Haircut and Nephew

Check out my cute new haircut here.

Jon and I are excited to be heading to California bright and early tomorrow morning. Hopefully the "life threatening storm" can hold off a bit so that our flight can get out of here. We are so glad that we can spend the holiday with family, including our brand new nephew James Owen Mason, born yesterday at 3:28 pm. I'll post more pictures this week.

Christmas Spirit

So.... I know Christmas is 37 days away, but I'm way in the Christmas mood this year.

Last week on my day off I decorated the house for Christmas, this week I worked on finishing up the last few gifts. I also had a fun time watching Bones season three. I just finished the Christmas episode of the show and it was adorable. It made me think about what makes a "real" Christmas. For me Christmas is only Christmas when I am with my family. That is the number one most important part of the season. Jon and I get to start our Christmas season next week when we fly down to San Diego for Thanksgiving with his family, the first of three family gatherings we get to enjoy this season.

In thinking more about what makes Christmas real for me, I realized that my list is probably very different from Jon's list. I grew up in the nice cool climate of suburban Detroit and Jon grew up in sunny San Diego. Starting on Thanksgiving day and ending on Christmas day, once a day I will post about a different Christmas tradition that my family or Jon's family enjoyed over the years.

I got the idea from an awesome new book that they are selling at Deseret Book. It's called Christmas with the Prophets. It's all about the different Prophets of my church and the ways that they celebrated Christmas with their families over the years in all of the different places they lived.

As all of our siblings' families are expanding we know that Christmas with our extended families will get more and more difficult, so it will be fun to decide which Christmas traditions to keep for our own little family in the years to come.

Christmas 2008, our first Christmas together

If you have any wonderful family traditions that you'd like to share, I'd love to hear about them.

Try Me Tuesday

Well everyone, you can be shocked and amazed as you read yet another blog update from yours truly. But, I am here to announce that I joined a group blog with a few of my best friends and I will be posting there at least once a week. I'll try to do the same on this blog, but no guarantees because I feel the pressure to put actual photos on this blog rather than ones that I steal from the internet.

So... speaking of pictures, here's a few manly pictures that I meant to put up for Manly Monday but never got around to. Jon was really excited for his car to hit 100,000 miles, so we took pictures.

99,999 miles

100,000 miles!

This weekend Jon and I were also manly in the fact that we tried to get the yard ready for winter. Jon finished putting up most of the trim on our shed and I "broomed" the yard because when I went out to find the rake it was missing. And if you are wondering if I jumped in those leaves, the answer is yes, of course I did. It's on my list.

Jon working on the trim.

The leaves wouldn't all fit in our garbage cans. P.S. We grew all of those pumpkins.

Leaves galore.

Furry Friday

If you ever had a chance to ask my family what type of animal I would be if I were an animal, I am pretty sure they would all answer, a cat. The whole idea of napping all day, basking in the sun, having warm fur everywhere, getting massages all of the time, who wouldn't want to be a cat?

Well, being the cat lover that I am, I asked Jon if we could get a cat when we got married. The answer, no way. He said he was allergic. Then Curt moved in, and his cat Paws was going to have to live with his sister. So, only being concerned for the well being of the cat, I mentioned to Jon that maybe Paws would be happier if she could live with us too.

Introducing... Paws the wondercat. She is so named because she has 6 digits on every paw. Curt's had her since she was a baby and now she's about 8 years old. She's chubby, reminds me of a bunny rabbit, and really likes to yell at us when she gets locked out of the house. She sleeps in the bed with whoever goes to bed first and that usually means she sleeps at my feet. For your viewing pleasure, here she is.

Paws curled up on my lap while Jon and Curt were at work one day.

Sometimes she sleeps in the weirdest positions. But only before the bed is made.

See, when the bed is made she sleeps like a normal cat.

Oh, and sometimes she pretends she's a hunter and blends herself into the surroundings.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

To the few people who actually read this blog... I didn't start blogging to join any bandwagons, but I did join the dayzeroproject just for that reason. The idea of completing a bucket list of 101 things within 1,001 days just seems so fun to me. If you want to join me and a few of my friends, Anna, Ruth, Sarah, Emily, and Jaime, feel free. Share your list with the url in my comments.

You'll notice from my list of goals that one of them is a 30 day themed blog. Look forward to that (a daily post) from Thanksgiving day through Christmas day. I've been awful at blogging this year, and rather than trying to catch up, I am just going to do better from here on out.

And, since no one likes a blog post without a picture, here is a picture of me and Jon in our amazing Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt Halloween costumes.

Mid-Diet and the Yard

Well, so much for posting the pictures the next day. We did take some though. Jon is down 17 lbs and I am down 13 lbs now. We are pretty excited but at the same time stoked to eat normal food again.

Here's skinny Jon. His shirts are all getting to be loose.

I haven't lost as much as he has, but my jeans are fitting way better.

In other news, this weekend we got four new fishes for our tank from one of the ladies at my work.

Here are most of the fish. There are: a bala shark, koi, angel fish, and bottom feeder. The others are our tiger barbs, gourami, and placostamus.

We also worked a lot in the yard. It's looking pretty good but it will be even better by this time next week. We planted the flowers and put down some dandelion killing fertilizer. Jon will be rerouting a few of the sprinklers in the back yard this week and we will plant our vegetables and a couple trees back there too.

The flowers in front are red, white, and blue. The bushes are a new addition as well.

Last on our update, we have a family of birds living above our porch and it is so fun to go out and hear them in the mornings.

That little black hole is where the nest of birds live.

Free Advertising

Nope, it's not Jon like I bet Maggie would have guessed, it's me, Rachael. Since completing school a couple of weeks ago I have decided to declutter our house. Not that a house that has only been lived in for 8 months can really be that cluttered. We moved all of Jon's things from the basement of the North Salt Lake house and went through them. I cleared out the storage room getting rid of papers from elementary school and receipts that Jon had in boxes since before his mission. With his permission of course. Together Jon and I cut down some branches from one of our trees, gutted both flower beds and moved our rose bushes.

We are finally getting down to business and fixing up the things around here that we said we wanted to. I have not taken pictures yet of these projects because we haven't planted new flowers and the office is deskless until this weekend when we move the BEAUTIFUL wooden desk into our house finally. We did frame Jon's documents though and we are just waiting for my diploma to get here so that it can be framed with Jon's and posted on the wall in there also. So, where does free advertising come in you ask? Well, in all of this decluttering I found a few things that we NEVER use and they just take up space in our basement, so they are for sale. I posted them on KSL, but thought mentioning them here might not hurt. So, check it out. We have a full weight set, a printer, and a 300 disc CD changer. I know, not a whole lot of excitement but maybe something you could use? If not it's all good. Just thought I could mention it.

In other news, Jon and I are doing well on our diet. The Biggest Loser competition with the Hamilton family is still around and it will be interesting to see how everyone does this Memorial Day weekend as they come out to Utah to visit and celebrate. Jon and I are looking forward to that and I am definitely looking forward to my visit to Vegas the first week of June to hang out with the Barries. All of this weight loss will be worth it during our summer of travels. Hopefully we get better at keeping you all updated on those travels. Oh, and since no one reads a blog without pictures, here is a pre diet picture. We will take a mid-diet picture tonight that will be added to this post when I get home from work.

Not the best for pre-diet, but you will see in the mid one how much of a difference there is.