New York Pics

Alright, I got time to sort through our pictures so here are just a few.

This is inside of a really cool mall that we discovered, right near Rockefeller Park:


Me eating my Fettuccinie Alfredo that I loved so much:

Grand Central Park:

The Apple store:


Rockefeller Center (the first picture is a glimpse of the people-traffic around Rockefeller center):


The Charmin Restrooms:


The crowd of people trying to get into the train terminal:


Well, that's all! Hopefully you enjoyed these pictures. It's just little bits of our day :)

New York City

Man! Life is Busy! I’m just getting a chance to sit down and write about our day in New York City on Saturday. We had a great time. Nate and Shawna met at our house at around 8:15 am so we could get to the Trenton train station for the 9:08 train to New York. By the time we got to our destination the train was packed with people.

The first thing we did was just walk around with no real direction. We were kind of heading for Little Italy but went the wrong direction and ended up at Rockefeller Park. Jon and I had never been to that park before; it was a nice little park on the water.

After walking around Rockefeller Park we headed in the right direction toward Little Italy. On the way we walked down Canal Street where there’re all kinds of shops and people trying to sell you stuff. I got a Cashmere feel pink scarf, which I love!

We ate lunch at this little Italian restaurant that had the most amazing Fettuccine Alfredo I’ve ever eaten! While we were at the restaurant an older man that was sitting outside of the glass front window, had a heart attack or stroke or something and fell off his chair, hit the window, and was laying on the ground. By the time the ambulance got there the man didn’t have much of a pulse. They shocked him a few times but nothing happened. Then they got him into the ambulance and were supposedly still working on him when we left (which I guess what a good sign). Needless to say that was quite an event to happen. I was shook up for a while after that.

We took a walk in Grand Central Park after Lunch. I always love going there! There must have been a Santa parade that day, because there were hundreds of people all dressed up like Santa, walking through the park (they seemed unending)! It was pretty funny to watch and see all the interesting Santa outfits people had.

Not far from Grand Central park is the new Apple store that Jon really wanted to see. So we walked over there next. It’s pretty cool. The building is all glass with just a glass elevator in the middle of it and an Apple icon. You go down the elevator or the glass stairs and the store itself is underground.

There’s also a Nintendo World store near by that Jon really enjoyed going to :).

From the Nintendo World store we walked to Rockefeller Center. All of NYC was pretty crowded but when we got to Rockefeller center the people traffic got way worse. The sidewalks were so crowded that you inched your way forward, wedged in-between thousands of other people. It was nuts! We got to see the big Christmas tree all lit up (it’s so pretty!), but we didn’t even try to get close enough to watch people skating in the ice rink. It was way too crowded.

Time Square was our last stop before dinner. We didn’t actually spend too much time walking around in Time Square. We were trying to figure out where we were eating for dinner, and of course, everywhere was full with an hour or so wait for the next table! We ended up eating at TGI Friday’s right in Time Square. We were all so glad just to sit and give our legs a rest from walking all day :).

After dinner we were headed back to Penn Station to catch our train home but we stopped at the “Charmin” Restrooms first. What a crazy place! Yes, I’m talking about Charmin as in “Charmin” toilet paper. As a Christmas gift to NYC, Charmin installed at least 10 or more private bathrooms in a building right in Time Square. You go in and there’s a huge line of people in line. “Charmin” music is playing and there’s “Charmin” people running around dancing, singing, talking through megaphones, and all kinds of crazy stuff. After each person uses their own private bathroom with a little sink, a Charmin employee goes in and quickly sanitizes the seat and sprays febreeze. Then the next person can go it. It’s this big, huge ordeal just to go to the bathroom but it was nice and clean and quite an experience!

Once our 30 minute bathroom break was over we took the subway to Penn Station and waited to find out what track our train would be on (they don’t post the track #’s until 10 minutes before the train is supposed to leave). Once the track # finally was posted there was a mad rush of people that were running to get on the train. Once again, we were surrounded by hundreds of people squeezing their way through the doors and down the stairs to the terminal. We had to run all the way to the front of the train to find a car that even had seats! The others barely even had standing room. But we made it on the train and home by like 11:30, not too bad.

It was a really fun day!

