Blogular Update

WHAT IS UP, PEEPS!!! I am excited because I'm posting so soon after my last post, like I promised. You should all be excited too. Ok, to start, vote on my poll on the side if you haven't already. BTW, you are allowed to vote for multiple answers, I did.

So the floors are done and our house is back in order, yay!! Here are some pics. Keep in mind that we went with water based poly vs. oil based. The water based doesn't have any color while the oil based has an amber tone to it and it yellows over time. So in the prev. pics our floors that were already finished were pretty yellow. Also, our new floors have a satin finish vs. glossy so they're not shiny. It was an adjustment the first time I saw them cuz they're so different, but we really like them. They have so much character and the wood is so nice.

What do you guys think?

So I got my flowers planted this weekend. The flower place (Bachman's) was chaotic and I don't know the first thing about flowers, so I had to ask like 4 diff employees for help cuz none had time to answer all the questions I had. So this is what I ended up with:

Impatiens in the flower box, they will eventually fill out the whole box.

Geraniums in the backyard

And a begonia by the side door

Here you can see our lilacs have really filled in. If you look closely, you can see the geraniums on the lower left part of the pic.

We are planning on getting more flowers in the future to fill in some spots in the yard, but that was enough work for one day. I'm not used to this kind of stuff! But it's fun and I like to check on my flowers everyday to see how they're doing! They are my new little babies.

Speaking of little babies, check out this one. Oooohhh, puppah!

So on my next post I will show pics of our new window treatments. We FINALLY got something on our windows, no more white trash towels!! So the only thing left right now is to paint the walls around the window trim in our bedroom. We might do that this weekend.

We had a great long weekend, got to eat some Taco John's, so that was a plus. Haha. Hope all of you had a good weekend too. Stay in touch and keep reading!

Seacrest out.

I'm Back!

Hey folks! I'm back from Bis and it was a good time for sure. Congrats to my mom on her retirement! It was fun hanging with the fam, as usual. Great to see my nieces and nephews again! I always miss those little tikes. I got to see Mel in her beautiful wedding dress and we shopped for bridesmaid dresses. She got one picked out and we're going with 'petunia' for the color. It's kinda inbetween baby pink and hot pink.

Here is a pic of the dress style (obviously not the right color).

This isn't going to be a real long blog, but I know I needed to post. It's been a long week and I'm tired. But this weekend I believe I'm going to get some flowers to plant around the yard. If I do, I'll post pics of those and the new floors. They are really nice!

We have these beautiful trees right next to our yard so I thought I'd share them with you! There are so many trees around our area, and they are all diff colors. I love this time of year when everything greens up, it's so gorgeous. We've had so much rain that things greened up nicely.

Ok, that's all for today. I'll post again soon.

Wurd.

Oh, one more thing:

House Projects

Hi peeps!! How is everyone doing? Just an FYI on the latest poll. My fortune was the 'silly' one, and yes, the better one. So I win.

An update on the house projects. We got the walls around the new window trim painted. We did all but our bedroom windows, cuz that's a diff kind of paint so we have to do it early in the morning and let it dry and air out. It's oil based so it stinks and takes longer to dry. Here are a couple pics.

A week from today we have our floor guy coming out and he's refinishing all our wood floors. Our floors in the bedrooms aren't even sealed, so they will look so awesome when they are done. The other floors are going to get sanded and 3 coats of poly. Here are before pics. I'll get you some after pics when I get back from Bis.

Entry way

Our bedroom. See how terrible the unfinished floors look?

The office

We have to be out of here when they get done, so I'm going home (as many of you already know). Justin still doesn't really know what he's doing. But good news! Bear gets to go to Dog Day Getaway after all! That makes me feel so much better. He'll have a blast and we'll be able to check in on him on their webcams.

I'm thinking about planting some flowers in a few pots we have in the backyard. I've got some ideas, so I might try those out. Someone suggested day lillies. I don't have much of a green thumb, but it's worth a shot. Owning your own house is fun! :) Our lilacs bushes are budding and creating more privacy for our backyard, not to mention prettiness! And they smell so good.

See how much more private our yard is when the bushes are budding?
Nevermind the terrible shape our lawn is in thanks to the dog.

It's our 11 month anniversary tomorrow! I can't believe how fast the time went. It feels like we just got married. We don't have anything special planned for our 1-year. Probably just a nice dinner. Yep, we're real exciting people.

This past Sunday we had some friends over and BBQed and drank some beers. We got some delish ribs from Von Hanson's (a local butcher shop). We had some potato salad, bread, and I made strawberry marble cheesecake. Everything was yummy! We also played some bolo (aka lawn golf, Norwegian golf, etc). It was good times. That's our Sunday ritual in the summers. The same group of people get together, bring some contribution to the dinner, get drunk, cook up some great grub, and play games. Throughout the summer I'll fill you in on our weekly BBQ meals. You'll be jealous.

