Well Well Well...

I almost felt guilty about not posting anything for the past three months, UNTIL I got on here late last night and tried to use this nightmare of a picture up-loader and realized why I had sworn off "The Blogger". I finally got all of these pictures on here, but instead of seeing the preview of the picture all I can see is HTML jibber jabber. SO, you're gonna have to deal with the completely random order of these photos because I can't stand the thought of trying to rearrange them.




Oh, the back corner of the house is always a nice place to start! To the left is the garage which is FILLED with our stuff. We put an offer in on this house in June, didn't close till September 10th (never. buying. a house. again.), couldn't move in till the last week of September because we were getting the floors done, sooo yes I've had a whole month to unpack and decorate, I don't want to talk about it.



Now, this is where you have to use your imagination. I'm envisioning a "courtyard" feel back here, which is currently over-powered by this lovely "white trash" feel. The garage needs painting to match the house, and the lovely rotting siding at the top needs replacing. The previous owners thought it would be nice to leave all the crap they didn't feel like hauling off, in the basement. Yesterday we brought it all up and here it sits until we get that dumpster. I'm sure our neighbors love us. The shed needs a coat of paint but I think it could be really cute with some flower boxes?



These pictures aren't the best, I was in a rush to leave, but this is the side of the house (duh). Even though the yard needs a ton of work (I'm not a fan of the over-sized ugly holly bushes, rhododendrons, etc.), once we get it fenced in it will be a great little space I think. It's hard to find a cheap house, but it's even harder to find a cheap house with a decently sized yard. I would take an old run down house with a yard over a new house without yard any day.



This is the same side of the house taken from the front of the house, kind of. The previous owners had this cute little vegetable garden under those bent pvc pipes. I think the pvc pipes will have to go, but a vegetable garden would be fun!



This is the view from the upstairs bedroom. I rushed to take all these pictures yesterday because it was the only sunny day we've had in a long time. It's been raining and dark for days now (which I love).



This is the "mini-room" upstairs. It would be a perfect office or nursery :) Right now it's the perfect place to throw our crap so we can find some sanity in the rest of the house.



The hallway upstairs. Pretty boring.



This is the room across the hall from the mini-room. All of the rooms in this house are very small! Probably because the whole house is very small! Ideally this will be the guest room for all our lovely guests (come visit!!), but we are yet to be able to get the box-spring for this bed up the stairs (you'll understand when you see the stairway).



Ahh, the mini-stairway!



We had the floors all re-done because they were covered in nasty old carpet, and these stairs turned out to be this orangey wood. I love how rustic they look, although I never expected them to turn out like this!



Parts of the house like this need a bit of work. This is at the end of the kitchen. The door on the left goes outside to the walkway between the garage and the house. To the right is the stairway that goes to the basement (or the dungeon as we call it).



Right side of the kitchen....wait for it...




Left side of the kitchen! Hahah, this is the smallest kitchen in the world. When we were buying the house we'd always laugh about our skinny alley kitchen that is completely inaccessible if a drawer is pulled out or the oven door is open. My mom kept trying to convince me that alley kitchens are really "cool" in like New York and Europe....hmmm I'm pretty sure if I lived in NY or Europe I would think my whole house was really "cool", but this is Oregon City.



This is the dining room. The whole house looks a bit "dead" because we have absolutely nothing on the walls and barely any lighting. That standing light in the corner was left by the owners before us. I really need to decorate. Our dining table is my FAVORITE. My mom and I found it at a thrift store for $50. It had an ugly dark shiny stain on it, but once we refinished it it was perfect! I love the french legs. My grandma bought us the 6 white chairs when she was here visiting a few weeks ago--they are perfect! It's so hard to find wood-colored chairs that match a wood table (that aren't like $200 each), and we thought the painted white wood was really pretty with all the wood! I'm trying to find fabric to make chair cushions. To the left is the front door, to the right is the picture below.



This is what you see when you walk in the house. To the right is our bedroom (which you don't get to see quite yet), straight ahead is the bathroom (yes THE bathroom, there is only one, and it's munchkin-sized), and to the left is the stairway.



Bad picture, but this is the couch that I love! Brandon's grandma gave it, and the matching chair, to us because she didn't use it anymore (love free furniture!). I should probably do something with all those stacked boxes. We bought a bunch of lights to try out around the house week ago, but haven't quite gotten around to opening them.



I love thriftstore finds! This table was found by my mom for 5 bucks! It needs painting. I'm thinking a lacquered robins egg blue? I'm not sure yet.



The matching chair and the side table that Brandon's grandpa made before he died. Our living room is on the small side, and it REALLY needs some decorating love, but I like it. I love the rug but it's way too small for the room (even though the room is really small!), so we're looking for something bigger and more comfy looking.



Moving on to random events as of late! Brandon's other grandma passed away last week, so we went up to Washington for her funeral. It was really nice to be able to re-meet all of Brandon's family. This is Courtney and her sweet little girl Riley. She is soooo stinking cute, I couldn't get enough of her!



