What We Did While We Were Offline

Last you all really heard from us was way back in July when we moved into our house. Soooo much has happened since then, so I'm going to give you the quickest version of it that I can.. :)

*Steve upgraded our electricity from 30 amps for our entire house to the normal amount for a house the size we live in, allowing me to use our dryer, among other things. I'm so grateful to be married to someone who knows how to do these kinds of things.

*Had A/C and a new furnace installed (our old furnace was from like 1953). Summer was hot and our house is all brick and basically turned into an oven. It was awful.

*Decorated our house. Through this learned that nails don't like plaster walls and Steve has a really good eye for drapes. :)

*Worked on the disaster that is our yard and planned our garden for the spring. There's still yet a lot of work to be done in this area.

*Put a kitty we rescued down. It was so so so sad. She was in a lot of pain though, and it was totally necessary. We had a little funeral for her in our backyard and she has a little grave where we plan on planting some roses in the spring.

*Steve discovered, through a close encounter (it jumped up on his leg) that we had a black widow problem in our garage. He has had a bit of arachnaphobia since then. We bombed the garage and thoroughly sprayed our house to kill the little buggers off.

*Reworked our front flower bed. I dug up a bunch of shrubs that just weren't working and planted a bunch of tulips and tiger lilies and we moved a pear tree that was there to our back yard.

*Started going to our new ward which is great and met some wonderful people there - we've made some great friends already.

*Discovered the wonder that is Kid to Kid. I'm in love with this store.

*Read Breaking Dawn in about three days. Got a lot of teasing for this one.

*Got the kids memberships to the Treehouse Museum. Coolest place ever! We go every week for Toddler Time.

*Reinstated my Gold's Gym membership and started going at 6 a.m. every morning. Check out the building it's in: Salomon Center.

*Joe started going to a preschool that the moms of 3 and 4 year olds in our ward put together and he LOVES it!

*Did the preschool at my house and had a headache that lasted several hours. :)

*Admitted Kathrynn into the hospital for an overnight stay due to a nasty stomach virus that left her badly dehydrated. Good news: she's all better and got her new favorite snuggly stuffed animal out of it. Bad news: severe separation anxiety. She was a little traumatized from the whole experience.

*Kathrynn had her speech explosion and started talking in sentences. It's seriously awesome that she's already able to communicate as much as she is.

*Kathrynn got all of her molars. Now THAT was fun.

*Went to a neighbor's birthday party for their son where there was only one other person who spoke English. :)

*Got a van. Mostly so I could have something to drive around during the day - but it will be so nice to have when we expand our family in the future.

*Got cable. Seriously, it was just so we could watch conference, but it's been nice to have. This is the first time we've had it in the almost 6 years of our marriage. We also got a DVR which I LOVE.

*Became addicted to The Biggest Loser.

*Lost 5 lbs and counting! :)

*Joe got a nasty ear infection which scared me a little more than normal due to the Kathrynn hospital thing.

*Joe has progressed with potty training but isn't all the way there yet. We've got #1 down, still working on #2.

*Got like 8 inches of snow in October.

*A couple of months after the initial bombing of the garage, etc., we found a black widow INSIDE our house. At that point I pretty much freaked out and said that we had to call an exterminator or move. We called the guy and haven't seen anything since.

*After 3-4 basement floods called Rotor Rooter and they pulled a 3 foot root out of our main line. Apparently we have a root problem there. He fixed it and put some root killer down there so we should be good for quite some time now.

*I turned 31. Not nearly as traumatizing as 30.

*Celebrated Halloween. Kathrynn was a darling little witch and Joe was a dinosaur. Pictures to come.. :)

*Went to the most insane trunk or treat ever at our Stake Center. There was a line around the side of the church. Not for the faint of heart.

I think that, for the most part covers it. :)

Glad to be back!