The Floor is Done

Well after 3 weeks of bitching and cussing, aching backs, knees, arms and hands we finally finished. The floors are done and they look beautiful. No more cement but I think it will take another month to get all of the saw dust swept up. Next I have to finish painting the hallway, the kitchen, laundry, bathrooms, family room and 3 bedrooms and put all of the baseboards back on. That work will mostly be mine since I am in charge of paint and I will let Todd take all of the credit for the floors since he did most of it. Good job honey!!

Snow! Wind! Sunshine & 70?

Thursday morning we woke up to a pleasant surprise about 2 inches of snow. WOW! It is the end of April and we got snow. I woke the girls up at 6:00 am with a whisper of "look out the window" and they were dressed, brushed and fed by 6:30 and out the door. They were so excited to go play in the snow I couldn't really deny them the opportunity. Cheyanne and Heather played outside until 7:30 then went to school where believe it or not the kids are not allowed to play on the play ground when there is snow :(. The rest of the day was just windy and cold but not cold enough to keep the snow it had all melted away by 10:30 and sounded like a rain storm streaming off of the roof. It left quite the muddy mess. Today is was sunny and 70 I haven't even put a jacket on.

On other things the house is coming along nicely and I am sure it will look beautiful when it is done. We are almost done with the flooring and I am half way done with the painting. Last weekend I somehow turned 37 but I am not sure how it happened though. We didn't do too much celebrating because we were working on the house but Todd did take me out to dinner to King's Fish House in Rancho and I had the always yummy Parmesan crusted sand dabs and some shrimp cocktail. Tomorrow we are going to the Lemon Festival to hang out for awhile and hopefully see some friends then it will be back to working on the house for me again and back to work for Todd.

One Whole Month

Well we have been up here for a whole month now and still aren't fully settled in yet but we have made some progress. I have managed to paint the living room, Todd put up closet rods in the closets so we could hang up our clothes, took out the 3 dead trees right next to the house, trimmed some of the other trees, Todd hooked up the phones line so I could have a computer, put up a fence and we took down the Christmas lights. I still have to paint the whole rest of the house and will be working on that this week. I am hoping to do some of the flooring this weekend but we have another glitch so I don't know if that will happen.
We took a walk around here over the weekend and explored some of the dirt roads and "bunny trails" by our house. There are a million rocks out here so next time we go for a walk we will need to carry a backpack to carry the girls loot back in. They both have been interested in rocks since they could walk and I am thinking about getting some geology books so they can figure out what we have. I am a little rusty on my rock identification so I could use a brush up too. The other thing I need to get is a bug I.d. type book, there are so many bugs up here and as I found out Saturday even the harmless looking little caterpillar out here is really a demon in disguise. I thought that venomous caterpillars were only found in places like the Amazon or Florida but no they are here too. They fall out of the tree, land on you and you don't even know it until you brush up against it and your arm swells up, turns read and hurts. Crazy buggers, and I was worried about rattlesnakes.

My Mexican Food Addictiction

There I said it I am an addict, I love Mexican food and I can't live without it. I am not talking Taco Bell either I like pretty authentic stuff and they must have a good salsa. This has created a small problem for me since we moved. I'll admit I have been spoiled having grown up in and living next to Ontario all my life where there are numerous yummy little hole in the wall places on every corner. I also have been blessed with a Hispanic side of my family that really knows how to cook. So having moved up here to the sticks has had some drawbacks. There is a serious shortage of good Mexican food here. I have tried a couple of places and so far nothing compares to El Ranchero, Patty's, Los Monitos, Jarritos, King Taco or Taco King BUT I have found one place that so far is better than the rest. Casa de Ortega (just down the road on hwy. 138) has some pretty good enchilada's, salsa and guacamole. I also had a strawberry margarita and it was pretty scrumptious. The real test is going to be the carnitas, if that is good they will soon be tired of me there because so far nobody can make a decent carnitas taco up here. I am keeping my fingers crossed but I am still going to drive all the way to Ontario to get my carne asada from El Toro meat market on 4th and Grove.

Our First Snow

Well, we had our first snow at the new house today. Unfortunately it didn't last long enough to stick but we sure had some interesting weather today. The day started out cool and breezy (when I say breezy I mean a constant 30 mph wind with gusts of 50+ ) but it was only 51 degrees so it was still nice just chilly. At about 1:00 we had hard snow pellets, then lots of wind, more snow pellets and then huge gigantic snow flakes for about 2 hours. It is now almost 10 pm about 30 degrees with a wind chill factor of about 10 and clear as a bell out there. Hmmmmm. That is really all I have to say about that. It is freaking cold!!!! But you should see the stars and the mountains if you can stand to be outside long enough to look. :)

Out of the Stone Age

Well I am finally back, I had to take a few weeks off to get moved and then we had problems with the phones lines but I am back from the stone age yippie! We are mostly loving the new house but have had some issues that have made this a difficult move. Most of the issues have been with the plumbing, for the 1st week we had our keys we only had half of it working and hot water only in the bathrooms. We also didn't have any heat for the first week and although we have heat now we have a lot of breaks in the ducting so it isn't running as efficiently as it should. The guy is outside preparing an estimate right now for $2100.00 yikes. Pretty sure we can do that ourselves to. Todd says living here is like being on vacation and I agree but more like one of those vacations where you work like at a dude ranch or something. I haven't seen any cute guys bringing me fancy drinks and nobody has stepped up to give us a massage although I could sure use one. Anyways I am cutting this one short just wanted to let y'all know we were still here.

Down to the Wire

Well times flying and I am feeling like there is so much more left to do. We are getting to the end of this whole house fiasco and I can't wait. We should be closing and getting the keys around the 16th and then we can start with the hard part, moving. We have accumulated a lot of stuff over our almost 12 years of marriage like 3 cars, a motorcycle (torn apart), 4 bikes,pool table, 3 computers, lots of filing cabinets, knick knacks,and enough dishes to serve 16 people and still match and I don't even want to try to guess how many stuffed animals the girls have (its freaking ridiculous though). Honestly I am not sure if it will all fit in the new house. Some how we will have to get it all moved in 2 weeks.
On a whole totally different note Todd and I are going out to see The Zac Brown Band at the Gibson on March 12th. It has been awhile since we have gone to any concerts, this will be my first "country concert" and I am sooooo excited. I absolutely love The Zac Brown Band and I can't wait to see them live. Wells gotta go for now it is almost time to take the girls to school and then I gotta work on my packing again.