Wonderful Vacation

Haydn and I returned late Sunday from a FABULOUS trip to California. I surprised him with the tickets for Christmas so we had been looking forward to the trip for a few months. 

We were able to spend the trip with our awesome brothers Everett and Steve and also Everetts girlfriend Marley.

We had awesome company, awesome weather, awesome food- just an all around great time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

poor neglected blog

I guess my New Years Resolution of blogging more is a failed attempt as I have not been keeping up on here! I wonder if anyone even reads this thing anyway!

The last month has been pretty busy actually. January is always kind of a bummer of a month for me so we really packed our calendar with a lot of social stuff- dinners out and with friends, movies (gran torino is GREAT), game nights (where I learned my husband cheats at scattergories), etc.

Dinners with friends has been really popular over the last few weekends… one weekend we did dinner and rockband at the Turchins, and then the next night dinner with our awesome nextdoor neighbors and good friends Jessie and Craig, followed by an epic card game that lasted until 4am!

We also had an Italian dinner party at the Whortons, sushi out with our new friends Jason and Kristy, and a few family dinners as well. This is the first weekend where we have stayed home on a Saturday night in a long time!

Work has been going good for both of us- I finally finished training at my job so I am actually working and am really enjoying it so far. I’m hoping to transfer to a branch really close to our house so we are keeping our fingers crossed for that!

Other than that, we are anxiously awaiting our California trip at the end of this month! We leave February 26th and cannot wait to be on vacation! We will be splitting our time between our brothers who both live out there (Everett in LA and Steve in Marina Del Rey). I also have a must-do list with 3 things on it: Sprinkles Cupcakes, Pinkberry, and Trader Joes!

Here are a few pics because lets be honest here, a blog post without pics is just boring!

Here I am with Taylor and Marley the day Marley came home from the hospital

 

here are marley and norah at Januarys cooking club:

Welcome to the world Marley Rae!

My oldest friend Heather and her husband Keith have a new addition to their family- baby Marley Rae. Marley came into the world on New Years Eve at 9:20pm. She is SO cute!

http://www.realphotography.com/slideshows/Marley/

Christmas 2008

Ack! I’m so behind with blogging… maybe that will be my New Years Resolution, to blog more!

I just wanted to post a few pics real quick of our holiday decor of our house. I just realized we never took any pictures of the outside of our house with lights and we already took them down. Boo. Oh well.

And the dogs in their Christmas Jammies!

Extreme Paint Makeover

Just a quick post to show some pics of the new paint in our living room! When we bought our house we knew right away we would be painting the downstairs- it was a couple of different colors and a pretty shoddy job at that. We decided to hire painters and luckily for us, our friend and neighbor Craig has a brother that owns his own painting business… SCORE!

We looooove the way it looks- we painted all of the walls “Biscotti” by Kwal and now have white ceilings as well. It really brightens up the room- especially with our dark furniture. Now we just need to hang stuff on the walls!

Giving Thanks

I know this Thanksgiving post is a bit belated but I wanted to make sure to post it regardless, seeing how I have so many things to be thankful for this year…

Here are the things that I am especially thankful for…

* my awesome husband and best friend… I am so happy to have spent our first married thanksgiving together. Everyday I am grateful for the joy you bring to my life.

* my incredible family- both those who I see often and those who I dont.. you are all in my heart and thoughts always and I am blessed to have you in my lives. I am so lucky to have the most wonderful parents anyone could ask for… as crazy as you make me sometimes, I wouldnt trade you for anything!

* my new job. It is times like these that make people grateful to have any job and I am lucky to have started one that I really wanted and am so excited to see what the future brings there. I am very fortunate that the last few months have turned out the way they have and for that I am SO very thankful. 

* my pets. They drive me crazy but I cannot imagine our lives without them. I can’t imagine my mornings without Layla sneezing on me or my nights without Charlie having to burrow himself under the covers.

* our house. Every day when I come home to our house I still can’t believe it’s ours. OURS. I am So very grateful that we were able to buy a home and to have found one that we LOVE is that much more awesome. This is our first house. The house we lived in when we got married. The house that we will bring our babies home to. It’s amazing and I am incredibly thankful for it.

*my friends. I don’t think I could be much luckier in this department. From the friends that I have had more than half my life, to the new dear friends I’ve made this past year, I love them all with all of my heart and am so lucky to have them in my lives. They get me through the tough times with their encouraging words and ability to make me laugh… and are there for the good times to celebrate and rejoice.

* other miscellaneous things: scarves, pumpkin spice lattes, Tj Maxx and Ross, lip gloss, cereal, library books, cooking club, new babies, googlereader, text messaging, netflix, high thread count bedding, bath sheets, cooking blogs, my new glasses, honeycrisp apples, facebook, ipods, massages, rosebud salve, puppies, online banking, nice neighbors, eyelash curlers, cheap gas, good morning kisses, goodnight kisses, and a million other wonderful things that I have to be thankful for.

The New Do

Just realized I didn’t blog the new hair color yet (=

Haydn has been pestering me to go dark for months now… I promised him that after the wedding I would give it a try. It’s been a mixed reaction so far…. he LOVES it, but not everyone does. TBD if I keep it this way or not.

What do you all think?

November Cooking Club/Heather’s Baby Shower

Last night I hosted Novembers Cooking Club at our house. It also doubled as a baby shower for Heather who is pregnant with a baby girl (Marley) due Jan 8th. We were able to keep the shower a secret from Heather so she was pretty surprised!

We had a great time even though we had a kitchen disaster (garbage disposal broke, kitchen flooded, sink was clogged, etc) and had some super yummy food. Laura brought a really yummy pomegranate champagne punch that made all of my kitchen sink disaster worries go away (=

We also had a special visitor- baby Norah made her first cooking club appearance! Rebecca was a major trooper and although exhausted, she came for awhile to visit and to show off her beautiful new baby. We all took turns holding Norah and admiring her cuteness!

 

 

 

 

Baby Love!

My dear friends Rebecca and Ryan welcomed their beautiful baby girl- Norah Kathleen into the world on Sunday, November 9th.

She weighed in at 6lbs 12oz and was 19.5 inches long.

She is GORGEOUS!

Good…no, GREAT news!

I got a job!

Not just any job either… out of the 200 jobs I applied for (not even kidding) and 8 interviews I went on, I got the job that I REALLY wanted. I start November 24th so that means I still have a little over two weeks before I officially re-enter the working world. We have a ton of stuff going on in the next few weeks anyway (keep your eyes open for more updates!) so it will be nice to have the time off but I am SO anxious to start working again. Being home all day is definitely not fun after the first day or two.

Thank you to everyone for your support during the whole unemployment debacle. Things truly happen for a reason and we are now in a better position than we were initially so we are happy campers in the Connors household!