making a frowny face while the other one was smiling and vice versa. The frowns are for our losing!

In spite of a frustrating Aggie loss we did have a great time with J & A - we all admit, it was at least pretty cool to see such an insane venue (which we actually had a chance to see again when we saw U2 there on October 12th!!! Shout out to J & A for such a cool birthday present for Michael and I :-D). Anyway, J & A hopefully we'll have a chance to hang out again soon - maybe while we bust some holes in your sheet rock?

Mother Daughter Weekend

The weekend of September 26th, Michael went for his guys weekend in Lake Providence, LA and mom came to Dallas and had a girls weekend with me. She drove in late Thursday and I took Friday off so we could have an extra day to relax. I had a great time, but part of me thinks it still wasn't as great of a time as Hucklebear had (oh man, our kids are going to be rotten!).

Friday we took Michael's car for an oil change in the morning and then headed out for some shopping. We hit Hobby Lobby, TJ Maxx, Target and a few other places I probably can't remember. Though I DO remember an incident at Chick-fil-A where mom told a pregnant lady that I was due "in about two years", so we must have gone there as well. :-D

Friday night we decided to stay in, order pizza and watch a girlie movie - mom's friend Becky who lives here in Dallas joined us and we ended up watching Doubt. Though it wasn't exactly the light-hearted comedy we initially thought we'd get, we really wanted to see it. Let me also say that Becky knows how to do a girl's night right and she came equipped with Snickers, Reeses, Peanut Butter M&Ms (I have a SERIOUS weakness for these) and all sorts of other goodies - just another reason to be glad she came!

Saturday morning we met Becky for coffee/breakfast at Starbucks and afterwards took this little pic below in front of the VERY sparkly Pegasus.


Mom and I headed to the house after that and began our painting of the breakfast nook (this was the painting of the khaki pictured in the earlier post). Hucklebear tried to help too - such a trooper...

Once painted, I knew that Target had this "perfect" little bucket that I could use as a vase on the table that would go just perfect with the new paint and that is where we found THIS little gem (which we did not purchase, but did try on!

Last but not least, Saturday night we made a fall wreath with the materials we purchased at Hobby Lobby the day before. I think it came out pretty good!

HAPPY FALL!

The Breakfast Nook

We had very few painting projects when we moved into our new house, but one of the places we decided to "add some color" was the breakfast nook. I picked a color on a whim and told Michael that if we were going to paint the breakfast nook I would choose to paint the bottom half of our wall red (which was, when we moved in, wood paneling that was painted a cream color... the same color as our wall).

We taped with blue painters tape and painted three coats of red. At that point, I decided to peel off the painters tape and have a look, but when I did that a huge strip of red paint peeled off. DISAPPOINTING. The wood paneling underneath the sellers cream colored paint was totally smooth - it hadn't been prepped for painting at all as far as we could tell!

We discussed everything from scraping it down to the wood to replacing the wood paneling with sheet rock, but ultimately sanded and scraped the red paint down to the wood paneling.

Below is a picture you may have already seen of mom helping us take that paint off.

This is Michael one Saturday morning sleeping on his stool while I scraped paint.

This is me below (on the same morning) working very hard.

We were going to sand the scraped wood paneling by hand with sand paper, but Michael asked if he could use the electric sander because "it won't make that much of a mess." Here is the footprint on our tile floor after the sander. 'Nuf said.

The scraped, sanded and wiped-down paneling.

Primed!

After my family came to visit and mom explained to Ninny that one of the reasons we were scraping the wall was to get rid of "the ugly red paint the seller had in here" I changed my mind about the red I picked. I think mom felt bad at the time, but she was right, it wasn't the right color. Still determined to do a "fun" color I picked a green. As soon as it was done (see below) I knew I didn't like it. Michael told me to "Wait a few weeks" and see if it grew on me. But EW! It didn't.

Ultimately I picked a shade of khaki that was just a shade or two darker than the color of our walls. Not too dark, not too light, just a little bit of contrast. Below, coat #1.

