that was then, this is now

We've had some requests to post pictures of our house on our blog, so here they are! I've also put some before pictures so you can see how much better our house looks now!

before

after

entryway before
after

front room before

after

Kitchen before

after (much better, right?)

great room before

after
backyard before

after

$5

Our neighbors were having a garage sale. They had a ping-pong table. $5. Come play before it gets too hot outside.

more adventures with paint

Two cans of this
makes my stove look like this:

FHE Meets Family Hockey Night

A friend of mine at work has season tickets to the Phoenix Coyotes. She mentioned to me one day that sometimes they look for people to take their tickets. Yesterday was one of those days. Her husband and son usually go during the week, and they got tickets on the glass, so we got their tickets. Although Matt and I aren't really hockey fans, these games are pretty fun to go to. The other ladies with season tickets (and most of them are middle-aged women) are hilarious. We ended up seeing two fights, and six GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLSSSSSSSS! I especially love it when they sound the sirens for each goal.

mail

Our mail is fixed. Since we moved here, we've had the hardest time with our mail. The post office didn't believe that we actually lived at our house. We weren't getting most of our mail for five months, and we finally figured out what was wrong. Somewhere in the vast outreaches of space, someone entered our name in the "system" as Sevafine. So, about half of the mail that was sent to us was read as Sevafine and returned to the sender. Mostly things like bills, checks, statements, and other important things. We called the post office numerous times, and we couldn't convince them that something was wrong. We finally got ahold of one of our lost pieces of mail, noticed that it had a sticker that said "Sevafine" and "no longer at this address." After more calls to the post office, and after the people there didn't believe that there was anything wrong, we marched ourselves down there and showed them the problem. Now, after months of broken mail, we finally get the things you send us. Oh, and our bills.

my garden

I'd like to preface my next post with an apology--an apology to my family in the great white north who occasionally look at the place where there garden grows and says, "planting will have to wait until the ground thaws and the snow is gone."

That being said, I planted my garden yesterday! Strange, huh? I have a few little garden plots in my backyard, and planted a few things to start us off.

I planted some strawberries, even though I can't eat them.

Here, in the short rows, are carrots, and green beans in the long rows.

Over here I planted some watermelon, zucchini, and summer squash.

from the land of endless summer

I don't know about anyone else, but I can't figure out where January has gone. I figure it has absolutely flown by because the weather has been so marvelous here. At home, January would drag on for ages and ages because the weather was so terribly gloomy. Here, though, the weather is just like Idaho summers, which makes for some pretty good days. Since it's been forever since we've posted anything that has been going on (except for the strange event in the nighttime), I thought I'd catch you all up on the happenings in the land of endless summer.

We had a great Christmas. We drove up to Idaho and spent the week of Christmas with my family. Because I'm really cool, I didn't take any pictures. None. My mom did, though. Mom, will you send me some of your pictures? Thanks. Anyway, we had such a nice time. It was good to get together with my family and do the things we love doing around the holidays. On the way there, we drove over the Hoover Dam:



But the Hoover Dam Bypass that is under construction was much cooler looking than the actual dam itself.



One of the days we were up in Idaho, we got to go visit my great grandma McKenzie. She has congestive heart failure, and it getting frailer (she's a McKenzie, so this doesn't mean much) in her old age. My grandma is great. She lives in an underground house and has the hottest, loudest wood stove known to man. It was good to sit with her and talk. Matt had never been to her house, so it was good for him to see a basement house. : )

Matt surprised me with some pretty neat things, and I hope he wasn't too disappointed with mine. Santa did bring him a remote control helicopter, thought, which ended up being kind of dangerous as it nearly sliced Jane's finger off, and got stuck in Katelyn's hair. Disastrous.

I opened one of my presents to find a Phoenix Suns shirt, along with this letter:

My mom and dad got me the coolest thing ever---A Silhouette! If you don't know what a Silhouette is, and you are still using a Cricket, you should really come watch my toy in action. FABULOUS!!! And so much fun.


I was surprised with a trip to here: (Thanks to grandpa Serafine for letting us use a week of his time-share!)

Where we'll get to look at this everyday:

And get to see some of this:

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited.

I had a birthday, and since Matt was the only one to take a picture, here's me having Jane help me blow out my candles. We also went to dinner with my mom and dad, Hannah, my uncle David and aunt Lisa, my uncle Rob and aunt Coleen, and Jeremy. It was fun to have my family in Utah for my birthday.

Since we've been home, I made a bed skirt and pillowcases for our extra bed.

And made a picture wall with some vinyl words. I'm having a hard time thinking of things to make with my Silhouette. It does so many things I'm coming up with a writer's block of sorts.

Coming up next: Gardening in January!

A strange event last night

So, to set this story up. I like to sleep with the window open and Stacy likes to sleep with it closed, but sometimes allows it to remain open to be able to "cuddle" with me. Well I wake up this morning at about 5am and notice the window is open and the shade is pull up a bit, and I think to myself Stacy must have wanted to cuddle last night. I asked her if she had opened the window during the night, she said no. I also told her that I had not opened either. We checked the window and the screen was still there untouched. I thought for sure that she had opened the window and did not remember doing so because I definitely didn't open the window. We both recalled that the window was closed and locked before we went to sleep. So, I begin to think that maybe there is someone in our house. So I grab the pole that I have under my bed, a rather unintimidating piece of wood (this is where Jake's gun would have come in handy). Its a pole used for attaching paint rollers at the end and painting ceilings. In a cowardly manner I check all the rooms and closets. Thank goodness there wasn't a burglar or I would have had to take action with my paint stick, maybe I would have painted him to death from a distance.

Well, the only thing that we can think of is that one of us sleepwalked during the night and opened the window. Why we would do this, we don't know. If there are any other ideas as to what occurred, please give them to us