Progress!! And a little reminiscing . . .

Alright so I decided it was time to post some yard pics. If you start getting annoyed by how good our garden looks, just keep scrolling down :). I cannot grow rosemary. It hates me, I've already killed like three rosemary plants and all the farmer's market guy had to say was, well rosemary is hard to grow from seed. Oh really? I didn't know.

My rose bush is blooming again! I went and cut off all the dead heads so that it would have the energy it needed to bloom again and it worked! I have five or six roses on my bush. They look almost as good as the ones that were on it when I bought it haha.

Our lovely cherry tomatoes getting ready to turn orange, at least I think I picked out an orange plant haha.

Bell peppers here we come! Okay I don't even really like bell peppers, but Spencer does and they make things look more colorful so I can live with them :). Plus my other peppers haven't set yet so maybe bell peppers will become my favorite kind of pepper . . . maybe.

This is supposed to show you how tall our tomatoes are!! They are a little out of control!

And my dead rosemary. Ha. So maybe I'm just lucky with all my other plants and really have no gardening skills. I guess it is to be determined :).

Alright moving indoors! My lovely birthday shelf. Okay I know if needs more things on it, I'm just happy about it :). I did manage to find some fun baskets at Ikea and I'm displaying all the bday and anniversary cards we got.

And a present from two of my favorite people! Alisha painted me this lovely painting for my bday and one day when I came home from hanging out with work friends, Spencer had made this cool frame from an old window. So cool! Oh and we finally found out our bed is going to be here July 13th. Yep 1 to 3 weeks shipping turned into 3 month shipping. Good thing I'm so patient :).

Okay on a completely different note. This weekend in Iowa we were scrap booking and my mom had brought this picture to put in an album for my grandma. If Peter is ever a famous indie rocker this will be his album cover:

Rachael said she thought I had punched her right before the picture or won the lottery and punched her too considering how ridiculously smug I look. I guess I was developing my conquering skills for later in life haha. Anyway we decided to reenact the picture this weekend and here you go: the new and "improved" family photo. And yes Will and Spencer are gma and gpa standins.

Ah I love my siblings. And apparently I love lording things over Rach's head. Sorry middle sis. I love you. And I will always enjoy sharing life with you, especially moments like this one haha.

Weekend Trip Number Two

Alright so this weekend we're off to be children of the corn . . . in the middle of Iowa with all my closest relatives for my gma's 80th bday. Should be pretty interesting :)

Also this week has just been full of random fun things and right now I'm feeling appreciative so I'm going to list them :).

I got to take a walk with my little on riverside and drink QT slurpies, which we actually drove to more than one QT to find, apparently everyone had the same idea as us haha.

We got to ride bikes with David and Kat Tuesday night which was just really nice and relaxing and then I got to hear all about Libby's sweet new art business! Creative people just make me happy :).

Last night was golfing with Rita, which I pretty much am horrible, but I've only played twice so I'm trying to keep a good attitude ;) and plus they had a free beer cart, how can that not be good? :)

And tonight it's off to girl's night at hideaway and then shopping and listening to music at Utica then walking with Spencer and packing for the good old family reunion.

Oh and my favorite part of the week I think: this morning! It rained last night and it wasn't muggy yet when I was leaving the gym so I opened the windows and jammed out to some Natasha Bedingfield and was just glad that God makes sunny days and lets us make happy pop music. Yes I know I am ridiculous, but I needed that kind of morning.

And yes I am also working this week too :).

Off To Dallas

So this is what I got!!!! (minus all the stuff on it haha). I was so surprised, I had totally forgotten I had asked for this awhile back!

And we are headed off to Ikea this weekend with our neighbor friends haha (Kathryn and David if you didn't get the joke) to look for furniture, although at this point I think I just want a lamp :).

And everyone is gone from my office this afternoon and it is so pretty out and yes I am so ready for saturday to come!!!

Happy Bday and Anniversary To Me :)

The lovely birthday dinner Spencer and I cooked. We've been on a cooking spree. Maybe it's just because on vacation all we did was go out so now cooking feels really cathardic and relaxing. We had steak and corn on the cob and new potatoes from the farmers market and mushrooms and fruit and our year old wine! Yes we actually made it. When we went to New Zealand last spring we got a bottle of wine from Ransom vineyard while we were with Brooke and Travis and the owners told us it would be at its premium if we let it age a year, so we did! Not really on purpose, we just made it that long without drinking it because we had all other kinds of good wine from California and Portland and my dad's graduation gift to Spencer of all kinds of good wine. So anyway it was delicious!! The food and the wine :).

