Walking in a Winter Wonderland

The street looks a lot more benign than it really is. It is Monday and Jonathan and I are locked up at home. After much deliberation this morning we decided to not go into work today...unprecedented thing for Jonathan...due to the ice storm we had last night. You could literally slip and fall on our grass right now...it is totally frozen over. Our poor little tree is almost horizontal. We hope it survives!

Our front garden is above and some fescue/rye that we planted is below.

You can see each individual blade of grass encased in ice. It is nuts!

I worked a little from home today, but mostly we are just bumming around. I worked some on my next sewing project and we watched a James Bond...Thunderball.

We played disc golf at Mitch Park in Edmond. It was really fun and Jonathan and I are planning on doing it again soon.

We also went out to Ted's Escondido. GOOD tex-mex food! Here is a picture of us after dinner...full!

Yum! Thanksgiving was fun this year. We had turkey, green bean casserole, mashed sweet potatoes, homemade stuffing, and pumpkin pie.

Oh yeah, and cranberry sauce, roasted carrots and home made bread (from Amanda's little bread maker we bought from her.

Matthew is thinking of where to put the potatoes. How bout on my plate?...they were SO good!

Here we are playing cards. It is so much fun to play cards with those two! Boo yeah!

We went out to eat at Lucille's in Mulhall. It snowed so hard that on the way home it looked like we were driving into a broomstick. It was cool....no real snow accumulation as far south as Guthrie, though.

Before Thanksgiving I said I was working on something I couldn't take a picture of because it was for one of our readers. Well, here it is. Matthew, Jonathan's brother, and Krista, his girlfriend, came down to visit us over Thanksgiving. We asked him if he wanted to open his Christmas gift a little early. I had made him a dual-sided fleece "quilt". It is two pieces of fleece with cotton batting in between. It is quilted and bound. It was a fun little project and pretty easy. I will never be sad I took a quilting class! Jonathan is getting a Dallas Cowboys one for Christmas. According to him and Krista it was very warm to sit on the couch under. Matthew is a Cubs fan, obviously.

Oh Where is my Hairbrush?

This picture is of my new cut and hair do. It is mainly up here for my parents and family. I like it. I was just was messing with it and everyone seemed to like this hairdo.

What ELSE Have We Been Up To?

Just before we did the flooring in the three rooms last weekend, I finished the curtains I have been making for our bathroom. These are made from three patterns of fabric. I appliquéd the palm tree fabric to the beige and then put the whole stripe on the chocolate. The design came completely out of my head so I am pretty proud of how it turned out. This change in curtains came about because we got some floor mats with shells on them so we decided to do a beach theme (plus, the maroon curtains did not match the rugs at all! I still have another set to complete, but I am working on another project that is more time-sensitive (I have pictures, but I will show them later as the actual things I am making may be gifts for some of our readers).
This weekend we are chilling out and getting food for our guests who are coming next week. We will have some new pictures then and also the next few weekends as we have several Christmas party invites already! Also, I want to get another picture of my new haircut. I got it cut again and I am way more happy with it.

What Have WE Been Up To?

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. No, we didn't try to clean up the destructive mess of our floor with a dustbuster as it looks like in the top picture. We used our shop vac:). We ripped out our carpet and ironically gave it to the guy who built our house! Then, we put in laminate flooring by Dupont. We are very happy with the floor. I actually pinned a quilt together on the flooring yesterday and...no scratches. I guess I didn't exactly push the pins in as hard as I could, but we think the stuff is pretty rugged.

We put down a vapor barrier under the laminate. Here's me trying to straighten it all out. Around the fireplace, we thought would be the toughest spot to do, but it wasn't tough at all!

The finished product with all of our furniture back in the room. We did this room, the office, and our bedroom all from a Monday to a Saturday night only working, obviously, when we were out of work. It was a tough week, but worth it just to get it completed. We still are going to do our bedroom closet (which is not attached to the bedroom at all. It is a 9 x 5 room, I think.