After mom and I changed the top of the wood panel trim to the color of our baseboards I knew it was finally right. Finished room below.

Finally FABULOUS!

An Anderson Weekend

Good Evening! I am in Austin writing this blog - I'm here for work for two days - and can't believe how cold it is! I also can't believe that Michael missed the opportunity to post another breakfast of champions... perhaps he went into work too early these last two days to eat like a champion - instead he had to eat like Otis (in a hurry)!


Anyway, on to our updates. We had some visitors again this last weekend - this time Charlie and Cathy - and Michael and I were both so excited for them to see the house. I've been feeling more and more settled over the last couple of weeks now that we have a picture hung in the breakfast nook and a duvet and frame 'installed' for the guest bedroom. All of this settling in has been taking it's time but I finally feel we're at a point where it is less stressful to have guests and so their timing was perfect! (It also helped that I cleaned on Wednesday because David was in town for work on Thursday - I was extra prepared!)



C&C got into town on Friday afternoon and we took a quick tour of the house and headed out to dinner at Besa's for some Italian food. We've tried to go there before when they were in town but they were closed (it was a Sunday). We had Greek salads and two huge pizzas and lots of good stuff to talk about :-D

Saturday morning we headed down to this drug store in Highland Park that Charlie read about. This store has been around since 1912 and serves breakfast and milkshakes and all sorts of other things at different times of the day. Breakfast was good but the coffee left a little to be desired... Charlie and Michael said it tasted a little bit like popcorn. STILL, there were some cool little bookmarks and picture frames and other little things to look at in the shop after breakfast.

After breakfast it was on to Steins Bakery (if you read the reviews you'll know just how fabulous it is! http://www.yelp.com/biz/steins-bakery-dallas) and picked up some cheese and cherry danishes for dessert the remainder of the weekend and breakfast on Sunday. THEY ARE FABULOUS! We headed to the house afterwards, enjoyed a danish or two, and then Charlie and Michael began work on the yard. Cathy and I headed out for some shopping at Dillards, TJ Maxx, TJ Maxx and TJ Maxx (haha), aaannnd... hmm, I can't remember where else.

We ate chicken spaghetti at the house on Saturday night and visited until it was time for bed, which it was early if you know my husband! Church on Sunday and Babe's for lunch rounded out the weekend ... after which we were ALL ready for a nap!

We had a great weekend getting to share the 'grand baby' Huck for the weekend and relaxing with our parents/in-laws. We are loving our first year of marriage, new home and the visitors coming to see it, and our fast-growing new baby HUCK!!

Natasha

Breakfast of Champions. (Me and Huck)

Huck and I are bachelors for a couple days while Natasha is in San Antonio for work.

This is the breakfast we slapped together this morning (he was still subject to eating dog food). He made sure to get in the picture last second though, just so you'd know he was involved. That's brisket my lovely wife whipped up before she left town.

Tonight we'll be dining on...something. Don't know yet but I know I'm looking forward to tomorrow's breakfast.

Tis the season...

What season you might ask? (And if you did just ask that, you fell right into my little trap!) :-D

For starters I'm starting to get the Fall bug. A couple of weeks ago I took Friday off and I spent some time at Hobby Lobby. As soon as I walked in the door I was greeted with fall colors and pumpkins and scary black cats. EXCITING. I love this time of year and all the fun decorating opportunities it affords. A little further into the store I found Christmas trees, but I'm not ready to go there quite yet.

Secondly, it is Marathon season. For the past three weeks Michael has been up at 5:30am to run 1, and now 2 miles through the neighborhood. These are just the warm up weeks for what will prove to be another grueling Fall and Winter of long miles traveled on foot. Michael plans to "Run the Rock" half in December and then potentially run the Little Rock full in March. Though tough I know that Michael looks forward to this time of year where he can cross another race off his list. For now it seems I will not be running anything on so grand a scale but depending on the knee I may look into a 10k.

