Give Thanks

I would love to sit down and dedicate an entire entry to the things I am thankful for, but that would be just plain crazy. Despite the fact that I often feel overwhelmed with the things I have going on in my life, I am in a great place right now and much of this is thanks to the people around me. This includes my friends who put up with my frequent absence from the mainstream, my family, old and new, who love me unconditionally, my dance studio and all of the families that trust me and allow me to be a part of their lives, my my other dance family who always pushes me and lets me vent, and my work who puts up with my crazy scheduling hours because they believe in my future. I am thankful for the fact that I believe in myself, because without that belief I would be nowhere worth writing home about.

Most of all though I am thankful to my husband Josh. Josh leaves the house when I am just crawling out of bed and works long, hard hours at his job. He has the passion and desire to build our home with his own two hands, and he also loves our dogs with all his heart. He also puts up with me. He has supported my dance career, and he is now supporting me as I work my way through college. When I say support, I don't necessarily mean financially, but simply doing what he can to make things work until I am where I want and need to be.

I know I said I wasn't going to write a whole thing about what I'm thankful for, but geez! Its hard to hold back, especially when I am extra thankful I have a four day weekend starting tomorrow. I wanted to post a picture of the stove, since it is now up and running. I also want to remind you that I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, and that I am extremely nervous about it. I am reminding you so hopefully I can brag later about how well it went. We'll see. A small snag in that plan; our dinner is the same day as the CIVIL WAR-----Ducks vs Beavers. The snag in this plan is that a) we don't have cable and b) Josh is going to watch the game with his soccer team- who are a bunch of crazy men. For his own sake, he had better come home clear eyed and ready to feast, if you know what I mean!

Anyway, here's our fireplace; Happy Thanksgiving!

Baby its cold outside (and inside)

Count down til Thanksgiving!! It is amazing how much easier it is to get out of bed and head off to work when you only have three days to get through. Even though it's raining outside, and there isn't even a chance of snow (anymore), this Monday morning was much easier to face.

For the record, I LOVE Thanksgiving- not only are mashed potatoes my favorite food of all time, but I also love getting together with family and slowing life down for a couple of days. We are spending our Thanksgiving at Josh's parents, where we will be joined by my parents and siblings. We are just so, so lucky that our families get along and enjoy each other's company, and very blessed they are willing to keep us all together on holidays.

Other plans include Josh finishing the wood stove installation and the countertops (no deadline on the counters), and we have a Thanksgiving dinner planned just the two of us on Saturday. I have never cooked a turkey, or anything really Tday related except mashed potatoes, so it will be interesting. Especially since we don't have a table to sit at or counters to cook on. But that is OK! We don't need those things, just some yummy food.

So, back to the most exciting thing of all, besides Thanksgiving- this would be the wood stove! YES we have it! Josh and his dad worked ALL DAY yesterday, putting in the chimney and whatever else one has to do to install a wood stove. He just has a couple more things to do, and it will be done. Here are a couple of pictures, just as a sneak peek. Hopefully later this week I can post a picture of a roaring fire.

 Above is the hearth we chose; originally Josh was going to make it himself, and my request was brick. However because we need heat, we realized there wasn't time for that. I was really worried we would end up with a really manufactured looking hearth, but we found this beat up thing in the back of the show room where we bought the stove! The guys offered to clean it up for us; I guess that is mortar all over it? But I love it the way it is.

Here is Josh working tirelessly to install the stove. You can see where he cut a hole in the ceiling and now he is vacuuming. Fascinating, huh? I have some better pictures on the camera, but I'll wait to bust those out until the whole thing is done.


I can't believe I've gone this entire post without mentioning the fact that Twilight came out this week. Holla! My sister and I went to the midnight showing last Thursday night (Friday was GREAT!), and then I went yesterday with my best friend. So...yeah I've seen it twice already. Verdict? It was amazing! So much better than the other ones, I'm not sure why it was so hard for them to get these movies right. Besides the fact that the plot and characters are out of control ridiculous. We also went to my parents for dinner on Saturday, where we watched the Ducks play (WAAAAAAAH dontwanttotalkaboutit).

Hope to have some great pictures to share soon!