I took pretty many pictures throughout the day but I haven't gotten a chance to go through them yet. I'll try to get to that tonight and post some, but there's no guarantee. :)

Passion Fest Video

The link below is a fairly short video clip from the previous Passion Fest. It will give you a little idea of what it's all about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDEx3p3WIU4

Starbucks

My wonderful, sweet husband got off work early last night and came home to take me out to Starbucks for a date!!! I knew he was coming home early ‘cause he had told me to do my errands first because he might be able to get off work early. But then when he got home he said he wanted to go to Starbucks with me. I was surprised but of course, I was glad to go! :)

We had a nice time talking and relaxing together with nothing to do.

This week is a full week for Jon and I. Tonight I’m looking forward to a girls night at Denise Randolph’s house and Jon is probably hanging out with Ian because Ashley will be at the girls night too. Tomorrow Jon works and Sarah is coming over to scrapbook again with me. I’ve got all my pictures organized this time so I’ll actually be able to do some scrapbooking. Then Thursday night Jon works again and I was invited to go out for dinner with mom F! Friday night Jon and I are babysitting our favorite little buddies Hailey, Justin and Sydney. After they go to bed we’ll be packing and getting ready for New York the next day. We’re going for a day trip with Nate and Shawna to see the lights and decorations and to walk around the city. It’s always fun walking around New York City.

So that’s our week at a glance, and next weeks no less busy! What a crazy time of year. But Christmas will come and go before we know it so we’re enjoying the season while it lasts. :)

Here I am Again!

It’s been a while since I wrote but not that much has happened. The smell in our fridge is gone but we don’t know what it was. The guy from LG came out and took apart the whole fridge and couldn’t find anything or any reason we would have had a smell. Hopefully it doesn’t come back since we don’t know what it was. I’m so glad to have a working refrigerator again though! :)

Our wedding album is finally created and in the process of being printed. Here is a link to the digital pages: http://www.allebachphotography.com/customer/jonalana Page #19 is the only one that will be different when we get our album, we asked to have it spruced up a bit more. I’m so excited to finally get our album, everyone is always asking about it :).

This past Saturday Jon had to work for lunch to cover for someone so I spent most of the day by myself. We had my parents over for dinner then Saturday night. That was fun :).

Going back to last Monday night (a week ago) Jon and I had our first Passion Fest meeting. This is the first time we are involved with Passion Fest. It is a big event, originally started by a few people at THP, to reach out to the communities around us in a way that is fun for everyone. Earlier this year we attended Passion Fest in Pottstown and really enjoyed it and thought it was a great way to draw in the youth of the community and then to present the Gospel to them. So for next year we decided to be a part of the Passion Fest team so we could help plan, promote and run the event. Basically it is a totally free, family oriented day with all kinds of stuff going on. There’s activities for younger kids, speakers, bands, food, and action sports - which last year included professional stunt bikers, skateboarders and motorcyclists (all of who are Christians).

July 7th of next year is the event we’re starting to plan for now. It will be in Pottstown again. www.passionfest.org is the website for it but it’s still under construction so there’s not much information yet. I will probably continue to talk about it and give updates incase anyone wants to come or knows people who would like to come or possibly benefit from coming.

Tonight Jon is working again (this week is the only week in December that he’s actually working 3 nights). I’m going to go out and try to finish my Christmas shopping :).

Scrapbooking

Someone from LG (our refrigerator manufacturer) is coming to look at our fridge today!! I hope they can figure out where the smell was coming from. The actual smell seems to be going away but we want to know WHY it was there in the first place. If it’s something that died I don’t want the remains of whatever it is, stuck somewhere. And if it wasn’t something that died, the smell could return…

Wednesday night when Sarah came over to scrapbook we had a great time! It was a lot of fun talking and scrapbooking together. When I pulled all my stuff out, that I haven’t touched for probably a year or more, I had a lot of organizing to do. Miscellaneous pictures were everywhere and things were just all out of order :). So between talking and organizing my stuff I didn’t get much actual scrapbooking done, but it got me motivated and I had fun. I also discovered that I was out of blank pages for the album I am in the middle of, so last night, while Jon was at work, I went out and bought a few things I needed and then came home and continued to organize all my things. I have everything organized accept two stacks of pictures. Sarah invited me to go to a scrapbooking retreat that is the last weekend in January. I am really excited about going! I need to get everything in order before then and have enough pictures/albums to work on so that I can stay busy while I’m there. Jon thinks I’m crazy for going to a scrapbooking retreat, but he’s glad I have something to enjoy doing with friends! :)

Tonight I think Jon and I are driving down to some place near Philly because one of Jon’s friends from school is having people over to play video games for his birthday, he invited us. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do but I haven’t been able to spend much time with Jon this week so I’m just going to spend time with him.

