Frogs and Food!

This weekend, the local museum got a new exhibit called: Frogs! It's pretty cool. They have all kinds of information about frogs, how they breathe, what they eat, where they live, the challenges they are facing, etc. They also have all kinds of live frogs! It was really fun to go look at all the different kinds and get a few pictures.

This is an African Bullfrog. It's quite large and would startle me very much if I ever ran across one in the wild.

I can't remember what these are called but I thought they were cool.

I really liked the poisonous frogs – they were such cool colors and hopped around a lot. There were also some really cool frogs whose heads were shaped like leaves and their camouflage was amazing!

After the frog exhibit, we went to a planetarium show where we may have dozed off for a couple minutes. Not because it was boring, but we were reclined in a dark room looking at the stars. I like to tease Henry about it because he snored for a minute, but I can't give him too much grief because his snoring woke me up. (It was pretty quiet snoring – I don't think anyone else could have heard it over the noise of the show.)
After that, we went to an International Food Fair at MSU that was put on by the international students. It was very cool. It was set up in the style of a street bazaar. It did get pretty crowded and difficult to maneuver but the food was really good and we had fun. My favorite was Turkey who had baklava and Spain who had Tortilla de Patata and something else whose name I can't remember. It was like a Spanish bruschetta and it was delicious.

Walking into the Food Fair:

It was a great President's Day weekend!

New Car!

In January, Henry and I found a car to buy! We had been a one car family (not counting Henry's company truck that he drives to and from work) since we sold our truck last January. The alternator had gone out and so the truck sat in our driveway for four months without moving. We had contemplated selling it before but could never get up the guts to do it. We thought we would need it too much. Anyway, after four months of not using it we fixed the alternator and sold it so we wouldn't have the large payment any more. We have been pretty happy with the decision. We have only needed a truck one time in the course of that year and we were able to rent one from Uhaul for $20. Much less expensive than insuring and registering and paying for the truck all year! We had always had the idea that within a couple years we would buy a car that was more conducive to carrying Sirius and multiple people (more family friendly, if you will). Our other car is the Toyota Corolla which we love, but doesn't do well with carrying a wet, dirty, hairy Labrador.

Anyway, we had spent a lot of time looking at cars and deciding what we needed in a new vehicle. We decided on this:

It's a 2006 Lexus Rx330 and we are very happy with it. It is roomy and comfortable, has a large cargo area for Sirius and will be a great family car for the future. It also has AWD which makes my snowy commutes much easier (as do the heated seats).

We're very thankful for the circumstances that allowed us to buy this car and we're sure it will be a great car for our family for many years.

Funny Video

For Christmas, my Dad and Karen got us a REALLY cool video camera that we have had a lot of fun playing with. Henry took this video of Matt's puppy Rowdy who got a little too close to the kitty one day. The best part is the music. He had Pandora on and it just happened to be playing this song during the showdown.

Catch up - Christmas

So, I'll be doing some catch up blogging and try to not let myself get so far behind!

First up - Christmas!

We spent our first Christmas in our new house this year and it was a great one. We had Henry's parents and sister Kat, my mom and her husband, cousin Matt and his parents Don and Caroline. It was a full house but we all had a lot of fun. There was some inclement weather and Kat's boyfriend had trouble getting here from Germany and Don and Caroline didn't make it home from Seattle until Christmas day.

On Christmas Eve, Matt and I made a big dinner. Matt had gone to Alaska last fall and came home with a lot of fish so we had delicious Alaskan fish, mushroom risotto and roasted asparagus. Yum! On Christmas Day, we got up and opened presents. With seven people giving and receiving presents, it wasn't long before the living room turned into a sea of wrapping paper!

Here is a picture pre-opening frenzy:


I don't think this picture fully captures just how many presents there were - but there were a lot. We also had Sirius, my mom's dog Cosmo, and Matt's new puppy Rowdy so our little house got a little crazy! But the good kind of crazy. :) Plus we all know I love an abundance of dogs.

