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!