Christmas Tree

Here's our Christmas tree finally:

Those blubs are not black and clear. The darker ones are actually a purply/grey color and the ones that look clear have glitter and snowflakes on them :). You have to see it in person to really know what it looks like but the picture gives you an idea.



I haven't taken a picture of the outside lights yet because theres a big chunk of them that died so we're going to replace them and THEN I'll take a picture.

Alright, Sarah's here to scrapbook, gotta run!

Quickie

When I was saying yesterday about Jon going hunting, I totally forgot to say that he really enjoyed hunting even though he didn’t get anything this past weekend. He’s excited about going again. He keeps teasing me that when he gets something he’s going to get it mounted and put it on our wall. Yeah RIGHT! :) I always said I’d never marry a hunter and now my husband is one! The thing I don’t like about hunting the most is the animal heads that get hung on walls as trophies. So hopefully Jon won’t ever really want to do that…

Sarah is coming over to my house tonight while Jon’s at work and we’re going to scrapbook. I’m excited, it should be a lot of fun, and I’ll be glad to start getting caught up on all my albums – I’m so far behind! Since Jon works every Wednesday night Sarah’s going to start coming over about twice a month to hang out with me and scrapbook, tonight is the first time she’s coming over.

Speaking of Jon working… I just found out last night that he has a new work/school schedule and he will now be working THREE nights a week! He just started a new semester of school this week and his new classes are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings so he’s working a double on Monday’s, Lunch on Tuesday’s, and Dinner on Wednesday’s and Thursday’s. That leaves us with Tuesday and Friday nights open. But then we have care group every other Tuesday. I’m pretty bummed about this new schedule! Jon said it’s only for the month of December though and after that he’ll cut back on work. Since I really didn’t like the idea of him working three nights he’s also going to see if he can just work two nights a week in December too. I hope he can!

THE SMELL update: our kitchen still smells like a mixture of bleach and dead something. I think Jon’s going to call Home Depot as soon as he gets a chance, to see if they can come out and take a look at the situation!

Thanksgiving weekend... and beyond

It's been a while! We decorated for Christmas since my last post so I was waiting till I had pictures of what our house looks like before I wrote. I haven’t gotten a chance to take them yet though, so I figured I better write because a lot is going on!

Thanksgiving went well and we had a nice day. We slept in :) and then went to my parents for lunch with a bunch of my extended family. Jon went with my dad and Alysa to sight in his gun for hunting and got all psyched up to go :). Thanksgiving night we went over to Jon’s parents for some more food and to spend some time with them.

I took off work Friday, and Jon didn’t have school so we had all day Friday and Saturday to start Christmas shopping and decorate the house for Christmas. We had a lot of fun spending both days together with nothing urgent to do! Friday we slept in again and then went out shopping for most of the day. After shopping we went on a date to Olive Garden for dinner, yum, yum :). Saturday we went out and bought a tree and then decorated it and we put lights outside on the house. I think everything looks really good and I'm happy with how it turnned out! I’ll take pictures when I get a chance and post them.

Sunday after church and lunch, Jon left with Nate to go hunting up at my pop-pop’s cabin in the Poconos. A bunch of guys go up the weekend after Thanksgiving every year for the opening of Rifle season. While Jon was gone I SHOPPED! :) I got a lot of my Christmas Shopping done on Sunday and even took a break to meet Jon’s mom and dad at Maccaroni Grill for dinner. Sunday night I slept over at Jon’s parents since I don’t like to sleep at home alone. I was really glad when Jon got home last night! I missed him even though he was only gone one night. :(

When Jon got home last night our refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen still smelled really bad (like it has for at least a week and a half), so he said we were cleaning it out right away. We’re both getting really frustrated with the smell and the fact that we can’t figure out where it’s coming from or why! There’s no bad food in either the fridge or the freezer plus Jon and Glenn Clemmer pulled the whole thing out and took the grate off the back and pulled some of the insulation out to see if anything was dead in there, but they couldn’t find anything.

So last night we nailed a drop cloth over the doorway from the kitchen into the hallway, we opened the windows and door in the kitchen and emptied everything out of the entire Refrigorator! We had to throw out anything that wasn’t tightly sealed because the smell had seeped into it; everything else we washed with soapy water. Luckily everything that was left from the freezer, fit into our extra freezer in the spare room. The stuff from the fridge we put in coolers out on the porch. Then Jon turned the refrigerator off and sprayed a bleach/water mixture all over inside and wiped it down. All night last night we left the doors to the fridge open and the windows open to air everything out.

