Brothers

Today we spent some time with my brother Jon. We drove to Winner, SD to obtain some awesome fireworks for our 4th of July party. For those that don't know, my brother Jon is a Marine and just recently returned home on his final leave time before he separates from the Marine Corps. I am awfully proud of him and SO happy to have him home again. Anyway, George and Jon never really had a chance to get to know each other before George and I got married so they've been spending some time together getting to know each other and get along quite well! So, we drove to Winner and bought fireworks.

While in Winner we also spent quite a bit of time trying to find Valspar paint so that I can hopefully finish our painting project this week...two rooms to go yet! Our local hardware store burnt down earlier this summer right in the middle of our painting so while they are rebuilding, we have to find a different place to get our paint! Anyway, all of that to say today was a really fun day. I even shot a .45 for the first time (Jon came up so he and George could target practice for awhile this evening). Having Jon and Rob (my other younger brother) around the place makes life a bit more fun! We wish my older brother Jesse and his wife Lindsay lived closer but sadly they don't :(

Anyway, thought I would post some more pictures of our house. These are the promised pictures of the living room/kitchen. The red wall is the shared wall for the two rooms. All of the others are the "bran muffin" color and are the living room walls.




Those letters were NOT easy to put up (and get them straight)! In the end I suppose it was worth it!





This collage of pictures is made up of pictures from the trip we took last summer (the one we got engaged on). There are some really great pictures and memories :) We are hoping to add one more picture to the collage so I guess technically the wall isn't done yet. This wall is actually a darker red...the light from the window kind of makes it look brighter than it really is.




Anyway, we are pretty pleased with how it turned out! And the couch covers were a MUCH needed update to the pink floral couches that lie beneath :)

Painting...

We've done a LOT of painting since moving into our new home in November. We worked first on the kitchen and living room and have now completed the upstairs bathrooms and laundry room. By the time we're done, we will have painted every room on the main floor. Anyway, here are pictures of the "orange" bathroom that is connected to the laundry room. George picked this color to go with the yellow, tan, and orange towels. It is bright and at first I wasn't sure but I'm loving it now :)

The shower curtain is off-white with different colored threads going through it (blue, red, green, orange, yellow, etc.)




I used my veto power on painting the laundry room orange. We have a color called "bran muffin" that is the common thread through the top floor. The laundry room is therefore a tan color instead of the bright orange!




I will post pictures of the other bathroom and the living room (which is finally finished with pictures up and everything) soon!

Isolated Storms...

We had a nice isolated thunderstorm this evening. At about 7:00 p.m. George went out to grill meat for supper. We were watching the clouds as we had an interesting looking storm cloud overhead. By 7:10 the storm had blown in (literally the wind began to blow REALLY hard...check out the flags) and the rain began to pour down. Within 20 minutes the storm had passed...wind, rain, rainbow, hail, and then more rain. At one point our flag pole was at about a 45 degree angle from the ground! We also had a lovely double rainbow (though it wasn't pronounced enough to catch on film). In the above picture you can kind of see how one end of the rainbow seemed to stop right in the pen across from our house...see how it "touches" the ground there!?!?! Pretty cool...God's greatness displayed :)

Look at the flags blowing in the wind!



The hail came after the first bit of rain and after the double rainbow appeared in the sky. It hailed really hard for about 5-7 minutes. This picture was taken after it stopped hailing and began to rain again.

Haying=Summer

Today was spent in the hayfield. Between my brother Jon working for a neighbor today and brother Rob going on a tubing trip, my parents were left a person short for their hay crew. This worked perfectly for me because I rather enjoy raking now and then. Being out in the hayfield gives you time to think, listen to music, and just generally smell the amazing scent of fresh cut hay! It was a pleasant day, just warm enough but not hot. Okay, so obviously I enjoyed my day in the field.

In the meantime, George was left inside caring for our dogs and doing his homework :) I'm guessing his day wasn't the most fun but I did come home to supper being grilled (yea!) and now he's out hunting rabbits.

About the picture: We don't bale in square bales like are seen in the picture. This one was taken in Idaho on our trip west last summer. George made fun of me for taking multiple pictures of hay bales but for me, summer means haying! So, I thought it appropriate to post a "hay" picture.

Trying this...

So, I love reading other people's blogs...and well, it just kind of looks like fun. So, I'm going to give this a shot and see how it goes. I have this feeling that I probably won't be great at updating because I just don't have that many interesting things going on in my life but I'm going to try it anyway. Life is currently pretty grand. We are on summer vacation from school so our days consist of just about whatever we want them to. George has been fairly consumed with work for his graduate classes so I spend my days entertaining our pugs and trying to motivate myself to do house or yard work. Today was slow. Lola recently went through surgery to ensure we do not have baby Lola's (Toby was already fixed but we don't want wandering dogs to give us funky mutt puppies). She is suppose to be "taking it easy" for a few days. When the vet told us that I just laughed because our Lola is HYPER as all get out and taking it easy for her consists of taking a short nap in the afternoon. I was right, she was right to bouncing around today so it has been a full time job today ensuring that she doesn't get too wild and pull her stitches out. Okay, I'm getting wordy...how about a picture of our dear pugs and then I'll be done for the evening!