I'll post tonight

If i get off work at a reasonable hour, and can convince Bran to let me use the computer for a little while.... :) I took pictures, so i'll upload them tonight!

Here are some things for you to do in the meantime:

• check out the new "About Me" section to the right -->
  
• check out the new blogs in my blogreel. There you will find blogs written by Doug Wilson's father (and my neighbor), Jim Wilson, Peter Leithart (the former pastor of Trinity), Toby Sumpter (Trinity's new pastor), and Femina (something every woman should spend hours reading).
• Clean a room in your house. Mine is particularly dirty, and I'm looking forward to getting to do some cleaning tomorrow.
  
• Look into buying a house in Moscow. In my opinion, everyone should live here.
  

And then there were 5....

Wait, what? 5? Yep, 5:

Bran, Ash, Duke, Moose, and now Hoss....


There will be more on that later. This is one of those Tyler-like posts, where I'm posting so that I have to post more later. But I promise the next post will have pictures. :)

COLD!

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Partly Cloudy -11°F Feels Like -11°F Updated Jan 26 07:45 a.m. PT Moscow Live Webcams UV Index: 0 Low Wind: CALM Humidity: 69% Pressure: 30.27 in. Dew Point: -17°F Visibility: 8.0 miles Download Now Free Desktop Weather

Just 3 weeks from Valentine's Day...

...and we still have our Christmas Tree up...

I took down all the decorations last week and boxed them up, but we don't yet have a bag to keep our artificial tree in. I would just have Bran stick it in our storage room in the basement and not worry about it, but we tend to have an abundance of huge spiders around our house, and I'm pretty sure that if our tree was good enough for a squirrel, it would be good enough for a million spiders. So our bare tree is the lone reminder that it was Christmas not too long ago (but long enough that it shouldn't still be up). Oh and our wreath is still on the door, but I see a wreath as more of a seasonal thing than a "Christmas decoration". I'll leave that one up until I get one for Valentine's day.

As you can see, I overhauled my blog for the "Love Holiday". I was thinking about it, and Bran and I have had 4 Valentine's days together, starting our Junior year in High School when he gave me a single red rose and a necklace. I remember us talking about getting married and how long 5 years would be, and how it would drag on and never seem to get here. Here we are, 4 months and 1 week away from our first Anniversary, about to celebrate our 5th Valentine's day. The time has FLOWN! We spent two years of High School falling in love while being told not to, a year of college apart and waiting to start courting, a summer of courtship and 6 months of engagement, and here we are, happily married and madly in love.

What a wonderful journey it was, in the "full of wonder" sense of the word, as in, how did we ever make it this far?! I remember being told that long distance relationships don't work (friends from college were dating 3 hours apart and couldn't make it work), and trying to explain to my poor parents that I really did know what love was when I was 16. At times it was trying and frustrating, but at times it was fantastic and fun. And all of that has brought us to where we are today - we wouldn't change a thing.

the boy is back in town

and the girls will be soon.

It was nice having the house to ourselves, but it will also be nice having people to hang out with while Bran's at work. I've been dying to watch the new episode of Grey's Anatomy, but have kept my promise to Jen to wait until she's here so we can watch it together.

One of the first things Ty said to me this morning was "I've got good news, and bad news." I can't tell you how bad that scared me. Luckily, it was just about him having more of his own kitchen stuff, but needing somewhere to put it. I can deal with that - don't freak me out! I was expecting something like "well the good news is that the toilet still works, but the bad news is that it's just a hole in the floor now....."

As bad as Bran and I want our own bathroom upstairs (which I hear might be coming sooner rather than later), I'm so tempted to beg him if we can install one of these in our spare room instead:



It's a closet system from the Container Store, which might be my new store, because it combines my love of organizing with my love of pretty clothes - their advertising alone makes me want to buy their stuff because I feel like if my closet looked like that, I'd have clothes that look like that, too.

I suppose that when I get pregnant, I'll be thankful for the upstairs bathroom... I know we were sure wanting it when Bran and I both had the flu....

Maybe someday I'll get to have my walk-in closet...

I'm not the best shopper...

and most of the time I don't feel like hunting for bargains, or even hunting for my size. Case in point, yesterday I went with Bran up to Spokane, Wa. (he was getting something for his truck, and I still had money on my gift card from mom). When we got there, he dropped me off at the Northtown Mall and then went to meet the guy he was buying things from. As some of you know, the Moscow mall is tiny.... like way tiny... like we just got an Old Navy, and everyone was really really excited. But yes aside from Old Navy, we have Macys and Bath and Body Works, along with some other stores. So anyway I'm shopping at this big mall in Spokane, and where do I use my gift card? Macys and Bath and Body Works. What can I say? I'm just not a shopper... but I'm always happy with the things I get, which is my virtue when it comes to shopping.