This morning when we got up the kitchen mostly smelled like bleach so we couldn’t tell if the fridge still smells bad or not. The coolers both smell when you open them though so the smell must have really absorbed into the containers of everything. UGH!

Earlier today Jon turned the fridge back on and closed the doors and tonight he’s going to wash the fridge down again to try and get rid of the bleach smell, so we can see if the bad smell is still there. If it is, then I guess our next step is to get someone to come out and look at the thing! Maybe we’ll have to get it replaced by Home Depot.

If there is something dead in the back though, I wish we could find it because it grosses me out just thinking that it’s still in there, even if it doesn’t smell anymore. Eww!

So, that is what’s been happening over at our little cottage latley :) . Between the smell and our plumbing not working for a week, we are really learning what it’s like to have a house! For the most part I love having my own house but sometimes it’s just not fun. Hopefully we figure out this smell problem and can get back to normal life soon.

Alright, this post is really long. I’m going to go now. I’ll post those pictures of our decorated house as soon as I get to it.

Nintendo Wii

Sunday was launch day for yet another video game system! Nintendo’s newest system called “Wii” which is much cheaper than the Play Station 3 that we waited in line for. The Wii is a much different kind of video game system than any before it because, instead of a usual controller, this controller looks more like a TV remote and it’s motion sensitive it’s also much less complicated with less buttons than other controllers. In-other-words, all the people out there like me, who can’t help but move their hands around while using a video came controller, now can actually move their car or player or whatever on the screen when they move the controller.

Jon had a Wii system reserved, so Sunday he went to pick it up, and yesterday he had a “Wii Party”. A few of his friends from school came over earlier in the day after school and then last night a bunch of the guys from church came over. It was dangerous walking through the house! They were playing games like bowling, tennis, baseball, etc. Since the controller is motion sensitive when you’re batting in baseball you actually swing your arm with the controller in it. When you’re bowling you go through the motions, just like if you were bowling, accept you don’t actually throw the controller! You probably get the point.

They had David’s TV and Wii set up on the kitchen table and Jon’s in the living room. To walk through the kitchen you had to watch out that you didn’t get smacked by someone swinging their bat or racket or rolling a bowling ball!! haha

I took a few pictures but it’s hard to see the motion:

Dave & Steve playing boxing:

Bowling:

Tennis:

As far as other things going on in our life. We’ve discovered a horrible smell coming from, we think, the freezer although we can’t figure out what it could possibly be!

Our plumbing is fixed as of today!!! Yesterday and today they were working on it and today they realized that it could have been fixed last Monday but somehow there was a mis-communication and they didn't realize that it was the sinks and tub that weren't draining. They thought it was the toilet, which was actually working fine! I can’t wait to be able to take showers at my house, do wash, wash dishes and run the dishwasher again! I’m very thankful that Jon’s parents live right next door and they've allowed us to use their house whenever we needed , but obviously that's more of a hassle :)

Alright, Jon's waiting to use the computer, I've got to run!

Waiting In Line For A PS3

Last time I wrote I thought I would be home alone for 3 days (that was Tuesday night). Turned out I was wrong. :) Wednesday I had a conference to go to for work that was in Valley Forge, so, embarassing as it was, I asked if I could drive my car to the conference and then afterward not go back to work so I could hopefully get in line for a PS3 before the line filled up. I got to Best Buy at about 1:30 on Wednesday and was 15th in line (Jon was 1st). Jon talked to the people in front of me so I was able to hang out and sleep in the tent that Jon was in with Nate, David and John Hendricks. Here's a picture of the first two tents in line and a few people (the big yellow & blue tent is ours): Most of the other people in line were very friendly so everyone hung out together. By the end, a lot of us knew each other pretty well. Here's a close up of our tent (the one side of it isn't up in this picture): After I got there the line started filling up quickly, by around 5 or 6 that night there were as many people in line as Play Stations that Best Buy was getting (28). Someone in line decided to write up a list with the names of everyone in line so that no one could budge and say that they were in line if they weren't (people get crazy about these systems). There was a 24 hour Giant, a Target, a Lowes, and other stores, all right there in the same shopping center, so we were able to get out of line for little bits at a time to go get food or use the restrooms. People were pretty easy going about it.

