No Fear!! We are finally HOME!!

So, we are finally home from all of our crazy adventures! I figured I'd start our journey off with the first stop, which was Leslie's wedding in CO/NM. It was a wild time for sure! I'm only posting a few pics here because I've decided it's a lot of sinkin' work to upload them all here (it can be kinda difficult and annoying) so I'm going to post them on flickr and post the link a so you can mosy over there and look at them. These are just some teasers for you. Matt looked great in his green shirt and I was ok in my bridesmaid dress ;) The weather was TOTALLY crazy while we there! Here is what happened:
Leslie, Jacob, and myself arrived in NM from CO on Monday, Sept 4 (Labor day!) and the weather was ok. Tuesday we get up and get going; by 1 pm it was pouring down rain and didn't stop for several hours. Wednesday it only rained for a little while that afternoon but it was nice for the most part. Thursday and Friday the weather was ABSOLUTELY perfect!! It was so beautiful, perfect for doing all the work needed at the ranch to get things done for the wedding Saturday afternoon. Then Saturday hit, wedding day! It was pretty nice in the morning and we had fun getting ready and goofing off. By noon we were all ready to go and started taking pics. In the middle of taking pics, it starts to sprinkle, but not real bad. Then it starts to rain harder. Once inside, it starts to down pour. Then it starts to hail. Then there is thunder and lightning. This combo continues for hours, literally! The wedding was suppose to take place at 3 pm; at that point there was still hail and lightning and thunder! Finally, they got the tent (that was supposed to be only for the reception) ready for the ceremony. It was still raining and such during the ceremony, which was beautiful, and it continued to be chilly and rainy the rest of the night. Sunday, once again beautiful! It was totally wild! But that is how things work right? The day you need the great weather, it doesn't happen. What is most important is that they got married (yaay!) and that they had an amazing and God-honoring ceremony. All in all it was fun trip; we got to see some great friends and visit with them. It was fun to go to New Mexico and actually stay there and not just drive through-it was a beautiful place! I think we both would like to go back for camping sometime in our life-and maybe go see the hot air balloons in Albuquerque too!
go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/themoritzs

Isn't he handsome?


I got a smooch from the bride!


Yup-we got to go riding!! beautiful huh?


Bachelorette partay!!


We got a little wild-can't you tell?

Quasi-update

So our comp is being somewhat silly right now and won't let me download the pics I've taken of our finished product, meaning the house of course ;) Yes, it is true! We have finished! Well, mostly. The backyard still needs love, the garden is wild, but I did do some damage control the other day, and the extra rooms still need to be primed and painted (which is going to happen tomorrow, at least begun) but the areas where we actually live is complete! Awesome right? We're so happy to finally be living in the left side of our house! We still need to get blinds for all those rooms but at least there is furniture in them and pics up!
We've also been doing some fun things on the weekends. I went to CO for a bridal shower and have tons of pics to post from that! We also went to the Nevada County Fair last weekend with our neighbors (Joel and Julie and baby Cate) and had lots of fun! We saw the Budweiser horses hitched up to the big wagon and go around the fair grounds which was really interesting to watch (at least I thought so!). We spend lots of time with them, just hanging out or playing card games. It's been a huge blessing having them as neighbors because we became fast friends and have people our own age to spend oodles of time with.
Today Matt had his wisdom teeth removed so he's crashed on the couch with ice baggies on his face and in a vicoden state. Poor guy had a rough time of it; the dentist said that his roots were real boogers (mainly on the lower ones). I won't be mean and take pics since he was a sweet guy and didn't get anywhere near me with a camera when I had mine taken out. So needless to say we won't be doing anything fun or festive for the next few days! As soon as I can figure out what's going on with our PC and as soon as Matt vacates the couch so I can take a decent pic of our finished living room, I'll get those up asap.

As promised, here are pics!

