Holidays and now back to the real world...

I do love the holidays! I have the great pleasure of not going to work for two weeks...I work at a high school that is year round. My sister was able to come home for Christmas, which I was so excited about because it would have been the first time the four of us were not all together for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, my best friend Leah was able to come with my family for our traditional outing. I was so excited because Leah was just days away from moving to Las Cruces and I was trying to spend a lot of time with her. She has now moved...but I will be visiting her this coming weekend with Sarah, a gal in my singles branch.

New Years was fantastic! I got to go to Arizona and stay at my sister's house...I hate sleeping on that awful couch! And I really don't like sleeping on air mattresses either, but at least it was better than the couch! My dad and I put up a wall in Elizabeth's house, but we had to have my cousin Kent help with some electrical wires for outlets that were hidden in the walls. The New Years party down in Casa Grande was so much fun! I just love to hang out with my family! I took a lot of pictures and will post them another day when I am not out of it...I haven't been sleeping really well...

A Few Things...

And here are the pictures that I said I would post. Pre-pictures are ugly!!

There are a few things that I still need to have done, like a vent in the ceiling and more grout around the window. It actually looks better than this now...my roommate's camera broke. :( So sad.

Well, Christmas is coming up now and so me and my roommates have decorated. I am slowly getting my collection of holiday decorations...slowly. :) The Christamas tree looks great! My parents got me a pre-lit tree last year and I got my first ornaments last year to go along with it. It looks so nice! My cats really like it...they sleep and play under it all the time now and it is so cute!

This is a picture of Patch playing under it. I was really concerned that the cats would try to destroy the tree, but I am really impressed now with their good behavior. I have only had to spray the cats a couple of times with water and since then they have been great.

I have decided that I REALLY don't like the winter. Even though I live in the desert, it gets really cold and snows. With the cold comes THE COLD!!! I have been sick since Sunday now and it is not fun to try to work and function day to day while you are fighting the stuffy nose, headache, sneezing, fuzzy eyes and whatever else I can't think of at the moment! I just want to breathe again! That's all I ask! My poor nose needs rest! Not only am I sick, but a good chunk of teachers and students at the high school are sick, also. I want warm weather!!!!

Reading Level of my Blog!!!

Since all my cousins and my sister did it, why not follow the crowd? :)




Yay!!! Higher than my sister! Hehehe...anyways, I guess that I am still an undergraduate at heart. Everyone seems to think I am a lot younger than I am anyways.

Thats all for now! ;)

Food, Shower, Snow, Shopping, and more FOOD!

Thanksgiving has now come and gone...but that means left-overs. Turkey, stuffing, yams (so good with the pecans and brown sugar and butter and peaches...not really that healthy...). But I am actually starting to get sick of them because I have had a Thanksgiving meal a total of...let me think...4 times now!!! It is so good, but it is getting really old. I am ready for normal everyday food.

It started snowing the evening of Thanksgiving, after we were all stuffed to full capacity and looking through the adds for Black Friday. It snowed off and on during the night and all of Black Friday. It wasn't too bad of snow...it made everything all pretty! The only really bad thing was that it was really really cold. We were all bundled up while we were running around town shopping where there were some really good sales. People seriously were crazy and mean and funny looking in the stores. I was laughing at some of them because they were running around with their shopping carts, trying to get everything that they were searching for...but I felt bad for others because even though they were Christmas shopping, they were being rude at times. People sure do get cranky when they are trying to find wonderful thoughtful Christmas gifts...sounds kinda contrary, huh?

Well, my shower is out of commission right now. It has all the new tile up in it, but it still needs the grout done and my new 9-glass-block window still has gaps open to the elements (which are cold, even though it is a desert here). It is looking so good though and I can't wait for it to be finished so me and my roommates can use our own shower again and not friends and family's showers. I got one of those showers that have a large spout that feel like it is raining on you...it actually was about the same amount as a regular head for the shower! Once the shower is finished, that is one more thing that will be off my list of home-improvement items. I will have pics of the finished product next post.

Have a fantastic day!!!

Yard Work and Cleaning

So my friend Leah came over Saturday for most of the day to help me with my weed problem in my back yard. Enormous tumbleweeds had overrun half of the yard. How did it get that way?....I was lazy...NEVER AGAIN!!!!!! I really hate weeds and it is not very motivating when the weeds look like such a daunting a task. We took an over-flowing truck load to the dump of just weeds and more weeds. I can actually see to the back fence of my yard now! This Saturday Leah's dad will be coming over to chop down my tree. I am really sad about it because it is so big, but it is slowly dying, so down it will come.

I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with my back yard yet, but plans are starting to form in my head. I don't want grass because it is too hard to keep it alive here and you need to use a lot of water, which I don't want to pay for. I do want to have flower bushes and roses and some bushes. That most likely won't happen until the spring because it is getting really cold and the forecasters are saying that there is a chance for first snow this weekend.

Well, I'll write again this weekend with picture from the tree coming down and my shower getting redone. Ta ta!

Gum and Detention

Working at a high school is always interesting. The kids all run around, jump on each other, have high emotions, get all crazy over the stupidest things, and don't listen to the staff...in this case, me. It was very simple. A freshman was about to chew some gum and I asked her to wait to chew it after school (30 minutes from that point) and she kept it in her mouth. Then I saw her a few minutes after that chewing the gum and I asked her to throw it out...she said she swallowed it. THEN I saw her still chewing it and asked her again to throw it out and she pretended that she couldn't hear me...even though I was right next to her. I got a form for her to fill out for lunch detention. And when I asked her why she was not listening to me, she said that she liked to chew gum. ?!?!?!? Why can't they just listen? I guess that is just part of being a teenager...

Replacing the Back Door

Here is what my back door looked like Saturday morning. Gross, huh? It let in one fabulous wind during the winter...it made my house really cold! The person who had put this door on many many years ago hung it way wrong...it was only held in with nails and no screws. And that foggy looking white stuff on the bottom left was water residue that was non-removable.

Here is the door in the afternoon...actually, notice that there is no door? That is Brother Lane who replaced the back door for me. It was really odd for there to not be any door and just a large gaping hole in my house! I was so glad for that door to be gone!

And here is me with the big metal braces! YAY!

The finished product. It looks so great! Now, just to get all new windows, re-do the shower, completely re-do the laundry room, completely change the floors through the whole house, and change out all the cupboards in the kitchen. That should all be done in, let's see...10 years or so?