Bear has been busy hunting the chipmunks that run rampantly through our yard and hole up in our garage. He's so cute when he hunts cuz he's so intense and cannot be distracted. He tries so hard! And no blog would be complete without a pic of The Bear!

Me is so warm in this blankets.

Can't wait to see everyone when I come home! Love you all and enjoy the pic-filled post. Only one week after my last one, not too shabby!

P.O.

This One's for B Squared

So this post is happening tonight only because of my sis, Brenda Babes. I knew I was overdue for a post, but was not planning on doing it tonight. Then I got an email from B demanding a post, so here you go. I hope you're happy ;)

Well, I have a wonderful husband. Remember my half eaten turtle from Bear's day of destruction? Well, I was so upset about that because it was a momento from our honeymoon and it was special to me. So Justin called the resort we stayed at and somehow (after much work) managed to get them to send me a new turtle! So I got it in the mail a couple days ago, and here it is!

I am one good looking turtle.

Yay!! He's a little different, but it doesn't matter. Just the fact that Justin went through all that work to get him makes him just as special to me!

So we got the trim done on the windows and then some dude came out today to paint the trim. We were originally going to do it ourselves, as I mentioned in my previous post, but we decided it would just save us so much time and effort to have someone else do it. And we knew they'd do a better job than us. So, alas, here are our new windows and trim! We just have to paint the walls cuz dude patched them for us.

So new windows, new trim, and refinished floors in 2 weeks. It'll be like a brand new house! It'll just be so nice to have all this stuff done cuz we've had towels on our windows for a month now.

We took Bear to Doggie Day Camp today because the paint guy came. Well, when they were checking him in this morn they noticed a bump on his lip. They called our vet and they thought it was probably CPV, a virus. It's like the equivalent to a wart on a person. But it's contagious to other dogs so poor Bear had to stay in the kennel all day at DDC instead of playing with all the other dogs. I was bummed out for him. But the people at PetSmart said they took him out more than just the scheduled times because they all know him so well and felt bad for him. So that was good. But I guess it takes a month or 2 to go away and we can't take him to day camp or Dog Day Getaway until it goes away. And we had plans to take him to DDG the weekend we're getting the floors done, which is only 2 weeks away. Now we might just have to board him at PetSmart without doing the day camp. I feel bad about that, but what else can we do? We're kinda hoping it goes away faster so we don't have to worry about it. Oh, and now Justin has a plethora of names for Bear now, including Paps (canine papilloma virus), Warts, etc. In honor of our pup, here are some adorable pics I took tonight.

Sleeping sitting up

Ok, have a good night everyone! You're welcome for the update. Guess whose fortune was whose? I'll give you a hint, mine's the way better one.

Peace out!

The Happenings

What's up everybody? It's been awhile, so I thought I'd fill you in on what's been happening around here.

I finally got my ASHA Certification!! Yay. That was an exciting day. I got the letter in the mail 2 weeks ago. So soon I'll be getting my raise. And I already started doing VitalStim. I had a patient at Richfield that I did a couple sessions with and now I have a patient at Golden Valley that will be starting tomorrow. It's just nice to finally have my C's.

We got all new trim on the windows yesterday. It's really nice, but now we have more work ahead of us. The new trim doesn't go out as far as the old stuff, so we have to sand down the paint, fill it, and then repaint around all the trim. Then we have to prime and paint the trim itself. So it's not that hard of work, just time consuming. We're talking 8 windows! But after it's all said and done, it'll look really nice. I'll post a pic of the new trim later.

Bear has been spoiled lately and going to the dog park a lot. Now that the ponds are thawed, I can't keep him out of the water. He loves to fetch balls out of the ponds. Funny though, cuz he won't bring one back on land at the dp, but he'll bring it back from the water. But he looks so cute swimming his little heart out to get those tennis balls. He went to the vet on Monday for his yearly round of shots, nail clipping, and 1-year check up. The verdict is out: the puppah is overweight!! He's 55.6 lbs, they want him at 50. I guess it's still just hard for me to get through my head. But now he only gets 2 cups of food a day (used to be 2 1/2 cups a day). And we're cutting down the peanut butter kong to only a few times a week. Greenies he'll only get on the weekends. Our poor pup will be treat deprived! Oh, and he has mild dental disease. So, we've started brushing his teeth. He has poultry flavored toothpaste. And he loves it. I can't believe he doesn't mind having his teeth brushed. Can you imagine if we used poultry flavored toothpaste? I think that I'd like mashed potato and gravy flavored toothpaste. On a good note, Bear doesn't have heartworm! But he is a fattie.

So, I'm flying solo this weekend. Justin is going to a wedding in Fargo so I'm stuck with Mr. Bear. Maybe we'll try a little rollerblading if the weather permits.

