Speaking of dogs...

here are a few pictures of our pups.

Maggie being adorable:
Lucy being a pillow:
Tucker playing video games with Jason:
Me and all three pups:

Bryson's Room

Here are some pictures of Bryson's room. The picture quality isn't all that great, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like (just ignore the mess in some of the pictures). Jason and I painted the two toned blue walls, and my mom made the awesome curtains and crib skirt. We, of course, went with a doggy theme. I hope this kid likes dogs :)

From the "garden"

Pictures

I've been meaning to post pictures of Bryson since his first photo shoot, but I had not got around to scanning them. Well, we've now had 3 ultrasounds, so now you can see just how much he's grown.

Here's a shot from our first appointment (4/14/09). This is still at the "we better label it so you can figure out what you are looking at later" stage:

The next time we got a look at him was at 20 weeks (7/6/09). Looking a little more human here:






And here are the latest shots from our appointment at 31 weeks (9/21/09). He's looking a little grumpy here, but cute none the less:

A dose of cuteness

The staring contest:


Maggie being "wrassled up":


Lucy and Tucker having a chat in the backyard:

Preparations

We've slowly but surely been getting things ready for our little turkey. A few weeks ago, we picked up the furniture and assembled the crib. And just this past weekend, we finished painting the room. The furniture was packed amazingly well, despite the puzzling size of the box containing these parts:

And the box that contained nothing. Even Lucy was perplexed. She thought, "If they had the extra room, they could have at least thrown in a few milkbones."

Maggie was either supervising from the hallway, or just overwhelmed with the mountain of packing material that had taken over the house. Seriously, 2 trash/recycling days have passed since then and we still haven't gotten rid of all the cardboard and styrofoam.

While the unwrapping and cutting down of the boxes seemed to take forever, we must have been very fortunate to obtain an easy-to-assembly crib. Having always heard horror stories of how hard and complicated crib assembly could be, we were prepared for the worst. However, it seemed like we went straight from this:

To this in no time at all:

Okay, maybe there was a little of this thrown in for good measure:

But overall, it was pretty easy-cheesy. More pictures of the nursery progress to come...

Random Things

Shortly after my last post, our new pet went missing. Jason had mowed the lawn and said he thought he saw a frog hop away from the lawn mower. When we didn't see Jeremiah for the next few days, we were worried he might have hopped away with one less leg. We were worried about our little buddy.

Then, after coming home late one evening, I saw something moving in the yard between our house and the neighbor's house. I took a closer look and it was Jeremiah!! He was hopping his way to the bush in front of the neighbor's house. I hope one day he will come back to live in our backyard, but at least now we know he's okay :)

We are making some progress in preparing for our little turkey. The room that will become the nursery is a little closer to being empty. I think we might go buy the furniture today. And I bought some letters for the wall (B-R-Y-S-O-N), so I guess that makes our name selection "official". I need to put some "pictures" of our little guy on here. Maybe that will be my next post.

This morning, I noticed a lady in a car behind me talking on a cellphone. The scary part was that she was using her other hand to "talk" too. I mean, it's one thing to talk on a cell phone... I admit I do it at times. However, if you are going to do that, use your other hand to do something important. Like, I don't know, maybe driving? Or eating a breakfast taco. But the person you are talking to cannot see your hand.

We have a new pet!!

Before you think we are crazy, there are a few things you should know about our new pet.

1. He stays outside all the time.
2. We do not have to feed him.
3. We do not have to clean up after him.
4. All we really have to do is make sure our other three pets don't eat him.

Luckily, all the dogs have done so far is sniff him then walk away. He's out and about just about every other night, next to the deck or under the rose bushes. Here's a picture of our new addition:


We haven't named him yet. Any ideas? Jeremiah, perhaps?

Backyard

A few months ago, we got a deck put in the backyard and did some landscaping to go along with it. I has really transformed the entire atmosphere from a boring patch of grass which consisted of a doggy mine field, to a nice, aesthetically appealing doggy mine field.

This is the bottle brush we planted in the corner of the yard, along with the joys of diggin in Central Texas. We were going to put another plant in the hole we excavated this limestone from, but since we worked so hard to remove it from the ground, we decided to keep it as decoration.


Here is the bed along the back of the house. Crepe myrtle, roses and salvia. All of which are thriving so far.


