Saturday, February 27, 2010

presidents day adventure

Nathan had to work on President's Day, but I had the day off paid (one of the perk of working for government I guess)- so I headed over to east east east Mesa to pick up my sister and niecey poos for "an adventure!"

Our first stop was Burlington Coat Factory. We tried on the most fabulous of fabulous hats.




Then we headed over to home decor...

Where's Mel?!



Peek-a-boo Bethany!

And then my horrible sister made her 3 year old daughter put on a bra- just so she could photograph it for her own sick and twisted amusement. It was funny though.


Then we headed over to Superstition Springs mall to look at puppies and try on sunglasses. THEN we were hungry- and as we drove by 5 & Diner we noticed they had a value menu and $1 kids meals- so we stopped in. We spent a lot of time waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting- o we had plenty of time to snap some photos.


Say cheese!

The girls with "The King"- eating adventure cookies. Savor those cookies girls- because even though we are at a restaurant- it's gonna be a while before you see any food...


Mel and I- having a super fantastical time on our adventure.


KISS ATTACK!

FINALLY seated- but still about an hour away from getting any food... If I had known that, I probably wouldn't be smiling so big in this picture. Haha

The girls had fun coloring and wearing their little paper hats. I wish I was still small enough to get color pages...


For some reason, the girls got their food like a half hour before Jessica and I did. Dinosaur chickens and fries- Delish. WAY better than the complimentary 3 cucumber slices and ranch they brought to hold us over until our food was ready.


Aw, how nice- Bethany feeding her mommy- since the restaurant wasn't! And I have to defend my sister's fashion sense- this is not her jacket! I was wearing her sweater because it was freezing- then she got cold too, so she was wearing Melody's jacket, since neither of the girls were cold. You rock that purple leopard print Jessica!

VALENTINES DAY!!

This year for Valentines day, Nathan decided it would be to take a trip to see some snow!

As you can see, he was very excited.

Dave- not so much. He hates riding in the car.

I wasn't even sure that there was going to be any snow, because it had been a while since the last storm. But what is that I see in the distance on those mountains? SNOW! YAY!


We were going to check out the snow play area that Nathan's sister and her family found around Christmas time- but it was packed! So we headed back up the road to a picnic area that we had seen. As you can see, there was quite a bit of snow.



Here's Nathan gearing up. He was lucky to have those boots! My sneakers got all soaking wet- and that's no fun at all once you leave the snow.


I wasn't sure how the dogs were going to react to seeing snow for the first time- they can be little weenies some times. They were so excited though! They both just took off- they LOVED it.


It was pretty deep in some spots- I sunk in to mid-thigh a couple times. That didn't phase the dogs though. Both of them biffed it in some deep snow a couple times, but they just shook it off and took off running again. It was really cute.

We were a little disappointed that there weren't any good areas to use the tube or sled thingy, but we found other ways to entertain ourselves.

Hand prints in the snow! His hands are so much bigger than mine! But they fit perfectly together when we hold hands =)


We also built a snowman!


He's a snowboarding snowman, with a hat, glasses, and a mouthful of money!

After our little romp in the snow, we headed into Williams and got some famous, and most delicious pie! Then we dropped by a little restaurant in Flagstaff to get some lunch, and headed back down to the valley. It wasn't anything too spectacular- but it was fun, and nice to be able to spend some uninterrupted time with my honey.

Monday, February 22, 2010

looks like our insurance is going up again!

Since Nathan and I got married last year, we've both gotten tickets. Nathan was busted by a sneaky photo radar van in Scottsdale and I was caught making an illegal U-turn. (You can't make a u-turn like anywhere in Scottsdale- it's ridiculous!) But anyway, after those unfortunate incidents, we've been SUPER careful drivers. You know how expensive car insurance can get for a young married couple! The last thing we need is rate hike for a stupid mistake. But with those photo radar cameras all over the place-it was bound to happen sooner or later...



Bad Buster.

valentines treaties!

