Valentine's Day

 We didn't do anything planned on Valentine's Day, but one of the departments Scott manages sent him home at lunch with goodies for us. They made awesomely decorated brownie bites and heart cookies for me.

Pixie loved them.

She's a strange one. She licks off the frosting, but doesn't like cookies. She actually asked me for a lightly salted rice cake instead. While I'd rather give her the icing and take just the cookie!

Her first self portrait. I let her use the camera the other day. She's been carrying around our old one telling everyone to say cheese. I noticed she was doing it from different angles and heights one stairs, etc. I think it's from the photo shoot with did with Sam! She's going to love her birthday present I got for her on black Friday.

I helped with this one a little.

I included these last two just because she looks so old in them. My baby isn't a baby anymore!

A Good Lookin' Classical Rocker

I first heard of David Garrett through a blog giveaway of his cd, back in 2009. He had his first US tour that year, but that was back when Scott had just graduated and was looking for a second job, with not much luck. So, I missed out. 

Last August tickets came on sale for another tour, this time in Omaha, so this time we got some for February 8th! Unbeknown to us, we were going to decide to move almost two hours farther away a week beforehand for a new job.

With Scott just finishing training and being on his own the day before the concert, needless to say, he didn't think it was a good idea for him to take work off on a Tuesday and Wednesday. 

So.

I.

Got.

This person to go with me.

.

.

.

.

.

Rebecca!

James watched Pixie and their children for us, so we drove up to Omaha and had a blast. 

We even managed to innocently and accidentally park in a restricted access parking garage through the fault of a faulty system. Had it occurred to me that we entered wrongfully? Yes. But I had a splitting headache and it was 2 degrees outside. Did I think how we would be able to get back in? No. I did not. We preyed upon the kindness of the security guard to let us back in, but had it been warmer, I'm sure we could have gotten in another way. Either way, even though we appeared like dumb out-of-towners, we got free close parking!

The show was spectacular. We had 5th row center seats. If you haven't heard of David Garrett before, I urge you to look into it. He is the record holder of being the fastest violinist in the world. He plays classical music, but also arranges rock music into his repertoire. My favorite of the night had to have been Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Amazing. I pocket dialed my parents and Scott, just so they could experience some of it.

He seems so genuine and nice, maybe because he's still new to the world wide fame. 

He seems to be good friends with his band and shares a lot of the spotlight with them.

The stories he told were cute. One was of when he was with his parents vacationing in Italy (he's mostly German). He wanted a toy, but his parents said no, so he decided to become a street performer. He played for an hour and got up enough money to buy what he wanted. It was the first time he had thought about making a career out of playing the violin!

He does a lot of meet and greets, but we didn't stick around as it was about 0 degrees when we left. And I read on Facebook that he had to be in NY the next day. I found out later that he did a very very short meet and greet. Sure it might have been cool to say hello, but that's not the reason I went!

He is pretty easy on the eyes. He modeled for Versace I think it was, while going to Juiliard.

Here's the song I liked. It was amazing live, even though I own the cds. They had a smoke machine that added just the right touch to the whole show. Love, love, loved it!

And also remember, if rock isn't your thing or all your thing, he plays classical music with the same, if not more passion.

Our New House!

I know, I know. I've been asked multiple times when I'm going to post pictures of the new house.

We got word on Friday, January 28th that we were set to close on Monday the 31st. I had planned to just meet Scott down here on Monday, until we found out that a blizzard, yes blizzard, was heading our way. I knew we had to get our little Honda Civic down there early or there wasn't any way it (or I) was going to get down. So, after attending the first hour of church, we booked it home and packed like mad. I thought I was going to get that extra day, so it was pretty crazy. 

We got the only motel room in the small town that allowed pets and spent the night there. I didn't want to touch anything, it was so old and gross. To make matters worse, not only did the next door lodgers have the tv on all night, they decided to get..intimate..at 6am for a long time. I was so ill and horrified that you could hear everything and until Pixie woke up, there wasn't much I could do. Gross. I feel like throwing up.

The day of closing they moved the closing up half an hour, so I had to race to the nearest town that had our bank, to get the closing costs out. It started freezing rain on the way there and Pixie fell asleep just as I pulled into the town. Scott was at work, so I had to haul her out of her seat and gingerly walk across the iced parking lot.

I made it back in time, we went to the closing and everything went well. After we were done, we were supposed to wire transfer the closing funds, but wire transfers don't go out after 2:30pm and our closing wasn't until 3pm. So, even though we technically weren't supposed to stay in the house that night, we did anyway. Our realtor was awesome. She stopped by the house while we were at the bank, to pick up the lock box. She found that the foreclosure company had taken it and left the keys inside, with the door locked. So she found a window that wasn't latched and sent her daughter inside. She even went in and turned up the heat for us.

We camped out that night as the storm started to progress. At about 5am the door bell rang. It was a police officer and it scared the heck out of Scott. His first thought was that he was going to tell us we weren't supposed to be there, but actually, Scott must have left the car door open. It was sitting there open and nothing was stolen from inside.

Here are a bunch of pictures. This one was taken last week, after the snow had melted some.

The dumpster was finally picked up today! Yay!

Living/ Dining rooms and coat closet.

Kitchen (the color is already gone!)

Door to garage and laundry room straight ahead.

Two car garage. The openers aren't working like lots of things in the house. Found out that a troubled young man lived here with at least his mother. They didn't take care of anything and broke lots of stuff.

The garage has lots of storage shelves and even a large bench for tools. 

Laundry room.

Laundry room closet I'm using as a pantry.

 Bathroom off of laundry room

With a shower!

More of the kitchen. This window thing is amazing. It pops out over the house like a little sun room for my herbs!

Double ovens!

Pixie's room. Don't know why it has linoleum in it, but after she played with Play Doh in there, I'm considering just keeping it and getting an area rug I can roll up when she wants to play!

The blue beast of our room. (That color is gone now too!)

Main bathroom.

Another closet in the bathroom. There are also two linen closets on either side before entering the bathroom.

There is a sliding door and a regular door off of the living room, to go to the back deck. If you go right around that corner, it's the stairway to the basement.

 Scary basement!

The view of the back yard when the storm was coming. The deck is covered, so that's really nice.

Front view.

We just hung out. Here is Pixie watching an old Johnny Appleseed cartoon and eating an apple she requested because of it.

We had to wait until Thursday night to load the truck at the old house. After shoveling two feet of snow here and almost that much at the old house (all the way up the hill and on the street for the truck), plus 4 1/2 hours of loading, we were all set. Well, not all. We thought the 22 foot truck would be more than enough, but it wasn't. We ended up getting back down here with the truck at midnight, exhausted, only to realize that we couldn't fit it in the driveway until we did even more shoveling. So, I went in and put Pixie down, then went back out to help Scott shovel until 1:30am. 

The next morning at 6am, we got up and took Scott to work, then Pixie and I headed back up (1 hour 40 min) to the old house to clean and pack up some more. Thankfully Becca watched her for me. We had to be back down here to pick Scott up from work at 3:30, but I had to swing by the house first to empty the passenger seat.

Then we took Scott home and he left straightaway back to the old town to load some more stuff and go to work. He kept his job up there on Fri and Sat nights.

The next morning we had people from our new branch at church help unload us. They did it in an hour! It was awesome. The guy Scott replaced (he retired) at work brought over two crock pots of soup, homemade bread and crackers. 

We took the truck back that afternoon and Scott went back up to the Joe once again for work.

It was quite the hectic week.

Since then we've been trying to unpack simultaneously with painting and fixing things. It's going slowly, but it's going!