All grown up...Happy Birthday, Jon!

Today my baby brother turns 21! I really can't believe that he is 21 already...I still feel like I'm 21. Regardless of my incapacity to understand how fast time goes, today is his 21st birthday and I hope he has the best day ever!

Auto Pilot: Off

My husband puts up with so much. Last night he called me on his way home from work and we were both chatting about our respective days (mine much better than the day before, I might add-no lock outs occurred on any front) when he suddenly interrupted the conversation with "Crap! I forgot to get in the lane to get on the freeway. Now I have to turn around." He then proceeded to tell me that he couldn't talk on the phone and drive home-that I distracted him. I was completely baffled. So I laughed at him. Out loud. Like I said, he really does put up with so much. Did I mention that he is the best person I have ever met and that I could only hope to be as good of a person as he is?

Anyway, I laughed because he does this drive home from work every single day. Just like I do my drive home from work every single day. When I am driving home ESPECIALLY from work, I could simultaneously be driving, talking on the phone, and listening to the radio. I wouldn't even have to think about the drive.... in fact I know sometimes I don't. Sometimes I get home and realize that I just got home but I don't remember any of the drive from point A, the office, to point B, home. It's completely and totally auto pilot. It requires no thought. So, I thought it was tremendously funny when he told me I distracted him from being able to drive a drive that he drives every day... it's not like he was trying to find a new way home or anything... he does this every. single. day. I think his drive really IS auto pilot in general, just apparently not when he is attempting to multi-task. So, from now on I think he will wait until he is on the freeway to call me...then he won't miss the turn. He works hard, though, so I guess I can understand why his brain isn't totally engaged after a long day at work. And, hey, if his only fault is that he is not the most efficient multi-tasker, then I'm a pretty lucky girl.

Golf, anyone?

I love Arizona! Today they are predicting 3-6 inches of snow in our previous home of Johnston, Iowa. Not to mention the temperature is FREEZING...literally. I think like 20-25 degrees and they might even have a wind chill! I heard they were under a winter weather watch and it could be blizzard-like because of all of the wind. My parents said that even in KC they were expected to get some snow. No, thank you. I will take my perfect day in Arizona today: 78 degrees and sunny. And maybe just to remind myself of how lucky I am and how much I hate cold and snow, I will go play golf later today just because I can.

One of those days where I totally screwed myself

Ah, yesterday. What can I say about yesterday?

Started off tired. Spent a great weekend by myself with Tim's family in Cali and now that they are an hour behind us I was still on their time Sunday night. Got home at 8 p.m., then had to go to the grocery store, clean up a few things around the house, watch Grey's anatomy (so important, of course!), and then sit and wait to be tired...which didn't happen until about 11:30 p.m. Got up at 5:30 a.m. yesterday morning (much better than Thursday and Friday last week when I got up at 4:30 a.m. both days). But, still, 5:30 a.m. FELT like 4:30 a.m. Other than being tired, though, it was generally a great morning.

Drove to work. Took an hour. Not bad. So far, so good.

Left work at 8:45 a.m. to drive to North Scottsdale to get the Mini's oil changed, get a tune up, and get our windshield fixed (finally!) No problems getting to North Scottsdale from the office. Drop the car off, no problems. Go to the rental car place provided by Mini so I can rent a car while the Mini is being taken care of. Can't rent a car. Why, you ask? Well, I stowed away my license in my butt pocket of my jeans when I was flying on Sunday night. And yesterday, it remained in the butt pocket of my jeans. Groan.

Go back to Mini dealer. Call Tim. We have to have a second car because the Mini will not be done until the next day (today). They can rent a car to him. He is not happy about having to drive to North Scottsdale from the West Valley. I think it took him about an hour. He was thoroughly impressed with how big Phoenix is. Ha. Finally get the car after waiting at Mini for two hours. So annoyed. We did get to rent a new mustang though...so I guess that is pretty cool.

