Gratutitous pictures of my family

Smarty pants

 

I swear he thinks he's a model, So cute

Its not a coincidence that Sheba's pictures both include food! lol.  Such a lover

 

Love these pups

 Can't beat a good picture of the husband and his Thomas the Train obsessed nephew! That line of trains was our Christmas present to him.

Blood, Sweat and no Tears Part 2 of 2

Our second big project around the house was the backyard. It was pretty hideous. There was a big concrete 'rip-rap' wall.

As you can see in the picture, if you can manage to look past Mitch and Hunter, the concrete wall. It was super cracked and starting to slide down. Plus there were lots of squirrels running underneath, which was entertaining for us when the dogs got excited to see them.
We also wanted to get some new rocks since these ones were not the prettiest (lol). As you can see in the picture we also broke up a large concrete pad that was slated and not made very well.

If you compare the backgrounds in the two pictures you should be able to notice a difference in the amount of work done. The rocks are gone, the retaining wall is moved up and back (took away dirt making our yard seem much bigger) and the concrete pad is gone. 

We have since then added new rocks and a new retaining wall using wood, and it looks so much better! We still have a little bit of work to do, and hopefully we can finish it over this next long weekend or at least put a dent into the last bit of it...but it is definitely an improvement.

I will have to add pictures of the new wall and rocks when I remember but trust me..it looks better.

Blood, Sweat and no Tears. Part 1 of 2

Mitch and I are expecting a move sometime in the not so distant future. So we decided it was really time to do some major renovations. One of them that I was looking forward to most was the kitchen. It was the project I knew I wanted to do as soon as possible when we knew we were buying this house. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do it until recent. However, better late than never. Even if that means I get to enjoy it for a shorter amount of time than I would have liked.
The original kitchen was pretty terrible.. It has old cabinets, which is not the problem. The problem was that the owner before us who had 'flipped' the house stained them (and stained them a dark, dark color-especially for such a small kitchen). Herein lies the problem, they did not care about the finished product. It was sloppily done, you could see drips of the stain on the front of the cabinets, and they didn't bother to clean (and sand? that happens, or is supposed to happen, when you stain right?) and so it was super grainy due to the dust build up that was pretty much unmistakable. Lame, right? Oh well, like I said i figured we would redo the kitchen pretty quickly after moving in. On top of the crappily done cabinets, we had a dark blue laminate counter top. Really?
Mitch and I order our cabinets from The Home Depot, and I wanted light cabinet colors. Just to make the kitchen seem bigger than it really is. Then we thought we would go with just a laminiate countertop-due to budget. Turns out for the shape of the corner where our sink is, it was cheaper to go real stone. whaaat? Whatever, I'm not complaining!
We went back and forth between having someone come in and install it for us. Just so it was done and over with, and we wouldn't have to stress about it. But Mitch decided he would do it. The cost wasn't worth it for him.
Part 1- demolition!  Which in reality..is not as much fun as it sounds. Lol. He would tear the cabinets apart. I'd haul them piece by piece to the garage.
Part 2- Cabinets get delivered and take up, basically the entirety of the living room. All in their own cardboard boxes and stacked clear to the ceiling fan.

Part 3- putting up the top cabinets. Also not fun. Mitch made it easier by drilling a piece of wood to act like a little shelf/ledge thing, so the cabinet would sit in the right spot. I, however still have to hold it up against the wall while he got it exactly perfect where it needed to be, and drilled everything into the wall.

Part 4- bottom cabinets. I didn't really help with this, but apparently it was hard according to the frustrating gripes I heard from Mitch. For those of you who don't know floors are apparently not always perfectly level, but the tops of the cabinets have to be so the counter top lays perfectly on top. 
Part 5- So much cardboard. Everywhere cardboard. For those of you who have never hauled huge flattened cardboard boxes. It is really hard to grip those suckers. (at least it was for me, Mitch just makes everything look easy. haha.)
Part 6- Live way too long without a counter top because the new cabinets have to be measured after being installed. but they cant come out to measure for days then can't deliver and install for another week or two. (I can't remember exactly how long, but it was entirely too long to be without a functioning kitchen. No sink, no counter top.)
Lastly, Enjoy a new kitchen.

