Valentine's Day

This year for Valentine's Day we didn't do much other than chores around the house.  Romantic huh?  That was fine with me because we spent the weekend together at least!  We also exchanged gifts.  I love presents! :0]

Saturday started out extremely yummy when we went to my friend Sarah's to pick up our Valentine's Day cupcake sampler.  She owns a business called For The Love of Sugar and makes AMAZING cupcakes.  They're so good!  She periodically offers samplers of her cupcakes and we couldn't wait to get ours.  We also bought one as a surprise for John's parents.  They loved them!

Then, beautiful flowers arrived in the afternoon.  John knows how much I love daisies so he did an awesome job picking out my bouquet.

 

  

  

Saturday morning John cooked me one of my favorite breakfasts - waffles and bacon!  Mmmmmmmm.  When he brought me my plate he also had a box with him.  I opened it up to find a beautiful bracelet!  I love that it can easily be worn to work or to fancy events too!  We need to take it to a jeweler to have it shortened because I have small wrists, but I can't wait to wear it.

 

My parents also gave us some treats and Nala got a Petco giftcard.  She loves going to the pet store so she's very excited to spend it.

So now I bet you're wondering, what about poor John?  Didn't he get any gifts??  Don't worry, he was NOT disappointed!!  Sunday morning Nala and I gave him cards in which we told him how crazy we are about him.  He also got a bag of Valentine's candy and some Stewie Griffin loverboy boxers - which he loves!  

But the REAL present arrived on Friday.  I had told him during the week that his gift was going to arrive a bit early because of the shipping date.  He knew that he was going to get it when we got home from work.  We pulled up into the driveway and there was a big box on the porch with our doormat standing up in front of it.  He was trying to figure out what it was when we caught a glimpse of the side of the box.  He turned to me and asked "Did you buy a tv!!!!???"  I just looked at him and smiled.  He was so stoked!!!  He couldn't believe it.  It never crossed his mind in a million years that I would have bought a tv.  I normally wouldn't have spent that much money but since it was our first Valentine's Day since the wedding, I thought I'd go all out!

The new tv is in our bedroom and we moved the old one out into John's "man room" in the garage.  He loves it, and I scored major points.  Go me!

Fireplace

John and I love our house, but there's just one thing that's been missing - a fireplace. I especially love fireplaces.  It makes everything feel so much cozier.  For Christmas, my parents were generous enough to buy us a Real Flame gel fireplace for our family room.  After some issues getting the right pieces and building it, we're now up and running!!  We even have cans of gel fuel that crackle so it sounds like a real fire.  We absolutely love it!

 

In case you're wondering, the gel is a little less than $3 a can and each can lasts about 2.5 hours.  We put in 3 cans for the "inaugural run", but we probably won't always do that.

John's latest pictures of Taylor

Not only was this past Sunday Superbowl Sunday, it was also my mom's birthday!  We all got together for a BBQ lunch and to watch the game.  We hadn't hung out in quite some time so it was nice to be together.  John took the opportunity to get some pictures of Taylor with his new camera.  They turned out great!  Here's a link to his Picasa page with all of them, but below are some of my favorites.

Look how happy I am in the backyard with my tutu!!

 

  

  

I love this one.  She looks like she's petrified and she tipped over or something.

She LOVED turning these little rollers. 

  

Did you guys know that today's my Mimi's birthday??? I love her so so so much!

Just look at how cute I am!

Busy husband update

It appears that my "productive weekend" post yesterday had some effect on John.  You should have seen him after work!  He gave Nala a bath, crushed a bizillion aluminum cans, cleaned the kitchen, made dinner, took Nala on a walk, worked on pictures of Taylor, AND gave advice/moral support.  He was a whirling dervish of activity!!  Great job hun!

Busy husband

Another productive weekend at our house ... Best Buy ad perusal, video games, and playing with the dog.

To be fair, he did a hard core vacuuming of the carpet and Nala's bed, and made a delicious pasta salad for my Mom's birthday lunch.  :0)

John's new toy

This past weekend John received a very exciting FedEx delivery.  A new camera!!!  He's had his eye on an upgraded model for awhile now and finally just decided to go for it.  The new camera is a Canon EOS 50D, which is an entry-level professional camera.  It's very fancy!

The camera paired with a new lens he recently purchased and his "eye" for pictures is sure to result in some amazing photographs. 