Our office above and the hallway (which we had done 3 weeks earlier when I went to the tea party). It is nice. We are going to look for area rugs tonight.

Halloween Party at the North's

The annual Halloween party at the North's house was also last Saturday. The scavenger hunt, bonfire, food, and fellowship with our Sunday school class from church was just awesome! We had a really good time getting to know new people. We miss our friends who moved to Austria, so it was a good chance to start making some new friendships with people here. Make new friends but keep the old, though, I got international calling on my cell phone today and called Amanda (they can be seen my clicking on the "Haskew" link to the left...or on any blog posts before July for that matter:). Above is a photo of Alex and Kristy Awtry and their new (2 month old) little girl, Brinley). She was a duck. On Sunday, the Awtry's...or actually the Carnegey's invited us over to the Awtry's and we saw Brinley's other costume, the turtle. We went over there after church and ate a tremendous pot roast and watched some football. It was fun. Actually, I am in a fantasy football league with all the people who just happened to be at the Awtry's this past Sunday - Luke and Amy Carnegey and Alex Awtry. Interestingly enough, we 4 are the only people in Oklahoma in the league. The rest of the league consists of people from Colorado, New Zealand, and Austria. So, the Oklahoma division of the "Vienna Bone Crushers" met to watch football this weekend:).

Jonathan eating and talking with Nate and Chellie Ison. They went to Montana with us in June (check it out...the trip was the trip of a lifetime).

Jonathan and I just before the card tournament at the Halloween party. I came in second to last, but in my defense someone had quit and I was deprived of my last hand. It's ok, though, the loser got Oreo's and we don't eat those anyway:). It was nice to get a picture of the two of us, though. Thanks, Alex, for playing with our camera!

Tea for Two?

Kellie organized a ladies tea with all of her cousins and kindly invited me along as well. This weekend we started our flooring project (pictures coming soon) and I took a break to have tea with some girls. It was quite fun and I met several new cousins I hadn't met before. Kellie and Josh are very close to his family, so we see a lot of them. They are all very nice people.

We went for tea in downtown Guthrie, our home town. Actually, it has a very nice look to it and is very nice to spend a Saturday just walking around. It is complete with train station (model railroad museum inside), chocolate shop (yum), coffee shop (double yum), many antique stores, and other unique and fun things. Generally the people are pretty nice and it is like a quiet small town. It was the first capital of Oklahoma (this year is the OK centennial) and is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Victorian towns I have ever seen. Anyway, the place we went we had hot Earl Grey tea (which I had "England style" - my friends from the UK in college taught me to put milk in my tea) and finger sandwiches. It was about 16.00 a person for tea for two, so kind of pricey, but it was a nice experience so I would do it again. We are talking about going to see a Christmas Carol around Christmas at the Pollard Theater in Guthrie.

The Replacement

Well, we decided to go for a large conifer this time. We got a Norway Spruce. It looks like a Christmas Tree and we plan to decorate it for Christmas in the next month. The guy at the nursery said it will grow between 15 and 20 foot high. It certainly is nice to get some greenery.

The bear, Fred, has been with us for a while, but he is wearing the new hat Jonathan bought me this week. I love it! The old Cleveland Brown's logo is my favorite football logo ever. Fred just volunteered to model it for me since it isn't quite cool enough yet for me to wear it (but it should be tomorrow - 49!).
The past week, Jonathan was up in Wichita, KS for his new job and I had a seminar I was teaching for my job. So, neither one of us were home and the week went by really fast. This coming week I have been called for jury duty on Tuesday and I hope it doesn't take longer than a day. Next weekend we have a Halloween party at the North's house. It is an annual event and I have pictures on this blog from last year. It is always a very fun time. Nothing much else going on this week.

Husband Tag - I was tagged by Elizabeth, so I thought I would participate.

