Baby It's Cold Outside!

Brrr....it's 9:24pm as I write this and it's currently 11 degrees below zero. It was just straight up nasty out today!! Very windy, blowing snow, etc. Not as bad as in other places like North Dakota, so I'm grateful it wasn't worse. We got Cody all bundled up to head out to daycare this morning & he was slightly reminiscent of the younger boy in "A Christmas Story". 

Cody is so darn cute though in his winter jacket, fleece hat, mittens and shoes.  I already lost one of his mittens though.  And, so it begins.

This is not good. Only my third post and I'm already out of things to talk about so I bring up the weather. Great.

We, and when I say we, I mean Gordon, installed the convertible car seats last Friday. We ended up buying the Britax Marathon for dh's car and Britax Roundabout for my car. Does this mean we're car seat snobs now? Yikes. I got a very generous gift card to Target from my work for Christmas, so we used that money and put it towards the car seats. They are super nice & Cody really seems to like them.  I must say, it's quite a bit easier to get him in and out of the car now in his "big boy" seat.  They are really easy to adjust the straps, too.  The infant carrier was getting sooooo heavy since he weighs over 18 pounds now!  At his 9 month appointment, he was 1/2 inch shy of meeting the height limit, so it was definitely time to upgrade.  That said, it was kind of sad to pack away the "bucket" though. He's growing up too fast!

By the way, anyone know how to make a gas fireplace stop stinking?  We have not used our fireplace much since we moved into our home, because when we turn it on, it gives off quite an odor.  It is kind of that "just turned on the heat" smell, except it doesn't go away after a few minutes, and it drifts through the entire house.  I've read it could take 30 hours for the smell to go away...Lord help me!  I don't know if we have had it on for 30 hours; it actually makes me somewhat nauseous after awhile.  I don't know if it's worth calling the fireplace repair people or not.  I wish we would have asked before our 1 year home inspection.  Oh well.  A nice warm fireplace sounds so wonderful on these cold days, but not when you want to just go outside to breathe fresh air afterwards!

Cody Meets Santa

We took Cody to meet Santa at the Albertville City Hall on Saturday. It was a really low-key event.  There were only a few kids there and we didn't have to wait in a line. We weren't sure what he would think, but Cody was OK with Santa! He gladly sat on his lap and studied Santa awhile, but after a few minutes, he let us know that he had been there long enough! It was pretty cute. For the cost of a food donation, we got the attached photo for free. Cody also got a book (about cats-how appropriate!), a little snack, and they had coffee, cookies and cider. It was nice to attend a neighborhood event!

First Post ...

Welcome to my blog!

I've been wanting to get a blog going for months, and I'm attempting to finally do this. My timing is horrible. It's less than 2 weeks until Christmas, I have an active 9 month old, and my work is crazy busy! I want to at least give it a shot and see how it goes. I'd like to get in a routine of posting daily or at least every few days...for nothing else, to have a record of what goes on in life! My memory seems to be completely shot for the most part, so maybe this will give me some sort of chance of remembering life with a baby. I can only wish I started this 9 months ago, as those memories are quickly fading.

I hope you enjoy & visit often!

The Simple Things in Life

I had this African Violet plant for forever and it was just greenery, no flowers. I remember I bought it at a church sale from this little old lady that told me how to take care of it. It was in a little plastic container up until a few months ago, when I re-potted it and put it in my "plant window" of our new house. It took off. It makes me happy. :)

Welcome Home

Gordon finally hung up his (this is questionable) birthday present this weekend....I love how it looks here! I blurred out our last name in the photo as I posted this elsewhere.


Also, you can get a glimpse of our entryway...I hope to take more pics of the house soon, since we are getting close to having all our furniture, etc...

Careen and John's Wedding

Here's a couple quick pictures from Careen and John's wedding on August 11th. I was honored to be a bridesmaid at this beautiful event. I met Careen (and actually, all the girls in these pictures) in church in a small group for single girls ~ now a bunch of us girls are married and some even having babies....God really brought us all together in His perfect timing!

Careen was a stunning bride! The wedding was in northern Wisconsin....I have to say, small town weddings are the best :) I may be slightly biased though!

Landscaping Before, During & After

We bit the bullet a couple weeks ago and decided to sign the contract for our landscaping work....Our front yard was ok, but our backyard was FULL of huge, scary weeds and I'm sure ticks, bugs and other creepy crawly things. The builder of our home did not sod our backyard or do any other landscaping except for sod in the front and side yards.

I wish I had some better "before" pictures of our backyard...the weeds just took off in early summer and it was treacherous out there! The photos I have are from when we had our home inspection and first moved in.

Upon thinking about this post, I realize I haven't even taken any inside photos of our home! I will have to get working on that as we've received most of our furniture now and things are finally coming together.

Back to landscaping...

Before:













During:


After all the weeds cleared out and backyard leveled out somewhat...this was heaven to our eyes!




The lawn edging going in....rock will be next.



Truck parked in our backyard!



Next day was the sprinkler system installation. Glororious, glorious automatic sprinklers.





After:




We have a backyard!!



Our new paver patio. We have our patio table & chairs and grill on it already. We just need to built some steps down from the patio door in our dining room, and we will be set!



In the right corner, I will be planting some flowers here. Not sure if I will do this year or wait until next.



Our front yard with one lonely tree (i.e. stick). It is much greener today as it has been raining non-stop for about 30 hours. We (as well as our water bill) are loving the rain!!

Eventually, we will be planting bushes and plants in the rock, as well as in the flower bed. I'd love to have a vegetable garden next spring with corn and carrots and the like. We're also hoping to get some evergreen trees and other trees from up north to plant in our backyard. It's pretty plain right now, but we've made a lot of progress in only a few months, so we're pleased with the results so far!

Thanks for looking :)