Hunter is the best helper!

 However, we still need to paint and/or do a full backsplash from the counter top to the bottom of the cabinets.

Hawaii!

This May Mitch and I were lucky enough to be able to go to Hawaii.

It was amazing. 

The flight was long but certainly worth it. 

This tree was the first sight we saw-in the middle of the airport.

 

 

The hotel that we stayed at has a luau show that they do a couple nights a week. Mitch and I went the first night we got there and it pretty cool. It was dinner and a show. Before the dinner or the show started, they had little stations where you could learn one of the ball-twirling dance moves, make a small anklet lei and the like.

They did dances from each of the different island cultures.

Somehow..I was pulled up to dance onstage..I was so awkward and uncomfortable, Lol!

They also had fire dancing. ooohh ahhh

The hotel next to ours does a fireworks show, so we waited on the beach for it to begin.

Fireworks on the beach <3

We had a fabulous view from our balcony, (not that you can tell from this particular photo) and we took advantage of it most days.

 When in Hawaii, do as the Hawaiians do! 

We took a surfing lesson..and totally loved it!

Mitch got completely up on his second try

I got up on my first try! Woot Woot! This isn't the picture from the first try, but I like this one most :P

 Another fun thing we were able to do was Scuba Scooter Rides. Along that same trip, we were able to turtle watch. The turtles were huge and everywhere! 

The awesome scooters! Lol, look at our itty bitty pea heads in those bubbles.

We were able to see lots of fishies and turtles. They attached some fish food right in front of our helmets so those fish came right up to you. Very cool!

Just a few of my favorite pictures. hehe.

Mitch and Jenn 2012 Hawaii

I certainly want to go back to Hawaii someday.

Janurary - May

The last few months have been quite a whirlwind!

One.  Jojo got married! She had a pretty simple wedding that was put together in under 24 hours, talk about quick!

 

Jo before the ceremony. 

Sisters ♥

Just a bonus photo-because I love this one of Janice and Mackenzie :)

Two. My baby sister announced that I'd be becoming an aunt again! She finds out at her next Doctor's appointment the sex of the baby and I can't wait. Janice and I have dibs on planning the baby shower-as we couldn't help at all with the wedding her new in-laws did all the decision making and decorating.

Third. Mitch came home! WootWoot!

Leaving the airport after picking him up.

Hunter gave him a nice big hug. Aww.

Sheba ran around for a while jumping on him...and me. Later he sat on the ground and she would sit in her rightful place...In his lap, ha! Then she'd get up, look at him, then turn back around and sit in his lap. It was pretty goofy.

 All is right with the world, and Mitch easily integrated back into his home life. We are excited to be going to Hawaii for a week just a week and a half after his homecoming! Definitely an exciting getaway. :D

Fourth. I finished my very last class at Pima Community College! Took my final this last weekend, and now it's just a matter of getting that Associates Degree in my hand. I'm super excited to have accomplished getting a degree. Now for the undecided future in school...

Things that make me smile :)

1. Mitch
2. My front yard tree
3. Puppies

This week marks Mitch's homecoming countdown to 7 weeks left! Woot woot!
Sometimes I get butterflies when I think about it♥

Also, in the last couple weeks, the tree we planted in our front yard has been blooming like crazy!
Which I am really excited about because when I told Mitch how bare it was (not a single leaf on a twig) and that I hope it didn't die over the winter, he asked "well, have you been watering it?" .... err, I forgot that it has to be watered :/ the plants in the back in pots have a drip system and I totally forgot that I had to manually take the hose and water the tree and plants in the front yard. Ooops! Luckily it is a 'drought-resistant' tree. Needless to say, I have been better about watering it since then.
Anyway, I came home from work one day and realized, there are flowers blooming! (It didn't bloom at all last year). I was so excited, when I took a closer look, I realized there were tons, maybe hundreds of buds that would be blooming. Words can't explain how excited I was.