So as promised here are pics from the fourth of July! It was a wild day of Jonny climbing things, sea lions being loud, walking around and a baseball game! The pics are in reverse order of what happened that day but that's ok. So we went to the Giants game where they killed the other team; all the points were scored within the first few innings and it ended up being like 12 to 0, no joke. It was exciting at first then it just got to be kinda pathetic for the other team. We met up with Darrel and Amanda and their little guy Liam (who is my buddy!). The pic of Liam and Amanda is really the only time he left my lap for a whole 2 mins. It was ok though, he was keeping me warm! I'm excited that Jonny is actually smiling in the pic too because that normally doesn't happen!
There are these toilets in Frisco that automatically clean themselves in between uses. We found them fasincating, itsn't that sad? Happily, or pathetically, we were not the only ones who thought this was a great new invention as there were many people who would stand and look at the magical toilet in wonder. Jonny decided to beat on the toilet while Matt was using it. It was pretty funny. There were other people waiting to use it when we were abusing, I mean harrasing, I mean utilizing it ourselves. They looked worried.
On our walk to the baseball stadium, we passed this large metal sculpture to which Jonny said, I bet I can climb that. So since we are not his parents, we said go for it while we watch and cheer you on. As he neared the top, more people stopped to cheer him on and offer advice on how to scale the entire thing. He didn't get all the way to the top since it was high, slippery, twisty, and kinda scary.
We walked up to Coite tower but didn't go to the top. It was a long walk up the hill and so I took a pic to document our triumph up! There were more people driving up to the top which I don't blame them at all for that! It was a pretty view up there, a nice one of the Golden Gate and the fog that was rolling it. It got pretty foggy as the day wore on and it was cool looking out at the bridge! Sadly, no pics. And we didn't bring the big lense for our SLR. That is a must for our next Frisco trip.
Also, we grabbed some Chowda at the Sea Lion Cafe which offered a fantastic view of all the sea lions sun bathing by the pier. They were loud and crawled all over one another which was funny to watch. All in all it was a fun day and we are looking forward to our next trip there.

Wild Fourth of July Weekend!

I'll post some pics later but I did want to tell this story about our fourth weekend. So our high school friend (Jonny) came up for the weekend and we went to sf (which I am now renaming frisco...I'll explain another time) for the day on the 3rd. It was super fun! We walked around pier 39, got some chowda, walked around more, went to the giants game, saw some SAWEEET fireworks, then walked back to the car on the other side of the city. We did lots of walking. Anyhew, we're driving back home on i80, going through the toll plaza (and it's about 12 AM) and we see there is a fire on the side of the road. And it wasn't a little one either. It was going up the canyon, trees ablaze. No, I didn't get any pics of it, I was half asleep. As Matt goes speeding out from paying our ridiculous toll of 4 dollars, a cop rolls by us, switches on his bull horn and says "hey, there's a fire. can't you see that. could you slow down please." I kid you not! I personally think he was actually some what polite about it; Matt thinks he was being a sarcastic jerk. Either way, that is HILARIOUS! I love that he completely stated the obvious and said "hey there's a fire." We laughed about that for a good 10 minutes while Jonny snoozed in the back seat. And the other crazy thing is that no one seemed to be worried or in a rush that there was a fire ablazing up the side of the canyon. I guess we have lots to learn still about fires here in CA.

On the trail again!

So in case you didn't know, we bought a horse trailer last week! Since bringing out the pony, I've been dying to get one so I can start going out on wild adventure, just me, the horse, and the dog! That's the way a girl should be on the trail! I was so excited that I decided to go out as soon as I could. I ended up going last thursday to a wildlife area which was great!! The ride there was not so fun and smooth, poor Rusty looked like he wanted to kill me when I let him off the trailer but the ride was great! My old guy was so happy to be out and roaming free again. He didn't want to turn around to go home after we had been out for about 2 hours; this is unheard of!! This horse was always guaranteed to walk as slowly as possible out and race back home or to the trailer. This time, he was walking full speed ahead onto the trail and there was no looking back! I'm going to shave Joey since it's getting pretty hot out here, then he will get to come on the next ride which will hopefully be either tomorrow or early this week; it's all starting to depend if it gets over 100! Here are some pics of the ride and Rusty's new ride (the trailer). The Sunset pic was taken a little while ago, we went out to feed Rusty and it was beautiful out! Matt even hoped on for a spin!
As for the house stuff, base boards are getting put up and finished today and this week! Soon we'll be able to move our stuff into the house and actually inhabit the whole thing! Whoo hoo!





My constant view on trails!