Work day goes smoothly. Not as busy this week but I know in a few weeks it will be nuts. So I'm ok other than a massive headache that I attribute to a) being tired and b) the stressfulness of the car situation. Drive home and talk to Tim. He might have to work late. Fine, no big deal. Get to our crossroads and have the revalation that I am locked out of our house. I keep my key with our mail keys because I take that when I run. Garage door opener is in the Mini. Groan...again. Have to call Tim to come rescue me... again.

Tim finally gets home and I finally get in the house. Decide that there is no way in hell I want to work out...I could possibly injure myself if I tried. So, I take the day off.... after a whole weekend off. Groan. We eat dinner instead at 8 p.m. To top off my series of intelligent moves today, I spill a whole bottle of ranch dressing ALL. OVER. THE. FLOOR. The carpet, no less. Wouldn't have been a big deal if it was tile. At this point I am so ready for myself to do stupid stuff, I don't even get mad. I just sit and stare at it. Unbelievable. Then I eat ice cream because I'm just so over everything and I fall asleep at 9 p.m.

I usually think I'm pretty together but man, when I'm off, I'm really off. Today, I'm cracking up at yesterday.

Wondering...

You know how people always say, "You'll just know when the time is right," or "You'll just know if you're making the right decision," well, I'm just not sure I agree with that. Sometimes I wonder if any decision I've ever made is completely 100% perfectly right or if I could have made a different decision that would have been right in different ways. How do you really know for sure? And how do you know when the 'time' is right? Does something hit you between the eyes to make you aware? Sometimes I think getting smacked at the 'right time' would be easier because how else do you know? Hmm...

Finally, some time to post!

I cannot believe how fast the weeks go by. Is anyone else just absolutely floored that it is November 6? I have absolutely no idea what happened to October...or to September...or to August...or to this whole year. Amazing.

I feel like time has gone so fast lately. Tim and I are both keeping busy with our jobs. He was just put in charge of a big Pepsi implementation thing. I don't understand the logistics (literally...ha!) of it but it sounds like a really cool deal. I've been on an audit for the past several weeks...I really love my job. I always thought that the first second that I could get to not work I would jump at it but now that I have a job that I absolutely love, I never want to leave it. To think that someday I might have to make that sacrifice is saddening to me. So weird to think that my train of thought about working has changed so much...I guess it really is true that when you find a job you love, it doesn't feel like work. And I'm only just beginning...I'm still trying to figure out everything... I can't wait until I'm as smart as the people I work with! We had a team building activity on Friday. We all went bowling and then to happy hour... it is so nice to work with people that you genuinely enjoy hanging out with outside of work. The people are probably the number one reason I love my job so much.

Our house is coming along...slowly but surely. We drove by it yesterday and there are actually machines in the neighborhood and what the streets will be are more clearly marked. So, sometime within the next several months the building process should start... We just bought a table today. I love it a lot. We got it at Ashley Furniture... we got an extension table with 6 chairs. It was also pretty reasonable. We got all of that for $1000-less than what we would have paid for JUST the table at Pottery Barn and the quality was just as good, so I was happy. It's one of the things that we must have...simply for our sanity. We have been using TV trays for mostly all meals (unless we go out) and it's getting old. It's a really nice table...it's black with redish striped material on the seats... so it will match our couches and our black granite counter tops perfectly! I'm excited... but we still have to buy the boring stuff in the next few months... washer, dryer, refrigerator...

We want to fly back to KC for christmas. I should be able to get some time off and Tim will be too. I have to work on New Years doing inventory observations for everyone whose year end is December 31 so that's kind of a drag but it will be fun to go back to KC. Plane tickets are ridiculously expensive though. I think the cheapist we've seen is $360 a pop. I'm thinking that maybe the Christmas present I want from my parents is for them to help us buy part of the tickets. Hmm... Speaking of my parents, they are coming out here for the week of Thanksgiving. Should be really fun...I'm excited to see them.

