Oh Vacation You Are So Beautiful To Me

Okay I like my job, but let's just be honest a much needed vacation every once in awhile is so, so nice. Although I still have a hard time turning my organizing little brain off. Maybe I'll make that a new year's resolution: stop and smell the roses!!

So thanks to some abnormally warm weather in t-town, we've been busy. Okay Spencer's been busier than me, but I helped :). The roof is done on the shed!

Thanks to a coworker of mine who had an ancient compressor and nail gun the job was not quite so miserable, but still roofing by floodlights since the sun goes down at five is not fun, okay I'm postulating here since I never actually did any roofing haha. All I ever did was cook dinner or buy joe mammas for the troops :).

Here's where my part came in: the cleanup! So yesterday it was a balmy 65 degrees in Tulsa, so we went to work on all the shingles and decking and random pieces of wood that were all over the yard. (See I'm really not so good at chilling on my vacation days haha). We took a load over to the dump, which by the way those people have made a couple hundred bucks off us during this whole process! Who knew it was 30 bucks to dump shingles! Something about their weight makes it more expensive to haul off. haha probably TMI :)

So after a couple hours of clean up and listening to blitzy bark at the broom in the shed ;) here's the progress! Okay I know it looks like an abandoned building with an oddly new roof, but it's all winterized in case Tulsa decides to ever enter the winter season this year :). And the yard is almost entirely free of shingles! I have a little more work to do in the corner, but that's by the crazy neighbor dog and I was getting tired haha.

So we also bought this book for Christmas called The Backyard Homestead for my sister since she's about to learn how to run a small scale farm. We loved looking at the book so much we bought ourselves a copy and I think I've almost read the whole thing already, well apart from the chapter on raising your own livestock haha I do live in the city thank you very much. But anyway it tells you how to use your quarter of an acre (which we actually have thanks to our corner lot!) to grow thousands of lbs of veggies and plant fruit trees and nut trees and have chickens ha not so sure about that one yet, but who knows maybe I'll raise chickens someday. One of our neighbors has them! Anyway so I might be asking around for veggie recipes this summer when I get tired of sauteeing them ;).

Alright so I'm bound and determined to make a list of resolutions, mostly just because I like to make myself dream big about what could happen in the next year :). We'll see what crazy things I come up with for 2011. Last year's list had get a dog on it and what do you know? haha we have a dog! And she is losing teeth haha. Spencer stepped on one this morning!

Okay just some mini highlights from vacation:

- seeing the fam, playing speed scrabble, drinking two cups of double shot before eating on Christmas morning (talk about distracted!), catching up with highschool friends, meeting possible future spouses :)

- seeing the other side of the fam, eating thai cafe, seeing evelyn!!! haha and shane and sherry in aspen coffee shop (the smallness of stillwater never ceases to amaze me), getting a kitchenaid mixer!!! haha I feel like a real housewife now, too bad I still have to go to work every day instead of staying home and baking haha please read sarcasm into that ;)

- hanging out at home in t-town, cleaning the yard, playing with our puppy, drinking topeca coffee and not having to rush because I'm on an impromptu break from work, getting our 8000 dollar home owners tax credit finally!!! woo hoo!!!!

I love vacation!!!!