Next, it is FOOTBALL season and what do you know? The Aggies won their first game. This past weekend we headed to College Station and enjoyed getting to spend time with all 3 of the brothers (J., David and Marcus), Ninny and Opa as well as my Uncle Mike and cousin Jacob in from Oregon. We missed Charlie and Cathy this round but I'm sure I'll get my chance to eat hamburgers and cheese sticks with them next game. Pics of Jonathan & Ashley, David & Sara and Michael & I all at the game below.

Last but not least, Michael is very excited that "soup season" is on it's way. Little did you know that Fall brought so much to look forward to! ha I learned last year that Michael has a serious love for soup - so much so that he joined an interest group for "soup" on Facebook. He's probably half excited about "soup season" though because it comes with corn bread and he sure does love corn bread....

Anyway, here's to a happy Fall with beautiful oranges and red decor, pumpkins, marathons (or 10ks), winning football teams, and yummy soup.

Love, Natasha

White Dogs Love Dirt

A couple of Saturday's ago (I haven't been very good at posting) a very clean Huck got into some wet flower beds and dirt. I heard Michael yelling "Noooo! Don't do that!!! Mommy's going to have to give you another bath!"

When I turned around and saw him I couldn't help but think of Lexi, Ninny and Opa's dog, who LOVES to get in some mud when it is available. It drives Ninny so nuts that mom took a picture of Lexi at her MOST dirty with mud all over her little white face, and framed it!

Ninny, I know that you of all people can relate to my frustration. These pictures don't even do this little mess justice!

Puppy Steps in Potty Training

Huck really did great not having accidents the first two weeks or so. We take him out OFTEN to try and avoid accidents since he isn't really able to say "Hey let me outside." while in his play pen.

The last couple of weeks however he's had some accidents while we are away at work. Either one or both of us comes home during the day to let him out at lunch but sometimes during that 4 hour span in between visits home he just can't make it. I attribute THAT to puppy bladder. Sometimes when we are home he's playing and will take a quick stop to pee on the floor and I attribute that to being like a kid too caught up in the fun to take the time to go outside.

We have begun ringing a little bell when we go outside so he knows that is the "please-may-I-go-outside" cue and he's still doing great going once we take him out. However today at lunch there was a nice little pile waiting for me when I came home. "Man we have regressed!" I thought.

But then, tonight while I was cooking dinner I look over and little Huck is doing a two-footed dance by the back door - he wasn't even scratching at it! (Good Boy, Huck!) We went outside and he went straight to do his business! (Good Boy, Huck!) Then about 30 minutes later I hear a tiny bell and so with my mouth gaping I take him outside and .... VICTORY again!

Huck, I'd have to say that tonight you have redeemed yourself! GOOD BOY!

You Lazy Dog

The other night I took Huck for a walk before dinner. When he came home all hot from walking he lay down on the kitchen floor with his belly flat on the tile to cool down. He wouldn't even get up for the dinner I set just a few inches in front of him.

I scooted his bowl toward him to see if the smell would rouse him, but instead he lay on the floor and craned his neck to get his head in the bowl to eat. He lay there flat on his belly eating for a few mins before he stood to get the remainder of the food.

We both laughed and then Michael says to Huck "oh man... I love you." You lazy dog - you're lucky you're so stinkin' cute!

- Natasha

Opa, Handy as ever!

Opa came to Dallas last Thursday to drop off a motor at a shop in Grand Prairie that needed some workin' on. He stayed with us Thursday through Saturday and we had a great time reaping the rewards of his handy-ness... not to mention Ninny's preparedness!

Now Ninny and Lexi didn't make it this time, but they sure did send 'enough food to feed Cox's army', said Opa. She sent a rotisserie chicken, potato and sausage casserole, salad, cherry tomatoes, spicy chicken, bread and a cinnamon caramel cake. YUM. Thursday night we ate on all that delicious food that was sent our way and we're STILL reaping the rewards as of lunch yesterday!

