Happy Birthday Jeff!

On October 27th, Jeff turned 34 years old - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I made him a no bake cheesecake recipe that I found on allrecipe.com, and it was delicious!

Blowing out his candles! Poor guy was sick on his birthday. He was freezing (therefore the lovely outfit and hat!) and actually climbed out of bed to blow out his candles and eat a bite of cake.

He'll love me for posting this pic - happy birthday babe!

Progress...

I'm very happy to say that progress on the living room is being made :-) We have been cleaning, dry walling, corner beading, mudding and taping, etc. Carpet will be coming Monday, yipee, and hopefully we'll have the room put together and pictures up on here by the end of next week!

Pecans

I was delighted to discover that we have a pecan tree in our front/side yard! A little over a week ago a few of the pecans began falling out of the husks to the ground. So each afternoon, I've been scouting around, trying to salvage as many as possible before the squirrels find them. These were results of last weeks scavenging.

Monday evening, after returning home from running a few errands, Jeff and I decided to try to pick some off the lower branches. This soon led to Jeff retrieving a ladder so we could get the ones a little higher up. Jeff proved to be a superb pecan picker!

After picking all the ones within reach from the top of the ladder, we decided it still wasn't enough. So Jeff pulled out a handy little device - not sure what it's called, I call it a trash picker upper! It's a long handle, with a grabber piece on the end that you can open and close by squeezing a trigger on the handle.

Random photo of my feet and some of the pecans with the husks opening. The next day I counted over 50 mosquito bites on my feet - grrrr! Pesky little things!

Posing with a pecan - LOL. We filled the pitcher in front of me on the ladder all the way to the top!

With Jeff's help, my little pile from the previous week greatly multiplied!

Catalpa Worms!

Here we have pictures of some Catalpa Worms. While working on a rental house, cutting down tree limbs, Jeff and Daniel discovered LOTS of these worms on a tree. After telling a friend about them and doing some online research, we discovered that they are Catalpa Worms, and that they devour the leaves of the Catalpa tree in the Fall. Jeff's friend also told Jeff that they are coveted by fishers for bait. So after church one Sunday, we swung by the rental house, where Jeff proceeded to catch I'm guessing about 50 of these worms for his friend.

I think this one here has a bunch of eggs on it.

Ha ha, got another one!

Ready to pounce on one!

Worms - ewww!

Here is a closer up picture that I found online of some Catalpa worms.

Our Kitchen

I just wanted to share some pictures of our kitchen, from start to finish! Jeff did a great job on the kitchen and took extra time to ensure some of my special requests.

The front wall of our house had no windows - weird, I know! We have a pretty big kitchen, and with only 1 window on a side wall, the room was rather dark. My grandpa's kitchen has two little windows between the countertop and the cabinets, which I thought might be a good idea for our kitchen too. Jeff liked the idea, and here you can see where he started cutting out the windows.

Here he is replacing the old window over the kitchen sink with a new one.

Hanging the cabinets!

Very cool undercabinet lights - Jeff's idea :-)

Looking good! Here you can see the windows, cabinets, and the undercabinet lights are on.

This is the step down from our kitchen to the living room area. He inlaid the first step in the kitchen floor, and when the living room is finished there will be one more step halfway down.

Countertops!

Kitchen sink! Up until this point, Jeff had been washing all his dishes in the bathtub - crazy man!

Jeff did a great job tiling. Diamond pattern per my request - thank you Jeff!

Jeff painting drawers.

Brother Brian and myself painting the ceiling while Jeff supervised to make sure we didn't miss any spots.

Appliances are in and kitchen is now usable!

Time to unpack and decorate.

I love my little windows and my windowsills. And I love my husband and thank him for all the hard work he put in getting the kitchen finished before we got married - he's the best!

Aren't these the cutest measuring cups? Thank you Uncle Ben and Aunt Joy!

Our favorite mugs :-) Already used many times for hot tea.

Honeymoon Day 1

The first day of our honeymoon we drove from Colorado to Moab Utah.

I had never been to Colorado before - love it, it's beautiful!

This exit sign made me laugh :-)

Entering Utah

Definitely not in the Colorado mountains anymore!

Red rock everywhere!

Jeff's Mom and stepdad, John let us use their condo in Moab for the week. It's really nice and Karen does a great job decorating - she's very creative.

Honeymoon Day 2

On the second day of our honeymoon we headed out to hike at Corona and Bow Tie Arches


The road on the drive out there is right beside these rock faces. I was surprised to see people pull over onto the shoulder, get out climbing gear, and go right up! Here is one such crazy climber.

Hmmm, I think I'll just pose for a picture and leave the rock climbing for the crazy peoples!

Jeff :-)

Here we are part way through our hike (more like rock climb!) up to Corona and Bow Tie

At this point, I thought we were going to that little cave looking thing behind Jeff, and was excited that we were getting close - boy was I wrong! And here is my handsome husband and his muscles ;-P

Time for a break, wondering where we are going, and why the "trail" has been so difficult to find/follow from the start.

Cheese!

I had never seen Cacti blooms

We finally made it to the arches, and it was definitely worth the hike up there! Close to the top we found the real trail, clearly marked with cairns. Corona Arch is behind us.

Bow Tie Arch

Kibbie loves Jeff!

I thought it was funny that they had this ladder fixed up to help the hikers at a difficult spot near the top, but at the beginning of the hike there were spots much more difficult with no offered assistance.

As we followed the cairns back down the trail, we soon discovered something we found to be slightly humorous ... we had left the parking lot going the wrong direction, weren't on a trail at all for most of our hike up, and made a fairly easy hike a rather long and difficult adventure! Not sure how we missed this sign, but we most definitely headed out to the left, instead of the RIGHT!

Fixing dinner after our adventure - mmm mmm!

Jeff grilling steak and chicken - it was delicious!