Playing catch up...again.

I can't believe it's been 3.5 months since I've posted! Time has just been flying by. Henry and I finished busy semesters at school and we both have the summer off! Henry has been going to school for almost 2 years straight without a break so he is getting a much deserved long break from school. The plan for him is to go straight through until graduation after this summer so hopefully this break rejuvenates him and provides a much needed rest!

My school plans have taken a bit of a change. The closer I got to student teaching, the less I felt like teaching! It's not that I don't want to teach, it's just that I don't want to quit my job! I love my job and have such a great time doing it. I work with wonderful people, have great benefits and like what I do. In addition, I get free tuition....sooo...I decided to switch gears and get a Masters. I was back in an English class this last semester and I loved it SOOO much! It was my first time back in one since I graduated in 2004 (how has it already been 7 years!!!) and from the first week of the class, I started thinking about a Master's in English. A Master's would help me progress in my current job, and would allow me to teach at the college level if I wanted to do that. Did I mention free tuition? I have a really hard time passing up free tuition. I might just stay there and keep getting Master's and just rack up the degrees. :)

So after school ended in early May, I spent a few weeks preparing for the GRE which I took right before Memorial Day. I haven't received the written scores back yet but I got a 630 each on Math and Verbal. I have to say I was REALLY surprised. From my test preparation, I was not feeling very confident. Maybe the make the practice tests really hard on purpose. Although, I would love to see the video of me taking the test because there were definitely times where I had no idea what they were asking and was making faces and dramatic gestures. So I was truly surprised and happy when that 1260 popped up. I should know the written scores by this Friday and I'm hoping they're good too. I'm actually feeling a little more confident in those. Now I just need to finish the application process! I need to write my entrance essay and scrounge up a writing sample. My motivation to write an essay write now is non existent after being out of school for a month. Hopefully it shows up soon because the deadline is July 1!

Henry and I have lots of big projects and fun plans for the summer! We will be redoing some landscaping, drywalling our garage, and doing some organization projects inside the house. When we moved in and unpacked we kind of just put things anywhere and now things are getting a little chaotic. We went shopping today to plan out and pick out our new landscaping stuff and I am so excited to get it started!

We also have a very busy travel time coming up! We have a trip to the farm at the end of June, a trip to Boise over 4th of July and a trip to California in the middle of July. We have 4 weekends of travel in a row! That's big for us...we're homebodies. :)

So that's about it for now. I'll try to stay more current and take pictures of our fun adventures and projects this summer. In the meantime, here are some picture of a hike to the M that Siri and I took a couple weeks ago.

One of the views on the way down:


I had to climb over that rock formation.

Siri acting more like a happy mountain goat than a Labrador:

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.