I love Phoenix. Love it. I still have the mentality that all of these perfect days are going to come to a halt...the temperature is going to plummet to 30 below zero and it's going to snow and ice. So every day, I itch to get outside for the whole day. What I don't realize yet is that for the next six months, it's only going to be the same, if not better. Right now our average temperature is the low to mid 80s, at night it cools down to the 50s (which feels FREEZING!) It's always sunny... today it is cloudy and I actually kind of like it. Clouds are a definite rarity around here... I love that! We've been playing a lot of tennis, walking, and running a lot. Yesterday there was an art festival in old Litchfield Park that we walked around in...those people are so talented! I bought a cute little sign to hang in my laundry room. Probably not the best piece of art at the festival but I love it nonetheless.

Cats are doing well. Emerson has learned how to jump. We've found her on counters and on our top rack of our closet which is honestly about 8 feet up in the air. I think she climbs on stuff to get up there but it's still amazing. She also has dreams to be a body builder. She sleeps on my weights everyday. Looks entirely uncomfortable but if we move them I think she'd freak. Berkely didn't die (or barf) after ingesting Clorox. Thank god. They both continue to wrestle each other when Tim's not wrestling them. They are so funny...

Things are going well...I really couldn't ask for them to be any better. I just really can't believe how fast the weeks go by...November 6, huh? Wow.

A shot from our porch

A hot air balloon basket

Last Sunday morning as we were watching Today and trying to wake up we saw tons of hot air balloons flying so close to our windows we thought they could possibly hit our neighbors houses...so then we had to go walk and see them since they landed at the high school close by. It was pretty neat!

Here is Mr. Monster Balloon dude. I was amazed at how huge these things are!

Wrestling...does she look scared or unintimidated? I think it's the latter.

Dreaming of her future career as a body builder

Happy belated Halloween!

Hope everyone had a happy halloween... we had ZERO trick or treaters. We were kind of disappointed but that means more candy for us! We think it's because 1) our neighborhood really doesn't have too many kids...it's mostly people around our age and a little older and 2) the lighting in our neighborhood isn't great. So, maybe next year when we live in a real life neighborhood we will have some. Until then, I have a huge bowl of different kinds of reeses that I need to get busy eating... YUM!

Thank you again for the reminder of why I don't have kids

My cat, Berkely, is high. Has anyone ever seen a whacked out cat? If I knew that incessant vomiting wasn't going to follow I might be laughing a little harder right now. She just ingested Clorox. And reveled in the five minutes (or more or less...I don't know) she had in the sink all by herself with the glorious clorox while I forgot that this was one of those times I had to keep a close watch on her. Does everyone see now why I don't have kids? I would go certifiably insane if I had to 'keep a close watch' on them 24-7...which I've heard is true. The kids would get down a whole bottle of clorox before I remembered about it. Then I'd be charged with neglect and known throughout the world as the worst mom on the planet. No thanks.

For now I'll just be a cat mom and deal with the occasional slip up and stupidity on my part of leaving hazardous materials out for them to eat. Then I'll watch them be high and clean up their puke. And pray to everything that by the time we decide to have kids I'll have more of a mom instinct.

The old pissy guy behind me waving his hands and flipping me off is the best...

Even though I am in front of him, a car is in front of me, we are blocked on all sides and we. are. not. moving. Apparently that is MY fault. Who knew? Thanks, dude, for giving me a reason to laugh out loud for most of the rest of the drive home. Much appreciated.

The biggest downfall to having a cold...

I can't handle cold medicine. I take it and I feel stoned. I would probably get a DUI if I was pulled over if I have cold medicine in my body. I cannot walk in straight lines. I can't see straight. I can't focus. I feel woozy. My hands shake. I get hot. Then cold. Then hot. Then cold. This is not uncommon. Every time I get a cold I face the biggest dilema: to take or not to take cold medicine and if so, how much? Today I opted to take it simply because I knew I'd be in meetings all morning and if I didn't take it I would have snot all over my face, have blodshot eyes, and be sneezing on everyone at the table. So, I took it. The full dosage. Against my better judgement. I had the conversation with Tim this morning that I thought I should only take ONE tylenol cold instead of the recommended dosage of two because it's supposed to last 6-8 hours. He didn't understand why that would matter. Well, at least I proved him right. I totally feel like I'm on drugs right now. Definitely not how you want to feel when you are at work and you have to look somewhat competant. At least I can breathe.