Shawna and Kelsey got to Best Buy around 3:00 and they were racing about 3 other people who were also on their way. Shawna brought the Hendricks camping grill so some of us cooked up hamburgers for dinner Wednesday night and Thursday we made bacon and eggs for breakfast. A few of the guys also made Steaks for dinner Thursday night:

Nate making hamburgers:

Steaks:

Me reading a magazine: Thursday it rained so we bought a tarp at Lowes and put it over the tent to keep it from leaking. Then we all sat inside watching two movies on a laptop, which was hooked up to a car battery for power :). In the picture below you can see our tent in the background with the tarp over it:
Thursday we were on Channel 10 news two times. Throughout the entire time we were sitting there 2 news papers came to do interviews and Wired 96.5 (a local radio station) also came out. Channel 10 news interviewed Jon and Nate personally and video taped us grilling and sitting around.

The NBC 10 news van:

Channel 10 News video taping:

EVERYONE asked up what we were doing there! It was pretty fun, other than the fact that we couldn't get showers and it rained pretty hard on Thursday so it was very moist and a little damp on the outsides corners of the tent.

Here you can sort-of see some of the tents but they also wrapped around the building:

It was definatly an experience :)

Less than an hour later...

Jon came home right after I published my last post but he was rushing around and on the phone constantly. I bairly got a few words in and just waited to see what was happening. Then Nate showed up and after that it was really a mad rush around here. Jon ran around and grabbed things he needed and within 15 minutes they were running out the door to go to the Best Buy in Plymouth Meeting because there they only had 2 people in line so far so they would for sure get a system. I just sat in shock!

I came home expecting a nice relaxing night with Jon and to prepare for going to sit in line tomorrow night. Instead I bairly got to talk to him and he rushed out the door and now I have no idea what to do! I was looking forward to not working Thursday and Friday and now I'll probably have to work because I won't be sitting in line for a PS3 unless, for some reason, there's no one behind Jon, Nate and David still tomorrow night.

I guess I should start packing up some things to go over to Jon's parents to spend the night, and the next 2 nights!

This is the first time since being married that Jon won't be around :(. I'm going through withdrawal already!

Play Station 3

Oh boy... on my way home from work today I called Jon and found out he was driving around Montgomeryville and there were already people standing in line outside of Target waiting for the launch of the new Play Station 3 that comes out Friday morning. Jon and I and a bunch of other people from church were planning on waiting in line too but we weren't planning on arriving until tomorrow night. So Jon drove to Best Buy and there were already 11 people in line! He hung up at that point because he had to figure out what was going on....

About 20 minutes later he calls and asks what I'm doing, of course I'm just walking around the house wondering what the next few days is going to look like if there's already people standing in line and Jon is determined to get a PS3. Then he says that him and David are standing in line at Best Buy for a PS3!!!

So, now I'm sitting at home waiting for him to call back to find out what's happening. He's calling around to other locations to see if there's anywhere where there aren't people in line yet. They may not stay in line at Best Buy. I was supposed to be with him too, but I've got work tomorrow and I'm already taking off Thursday and Friday.

Wonder what's going to happen! One thing I know, if Jon doesn't come home tonight I'm not staying by myself! I'll be heading next door to stay at his parents, I have to go over there to get a shower in the morning anyway.

I'm Back! :)

Since the last time I posted I have had absolutely no time to write again. I've been busy at work and even busier at home preparing for my open house that was yesterday. Friday I only worked a half-day at work and then came home to start preparing for the open house. It was so nice out when I got home that I just had to be outside, so I raked the yard, swept the porch and walkway and washed some windows. I should have worn gloves to rake because I had a nice big blister when I was done. Friday night Jon and I organized some more upstairs and I cleaned up there so it was all ready.

Saturday my mom came over after lunch to help me finish making all the food. Without her help I never would have gotten it all done. We baked and cooked the whole afternoon and into the evening, it was fun! My dad came over with pizza at dinner time so we wouldn't have to stop cooking to make dinner. After we ate pizza dad and Jon helped make mini sandwiches and cut up cheese and ring bologna, which was the last of the food that needed to be made. Mom and Dad left around 8:30 or 9:00 Saturday and then I was up till midnight finishing the cleaning and organizing. Jon did a lot to help out during the day Saturday too, even though he had homework to finish up.