While he was here Opa repaired a leak under our kitchen sink, fixed the stopper in the secondary bathroom, helped Michael install a programmable thermostat and told us stories of all his crazy jobs. Life at the railroad and the time he was almost hit by a train of 4 cars, and all the great characters that he knew there - Stringbean, Porky and Rabbit! He also told the story of his brain tumor from the 90s, how they found it, the surgery and how he could hear the doctors talking and of the times he spent at Kelly Field working on nuclear weapons. During the nuclear conversation I could just feel Michael going into his Bourne-Identity-Zone!

Below are pictures of the thermostat change out. Opa said "your old thermostat looked like it came over on the Mayflower!"

(Ahem, and yes Michael is wearing a headlamp to work on that thermostat - he wears it for nearly all in-house repair jobs).

I feel so blessed to have an Opa that can travel and spend time with us in this capacity at this time in our lives. Love you Ninny and Opa - come see us again soon!

PS. One more pic from the visit to Dallas a couple of weeks before out to eat at Babe's after church.

Favorite Things

A couple of favorite things right now...

• McDonald's Iced Vanilla Coffee (I thought this was better than their McCafe!) and though I am sort of anti-McDonald's I got some of this while I was travelling last week and it was pretty delicious and cheaper than Starbucks!
• Huck when he is sleepy in the morning and lets me hold him like a baby
• Tracy Chapman "Change" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=196a3M9CbUA

Happy Friday!!!

Scraping Scraping and MORE Scraping

Well we had a very productive weekend at the Anderson household. Marcus came to visit and amidst some of the fun that we had and playing with our puppy Huck we also managed to get some stuff done. Some of it even after Marcus left (way to dodge that bullet Pook!). One of the things we got done WITH Marcus however was the ridding of a serious yellow jacket nest that I discovered behind one of our outdoor speakers. Marcus, you were so brave - that nest was huge! See video (cinematography courtesy of Michael) below...





Michael finishing sanding down the Master Bathroom door that wouldn't close because of the carpet hitting the bottom of the door. Michael also dug out the big pot of water (formerly used for a fountain by the previous owner) that had since become a mosquito breeding ground and filled in the hole with dirt. Earlier in the week he also fenced off the bottom part of our deck that Huck had become fond of running under.

We successfully hung one HUGE mirror in our dining room and together scraped and scraped and scraped some more in our breakfast nook. That stupid project has turned out to be a LOT more than we bargained for but I feel somewhat at peace knowing that if we do it right it will be worth it in the end!


This the status of the wall BEFORE the weekend (AFTER picture to come once I make some space on my camera). This is largely in thanks to the work mom put in two weeks before! What a mess it is!

Pic of Our Little Family

Happy Little Family

So we have a small hairy addition to our family these days and his name is Huck. Huckleberry to be exact, or Hucklebear as I call him. We've had him for nearly two weeks now and though he is precious, he is certainly at the stage to be a stinker.



He loves all things bad for him including chords/plugs for appliances, trying to chew on cleaning rags, even trying to lick the outlet in our bedroom - that was after we told him he COULDN'T chew the chord. He also loves some things that are harmless like scooting along in the grass and licking water off blades of grass when it's rained or the sprinkler has gone off.



We've successfully had him sleeping in his crate rather than our bed but it hasn't been without a little bit of crying... from me. :) He's played some with Lexi, my grandparents dog, and some with G & Lu's dog Charlie Daniels, both of which he has aliented with his rough housing. Hopefully they can be better friends after he realizes you don't make friends by biting.

Parched since Monday...

While last night I had a fun time writing about our funny water shut-off incident and how it's allowed us to have some time with our friends, today we are less optimistic about the situation. We have not stayed at our home for two nights now and we're going out of town this weekend.


Today Michael called to check and see if our water was turned on yet (so we could figure out if we could stay there or not) and the woman says "Oh yes, we can schedule that as soon as I get blah blah blah blah blah." You can imagine our surprise that they have yet to SCHEDULE our water to be turned on after we showed proof of ownership YESTERDAY. As I write, Michael is providing the necessary information, after which she'll put us on the 24 to 48 hour turnaround schedule to turn our water back on. If it is 48 hours it could be as late as 5pm on Friday before our water comes back on.


