Army Crawl

X taught our dog a new trick. It only took her 2 days to get it down!

P.S. We finally named her "Rhys" (Reese). It's Welsh for "Dragon"

Home Improvements

When we moved out to Nevada we knew that there were going to be some upgrades we were going to have to do pretty soon. Our couch was old and uncomfortable. Our kitchen table was small and only had 3 chairs. The fridge was not energy efficient at all. And our TV was small. But X was only at the house for a couple months before she left back for school, and I figured that everything still WORKED, so I could manage using it all still at least until she got back. Fast forward 9 months. X came back and was able to give her input on what kind of new furniture we could get, and now we’re ready to show it off!

This is our new dining room set. We specifically bought a counter-height table so we would be able to get extra chairs to put along the island bar. All eight chairs will fit around the table if we have enough company, and it makes for a perfect game-playing table for the game nights we've hosted at our house :)

This is our new living room furniture. We actually ended up (unknowingly) buying the same sofa & love seat that X's dad had in his old apartment. We were sure surprised when Carolyn walked in our house shortly after we had bought everything and said "These are our couches!". They are definitely MUCH more comfortable than the old blue couch. I would've love to say RIP blue couch and burned it out in the desert, but some guy offered to buy them for $80. Why not, right?

One of the benefits of being a GE employee is the ability to purchase GE appliances at the "employee" rate. The top is a french-door refrigerator, and the bottom is a pull-out freezer drawer. Its way more energy efficient than our old one (we were shocked at the savings on our new electric bill), and we also enjoy finally being able to use a water/ice dispenser.

We finally splurged and got a new TV! We held out for so long since we couldn't afford a new one as students, and we wanted to wait and see if the latest technology would come down in price. We decided to get a 3D TV, but we got one that uses the same kind of glasses as the theaters, instead of the $200/pair kind. Now we don't have to worry about having the neighbors and kids over to watch a movie! This also "forced" us to upgrade to a blu-ray player, and I decided that we would also get a 7.1 Surround Sound Home Theater system too while we were at it. I LOVE these new additions most of all :)

X has also done a lot of decorating in the house too. I'm grateful that she's able to do that, cause it isn't really my thing. She really seems to enjoy it though, so I'm glad she's found a new hobby to keep her happy. She has a real knack for buying cool creative things and pairing them together, and she has also made some neat things from ideas she found on Pinterest. Since it isn't really my thing, I'm not really up to posting about it. So I'm calling X out to post about all your new décor either here or on your own blog :)

Day by day our house feels cozier as we add new improvements!

Home Sweet Home

Wow. I really waited too long on this one! At first I thought if I delayed writing about our house, people would be incentivized to come out and visit us to see if for themselves! And then we wanted to make all sorts of improvements so we waited and waited, and then 2 years later I decided I just need to get this done so we have some kind of record that we do indeed have a house!

This is Carson Valley - Can you see Lake Tahoe in the background?

So that is the area we live. Some people have told us it is a little bit country. We think it is a lotta bit country! People are VERY laid back out here and I still don’t think we are used to that. We do enjoy all the open space and outdoor activities available out here though. We can’t remember what rush-hour traffic is, and the starry nights are AMAZING. And the best part is that it feels like home for us.

Moving Day!

Have to add felt pads to the bottom of EVERYTHING to keep the hardwood floor looking nice

All the packing paper from the movers – unfortunately there isn’t a recycling program out here, but I like to use this paper as tinder for the wood-burning stove

Here's that fireplace. It keeps us roasty-toasty in the winters, and also helps reduce our gas bill!

The kitchen was remodeled in 2008. We’ve had to re-organize the kitchen twice now to make all our stuff fit and easier to access, but we both love how it looks.

The “Green Room”, as we call it, has become our office/craft room. There is enough room on the floor for a queen-sized blow-up mattress, and we’ve hosted several friends and family here.

The “Blue Room” is our guest bedroom. It also features a Crayola-colored ceiling fan for our guests' enjoyment.

Guest bathroom

The master bedroom is where it is all at! So far we've actually kept it pretty plain. We don't even have a TV! But X is working on new decorating ideas every day.

The master bathroom has slate floors – pretty nice, but FREEZING on January mornings in bare feet! Walk-in closet is in here – a little different – but at least our clothes get steam-cleaned on a daily basis!

The Laundry/Mud room with utility sink. Also acting as extra emergency storage.