For Christmas dinner, we had a Prime Rib (yum!), mashed potatoes, roasted Brussel's Sprouts and homemade canoli for dessert. Everyone was so helpful with cooking and cleanup and it really was a wonderful time.

For New Year's, Kat's and her boyfriend (Peter (who finally made it from Germany after two days of travelling!) were able to come back to Bozeman from Missoula and spend it with us and that was a lot of fun as well. Henry and I caught ourselves looking at our watches ant 9:30 and wondered if we were going to make it, but we did. :) We had a great sushi dinner (Peter's first time with sushi) and then were able to snag a couch at a bar so we didn't move for the rest of the night. It was great to ring in 2011 with family and friends! So far the year has been good to us and we're looking forward to seeing what else it has in store!

Far Too Long...

Ok, I know it has been over 2 months since I last posted which just shows how incredibly busy we have been! I think my last post was shortly before midterms and it has been chaotic ever since. I had midterms for school, followed by a lot of group projects and service learning projects, then it was my 28th birthday, then Henry's 30th birthday, we threw in a trip to California for Thanksgiving and now it is time for finals and Christmas is in 3 weeks! I can't believe how fast the last couple months have gone. My last day of class is tomorrow and then it is finals week! I have 1 paper, 1 project and 1 final to do. Then, I have to arrange to go in and get 18 hours of observation in the classroom over Christmas break for a class I am taking next semester. In addition, I have been EXTREMELY busy at work. I went back to working a bit of overtime in November to try to stay caught up. The Residence Halls close next Saturday so the students will be gone which should make it a bit quieter. Henry is still busy with school but has dropped his credit load a bit this semester. I think it was a good choice - he doesn't get summers or breaks between terms (just 3 weeks at Christmas and 1 week in May) off so he was getting a bit burned out.

The animals are doing great, Henry and I are healthy and the house is doing great! We still need to get our new roof but that will be a spring project. We are getting all geared up to host Christmas at our house for 11 people - I'm looking forward to it! We bought our tree last weekend. We went fake this year - prelit with hinged branches. Basically I pulled it out of the box, put the three pieces together and the branches unfolded themselves. Then I plugged it in and TA -DA! Instant Christmas tree. So happy we went that way. I didn't mind pine needles in my house and the risk of fire hazard when I rented - not so keen on those things when we own. :)

Have to run to bed - I've been running myself on too little sleep the last couple weeks - more posts to come soon - probably after finals!

Best Weekend Ever!

Due to our incredibly busy work and school schedules, Henry and I have been feeling a little burned out and overwhelmed. Our evenings are usually spent doing homework, or being so exhausted we can’t do homework. Then our weekends are spent doing homework and trying to run the household. Even Sirius has been feeling a little neglected lately. So we decided to plan a weekend away for ourselves. Thought we would just get out of town for a couple days and have a little change of pace to help us feel refreshed. We aren’t even halfway through the semester so we thought we’d better do something to nip this in the bud.

However, when we were planning where to go on our mini holiday, we ended up getting so stressed out that it wasn’t even fun anymore! Henry had the brilliant idea of doing a Staycation, where we just stayed at home and relaxed. I was pretty hesitant at first – I didn’t want to get caught up in all the stuff at home – housework, TV, computers, etc. But we came up with a great plan. We got all our homework done in advance, the housework was done enough, and we made a rule of not TV or computers for the weekend. We planned to do things we always say we want to do but never end up doing and going out to a nice dinner.

