Maggie has arrived!

Josh finally got his anniversary present and she's so cute! Look at her, how can you not love this face (this coming from a person who hates dogs)?:


We'd been looking for a puppy for awhile and when we went to go pick her up, we kind of bought her brother as well:

They look like two black mops.

Luckily, Josh's brother said he would take the boy for his family. Here's our nephew holding his new puppy, "Bear":


Every time he had to put the puppies down, he'd complain to us, "But I'm strong!" It was pretty cute.

Maggie is so lucky, she even gets her own pink water and food dishes. Just so everyone knows she's a girl.

So we got a toy poodle because they're supposed to be hypoallergenic and they don't shed. Plus, she's small enough to not drive me insane. But unfortunately, I get hives every time I touch her and I sneeze about 20 times a day now. We bought some allergen shampoo today so hopefully that works.

We've gone to church one time in our new ward. ONE TIME. Tonight I got the phone call. And now I'm "subbing" for the 14-15 year-old Sunday school class on Sunday. GRRRR!

I'm basically unemployed right now.

So why, you might ask, haven't I been blogging more? Well, it's like this. My life is so consumed with Judge Judy, Montell, and Maurey, that I simply cannot find the time. Ok, that's not entirely true (except for Judge Judy), but it is amazing how I don't want to do anything when I have so much time! But seriously, the house still has so much to do. We're still not done painting and every time I walk by the mess that is our storage room I want to cry cause it's pretty much all my stuff that I don't know what to do with! It is nice to have a break from work though...

I'm working in a high school next year. And I'm a little bit nervous. Last year I worked at a school with grades K-8 and one day I had to go upstairs, but I could hear all of the eighth grade students out in the hall and I was too scared to go up there, so I hid in a doorway until they were in their classroom, so how on earth will I survive in a high school with over 2,000 students where I have to pass them in the hall EVERYDAY? AAHHHH! (and how was that for a run-on sentence?) Someone told me that everyone will just think I'm another student. And that was just about the best compliment ever. Because I'd like to think that I still look like I could be in high school.

Ok, ok, I'm back

After having at least 20 people (well, like 3) complain to me about not posting pictures of our new house, I finally decided to do something about it. So I grabbed my camera and went around the house.

Our first project was removing our weed trees. Here is our backyard before:















(I know they don't look like much, but they were seriously bigger than me. Like trees I tell you!)

And here is our pretty backyard now!

(well, "pretty" except for the massive dead spot of grass. We just can't get it to turn green!)

We decided we were too lazy to paint all of the house, so hired a painter to take care of the front room and kitchen/family room area.

Before:















The red almost looks good in this picture, but it really wasn't. Every single wall was red and it was a crappy paint job.














And now...
















(yeah, the kitchen still needs a lot of work. Ugly yellow cupboards. Blech! We're hoping to remodel for Christmas).














Isn't it so warm and homey? And we love our new couches (Finally! After two weeks of sitting on the carpet).

And this is our storage room. We realized the other day that we had unpacked most of our stuff, but we don't have a single empty box. I still don't know where we got all this crap from!
















So, I still need to do tons of decorating and get some color in this place! Jules--you planning on coming out here to help? You promised!

Pictures of the house are coming soon.

I promise.