Making History

For those of you who have ever been to my house, you know that our office is a proverbial wreck. Well, I decided the other day that I'd had enough - for reals - and cleaned it up. That's right - all by myself, and in record time. (You learn how to work really fast when you only get 30 minutes chunks while the babe naps). Needless to say, Alec was very pleased when he got home... :)

(Sorry there aren't any before pictures, but really, who wants to see that!?)

Holiday Cheer

Greetings from Kansas City!

(We're actually in Phoenix right now, but I wanted to share some pictures of our

warm and cozy Christmas-ized apartment).

Finally, a Christmas tree I actually like to look at! For 3 years, now, I've decorated and redecorated, purchased, returned, and dealt with ugly trees trying to be beautiful. This was actually the second attempt. As you may recall from my previous post, I went shopping with my mom and sister and spent far too much money on Christmas decorations. Well, it turns out those were just ugly, so I took them back, spent less money on different ones, and redecorated. Who knew someone would be crazy enough to decorate a Christmas tree twice in one year? (I realize that most of you won't appreciate this, a lot of you may even think it's ugly, but I like it, and that's all that matters!) You can't really see it that well - it's not a great picture - but it's your standard artificial tree [that once looked huge in our little Logan apartments and is now dwarfed by the height of the ceiling in our KC apartment] with white poinsettias, silver and white berries, silver, white and clear balls, glass stars, and silver icicle droplets.

On a side note, Alec doesn't like it and we will have something different next year.

We've always wanted a fireplace, and now we have one. So what better thing to do than string some garland, lights, and candles for a little sparkle and warmth?

Sasha likes to get into the Christmas spirit as well. (Mostly she like to chew on the tree branches and use the ornaments like toys, but that's okay... No harm done... yet...)

Lessons in Bad-Wiffery

So, I'm a bad wife. Our building is pretty air-tight to get into: You need a clicker to get into the parking lot. You need a key to get from the parking lot to the front door. You need a different key to open the front doors. And you need a different key to open the apartment door. The other day, I dropped Alec off at class so I could run a few errands while he was gone, and he would call when I needed to come pick him up. Well, he did, but my phone was in the other room with the ringer turned off.. He was able to get a ride home, though... However, he couldn't get into the building because we've only been using one set of keys and he didn't have it because I did. He managed to climb the fence to the parking lot, since that was the best bet I would see him because our office overlooks the parking lot. However, I was too busy playing The Sims (I'm so bad, I know) and didn't see. Nor did I notice when he threw a nut from the tree at our 4th floor window, but missed and ended up breaking the 3rd floor window. Nor did I notice when he climbed up the [should be condemned] back stairs to the "not an exit" locked door of the kitchen.. a mere 10 yards away from the office window and had I looked up I would have seen his smiling, waving little personage and the whole ordeal could have been over. But no, he had to call his dad have his dad write me an email telling me to call Alec, and even then I didn't get it... (stupid Sims). Finally, it dawned on me that he had been gone a really long time, so I went to my phone to call. And what did I find, 16 missed calls! I'm such a BAD wife!!! :( In the end, he made it home, after waiting outside for 1/2-an-hour while stupid me was wasting time on a stupid computer game... who would have ever thought?

On to happier things... I've been a bit inspired by our great place and have built a shower curtain. Not just because I felt like it, but also because we sort of needed one. The way our tub is set up, the rod goes around 2 sides of the tub, making a standard shower curtain too short. Also, the curtain rod is hung high enough above the tub that the curtain barely comes down far enough to do it's job... so we really needed something different anyway. Here's the finished product:

Max has also been training Alec to be a dad. The last 4 nights or so, he's just been crying and whining all night long. It seems like every hour or so, he'll cry and howl until someone - usually Alec because he's nice to me and feels bad that I haven't been sleeping well anyway - comes and watches him eat. That's all he needs. He doesn't want someone to pet him, there's nothing wrong with him, he just wants someone there while he eats. He's so silly!

Here is a picture of the kitties nuggling on a pile of dirty clothes [another sign of what a bad wife I am] ... too cute!

This is the tree outside our office window. It's beautiful. It also has 2 resident squirrels, Jimmy and Sally. Sally is a bit camera-shy.

Everything's Up-to-Date in Kansas City

Well... Here we are!!!

After an extremely exciting (boring and long) drive from Utah, we made it. To make a long story short, we got into our apartment (finally) by signing the lease and then taking a first look at it. It's beautiful! :) It's in a building that used to be a hotel in the early 1900's. It's been a bit worn down, and unloved, and there were a TON of cobwebs, critters, and dusties everywhere, but we've made a little (1600 sq/ft) home of it. (The pictures are some of the beautiful architectural detailing of the apartment as well as our sunroom that I'm still at a loss as to what to do with).

We've spent most of our time here unpacking - Alec has been going to school and really enjoying it, so really I've done most of the unpacking, but we made a deal when we were still in Logan that since he did most of the packing while I worked, I would unpack while he got educated. (It's better this way anyway, because now things are where I want them.)

The cats are adjusting pretty well. They didn't like the drive or the hotel rooms one bit, and it took a day or so for them to decide this was an okay place to live. Max still gets a little lost because it's so big, but we never said he was a rocket scientist kitty. Sasha's favorite activity is terrorizing the pigeons that live outside our bedroom window, but as long as she stays inside, I'm okay with that.

We went to a KC Cheifs football game last week. One of Alec's professors has season tickets that he gives to the students when he can't make a game. They lost miserably, but it was still fun to hang out with some of the other students in the program.