1. Who is your man? Jonathan
2. How long have you been together? 8 years - October 1999 we met.
3. How long did you date? About 3.5 years before we got engaged.
4. How old is your man? 27
5. Who eats more? Depends on the day...I would love to say Jonathan, but I don't think that is always true.
6. Who said "I love you" first? Jonathan...though at first he mouthed it at me and I thought he was saying "elephant shoes". It was very cute how bashful he was.
7. Who is taller? Jonathan
8. Who sings better? Me
9. Who is smarter? He says I am, but it isn't true...depends what the subject is.
10. Whose temper is worse? Jonathan...we are both of Italian descent, so we both have fiery tempers, though.
11. Who does the laundry? Mostly him, but it depends on the week.
12. Who takes out the garbage? Mostly Jonathan
13. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? If we are in bed, him.
14. Who pays the bills? Me
15. Who is better with the computer? Me
16. Who mows the lawn? Jonathan
17. Who cooks dinner? Both is us for now, but I can't wait to really cook for us!
18. Who drives when you are together? Jonathan
19. Who pays when you go out? Jonathan
20. Who is most stubborn? That's a tough one.
21. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? Me...though he claims he is never wrong.
22. Whose parents do you see the most? Both about equally.
23. Who kissed who first? He kissed me first.
24. Who asked who out? He asked me to Campus Crusade for Christ
25. Who proposed? Jonathan
26. Who is more sensitive? Me
27. Who has more friends? Me
28. Who has more siblings? One brother each
29. Who wears the pants in the family? Jonathan

Our Tree Ran Away!?

No, this isn't a mangled broomstick from a Harry Potter film. I got home this evening (Jonathan is out of town) and got on my running shoes to go for a quick jog. I only planned on going out for about a mile and a half because I am still congested and have a cough (this is one evil cold...plan on not being able to breathe for 4-6 weeks if you have it). Anyway, I walked out the front door and realized....our tree was GONE! All that was left was this stick. By definition it is a stump, I guess. Well, for any non-Okie readers out there it is one windy state here! We had been suspecting our crabapple tree was dead for a while now. Well, now we are without a doubt. The wind came and snapped the tree because it was dried out and dead. We bought it in March and we were worried because of the strange weather this year. I called the girl at TLC (a nursery here) to make sure we could get our money back and she laughed that I couldn't find the rest of the tree (it was over 6 feet tall when we bought it). I hope she has the same good attitude when I bring in these remains tomorrow and ask for 50 dollars:). Well, I guess the good thing is we won't replace it with a crabapple and won't have to worry about mowing over the fruit:). I guess we know we will be planting this weekend! Now the fun part..picking out what we will be planting.

New Haircut

How hilarious that I cut my hair this week. Exactly 4 other women in our Bible class did the same thing and none of this was coordinated. Elizabeth, I do plan on responding to your "husband tag" or whatever that is:). It has been funny to read.
So, some things have changed in our lives. Jonathan no longer works for Terracon. He started a new job on the 8th with a company called MKEC. He will be in Wichita (corporate) all week this week to train. I have a training of my own (only I am doing the training) here, so it all worked out very well. We have had a busy last few weeks. I had jury duty last Tuesday. Thursday night we weekly Bible study at our neighbors and it was fun. Last Thursday we played cards with them until late. This weekend we hung out around home. Next weekend we will be doing the same and then we have a Halloween party and I have a Tea party on the 27th!:) I am looking forward to both and hopefully will have some good pictures.
Not much else I can think of right now. We are going to watch the Cowboys play pretty soon!
Have a great week!

Last weekend we went out to eat with the Richards, our neighbors. It is such a great blessing to have another couple on our street who are Christians and also have no children. We had a great time hanging out with them. We went to P.F. Changs where we got great food and then headed over to Freddy's for some nice frozen custard.

