HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY!

Today is my fabulous sister's birthday! She's smart, pretty, sweet and fun - one couldn't ask for a better sister :) Happy 26th Em, hope it's a great one.

....er... i still haven't shipped your present... so you might be celebrating again Sept haha

U-S-A!!

So I didn't really do anything around the house this weekend like I had planned. But I did cheer on my country's men and women a-plenty. I'm all wrapped up in the Olympics again this year - starting from the opening ceremonies... well... 30 minutes in to them when I remembered they had started already :) It was awesome, what a beautiful show. Jason and I even hit rewind a couple of times and rewatched some of the best parts. And I Love the Bird's Nest -so unique.

My favs of the summer Olympics are probably gymnastics, swimming, diving and my recent addition is beach volleyball. I also like to watch weightlifting, rowing, basketball, softball, and tennis... and if I'm really honest with myself I like synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics(even if I think they're kinda cheesy). You may notice, soccer is not one of these, I'm sorry, I don't like soccer, I can't get into it, it's boring. Sorry, babe.

This time difference thing has got me going crazy. Everything is happening in the middle of the night- because, you know, China is on the other side of the world and what-not. I fell asleep during the men's swimming relay last night and missed the big finish argh. It's a good thing they've disabled videos on my work computer or I'm pretty sure I've have watched every one of them on NBC's website today.

I'm seeing my evenings this week taken up by more TV watching. We've got 6 different channels showing difference sports at different times. This is not good for my home improvement schedule. Hope everyone out there is tuning in and rooting for our peoples. :) Go USA!!

WIP

I'm finally getting around to sharing what we've been working on. This last weekend we continued in making our new house 'ours'. For a while now I've been feeling like we've been living in some one else's house that just happened to have some of our furniture in it. There are boxes and junk stacked in places, the walls in the living room are this crazy sea foam/teal color, the window blinds match and the garage seemed to catch all the random things in towering piles but goodness knows where things have been stuck if you need them. Even the plants in the flower bed don't seem like 'mine'.

We started the multi-weekend conversion by doing some planting, cleaning the garage and painting the living room. The planting was really to replace what had died while we were in WI - the former owner put potted plants throughout the flower bed and almost everything in the pots died in the 100 degree heat and no water for a week. Jason mowed the yard - it didn't look like there was a lot of grass but it really made a difference. Then he started to organize the garage while I painted the living room - with the fabulous help of Ellen. I've got some before and after pictures below - though it's far from finished and the color came out littler in the pic. Some friends from church came over Wed night and helped me decide were the living room furniture should go. Us women made the guys rearrange the room about 5 times, it was fun :)

This weekend is more of the same. I really want to get some things hung on the walls, it's looking so bare still to me. But I'm definitely starting to see 'My' house coming through. One of the biggest differences will be when we finally get rid of the teal window blinds - I keep them open as much as possible so I don't have to see all that blue/green.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however." - Richard Bach

Love Story

Love is so uniquely amazing, and a real life story like this makes me excited for people in love all over the world and our ability to connect with each other.

I just found out about these two last week. What a beautiful story. Rosie and Aaron met on Flickr and fell in love through photography. He's from North Carolina and she lives in England. I've been checking in every day for the latest post. These two are amazingly talented.

Love and the Internet are powerful things. Some may not know that Jason and I met over the Internet. Not nearly as exciting or colorful as their story, but it's our own.