Fall Dance

Finally a nice, relaxing weekend (sort of). The weekend started off great, because Josh had Friday off so we was able to come pick me up at dance class. He actually came early and hung out for a little bit, which is AWESOME. Someone asked me if that was distracting, and I say NO WAY! I think I dance better with someone special there to show off for. :) The dogs were over at Grandma and Grandpa's (Heineys), so we picked them up there and ended up staying for dinner. Bedtime was an early affair, which was awesome.

Saturday my students had a dance competition, which was held by our local dance association. I do not compete at these, because 1) I am on the board of the association so I'm not allowed and 2) Being a competitor and teacher at the same time is stressful. I try to only enter competitions where I don't have most of my students competing, which means mostly championships out of the area, and this is just fine by me. This particular dance competition was really, really great- every one of my 6 students placed! My two premiers placed first and third, and the other dancers did quite well. I have one student who is moving up very fast- she and her family are extremely dedicated to dance (she also takes tap and ballet!) and its so fun to watch her succeed time and time again. She is a very hard worker, and a GREAT team player! She and her family always have treats and kind words for fellow dancers. I have two other little ones who are just starting to come into their dancing, and it is so fun to watch them get up on stage. Every time they compete I can see so many improvements. Finally, I had a little, little one compete in Primary, the youngest group. I may be biased but I thought she was the cutest thing up there; and she danced very, very well. Overall, an extremely fulfilling day for my studio!
That night, Josh and I headed to a local bar to watch the Ducks, who DOMINATED Stanford. I also went out for a drink with my dance teacher, a couple dancers and the judge from the competition. I was very excited to get to go out with the judge, because one of her students just won the World Championships this summer! It was really nice to get to talk to her about it; she still gets teary thinking about the whole thing. Awe.

Sunday was part lazy, part productive; got some dance practice in, got some TV watching in, got some grocery shopping done (finally!), got to spend some time with the family (Heineys) and got the house picked up. That is my favorite kind of Sunday right there! I can never really get a good rest Sunday nights unless I'm ready to start the week, and this weekend helped me do that.

This week has started off great, because not only did I get the great news that we are getting heat at our house (fireplace!!!!) but I also have my mother-in-law's car for the week while she is out of town. Until we have two cars in the household, this is such a treat for me.

WOW this was a long post! But I have a couple cute pics from the weekend, so here ya go!

Me and my Primary dancer

Movin on up!

Reaping the benefits of hard work!

Crafty

Well, it isn't very exciting, but I primed the dining room chairs. Do we have a dining room? Not really. Do we have a dining room table? Not currently. But once we do...I'll be ready. I think I'll paint them a light gray or something so they aren't just primed. I hope you can take a moment and enjoy the shed in the background; it came with the house! Oh my gosh, it was such a deal. The only problem? Its UGLY! Seriously. I think hobbits lived in there while our house was uninhabited. Hopefully next spring we will build something that is nicer to look at. 

Here are the pumpkins my sister and I painted. They are currently at the dance studio, but I really liked them on our stoop. Is that a stoop? It's no porch...I'm not really sure what it is. I feel like in order to be a stoop we need to sit and drink beers on it, but whatever.

That is all I have for my crafts. I know, kind of boring.

I said I would talk more about our trip to Fabric Depot, and let me tell you, I never knew you could go on a date to a fabric store, especially with someone like Josh. He grew up with two brothers, so he never really had to partake in the girly outings, and every time we do something like this he normally turns into a zombie, and finally we just have to leave the store. Magic was in the air though, because this turned out to be an amazing outing. Did you know that you can buy fabric with just about any print on it? The sections were limitless: Cat Print, Western Print, Farm Print, Transportation Print, Ethnic Print, Coffee Print...I mean, it is all ugly but AWESOME. Consider Josh's mind blown. I did find some fabric I want to cover the cushions for the (above) chairs, although I didn't buy it. I am planning on making our curtains, so I will go back with my mom to really look for that stuff.
But can I just say that Josh and I had a great time together? Such a small, silly trip turned into something we've been laughing about for 2 days now. Sometimes I feel like we should be more adventurous or romantic; but its the small things like our trip Sunday that remind me why I fell in love with Josh ten years ago, and why I still love him even more now.