This past week, Jonathan was off of work. Why was he off of work, you ask? He actually left his job at Terracon last Friday where he had worked for the last 2.5 years and he starts his new job this coming Monday with a company called MKEC. He is changing from being a Geotechnical Engineer to being a general Civil Engineer and doing site development. He has been unhappy in his job for quite some time now, so this was the opportunity we have been praying for for about a year. It was funny how it came about. My friend from work was at a function for his church and a woman was talking about how her husband needed Civil Engineers. Marshall heard this and said, "I know a Civil Engineer who is not happy in his job" and that is how it began. Crazy how God works sometimes. Jonathan had looked at other opportunities in the past year and nothing seemed to fit, but this job that came about in such a random way was exactly what he had been seeking. Nothing is worth being miserable in your job like that! Anyway, we are very happy about this opportunity and we think he will be much happier. He is putting his MBA studies on hold, too, for which we are thankful for many reasons.
So, the past week he relaxed. We went out to lunch on Thursday and enjoyed our time together. I have been sick for a little over two weeks and finally broke down and went to the doctor yesterday. I am feeling better today after 2 rounds of antibiotics and some wonderful cough medicine (I haven't slept like that in weeks). Also, our new mattress came this week and I must say that I am glad our last one was defective. I love Simmons individually pocketed coils. They form to you plus you cannot hardly feel when your spouse moves and gets up.
This Thursday night we went to Bible Study at the Richards together. Jonathan really enjoyed it. It is a great thing for us. Josh bought everyone prayer journals and did a very nice introduction to the lesson on talking about Christian unity (knocking down walls built up around us in our specific denominations, etc). The prayer journals were quite a nice surprise. After the lesson, we played Nerts (I have no idea how to spell it) which is a solitaire-like game and then came home. Today we are not doing much of anything. We are going out to eat tonight and then shopping a little bit. Tomorrow I am running a race. Recovering from this cold/infection, I haven't run in about 2 weeks, so I am going for a brisk walk right now, I think, before it heats up too much. I will jog the race tomorrow and run at Kellie's pace (which is a nice, steady pace for me). Hopefully she will be nice enough to send me some pictures of us running. I really would like to get a small camera...I can't ask Josh or Jonathan to lug around that huge camera (awesome as it is) to take pictures of us running.

The Eight Random Facts Game

Tagged by Elizabeth
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules. (if you don’t have a blog, email me)
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I eat my food in phases by things I like least to things I like most (which is probably bad motivation to finish my plate, but I can make it past the temptation and get a doggy bag and say "I will have great food for lunch tomorrow"). And, as I eat in these phases my food absolutely cannot touch (at least anything sweet and anything savory cannot touch).
2. My hobbies are sewing, scrapbooking, drawing, reading, exercising, baking, photography and the list goes on. I have too many and I like to do them all so much that there is never enough time in a day.
3. I play guitar, saxophone, and trumpet (not all at once).
4. It took me FOREVER to figure out Sudoku and at that I had to be stuck in an airport, bored to death, to figure it out.
5. I may not look like it, but I have run more than 8 foot races ranging from 5K to 10-mile. I am running a 5k Saturday.
6. I have had recurring nightmares about wolves and tornadoes since I was very young. I still have vivid dreams that I can remember. I found it quite ironic that we moved to Oklahoma with my tornado fear. Strangely enough, most of my nightmares I have about it to this day take place in Ohio with Jonathan, myself, my brother Chris, my parents, and our old dog Lucky who always gets swept up by the tornado.
7. I have lived in 4 states (OH, NY, NM, OK) and been a permanent resident in 3 (all but NM).
8. Some of my favorite memories from childhood revolve around my parents being the whole neighborhood's pitching and catching machines. They would all convene at our house and play baseball...Dad would pitch and Mom would catch. My brother and I always were working up some sort of clever scheme, whether it was making a sports team with the neighborhood kids or trying to start a golf ball selling business (they were used golf balls and we would collect them from the golf course out of bounds behind our house).

I am tagging: Amanda, Amy, Kari, Alisha, Kellie, Mary W, Kristen, Christine

Who Hates Furniture Shopping?

