christmas recap

well, it's been a busy week at the LW/LH house. in the past week,

-we purchased a new washer and dryer. i am in love with this set and plan to devote an entire blog post to how cool these things really are. did you know that i can sanitize my clothes without using any hot water whatsoever? cool, huh? anyone want to know what the name of the paint color in our laundry room is so you can copy it? sorry, i don't have a clue what the technical name is, but i like to call it the flamenco room. it's flashy and it won't last long. since we got the white washer and dryer instead of the cool red pair, we are going to paint the laundry room red and spice things up a bit. as if flamingo pink wasn't spicy enough...


-we received our furniture and things. because we thought it would be fun to camp out in our condo and new house for as long as possible, just to see how well we could survive on so little, we had them pack up all of our stuff and keep it in storage for a few weeks. it's a good thing that the company that packed us up did such a great job packing and protecting everything, because this is the truck that brought everything out of storage. it's probably a good thing that i didn't visit our things in storage to see what the facility was like.


-my friend, i'll call her "mrs. d," brought over some amazing homemade fudge and peppermint bark. she reads my blog and knows how much i love peppermint bark... it's a good thing that mrs. d agrees to go running with me every once and awhile, because i gobbled down the fudge and peppermint bark faster than you can say "weight watchers."

-my brother did fly out to help us paint after he finished his finals. unfortunately, i was waffling on the paint color decisions and halted all painting efforts until i could learn to be more decisive. after all, i'm a military wife and am supposed to make decisions quickly, right? not quite.. i think i've finally decided what to do and am going to lowe's this morning to make everything right. thank you, LH for being so patient and enduring the existing paint colors for so long.

-i graciously offered to fly us all back to my parents for christmas. unfortunately, my brother wasn't so sure of my piloting skills, as you can see in this picture (LH risked his life to take this picture from the runway).


my brother finally loosened up a bit once he saw that i knew what i was doing (notice that LH took the picture from outside the plane. he is a very, very brave man).


-seriously, though... we drove back to my parents and bozeman was more than happy to have a friend in the back seat. in this picture, he is leaning on my brother so they could both watch a movie together. he stayed that way for a long time, even though i initially thought that he was just posing so i could take a picture of them together.


-on sunday, my brother, LH and i rode to church together and then we all had to do some last minute shopping. since some of the shopping was for LH, my brother and i dropped him off at barnes & noble while we drove around in the crazy christmas traffic. we almost ran out of gas, had some rather interesting experiences trying to park the big truck in crowded parking lots, and eventually went back to get LH, who was waiting for us with hot chocolate for everyone.

-we had a ton of fun spending time with family at christmas. unfortunately, i didn't take a picture of the dinner that LH and i made for everyone. we were a little non-traditional this year: i made a mustard-dill salmon and LH cooked his famous steaks on the grill. i did manage to get a picture of bozeman on christmas morning, although i refuse to share the picture of me in my glasses with some major flyaway hair.


-we also met our mailman. you laugh, but that is a big deal in these parts. he has been on the same route for 21 years, so he knows everyone. our neighbors are incredibly friendly and LH and i quiz each other on their names all the time. neither one of us has done very well at remembering their names, and rather than ask them for the third time what their names are, i'm going to resort to searching through the GIS tax maps and creating a chart that lists our neighbors names. most of them have lived here for the past 20+ years and their kids have all grown up together. it's kind of nice to live in a place where everyone is so established when we know that we'll be moving again in three years or so. gives us a sense of stability. i know more about our neighbors here than i ever knew about our previous neighbors. this is the kind of place where people stop and talk to you when you are checking the mail, walking the dog or taking out your trash.

-and the best one yet: we are going to watch some bull riding on new year's eve. at least, that's the plan. mr. and mrs. d are also having a party that we are looking forward to on the same night.

i hope you all had a very merry christmas and aren't kicking yourself too hard for indulging in all of the yummy foods. i hope you spent time with the people most important in your lives and also remembered why we even have a christmas to celebrate: that god sent his son here to save us.