5 full days of not being able to stay at our house, 5 full days of 100+ degree weather with NO water on our grass or other plants. This battle is sure to have casualties not the least of which will be the hydrangea, passion vine and other landscaping that our seller so lovingly maintained. What if we didn't have people here to stay with? How can you live in your home with NO access to water? You can't!!!


Sigh. I feel better now after my mini-rant.

Slumber Party Fun

So yesterday we received notice that something had gone in the transfer of our water bill and it was still in the sellers name. Actually, she found out that something went wrong and stopped service immediately. This meant that we had to get the water transferred into our name but something else happened that required a bill to be paid before 5pm and it wasn't.... yada yada yada our water got cut off.

Michael had already given our friends Garrett and Lu a heads up that we might need a place to stay and so last night we packed our bags and headed north to Carrollton to stay with the Frith fam. We had a nice dinner, Lu and I got to watch the Bachelorette together aaaaand Michael broke the handle on their back door - it wouldn't open anymore. Whoops! Anyway, G & Michael took the door knob apart and got that fixed ...

Then today Michael tried to get the service up and running again but alas, it may be another 48 hours before our water is back on. We packed our bags and are again playing double household with G & Lu who are nice enough to host again. Michael eats it up getting to play with their Boston terrier, Charlie, and we even worked in a dinner-for-six tonight with our other friends Ben and Amy.

A little inconvenience has allowed us to enjoy some more time with friends so I'm just going to look for the silver lining. However I DID just watch Michael - who was blowing in Charlie's face to make him do this crazy bite-at-the-air licking thing - spit his gum across the room onto their carpet. Forgoing any other broken doors or gum in the carpet, perhaps we'll be allowed to stay again one more night should our water still be off come 5pm manana. ha!

Have a great week!

Officially Out

As of Monday night we are officially out of our apartment. Looking at all the moves that we have made together each of us from one apartment to the next I would say that this, by far, was our most challenging move. In the past, we were two people moving one person... this time, all of our stuff was combined and we were two people moving two people!

We reserved a truck for 9 am Saturday morning ... I confirmed this Friday night. Saturday morning at 8am I got a call that said the guy that rents the trucks wouldn't be in until noon, so I should wait and pick it up. We finally got the truck at 1, but not until Michael was able to throw in an awesome Seinfeld reference at the rental place.... "Anybody can just take a reservation...it's the holding that is important..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7uvttu8ct0&feature=related

We moved all day Saturday with some help from Nate and Caleb (thanks so much) but we made countless trips following the return of our truck in the 4-Runner. It's like our stuff was multiplying... we are SO ready for a garage sale! As Michael put it, "If we were doing this in reverse and I was standing in our house with all this stuff, and you told me that I had to move all this stuff into our 1200 sq. ft. apartment, I'd tell you there was no way." And that is the TRUTH!
Last night was the first night we did laundry in our house, the first night I attempted to use the gas cook top (more on that later) and the first night I used the tub (ahhhhh). We're making progress unpacking, but there is still a ton of stuff just dropped wherever we could find room to put it! We are REALLY looking forward to our long weekend to make some huge strides. I'll post pictures of the 'wreckage' soon but for now I'm attaching some painting pictures...
Our breakfast nook got a couple of coats of paint before I pulled off a huge strip of paint like a big gummy worm - I was trying to pull a paintbrush hair off the wall (lesson #1: cheap paintbrushes are cheap for a reason and nice ones are worth the investment!). We're now going to have to sand and start over in this room, but the other rooms were more successful.

The Master Bath all ready for painting. The lighting is bad in this pic but the tile is a beige color and the walls were yellow.

Michael hard at work painting his walls this lovely "Dry Pasture" color.

Priming the niche in the secondary bedroom for painting. It was a VERY dark red and you can tell it's been painted about a hundred different colors so it was pretty crazy texture AND color to paint over.

Anyway, we also painted the other bathroom and got the final color on the niche so more pictures are to come! Thanks to all of you who are sharing in our joy for this very exciting step in our lives - it's an adventure!

Natasha