Whoo hoo!! So happy to be out on my pony!!



Stopping for a rest







Ready to go home!! Such a hard day out on the trail!

New Floors!! Some gardening and Joey gets a bath!

so we've been pretty busy here lately! Matt has finished putting in the hard wood floor and it looks amazing! Once again, my pictures do not do them any justice! You all will just have to come visit and see for yourselves! We need to sand and paint the trim still before putting it back on so there is some work to be done, of course. But, the bulk part is done which is good! No more concrete floors to be walking around on! We also washed the car and gave Joey a bath! His first at the new house; of course he looks miserable but he truly likes it!
Also, I planted some more stuff! I'm loving that I get to put plants in the ground and watch them grow!! I planted a butterfly bush and honeysuckle in the back (and put some pansies to fill the space for now, they'll die which is fine cause hopefully my bushes will grow nice and big quickly!). Also, we put in a little veggie garden! My parents graciously lent us their rototiller so we churned up some ground so we could plant some veggies! SO excited!! There are 2 tomato plants (cherry and big boy), cucumber, zuccini, strawberry, pumpkin, and squash! That is what I'm planting in the pics below-this was also to document what I'm starting to look like these days; in the dirt, sunburned, and with my fun gardening hat on! I look like a little old lady already! And of course Joey is always by my side.
So this is the progress we've made so far. Once we get the trim up then we'll finally get our area rugs and furniture in and we'll actually be able to live in that space!! We've been joking that our bedroom is like a loft apartment since we have our couch and tv in here so we can watch movies and play the playstation until we get the living room taken care of. We also eat our meals in here. Can not wait until we get the table in the dining room! So that's the update for now; hopefully more to come soon!


Eric, this one is for you!

Huberts a girl?!?! And maggots are gross!

Yes, it's true! It turns out that Huebert is a girl! Joel was laughing at the name and then said, you know the bunny is a girl! I was shocked! And a little sad too; I thought Huebert was the perfect name for it. This also explains why Joel's wife Julie laughed at me too when I said I like Huebert as a name; I guess she shall be Hilldie then!
Now onto maggots! Yes maggots. Matt and I have made the ASTRONOMICAL mistake of keeping ALL our garbage in our garage for the time being. Seeing as we were accumulating so much and most of it was house stuff, paint, nails, dust, etc. we didn't think it would be that big of a deal. However, we were throwing away food stuffs in there too. And it was starting to get stinky. But, we didn't think anything of it. So yesterday mom, Gwynne and I are clearing out the trash to put it outside so we can better organize all our stored stuff in the garage and make the space a little more usable until we could get everything into the house. As we start moving boxes and such I see something squirming on the floor. Also, an important side note, just before seeing said squirmer, we saw a HUGE jumping brown spider scurry across the floor which freaked me out big time and so Gwynne squished it very quickly. So the squirmer on the floor turned out to be a maggot. But is it just a few, oh no! There were TONS, probably a hundred or so inching their way across the ENTIRE garage floor, trying to run away from us. It reminded me of the movie "Flushed Away" with the slugs inching their way away from the sewer lines yelling "run away." In that sense it made the situation a little more comical and also made me want to watch the movie so I could get a good laugh out of the whole thing.
To say it was disgusting is an understatement. So we got ant killer and wasp killer to see if we could just spray them to death; no such luck. Apparently maggots are resiliant little suckers who don't like to die! So then we resolve to just vaccum them up with the shop vac. However, they are also stuck (or hiding) in the cracks in the floor so we have to sweep them out of hiding before sucking them up. Honestly, we spent probably a good 2-3 hours scouring the entire garage looking and sucking up all the little maggots before calling it good and eating lunch. The up side to this is that the garage is very clean and orderly now and everything is pretty easily accessable. The down side, that I had to tackle maggots in my house for 2 hours. Thankfully mom and Gwynne were here to help because I was thourough grossed out. And ironically I was a little sad that we had killed the massive spider, because he was probably eating the maggots. But it's ok, they are all, maggots and spider, gone. Well, I figure we got 99% of the maggots; there are a few still lodged in the cracks and refuse to come out at all. Don't worry, I will be armed and ready with a vaccum cleaner at all times, ready to combat any more of those nasty little creatures.