Bye Bye Blue

I hinted in the last post about blue carpet. This blue carpet was in the entire house. The first thing we did when moving in (July 08) was rip out the blue carpet in dining room and living room and extend the hardwoods. Therefore, the entire first floor is either hardwood or tile.

Before (This is from the realtor's website)....

after...The light fixture in the dining room used to look like this....
As you can see, we also replaced that with an amazing $60 craigslist find (compared to the $300 I really wanted from pottery barn).

Finally some HDTV!

We have this great living space off the kitchen. We love the open feeling that flows from kitchen to eating to living. It is one of the major things that made us fall in love with this house over any other. Unfortunately, the built-in TV cabinet was made for an old school tube TV. Our lonely HDTV sat mostly unused in the basement for the entire first year we lived here. Luckily... my father is rather handy dandy when it comes to carpentry. He removed the old cabinet (in pieces) and built a brand new unit to slide in!

Before (picture taken when visiting the open house before purchase... note the blue carpet)

After (beautiful TV and hardwoods)

Fetch!

My parents had the "blessing" of keeping an eye on my dogs while we were in CA over labor day weekend. They also got to babysit their grandson Braden. Rocky is the type of dog that will play fetch for hours. Braden was wildly entertained with this! Everyone was happy :)

Duke looks oddly dwarf in the angle of this picture.

Unfortunately he has not shrunk smaller than his 112 lbs!

San Francisco & Monterey

For Labor Day 2009 we visited Joe's sister in San Francisco. Joe was already there for work and I met him there for a long weekend. He picked me up from the airport and we went straight to a lookout point near Sausalito (it was VERY windy)...

After that we headed down to Sausalito to walk around, check out the town, and have a drink. I don't have any pictures... whoops!

In the morning we went to Shelly's house for breakfast and then drove to Monterey. We had lunch and then went straight to the Monterey Aquarium. It was insanely busy (the Saturday of a holiday weekend) but it was still full of great exhibits. Some of my favorites were...

Jellyfish! Oddly mesmerizing to watch....

The seahorses were crazy. They had so many different types that I didn't know existed.

These looked like leaves...

That evening we drove down to Carmel along the "17-mile drive." The drive consisted of great views, fancy houses, and plenty of places to stop and share a bottle of wine!

Joe & I...

Justin, Shelly, Joe, and I....

In the morning we went on a whale watching trip. It took awhile to find the whales but, we ended up seeing 2 different pairs of Blue Whales (the largest type of whale) and one pair of Humpback Whales! That is SIX whales along with lots of other sea lions, sea otters, and birds. It was a great trip but, a little hard to photograph.

Pelicans...

Sea Lions...
Blue Whales ...
Humpback tail...

Breckenridge 2009

We had an awesome trip to Breckenridge this August. Very relaxing! The parents had rented a house for a few weeks and we were able to make it out there for 5 days. Below are some pictures of the highlights...

Braden did great on the plane...

The view from our house...

The girls did some hiking with Braden...

And the "kids" went whitewater rafting and out on the town!

We like to call him Bobblehead...

Rocky got his summer haircut.

We think he looks rediculous but, he loves it.

Before:

After:

Joe's 30th Birthday

It is the birthday that never ends! As part of Joe's 30th Birthday Weekend Extravaganza, I got him The Racing Experience. I only splurged for the ride-along (because the driving one is rediculously expensive). Well, it rained the day of the event in April and we rescheduled it for a weekend in June. My Mom and Dad wanted to come because Mom had never been to the speedway. They just happened to be babysitting Braden at the time so, he experienced his first race track as well!