When I showed Bran, he laughed and told me that's why he loves me. :)

There's a lot going through my head, and rather than type it all out in paragraph form, I'm going to fill you in machine-gun style and just use bullet points.

• While I was feeding Evangeline her cereal/mush today, she sneezed and it went everywhere. We both laughed.
  
• My computer has now killed 3 power chords, and the last one is melted into the computer... I'm afraid it might be going toward the light.......
• One of the things I bought with my gift card was a glossing kit from Fekkai. I used it today and my hair looks like I spent hours blow drying it (it takes hours...) but it air dried! I love that stuff.
• I got a postcard in the mail from Domino offering me a 2 year subscription for $12. I was good, and waited until my hubby got home so I could ask him if i could do it, and he said yes. This made me excited. So with the re-kindled Domino excitement, I jumped on their site to see what's up, and came across this blog. I love all their ideas.
• I made this macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight, and I can't wait to eat it. I'm having Bran grab a salad from Roseauers and might have some other veggies on the side. Didn't have enough time to make my garlic bread, though.
  

More snow?

It's been really warm lately (40s-50s), but last night it snowed another 2 inches or so. I'm so tired of snow! I never thought I'd say that, but it's true. It really does make everything harder to do.... and the snow we've had recently is so wet and icky... more like slush than anything else. But I still prefer snow to any other kind of weather - just in limited quantities :)

Bran and I have been doing good. He went back to work on Wednesday (Monday and Tuesday are his days off), and I go back this afternoon. I'm not sure why they didn't schedule me all week, but I'm glad because I wouldn't have gotten anything done around the house otherwise.

I haven't babysat Evie since before Christmas because Austin has been on break from U of I. We think he goes back on Wednesday, so I should start watching her again then. I miss that little girl!

All is well, we miss our families dearly, and we can't wait to see everyone in June!

A Picture Post

Thought you'd enjoy some pictures of our trip to NC (I don't have any of when we were home - Jen you have to help me out with this!)

Me and my sweetie

Tyler and his "smoking on the beach" outfit

Moogie discovered that flying a kite with no wind was a workout!

the beach was gorgeous

Our new curtains - Thanks, Mom! I love the fabric more now than I did when we picked it out!
When things are more updated (and shortened), I'll post another picture.

and a picture of the green room, because I'm proud of myself for cleaning and organizing it (except for the Christmas boxes in the corner... :) )

the things that are hard to see because of the glare on the table are a decorative bowl and candle holder that Tyler got me for Christmas, and a book I started reading on the plane ride back to Moscow. I don't have candles for the candle holder yet, but I think I might get those today. So pretty!

45 degrees?

The weather has been so strange lately. We got another 8" of snow on monday, bringing our total to about 2 and a half feet in places, and then yesterday it rained and started to warm up, and today everything is melting because it's 45 degrees! Bran and I are both okay with the warm weather, but all the melting is causing flooding in places, and lots of ice at night. We're hoping that it will stay warm long enough for all the snow we have now to melt before it snows again.

Bran went back to work today, but I'm not scheduled until Sunday afternoon (I'm not sure why they keep mixing up my schedule... hopefully it will settle in when everyone gets back from school). I'm hoping to get most of our unpacking done today, and maybe start to put some of our Christmas decorations away.

Home again, home again

Our trip to North Carolina and Maryland was fantastic - it was so wonderful getting to spend time with our families! It was also nice to get a break from all the snow!

We flew out Saturday afternoon, and were supposed to get into Spokane by 11pm west-coast time. Our flight was delayed (we sat on the runway in Minneapolis for an hour) and by the time we got our bags, it was already about 1am when we got to spokane. Bran and I decided to try and get a hotel room while we were still waiting to take off from Minneapolis, and I was able to get us the employee rate ($60 a night) at a Best Western 5 minutes from the Airport. Everything went great, we stayed in the hotel, then slept in and did some shopping before heading back to Moscow yesterday afternoon. Our travels were incredibly blessed, as it started snowing just hours after we arrived home, and hasn't stopped since (we've already gotten another 6 or so inches since last night).

We're happy to say that we're home safe and sound, and that our new dining room curtains look fantastic. Thanks mom!