I know this is a boring post, but deal with it. If I didn't post anything new, I'd get crap for not updating it. So make yourself enjoy this. The colors will help, and that's why I did it.

A blog without pics! AHHH! I'll try to not let it happen again. The fact of the matter is I'm too lazy to get off the couch and go upstairs to get the camera.

Ice Cream Update...and More

Props to Ben and Jerry's for their response to Justin's email about the ice cream fiasco. J-wad sent them an email basically saying we know it's not your fault, but we just wanted to make you aware of the sitch. About a week later, we got a letter in the mail from B&J's saying they were sorry about what happened and they included these coupons (or koopins, as it were).

I used this coupon today, bought the S'mores kind. Haven't tried it yet, but am considering it this very moment.

Thanks Ben and Jerry! We 'preciate it.

This past Saturday we got the office painted. I now present you with a timeline of the event...

in pictures!

Pre-prep. Note all the trim and the chair rail that needed to be taken off of 3 walls, sanded, patched, then floated with joint compound. Who do you think did all of that? You're right, me. Ha ha. Not so much. It sure is nice to have a husband to do that stuff.

Here's Justin taking off part of the chair rail.

Bear's doing his part to help take care of the trim.

Chair rail and trim are off, sanded, patched, and floated.

Justin taping

Justin cutting in

Almost done with the first coat.

First coat done and drying!

Next two pics are the finished product!

Perfect for a baby boy or girl in the future! Green and pink and brown if we have a girl, green and blue if it's a boy. Yay! Maybe just another year or two ;)

What? You'd like to see some more pics of the pup? Ok, here they are.

Ok, more news later but I had to get this post done, it's been too long! Oh, btw, I know it appears as though Justin did all the work in the office. Someone had to take the initiative to snap some photos while working. Of course it was me.

P.O. homies.

I went to buy some groceries the other day and Justin and I like us some ice cream, so I perused the ice cream aisle. And what do I find but a delectable sounding Ben & Jerry's flavor, Vermonty Python. See below for description:

So, I bust it open the night I got it and dig into it with my spoon. Or should I say, attempted to dig into it. But it was like a rock. I manage to scoop out a bite; it wasn't bad, but definitely not great. Maybe even a bit gritty. I think this is odd, so I flip over the container and this is what I see on the bottom:

Eeewwww, gross. If you buy a thing of ice cream today, it expires one year from when you buy it. That means that this ice cream has been sitting in the freezer at Cub for 2 years!!! I returned it, and got some yummy (not expired) Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. I highly recommend it! That's my ice cream story.

We really enjoyed having Steve and Erin over this weekend. We did some intense grilling on Sat. Nice job on the strips, bro! We had some drinks and watched the bball game (I don't want to talk about it). It was a beautiful 66 degrees on Sat, so perfect day for grilling. P.S. Thanks for walking Bear on Sat. afternoon!!

The next morning, I get up, drink a cup of coffee, then go for a refill. Well, I can't exactly explain how it happened, but right after I put the creamer in, I have a hand spasm and knock my cup over, in turn dousing my phone with freshly creamered java. The screen starts blinking from the Verizon screen to a white screen, over and over. I take the battery out and try to dry it out. Justin puts it in a bag with some of those silica gel thingies (you know, those little packets that always come in your shoe boxes) to try to dry it. Well, then a little later, it powers up. Justin actually uses it to call his phone, and it works! I think, I should get my contact info off there asap. But then he proceeds to turn it off and all I can think is that it's not gonna start up again. Well it did, then it started sizzling, battery got hot, and it died. Never to be resuscitated again. Needless to say, I got a new phone. It's the Samsung Gleam. I really like it so far. Couldn't get a good pic of it yet, but check out Justin's blog for one.

We are painting the office/future nursery this weekend. We (I) decided on a color called Garden Spot from Behr. It's a job cuz we have to take down a bunch of crap off the walls, then sand, then paint. Here's a pic of the color, but it doesn't really do it justice, so just know it's better than it looks. With this color, we can accessorize for a boy or a girl! Plus anything's better than that ugly yellow color.

Below is a pic of the bedroom.

We have to take all that trim stuff off.

Bear loves his new bed! We got it from LL Bean. It's big but he loves it cuz he gets to stretch out! Isn't he the cutest pup ever?

Ok, I'll comment on the game. UNC was completely cold and they got themselves into a hole that they couldn't get out of. They made a hell of a run at it, but fell short. The only thing that makes me feel better is none of the starters are seniors, and I'm positive Hansbrough will come back for his senior year. So they should have a killer team next year too. I'm sad about no more bball for 7 months! :( Oh well.

Ok, gotta go. Hope everyone is doing well. I miss my fam, love you all!

Peace out.