Tagged!

Well, I (Amber) learned what being "tagged" is today. Someone posts a "tag" to you on their blog and then are supposed to respond and "tag" someone else. My friend from work and fellow new "blogger," Trisha, tagged me with this!

I am - a Christian, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a hope-er, but a worrier, too! :-)

I want - to leave a legacy...

I hate - black licorice, fish (eating them, that is), walking outside barefoot and dirty feet, people walking inside with wet shoes, people who don't use their turn signals, people who talk down to me, tapered jeans, Barenaked Ladies music and other bands that sound like them, horror flicks, waking up to an alarm clock

I love - Jesus, my perfect gift-my beloved husband, my family, being a big sister, candy and baked goods(basically anything with sugar in it!), backrubs from my hubby, NAPS and cuddling up with blankets, praying, God-incidents, traveling, dancing, singing, performing, worshipping, accessory shopping (including purses, shoes, jewelry, etc.), laughing, relaxing, reading, and the list goes on....

I miss - seeing family members more often, my Grandma Jan who's up in heaven, sleeping in on weekdays, dancing/singing/performing

I fear - heights, that family members will become ill

I hear - the faint hum of my computer, keyboards clicking outside my office

I wonder - what our children will look like (don't get any ideas anyone - we're not pregnant! :-))what heaven is like, why people get hiccups

I regret - blurting things out without thinking sometimes...

I am not - a morning person

I dance - whenever I see dancing on TV (So You Think You Can Dance is awesome! I have been dancing around the house a lot lately! We have a mirror at the end of our hallway that I like to check my lines in!)

I am not always - serious, I love to be silly with Jason and with my sisters

I make with my hands - food every day, the occasional crocheting or sewing project, little tin foil balls out of candy wrappers (haha Jason!!!)

I write - text on work mailers and letters, emails, blog entries, cards and letters to family and friends

I confuse - people when I try to give them driving directions (I insert too many landmarks!)

I need - lots of love and support from God, Jason, family and friends

I should - read my Bible more, exercise more, and be better and staying in touch with friends

I start - sewing and crocheting projects...and don't finish them...

I finish - the last drop of things in cans and bottles when cooking - can't let things go to waste!!!


Well folks, that was fun!

I tag Jason and Sarah!!!

Father's Day Weekend

Our lovely rose bush in our backyard. Mom Johnson gave some pruning pointers to help them bloom even more next summer.
Amber shooting the rose...
Dad leaving the house. Thanks for coming Dad! We love you!

The floor with the new floor installed with all the screw heads covered and leveled...

All that work, and only a pry bar and a flat blade to do it with...Like the saying on Shawshank's Redemption....it's a matter of time and pressure....and we got it done!

Scraping away.....

How come every job is a messy one? The old wax ring needed to go. What a mess!

The peace of God...

Any of our blog readers ever feel weighted down by life? Wondering about finances, jobs, the future, the economy, and so on? Well, I'm having one of those weeks. Can't really tell you why, or what started it, but it seems like the pressures of life just keep getting heavier and heavier. The cool thing though, is what our pastor reminded us of on Sunday morning. No matter what huge, gigantic mountain it may seem like in front of you, in God's eyes it is but a mere speck. It is so cool that I can have peace in life no matter what is going on around me. That doesn't mean I don't care, but it means that I know that I'm being taken care of and that I can focus on the joys of life, rather than the hardships. I can have peace in the middle of a storm. I can keep my head up because I know that God has brought me through the past, and He will get me through today and the future. Just some thoughts.....

I'm a hero!!!

I just finished giving blood! There was a blood drive at work today and a committee that I am on was sponsoring it. I volunteered to work at the drive, but wasn't sure if I was actually going to try to donate. Last time I tried, I was denied for low iron. Expecting that this would probably happen again, I figured, "what the heck!" the lowest "hematocrit" level that you can have to donate is a 38 - exactly what my count was! So, I did it! I feel pretty good. I got myself a little worked up since I didn't know what to expect and because of the fact that the girl on the gurney across from me was passing out as I was about to start my donation. But, I made it and have made it back to my office to tell about it!

