Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Our recent ramblings

The boxes are slowly moving out.  Slowly.
The garage is halfway habitable for our car.  Which is nice.
In the house we might have 3 boxes yet to go through and get organized.  They are the ones full of misc. papers.  Always seems there's so much to do, yet so little time to do it.

We spent Thanksgiving on our first road trip since moving to Florida.
My husband had to do some work in Atlanta, Georgia and so we decided to take the whole family with him, and THEN head to our Thanksgiving festivities.

As such, we enjoyed an 8 hour drive to Atlanta.  It wasn't too bad.
The next morning after dropping my husband off at work, there in the parking lot, our car battery died.
Lovely.
We have AAA, but haven't ever used it, and were discussing cancelling it.
Nope.

Carlos came and figured out our battery was dead, and then installed a new battery.  Cool.
The girls and I hit the mall for a while where we comparison shopped running shoes for our daughter who is beginning track cross country season.

Picked my husband back up, and headed to another town north of Atlanta.  Calhoun, Georgia.  We enjoyed doing some pre-shopping in the outlet stores.  Then, the next day while dad was at work, we hung out in the outlet stores, and then the girls got pedicures.  Definitely some fun pampering.

Then, we headed out of town for a 3 hour drive to my sister's house to celebrate Thanksgiving.
We planned to go out to eat, but didn't realize that she lived in a college town and everyone had gone home for the holidays.  We called at least 10 restaurants before we found one that was still open.

The next day we did some cooking, and we ran to the store before heading over to help my sister with the cooking.  Unfortunately, our tire blew while we were driving.  Luckily, we were super close to the condo we were staying in.

Lucky us - we got 4 new tires.  Merry Christmas.  I guess though, that we should acknowledge that our tires got us through at least one season in Colorado, and an additional almost 17 months in Florida.  And my neighbor said that the Florida UV is just torture on tires.  Anyways, we've got new ones now.  Our car should be happy and not seek attention for the next 4 years.

Thanksgiving was lovely with 5 of the siblings and my parents all together.  The cousins yucked it up, and my sister presented us with a thoroughly southern home cooked Thanksgiving.  Smoked pork, smoked briskett, smoked and baked turkey, collard greens, corn puff, cheesy beans (for my husband), potatos, rolls, cranberry salad, and pies.  I was surprised that I enjoyed the collard greens and corn puff.  Fun to try new things anyways.

We spent time at the state park hiking around on Friday (after getting new tires), and then had a post Thanksgiving Thanksgiving leftovers meal, and after breakfast the next morning all together we all hit the road and went our separate ways.  Luckily we had an uneventful ride home.
I will throw in some photos once I get them all transferred over.

While preparing for Christmas, our primary is in charge of the ward Christmas party (just finished the primary program), and I'm having my first Florida piano recital in just over a week as well.  Trying to catch our breath - holding it until January I think.  :) Hopefully I can get what we need to get accomplished before Christmas. If you are on my gift list, it may be late.  Just know that.

My exciting news (for me at least) is that today I picked up a light fixture to attach to our ceiling fan, and got it all attached and we now have light in our family room!  Hooray!  I love it. It needed it the most.


Band audition

Our daughter auditioned a couple of weeks ago for an all county band.  While she didn't make this one, she had a great experience and now knows what to expect.  She had to do all 7 scales, in order, in under 2.5 minutes (2 for state), then her chromatic scale, then perform a prepared piece, and also sight read music that she'd never seen before in front of a judge.  



Friday, November 2, 2012

It's ours! (and the bank's of course) and Halloween pics

How negligent I've been.
I guess I can blame it on not having decent internet, and on moving.
Needless to say - we officially moved last weekend. More of that at the end - after some Halloween pictures.

Our Irish/Trinidadian/English friends joined us for the feet of meet and potato ghosties.  And then the annual donut competition: (notice the cool pineapple plans in the background)
:)




Here's our little medusa - snakes and all (it was a pretty quick do all ratted up, although we did it in twisties with pipe cleaners at the church party on Friday)...and her BFF of course.

Here's our Halloween ballerina.  Her costume is actually one that was retired from the stage.  Her ballet school sells their retired costumes each year - we think she looks pretty good!  Very fluffy!


 
We closed at 9:00 am on Friday, and started moving our stuff around 12:00.
So many people from our church came and helped us out...both on Friday and on Sunday.
They have all been so very kind and giving of their time and talents and resources (like Patti who brought us Sunday dinner).  Muahh!  A huge kiss and hug to all of them!
(And everyone far away who sent positive moving vibes as well).





We had our ward Halloween party on Friday night, then moved the rest of it all on Saturday, then the ward primary program on Sunday (the first one that I was ever in charge of).  It was nice to come home and relax on Sunday and heave a big sigh of relief, and then take a nap.  :)

Monday was spent at the old house - cleaning.  Then Tuesday morning, and then we returned the keys, and I taught lessons all day.

A friend helped me with a bit of unpacking on Wed, and we got one of the kid's rooms closer to order, we also had our traditional feet of meat Halloween meal, and then Thursday I hung out for 4 hours with the internet repairman.  Meetings all day today (we are in charge of the ward Christmas party in a few weeks), and I'm still trying to figure out when I can get the rest of this stuff organized.

But, at least I'm not house shopping!  On to a new phase of our lives.  Settling, gardening, and learning to maintain a pool, and Florida home.

Yay us!

Yes, Caterina - photos to come...once I get everything into order :)
Here's a teaser of the master bath though...
And the pool and back yard...