This is the other corner of the yard. Our little live oak tree and some dwarf yaupons. These plants were doing okay, but the recent hailstorm seemed to have set them back some. We are watering the tree like crazy in an effort to save it, but we might be in the market for a new tree soon.


Some purple and white Alysum along the side of the deck. These little plants also sustained quite a bit of damage from the hail and wind, but have since bounced back nicely.


And here is the deck. There is a Texas sage on each corner and 4 Indian hawthornes in front. Also, on the side is a bush daisy.

It is nice to sit out on the chairs (when it's not 100 degrees outside) and read, talk, or just relax and watch the dogs patrol the yard. I'm sure we will get even more enjoyment out of it once fall rolls around.

Guest Bath Remodel

Allow me to introduce you to "Tavern Taupe":



It's a nice enough color but, let's face it, when it's on every wall in the house it gets a little monotonous. So we began our effort to infuse a little color in the house. First project - the guest bathroom:



This is my least favorite part of painting any room:







We also decided to change the towel racks and light fixture:







We had picked a color that went with our existing accessories, so we didn't need to go out and buy anything else. And here's the finished product:


Maggie seems to like her new dining room :)

Is anyone out there?

Probably not.

I'm back! I have yet again neglected this poor little blog, but the good thing about not blogging for 5 months is that there is no shortage of material to blog about. So the next few posts will be old news, but maybe catching up will get me back in the habit (was I ever "in the habit"?) of posting.

First topic: Our vacation to Egypt.

Or was it France?

China maybe?

No. I remember now... VEGAS!! Below is the Bellagio, famous for the water fountain shows (like in Ocean's Eleven). We watched it a couple of times and it was really neat!

We stayed at the Wynn, saw a couple of great shows (Phantom and Wayne Brady), didn't lose too much money and had a great time! I guess that pretty much sums it up :)

Next catch up topic: Bathroom Remodel (I know, the excitement is just too much, isn't it?)

Long Time, No Blog

So, I'm sure no one has been looking at this thing lately (except for Jason, who checks it everyday then says "No blog?" as if he's shocked) :)

It has been a while. And, while not necessarily intentional, I suppose I have taken a break from blogdom. I think it would be quite difficult to cover everything that has happened since the last time I posted, but I'll try to cover some of the major events (not necessarily in order).


Of course, there was Christmas -- absolutely wonderful! I really enjoy spending time with family, playing games, eating yummy food... it's hands-down my favorite time of the year. It reminds me how incredibly blessed we are with wonderful family. And the 2 weeks off work was nice too!

Oh! And Mom made Jason a stocking! She made me and my brother stockings that we've had forever and now all the kids, kids-in-law and grandkids have one. They are really special! (Jason's even has an extra special something on it)



Before we headed out to visit family, Jason and I took in some impressive light displays in the area:


Although our street didn't really have a theme or anything, I was excited that 10 houses in a row on our side of the street had lights!! woohoo!!

I have cooked in the crock-pot again since the last post and it turned out really tasty. I did a "cowboy" pot roast from a crock-pot cook book my parents got me for Christmas and it was yummy! In fact, tomorrow we're having another slow-cooked meal. Eating more at home is saving us time, money, calories and the oh-so-painful "where do you wanna eat" "i dunno, where do you wanna eat" discussions. Plus, there are usually leftovers that I can take to work for lunch, thereby saving even more money!

Before Christmas we re-financed the house and had a pleasant surprise at closing. Instead of the 5.25% we were expecting, they had re-negotiated and got our rate down to 5% even.

Just yesterday, Jason and I got library cards from the public library. I checked out two books. First, I'm reading "The Secret of Lost Things" by Sheridan Hay, which is pretty good so far. And even though he didn't check anything out from the library, Jason was inspired and read half of "Prey" by Michael Crichton that he had here at the house.

We were taking one dog for a walk each evening, but we got off track and haven't been doing that regularly. Maybe we can start that up again.

We've got some exciting things coming up. I can't wait to see my nephew's play this week. Then, it's off to Las Vegas for a little vacation.

I have a desire to do somewhat of a "spring cleaning" and get everything de-cluttered and organized. And I've also got the sudden urge to paint!! Maybe there are some renovation photos in the future of this blog?!?! Who knows. But I will try not to wait over a month before the next update. :)