212:365

Do you see the kitty hiding in this picture?!

211:365

Sean took me out for a nice dinner tonight... we went to Pismo's. We'd never been there before but it was SO good! We'll definitely be back! This is the only place (other than Red Lobster) to get seafood in this town! The pic above is of our appetizer... fried oysters with an olive tapenade! Yum!

210:365

The other day, i was making some hair accessories and had cut up this elastic hair band. They boys had fun playing with it-- they batted it around, all the way from the guest room to our bedroom. Seal apparently won ownership of it for the evening as you can see from his protective posture! Duke is looking quite disgruntled in the background. But then again, he always kinda looks like that. :-)

209:365

Silly Seal. He's discovered its cooler to just lay in the sink on hot days like today.

208:365

Fall is just around the corner, though if you live in Fresno, you'd never know it. I went to JoAnn's and couldn't believe all the Fall stuff was out already! But I guess it is the last week of July!!

207:365

Ugh today was such a waste. I have today off this week, which meant 4-day weekend! Yay! (I am working Friday, though, which I usually have off.) I woke up later than I wanted to today, and then spent the entire afternoon looking for curtains for our living room and dining room. I bought stuff for both, but when I got home tonight and put them up, I hated them. I mean H-A-T-E it all! Grrrrrrrrr. So I feel like today has been a horrbile waste of a perfectly good day off. This weekend we also switched up our TV service providers. We've had AT&T Uverse, but hated it. It just kept getting more expensive and it wasn't really a great service. That, and I just really dislike AT&T. So, we switched to Direct TV which is less than half the price!! And Sean gets all of his football channels that he's been wanting for years. Sean's been playing around with the TV and he found that you can put Apps on the tv! This is one where he could make the screen look cracked and write a message... did you think Shep was proclaiming his love for me on national tv? nope, just my husband playing with our TV apps. :-)

206:365

Tonight, Sean and I drove down to Bakersfield to meet some more of our Joplin friends for dinner. The Heads and Liberatroes are vacationing down in Santa Clarita, so we decided to meet halfway so we could all hang out for a little bit. I'd never actually met Tim and Joe's wives before, but they were great! I could definitely see us hanging out all together if we ever moved back to Joplin. And Sean... oh, my Sean. It was so great to see him in his element with such great friends. I know he'd love to be close enough to be able to hang out with them regularly, especially during football season. This has been such a refreshing weekend with some really good people. There's an authenticity to some people that you just can't fake, and the friends we've been surrounded by this weekend have been just that. It was a really great reminder of the wonderful people that God has placed in our lives. I am so grateful for them!

205:365

Today was a nice lazy day for the most part. This evening, before church, we went to a BBQ with our new small group. Sean met one of the couples through a church membership class he teaches, and thought we'd all four hit it off pretty well. He was right! They are a blast to be with! So hopefully we can work it out so the night of the week works for us!

Then we went to church and Matt Proctor preached a GREAT sermon on humility. Isn't that something we could all hear more about? It was excellent. Afterwards, we went to John's Incredible Pizza with all the Proctors and the Solorio's. It was a great time of just talking, fellowshipping and catching up on lives. Man I miss the midwest. :-)

204:365

Today was a great day! The President of Sean and I's alma mater, Ozark Christian College, is in town this weekend preaching at our church. He has his whole family with him, so they took their older kids white water rafting. They needed someone to take care of their two little kids who were to small to go, so this morning, they dropped them off at our house for a little bit. Then, Lito (another pastor at our church who also went to OCC) took the kids to the zoo and went swimming. While they did that, Sean and I ran some errands... But we started off with brunch at BJ's Kountry Kitchen... a fave of ours. The waitress took forever to come take our order, so when she brought us our food, she told us the meal was on her! We were blown away, and of course told her she didn't need to do that, it was no big deal. But she insisted. So we still gave her a good tip (because really, that's what she was probably wanting all along, right?) At any rate, we go there all the time and have had this waitress many times so we knew it was off for her to be so seemingly rude about not taking our order. No biggie. But it was nice to get a free-ish meal!