 The first bloom I noticed.

This picture is from this morning. I just can't leave and come home without being happy after seeing my tree. I love it! Makes my day, at least twice a day! :P

Puppies, Puppies, Puppies!

Its no surprise that I love puppies. I had the chance this last weekend to puppy sit Mitch's friend, Dave's new Dalmatian puppy, Lucky. It was just for the day, but it was just enough to get me my puppy fix for a while. 

Naturally, Sheba and Hunter liked to gang up on him, chasing him and wresting, but he was pretty scrappy. He loved running in circles around our loveseat, Hunter was pretty smart, he would chase him around a couple times, then would stop, turn around and surprise Lucky.

This first blurry picture is pretty much how the first half of the day went. Them just running around like crazy, non-stop. 

Eventually they pooped themselves out, but Hunter is a jealous, grumpy butt. He would not have Lucky anywhere near his toys, me, or himself. He would whine and growl at Lucky if he was near any of the three. 

 Even this far away, Hunter would be making growling noises.

 Eventually, he let Lucky get closer, but still not without protest.

 Eventually, Hunter let Lucky cuddle like this. Apparently, this was the only way Lucky was allowed to cuddle with Hunter. Lol. Like I said, grumpy-butt.

Sheba was nice the whole time, and let Lucky cuddle anytime. Aww..

 

Valentine's Day

Valentines day is not a very big holiday in our house, but seeing as Mitch has been gone for so long, and we haven't seen each other and wouldn't be for a while. I thought Valentine's this year was especially important for him, for us.
I really wanted to surprise him (for once!), so I kept everything on the down low. The biggie was remembering to pay for the shipping in cash, not with the card. Since he is obsessive over looking over our budget and therefore looks at our transactions all the time.
Anyway, so I asked Rina if she would want to help me decorate some sugar cookies because doing them by myself seemed too lonely. I had seen this cute idea of doing one cookie the sits on top saying "I love you like..." and the rest of the cookies list what I love him like.

 

Then to send them over, I wanted to make sure they got there in one piece. So I found some little boxes and bubble wrap from the dollar store. Which worked fabulously, I think he said only one broke?

Then inside the USPS box, I did the same thing I did with his birthday box. I found some heart wrapping paper in the seasonal dollar section at target (Whoo!), I looked in a few places for wrapping paper and couldn't find any! So I was happy that when I did, it was only a dollar :)

Also in the dollar section they had these little planter pots with soil and seeds, and it was just so perfect and cute that I had to get this.

 

(See what I did there? They're forget-me-nots! :P)

Also in the box was some Andes mints chocolates, these whack a pack self-inflating valentines balloons (They are so awesome! I was so excited, and wished they had them for Birthdays too)..

I also wanted to take a picture with the dogs with each of us holding signs that all together say, "We ♥ You!". Unfortunately, the day I decided to take the pictures, the dogs were being so bad on their leashes, wouldn't listen to me and were just being bad. On top of it all, it was super windy, my hair was flying everywhere, I didn't have a hair tie. So I just took the dogs photos individually, then decided to take my own picture at home, without the wind or the nice green background. Oh well. That's when I decided it would be a better option to do a little scrapbook-y type photo. Instead of doing individual pictures in a frame that had three small photo slots next to each other. This is what I came up with:

Anyway, I can't remember if there was anything else. It's been a while since I've thought of the package. Anyway, it was a fun box to put together, and he was definitely surprised! Makes me feel good that he can brag to the people in his office about stuff like that. 

The finishing touch; just so he would know (if the box got there just a little too early) that it was for Valentine's day.

I hope you all had a great Valentine's day and took full advantage of your sweethearts being home and able to celebrate, even if just a little bit.

Happy Valentine's Day ♥