Here are a couple of practice shots John took Saturday utilizing our favorite model (click on any picture to enlarge it):

 

 

Building the Shed

***UPDATED 1/27/10 to add pictures of roof!***

My Dad and John have been tirelessly working on building a shed in our backyard.  They had hoped to build it over the Christmas break, but as usual, it took a lot more time, money, and MANY MANY MANY more trips to Home Depot than they had expected.  Rollie came over and helped a few weekends too.  They were a good team and did a great job!  All that's left to do is to move it into position against the garage and fence next weekend.  I can't wait to go through the garage and get everything organized now that we have extra storage space!!

 Digging trenches to pour concrete

The site supervisor

Prepping to lay rebar

We're ready for concrete!

Concrete poured and grass dug out

Time to lay down the plastic and pour sand

We had to buy SOOOOOOO many pavers and move them all by hand.

Site supervisor inspecting the work.  She approved.

The walls are going up!

Nice paint job!

Look at all of this storage space Nala.

Look at those perfect rows of shingles!!

 The guys also installed several vents.

 

Looks great huh???

Fallen tree limb

***Updated 1/27/10 to add picture at end***

We weathered the rain storms pretty well last week. John and I both love the rain. Nala's not so crazy about it, but she does ok. If she feels raindrops when she pokes her head out of the doggy door, she reverses right back into the house. We have to go out with her so that she'll go potty or she'll just hold it all day.

We didn't have a leaky roof or flooding, but the winds early in the week tore a big limb off of our backyard tree. We were VERY lucky that it fell perfectly so that it didn't hit anything (including Nala!). The limb broke off and spun 180 degrees before landing on the grass. John got to get out his power tools and cut it up this weekend. We're definitely going to get the tree professionally trimmed this Spring!

Surveying the damage

All of the wet weather (and tree limbs falling) is worth it when you get see beautiful rainbows as the skies clear.

Nala's new bathtub

For any of you dog owners out there who end up with a sore back every time you give your pooch a bath in the bathtub, we've got a product for you! It seems to have been around for a long time but it's new to us. It's called the Booster Dog Bath and we ordered it from Costco online. (Costco has some wonderful dog products at great prices. We love their beds.) Now John can wash Nala without being all hunched over in the bathtub. You can remove the legs so that it doesn't take up as much storage space. It's great!

There are safety straps that hook onto her collar so she doesn't try to hop out.

The water just runs out the back of the tub.  There's even a little holder for the shampoo!

Stop taking pictures and get me outta here Mom!!

I don't know about your dog, but ours goes on a rampage after she has a bath.  John dries her off and cleans out her ears, etc.  And then she goes nuts!  She tears around the house like a wild thing.  It usually only lasts a few minutes, but it's hilarious!

Picture post!

Just a few pics of our holidays ....

Baking cookies

 

Bobby's 29th Birthday - Dec. 23rd

Yay!  I got the Cabella's exotic meat pack.

Dixie and Nala loved Mimi's doggie ice cream cups. They were trying to lick it out of the cups at lightening speed!

 

Taylor loves her Papa!

 

Nala's 1st Birthday & Christmas Eve

Our puppy turned 1 year old! Even though she's a big girl now, she's still a puppy. She loves the Kong frisbee that John got her. She's pretty good at catching it now.

Christmas Eve was spent at my Grandparent's house this year. Everyone had a great time. It's nice to spend time with family during the holidays.

Aunt Elaine and Uncle Bill

Renee and Taylor

Grandad

Bobby and Brian

Teresa, Michael, and Aunt Elaine

Caitlyn

John

 

Grandma

April and Aunt Lori

Debbie and Angela

My mom with her crushable golf hat

Careful Uncle Bill ... you're just asking to get puked on

My Dad

Matthew

Julia

April and Caitlyn having a good time after all of the presents were unwrapped.

John made Christmas cupcakes so we could sing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus (Our family does this every year).

Caitlyn sure had fun eating her cupcake!!

 

Debbie and John

Christmas Day - Didn't take too many photos. We were too busy unwrapping presents!

John made breakfast and both sets of parents came over to eat with us.

Guia came to breakfast too.

Check out that roaring fire!!

Taylor lasted for one present, and then slept the rest of the time. It will be more exciting next year.

We had one pooped pooch at the end of the night.

Awwww ...