The open house yesterday turned out wonderful even though the weather didn't cooperate. It was raining off and on all day so we put a couple pieces of remnant carpet from Jon's parents house on the porch and right inside the front door and we had people take off there shoes when they came in. Suprisingly the house stayed really clean and there's no stains on the carpet! Yeah! We had WAY too much food though :) I guess it's better though to have too much than not enough. There was a steady amount of people coming through all day long but it was great! I took a few pictures throughout the day:

The main food table:

Here's another table of food we set up in the middle of the kitchen:

We had 900 some pictures from our wedding and honeymoon playing on the TV:

Mom, Dad and Uncle Ron watching the slide show:


I meant to take more pictures than I did, but I forgot. So I only have a few more than what is here. :( Oh well. Most of the crowd left by around 9ish but Amanda stayed to help clean up some. We were dumping things down the garbage disposal in the sink for a while and then turned it on and it kept going and going... It wasn't sounding normal, so we shut it off and dirty water started bubbling out! We kept turning it on but it didn't do anything different and when we ran water in the sink it would just sit there until we turned on the garbage disposal. I got Jon and he tried all different things but nothing worked. Then I was going into the bathroom to get something and noticed an awful smell and realized that the tub was full of dirty water with carrots and dip and everything we put down the garbage disposal, YUCK! Jon tried plunging the drains a little but it didn't do anything. It looked so gross. Jon's mom was still here at this point so she said she'd have the handy-man from the Inn come over first thing this morning to check it out.

This morning I had to get my shower over at Jon's parents house before work and I left with all my dirty dishes sitting on the counter. I had requested a half-day of work today so I could come home and clean, and I was hoping that the drainage problem would be fixed by the time home so I could do all my dishes.

When I got home there was an I.T. Landis Truck and the handyman from the Inn just leaving and I was told that our septic pipes were all collapsed and busted and it all had to be pulled up and re-done. They said we could use water, but sparingly and I'm not supposed to do wash or anything because that's too much water at one time. I can't really do anything though because the water drains from the sink and tub so slowly and if I turn on the garbage disposal to make the sink drain fast it bubbles in the tub, ha.

When I came inside after getting this news I was surprised to see my counters were all clean and there were no dirty dishes in sight. Jon's mom and Liz (her cleaning lady) had taken all my dishes over to her house and washed them for me!!! I am so thankful! Mom F even cleaned out the disgusting junk in the tub for me!

I'm so glad this all happend AFTER the open house when there was only 2 people left! That would have been really bad if it had happened earlier in the day!

Tonight I am getting a massage, I can't wait! I'm sure I have tons of knots :). Jon came home a little bit ago from school so I better go. We have to go out shopping to fill the shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. This post is getting really long anyway.

Now that I figured out how to post images I'll have to post more of them later.

A surprise for me! :)

Normally Jon works Wednesday and Thursday nights until late, and since I don’t like being home alone after dark, most of the time I’m out running errands or grocery shopping while Jon’s at work. This was my plan for last night. I had a big list of errands to run: things to return/exchange, grocery shopping, gift shopping etc. Jon had said he would be taking off tonight to work on homework so I wanted to get all my errands done last night so I could be home tonight while he was there. Yesterday afternoon I emailed Jon to see if he had gotten off work for tonight so that I could plan my night last night. To my surprise and excitement he said he was going to be home last night PLUS tonight he is going to be hanging lights on the trees at the Inn so he’ll be home earlier than usual!!

So last night, instead of going out, I went home and got a LOT done around the house. Even though Jon was upstairs working on homework for most of the night it was good just knowing he was home, and we got to eat dinner together and spend a little time together at least! :)

Tonight I’m going to run all my errands and go grocery shopping. My open house is coming up in less than 2 weeks!! I can’t believe time went by so fast since I planned it. I’m going to start baking cookies this weekend and freeze them. Thanks so much for everyone that is helping out with food or otherwise!

All in a day's work…

Last time I wrote I was sitting in my disaster of a spare room getting ready to start cleaning… It looks much better now thanks to moving a bunch of stuff upstairs!

On my to-do list for Saturday I wanted to organize our closet and eve upstairs to create more storage room. So, Saturday morning after sleeping in :), straightening up the house a bit, and making lunch, I headed upstairs to start organizing. After pulling all the junk out of the closet to get to the eve I realized I had forgotten how dark and dirty it was, and how many empty boxes and misc. things we had shoved in there, {maybe there wasn’t that much extra space afterall} this was going to be a bigger project than I had thought, and I had no desire to crawl around in the dirt and dust with a flashlight to straighten it up. So I sat there… and sat there… haha!

