Christmas present from Ben

Ever since July on my first visit to Ikea I have been wanting a bookshelf I saw there. Me being my cheap self instead of indulging myself in this wonderful item immediately decided to wait until I got Christmas money. I'm glad I waited because Ben took me to go get it. It is now assembled and looks just a great as I had dreamed it would. I have not had time to fill it with things yet. It has been a crazy Christmas season to say the least. I think my problem will be narrowing down what belongs in it. Although our house is wonderful it lacks good storage spaces with shelves and such things. It's exciting to have a new place to put things! My house is one step closer to being organized in every room.

Ben piecing it together.


The finished product!

More Christmas

Christmas day was spent at my Aunt and Uncle's house eating great food, watching the Lakers, and playing with some sweet remote control cars. We hung out with my cousins two little boys who were quite the entertainers. They got a real kick out of the cars and our makeshift jump we made in the living room out of a magazine and shoes. Christmas night we went bowling with my cousins and friends from church. Everyone had a blast.

The boys, showing me their new wallets with chains "so you don't lose it."


Ben snuck a nap in.


Korey being informed on how the chain on the wallet keeps you from losing it.


Our nifty ramp.


My brother and I. (no I don't know why my eyes are so wide)


My sisters.


Two parts of the unstoppable three!

Catching up

I know I have been a slacker as of late on here. The month of December seemed to catch up with me and I now understand why my mom was always a little glad to see Christmas pass. We love seeing family and friends but with double the family now it is definitely a juggling act. Where to start? We got our first Christmas tree a couple of weeks ago and the grape ornaments I blogged about earlier look great on it. I am still on the hunt for a great tree topper. I wouldn't settle for a temporary junky one, not to mention Ben would not allow it.

Our wonderful tree, with no topper yet


This has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas but it was just too funny. Peachy dragged her bed out into the middle of the yard and was sleeping like this soaking up the sun.


The first Christmas to attend was Sorensen Christmas. We first attended the big extended family one and then that smaller more immediately family one afterward. The big one was a little odd for me because I knew absolutely no one. Our smaller one was definitely fun with Henry crawling around and Ben throwing balls around with the little boys. Here's a couple pictures of Henry eating lunch. How can you not love that face?



After Sorensen Christmas was my immediately family Christmas. It was great to be able to hang out with them for a while. I got some great "grown up" gifts as I call them. It just makes me laugh how much my Christmas list has changed since I got married.


Kari on her new bike.


On the way home from my immediate family Christmas Ben and I were getting anxious to see what each got the other. Then I suggested maybe we should just open them that night. So like a couple of kids we lost our patience and opened them. I justify this by the fact that we will not be home on Christmas and why not open them early. It turned out great because Ben got to play with his new toy, I got him an itouch. His big present to me was a bookshelf from Ikea I have been wanting forever. He is taking me to Ikea to go get it too. He's actually going with me, now that's a gift!
These are pictures of us with our respective gifts.



Christmas Eve morning was at the Fast's. It's a whole different Christmas with the new additions of me and Henry. Henry is mobile now and was having a grand time of wallowing around in wrapping paper. One of his gifts was a walker and he thought that was the best because he could be upright with no help at all. I got some more grown up gifts at this Christmas and I am really excited to start using all the wonderful things I got.

My beautiful sisters in law.


Henry playing in his walker.

Saturday Fun

This last Saturday was a great day for Ben and I. Last weekend I was able to catch up on major cleaning so this Saturday I didn't have quite as many chores to do. Ben decided to take the day off so we both were excited for the day. We both started out taking care of a few things around the house and then as I moved on to Christmas decorations Ben moved to reloading. After this we decided to put the legs on our couch. For those of you who don't know the story we got a great u-shaped couch after we moved in. After much struggle and toil we finally got it in through the front door. When assembling the couch we could only find one set of legs (there should have been 3 because our couch is in 3 sections). Thinking they were just left out we left it on the floor and it looked good enough. A couple weeks later I was struggling with a cushion that never seemed to go down all the way when I reached underneath and discovered the missing legs. After this discovery I went on a hunt for the other set and found it under the other "funky" cushion. Needless to say we felt very smart and had a good laugh over our missing legs and have since failed to put them on. I'm glad we did, it looks much better. After this we put up Christmas lights on our house after a hunt in town for inexpensive hooks failed, we went for plain old nails. Peachy was a great helper and now our house is a little more festive :)

Couch with legs


Ben putting up lights


And more lights


My little helper Miss Peachy


Finished product

How do you cure a dish......

when your sink isn't big enough?! Try the bath tub :)

6 months

Today was our six month wedding anniversary. We didn't make a big deal because we have many anniversaries to come but it is still a milestone. Looking back it's quite crazy to me that me and Ben have made it this far. I'm amazed at God's handiwork in our lives by bringing us together and keeping us together. I couldn't imagine my life without Ben and I look forward to all the new and exciting things we will experience. Ben had the wonderful surprise of flowers waiting at home for me. An awesome husband and pretty flowers, I truly am blessed and loved.

