Leaping

Today my boss had his eleventh birthday.
He's pretty mature for eleven.

What did I do on my leap day?  Worked, taught art class, and won a soccer game.  Lots of leaping going on around here.

Like leaping to drive my co-worker to the maternity ward, mere days away from delivering twins.

{This is Eryn at 14 weeks.  Cute pregnant lady!}

Leaping to try and save my student's curly locks from soaking up all the red paint.

Leaping in front of the hugest guy on the field to "defend" the goal.  My leap ended up being more of a ricochet onto the ground.

As crazy busy as I am, I need another day to catch up on things.  Like this blog!  Oh leap day, what would I have done without you?

Valentine Fail

Oh, I'd been planning Valentine's Day for a while.  And let me tell you, I had big plans.
Big BIG plans that were too crazy for me to rein in, actually.

Roy's favorite food in the universe is pizza.  I was going to go all out and make a homemade pizza and cut the pepperonis into little hearts.
'Cuz, you know, I have lots of time to meticulously cut pepperonis into tiny hearts!

Anyway, that's just an example of my imagined greatness.  Hopefully my visions will be realized over the next several upcoming Valentine's Days. This year, we ended up going out to Mexican with my parents and brothers.  Romantic, right?  Well, we had fun, that's not the valentine fail.  Read on.

 After Mexican we went home and did our own thing, just the two of us.  It would have been pretty close to perfect.

Roy and I use AmazonPrime, which gives us free shipping on items we buy off of Amazon.  Naturally, my husband is now obsessed with ordering everything we need from Amazon.  I mean, down to toilet paper!  He just loves it.

Earlier this month I took a sick day from work.  Before he left for school he said mysteriously, "If anybody drops some boxes off... don't look in them."
And he slunk out of the house all giddy with anticipation.  When the boxes came he couldn't wait for three seconds, much less Valentine's Day!  So he opened up my gifts to show me.

They are the most beautiful set of books!  He knows how obsessed I am with gilded covers and inside cover artwork.  I'll post a picture here in a few days.  They are gorgeous.  And they are the best of the children's classics: Grimm's Fairytales, Hans Christian Andersen, The Chronicles of Narnia.

I already read Andersen's The Little Mermaid in one sitting.  It was really interesting, but um...
I think Disney did us all a favor by making the story a little less depressing.  Like how the Little Mermaid doesn't die at the end while the prince marries someone else.  Good move, I think.

But I digress.

I saved my gifts to Roy for Valentine's Day, and this is where my epic fail comes in.

Gift #1, a Lover's Journal.  Basically a place to finally keep all our love letters in one place.

Gift #2, three frames depicting a kind of map of our journey.  Look how he's trying to smile and look excited but at the same time he realizes something is a little off.

One of these things is not like the others!

But the idea is supposed to be that these frames depict important locations in our life together.  They read "We Met" {Map of Idaho} "We Wed" {Map of Oregon} "We Live" {Map of Arizona}.  So close to being cute but...

Valentine FAIL!  When I wrapped these and snipped off the excess wrapping paper, I chopped off the ribbon too!  Blond!

Other than that, though, our little celebration was good.  We decided we're still pretty crazy about each other, even if my gift didn't do a very good job of showing that.  :-)

And in celebrating love, I thought I would dedicate a little section to Weasley.
Who ever knew that someone could love a fish?  To Roy, Weasley might as well be a loyal dog or something.  (That's as close as we're going to get to a dog or a cat for a long time.)

A while back he said, "Weasley needs something else in his bowl.  It's boring in there."
I thought he was joking.  But a while later I walked back into the kitchen to see the new friend Roy stuck in there for our fish.  Weasley hides under the bear's chin all the time and Roy says, "See?  He likes it."

The other day I was going through my checklist of things to do while Roy was studying.  I read aloud, "Clean Weasley's bowl."

I went over to bring the little guy into the kitchen but Roy popped out from behind his text book and asked, "Wait, you're going to clean his bowl?"

"Yes."

"Oh... maybe I should do it."

"What?  You don't trust me with your fish?"

"I'll just do it," he said.  And he took the bowl from me.  How hilarious is that?
Just look how much he loves his pet.

Love is in the...
                         water!

Buckmaster Disaster Zone

Welcome to the virtual tour of the Buckmaster place.  The Buckmaster Disaster Zone.  There have been requests for pictures, and this is the easiest way for me to show everyone.

Don't you just feel so welcome after seeing that?  

This is the front entrance.  No, there aren't any pictures in those frames yet.

Look to your left and you will see our kitchen!

Complete with a horribly painted purple ceiling that I can totally live with.

And back here is our table.

And remember in our first place I got a little shelf and decorated it?  Well that was in a much smaller space.  So, naturally, I had to add a little something. 

And a little something over here.  Merry Christmas to us!  Okay, mostly me.

Ah, and let's not forget my stalking window.

Yeah, it got a little awkward not having blinds or curtains, and being so close to our neighbors.

But we are busy, and for some reason I put decorating the kitchen wall higher on the priority list than getting the windows covered. So luckily Roy is resourceful and... well now we are mostly hidden from view.  Now when the neighbors come out their front door and I'm eating breakfast, they can only see me from the chin down.  HA!  At least we've eliminated awkward eye-contact!

If you head on out of the kitchen, you will see our study nook. 

This is where Roy burns holes into textbooks with his eyeballs.

And here is our living room.  Along with our TV with the glitchy red line that runs through it.

His name is Clifford.

The Big Red Line.

At the back of this room is our back door, which leads to our garden.

This is where I grow weeds as tall as the house.

Look, flowers!  Kind of...

But as you can see, there is that perfect shady little corner I told you about earlier.  That's where my legit garden is going to go in a few weeks.  I've been drawing up plans.  Any suggestions for desert growing?

It might be cool to have an orange tree, like our neighbors.  Of course, if that doesn't work out we can still benefit from their green thumbs.  Look at this last orange on the tree.  If we get a good gust of wind it could drop in our backyard!  Mmmm!

Let's go back inside, it's getting a little warm out here for February.
Through the living room and down the hallway.  Let's check out the bathroom, shall we?

 {Don't mind me and my super cute outfit}

 Here is our guest bedroom, furnished with the bedset that I've had since I was in fifth grade.

Cherries will never go out of style, right?

 And here's our second room, the one I should probably be embarrassed to even post online.  But hey--we aren't in any serious rush to unpack.  Right?  We're taking our time.  So this room is the "room of objects yet to have a place."

And our bedroom.

 At the very end of the hall you come upon a tiny little room with a washer and dryer shoved into it.  Nothing interesting there.

We love living in this town, and we love renting this house.  We're a lucky pair.

 So you've officially had a tour!  Now even my sister, who is doing a study abroad in Austria, can feel like she's been here and seen it all.  Gotta love technology.

If you'd like a real tour {maybe after the very blue room is a little less crowded} come on down to see us!  Maybe I'll show off my domesticity and cook something!

Uh... maybe.