If You Haven't Heard...

We added a new family member about 3 weeks ago, so I'm going to talk about it. If not for you to enjoy reading, then for me to remember how it all went down.

We'd been thinking about adding a new family member to our lives for a little while and then when we bought our home it became something we actually could do. We really wanted to adopt rather than buy from a breeder. After browsing their websites, we visited the animal shelter and the humane society a few weeks ago on a Friday evening. We went to the animal shelter first and walked around all the kennels to see the dogs. Then we went up to the front desk and told them which ones we wanted to meet. We spent some time with a couple, but they didn't seem very interested in us. Matt asked the worker who was supervising if there was some sort of sign we should look for to know that this dog was "the one." She told us that all of them might seem a little disinterested because they're so excited to be outside, but that if we didn't feel some sort of connection we should probably keep looking. After that, we decided to make our way to the humane society. 

With only 15 minutes left before they closed, we hurried and walked around the dogs at the humane society and found the ones we were interested in. There were a few, but Charlie was the first we decided to take out. From the get-go he seemed like a good boy. He leaned in for Matt to slip the leash on, he didn't pull while we walked him, and he sat immediately when Matt asked him if he knew how to sit. We took him outside for a bit and he was pretty chill, even wanted us to rub his belly. With the humane society getting ready to close, we took him back inside with the intention of coming back the next day to see the others. However, once we got home we couldn't stop thinking about him and how our meeting seemed to "click" much more than with the other dogs. So, on Saturday morning, I went to work and Matt went out to buy things needed to prepare our house for a dog and then also to pick him up. It was a quick decision!

Charlie was a pretty much perfect dog for about the first week. The only thing weird was that he seemed to be scared of his food bowl. He took to Matt very quickly, and I keep saying that Matt is his best bud. Now that he's settled in a little more, he has acted up and can get quite frustrating at times. But, we keep trying to remember that he's still, if not a puppy, then a teenager. Matt and I keep saying that he picked us and so he schmoozled (what, that's not a word?) us into bringing him home and won us over with his seemingly great manners. He does have decent manners actually, it's just whether or not he wants to show them. He seems to have separation anxiety, especially with Matt because he is gone at work all day. He has a really hard time staying calm when Matt gets home, because as I said, he's his best bud and all. But that makes it difficult for Matt to relax and not get frustrated. Sometimes it's hard to get a break, but we've been having a trainer friend come over and help us work with him. He's a very smart and determined dog, probably too smart and determined for his (or our) own good. Matt taught him to "shake" in a matter a minutes. Yet teaching him not to jump on you when he's excited seems like a much more difficult task. He is pretty cute when he's sleeping though...

First day home

Charlie is 1 year and almost 5 months old and currently 64 pounds. The humane society told us that he was German Shepherd /Boxer mix.  However, if you look up pictures for that mix, they look nothing like them. Our trainer friend thinks he is a German Shepherd/Border Collie. (Which would greatly explain his never ending energy and need for mental stimulation.)

Just hangin' out while Matt works on his car.

Basking in the sunlight in true dog fashion.

Updated Photos of the House

I just thought I'd post some pictures of the house as it is now, since we've had a chance to get more situated and decorate a bit. If you're curious, check out below.

Front Room - We are giving Emily's piano a temporary home

Kitchen with new appliances

Dining room

  

Family room 

Matt painted the mantel

And he made our headboard!

Lyla and Roxy's room

Craft room/ Office

The new addition to the basement. We've also put a dart board up.

Holy Hannah, a House!

So it's been two and a half weeks since we officially moved into our house. It's been a busy and pricey two weeks as well. We've bought a new dresser, an entertainment center, paint, and some other little things to make the house more like a home. And it's still not even to the point we want it. We still have a list of items that we'd like to get done soon, although I'm not sure that it will, or can all get done. Luckily, my parents had an extra set of couches they weren't using that they let us take. That was sure a nice money saver and they fit pretty much perfectly in our family room. We've been on the hunt for side tables and an ottoman and man, is that one a doozy. Who knew furniture could be so expensive? Especially since we've decided to try and stay away from Ikea since our bedroom furniture is that and also the furniture we had in our apartment front room. Our current end table is an upside down box. It's pretty stylin'. We're also on the look out for some cool, larger paintings. If you have some recommendations for artists, hit me up. It's funny because there's two rooms that pretty much have no furniture in them. One, which will be a guest room, and the basement room which we're hoping to make some kind of game room. Everything will get there eventually I'm sure, it's just hard to be able to buy everything within the first month. Plus, we don't really have any guests to be staying with us anyway. So for now, it's the rats' room.