Freezer!

If you have been over to our house you might have noticed the small size of our freezer. The fridge is a decent size but it takes up all the room for freezer space. I can barely fit a frozen pizza in it. Since we live so far our I like to buy in bulk, especially meat to save me time and money but it's hard to plan ahead and such when you don't have the space. Ben and I have been planning to get a chest freezer. We hadn't gotten it yet but I've been wanting it more and more. My parents and grandparents came over and my mom brought us a turkey. It was great but we were going to have to store it at Ben's parents. Little did I know that Ben had gone out and gotten one to surprise me at Christmas. After I told him we got a turkey he gave in and told me so we wouldn't have to go through the hassle of storing it elsewhere. We brought it home today and it is perfect! It doesn't take up too much space but has enough storage for our needs. I'm sorry I ruined the surprise but glad we finally have one.

Fridge/Freezer


New one!

Flower beds

The front flower beds are in! Next step....Sprinklers!

Christmas purchase

Saturday I went shopping in Valencia with some girls from work. We went to home goods which had oodles of stuff for Christmas. Now I am the most avid Thanksgiving fan but it is exciting to get Christmas decor because I have none! I saw these ornaments and I had to get them. I've never seen anything like them and well they seem to suit me and Ben. I thought Ben would like them also, of course I didn't get the reaction I was hoping for and after he was done teasing me he admitted that he liked them. Hopefully they will make our tree look beautiful and unique.

Progress

I have told the saga of a now thriving backyard that took much sweat to get it to the way it is now. I still have another wish, that I would have a front yard to match the back. Oh to not get dirt in my shoes every time I walk to my car, to not have a growing dirt pile by the front door. Its the simple things really. Well we are one step closer to my dream of a front yard. Ben put it one of our strips of bender board. One side of our front flower bed actually is contained and looks nice and neat. Ben really knows how to make me happy, coming home to see that brought joy to my heart. I have been giving him a hard time because he has been working on "fun" projects like his gun range and deep pit barbecue pits. Well watch out we are on our way to living in luxury.

A "before" picture


The product of Ben's labors

New Decor

I think I could speak for most women when I say they want their home to feel like theirs and put special touches on it. When we moved in we had our work cut out for us. Two people with a lot more stuff than they thought they had plus a house that had been unoccupied for a few months prior equals a lot of work. Moving our stuff in plus wedding presents then de-weeding and getting grass growing, putting up a shed and maintaining a huge garden, all of this while working was making life busy. Luckily I was only part time at the moment and was able to invest a lot of my efforts into making our house livable. Once we got to a point where it was maintenance work instead of an uphill battle it was nice to be able to relax. We have three bedrooms besides ours one which is Ben's "gun room" and the other two just have random things thrown in. Out of sight out of mind and that was good enough for me. I started working full time and then I found it hard to even get in the basic cleaning and laundry much less the little extra projects that are waiting around. I was glad I could just close the doors of the back rooms. Lately I have gotten the urge to make more progress on our house. There are parts of it that are already how we want it and then there are parts that irk me a little. So instead of diving in to something huge and being totally overwhelmed I decided to start small. A new shower curtain and towels for the back bathroom seemed to fit that criteria. We had been using older towels that had seen better days and the shower curtain wasn't my favorite. So I ventured to one of my favorite places, Target, and got the items I had been wanting. I must say it has helped me feel a bit better about our house. I have bigger and better things on the brain though and I will be sure to post them when they become reality.

Ode to walks and pumpkin muffins

Not much has gone on around our parts lately but I do have a couple of things that I want to highlight. Ben and I frequently go for walks out around our rural country home. These walks always prove relaxing and fun. Peachy comes with us of course and she is a source of endless entertainment as she is curious about everything. I love these times that we can just get out and walk around with no destination in mind and the only goal being to walk until we don't want to anymore. I also saw a pumpkin muffin recipe on my sister-in-law's blog. I have been craving something festive and thought this would do the trick. They were great! The combination of pumpkin with cinnamon and other spices just warms the heart. I must admit I am a big Thanksgiving fan and these just bring all that is Thanksgiving to my mind. So there, I've said it. I love pumpkin muffins and walks. It's the little things that make life so wonderful!

