10 Things to do Before I Die

I was perusing my amazingly talented, hilarious, and wonderful mother's website which she recently updated, and came across a list she made of things she wants to do before she dies. For all you blog-stalkers out there, her website is right here. I thought that was a pretty neat idea, and since all my kids have gone home early today I'm gonna give it a shot. I didn't really have time to think up this list, so I may add some more stuff later.

1. Have at least three babies...preferably four. And of course, my first girl will be Juliana. The boys will all have manly cowboy names like Ike or Eli or Wyatt.

2. Spend a month cruising around Europe. I've wanted to go ever since Dad took Melanie when she was 10. I was so jealous! He took me to Hawaii though, so he's off the hook.

3. Write a kids book and have it published. You can illustrate it, Mom.

4. Get myself back into single digit pants and stay there. Now that I'm trying to reproduce it's the worst possible time to diet. But once the babies are here it's on!

5. Have more foster kids. We're actually thinking about doing it sooner rather than later. It's been discussed briefly. I'm not sure Pete is completely ready to do it again, but I am! This time I want a 2-4 year-old though. I can live without the 9 year-old sass! I rock with the terrible two's.

6. Get rich, buy a private sailboat, and sail around the world over a couple of years. See EVERYTHING. I actually know somebody who did this with her husband and three kids. She is my hero. This is one of the items on this list that is more of a dream. This may be a little harder to make a reality. Pete agrees it would be amazing, though. I'll just keep buying those lottery tickets!

7. Learn (or re-learn) to play an instrument. In high school I took a piano class that I loved. I learned to read music, and could actually play quasi-well. I've completely lost my ability to read music, and can barely play chop-sticks. Now that Pete and I have a decent sized house, I may just get my piano back from Melanie and start taking lessons again. I've also been thinking about taking up the guitar.

8. Learn a foreign language. I took four years of French only to forget 98% of it. The problem is that I have absolutely no use for it in New Mexico. I want to learn Spanish so I can keep my hand in over the years. Dang, I wish I was as smart as I was in high school! I also wish I took Spanish.

9. Learn to juggle. This has been on my list since Junior High.

10. Have an amazing garden. I'm really awful with outdoor plants, especially. I plant them, take care of them for a couple weeks, and then completely ignore them and they die of thirst. Or the dog digs them up and drags them through the yard. I guess what number ten should really say is "have self-control and will myself to take care of outdoor plants." Even the local, low-water plants seem to die in my care. My indoor plants are doing great, though.

This was fun. Now I need to get off my double-digit badonk-a-donk and make it happen!

Today, your awesomeness is not going to be a ridiculous video. Instead, I'm going to make you aware of an amazing product that I believe everyone needs. It would come in really handy if you're ever stranded on a deserted island. It's The Most Incredible Knife. That's the actual name of it. Click here to check out its 85 features. (I covet the 300-foot laser pointer and golf divet repair tool.)

We're Baaa-aaaack!

I finally unpacked the desk stuff today, to include the cord to the camera. Which means we can post a couple of house pictures. Hooray!

We've been constantly working on the house since we moved in a few weeks ago, and we're still not even close to being done. I'll post a few before and after pictures so you can get an idea of what we're talking about here.

Let's start with the exterior, shall we? When we moved in, the outside of the house was in awesome shape as far as the roof, stucco, and anything costly was concerned. But the front yard was full of dead weeds, random big rocks that didn't really belong, and two half-dead agaves. It had zero curb appeal.


Now that I'm done with it (for now) the agaves have been cut back, the trim was painted, the weeds are no more, and I planted a couple small plants that will grow pretty and add color in the next couple years. I planted a Russian Sage which has purple flowers, and a Spanish Broom which blooms yellow flowers. Here's the result of my labor:


I'm still not so sure about the green. It may be a little too green. It was easy to paint, so I'm still considering changing it. What do you think?