I certainly am not a fan of furniture shopping that does not take place on the internet or in a non-furniture store. I don't like furniture stores. We went back in January and bought a bedroom set from Bob Mills, a local store in Oklahoma City. We love our set and we bought a new mattress and the whole deal! We had a guy who didn't sit there and watch us pick out the furniture (named Brandon) and he walked away and said he was available for questions if we had any. We liked this...it was very low pressure. Well, we slept on our new mattress for about 7 months and noticed the thing was beginning to deform already (ha ha...any jokes made here are not original). In fact, we noticed it because we have some vertically striped sheets that were big curvy lines as they ran up the bed.
So, I called Bob Mills and they sent out an inspector who took pictures and sent them to Simmons (we had bought a very nice Simmons Beautyrest...which we were very happy with). We ended up being given a mattress "re-selection." So, we went back in there yesterday to "reselect."
Now, I have been very sick since Wednesday and really didn't feel much like mattress shopping, but, hey, misery loves company so why not bring on more pain!? I also am on an antibiotic for my extremely blotchy skin and it has been making me sick...so keep this in mind as I tell this.

We go into the store and are immediately hounded by some lady who looked quite scary. She took us to the main desk. No one seemed to know what was going on. She got a manager and he finally knew what was going on (we had been there 20 minutes). We go up to reselect on the mattress and it looks like we are going to end up paying big time, out of pocket, to get the equivalent to what we have. (Now looking back I think our saleswoman may have been confused and explained it incorrectly to us). I was having a very tough time not showing how mad I was. Jonathan, the calm one, was handling it a lot better than me. I was also sick to my stomach so laying down and getting up was not exactly fun. I was not in a good mood. The saleswoman actually ended up being pretty nice despite here scary first impression. When it all ended, we ended up not paying anything more and may have gotten a slightly better mattress. Hopefully this one will not deform because if I can last without going furniture shopping for another decade, that will be fine with me.

So, if anyone from OKC reads this, we have been very happy with Bob Mills and in the unfortunate event we have to go furniture shopping again, we will probably end up there.

Well, this past week has been fun. We didn't really do anything exciting, though. I was supposed to help with a health fair for a local church, but they had more volunteers when we got there than they needed, so we (me, Kellie, Josh, and their cousins) didn't do that. I saw the puppy. That was nice as was seeing Amanda. Jonathan and I did plant two trees yesterday (I think we have about 20 on our lot now). We got an oak and two pines since my parents left. Here's a layout of all the trees we have planted. Actually there is another maple in the back on the right, but it is so small I didn't label it. It is really healthy, though. The dirt patch off the porch is where our pool was.

Below is a picture of the right side of our property. It was absolutely AWFUL this past spring. It was like the Grand Canyon with all of the rain we got just cutting into the dirt. So, Jonathan painstakingly roto-tilled the whole area and we planted it. Then a big storm came and washed it away. Then, he re-tilled it, and we bought a pallet of sod. We were glad that our neighbor bought a pallet, too. We can actually cut it with a mower again!

Here's most of the trees in our back yard. Our property line ends where the longer grass is (there is a slight line). We planted the oak and the spruce in the last month along with the Austrian pine.

An update of the house.

Here's the front yard trees. The crabapple completely blends in with the brick, but when it gets higher it will be more visible. The Hibiscus tree we recently purchased, too, for 6 bucks!

We took down our pool, too, today. Wow! That was a ton of work.

The only other thing going on here is that I am training to run a 5K with Kellie.

Fantasy football...I joined a league this year with our friends in Austria. My team got really destroyed last week. This week I knew they would, but I needed to choose my starting line up better. Who'd have thought that the Browns (with Jamal Lewis...my RB who I didn't play) would beat the Bengals (my defense...I need to rethink that). It is all fun, though, and I am actually learning a lot about football and strategy. This coming week should be more exciting.

Well, I saw Belle (Gradey) this week. She has gotten big! Above is a picture of her with her "mommy" Macy.

