Get ready, set, go!

We had wonderful Thanksgiving with the family! We came to Joe's parents house around 11 am. Everyone did their part for the dinner, and since I made the pies I had the luxury to sit and read the newspaper ads for "black friday". For the last several years I've made it a tradition to go shopping at 4 am the day after Thanksgiving, in order to get great deals. It took me a while, but Liz has finally agreed to go with me. I just love the adrenaline rush that I get when I'm in a mad dash to get one of the 12 free laminators. So after a lovely dinner we relaxed for a while and then had yummy pumpkin pie, that Winter and Ginger helped me make. Tonight we went down to uncle Bill and aunt Barbara's house in Dallas, and hung out with the whole gang. Several cousins were there, which made for a good time. I even got to go to Aaron Allred's fancy lawyers office, so Katy and I can redecorate it to look all fancy. Anyways, I really need to get to bed, since I have to get up in 4 hours!!

time flies

I can't believe it's been a whole week since I last wrote anything. I have to say that throughout the week I've had great stories that I wanted to post, but simply didn't have the internet to do so with. So now I am really not in the mood for writing, so I'll give you a quick rundown of this week's events. I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to prepare the kitchen and all other cabinets to be painted. Wednesday night we painted them, and they look fantastic. Now I just need to make a quick trip to Ikea to get some great knobs to finish the look. The other developing news is that we went from 2 kittens, to 3 kittens, back to 2 kittens. A girl in our ward, Theresa, gave us number 3 (whose name is brownie). On Thursday she made a fun trip in the hood of the suburban. Apparently she crawled up in the hood right before we left to Winter's Thanksgiving school program. I heard some meowing, but just thought he was in the car with the kids. She rode there 15 minutes into town, sat there for an hour, and rode back the 15 minutes without getting killed. I think her salvation was that she was stuck. Meanwhile, our first cat Sunny got lost. I don't know if she also tried to ride with us and fell off, or if she got all the way there and then jumped off, or if she simply got eaten by a coyote... So now we just have pumpkin (the orange boy cat), and the new cat Brownie.
Today we are going to visit Joe's grandma in the hospital, who unfortunately fell Thursday and broke her hip and has some head trauma. The kids had fun this morning decorating some cards for her. Oh yeah... about the benefit of living here in Dallas..... Last night we came home late from a fancy dinner with the BYU management society. Mom and dad and us all went together, and after we got to their house, we decided that it would make a lot of sense to sleep here. To sum up how nice it is: I just finished my pancake breakfast. I really think I'm going to love it here, especially out at our farm. Our little town of Leonard has great things: a grocery store, for last minute purchases, a library, post office, mexican restaurant, pharmacy, pre-school for Sterling etc. Sterling now goes to preschool 5 days a week from 8-2 pm. It's been quiet at the house.....
Oh... I just remembered... We also got 4 sheep this last week! And Joe got a new truck.

The big move

So today is the big day. We move to the farm! The house it totally not ready for living in, but we've decided that we'll get much more work done if we're there to work on it all the time. It is a little crazy that we are all sleeping/living in 1 room. None of the other rooms in the house have any floorcoverings. At first Joe will still go to his parents house to work until we can get internet, but then he'll be at the farm all day too. I went to Sterling's new school yesterday, and he and I are very excited for this new experience for him.

We are in the middle of the process of getting a home study done for our adoption application. We are hoping to get the paperwork done before the end of the year, so we can get on the list of adoptive parents. We want to adopt a little baby (under 1 years old), and we have no preference for race or gender. Most of all we want to give a child a forever family that otherwise wouldn't have that opportunity. So as part of the process, I had to get my fingerprints taken today. They send them to the FBI to make sure we are no criminals. 2 things about that: 1. any idiot/criminal can get pregnant and create their own child, but if you want to adopt they have to check out everything about you. 2. I just had my fingerprints taken by the FBI for a background check when I became a citizen. Now you would think they could use my fingerprints (that I'm sure are still in their system), but no, they have to get them again... just in case my fingers morphed into something new. No, I'm sure it's just to get more money out of me, which is why it frustrates me.

Today is my last day with internet access (on a normal computer) so I don't know how long it will be before I'll entertain you again with my simple life.

1 + 1 = 2 kittens

Since "Sunny" will be an outside cat, I thought it would only be humane to get another cat to keep her company. I picked up an orange tabby kitten today (a boy), that will be able to keep Sunny company, now and later... Winter decided to name him Pumpkin. He is definitely a little spicier than Sunny. On the way home, I held him on my lap, as I had done with Sunny, but he kept trying to claw his way up my shoulder, whereas Sunny just layed down and went to sleep.

Pumpkin is also much more of an explorer and got a hold of a grass hopper and had himself alittle playtime. He also showed Sunny that it would be a fun/good idea to climb up a tree,.. but the only problem is that since she is still a couple weeks younger than him, she wasn't able to get down. This is the point where I have to get the ladder out of the house, and pluck my cat out of a thorned tree. I don't think she appreciated it as much as she should have.

Kitten

So, for the last 2 weeks we've had a farm with no animals. Well, we now have our first one. I finally got my cat!! As some of you know, we had a cat when we first got married, that mysteriously disappeared on the way back from Florida. After that I've wanted a new cat, but Joe's not a big fan, so it just hadn't happened. Joe is very opposed to pets in our house (and I am too, ever after this nasty house we had to clean up) so now I have an outside cat. Sterling, Ginger, and I went to pick out a kitten yesterday. We picked a girl cat, and Sterling named her Sunny. She is silver and super cute. I can't believe how small she is. After we got her, Joe wanted me to look at some trucks for him, so I just put her in my purse, which she just loved, and she just went right to sleep in there. As I'm typing this I am feeling a little bad though, because she is all alone at the new house right now. She has the shed as her house, and there is no windows in it, so it's gotta be dark and lonely. Later today I'll go over there, and Joe has been trying to assure me that she'll have a blast in that shed.... Ginger has really taken a liking for Sunny. when we were in the car she screamed the whole time (1 hour) because I wouldn't let her hold it.

Back to work

Yesterday I had to make a very difficult decision: Play volleyball, or work on the house. Even though I was very tempted to go play volleyball and win the Dallas regional church volleyball competition, I decided to make the responsible decision and work at the house.
All the tile was broken out, and we were left with a whole bunch of cement glue/grout. So we went to Home Depot and rented an electric hammer/chisel. It took 9 solid hours to brake it all out. At the end we figured the best way to get it all up, was to have me vacuum an area looking for leftover grout, and when I found a spot, for Joe to get it up. I kind of felt like an assistant to a dentist... you know... when they stick that vacuum in your mouth. We are all very sore from this task, but also very happy to be done with it. It's fun to reflect back on all the work we have done, especially because that makes the work ahead seem not quit as bad.

The other fun thing was that Sterling caught 4 fish in our lake. Joe was very jealous, as he hasn't been able to catch anything yet. Unfortunately I haven't really had a chance to do any fishing myself, but I did witness the slaughter ( and managed to save 1 fish's life by convincing Joe to throw it back).

a little brake

Today I finally got to a little brake from the craziness. We sold our pacifica, so we are back down to 1 car. Joe had to go buy an "animal trailer" and took the burb, so I was stuck at home. Not that I minded too much, because I've been working too hard anyways. It's nice to catch up with my friends and family and sit down to check my email and to do other mundane things in life. Speaking of mundane things... I better clean up this pig sty (as I'm still living with the in-laws, and I don't have the liberty to choose to live in a mess) and cook some dinner (which I'm sure will be appreciated by all the hungry mouths.)