Thanksgiving 2013

This year I am thankful for my beautiful family, my new spacious home, a steady job and wonderful friends!

I Looove YOU!

I am declaring this Elsa's first sentence. I am ignoring "nite nite" and "uh oh."

Our Little Pond

More new house posting....

We have a pond! Not just any pond, but one with live koi and a waterfall. Photos of this from the listing is what got us out to look at the house to begin with. The rest of the photos of the house were just awful and really didn't represent the house well.  So it's a good thing we wanted to see the pond!

Waterfall, with greenhouse in the background

Our Yard

Our new house has he most amazing yard. Every time I am out there I find a new fabulous plant. It has been full of surprises.

Here is a list of what we have found so far:
shrimp plant, amazon lily, hydrangeas, oak leaf hydrangeas, Glorybower, yellow cestrum, bottle brush, chinese fringe bush, orange tree, pear tree, azaleas, thai plant, mexican heather, white sage, canna lily, variegated fern, elephant ears, fire spike, 4 o'clocks, beautyberry, camellia, chenille plant, bromeliads, persian shield, variegated legustrum, crepe myrtle, wandering jew, cigar plant, necklace pod, roses, jasmine, mondo grass, walking iris, trumpet tree, lariope, coleus, caladiums, variegated holly fern, and a ton of gingers (butterfly ginger blue ginger, peacock ginger, variegated ginger, curcuma petulata).

These are actual photos from our yard.

Shrimp Plant

Ginger

Bromeliad

Butterfly Ginger

Roses

Amazon Lily

Yellow Cestrum

As yet to be identified

Apple

The english language is something I hear everyday, since the day I was born. It amazes me how unique and cool it sounds as Elsa adds words to her vocabulary. Something so simple as "apple" becomes the MOST AMAZING thing ever! It's just a word, but as she learns to say it and learns what it means it makes me so happy.

Who's that snoring?

This is a photo of my sweet little faker. She crawled up on the ottoman, laid down, said nite nite and began to fake snore! It was too funny.
I told her sitter about and she died laughing. She thinks Elsa sees he mother (affectionately called "Mimi") falling asleep and snoring and has started copying it.

The funny things kids do.

Slacker with a capital "S"

I realize that I haven't posted since August. Since we moved into the new house. I figure that might give me a little leeway, maybe?

So much has been going on I am not sure where to begin. So how about with the house?

We LOVE it. We are slowly getting settled. A week after we moved in I had to go away for 5 days for a conference. So there was some added stress there (I'll fill you in on my first time away from Elsa in another post). We managed to get the storage unit emptied. Right into the new den. How can two people collect so much crap. then you add Elsa's infant stuff on top of that, and it is slightly overwhelming. I have lots of stuff to donate to Gainesville Pet Rescue for their yard sale fundraisers. At least I know what we don't need or want will go to good use for a good cause.
We are also trying to get the yard under control. The house was vacant for about 2 months and the previous owner did a good job with maintenance of the big stuff, like the lawn and the pond. But a lot of the beds got overrun with weeds and the bushes covered in a pesky evil vine called skunk vine. Seriously, that stuff is a royal pain. Steve got his American Dream in the form of a John Deer riding lawn mower....with a cup holder for his beer.
We have a long list of projects for the house, including but not limited to, getting the inside painted (living room too tall for us to do it), mount and run new electrical for the tv, setting up the man cave (aka den), furnishing the spare bedroom so we can start having guests. Etc Etc.