She has a pretty long tongue. I don't know if she remembered me, but I got a lot of kisses anyway.

She likes the water. What lab doesn't?

The past week was somewhat uneventful, which is fine by us. Work, studying, sleep, eat, etc. I guess Jonathan wanted to add a little excitement to the week, so he invited the Brocks to go out to eat with us in Mulhall, Oklahoma. Mulhall is this dinky little town with literally no "town" to be seen. There is a restaurant there called Lucille's. It is down home fried cooking at it's finest. We met the Brocks there yesterday evening. Sadie, of course, was cuter than ever and it seems that she has picked up on sticking out her tongue a lot. She turns 4 in a little over a month! It is tough to believe because when we met the Brock's she wasn't even 2 yet!Lucille's is the building behind the Brocks (Matt, Sadie, and Holly) and it is really the only two story building in town.

I had to get in on the fun...I never end up in pictures.

Sadie and the tongue sticking out. She sang a song for the entire city of Mulhall (actually, just the half that was in and around the parking lot to Lucille's) and she showed us how she could count to 100. She missed 15, but nailed everything else...except that she skipped from 39 to 80 somehow. She's not even 4 though. It is crazy how articulate kids get between 3 and 4 (well at least in our friend's experiences).

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend was fun. Jonathan took off Friday and just hung around the house. He has been battling a cold, so it was good for him anyway. Friday night we didn't do too much...just watched Seinfeld and hung out. Saturday we had a cookout at Josh and Kellie's house. We invited Tim and Amanda to come and they did! It was a lot of fun. We played Bocce, and then the guys invented Bocce hackey-sack and Bocce Baseball. It was pretty goofy looking. The big bocce balls were the bats and the little ball was the baseball (similarly for hackey sack). After that I learned how to play Nerts (I don't know if I spelled that right).
Sunday we went to church and then went and bought another tree (bringing our living total to 16 in our yard). It is a hibiscus and we put it by the garage (picture later). We hung out here a lot just doing yardwork and I sewed a lot...finished a sampler I had left unfinished for months.
Today, Monday, we got up early and biked around Lake Hefner with Kellie and Josh which was fun. Now we are beat. I think I am catching Jonathan's cold, but maybe a good night of sleep will fix me up. I was going to go running to train for the 5k Kellie and I are doing, but I am way too whipped to do that. I am going to relax in the pool. 4-day work week...YES!

Like I said, my parents and brother came out. Chris and I went golfing when he landed on Wednesday and interestingly, my parent's neighbor's son (whom we grew up with) was passing through with his mom on their way to LA where he is moving. Chris, Phil, Jean, and myself went out to dinner that night and they stayed with us. Thursday (the 23rd) Chris and two guys from my work went out and shot 18 holes. My parents flight was nearly 3 hours late. I took Chris home after he got done golfing and he hung out with Jonathan. I went to pick my parents up and they came home and we ate. I took off the next day from work and we went down to a golf store that was having a big sale and then to Bricktown for lunch. We came back home after hitting up Academy (which they all liked). Academy is a really inexpensive sporting goods store. It is great! Anyway, we came home and we went out to dinner at Ted's Escondido in Edmond, OK. It was nice, except Dad and Chris's dinners were dropped and Dad ended up wearing some of his on his shorts. Needless to say we didn't have to pay for their meals.
Saturday we went to Guthrie and we went to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame (two pics up). There the guy gave me a picture of Mark Price who was my sports hero as a kid, A Cleveland Cavalier, and a native Oklahoman. It was cool. We walked around for a bit and Dad and I got some chocolates from a shop. Mine were chocolate covered blueberries and they were awesome!
Saturday night we got BBQ from County Line (our favorite). We got it take out just so we could relax. Chris is posing with his beef ribs here. We relaxed by the pool the rest of the day and that was it. They left Sunday. We went to Academy again before they left. It was really nice to see them. The next scheduled visit for me up to Ohio is next summer, so we will see if we get one in between then and now.