After that we went to the mall. We got the plaque to go on the ultrasound machine that was partially funded by Whitney's Memorial Fund-- it is GORGEOUS! I'll have to put a pic up here soon of that. While we were at the mall, these shoes found their way home with me. Love at first sight!! And we also got a slice of cookie cake... what more could a girl want?!!? What's that? Top it off with Papa John's left over pizza! oh yes... a perfect day!

203:365

Sean and I have been craving Papa John's Pizza....so tonight, we set out on an hour-long trip to get Papa John's and bring it back to our house. It was sooooooooo delish. We even got the buffalo wings, too. We haven't had PJ's pizza in YEARS... and it just hit the spot!! Yummy!

202:365

Sealy had to go to the vet again for another check up... poor kitty was not too happy about it. But the good news is, his eye is healing, but we still have to do another round of drop to clear up his conjunctivitis.

201:365

Our friend Jordan came and hung out with us tonight. We watched "Green Zone"... more like, they watched it.... I wasn't really that into it. I've also been pretty happy that Sean and I have managed to keep the house clean for more than just a day or two!!

200:365

We had our friends, Tiffany and Lito over tonight just to hang out, but of course, I forgot to take a picture. I really need to get better at that! Grrrr. Oh well.... So here's just a cute pic of Sean and our kitties. Wish I had something more monumental for my 200th photo post!! But that means we're more than half way through the year!!

199:365

I got this necklace from my dear friend, Christina. It is from a company called "The Vintage Pearl." They had a contest for people to take pics and show off their jewelry so I had some fun doing that this weekend. Here is one of the shots I took. It didn't win, but I still love it.

198:365

Today I had to work for a little bit... took the mobile to a community health fair in Selma. This picture is from something that I found while I was cleaning out the craft closet... it is a box full of all the little love notes and cards I've written for Sean. One summer while we were apart, I made a box full of letters for him to open at different times... so Sean and I both sat down and went through the box again together... it was so much fun. It also reminded me of how much I tend to take things for granted. My letters were full of encouraging words and love and Scriptures to help him in his every day life... I need to get back to doing things like that. It was so much fun to go through these again!

197:365

As a part of our decluttering, we've been trying to get rid of several miscellaneous pieces of furniture. Like this horribly ugly overstuff chair and ottoman. Why I said, "Sure I'll take it!" when my former boss asked me if I wanted it, I will never know. So now here it sits... in the middle of my living room. Waiting for someone to take it. If we don't sell it by tomorrow, we're going to let Neighborhood Thrift take it. :-) We did sell one of our TVs and the console it was on... bonus of $65!!!

196:365

I feel like I've gotten so much accomplished today, but I really only did one thing... cleaned out our office! We have a lot of miscellaneous furniture that we are going to sell, and most of it has been stuffed into our office. So I spent a good 6 hours today cleaining it out and even cleaning out and organizing our craft closet. I also filled another whole box for Goodwill! It feels good to be de-cluttering, one room at a time! The only problem is, now I really want to paint the office and decorate it all pretty! But I still don't know exactly what I want. I got the idea to make a layout of our home's paint colors from a blog I love, called Young House Love. So, I spent this evening working on a mock-up of our paint lay-out. I have to say, looking at it all together, it looks pretty dark. But it doesn't feel dark in our house... maybe its because we have 15+ foot ceilings? I don't know... I still need to figure out a color for Bedroom 2, which is the office, and our master bedroom/bathroom. This is a fun way to see how it all flows! I haven't painted the kitchen, dining, laundry or guest bathroom yet... so this layout is kinda a test to see how it goes together..... what do you think?

195:365

Our garden is growing like crazy! We have already picked a hanful of cherry tomatoes and 3 HUGE (as in, bigger than my arm) zucchinis. I do'nt think we're actually supposed to let them get this big!) But you can see how much my little pepper plants have grown in just a few short weeks! There are tiny peppers and tomatoes blooming out everywhere! Even our cucumbers (which I thought were dead) have sprung back to life! I am planning on making zucchini bread this weekend... I got a recipe that Sean's mom used to make, so we'll see if I do his memory of it justice. :-)

194:365

Look at how our peppers are growing! Its been so hot lately and I"ve been a little bit afraid of how our tomatoes are holding up, but the peppers just keep getting bigger and bigger!