The first week of living here felt so surreal. It was like we were staying in someone else's house and I was going to have to go back to my apartment soon. Now, it's sinking in more. I'm really enjoying the fireplace and lovely space in the kitchen. We don't even have enough stuff to fill all the shelves! Hooray! Gone are the days of stacking dishes on dishes, pots on pans, and overflowing boxes of food stacked on top of my fridge. Our master bathroom is a bit small, but what it lacks in space it makes up for in style ;) And did I mention there's a laundry chute from the master closet to the laundry room? It's pretty awesome. This house has more space than we're used to, but we're really enjoying it. I can't wait til it's warmer and we can enjoy the deck in the backyard. Matt keeps joking that "there's rooms we haven't even gone into yet today!" Matt is loving the garage (it really is soooo nice to have) and slowly making steps for it to be his "man cave." This last weekend he found a pretty nice work table on sale at Harbor Freight. He's pretty excited about the shed we have in the backyard too. There is a "nice" baseball themed room upstairs next to the rat/guestroom that will be a craft room/office. Matt was nice enough to tackle the project of taking down the baseball wallpaper border and get rid of the huge amount of glow in the dark stars. Next we'll paint! I wish we had a picture of this room, but unfortunately I didn't think to take one before the wallpaper came down and surprisingly, the sellers left a picture of this particular room out in the MLS listing.

Anyway, enough blabbing, aka word vomit, about the house. I haven't taken any pictures since we moved in because I've been waiting until things are "picture ready" to reveal what it's like. However, I do have the pictures from the MLS listing. If you're curious, see below.

House front

Upstairs hall bathroom

Master bedroom, which has since been painted a nice steely blue/green and has better furniture in it :)

Master bathroom

Front room

Backyard deck

Backyard

Kitchen which now has stainless steel appliances.
We plan to add hardware to the cabinets and drawers soon and possibly get a new counter top in the future.
And if we're really feeling like DIYers, we MIGHT glaze the cabinets in the far away future.

Laundry room complete with laundry chute!
Oh, and a little half bath off of that.

Guest bedroom
The baseball themed room is next to this and pretty much identical in layout and size.

Family room

Dining area off the kitchen

Well hoped you enjoyed the little "house tour." We're very much enjoying living here!

Excited

We have 10 days until we get the keys to our new home! So exciting :) So much more packing to do... Each time I get things ready or move around my apartment, I think of all the things I'll enjoy about being in a house.

A larger kitchen with a pantry and enough cabinet space that I can put ALL of my dishes away and not have to stack boxes of cereal on top of the fridge.

A laundry room with storage and counter space to fold clothes. And don't forget the laundry chute!

Having more than 1 bathroom. Especially a master bathroom.

The fireplace.

GARAGE!

Not hearing people above, below, or next to me.

Room for a ping pong/pool table in the future.

A place for a craft room.

Toilet paper and paper towels can be stored somewhere besides my bedroom closet.

Not having to deal with limited parking.

Not hearing random car alarms going off multiple times throughout the night. (hopefully)

Not smelling cigarettes outside my door.

Room to entertain.

A nice backyard with an awesome deck.

CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING!

A linen closet.

Wood floors.

Storage, storage, storage.

What's Up Lately

Well apparently time can sneak by and before you know it, it's been over a month since your last blog post. Sorry about that. I was having a hard time finding anything particularly worth writing about and so I was just keeping up with Media Monday. But then Matt sort of made a comment about how the blog had nothing new or interesting, it was just being filled with random "crap." So then I stopped blogging Media Monday as well.

But I'm back for now, so let's try to re-cap anything you've missed, shall we? In a fairly unorganized manner, mind you.

Another season has come and gone for U of U football. It had some ups and downs and definitely wasn't something to make us feared in the PAC 12 just yet, but the day will come, I tell you. Although the games were not always a happy ending, we did enjoy alternating games to go with my dad. Unfortunately my dad wasn't able to get work off for the last home game so my dad gave us the tickets for Matt and I to go together. Thanks Dad :)


We had a nice Thanksgiving. Meals covered for us at both sets of parents and lots of pumpkin pie. "Free Meal, Free, Free, Free Meal!" Cafe Rio anyone? :P We went to Matt's parents in the afternoon and spent some time there until we went to my parents for the evening. Luckily, this Thanksgiving my parent's house didn't turn out to be as barren as I was expecting since Emily has moved. My oldest sister and her family were in Utah and came to visit. They proved to be good company and I even got in a game of  Rummikub; which I won. I can't believe how old my nephew and niece are - teenagers, wth? So if they're teenagers and I'm still relatively young, does this make me the cool aunt?

