Weekend Adventures and Projects

I took a couple days off from work this past week.

Not because I had any fun or grand plans, but mostly because I am close to capping out on my vacation time, and I need to use it or I lose it.  Super exciting stuff, I know!

Well, it turns out that my taking vacation time when I did was extremely fortuitous!  (Love it when that happens).  On my way home from dropping the husband off to work on Thursday, our tire pressure light went off in our car...again.  For some reason, we keep getting bead leaks in our tires, and it is super annoying.  During the winter, I think we took it in every 2-3 weeks for a while.

So I got to spend some of my time off dealing with that, after dropping the pups off at doggy daycare.  Which, doggy daycare is the best!  They get to run around all day, and get nice and worn out by the time we pick them up at the end of the day.  Not having them underfoot while trying to get things done around the house is a HUGE plus!

After dealing with the car, I did some weeding and edging in the front and side yard, which needed it badly...I am still not done, but it is a definite improvement!

Before

This was a couple weeks ago when everything had bloomed and looked pretty, but the weeds and grass are everywhere!

After

The blooms are gone, but so are the weeds and most of the grass!  And I love having the nice edge on the flower bed too!















During this whole process, I tweaked my neck, which hurt like the Dickens for the next 2 days, but I feel fine so far today, so that is good!

Later that night (Thursday), I got a call from my parents who were driving up to Washington to visit my sister and her family for the twins' baptism on Saturday, and it turned out that their car had completely died when they hit Burley!  So they had their car towed to Pocatello, and they stayed with us for the night, and then they rented a car here, and left the next day, but luckily still made the baptism!  So glad I had the day off to help them get where they needed to be!

Friday was spent getting things done around the inside of the house, since my neck was giving me grief, and making it difficult to move, and it was nice to have a relaxing day with almost zero responsibilities.

On Saturday, we decided to take a day trip to Shoshone Falls, since Bruce had never been before, and I figured that since we live relatively close to it, we should make the most of it!  The weather turned out not to be as nice yesterday in Twin Falls as it was in Pocatello, so it was pretty overcast, but they were still really pretty, and impressive!  Bruce is always a bit wary of being so close to large waterfalls, but he thought they were pretty neat too.

The Falls

 He looks a little nervous!

On solid ground, much more relaxed!













It was fun to get away together for a little trip.  We didn't take a big trip this year like we have in years past, so even just this little jaunt was nice.

Later in the day, my stud of a husband did the edging and laying of pavers in our backyard to create a mowing strip along our flower bed, and it looks amazing!  He is such a stud!

 The flower bed desperately needs to be weeded!

Such an improvement!


















I am now of the opinion that weekends always need to be 4 days long...it really is the only way to get all of your projects and chores done, and still have time to relax a bit!  Whoever decided that 2 days off per week is sufficient is crazy.

Still kickin'

Hey y'all!

We are still around, just apparently radio silent.  Ha ha!  I am so lax in posting, it is almost becoming a bad joke!

Here's another recap on our goings on for ya!

January:

Our basement flooded. Twice.  So we tore the basement up trying to find a source, but determined that is was really just due to the crazy winter weather we had, so we put up gutters on the house, and things have been fine so far since then.

We added another puppy to our family.  Because we are crazy.  His name is Watson, and he is super cute, but definitely a handful.  To those who don't think that puppies are as challenging as babies, I respectfully submit my disagreement.

February:

I honestly don't remember anything terribly remarkable happening in February for us, or maybe I am suppressing some things, I honestly don't know...but it is a short month anyway, so I am not sure it matters.

Oh, we did get together with some friends a few times though, which was nice, since I don't get out much!  We had some friends over for Valentine's Day, and did dinner and dessert.  We also went to a Escape Room with a couple from our new ward, and it was fun to do that and get to know them a little better.

March:

We started putting the basement back together (yep, it took us this long to even start doing that after the flood), so Bruce patched a wall and stretched the carpet back into place.  I am pretty sure he hates the carpet kicker now.

I attempted to organize the garage a bit, since when we moved in, there were a bunch of things left from the previous owner (wood, bags of cement, tools, beer cans, random things that I cannot identify), and found, to my surprise, a full bathtub, still in its original pallet packaging!  What?!  It was covered in cobwebs and dust, so I did not touch it. Yuck!

April:

Which brings us to this month!  So far, we have gone down to Utah for Bruce's LDS mission reunion, then met up with my family the next day for breakfast and chatting.

Watson got neutered this past week, and is sporting the Cone of Shame, which, he naturally despises, but he is still as rambunctious as ever.

I took two days off this past week to deal with Watson's vet stuff, and take care of some other tasks, and wound up painting the basement.  I never really cared for the beige (some people think it looked a little green too) color, so I was more than happy to change it up a bit.  I decided to go with a cool grey color to match the color that we have in the upstairs living room, and I LOVE it!  It makes the space feel so much more open and pleasant.

Side Story:  So, back in February (there you go, another thing for February!) I met a gal in our ward named Rebekah, and she reminded me a lot of my sister Jenelle, whom I love and adore.  Her looks and personality both are so remarkably similar, that I even mentioned it to Bruce later, and he agreed.  Fast forward a few weeks, and it turns out that Rebekah and I are related!  We discovered that we are both Fairbanks' by birth, and that my grandfather was her grandfather's uncle!  Such a small world!

Back to the now:

Today, we attended the baptism of one of Rebekah's sons, and got to meet some of her siblings and other extended family, which was a lot of fun.

My parents also came up today to help us tackle the garage (ie, the bathtub and other random junk that was left in there).  They were kind enough to rent a U-Haul for us to use to remove the junk, and helped tear out the old cabinets, and load up the bathtub, broken screens, windows, doors, siding, paint, wood, and who knows what else.  Mom also helped me hem the curtains that were newly hung in the basement (and by "helped", I mean that she was kind enough to do it for me!).

It has been a busy week/weekend in our house, and I for one, am looking forward to a relaxing Sunday tomorrow.  Hopefully the puppies will comply!

Paths

Has it really been almost a year since I posted anything on here?  Wow.

Clearly, I have slipped back into my bad habit of not posting...which really shouldn't be that much of a surprise, since I tend to have this lapse on a fairly regular basis.

Anywho...this past year has been pretty interesting, and we have had many ups and downs, and shifts, and pulls in different directions.

Over the course of the year, Bruce completed his internship, finished his undergrad degree, job hunted, interviewed, and hunted some more.  There were many trips to Boise for interviews and some of them looked promising.

At one point in May, we contemplated making a leap to move to Boise, for all of the opportunities for work in that area, however, things kept getting in the way of those plans...royally. And it became painfully evident that a move to Boise was not in the cards for us, but we did not know why.

So we stayed in Pocatello, continuing the job hunt in Southeast Idaho, and there were a few promising interviews with one of the hospitals in Idaho Falls.  During this time, he had continued to work for the clinic that he did his internship with, as a part-time employee, and in October, they approached him with an offer to keep him on full-time, which he took.

At the end of October, we also stumbled across a listing for a charming little house here in Pocatello, and we immediately fell in love with it, put an offer down, and had the offer accepted less than half an hour later, and then one month later, we moved in!  We are so happy with our new home, and love that we have a space for Cooper to run around, and for us to call our own.

While the past year may not have taken us down the paths that we originally planned, we could not be happier with where we have ended up!