And behind door number 3...

We live in a three bedroom apartment. Our old apartment was two bedrooms. We have gotten used to two bedrooms. One as a bedroom and the second as an office. That worked for us here too.

The boys stacked almost everything we owned into the extra bedroom when we moved in. That was great. It made it so that all of the clutter was in the one room we didn't even need.

Last week I was sick of wasting space. So I decided to tackle our extra room.

I feel like such a disgusting person looking at this picture. How did I let it get like this?

Another angle.

I started out so motivated! I was pushing through hoping I could get it done in two days. What a joke! My motivation started to wane and I was afraid I'd end up with two messy rooms. The extra room and the living room that had inherited a lot of the junk from clearing out the extra room.

After a couple days of not doing much in the room, I realized its purpose. I'd use it as a better place to make my jewelry and also to set up J's recording equipment so that I could start working on recording and see where it takes me.

We got a new bookshelf for all of my books (I surprisingly have a lot!) and two tables for my new adventures.

The view from the door. That's a puzzle J is working on. But that's an entry all for itself.

My table. It has beading stuff on it.

My bookshelf (in bad lighting). This very well could be my favorite part.

Ok I lied. My favorite part is my new filing cabinet. Its so nice to keep everything from school that will be useful. Also, don't you love my sugar cereal food storage? :) I can't resist when things are $1.

Now I have to go back to cleaning every other room well to make up for the fact that all my energy has been spent on this one room. Hopefully it'll all be done before school starts!

My problems are solved!

I found out almost a year ago that I was lactose intolerant. I would eat some cereal in the morning and then feel the milk in the pit of my stomach all day long. Some other, not so pretty, bodily functions would follow and I finally realized that I just can't tolerate milk.

Luckily mine isn't that bad. The only things I can't eat are milk, sour cream, ice cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, etc. However, if I wanted those things all I had to do was pop in a magic pill with my first bite. The pill would last 20-40 minutes before I needed a new one. I was amazed. I could finally eat whatever I wanted.

Exhibit A: Magic Pill

A few days ago I was browsing around online and found the real magic pill. The answer to all of my problems. A pill that is taken once a day. All I have to do is take one every morning and can eat whatever I want, all day long! For the longest time I've had to give up little bites of things. Jonathan always has ice cream or something and offers me a bite. I always respond by saying that one bite isn't worth taking a pill. Now I can take all the bites I want! And no more having to cart around 12 pills with me every day because I don't know when I'm going to eat dairy.

Exhibit B: The Real Magic Pill

The best part is that I found a site that will send me an 8 day supply for free! Although I almost want to just go to the store and get some tomorrow! But I should probably wait. (Can you tell I'm way too excited about this?)

Picture time!

I can finally post pictures! The internet at my in-laws is more reliable than at my house so I can use linux and post my pictures!!

Let's see....where to start on the trip...Milton usually has a hard time with these rides so we came prepared with sedatives from the vet. We figured if he started getting anxious we could just give him some to calm him down.

Jonathan also built a little "fence" from the front seat to the back seat so that the dogs couldn't get through. This helped tremendously! Milton didn't freak out the entire time and just stayed put in the back. It was amazing.You can kid of see the "fence" here. Chloe was actually a little worse than Milton on the trip. Funny little thing.
I love Chloe's faces.

Jonathan was glad I drove, even if it wasn't for very long.

Milton liked to pop his head around the seat to try and be comforted.

Jonathan went to probably his 4th and 5th professional baseball games ever on this trip. The first week we went to an A's game with Tom's clients and got to eat all kinds of yummy food. Then, the day before we left we went with Daniel to a Giant's game. Jonathan actually really liked the games. It was fun to just sit around and eat stadium food and enjoy each other's company.

Jonathan wasn't quite into the game at this point. He was more interested in his free burgers and diet pepsi!


The A's game wasn't really as exciting or intense as the Giant's game. The only fun things were that Alex Olson caught two balls and a cat ran into the field.


I really feel bad because I convinced Jonathan that he wouldn't be cold in shorts and flip flops. He was freezing! I learned my lesson for the Giant's game. I don't know what I was thinking!




We were dressed much more appropriately for the Giant's game, but I was still cold!

I have the best brother ever!

Mom and I did plenty of shopping and we hung out with Daniel, Sarah and Luke a ton too. We finally found Mario Kart for the Wii when we were in California and had a blast! Watch out for Sarah, she can kill you if she's got Waluigi!

I already want to go back, but instead, I think its time someone made a trip up here *hint hint*. I'm excited to see what we can do to see everybody around Christmas time.



We love you all!

A word to the wise....

Do not go on vacation with a dirty house. Seems simple right?

We had been doing a pretty good job keeping our house clean, but in the midst of packing for our trip, things got a little out of hand. Stuff got scattered. That can be expected with packing, but I didn't have time to pick it up before we left.

So we left California at 10:45 California time and started for our LONG trip home. We didn't get in until 1:30. The drive itself wasn't bad, it just took forever.

We walked in and immediately smelled....the stench. We had forgotten that this apartment smells funny. Now, before you start thinking that we're nasty dirty people or that we have bad smelling dogs....oh wait, I guess we do have stinky dogs...anyway! This smell has been here since we moved in. We have no idea where it came from. But it just smells....weird.

With the combination of the smell and the fact that the place was slightly cluttered I was ready to hop back in my car and go back to California. My mom wouldn't mind housing us for another month or two would she? She'd pretend she'd like it, but inside she'd be wishing we didn't make HER place a mess like ours was.

Anyway, since we've been home I've been a cleaning machine. Not to say that our house was a disaster before, it just needed picking up.

Every room is almost spotless. Then there's that pesky third bedroom. One bedroom is ours, one serves as an office, and then we have a third that doesn't really have a purpose. We could make it a bedroom for the dogs, but....they wouldn't sleep in there anyway. Chloe won't sleep unless she's touching some human skin. Right this minute she's right next to me. She could sleep all day.

It could be a craft room. I could put all my jewelry stuff in there so I could leave it "out" and not have to put it away every time I'm done using it.

But instead...its the junk room. There's stuff in there from the move that I didn't even know existed. That should tell me something. I should just take everything in that room and throw it out. Its obvious we don't need it. One of these days I should post a picture of it. Its pathetic.

Well, I'm sure there's more cleaning I should be doing. I'll update about the trip with pictures later. I just have to figure out how to get my pictures from my Linux drive into my Windows drive since the internet is incredibly unreliable in Linux right now.

I hope everyone is having a great summer!