Yummy funeral potatoes! We took a ton of pictures but none of them turned out...something about that awful cultural hall lighting.



Daisy Duke cracks us up every day (even though most days I want to kill her). I had just brought our duvet cover out of the dryer and was putting the comforter back in it when I turned around and she was snuggling up in it. When I yelled at her she looked at me like, "What's your deal?! You didn't bring this super warm blanket out of the dryer for ME to lay on!?"



Real bad picture of the front of the house. The house is up a bit on a hill so I can't figure out how to get a decent picture of it. I swear it doesn't look this squished in person.



The DUNGEON! The unfinished basement in this house needs a serious rehaul, but it's a huge amount of space compared to the rest of our house! We plan on gutting it and turning it into a cozy TV/family room.



Manly man ripping out the wall so we can turn it into one big space. He thorougly enjoyed taking his anger out on this wall with a sledgehammer after spending 30 minutes on the phone with Comcast.



The woodpecker knocker. Unfortunately this guy had to go. I didn't have the heart to throw him away after all his days of dutifully knocking...so I "set him free" and relocated him to a nearby tree where he can knock away. I do LOVE having Billy the mailman bring our mail right to the front porch! Pretty darn cool.



Bran and his baby. She lays like this forever, I love it.



My Aunt Erika got to visit for her birthday which was fun! I can't remember what we were all laughing about...but it looks like it was really funny.



Brandon's mom is going to school to get licensed to take x-rays at the dental office she works at. Brandon was a very whiny practice-patient and kept telling her she was doing it wrong. We're so proud of her, she's the best dental assistant around!




Brandon spent a lot of time this summer up at my parent's cabin in Mosier. We went up there one Saturday so he could set up deer stands and tree stands. A few weeks later his dad shot a bear from that tree stand. I so don't approve.


WELL, that took forever! I've learned my lesson--don't save 3 months of pictures for one post! I'm going to go eat my honey nut cheerios now for breakfast. Have a good weekend!

Baby Daisy

Love these pictures of Baby Daisy and my two favorite sisters. We were going to go to Eagle Creek today and swim in the waterfalls but it's a rainy Oregon day, so we're watching "In her Shoes"---ever seen it? It's not over, but so far it's the worst movie I've seen this year (second to Valentine's Day of course).

Ahhhhhh!

Well hello blog friends (Amy, Peyton, and on occasion, Brittany...), I'm still alive! Took lots of pictures - can't find camera - found camera but memory card is MIA, you know how it goes. So to sum up the past month and half since we've been in Oregon (and done with Provo since Brandon graduated-yay!), here ya go: Went to the dermatologist two days ago because ever since I moved to Oregon I've had all these zits, blah blah, very boring. Anyways, I paid Doctor whoever-she-was $135 to not prescribe me anything because apparently my insistence that I am suffering from life-altering, extreme, 13-yr-old acne meant nothing to her, and she assured me they would go away and I might "be under an increased amount of stress lately?"

Hmmm, well, as of late:

-We've moved from Utah to Oregon. (Hmm, funny story for a later time on that topic. It involves my car making it to south Salt Lake before it plunkered out and died, which left me stranded on I-15 for 2 hours in the blazing sun.)

-We bought a new car (Rav4, not new of course, but fun!)

-We sold a car (Flames and all!)

-We are in the middle of closing on a new house in Oregon City (which is a million times more stressful than I ever thought it would be!)

-We bought a lab puppy (It pees, it poops, it pukes, it whines, it bites, it licks my face...we might as well have had a baby!!! Have you seen Marley and Me? Watch it, then cry for me.)

-We are yet to unpack any of our boxes because we live in Brandon's Grandma's basement until mid-August (which also means we don't have our own place and are NEVER ALONE). So naturally I can't find ANYTHING and every morning I spend a good chunk of time crying to Brandon that I don't know where any of my clothes are and I'm sick of wearing the same 5 outfits over and over...and over.

-While living at Brandon's Grandma's house we are conveniently located 6 minutes away from my parents and 10 minutes away from his parents. No matter how much I LOVE our families, this is a weeee bit to close.

-Brandon works 9am - 8pm pretty regularly and so I never ever see him.

-I work for my dad, and I just got a new job at a Real Estate company.

-We have taken on the care of 2 horses at my parents property which somehow is way more work than you can imagine.

Okay, now I just sound like the biggest whiner ever. I am very happy, life is fabulous, but for someone who stresses constantly this is not the ideal situation! Isn't it funny how in life we are so quick to look ahead and say "Okay, when this is over I will be happy and able to breathe"? That is exactly how I feel right now.

I'm really trying!