It was a nice peaceful way to close up my birthday after the craziness of the week before. I decided calming is my favorite thing right now. But I would have gladly given up calm if all my missing favorite people had been in town!!! I missed you all, mom, dad, other mom and dad, all my siblings, hellman and schaffner and of course Alisha :). So mark your calendars now, I'm giving up peace and quiet for a crazy thanksgiving dinner at our house here in T-town, so you better be there :).

On another note, I saw a commercial for a church the other day and realized the guy talking was sitting at the front table at Double Shot, so strange! Talking all about God's love and how if you ever need to just talk about it and don't know who with, come to our church, kind of cool I thought.

Also, I saw a real live duckling crossing the other day.

And Spencer won't tell me what he got me for my bday, I have to wait till it ships!

And our bed is finally shipping!! So come two weeks everyone should come visit because we'll have an extra bed :).

Oh and one more thing, my boss found out Spencer and I were celebrating our anniversary tonight and made me let the other engineer working with me be on call for the pressure testing in the middle of the night! What a nice present :).

Vacation Pics

Okay so I figured I'd put up few of my favorite from our adventures on the west coast. So here you go, for your viewing pleasure!

Garrett had said he would take us to this giant troll, none of us really knew what he was talking about. Then we walked under this random overpass and there it was! And I guess Spencer forgot he was not a senior in highschool anymore :).

And how would it be a good vacation without a little coffee recommended by the Doubleshot gang. Spencer enjoying his freshly made cup of coffee at Victrola. And yes we did go there two mornings in a row and I ordered the same thing twice, it was just so good! A delicious americano with a gingernap cookie, breakfast of champions haha.

After hitting up the coffee shop one morning we took the rainy ferry over to Bainbridge island. Di had recommended the ferry ride and I was goioing to go even if it was raining the whole time! It was really peaceful and the town was really cute, after we figured out which way to walk to eat food. Down the road with no one else but us and consistently fewer houses and cars was not the right way haha.

View of Seattle from the ferry. And yes it was this gray almost the whole time we were there. I could not do that long term! Bring on the sun, seriously!

And I'm not convinced I would ever be able to live on the west coast with all it's rain and chilliness but if I lived in Seattle I definitely would be at the market all the time. It was like the farmers markets in Tulsa but bigger and better and every day!! And yes home of the famous fish throwers too :).

Enjoying a little wine tasting in the hills outside of Portland. It was truly gorgeous. And truly not fun to drive up to and down from in an Expedition full of eight people full of wine. ha ha yes I was the designated driver. Actually it wasn't too bad, everyone just fell asleep while they trusted their lives to me haha.

And last but not least, what our backyard will someday look like, okay maybe not but we might try to incorporate some of the elements of this awesome japenese garden we went to in Portland. It was so green!

And on another note, we've started getting up at 5:30 every morning to work out. We'll see how long this lasts :).

Saga of the AC

So a couple weeks ago we went to turn our AC on and nothing happened! We messed with it a bunch a finally called the AC guys our contractor used and found out they had never finished hooking it up/they still needed to do a trial run on it. Okay, seems to not make much sense, but whatever. So they came out to do the trial run and well PSO never hooked up our electric meter! In living there five months we had only been paying service fees, no actual usage fees! Our meter had been laying on the ground next to the breaker box the whole time. Doesn't give you much faith in the fact that PSO is supposed to be checking meters often. So finally after a few more days (during which Spencer rigged up an old air conditioning unit from the house so we could sleep some at least) PSO came out. Then we left for vacation with a promise from the AC guy that he'd come out the next day at the latest. Well we got home and the AC still wasnt' working! Our poor house sitter had been in a hot house for a week. Our cabinet doors were starting to warp from the humidity and our jungle plant was well thriving with a bunch of buds since it was basically a green house inside our house! It was a nice HOT 84 degrees and sticky when we opened the doors after getting home. So we called the AC guy again and finally last night when we got home from work it was COOL!!!!! I never thought 72 and dry would feel quite so amazing :). Yeah for modern conveniences!