I have to say it was a resounding success! I had so much comp time that I was able to take Friday off of work so after my 8 am class, I was free for three days! I had a great day hanging out by myself, visiting some friends and playing with Siri. Then at 5 pm, Staycation started! Henry got home and we went out to dinner. Then on Saturday, we went to an energy fair and got a bunch of free stuff to weatherize our home, went to a great, new Thai restaurant for lunch and went to the Museum of the Rockies. We became members there this summer and decided to take advantage of it. We went to go see a planetarium show but ended up getting sidetracked by some interesting lectures that just happened to be going on right after we got there. Then we went to a planetarium show about Mars (very cool!) and strolled around downtown before we went to our nice dinner. Sunday we relaxed all morning and then took Siri to the park and got Pumpkin Pie blizzards from Dairy Queen on the way home. The whole weekend was perfect. We were so relaxed and had such a good time – it was really hard to go to bed Sunday night and know it would be over! We decided we are going to do this at least once a semester, if not more! By staying at home, we saved a lot of money and were so relaxed. Plus, we got to really enjoy some of the benefits of this town we live in!

Here is a picture of the dessert we had on Friday night. It was delicious!


This is a picture of Siri trapped in the garage. I had to go down into the crawl space to clean out the dryer vent and didn't realize Siri had walked out there and then I moved a bunch of stuff. Apparently, it was far too traumatizing for him to walk around the stuff, jump over it, or walk around the car. He refused to move, even when we called him and got really excited and he would just stand there and cry. We eventually moved the recycle bin so he could get back in the house. But not before I snapped a picture to always remind me of what a giant baby he really is.

New Job and Back to School

I have been so busy with my new job I barely have time to think - let alone blog! As you can imagine, opening residence halls at a University would be a very busy time of year, but this year it is quite different due to the number of overflow housing students we have. We received so many more applications than we had rooms for and I have been made the temp housing coordinator. When I say many, I mean a few hundred male students in temporary housing.

It definitely has presented some challenges in the new job. I've been working anywhere from a 9-12 hour day for the last three weeks. I could stay for 12 hours everyday but I am forcing myself to go home just so I don't get burned out. I'm usually exhausted by Wednesday and start going to bed at about 9 or so every night. On the bright side, I have earned enough comp time to get me through the entire semester until I am able to use vacation time in January! (I need to use comp time to go to class or I have unpaid time - and who can afford that!) I earned around 40 hours of comp time since August 10th so I am set until December!

In addition to the crazy work schedule, I started school this week! It's been good so far - I'm really happy with the decisions I made about school and work. I originally was going to take 14 credits (ended up with 8) and I'm SO GLAD!! I really don't think I could handle any more. Also, working on campus was the best decision. It is so convenient and I think if I had to drive across town and look for a parking spot multiple times a day I would pull my hair out. The people I work with are extremely understanding and supportive of me going to school so it is a wonderful environment in which to be. :)

I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I am not even close to being the oldest or only post-Baccalaureate student in my classes. In one of them, I would say post-Bacc students make up at least half the class. Apparently going back to school to get a teaching cert is the thing to do. Plus, I don't look anywhere near older than the traditional college students so it probably wouldn't matter even if I was the only "older" student. One of my new job duties is to supervise our Resident Hall tour program and I gave the tour for about three weeks while all our student workers were gone. Someone asked me if I was a sophomore or a junior while I was giving the tour. After that I started mentioning my high school graduation year in the beginning of my tours. :)

Everything else is going really well. Henry just finished a really hard term in school so he is getting a "break" this term. He is taking one class instead of two but that class is Calculus so it remains to be seen how much of a "break" it really is. Siri is doing wonderfully but is feeling the neglect of the last few weeks. We took him to a pond with a dock a couple weekends ago and he jumped off a dock for the first time ever! We took some videos with our phones that I will try to get posted because they are HILARIOUS!!! At least to me.

We got the hail damage on the car fixed (nice week of biking to work for me) and we have yet to call the roofers but that should be happening soon. I had my ten year high school reunion at the beginning of August and that was a lot of fun. I had a blast seeing people I hadn't seen in a long time. I cannot believe it has been 10 years.

I think that's everything for catch up for now - we're getting very excited for Labor Day weekend - three whole days to do whatever. I can't wait!!