Here I am!

Stinky poopy internet is down at my house again...RAR! For pictures of my 4th of July BBQ go here. Thanks so much Gabe!

Happy 4th of July

I think this photo best represents my current state of mind when it comes to this holiday.

My mom will be here at noon with the ice, I am boiling water for my GIANT pasta salad....paper plates? Check! Hot dogs? Check! Buns? Check! 42 RSVP's? Check! 72 bottles of beer? Check! 2 big bottles and one box of wine? Check! Secret spy to tell me when the game is over? Check! (Thanks Corinna!) Place staked out on hill? Uh...call Jimmy then check!
Woo-Hoo! Here we go!

Lucky to have friends like these

My mom's friend Sue came up with this brilliant idea....Her, my mom and I would have a "cleaning exchange". Tonight was the first try and it was also my turn! So, they came to my house and the three of us worked together for two hours cleaning my house! Next week we will go to Sue's house and then my mom's the next week! Isn't it genius?!?! My mom and Sue had been venting their frustration over getting motivated to clean and Sue came up with this plan to help us get a little fire under our butts! I love it! My house is so clean and we had fun doing it!

Everybody's workin' for the weekend

Sometimes I love 'em and sometimes I hate 'em. This one was particularly good.
We had a surprise 30th birthday party for my friend Melissa. Well, it was at my house but her husband, Gabe, was the mastermind.
He put together this great video of pictures of her and her friends and family over the years. He did a similar one for my wedding with pictures of Jimmy and I and then added the video of the wedding to the end. I love it! I watch it all the time. So, I am putting an unsolicited advertisement for Gabe right here on my blog....I am sure he will post some of his videos on his blog now that I've put the pressure on. They are so great and they are really professional quality. He's done them for weddings and birthday parties...they are a priceless keepsake to celebrate a milestone.

So...back to the party. We BBQ'd and then we had a famous O'Dell waterfight. They start out fairly innocently with water balloons and squirt guns and end up with buckets, pitchers, hoses and everyone totally drenched. Someone inevitably gets on the roof with a hose. About 1/2 of the drenched people intended to participate....bwhahaha! The measure of fun could definitely be the water that was dripping from the ceiling in my laundry room!

And guess what...I don't have a single picture! I'm sure someone else does so I'm going to try desperately to find some.

I do, however, have pictures from our adventures on Sunday!
My mom took the kids to church on Sunday and Jimmy and I had a leisurely breakfast that consisted of reading our own separate papers (The Boise Weekly for me and American Classifieds for him) and then commenting to one another on something we read. I know we look like two people who have nothing to talk about..or something...but, honestly, I talk to him everyday. However, I don't get to read the newspaper while I eat breakfast...ever! Then we headed over to Joe and Kelsey's to steal a fish from their pond and put it in ours. (Something ate our fish). They were tossing around the idea of going to Crouch for the day so Jimmy and I jumped on the bandwagon.

We plopped our lawn chairs right in the river (the pic on the top right is where our butts were sitting just moments before) My mom calls that "redneck swimming". It was so much fun and so relaxing. The mosquitoes started to come out so we headed into town to look for bug spray but we ended up pulling over at a picnic table alongside the road (right center) and having dinner. There was another little stream so the girls and I played there for a little bit. (Left center and bottom right...I was pointing at a snake)
I love spontaneous adventures and it was really nice to spend time with Joe, Kelsey and Chance. Every time I do something with them (or Warren and Casey) I am reminded how fortunate I am to be friends with my brothers and their wives.

Tutorial

How I made my mosaics...
I created a flickr account. (It's really easy for a person who uses blogger because they just transfer your information.)
I uploaded photos
I organized them into a set
Then I went to http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php
From there it is really easy. You can make your mosaic as big or small as you want. You can use a flickr photo set, or your flickr favorites or you can use individual URL's.
After it makes the mosaic you can right click on the photos. "Save photo as"... and then go back to your blog and "add image"
I stole this idea from Ali Edwards blog and I am soooo lovin' it!

More summer pictures

I did take these

Buffy and I vowed (back in May) to make this the biggest, bestest, summery-est summer of fun ever and I thought I would show my progress so far in the fun department...
We have been playing in the water a lot. We've gone to Eagle Island, Veterans Park, Lucky Peak and of course our very own backyard...tiny wading pools rock!

We have gotten together with our friends and family and we have gone on 3 trips! Woo-Hoo it's only June!
We have some fun stuff coming up too...2nd annual 4th of July BBQ, a trip to Lagoon and our big family vacation (uh,mom, is this happening?).

Good times! More pictures to come...it's that pain in the butt process that takes 1 minute but I can't seem to manage...moving the pics from the camera to the computer.

In case you didn't know

No, we are no longer building a house. The property is being surrounded by row houses and condos so our houses won't exactly "fit in". Also, my dad can now make some money by selling it to a developer or building condos himself. He got such a screamin' deal on the property that it's pretty much a win/win whatever he ends up doing. So, we are looking for a slightly bigger house than we have now. The catch is...I don't want to live any farther west or south than I do now. If we move I want to live further east and north or stay in the same neighborhood. We have been looking at houses across State from Jimmy's shop (the square that's made by 36th, Hill road, State St. and 27th) but we haven't found anything that is quite right.
This house down the street has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs. It has an office, family room, living room, dining room, kitchen, laundry room, another bathroom and a little "workshop" attached to the garage. It has gorgeous mature trees and lots of them...tons of shade. It also has cute dormer windows, all hardwood floors, it was built in the late 50's so it has some cute old house charm...ahhhhh, I'm in love... It does need some kitchen re-configuring but we think it can be done without a ton of expense because it doesn't need new appliances and I personally think we can use the existing cabinets (I'm sure Jimmy won't agree).
So, Jimmy called the realtor and they had not set a price yet but...there are 5 houses for sale in our neighborhood..actually within about one block of this house...and they are listed for an average of about $245,000. I know that the one across the cul-de-sac was on the market for over a year and ended up selling for a lot less than it was listed for. So I think we can get it for about $225,000. We agreed that no matter how much we love it we won't pay more that $235,000. Cross your fingers!