Quick update...

I know I already wrote an unbearably long post below, but I wanted to let you all know that we added two albums on Picasa. Click here to see pictures from Hawaii (which was in August, I know) and from our stay in Vegas before Christmas.

Pomelo?

So after months of telling everyone about our grapefruit tree, we have finally determined that our tree does not grow grapefruits, but pomelos. What is a pomelo you ask? According to Wikipedia, a pomelo is "is a citrus fruit, usually a pale green to yellow when ripe, larger than a grapefruit, with sweet flesh and thick spongy rind." That would explain my confusion when I cut open the first 'grapefruit' only to find that the rind was extremely thick and very squishy. Either way, we've enjoyed them and so have our neighbors and friends. We did discover that they sell pomelos for $2.50 each at the grocery store, so we might be selling them next year :).

I finally took our pictures off of the camera, so I have quite a few things to write about... This may be a long post so grab a snack, you may be here a while!

Anyway, last weekend (when Shane got President's Day off and I didn't), Shane kept himself busy working around the house. He and his dad and brother put in our new sink and countertop.
Thanks to some great connections, everything was FREE (except for the faucet)! The sink and stopper were from Linkasink (a company that the Guthries own) and the countertop was left over from a job that Shane's dad worked on.

Shane refinished the cabinets a while ago. Now, we just have to find a mirror that we like!

Shane's other project was to extend our back patio to the wall so he'd have a place to put the grill we inherited from Emma and Kendall. Shane dug out the dirt, leveled the ground, and laid all the brick himself. It turned out better than I could imagine!
Also, he picked up a few lights to accent our new bamboo plants and the rocks we got from another one of Roy's jobs.

This is a little old, but last month Shane took me to buy plants to fill the pot I got for my birthday. It only took six months, but I found ones I liked and Shane helped me fill the pot! It now sits next to our front door and I love how it turned out!

I also blogged a while ago about Shane and his dad putting in our new front yard. It's still kind of a work in progress, but here's a look at the main part of the yard. Now we just have to find some plants to replace our monster boganvias and then we'll put matching rock on that side of the yard too.

They also added to our sidewalk. I hadn't paid much attention, but apparently if a car is parked in our driveway, it's hard to get onto the sidewalk without walking over the rocks, so Shane and Roy decided to expand our walkway a bit... Here's the result:

We went out to spend a day with Amy, Chance, and the kids a few weeks ago. We watched Mason play basketball, had a barbeque, and played the Wii. It was a great day! After Mason's game, Paige and Brody wanted a chance on the court, so Shane gave them a boost!
Well, that should be enough for now... I'm hoping to update our Picasa albums with more pictures eventually.... Hope you enjoyed this update!

Under Construction...

Thanks to everyone else's cool blog designs and layouts, Shane has been nagging me to change our blog. Emma found this site which has all sorts of cute blog backgrounds, so we're trying this one out for now. I promise pictures will be coming soon...we haven't pulled any pictures off the camera since before Christmas. That sounds like a good weekend job!

Traffic and blinds

As I write this, Shane is busy putting up our new blinds! It took a few days longer than we thought to get them (they promised them on Monday, we got them on Thursday) so we lived in a fishbowl all week, but now we don't have to worry anymore. I'll take pictures once they're all up and we clean up the sawdust and boxes. Also, we just found out that the transition strips for our wood floor finally came in (we ordered them about 3 months ago), so our front room might be done soon!

In other news, I am now making the longest commute I've had to for this job yet, not including the times I've stayed in a hotel. The drive is about 35 miles, but most days it takes about an hour with traffic. All of this driving has given me a good chance to use my new iPod!

Anyway, that's it for now! Pictures to come soon :)

...exposed...

So, yesterday Shane and his dad were making a trip to the dump with all of the plants and trees they removed from our yard and Tom's yard. Shane decided that since our new blinds will be in tomorrow, he should take down all of our old blinds so we could throw them out while we had a chance.

Our new blinds are for all of the windows in our kitchen/living room area, so now we're feeling very exposed. It was very nice this morning when all of the morning light came into the room, but now that it's dark, we're realizing the whole world can see in. It's probably a good thing we live on a quiet street and have a wall surrounding the back of our house because if not, I think we'd be hiding out in another room.

In other window-covering news, I've decided it's almost impossible to find thermal/blackout curtains that I actually like. I've narrowed it down to a few that will work, but now we have to decide on which ones we'll like for a long time... So for now, we're using the ones we originally bought from Target that are barely wide enough to fill the doors and a little bit too short, but we're hoping to replace them this week.

Happy February!

Okay, okay...it's been a while. A big thank you to Emma for giving me a call today to remind me that I haven't blogged in FOREVER!

So, here's a brief overview of our life since January 3.

• Still no news on whether or not Shane has a permanent position at Medicis or not. He did get to design his cubicle in the new building, but that isn't a for sure indication. He's also been given bigger projects and more to work on, so that's a good sign.
  