193:365

Last night our orange kitty Seal came inside with a horrible looking eye... He must have gotten in a cat fight. Our kitties are indoor cats, but lately we've been letting them go outside a lot more. They usually just run off somewhere then come hopping back over the fence whenever we call. But last night, Seal was gone past dark, and when he came back in, his left eye was shut and really weepy. And his other eye had that nasty white film over it. So we freaked out and started to take him to the Vet ER. However, on our way there, he started opening his other eye more and we were able to see 1) that the eye was still there and 2) taht it didn't look THAT bad. So we turned around and went back home, hoping to save ourselves $500. I'm glad we did, because Sean took Seal to the vet first thing today, and although he does have a little scratch on his eye, its nothing that will threaten his vision. But I feel so bad for our poor little kitty. Needless to say, he hasn't been so eager to get outside today.

192:365

Tonight, Sean and I tried our hands at a new recipe- Koshary. Its a traditional Egyptian meal that we had in Cairo on our trip there a few months ago. It was great!! It tasted ALMOST just like we remembered... we still need to tweak the tomato sauce a little bit. The kind we made was too chunky... we want it more saucy. So we'll definitely be trying this one again! Earlier today, I went over to my friend, Kirsten's house. She just bought a brand new Cricut! I am so excited to have a Cricut buddy in Fresno!!! She even got the BIG one that cuts 12x24. Mine only cuts 6x12. I'm so excited to finally have a friend in town that has one, so we can share cartridges and get together to create fun stuff!! We make a vinyl name thing for her wall-- it was so much fun! I can't wait to do it again soon!

191:365

Our stay in San Francisco last night was great! Our hotel was a cute boutique hotel right in the heart of Union Square. We both slept so good we didn't get up until 9 this morning! Sean had one more treat for my birthday weekend... IKEA!!! Man, this guy is good! I promised to be out in less then 5 hours, and he was a trooper. We actually made it in and out of there in 2 hours!! Record time for an IKEA shopping trip! We left with a basketfull of goodies... and I've already put it all to good use at home! I just love my husband so much... this Birthday weekend has been perfect... filled with all kinds of things that he KNEW I would love. :-) I. heart. him. (and IKEA).

190:365

Today is my birthday!! Wooo hoooo! Its my last birthday in my 20's. I can't believe I'm 29! One of the things that stinks the most about having family so spread out is that I don't get to spend many special days, like birthdays, with them. But thanks to my awesomest hubby, it was still a really great, special day. Sean surprised me with a trip up to San Francisco! And the best part... we went to see Wicked!!!! When we got to San Fran today, we looked around some of the shops (H&M!!!), then headed down to the Wharf. Of course we had to stop and take pictures of Whitney reminders that we saw everywhere.
For dinner, we headed to my fave... Joe's Crab Shack! I think I could seriously win a crab eating contest. I got the biggest crab leg feast they had-- the Crab Daddy-- and STILL could have eaten three more buckets. I love the stuff. I'm still thinking about dinner. Mmmmmmm. Sean just sits there and watched me eat, laughing as I savor each delicious bite! Haha!
After we headed back to our hotel and changed, we headed to the Orpheum theatre for the best part of the night... "Wicked"!!!! And get this--- we had FRONT ROW SEATS!!! They were fabulous and amazing!! I absolutely LOVED the show... it was beautifully written, sung, acted, danced, etc.... And the costumes were simply incredible. I loved it! After the show, Sean arranged for room service to deliver a yummy piece of chocolate lava cake. It was great! We had an awesome time-- thanks, hubby for such a wonderful Birthday! I realized that I have spent every birthday in my 20's-- except for my 20th-- with Sean. Its kinda sweet.... but then it also kinda means I'm getting old. :-) Oh well... I wouldn't have it any other way!!

