Top Secret Mission

With the economy in the toilet and oil and gas prices down in the dumps, Brent and I are temporarily out of work. However, when you are self-employed, you are never unemployed....right? Now is time for my dad's joke about being self-unemployed. All that being said, we are doing a little side work for ourselves during the down time (with Karla). The project is top secret, and all I can tell you is it involves a giant pencil.

Saturday Night with the Bowlings

I'm a little behind the ball on my blogging, but we went over to Ursi and Michael's last weekend and had a ton of fun. Here's little Ephraim. Isn't he the cutest thing ever?
We ate burgers and played a board game. It was a ton of fun!

I'm so lucky that my best friend is the coolest person in the world!

Windows and Doors

They have put in all our windows and outside doors, except the front one. The front door is on order, and may go in this week.

We love the back of the house the most. We wanted a lot of windows in this house, and we sure got them.

Brent - enjoying our balcony.

The next step is the roof tiles, which might start as early as this week. Can't wait!

Cleaning Out the Pantry

Ok, this is pretty embarrassing to tell on myself, but here it is anyway... I decided to clean out the pantry yesterday. I'm wanting to do some more cooking, so this seemed like a good idea. I was also thinking about something my mom said at Christmas. She was talking about how my step-grandmother used to get mad at she and Joe when they threw away things from her pantry that were expired. My mom let all of us know that if we see something in her pantry that is expired, that we have not only the right but the obligation to throw it away. With that in mind, I thought that I had better go through the pantry and look at the expiration of everything, throwing away all expired food. I found a number of items that expired sometime in 2008...expected. Some items that expired before that...a little embarrassing. Then, I came upon this canister of Quaker Oats. After peering at the bottom of the container, I exclaimed to Brent, "We have a winner."
Yes, you are reading that correctly...these Quaker Oats were best before September, 21, 1998. 1998...I wasn't even married then. I was in college. I realized that means that I had these expired Quaker Oats in my college apartment, moved them with me when I married Brent to Rhode Island, moved them to our second apartment in Rhode Island, moved them to my mom and Joe's house for 3 months when we moved back to Oklahoma, moved them to our apartment here in OKC, then to our current house. 5 moves...after they expired!

Tellingly, the canister is still about 3/4ths full. It is clear I am not a big Quaker Oats fan. In fact, I'm not exactly sure why I bought them. Maybe, to try to make my mom's Chocolate Chip Oatmeal bars?

Sadly, these Quaker Oats will not make the next move with us. They made the final move to the garbage can last night. And I promised myself to look at the expiration of items in my pantry more frequently.

House Progress

Additional progress has been made on the house, and it is so neat to see it take shape. This is the back of the house. Brent is standing on the back balcony. The windows in the middle all look into the great room. On the right is the master bedroom. On the left, the first story is our breakfast room, and the second floor is a bedroom.


They have the windows sitting in the house now, and they will be going in soon.

We went today to do our granite, tile and carpet picks, along with finalizing a few other things with Richardson. It was a bit overwhelming, but we are really happy with our picks...we think.

New Year's Eve

For New Year's Eve, Brent and I went out with Toby and Karla. We went to the Thunder game...and we actually won!!! After the game, we caught Yes Man at the Harkins theatre.
After the movie, we went over to see the ball rise. Yes, in OKC we don't drop the ball we raise it! Interpret how you will.

Afterwards, they have a pretty impressive fireworks show. My iphone doesn't quite capture it, but if you've seen good fireworks before, you get the picture.

All in All a very fun evening.