We don’t have any A/C, but the house came with a window-mounted swamp cooler. We were a little nervous about this fact when we moved in, but the summers are so mild here that we haven’t had any problems! In fact, most days we just keep the blinds closed and turn on the ceiling fans and that has kept us cool enough!

And that’s it! Sorry it took so long to get this out there! Check back soon for a post on some of the improvements we’ve made since X returned.

Our Baby

Towards the end of the year X and I decided that our house was a little too quiet. We decided that it was either time for a baby or a dog. We went with the dog. :)

Introducing: Name to be Determined!

This is our new 3-year-old Welsh Terrier. She’s a hypoallergenic dog (doesn’t shed much, like a poodle), and she is very well behaved… Unless you make her do something that she doesn’t want to do; then she gets a little, shall we say, “bitey”. She also doesn’t get along very well with other dogs, but we’re hoping to nip that problem (and the biting) pretty quickly. We’re still working on some dominance issues, but once we’re over that we feel pretty confident we’ll be able to socialize her just fine.

We actually ended up getting her from a posting we saw on craigslist. It all seemed a little sketchy – one of those “too good to be true” kinds of things, but so far she has been super fun and has filled in that gap that our house was missing. She’s completely house and kennel trained, and has no problem staying inside while we’re both at work during the week. She doesn’t seem to really chew on things, and since she doesn’t really shed she is allowed on the bed and on the couch (although she does get down and sleep in her kennel during the night).

We’re still working on a name (her previous owner called her “Lulu Bear”, or just “Lulu”), but our friends’ dog’s name is “Lula”, and we’d just prefer to change it anyways. Some names we are considering are “Toffee”, “Reese”, and “Pepsi” (LOL all food names). Leave a comment if you like any of those or have another suggestion!

The Challenge is Over

Last year I blogged about the Cruise Lifestyle Challenge we were doing with my family and X's mom for a year. The challenge officially ended October 1st, and everyone had a good amount of success with completing their goals.

I ended up losing 55 of the 60 pounds I wanted to lose! Unfortunately I couldn't find a "before" picture (not sure if I even took one), so I figure an "after" picture won't be worth much without something to compare it to. Instead, here's a picture of 5 lbs. of fat, so you can just imagine what it looks like (and feels like) to lose 11 of these :)

I also successfully completed a year without sweets (minus the once-in-a-lifetime desserts I was able to try in Israel, Egypt, and Jordan). I had hoped it would be relatively easy to stay away from sweets after a whole year without them, but unfortunately Halloween proved this to be incorrect. At least I feel like I'm eating a lot LESS than I used to! Here's to keeping it all off - until the cruise at least!

New Callings

Now that X has gotten settled into the area, the bishopric decided that it was time to put her to work. They were going to try to give her a calling that she could do remotely (calling for visiting teaching reports maybe?), but it didn't end up happening. Now that she's back we've heard that all the auxiliaries have been "fighting" to get her, but she ended up with the young womens. Here's the new YW 1st Counselor:

I've been the Elder's Quorum secretary for about a year now. The EQ President that called me had been in for about a year. A few weeks ago X and I were asked to meet with someone in the stake presidency (we weren't familiar enough with the presidency to know if it was the president or one of his counselors), but it ended up being the president! We weren't sure if it was going to be a new calling for X or me (it really could've been for either of us - it didn't matter that she was just called as a YW's counselor), but it ended up being for me. Prior to the meeting X teased me that I was going to be called as a bishop (there have been rumors about splitting the wards out here for some time now), and I was fairly sure I wouldn't be called as the EQ President since our current President has been in for less than 2 years. So any guesses?

I'm the new EQ President!

We both are a little overwhelmed with our new responsibilities, but I guess we got what we were looking for when we decided to get outside the Utah bubble and find opportunities to serve!

Stay tuned next time - we're getting our new furniture delivered this week and finally feel like we can show off our home!

Our New House

BIRD-House that is! We've had this plain, old, log/post sitting out in our front yard ever since we moved in and we've been looking for something to put on it. We were pretty sure we wanted to do a birdhouse of some kind, but none of the ones we found had the right "look" that we were after. But on our bike ride yesterday after a work picnic/carnival, we spotted a bunch of birdhouses for sale and found the perfect one. Here's the final installed product!

There's a tiny little broom leaned up against the door

Sitting atop the log/post