Okay, I'm really trying hard to take more pictures! It's kind of hard when there's only two of you. No adorable babies to photograph, and taking picture of each other kind of gets old. This weekend was fun! We did really boring "married" things like clean, run errands, wash the cars, go grocery shopping, etc., but for some reason when it's WARM out it makes everything a million times better! And sometimes just doing things together is so nice. I can't wait to someday have kids, but I'm sure I'll look back on these times and miss being alone with each other! These pictures are really lame, but they are a good start!

I feel like usually it's the wife who has to be careful not to "nag" and re-do the husband's chores because he can't do anything the "right" way. Well, behold the benefits of being married to someone with a little bit of OCD in their blood. I love it. I spent quite awhile washing these windows myself. As I was admiring my work, Brandon came and grabbed the Windex from me and went outside to "fix" the mess I made and get rid of all my streaks. He said something about being the window washing master...sure enough, 20 minutes later, there were no streaks. Weirdo. He's that way with everything though; it's really funny and really useful. We joke that he's better at cooking, better at cleaning, and better at doing laundry. Truly though, he definitely is!

Brandon is such a better cook than I am. Every time I'm about to make something (french toast for breakfast in this case!) he jumps in and says he'll make it. I would like to think he's just being nice...but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my cooking. I'm getting better though, really!

Ignore the prayer pose, not sure what's going on. I got a pretty good shiner on Friday. The story is more than embarrassing, but it has something to do with my horse, a horse dentist, passing out, a metal pole, and a vet catching me. I hate to relive the story at all, but it's the only picture I got of myself all week.

My hard little worker! Just a shout out to a great guy who someone pulled of 40+ hours/week of work and 19 credits this last semester! He's never not working. Even when he's watching the NBA playoffs he'd tirelessly making calls for work. The best is when he puts people on hold for long periods of time to focus in on the game and yell at me to "come watch this!!" And he still sells them, every time! 3 cheers for Brandon!

For Lack of Anything Better...

I'm the biggest picture slacker. I love pictures more than the average person, but somehow never bring my camera anywhere! I was skimming my last posts and realizing that my recent cop-out of posting internet picture is really lame. SO, I whipped out Brandon's camera and found some fun old pictures from the past. Bear with me....I will get better at taking pictures. Maybe if I had cuter clothes I'd be more willing to take pictures....geeez Brandon's right....that is my excuse for everything. But really, the lack of cute summer clothes is a serious problem.

When I went home in February to help my parents move into their new house I got to go visit my brother in Eugene! I had never been, which is strange because I've lived in Oregon my entire life and it's only 2 hours away. Anyway, it is an absolutely gorgeous part of Oregon and a really cool city. I brought my little brother with me and we hung out with Ian for the day. This is both of them at some yummy Pizza place we found.

Over Thanksgiving (I warned you these were old pictures, stop judging), Brandon went pheasant hunting with his dad and some friends. No, I don't "like" that he kills things for fun...but there are worse things. We prepared and ate the pheasant meat for our Thanksgiving feast in Park City. Yea, I would not recommend it. Chewy, dry, bland...tastes like blah chicken.

I hate this picture of me. My face was all swollen and I was really sick. BUT it reminds me how much I love that guy. This was taken when we went to Sun River for a week or so last summer when we were in Oregon. His family goes every year and rents a cabin. It's a really neat place, we go tubing down the river, fishing, biking, we lay out, barbecue, watch movies, get ice cream cones every day (nothing makes me happier), eat really yummy food...it's pretty much my favorite.

Most of the pictures on Brandon's camera are from fishing trips he's taken. I just thought this was a cute one of his boat and his dad. Nothing makes Bran happier than fishing with his dad.

Two big ones! I have to look at every one of these pictures when he gets home from a fishing trip. I've spared you all by only posting the "good" ones, the other 200 pictures are individual glamor shots of fish that all look the same, or dead fish, or blood from gutting the fish....boys take the weirdest pictures.

This picture just really makes me miss the Oregon waters! The trees, the mountain (don't laugh if you're from Utah, yes we call those mountains), the boats, the ducks, so pretty!

Brandon would tell you I never want to go fishing, but I know secretly it's just "his thing" and he doesn't want me to go :) because I DO love to go! But it's fine, I think it's good to have things you can do without each other. He has his things (hunting, fishing), I have my things (horses, horses, horses), and it keeps us sane! BUT every once and awhile it's really fun to share in each others favorite hobbies. This past summer we went fishing for the day with his dad on some outlet off the Columbia river.

The first 5 hours were great---really relaxing, beautiful, fun....ok, but really, I don't know how people sit in that small boat all day and wait for a bite. It hit a point where I had had my fun and was ready to gooooo. My first fish was a 32 lb. Salmon. Mitch took this picture on his phone when I was holding onto this fish for dear life. We had it on the line for truly like 30 minutes and it was determined not to be brought in that boat. This picture doesn't do justice to the drama that incured during those 30 minutes. All three of us were literally running around the boat trying to keep this fish on the line. It was exciting when we finally pulled it up, but to this day Brandon still gives me a hard time for not fully appreciating that moment...thus I am no longer invited on fishing trips.