Sad news

We recieved word last night that Brent's long time family dog, Demi, went to live with God in Doggy heaven on Tuesday. She was 16 years old. We will greatly miss her.

A little update :o)

This past weekend (October 16th-19th) I was finally able to attend the Infant Massage Certification course I had been trying to attend for over a year! It was wonderful!! I flew into Seattle Wednesday night and class started Thursday morning. I met some wonderful people and made some special friends, and loved learning how to teach parents how to massage their infants. It was such a special and personal course, the connection between a parent and their child is amazing, and being able to teach parents this special technique is something I am humbled to do.
My first class starts this coming Monday, This will be my practicum class, so these are all technically volunteers for me to practice teaching and then they will evaluate the class and i'll be passed or not... hopefully passed :o) I'm working with several friends and their babies, and i'm so excited to be able to bring this to Boise! I also met a wonderful lady with twins on the plane ride home, who happened to evesdrop over my work I was doing and signed up immediately! :o) After the 5 week practicum class I'll send in my exam and all the evaluations from parents, and hopefully with about another 5 week turn around on exams, i'll get my certification to teach!!.... and get paid for it. :o) So far I am the only one in Boise that I know of, i've googled, looked in the phonebook, asked around, and cant seem to find anyone else that does this, so I'm really hoping i'm the first, and can get a successful business going. so I guess all I can say is... Wish me luck!!!

Update: Snow!!

Yes, your seeing correctly. It has currenty been snowing for just over an hour... and we have 2 inches!!! This is crazy!

Brent and Abby are loving it though! Abby didnt want to come inside!

We got home about an hour and a half ago, just before it started snowing hard... our cars are still warm... but that doesnt stop the snow from settling on them!

It really is beautiful isnt it

SNOW!!!!!

Well, It is officially freezing outside! literally, it's snowing! the drive home from work was filled with paniced drivers, thank goodness neither Brent or I have to go far, and we both got off work early... because Boise drivers are scary in the rain or snow! They didnt warn us of snow until this morning, and then they even said it would be tomorrow morning, so imagine the shock throughout the treasure valley that came with the white stuff this evening.

Abby is loving the show! she was covered when we got home, and what better way to show the snow than on her!

They are now saying It will snow until 8pm tonight, then freeze, then snow the rest of the weekend :o) yay. Brent also happens to be taking me duck hunting tomorrow morning... i'll let you know how that goes.

Happy Belated Birthday Hubby!!!

We were so busy with the yard this past weekend I didnt have a chance to post about Brent's Birthday! He turned 26 on Sunday the 5th! It was great having his parents here to celebrate with us! We went out to dinner at the Bittercreek alehouse and I baked a cake to enjoy. We worked hard on the yard, but I think he still had a good birthday. Thanks for all the well wishes and cards he recieved, he truly appreciated it!

Boise's First Frost!!!

BRRRRRRR!!!! We woke up to a 32 degree morning! we were fairly warned by the news, but still it doesnt seem like it will happen until it does!!

It was our first big fall frost! I spent a good 8 minutes scraping my windows and heating up the car before I left for work. I'm not sure if you'll be able to see the frost on the ground, but it's frozen solid! I'm really nervous now because of the trees and bushes we just planted! I hope they survive!

This shows a little better the frost on the grass (or clovers in our case)

I think this shows it the best, and this was taken at 9:30 am, I think the roof above the garage is dry because that is where we had the new insulation installed... not sure, but it was interesting. Now we just have to figure out if we'll be able to lay sod this weekend or not!!

Kinda After...

Our little tree! We saved this tree from being consumed by the nasty pond that once filled our back yard, we were not sure it would make it, but Beth pruned it back alot and made it look like a tree again, while I layed the rocks and made a nice raised bed for it to live in. Hopefully it will survive!

These are our biggest trees, they were right off the back of the deck, one is a crabapple tree, and I'm not sure what the other is, but it has alot of leaves! We connected their beds so we can plant some things between them, and we'll make a little path off the new deck in the spring.

Deck clutter :o) and the right side of the yard, finally graded, ready for gravel

This is our new bush! It's a burning bush, which will turn bright red every fall. I'm so excited to have color and plants in our back yard!

We lined the rocks all the way around to the deck, we made it wrap around in a light curve to form flower beds and a garden area for my veggies next spring.

We are so excited to have a back yard we can use! Hopefully this weekend we'll be able to lay sod, Brent figured out our back yard is roughly 2000 sqft, or at least the part were going to lay sod, this is going to be one huge project!

Before...

2 weeks ago Brent and I spent the weekend ripping out our lower deck in preperation for our huge back yard renovation project! It was a long weekend, with lots of screws to remove (by hand!) and lots of rotten wood, but we got it done, and were able to move onto the next project!

(Below) the final boards of the lower deck... almost done! They were sooo rotten! Brent kicked on board and it crumbled, their used to be a pond off to the left of the pic (where the dog pool is) that was so disgusting, it decayed the deck, thank god that is gone!

Brent's parents helping move the massive amount of river rock we had in our yard, we had over 2,000 i'm sure!

A view of the whole back yard, under construction. See the skid-steer! It was a blast to drive! we moved so much dirt it's unreal! but we couldnt have done it without Brents parents help! Thanks Beth and Jim!!

Our wonderful rented skid-steer, we could not have done anything this big without it! and see all the rocks??? we picked through every single one to get the dirt out, and organized them around the yard.

Beth and Jim hard at work organizing rocks

Starting our down-slope from the house, we had to bring the dirt level down 6 inches, cause it was sitting against the house too high and could corrode the foundation... Brent's an engineer, when he says to do something, I listen :o)

Our side fence (the right side of the yard) which is leaning if you can see it, this area (about 10-12 feet from the fence line) will be filled with gravel for quad parking and i'm sure eventually a boat or something...

Another angle of the right side of the yard being graded down to the back

We are so excited to have a yard that actually looks like a back yard! Summer was so difficult without a real yard! I cant wait to host a real bbq next summer and have actual grass to enjoy!