• My parents came to visit for a whole week. We got to spend time together and watch some good, quality movies...
• Thanks to the webcam we got for Christmas, we have discovered the wonderful world of Skype. Now my mom and I can have face to face conversations any day! We've also made some really cheap calls to Peru and played peekaboo with Vera in Bosnia!!
• We ordered new blinds for almost our whole house. By Monday I should be rid of the old, 70s-style vertical blinds!
• We may get our first night's sleep in a completely dark room this week. I'm going to today to buy black-out curtains to block out the wonderful orange K-mart lights that shine in our bedroom windows.
• We have half of a new front yard. Shane and his dad moved over new stone for our front yard and installed new lights along our sidewalk. Shane also pulled out my monster boganvias and is working today to get that area ready for gravel too. As I write this, they're pouring cement to make our sidewalk more accessible and get the other side of our driveway ready for cobblestones.
• We got new doorknobs for the entire house. This may not seem very exciting to some, but the ones we had were a funny color (a weird dark brassy color) and they were funny looking.
• Although I'm only scheduled to work 40 hour weeks now (I know...only??), I'm still working at least 50... They keep saying it'll slow down soon, but I'm not sure it ever will.
• Shane finally learned this week just how good I am at procrastinating certain things...and he's learning how to deal with it. I'm turning in receipts for reimbursement from our move in May TODAY (yes, it'd been that long...).
  
• I learned how effective copying the CIO on an email request is at getting results. I'd been waiting for a response from someone for over a week, but once the CIO's email address showed up in the email, I got a response within hours!!!
• In order to fill the void in our life from the lack of a new season of 24, we've been watching season 5 with Tom and Ashlely. We only have 6 episodes left, but we have season 6 ready to start right away.
• We officially have a guest room! We have a bed and it's all put together, so you're all welcome to visit!
  
• We (almost) had house visitors... We were sad that Tim and Tricia couldn't come in the end!!
  

Well, that's a good start for now. I'll post pictures once the blinds are up and the yard is finished.

Happy New Year!

I know it's been a while, but we've been busy working and enjoying the holidays, so here's my attempt to bring you all up to speed in our lives.

I finally finished my out of town work and have a funny story to share about it. Now when I'm all by myself (in Vegas, nonetheless), I am a little more cautious when I'm out and about. So, on the Thursday night before Christmas, when I opened the door to my hotel room, I noticed that none of the lights were on. Usually, at least one of the lights gets left on by the cleaning people, a gesture that I appreciate, but this night it was completely dark. To add to that, the light from the hallway drew my attention to a card on the bench at the end of the bed. It had "To Our Guest" written in neat cursive on it. I decided that the hotel decided to leave nice holiday cards for their guests that were traveling close to Christmas... Well, as I reached for the card, I heard the closet door burst open behind me and someone grabbed me!!

Now for a little more information... We had planned to have Shane meet me in Vegas on the Friday before Christmas so we could finish the drive to Salt Lake on Saturday morning. Well, little did I know, but Shane decided to come a day early to surprise me. He was hiding in the closet after I called him on my drive back to the hotel (something I did every night). Apparently his phone rang right as I opened the door. He silenced it, but was convinced that I had heard it. I guess his original plan was to wait for me to read the card before he came out (so I knew it was him), but he decided to jump out since the surprise was already blown. Well, I hadn't heard the phone, so I was terrified, but then very excited to see Shane standing there. Once my heart slowed down, we went out and treated ourselves to the MGM Grand Buffet. It was so fun having him there. The next night we wandered around Vegas and then headed to Salt Lake on Saturday.

We were lucky to be able to spend Saturday through Wednesday in Salt Lake at my parents' house. We tried our hardest to get out and see people, but we were very limited since the holidays are also filled with family activities. We were able to see baby Vera once more before Jared and Jessie head to Bosnia for the next four months (they actually left this evening...). It was fun to be back at home and hanging out with old friends. It was even fun to see the snow (although it was nice to get back to our snow-free land in the end). I got out one night with Carly, Lahdan, and Natalie. We had a big family breakfast with my dad's family. We had our usual Christmas Eve festivities with the Smoots. We even spend Christmas evening with the Castles. We wished we would've had more time to see everyone, but it just wasn't possible.

We had to come back on the 26th because Shane had to work Thursday and Friday. I still had the days off, so I was able to reclaim my house from the layer of dust that built up during my month of travel. It was so nice to have some time at home and know that I didn't need to pack up to leave again in a day. We also got to spend some time with the Bakers while they were down here. It was so fun just hanging out with them and playing games. Except for the venue (and the presence of Megan's parents), it almost felt like we were back at Wymount!!

Shane's been busy around our house since we've been back. Thanks to some generous presents from both of our parents, our home improvement power has been increased! Since returning home, Shane has painted every door in the house, replaced all the doorknobs and deadbolts in the house (doorknobs add up fast!), and sanded and stained the cabinets in our guest bathroom. My parents are coming down here for my dad's work in about 2 weeks and he's making a push to get things done so they can see everything he's done so far. I think my mom's going to be impressed at the progress we've made!!

I went back to work on Monday of this week. I've just been working on random projects for people from our Phoenix office. It's been a nice way to ease back into work. I noticed today that all of my traveling helped me appreciate the amount of time I actually do have each night after work. I got so accustomed to only have one day a week at home that I now appreciate the 4 hours I have each day between when I get home and when I go to bed!

This post is long, but I wanted to add one more thing!! Today, we got an awesome sink for our guest bathroom. Thanks to some great connections, we got a great deal on a designer sink from Linkasink. Now we just have to find some good counter tops to go with it!!

Well, that's our news for now. We're just back to our normal life of working...and Shane working on the house on the weekends. I'll try and put up some new pictures from our break, but I'm at Tom's house so I don't have our pictures.