Miss Peachy

Soon after Ben and I moved to Bakersfield we acquired a beautiful little puppy whom we named Peachy. She is a border collie australian shepherd mix, loves to be with people, and has endless energy. As this is my first time owning a dog I could not be more happy with our little friend. She lives the wonderful life of a country dog, going on runs with me, going to work with Ben and not to mention our house is just surrounded by fun things for a dog to investigate. This country life has its hazards though. This last week our Peachy started acting very unlike herself. She was sluggish and lacking energy. Not very much like the Peachy we know and we attributed it to a long day with Ben. When she was barely excited about going to work the next day we knew something was wrong so Ben took her to the vet. They came to the conclusion that she had gotten into some poison. Peachy had to stay overnight and the next morning looked better but her blood platelets were very low. I did not even know they could do that for dogs and words like "transfusion" were being thrown around by the vet. All me and Ben could hear was the "cha-ching" of a cash register so we crossed our fingers Peachy would pull through for us. She did with flying colors and was able to come home yesterday to two very happy owners. She is getting babied right now with nice soft dog food and doggie pills. She is already like her old self again so hopefully she learned a lesson that squirrel bait is not good food!

Weekend Fun

I have admittedly been slacking on posts. Ben and I have been doing stuff sometimes it's just hard to get up the gumption to blog. Over the last couple weekends we have been pretty busy. Two weekends ago Ben got our spa wired and running. My parents came down at night to hang out with us. We took them to Woolgrower's. It was not their first basque food experience but you have to try Woolgrower's. It was good to see them since we don't see them as much as we would like. That weekend we also did a little demolition on our garden. The garden has been pretty much done for a while now but we needed to pull out drip tape and tomato supports. Ben decided to hook a rope to his truck and then one of the supports because it's way more fun that way rather than kicking it over. I got a good laugh and it was a very effective method. That's about as far as we got, Ben will disk it under someday soon hopefully so it doesn't look like such a mess anymore. This last weekend was the cruise 99. Ben's truck hasn't been quite right for a while and the Monday before he and his dad decided to fix it. Talk about cutting it close they got it running and back together at 2 p.m. the day of the cruise. It was a great time as it always is, all the old cars, fast ones, ones with cool paint jobs. I hope we can get to use his "fancy" truck more often now that it is back in good health. Saturday night we had a ladies dinner at church. The night was so nice with great food and great company. I also really enjoyed the couple that sang. So that is what we have been up to lately. Hopefully my next post won't be so long in coming!

Ben hooking up the tomato supports


The supports biting the dust


The cutest dog ever


The red truck lives again


A happy cruisin' couple

Sunday Funday

Today during the sermon in church Pastor John mentioned a big juicy steak. This got stuck in Ben's head and since we were headed to the grocery store after church anyway we decided to "feast." Every great once in a while Ben and I have what we call a feast. It doesn't necessarily mean there's tons of food it just means we're going to treat ourselves to some very tasty stuff. We got big beautiful Rib eye's from the butcher counter and purchased some potatoes and salad to go with. The steak turned out amazingly as usual. We didn't get much past them though. I ate about 1/4 of my potato and Ben didn't finish much more of his. The salad went untouched. After a nice Sunday afternoon nap we headed out for a drive around me and Peachy on the gator, Ben on the dirtbike. It didn't last too long with it being about 102 outside. Once inside again Ben played some video games while I worked on a couple things. We topped the night off by pazookie. Homemade chocolate chip cookie dough and great vanilla ice cream. I made it in a pie pan though and I think we made it through maybe half. Thus our day of feasting, fun, and of course football was done. I love these days but I'm glad they are far and few between. They wouldn't be as special and I would be quite a porker! Anyways, kudo's to Ben for a wonderful steak and to Denise for the milk glasses that hold the perfect amount of milk for these occasions!

Delicious Ribeye steak with mushroom and onion


The untouched salad


Ben's half eaten potato


Ben having a beef overdose


Short-lived second attempt to eat more potato


Ben on the dirt bike


Peachy getting ready for our ride


Time out in the shade from our ride


Chocolate chip pazookie