Expose Yourself- Day 2

D2: I am influenced by... These people (and things) always tend to steer me in the right direction no matter what the circumstances. My parents have been happily married for 34 years and are going strong. I hope to one day have the marriage they have. My best friend has been there for me through thick and thin. I moved across the country with a boy, and can honestly say that I'm proud of myself for taking that leap. My son keeps me going every day. And the thing that I am probably most "influenced" by is my past. I grew up in an incredibly diverse town in Northern California, and learned so much more because of the diversity than I could have ever learned anywhere else.

Expose Yourself- Day 1

Ok, so it's late, and I waited until last minute so it's not as perfect as I had hoped, but here it is, my best trait.

I think my best trait is my ability to FORGIVE, but never FORGET. I can think of MANY different times that I forgave someone, but those things I forgave them for will always be in my head, and make me who I am. Forgiveness is like a shadow that will always follow you around, as much as you wish you could run away from the problem or situation, you can never truly forget it.

house, jayden, work, and pictures!

I haven't updated this in a LONG time it seems.
House
Work
Jayden

Soooo. I'm undertaking another photography challenege starting on monday. It's called the Expose yourself challenge. Here are the guidelines.
Day 1- My best trait
Day 2- I am influenced by
Day 3- Me in one object
Day 4- My biggest mistake
Day 5- Apple of my eye
Day 6- My favorite fairy tale
Day 7- Business and pleasure
Day 8- (not so) black and white
Day 9- My alter ego
Day 10- I need to change
Day 11- My inspiration
Day 12- When I grow up
Day 13- I love that i am
Day 14- I have grown

So it should be fun and challenging.

What else?

We are moving forward on building our house. It's going to take until December to finish it, but baby steps. =] we had our final consult for the interior (cabinets, carpet, flooring, paint, appliances, countertops, etc). We picked out our lot and everything. I'm going to start doing a bi-weekly picture of the progress i hope. They haven't broken ground yet, but once they open the street i'll do it. I'm excited and nervous, because i know this is just the first step. AJ and I have very "expensive" taste, so we're going to want to update a lot of things we didnt add on at the design center. We just got stock faucets, door handles, etc... and we're going to want to update them. Pluse furnishings and decorations. I just have to constantly remind myself of "baby steps."

I've been kind of looking for a new job, but after the shennagins this weekend think it may get put back on the backburner. I was scheduled to work thurs fri and sat this week, but then found out our sitter is out of town, we had people scheduled to watch lil man, but then they were late and i almost didnt make it to work. I just don't like feeling like my "career" is lower priority so I dono. Right now it definitely is because AJ makes good money on the railroad, and there is no set schedule so I have to be able to watch jayden 24/7... Im not going to sign on to a job knowing that his job will still take priority over mine... so backburner that is.

I've been wanting to do a scrapbook for a LONG time now. I actually have at least three I want to do, but I can't really find the time to do it. Plus I don't have any pictures printed up. I need to do my 365 from last year, a yearly one, and a jayden 0-6 months. Hopefully I can get one of them done in the next couple months. I'm thinking I may just order one from my printing company. it costs like $120 but i think it may be worth it.. we'll see.

Jayden is crawling, almost walking. HUGE! Into EVERYTHING! I'm so excited because i get to get him a whole new wardrobe soon for winter. SO much cute stuff. I just have to wait another month or so, that way it cools down and I can convince daddy that he needs them. hehe.

Anyhoo. that's all I have for now. I'm home alone (this never happens), so I think im going to try and enjoy it somehow. haha.

rev up!

I have decided to start my p90x back up... I have HARDCORE been slacking on staying in shape. I have gained 18lbs since my pregnancy, which may seem legit, but mind you, i went down to my pp weight about a week after giving birth... so technically, i put on 18lbs since giving birth... its hard to get time to go to the gym because i have to take jayden with me... and he sure as hell isnt going to sit and be a good boy while momma is on the elliptical.. boo... so p90x it is... before i did it in the morning, which i think was bad because it basically took up my WHOLE morning, so now, i'm going to try to do it after jayden goes to bed. I usually stay up until 10 or so anyways. may as well work out instead of sit and watch tv!

Dieting is not for me... in any way. I have NO self control when it comes to eating... so i'm not even going to try. the only thing i can cut out that i know is bad for me is coke. i can not drink it at home... no problem, the problem is that aj is a bad influence and buys it anyways. grr.

wish me luck. my goal is to lose 7 lbs by the 1st of next month. i'll keep you posted!!!

Build your own?

Ok, so kinda a lot has happened since my last post...

We had the inspection on the house, and well, just to get it up to city code, it would be about $12,000. Which, essentially would jack the price of that house up to $200,000 without even doing any work WE wanted to do. So we withdrew our bid. Sad, but happy at the same time.