After much dreaming and scanning real estate sites, we officially started our home search and have been pretty much searching all of November. That stuff is exciting, overwhelming, and terrifying all at once. Some homes are seriously weird. We're thinking we're set on something, but won't know for sure just yet.

December marks getting into the holiday spirit; or trying to at least. We went shopping for our Christmas tree, which I look forward to doing every year. We brought it home and got all the decorations out that day. Lights and ornaments on the tree, wreath on the door, Christmas scentsy out with a Christmasy scent, snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, all make Christmas seem so much closer.

The first weekend of December we made our annual night out to the Festival of Trees. This year, like last year, we were able to go with our friends Whitney and Jon. It took us probably 15-20 minutes just to get off the freeway exit and then probably another 10 at least just to get into the parking lot. That place continues to get crazier every year. We browsed trees and had strollers run into us, admired gingerbread houses and had a little girl try to hold my husband's hand, took some pictures - a few with unwanted attendees who thought they were funny, and ate some scones, of course! No offense to kids or families, but I think they should make one night where it could just be adults. It doesn't even have to be a whole night, just 7:30-9:00 or something.

We also went to Zoo Lights today. It was our first time ever going. It was cold of course, but a fun thing to see. You don't really get to see many animals because it is night time and a lot of them are sleeping, but I'm glad we went and got to check it out. We also were able to see someone carving a block of ice into a big snowflake.

The ice sculpture is a little hard to see because there is a light up lion behind it, but it's a snowflake.

We were standing in front of a gingerbread house, but we're sort of covering all of the lit parts. 

So now we have a couple Christmas parties to attend, and we're hoping to find a good area to drive around and see Christmas lights. Anyone know of good places or have any suggestions?

80's Rock Party 2011

A little back-story:
Matt started a new job in May. The group of guys he works with are all pretty close knit and spend time together outside of work. About a week into his job, he got to know the guys in his department better and they started telling him about an annual 80's rock party that one of them hosts. Two of the guys play guitar in the band that plays the music at the party. Although the party wasn't for months later (it almost didn't happen this year) we were excited for this evening everyone talked about and I was excited to meet a few people Matt works with that I hadn't yet.

This isn't some silly, small get-together either. Actually, we all probably look pretty silly but it was really fun. A stage with speakers and band equipment was set up in the backyard and everyone who attended dressed in 80's attire. Well, mostly everyone except for a couple boring people. The band played songs from Iron Maiden, Metallica, Bon Jovi, and ACDC to name a few. There's food, drinks, and socializing after the "concert." And although we were invited to this party because of the guys Matt is friends with at work, this was not a "work party." I'd say about 40 people attended and most of those weren't work people, but just friends and family of the band members. There were even neighbors watching over the fence and enjoying the show.

We had a good time and I'm already excited to attend another. It was pretty fun finding clothes to put together for an outfit too.

On to the pictures!

People kept thinking I'd sprayed color in my hair just for this. Ha! I'm way cooler than that. :P Note to self: when a girl tells you she likes the yellow in your hair, which was originally lime green, it's time to re-dye it.

The formulations crew

Rock on! 

If you think the guy on the left is one of those boring people who didn't dress up, you're wrong. His outfit was inspired by Angus Young from AC/DC. It's a shame you can't see the shorts.

Sunday = Funday

Now since Matt started a different job and I work every Saturday, Sundays have become our day of getting to sleep in and do whatever we please with the entire day.

Today we drove up to Brighton Ski Resort for some activities. We went to the Keep Rollin' On custom car and bike show where we walked around for a bit and saw some fancy cars. After the car show, we drove further up the canyon and hiked a trail where we had a little picnic lunch. While eating, I told Matt that I wished I could have the hike without the wilderness - but really just without the bugs. We concluded that that would be going to the gym and using the tredmill on an incline.

car show

I'm surprised we managed to get a picture without all the bugs going crazy

there's still some snow!

top of cottonwood canyon

us at the top

Visit to Washington

So if you've been reading my blog since last year, you'll know that for spring break 2010 we had made plans to go to Washington. It was sort of last minute, and we were planning on it being low cost. Unfortunately, about a week before we were supposed to go, we ran into unexpected travel costs and had to cancel. We ended up  here for a few days instead. Anyway, because of our last minute choice not to go, we had to cancel our airline tickets. Turns out because they were ordered online with a promotion, a refund was not an option but we received a credit that had to be used by March 1st 2011. Thus, our February trip to Washington.

