the yard

thank you mom and dad madsen for the beautiful blue spruce!

 next year we will have our own yummy vegetables growing in this garden space.  the 4 posts are the corner posts for the garden. since this picture, marty has set the rest of the posts. the garden will be all fenced in and have a really cool antique garden gate that i found! i can't wait till spring!

 oh my gosh, we finally have sod surrounding our back patio!

where did our summer go?

this was our hope all summer long.  it was a hot and dry one this year!

Well... we worked on our yard! A lot! And the crazy thing is we still have so much to go, but we love what we have done so far! And working on our yard was not the only thing we did, well Marty might say that but it is because he does not love landscaping as much as I do, he is a good sport though! We made a trip back to WI and MI and spent some great time with our families and friends. We went to six flags with my sister and dad, we went fishing with my father and law, spent quality time with Grandma and Grandpa, caught a Brewers game and took the train to Chicago for a Cubs game, went to Summerfest (a big music fest in Milwaukee), did some shopping, went to the lake, celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary in Milwaukee and had a great night out at a yummy restaurant and stayed at the Iron Horse Hotel, and well just enjoyed seeing everyone and being able to hang out and catch up!  We also did lots of mountain biking, climbed a few fourteeners, logged some poolside time, hung with friends, and relaxed which is my favorite part about summer.

And now back to the yard and house projects...  We planted more things in the front yard, stained the second level deck which I never ever want to do ever again in my life, we finally got to lay some sod in the back yard (when I say "finally", for those of you that may not know the pump house in our subdivision burnt down, so our subdivision has been on half the amount of water tanks all summer, actually I still don't think the new water tanks are online yet, but we have been restricted to no irrigation all summer), and we have unloaded about 8 tons of river rock that we hand picked into our really long ditch.  Oh and we also framed out an area for our garden we will plant next spring.  So far we have the four corner posts set in the ground and before the cold weather comes we want to have the rest of the posts set and the fencing around the garden.  Enjoy the pictures! Just realized I didn't take any of the new sod yet. I will post those this weekend.

creeping red thyme throughout our steps

butterfly weed (thanks mom for showing me this plant)

this ice cream shop chair was my great antique find this summer.

the beautiful front porch my father in law built for us

we cant wait for the bushes to just grow and grow and grow! things have already gotten so big this year.

rocks anyone?

this is the side yard we laid sod in our first summer in the house

we love our back patio and our new patio furniture

ahh the staining is finally finished!

I love all the pretty colors! Thanks mom for the inspiration.

back to reality...

otherwise known as work! I just finished up my second week of school with my new batch of kindergartners and whew this is a batch! This is my 8th year of teaching already, time certainly goes fast.  And in my 8 years in this carreer, I have yet to have a start of the school year like this. Things have been a bit rough these first weeks.  Don't get me wrong I love most of my kids in my class, actually I have lots and lots of great kids, but to be honest I could certainly do without a few of them.  I just don't get how the few naughty ones can set the tone of the group.  The big question is why can't all the really great kids have an influence on the sassy ones?  Trying to look on the optimistic side of things  I have come to the conclusion that it may just take longer, way longer than expected to "train" these select few.  The only problem is so much of my energy is spent redirecting bad behavior and I feel sad for my students who are so ready to be at school and just want to learn and have fun.  I just want to feel respected by my students and right now those select few have no idea how crappy they are making me feel.  I know things will get better, well I hope they will, otherwise Christmas vacation will not come soon enough!

more fourteeners

a few weekends ago we traveled to the buena vista area to hike 2 more fourteeners with our friends jarrid and liz.  we hiked our first one last summer with them and wanted to check a few more off the list.  we had a very early morning at camp waking up at 4:30 to make sure we had some coffee and breakfast before making the trek up.  we summited mt. belford first around 8:30, then we hiked down and up a saddle to mt. oxford to complete our summit at 10.  the views from the top were absolutely beautiful.  we had a great time as always and we are looking forward to our next adventure. another exciting part of our trip was that we had a sweet new camera to take all of our pictures.  we decided to use all of our birthday and anniversary money gifts to purchase the cannon rebel t3 camera.  it is so nice to finally have a good camera... now we just need to learn how to use all the bells and whistles! 

Happy 2012!

It's been a long while since I have posted anything to our blog, sorry everyone:(  December was filled with many firsts for Marty and I... our first Christmas tree together, our first Christmas we hosted for our families in our new house, and our first New Year's Eve party we hosted.

The first weekend in December we hiked up into the woods to find the perfect tree and we did.  It had finally snowed the night before and as we were hiking around in the woods, big fat charlie brown snowflakes were falling from the sky.  It was so much fun!

A few weeks later the families began arriving.  My sister Meg came out first so she could get some skiing in with Marty and I, a few days later Marty's parents got here and then mid week my parents arrived.  We had a house full, but it was exactly what we wanted... we couldn't wait to share our home with our families for the holidays.  The winter break consisted of some skiing (we had no new snow the entire month of December, in fact today it has finally snowed a bit), baking, cooking, lots of eating consuming really yummy foods, hanging out, watching Christmas movies, games, shootin guns, and ice skating.  Christmas morning was filled with lots of fun and wonderful presents for all. 

New Years Eve we threw a party for our friends and had a shrimp boil.  We threw potatoes, corn, seafood, lemons, and lots of great seasonings into a big pot on the patio and then brought it in and dumped it onto paper on the counter.  It was so good and lots of fun!  The evening ended with a big dance party in our living room filled with lots of confetti and about a half hour session of people blowing the stupid noise makers I bought:)


Here are lots of pictures (my dad loves to take pictures) of the fun we had...

early presents for me and marty

good thing we got this we used it 4 times with everyone

mom and dad had these delivered to the house for us. when they held their very 1st christmas, nana delivered flowers to them. needless to say i was balling my eyes out while reading the card my parents wrote us.  this was a very special surprise!

my christmas kermit made his appearance in a few photos:)