It has to happen at least once a year...

I have a cold. Given to me by Tim. Nice gift. I want to know where the switch is that automatically turns on the second you get a cold to make your nose gush like a waterfall. Then I will proceed to turn it off along with the sneeze switch and the sore throat switch. Luckily the achy body switch and fever switch have remained turned off and hopefully will NOT turn on. Turning those two switches on is like pure torture. I always feel like I'm dying when I have a fever and my whole body hurts. I can handle a little cold.

By the way, has anyone heard of Airborne? People at work have told me about its wonders and we got some. It has like 1500% vitamin c, 1000% vitamin a, and tons of other vitamins and minerals (including echinachea which I usually take by itself to conquer the yearly cold). I bought some and took some...we'll see how well it works. I have to believe it will do some sort of good judging by all the good things it has in it!

One of the moments where we look at each other and think "Oh hell-this is either going to be one of the best or worst things we've ever done."

After meeting with our mortage officer the other day, listening to him speak in tongues, and then proceeding to sign away our life, I am still in a state of incoherence because of the foreign mortgage languages my head is still trying to process. One of the biggest moments of the day was when Mike the Mortgage guy nonchalantly said, "Assuming you pay off the mortgage in 30 years, don't refinance, and don't move, you will have paid a million dollars for this house at that point." That seems absolutely crazy to me. Granted, it's really not that much money in the grand scheme of the housing market-especially in 30 years-but considering the fact that we are 23 and 24, respectively, and in our first jobs, that sounds like a whole freakin lot. But hey, since we will have a house now, our payments and interest rates are reasonable, and we'll gain equity, we decided that signing a huge lump of debt into our names is bound to be beneficial. So, into suburbia we go...willingly but not fully knowing what we could be getting ourselves into. Such is life, eh? Life seems to be full of these blind jumps: marriage, buying a house, accepting a job, possibly in MANY YEARS having a child. Every experience has its own risks but in my experience (at least with marriage) the benefits have so far outweighed the risks. So, we will continue plunging. What fun is life anyway if you never take risks?

Weekend Update

We spent this past weekend in Orange County with Tim's family. We went to see a big cross country race that Aaron (Tim's brother) was running in. It was a lot of fun running all over the park to see him at various points in the race and he did really well, too! He got his best time ever: 17 minutes 15 seconds. He was fast! I wish I could run that well... On Saturday night it was really too cold to do anything so we just put on sweaters, hung around, and ate chili. And no, you cannot laugh. 65 degrees out is FREEZING to us now. It honestly felt like a December day in the midwest...weak, I know. Kind of funny though how you get acclimated to a certain climate so quickly. Anyway, being that it was cold, we stayed in. Beth and I were sent out to rent a movie for all of us to watch. Since Tim, Mark, and Aaron have been extremely depressed since the Yankees lost to the Angels in the playoffs, we thought we'd cheer them up by renting "Fever Pitch," (the movie about a huge fan of the Boston Red Sox, aka the Yankees biggest rival). I think they felt better after watching it.

The weather really was cold, gloomy, and rainy in southern cal but it was awesome because it felt so much like fall. We actually hit a few pretty bit thunderstorms on the way back to Phoenix and today here it has been really cloudy and overcast with sporadic rumbles of thunder, wind and rain. It's kind of a neat change from the constant sunshine, though... it really feels like fall and I love fall! October is by far my favorite month of the year. I was a little worried that I would miss fall but I haven't...October is still my favorite month even in Phoenix!

I can't believe I forgot!

In addition to the list I made on my last post, we FINALLY got our wedding pictures! We didn't get all of them but we got our album, several loose photos, and our engagement picture negatives and proofs. The rest should be on their way (per a lengthy apologetic letter from our photographer). I really can't believe we actually got them! AND, they are really good...an added bonus!!