Moving on to the kitchen. When we moved in , it was what I like to refer to as "baby poop orange". All of it. To include the cabinets and the small tiles on the back splash that used to be white.


At first I thought it would be really cool to paint it dark blue. I wanted to do the tiles in either all different shades of blue, or different shades of green with a little turquoise thrown in. Once I painted the kitchen dark blue I realized what a mistake I had made. It looked like a garage!


I really hated it. Pete thought I was crazy, but the next day I re-painted it. When we lived in Flagstaff, our kitchen was lime green and I loved it. I decided to stick with a classic, and I went with the lime green. I still haven't painted the individual tiles yet. Also, we're going to change out the sweet 70's counter tops, but the ones I want will cost about $1,500. We're gonna have to wait on that for a few months. The tile, and the tile in the nearby dining room are getting changed out as well. Here's how it turned out so far.


I don't know why, but I didn't take any "before" pictures of the living room. Therefore, I will describe what it looked like. Tan walls, dirty fireplace, and my favorite, concrete. It was just plain concrete in the living room, but it was orange down the hall. What is with these people with the baby poop orange I will never know. Anyhoo, we decided that we really liked the wood at our old house and that we'd love to kill ourselves laying 500 square feet of wood, so that's what we did. It was really hard work, and our friends Kyle and Megan came in and saved us at the last minute by helping us out. They were like angels of mercy swooping down from the heavens in work clothes ready to assist in any way they could. They literally shaved at least 5 hours of work off the job. I love them! Our hard work paid off, and our floors look really great! I also slapped a coat of paint on the walls.










We still have to lay down tile in the dining room, so we're waiting to do that before we tackle the molding that goes along the floor. We figure we'll do it all at once.

The carpet comes in on Thursday for the three bedrooms. I can't wait! I hate waking up and putting my feet on the cold, orange concrete. I am dreaming of Friday when I awake to some lovely, soft carpet to greet my tootsies! Yay!

Incidentally, on the day that I was outside doing all the yard work and painting the house, I completely slathered myself in sunscreen. I burn really easy and my freckles get darker (yucky) if I'm out in the sun too much. However, there was one place that I didn't think to put sunscreen that got toasted! That's right...the coin slot.


And on that note, we cue the moment of Zen.....

Oops!

After posting that last blog I decided to be fancy and put up a custom background. Then I accidentally deleted all my pretty pictures and other stuff. Oops. I'll put them back up later when I have time. Now, read the next posting! I just wrote it!

sooo......tired....must........rest....

I am EXHAUSTED! Our new house closed last Thursday, and since then I have been spending every evening scrambling to get this house packed up and the new house ready to be moved into. It's not ready by a long shot, and we move our furniture tomorrow. Every night this week I've been at the new house until at least 10pm (usually later) painting, installing the wood floors (the worst!), moving all the little stuff in boxes, pulling the bjillion weeds in the front yard, etc.

It wouldn't be all that bad except every night this week I've woken up in the middle of the night either because I had to go to the bathroom, or for no apparent reason at all. I do my best to clear my head and not think, or to find something unimportant to think about so I can drift back off to sleep. It doesn't really work, and I generally spend anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour trying to get back to sleep. I've also been having really bizarre and vibrant dreams. It's so obnoxious.
To top it all off, I'm getting sick. I thought it might just be allergies, but Claritin isn't working and my face is all congested. I am so groggy and achy! I've been taking naps with the kids each day to try and catch up on a few zzz's.

Despite all the yuckiness, I am really excited to get into the new house. I'm bummed that the carpet in the bedrooms won't come in for another two weeks and we didn't get a chance to tile the dining room yet, but that will happen in the next few weeks as well. As soon as the house is all put together I'll post pictures. I'm really excited because we'll have three bedrooms. That means Pete can have his man-room and we can have a real guest bedroom. Hopefully it'll become a nursery soon, but I'm not doing any decorating until it's for sure!