I thought it would be really fun to make some Valentines Day treat baskets for friends and family this year. So I enlisted the help of my best friend Kassi and we made some V-Day deliciousness!

Here I am filling in some of the candy molds...

Kassi making some candy hearts!

We made some super yummy strawberry mousse and put it inside a homemade candy shell, and topped it off with some fresh berries. These were most exquisite, but unfortunately our candy shells kept breaking when we tried to take them out of the molds! So we only wound up with like 3 of them.


All of our candy creations! I think they turned out pretty well for our first time!


And here is sheet one of my sugar cookies....

...and sheet 2! There were supposed to be more giant hearts- but I just couldn't get the dough to cooperate with me!

Here's a few of the delicious cupcakes that Kassi made. There were a lot more, but we had already packed some up (and Nathan had eaten a few) before we realized that we hadn't taken a picture of them yet.

After all the treats were finished, we packed them up in little boxes so we could deliver them! This is the inside of one of the boxes.

Our original plan was wear our love bug attire, as shown above, and deliver the baskets of Valentiny goodness- but we ran out of time. We actually had a few things that didn't go quite as we planned- but at least we will know better for next year.
After Kassi headed home to get ready for her hot Valentines date, I headed over to deliver one of the boxes to my sister's house.

Bethany enjoying her Valentines sucker!

Melody, hamming it up for the camera!

My two little niecey-poos! So cute. Hope everyone had an awesome Valentines Day! Sorry if you didn't get a basket this year- our treats didn't go as far as we had hoped! Love you all!

my babies

Our puppies are growing up so fast! It's been a while since I did a Dave & Buster post, so here are some recent pics of the boys.

I snuck up on them for this one. They had been rough housing a bit, that's why Dave's ears are all funny.



I love it when the camera catches the dogs mid yawn or lick. This one looks like Dave is screaming. And of course, Buster is giving me a death glare.


He really doesn't like getting his picture taken. That's why there is only one picture of him by himself.


Little Dave doesn't mind though.







Aren't my boys just the cutest?!

a house update- of course!


Nathan says: "YOU haven't been blogging about the progress on the house!" And by YOU he means me... and he is right. I have been slackin' in my picture taking and my blog updating. Bad Tarin.

So, this hardly makes up for it, and doesn't show much, but these are the only pictures I have progress-wise.

As most of you know, we decided to do a little remodel/addition to our new house, that would attach the laundry room (which was originally in the garage) to the rest of the house through a little breezeway. In doing so, Nathan took some trips up to the attic to get all the electrical iring stuff hooked up...

These are some pics that Nathan's mom took (Thanks Virginia!) of Nathan after one of his trips into our, apparently dusty, attic!

He always gets decked out in long pants and long sleeved shirts AND his hard hat when he has to go up there. But anyway, if you look beyond Nathan in these pictures, you can see we have a new back door (on the left hand side) and you can see that we had torn down the wall to laundry room. These pictures were quite a while ago- like mid-Januaryish.



This picture was taken standing in the doorway from kitchen to the new breezeway- to display the fabulous job my husband did retexturing the two rooms. That's right RE-texturing. We actually hired some guys to do it, but they sucked and didn't match the texture that was in the rest of the house. And so my fabulous hubby got up early the next morning and went down to Home Depot and rented the equipment and stuff to try his hand at texturing. He did an amazing job. It looks ten times better than what the "professionals" did. Nathan single handedly put a stop to my "OH MY GOSH IT DOESN'T MATCH!" panic attack.

This is a close up of Nathan's handy work. It's hard to get a good picture of the texture of a wall...



We also finally got around to painting the outside of the house. Or at least hiring someone to paint the outside of our house! I was so sick of painting after we did the inside, I had no objections when Nathan said he was going to hire someone to do the outside.


These pictures show it all taped off still. You will have to wait and see the completely finished product on the Before and Afters Part 2- which is still to come. I am waiting for the addition to be completely finished and the new hole in my kitchen ceiling (more about that later) to be patched before I post Part 2. It is coming though- I promise! Probably in about week or 2! And I apologize again for my slacking in the home updates department.