Happy Birthday to Me!!

So I was driving home on the eve of my 24th birthday (yes I know I am on old lady..joining the old womens clubs even!) and I got an EARLY BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!! Now I know that sounds so exciting and fun! I guess you could say fun is one way of looking at it, but I would more say it was more like drop zone entertainment..stomach come up to your throat then down to your knees! So if you haven't quite figured it out or haven't been told yet...I got rear ended!! Yes Betty lost her tail! I was at a dead stop waiting to turn into our neighborhood after work and some guy completely plowed me. He slammed on his breaks but only right before he hit me. I got pushed (with my foot still on the brake!) about 2 car lenghts forward. I somehow managed to stay in the right lane. I was just on the double yellow line. I Luckily (thanks to angels above) didn't get hit from traffic coming the opposit direction. Cars were swerving in the opposite lane to miss me it seemed, but no one stopped to be a witness. Overall after a visit at the ER and some CT Scans, I came out with sore muscles, a bad bad headache, and back pain. A bad case of whiplash! Hopefully things work out ok with the celica, little betty! She got beat up pretty bad. I have been sore for the past couple of days, but doing pretty good all things considered! Well here is what Betty looks like after everything!!

Fruit Parfait

I made a fruit parfait the other day in my trifle bowl that Taryn and Matt had got us for one of shower gifts :) I love it and it was the first real layered dish I had made in it. It was super yummy and super easy to make!!!

HOUSE!

Picture frame (from Ali) we finally got some pictures in it...now we just have to HANG it!! haha!! Engagement pictures :)
Mom and Dad Ray got us our Engagement picture framed for Christmas...we are still deciding where to hang it, but we LOVE it!!!!

So we have really been working on getting the house organized and fixed up! We have been working on everything from getting wedding and Christmas presents put away, to painting, to re-organizing the great room. We took New Years weekend as an opportunity to get ahead on it all and have been working on it the past couple weekends as well. Brian and I both had New Years Day and the day after New Years off (last minute, but turned out well). We were able to finish painting and re-doing the trim in the great room area! We also were able to paint the loft wall Navy/Royal Blue! I LOVE IT!! The blue wall is AWESOME! Color is scary but fun. We have neutral tone (almond oil) on the walls in the great room and dining room and we have sanded and painted all the trim Pale Bloom (a not so white, white). It is really coming together! It is so nice to be in that room now. We are excited to move on to the downstairs hallway and bathroom next! Brian is going to make a really awesome bookcase for the loft and we are going to turn it into a small library! We got our idea from Crate and Barrell, but made it better and more to fit our space...plus I know Brian's handy work will be better quality :) We will get pictures of the Navy wall once the bookcase and shelves are done, but here are some pictures of the place!

The great room with Jux snuggled up in front of the fire :)


Recipe Shelf that Mama B made for us!! Perfect fit on our little space of counter by the stove!



The wedding quilt that MamaB made us! It is AMAZING. We are planning on hanging it most likely, but for now it rests on the spare bed. It is BEAUTIFUL!!!


The wine holder that Jessi and Ross got us....we had to try and figure out what it was Christmas day...we didn't do so well, haha!! We have it in use though!!


The lamp that Aric made us for our wedding gift. It is really awesome!! We have in the great room now and are enjoying it every evening. We may move it to the loft in the study/library...but we like it so much in the great room we may not! Anywho..the lamp is great and hand made by Aric. Can't you see the waters of Maui glistening in the light? For those who don't know the wood was found on Maui on Aric's trip and the lamp shade was made to remind us of our experience in Maui. Any time we have a stressful day, we just turn on Maui!!

Honeymoon pictures

OK!!! So now I had to delete the slideshow because it was messing up the layout of the entire blog somehow!!! haha! So if you want to see our HM pictures just click on the link:

http://www.slide.com/r/1k8ktAgk0T-Gq0znTjIHczGVk2ANPTXm?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

That should take you to the right page to view the slideshow!

Sorry this has been so confusing!

Just so you know!

Just so everyone knows...haha!

I had a lot of trouble loading the slide show for the honeymoon so I had to go about it in a conviluded way! So if you could just ignore the top row of slide icons and only use the ones that are UNDER the slide show that would be great! :) If you have trouble viewing, please let me know!! Thanks! We love and miss everyone!!

Honeymoon Pictures...FINALLY

We talked about the honeymoon...we have raved about how AMAZING it was...but we (up to this point) had not verified by pictures that we actually went there!! HAHA! So here are SOME of our amazing photos!!! ENJOY!!!

Kitty Came to Visit

Pete and MK were running the Disney half marathon down in Florida so we got to have the lovely ORion come visit for a week! She is the sweetest little (well not so little) kitty. She is the same age as Jux, but twice the size! haha.

At first Jux and ORion HATED each other. They would hiss and growl and chase and scratch each other...over the week they got to be buds and Jux actually cried as Pete was taking ORion home. :) Quite funny! Jux is a little distraught now...she doesn't quite understand where ORion went. When mom, dad, Taryn, Matt, and Gabriel came over to see how the house was coming together, we locked Jux upstairs because she was being onry and then let ORion play downstairs with us. Gabriel LOVED her. He was so fascinated by her. He would follow her around and rub his head on her head and play with the feather stick with her. He had so much fun with her he almost forgot to eat! :)

Overall it turned out a really good thing for Jux to have another kitty in the house...put her in her place a little. We will have little ORion again in a couple months while Pete and MK get married!! YaYY!!

Brian's Mustache

JUST in case no one got to see Brian's mustache when he had it, I thought I would post a picture of it!! haha!! SOO here it is:

He had it for a couple weeks. At first he had it plus a sole patch...which made him look really scary! THen he dumped the soul patch and had just the mustache through Thanksgiving. Very funny!! It took all day a glass wine before someone said anything about it! Taryn was finally like..."OK what is going on with the mustache?!" haha!