Jon was upstairs too, working on the logo he was creating, and I think I was getting on his nerves because I kept interupting him and rambling to myself and to him about how I didn’t want to crawl on the dirty floors, and there didn’t seem to be much space left, and even if I did make more space it would still be dirty in there so I’d never use the space for storage, so was it worth it? And-on-and-on…

After reasoning like this for a while I decided: the only way I was going to organize and utilize the full length of the eve would be if we put remnant carpet in there, and why not do that right then because I already wasted half the day anyway. So I measured and called around to see how much it would cost to cover the entire eve in carpet. Roy Lomas said I could definatly do it for $100 or less so Jon said I could go get some carpet but I shouldn’t spend more than about $40.

Off I went, not exactly sure what would come of my trip to the carpet store. All I can say is… God was working! When I first got there and told them the dimentions of the space I needed to cover, I was told that was a very unusual size (30’ x 7’) and probably the best I could do was find a few smaller pieces and put them together, but within 10 minutes I had found a piece of carpet that was almost a perfect fit and was only $39!!! I was soo excited!

When I got home Jon helped me clear out the eve of all our empty boxes as well as an old door, some old carpet, and other odd things we found back in there - it was a dirty job! Then we spent a good half hour to an hour rolling out the carpet into the eve… well, Jon did most of the work… I watched and tried to help but the carpet was too heavy for me and it was a very awkward space to put carpeting into. After Jon laid down the carpet I vacuumed it and Jon helped me put all our empty boxes all the way to the very back of the eve which left us with plenty more room for storing other things. I’m surprized at how much extra space we have now. The carpeting looks great in there and now it’s all clean and fairly organized so as soon as Jon installs some lights, I might actually crawl in once-in-a-while to store things :) .

Yeah! It's the weekend

I'm sitting in my very cluttered spare room right now with the heat blowing out on my feet! It's getting soo cold out these days. I was about to start organizing some in here but sat down first to check on all the blogs I "monitor". And then I decided to write a post myself :) .


I'm so glad it's the weekend. Work gets so old and boring. I don't always have enough work to keep me busy so I sit there trying to think of something to do while the other side of my brain is spinning with all the things I want to do at home. It gets pretty frustrating!

Jon's upstairs right now working on a graphics project. There is an upcoming TV show called "Hot Spaces, Cool Places" and they're looking for a logo so Jon and his classmates were given the opportunity to create a logo following just a few guidelines. Then the directors or someone who's in charge of the show (or I don't know who!) will pick their favorite logo to use for the show. Whoever's logo is chosen, that person gets $300 and a job working for the company! So Jon's been spending pretty much time on this project. I think what he's got looks really cool, we'll see... That would be great if he got the job too, and maybe then I could start working just part-time :).

I keep looking around at all the mess in here and I better go so I can start to tackle it!

Funnel Cake

Ingredients:

* 2 eggs
* 1 1/2 cup milk
* 2 cups flour
* 1/8 cup sugar
* 1/4 tsp. salt
* 1 tbsp. baking powder

Beat eggs. Add remaining ingredients and beat until smooth. Pour through a funnel into hot oil (medium heat). Turn over when the bottom is golden brown. When both sides are brown take out of the oil and put onto a paper towel to drain. Sprinkle with powdered sugar as desired.

ENJOY!!! :)

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Making applesauce last night with my mom was fun. Two baskets worth of apples made about 15 quart sized bags of applesauce. Jon said it smells yummy. We put all the bags in our new freezer last night, it's nice having all that extra space to freeze. Jon works tonight so I'm planning on grocery shopping and running errands for most of the night. I'm excited for the weekend, tomorrow is Friday! Yeah!!

A Full Weekend...

This past weekend was a full weekend for Jon and I. Jon had his final Hunter’s Safety class on Saturday… HE PASSED with flying colors! :) He’s excited to start hunting but I’m not sure when he’ll be able to. While he was there I was busy cleaning around the house and getting ready for the couples night that we held at our house Saturday night. I am really happy with all that I got done. Besides doing a general clean up of the entire house, I completely cleared out the living room of all the stuff that was piled around the edges and stacked in the corners. It looks like a different room now :) . I also spent a little bit of time organizing in the spare room… that still needs a lot of work.