I have been to Washington 4 times now - 3 (including this trip) that I actually remember, but this was Matt's first time. I had been telling him that I thought he would really like it there - and guess what? He really did, even more than I thought. My brother and sister-in-law were cool enough to let us stay with them for 3 of the 4 nights we were there. His two older girls were nice enough to let us sleep in their room while they slept on a bed in the living room. It was a really fun visit, with a nice balance of family time and alone time. Being my typical self, I had  researched things to do and made a list of places to see. The rest of this post is probably better explained with pictures...
you are hereby warned for picture OVERLOAD. Seriously, not joking. {all pictures courtesy of MK photography} :)

Thursday, Day 1
Volunteer Park Conservatory - This was a series of connected greenhouses in the middle of a large park. Each greenhouse had its own temperature and humidity in order to house plants specific to various climates.

Seattle Asian Art Museum - also located in Volunteer Park. I thought this would be an interesting change to the typical art museum since it was all art from Asia or done by Asian artists. Some of the art was from a long time ago and some of it was more modern. It was pretty neat.

Statue outside the museum

I wish I had a huge wall in a house to put this

Or this

Friday, Day 2

Olympic Sculpture Park - A free, outside area with walking paths throughout that led to giant sculptures

Columbia Center Tower - Instead of paying the $18 per person to go up in the Space Needle, I found a lot of travelers suggested the view from the Columbia Center Tower. With our student ID's it was only $6 for both of us to enjoy the view with no time limit. It was crazy how much of the area you could see and how different every area looked as you faced different directions. 

The tower

We did manage to get this picture of the Space Needle while walking to a Thai restaurant for lunch.

Because we drove around for about 15 minutes and still couldn't find parking, we ended up parking at the Seattle Library. It was a pretty neat library, with some cool architecture and really bright colors. It has its own unique funkiness to it. 

This was inside their elevators. Definitely a wake up in case you forgot your coffee. It was also the color of the escalators.

The windows/walls of the library

 Ferry Ride from Seattle to Bremerton - We weren't sure we were actually going to do this but after seeing the ferries come and go from our view atop the Columbia Center Tower, we thought it was something we shouldn't pass up. You can drive your car on or walk on - we drove the car on. The whole inside was pretty big. It had lots of seating, tables, booths, and even a small concessions area with simple foods and coffee. It was a neat experience, and I'm glad I didn't get sick!

After our ferry ride, we drove from Bremerton to Gig Harbor where my brother lives. Eddie and Kelly were able to get a babysitter that night so the 4 of us could go out to dinner. We ate at Tides Tavern, a pub type restaurant with views of the harbor where you have to be 21 or older to get in. It was nice not having any kids in the whole place. Their food was pretty tasty (I got a seafood platter, Mmm) but beware they are not too fond of people who don't order drinks. Sorry, no pictures of this outing :(

Saturday, Day 3

We reserved Saturday for the Toy family and whatever the girls wanted to do with us, since this was their day out of school. They chose to go to Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. It was a smaller zoo but still interesting. I, of course, could probably spend a whole day at any zoo or aquarium... 

Matt and Leora

After the Zoo, we headed back to the house for lunch, some video games, and then Matt and I drove down by the harbor to explore and get some pictures. 

Later, we played Sing Star with the girls while my brother cooked us dinner. I'll spare you the pictures of me singing - but I did get this cute one of Matt and little Evalin. 

Too bad I didn't take pictures of the dinner, 'cause it was delicious! We ended our last night at the Toy home by watching Clash of the Titans. A visit to their house wouldn't be complete without at least one movie night.

Sunday, Day 4

We woke up early this morning to attend the Seattle Bites Food Tour in Pike's Place. The tour was neat, although pricey. We went various places through and around the market, all while learning the history and eating some samples along the way. For the price it cost, we most likely could have gone to more food vendors of our choosing, but we probably wouldn't have known where we were going anyway.

Grunge wall - decorated for Valentine's Day with reds and pinks and the saying "Make Love" across the wall.

Gum wall

After the tour, we explored Pike's Place a little more on our own and purchased a few souvenirs for home. We got a small Chinese painting from Master Calligrapher Jin Bao Shu and also a night cityscape picture by architect Patrick T. Kerr. We also walked about 6 blocks to the Historic Pioneer Square in hopes of participating in the Underground Tour. Unfortunately, we missed the last tour to leave and were unable to go. Next time though. 

Our last night we spent going to an Italian restaurant for dinner and then checking in to The Cedarbrook Lodge since it was closer to the airport than my brother's. This hotel was quite satisfactory. Not only did they have a breakfast in the morning, they had complimentary string cheese, chips, candy, water bottles, and the best part - Haagen Daz ice cream. This hotel also has awesome reviews on trip advisor.

All in all, this was a great trip. We will definitely be going back. Shout out to Eddie and Kelly for letting us stay at their house and being awesome hosts! In case you didn't get enough pictures, here's a couple more taken on the island where my brother lives.

If you've made it to this point, I admire your patience and curiosity.