Yurting!

We think it's been about 7 years of going to the yurt. This year made for an especially interesting trip since we started at the beginning of a storm. We hiked up in windy snow and got had 2 feet of new snow the next moring. Here are the highlights of our week (minus the sledding, I couldn't take pictures and sled).

Mom and I cooking dinner.

Our humble home.

The commode

After the storm, when the sun finally came out!

What a beautiful morning!

After the fog lifted.

Many many hours of pinochle!

We had a great trip! Lots of cards, snow, sledding and food. Good good times!

Until next year!

Awww Christmas :)

Christmas has come and gone. We had an amazing weekend filled with family. We spent Christmas eve with my parents eating wonderful seafood. We spent Christmas day with the Butler's eating wonderful lasagna!

Needless to say, we ate a lot :)

I wish I had pictures, but I barely have a computer that works. So without my other laptop, there are no pictures.

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

More Projects

Our poor coffee table has been through a lot. It really needed a face lift. So, Anthony promised me we wouldn't bring it back into the house until it was done. If I had known it would be so easy, we would have done this a LONG time ago! I'm feeling very accomplished with our project. Now to get our rugs, and the living room will be all homey and complete!

Success!

Where did Fall Go?

It's been a wonderful Snow Day, I've gotten so much done today! And, speaking of getting things done, I really should be updating those of you that keep in touch this way :)

Anthony and I were so excited to host Thanksgiving this year. Rachel came over to help (and visit, but mostly help) with cleaning the house, making pie, and starting the stuffing. We made a list for Thanksgiving day which included a specific time slot just for showering. We served dinner five minutes to 2:00. Whew, so proud :) The only thing that could have made it better was not having lumpy potatoes (and of course to have Ruth feeling better), but now I know, and I can fix that!









What a fun day! Thank you for letting me host this Holiday! We really enjoyed having our families together!

Gardening

I learned this year, I really do love gardening (except the whole pulling weeds part).

I started by going to Lowes and buying a million flowers to plant, have no idea what I was doing. We bought a few rose bushes and some annuals. It looked a so pretty when we got them all planted, but I had no idea how big they would all get.

Here is me, showing off what I accomplished!

There are my roses we babied along all year because we broke them in

1/2 when they were being planted.

My grandma brought me a box full of daffodil bulbs, so we'll see what my yard looks like next year. I feel successful in my "keeping plants alive" skill.

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, I did finally get some tomatoes on my plant! It just took all season for them to actually get big enough to produce fruit :)

Updates

Wow it's been forever since I've been on here.

Here are the few updates in our lives. We are finally living a "normal" life in our house again. We have a couple of things to finish up before it's all put back together, such as baseboards, the toe kick under the cabinets, and actually put up a back splash in the kitchen. We were supposed to finished a couple of those things today, but Anthony is down with a cold so we'll wait til next weekend :)

I thought it was hilarious we had the toilet outside for a few days!

Working hard to get it done!

Ta-Da! All finished!

I love the counter tops even more than I thought I would!

Random fact: My parents gave us Molly's old cat bed because she never used it. We just move it around the house because Sirus just sniffs it and walks away. Last weekend Ruth magically got Sirus into the bed, and now it's his favorite place to sleep (2 years later). I think it's precious to see him all curled up in a bed.

I'm sad that those were the only updates I could come up with. Nothing really exciting has been going on around here. House work pretty much keeps us busy all the time and when we're not working on the house, we're at school busy busy busy. Parent/Teacher conferences were this week. Anthony is exhausted! I was able to come home and have the house ready for some friends to come over and vent after a long week of parents! I enjoyed being able to invite people over again. Remember, I love to entertain!

Other than that, things have been pretty mellow.

Venting...

I need an outlet...so here it is....

We spent the morning running errands and picking up supplies for the house. Once we were there I had no motivation to do anything. Anthony and I both took about an hour nap before getting to work. We spent the afternoon stripping the old, stuck on vinyl which actually came up easier than I thought it would. I took out most of the tack strips while Anthony finished the kitchen. The neighbors came over and had an mis-hap with their a/c unit so we tried to help them get the water out of their attic. We chatted waiting for the vinyl installer to show up so we could show him the problem areas in the house we were worried about. He said we could just screw the subfloor back down and all would be well.

Anthony and I went to dinner, came home, and I realized how much crap we still have to do. In order to get ready for the vinyl, we have to screw down all the floor, every 4 inches, we have to get all the crap we scraped up thrown away, and edge around the walls still. In order to start the hardwood, we have to move all the kitchen contents....somewhere else, and get all the staples removed from where the pad was tacked down. We still need to rip off the rest of the baseboards and finish pulling up the tack strips. All while trying to get ready for school next week. Needless to say, I spent the evening crying in my bedroom again, feeling entirely overwhelmed and frusterated to not have a place to call home. I can't stand this "living in 2 places" anymore. All I want is to move back into my put-together house. I want to leave for 3 days and come home to it all put back together. Thinking off all the work we have to put in next week, I just don't see how we're going to come out alive. I know it will all work out and life will be fine. It's just another one of our adventures. But, I just can't see it all actually working out in the 8 days we have left in the hotel. To make things EVEN better, we have no quote from the insurance yet, and we're still waiting for a quote to start on our counter tops. Uhg!

Waiting is the worst part of all.

If you're still reading, sorry...had to get it all off my chest