We started to get really antsy, because once we decided to back out of that house, the pressure was on. Our lease ends on October 6, so we'd REALLY like to be out by then to avoid going month-to-month, which generally is an extra $300+ per month... We looked for more houses, and it seems like the SECOND we found one, I'd get an email that it was under contract. Grr.

Yesterday we went driving around Green Valley Ranch to see if there were any houses for sale, and happened upon a new development. We walked though all of the model homes, and are pretty sure that we're going to just build a house!! YAY! We get to completely customize the house, floor layout, cabinets, countertops, carpets, cutouts, wall colors, EVERYTHING basically, and all for about the same price as if we bought a house that was built in the 80's. The only problem is that it takes 4-5 months to build the house, so we wouldn't be able to move in until the end of November... so we'd have one-two months of month-to-month... but i'm thinking that it might be ok because in every other instance, the first two months of a mortgage are "free." So if we could manage to move in on Dec 1, then we wouldn't have a house payment for December or January.

So that's what's going n with that.

Holy heck!

Sooooo it's been a minute.

Lets see... We got a house. haha. We went to look at a few houses with our agent a few weeks ago, put an offer in on a HUD house, thinking we weren't going to get it, and never fail, five days later our agent called and said we got it. So far we've signed some paperwork and did the inspection. The inspection didn't go as well as we had hoped. We need to get a bunch of electrical fixed, a new furnace (ouch), and AC (but might wait till next spring for that part, and a new water heater, among a BUNCH of other little things. The celings have the "popcorn" celing, which i'm ok with, eventually I'll wanna fix that because it's tacky and not very healthy, but then when AJ found out that it might have asbestos, he freaked and decided that fixing that would be one of the main priorities. There's a BUNCH of projects that need to be done to that house, but in moderation. I'm thinking that new paint on the walls, and cabinets/trim, some new carpet, a new master bath and we should be good. The backyard is HUGE, it's the size of the two backyards behind us put together, no joke.

So that's the biggest thing on our plate right now.

My mom and dad are coming tomorrow, which i'm SOO excited about. I feel like I have so much I want to do, but then I try to plan it out and it doesnt seem like it. I know we for sure wanna go to Garden of the Gods. Then on Thursday dad wants to go to the Rockies game, and while we're down there probably go to lunch at the Wynkoop brewery. I want to take them to BJ's, and Village Inn for Pie Rush Wednesday, and I have to make Cabbage burgers. Ahhhh.

AJ has been working NON-stop. He left for work on Friday at 4pm, and is just now coming home today, Sunday, at 1. =[ Before that he went to work on Tuesday at midnigt, and got back Friday at 2am... lame...

Jayden is on the edge of crawling, but I really don't think he's going to for very long, I think he'll transition into walking pretty quickly.

I have another wedding booked the end of this month, and then a family shoot right after that. i'm excited because the family shoot they've already expressed interest in ordering a huge canvas. =]

Nate & Alyssa got married a couple weeks ago! Soooo happy for them!!

Ok, baby is awake. gotta run!!!

busy summer bee.... summer school= BAD idea

Goodness am I overwhelmed.

I had to drop Spanish 1 because it was way too intense for a 4 week course. I was sure that I wasn't going to get the "C" that I needed in order to not have major consequences, so I dropped it. And added criminal law. Man was that a mistake. I have had 3 assignments (of 10) due so far, spent AT LEAST 4 hours on each, and haven't gotten better than a 60%. I'm nervous. If I don't get a 'C' then we will probably have to pay around $5000. I emailed my professor to see if there is anything that I can do. Hopefully he writes back.

Other than that, our time is quickly dwindling to get our CO drivers licenses. Maybe have like 7 days?? Hopefully we have at least that, before our insurance is cancelled. We spent 2 hours at the DMV a couple weeks ago before they told us we didnt have the proper paperwork and we would have to come back. Grrr. I'm hoping to get mine done on Monday, it's just a pain because if AJ can't go with me, I have to get a sitter for Jayden.

I also have a TON of pictures to edit. I still have to finish Jessica's senior pictures, and then tackle the mountain (of 1300) pictures from Christina's wedding. That's gonna hit the back burner until I finish my criminal law hw that is due this week though.

We're also in the process of house hunting. Oi. Frustrating. We've put 3 offers in so far. Have heard back from one, and they pushed us out of that one (sad face), but still have two out there. We'll hear back about one on the 5th for sure (it's gov't owned, so they have a date set), but the other one could be a while. We've got 5 more that we're going to look at this week. It's just an exhausting process.

Ok, I'm off to read about Colorado Histoy for another class.

What I wouldn't give to just escape at the gym for an hour right now... soon grasshopper, soon.

I'll leave you with a couple from our Alliance trip this weekend.