Saturday night Dwayne & Rachel and Brian, Sarah and the kids came over. Ian and Ashley were supposed to come but it ended up that they couldn’t make it. I made funnel cakes for the first time with a recipe that my mom would make when I was young. After adding more than double the amount of milk the recipe called for, the funnel cakes turned out YUMMMY. I’ll post the recipe once I find out the correct amount of milk & flour.

Sunday after going to Brian and Sarah’s for a church sound-team get-together we went shopping around for the best deal on a chest freezer. Since I’m making applesauce with my mom this coming week and Jon got his hunting license and will hopefully get a deer sometime in the future, it was time we needed more freezer space. The last place we ended up was at Best Buy because Jon has a rewards card for there and they were having this special event where only rewards club members could shop after hours. They had raffle drawings and double rewards points for purchases and they were giving out a free gift to the first 100 people who came in the door. We got there a little early with our favorite fast food dinner (Taco Bell) and were planning on eating it in the car while we waited for the doors to open. Our plans changed though when we saw there was already a huge line of people waiting to get in. So we took our dinner and stood in line for about 15 minutes for the doors to open. All that just to each get a Best Buy Coffee mug, Yippee! Oh well, maybe they’ll come in handy sometime.

We did find a freezer at Best Buy so we bought it that night in order to get the double rewards points for Jon. It’s just a small 5 cubic foot chest freezer but we hope it’s enough to store plenty of food for the two of us. I’ll just have to be careful not to buy a ton of stuff just because I have the room now. We also found a computer desk for the spare room. I’m really happy about that because I’ve been shopping for a desk and just wasn’t finding one that I liked. The one we bought is just a little “computer cart” that doesn’t have any drawers or anything, but it’s small so it doesn’t take up much room and I’m just going to go out and buy some kind of filing cabinets or drawer units to go along with the desk.

Last night was a very exciting night for me because my ring has been at the jewlers since last Wednesday and last night we went to pick it up. My wedding band was getting soddered to my engagement ring because it would always spin all around and you could never see the diamonds on it. It looks so shinny and new now and the soddering job looks perfect! You can hardly tell that the rings were soddered together. We also went to get me a new cell phone because I had a credit for one after renewing my plan for another 2 years. I ended up getting a cute PINK razor phone for only $3!!! (after the mail in rebate). I love it just because it’s pink and it only cost $3 :).

So, that brings us up to today. Tonight we have nothing on the calendar so I’m excited to just spend time with Jon. I’m not sure what we’ll do but it’s just nice knowing we don’t HAVE to do anything. At the moment I’m just starting to wonder what I’ll make for dinner.

Tomorrow night while Jon’s working I’m going to my mom’s to make applesauce. That should be fun! I don’t actually like applesauce but Jon does and it will be nice to have for when company comes over.

Hunters safety, Couples Night & an Open House

I didn’t get around to writing earlier this week but not much happened. Tonight is Jon’s second hunter’s safety class. On Monday night I went with him to his first class. Jon said he found it very interesting I, on the other hand, was just happy to be there with him rather than at home alone :). They covered so many things I would never remember it all. Jon said he knew a lot of it already though, and the stuff he knew already was the stuff I thought was the most confusing; so he should be in good shape for his test at the end of the course. I’m not sure if I’ll go with him tonight or not. I’m torn since there’s a lot I should get done at home but I don’t like staying home alone plus I don’t get to be with Jon that often so it would be nice to spend the night with him. This coming Saturday night we’re having a young married couple’s night at our house and I have a list of things I’d like to get done before then. Last month was the first “couple’s night” at the Herr’s and we hope to continue the event once every month. There’re 4 other couples that are part of the group: Ian and Ashley, Nate and Shawna, Dwayne and Rachel and Brian and Sarah. It’s a lot of fun getting together with all of them. Last month we did a 3 course fondue night and at our house Saturday we’re doing hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill with funnel cake for dessert. Nate and Shawna can’t make it this month so there are 8 of us but that’s a full house for us! We’re going to spend most of the night upstairs most likely because it’s much more open up there and there’s more seating.

Other than getting ready for the couples night, my latest project is planning and getting my home ready for an open house on November 21st. Most of my family (other than my immediate family) and a lot of our friends from church haven’t been at our home yet since we got married. So, I invited almost 100 people to our open house! If everyone shows up at once all I can say is, we’re going to be squished in our little cottage. :)