Anyhoo, if anyone wants to plan a visit let me know. I've got a guest bedroom now, and we'll have an actual queen-sized bed in there. No more crashing on the couch! Yay!

An now...your moment of zen.

Trip to Phoenix / The Big Move!

Last week I was in Phoenix watching my 13 year-old niece Autumn while my step-sister Angela and her husband went on a cruise. It was a busy week trying to get a visit in with all the relatives in the Phoenix Metro Area. There were several people I didn't get to visit, and to them I say sorry. My family is huge, though, and I only had a couple hours each day while Autumn was at school. Next time I'll make the trek up to Prescott!

While in Phoenix I got to go on lots of field trips! I went to the Phoenix Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, The Phoenix Art Museum, Robbie's dirt bike practice (which was really cool!), the Science Museum, and tons more. I also went to a couple girlie movies and read two books. For those ladies who love period romance novels, I highly recommend The Other Boleyn Girl. Melanie and I went to the movie after I finished reading it, and it doesn't hold a candle to the book. I also got to see my nephews which is always super-fun!

I brought my schizophrenic camera, but it only wanted to work at the botanical gardens and Ikea, so my pictures aren't all that great - hence not posting any. Thanks for all who were gracious enough to host while I was there, and to those who went field tripping with me! It was well needed R&R.

Now that I'm home, it's time to pack! Our new house closes on Thursday, and then Pete and I get to install the flooring and paint before we lug all our junk across town and into our new house. We are both really looking forward to the move, and truly dreading all the costs associated with it. We have to buy a new heater before they will turn on the gas, so that means forking over $700, or taking icy cold showers. Also, the flooring alone is going to cost us a little over $3,000 and we need to buy a fridge. Goodbye sweet savings! Luckily Pete will be getting bonuses with his new job, but we probably won't see those until at least late May, early June (and thank goodness for them!). Overall, though, we are both really excited about all the extra space and are not at all disappointed to say goodbye to our ghetto neighbors. Later, sucka's!

As promised, something interesting...

This one is a little less depressing.

He got it!

Pete just called and he said that they offered him the job, but for less than he was hoping for. Unfortunately, they don't count years of experience until after you've graduated with a bachelor's degree. So even though nothing changes, and he'd be doing the same job, they offered him less than he was expecting because two of his four years of experience were knocked off. However, he was still offered more than he's being paid now, plus he'll get a $4,000 bonus when he graduates in May, so that's a plus. Regardless, he's going to take it because there is lots of room for growth and he'll be paid more than he is now at Emcore. They have somewhere in the vicinity of 40,000 employees, so there is definitely wiggle room as far as promotions are concerned!

Well, they say that good things happen in threes. We got a new house, and Pete has a new job. Now I just need to get knocked up and all will be right with the universe!

Changing gears, I've decided that from now on out I will post a random thought, picture, video, what-have-you at the tail end of each post. It'll make things more interesting and keep you stimulated while reading about the mundane details of my and Pete's lives. So, for today's viewing pleasure will be a random video clip that is sure to make you smile. Enjoy!

Yippee!

Our house sold! I got the call literally hours after posting the last grumpy blog. What a relief for both of us! And don't worry...I'm over the grumpiness. I just had to get it out of my system. :)

I just dropped Pete off at the airport. He is flying in to Washington D.C. for his big interview. Unfortunately, he really doesn't have ANY time to sightsee. I'm thinking that maybe our next vacation after the cruise will be to D.C. I've only been once, and I didn't get to see everything I wanted to. This is Pete's first trip there. Everybody keep your fingers crossed that the people interviewing him see how awesome he is and hire him! If he gets the job he'll get a big raise and an amazing corner office with a great view! Send good juju's his way!

On another note, Pete and I are completely pumped that Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica starts this Friday! Yay! It's been over a year since seeing the last season, thanks to the writer's strike. For those of you who love it like we do, but forgot what was going on, here's an update and recap of all the lovely soap opera drama that is BSG....


Also, I love this commercial.