189:365

Silly Duke... everywhere I sat tonight, he had to sit close by me. I love this cat. :-) Tonight Sean made a delicious eggplant and pasta recipe. Its one of Pioneer Woman's. So delicious. I love that Pioneer Woman. And that husband. :-) Tomorrow is my last birthday in my 20's... sheesh, when did I get this old???

PS= I konw I'm behind in posting (ok, like A LOT>.. .. so I'm just going to start posting from today backwards.... )

188:365

I worked more on our bookshelves/window seat area today... moving and shelving books from one room/place to another is a lot of work! The first few shelves on either side are all grouped logically (same author, type of book, color of binding, etc... something like that), but by the time I got to the top shelves on either side, I was done. You'll see what I mean when I upload the full photo of the whole shebang later on. I'm waiting to get curtains and a window seat cushion/pillows. :-) But its pretty much just like I envisioned it would be. Loverly.

187:365

I love these books. And I love them even more sitting all together on my new shelves in the dining room. And even more than all that I love my mini statue of the David. Ok... maybe not more than the books. But I got that little guy on a trip to Italy one summer... along with a half dozen other mini-replicas. My 'Pieta' replica sits on the shelf above, right next to my stack of CS Lewis books. Sean went to a movie tonight with Jordan, which left me plenty o' time to work on getting these new beauties all organized.

186:365

I had the day off today, as did Sean so we took advantage of the bonus time together to take in the summer event I'd been waiting for: "Eclipse"! Yay! I was so excited! It was a pretty good movie, but of course the book is still a million jillion times better. I left the theater slightly underwhelmed, but still satisfied. (Maybe that was due in part to the delish Raisinets we had too? $1 candy- what what!!) We had a great day off together... I love it when that happens. Oh, and can I say that its getting hot in here? In Fresno I mean... summer has definitely arrived and it is H. O. T. HAWT.

185:365

picture coming....

We went to our friends' Sean and Christine's house tonight... we all had great hopes of catching the fireworks at Sanger High. We packed up (6 of us, with Jake and Mandy following) in the Nathan's car, only to pull into an empty Sanger High parking lot 20 minutes later. The fireworks had been the night before... bummer dude. I love fireworks. They're one of my favorite things ever. No seriously, they're on the list. Of favorite things. I really have one. A list I mean. Of favorite things. I should post it sometime. If only I could find it.... But I digress... I did wear this really cute dress for the occasion,, though... I got it last year and planned on wearing it to the coast for Memorial day, but like all the lame-o NoCal beaches, it was too cold to wear. So I got to wear it this year for the 4th. :-) Sean has the last day of baseball camp downtown today. I went and helped out cooking the hotdogs and hamburgers and stuff, but in the end, wound up letting the guys do all the hot dirty work. :-) So we were outside almost all day. This year's 4th of July sadly felt like such a waste though... no great food, no great fireworks... just kinda a bummer. Here's hoping next year is better.

184:365

Second day of baseball camp downtown. Its been a pretty good turn out so far... Loved this picture of this litte girl hitting the ball... and the missing front teeth are great, too!

183:365

Sean is doing a baseball camp this weekend with our partner elementary school downtown. Its in a very underpriviledge and rough neighborhood, and our church has adopted the elementary school down there. Sean leads a Saturday Sports program there throughout the school year and they did this baseball camp during the summer. All the kids who came got a hat, t-shirt and their very own glove! Pretty cool! Its really neat to interact with these kids and get to know them... but its also kinda sad to listen in on their conversations with each other... I overheard one kid telling another kid (both were probably about 7) about how his dad and dad's friend were arrested last weekend. The kid was in the car when it happened. These kids need the light of Jesus and I hope and pray that through working with them, they will see it.

182:365

From our garden!!! How pretty are these little green things?! A squash (or zucchini?! I'm not sure... and I'm not sure exactly what to do with it either....) and sweet banana peppers. I tried one of the banana peppers, but it tasted horrible... maybe we didn't leave it on long enough? They looked "done" though... any wise gardeners know? We've also harvested (ha! harvested! this is the first time I've ever gotten to harvest something I've grown! How fuN!) a couple jalepenos that were REALLY good. I can't wait for our tomatoes to turn red.... yum.