I convinced my colleague, Trisha, to go and try it even though she was a bit freaked out. She is down there now. Go Trisha!!! I am so proud of her for being bold and trying it, too!

I know Jason has been really busy at work and away from his desk a lot, so hopefully we can get some pics up soon of the progress we made on the bathroom in the next few days. We hope to have it completely finished by the end of the weekend.

Later gators! Go donate blood - it is not that bad! :-)
~Amber

By request...more wedding pics!

Hi, everyone! Hope that you all had a wonderful weekend. Jason and I worked very hard on the bathroom - scraping for hours the remnants of subfloor and adhesive on the floor, laying the new subfloor, and cleaning the walls of all the spackling dust. I think that Jason has some pics to post of this tedious work. He was showing his brut strength by scraping the floor with a pry bar instead of the $50 floor scraper we refused to buy! My strong man! I used a flat screwdriver and a razor blade! F-U-N!!!!

My college friend Kristine let me know that she read our blog - yeah! She requested more wedding pics. These are the other 3 that I had on my computer.

Have a fabulous day! ~Amber

Oh I DO love spackling dust!

I just thought that I (Amber) would let you know just how much I love spackling and sanding dust! It took me a LONG time to clean the 1/2 bath after all of the sanding was said and done in there. I can't wait for the day when I'll get to clean the main bath which is twice as big!

It was smart though because Jason had the idea to put old sheets on the toilet and vanity and hang one with tacks over our shower. Dust still made its way onto all surfaces, but this did help. Jason drew me a lovely picture on the mirror in the dust!

I hope that everyone is having a great Friday! The office is pretty dead on Friday afternoons in the summer. Today is the 1 week mark after the "incident." My hair has been worn straight all week! :-) I still have to wear a guaze pad and suspect I will have to do so for a while as many parts are still, um... "raw". Sorry if I grossed any of you out!

I am going to try and get Jason to rest for long enough to enjoy some pizza with me tonight. We are fond of the new "Chicken Mediterranean" pizza at Papa Murphy's. It is garlicky (sp?) and delicious! Fresh spinach, grilled chix, sundried tomatoes, mozzerella, gorgonzola, basil, mmmmmmm!

Have a great weekend! We'll give you all the updates on Monday!

That should do it....now where is my trusty palm sander that my Dad got me...Amber loves spackling dust. She actually loves the nice white film it puts on every little inch of everything.
Yep, I'm definately going to have to patch the ceiling. Notice the corners...we don't want attic man escaping now do we?
The new fan installed. The old fan actually had a bigger cut out, so bring on the spackling!

Bathroom Adventures Part II

The old ceiling fan was not cutting it. Our walls would be dripping water after showers! Sorry ol' bessy, time to retire and make room for SuperFan 2000.
Do ceiling fans have large talons? Kids remember this: If you think it's going to take 2 hours to fix something, it will really take 6!
Attic man! Amber loves attic man despite his strange breathing mechanism.
Oh no! It's the attic man! (I heard he runs around up there in the early a.m. hours)
The infamous avacado sink that has only seen nothing but love from us. (I loved it, and it's growing on Amber)
So here is our small, yet perfect for us main bathroom, complete with SUPER TOILET to fullfill all our flushing needs.

Painting ourselves the color of blog...

So this blogging thing is cool, and efficient way of communicating with multiple people online, especially the ones we don't ever see. I have to admit, I was browsing some other blogs and I'm amazed at the time people have. How come everyone around us is moving at such a fast pace, and everyone says they just don't have enough time in the day, yet somehow people have enough time to take care of 2-3 kids, do chores, make dinners, work jobs, and still post blog entries along with fancy artsy pictures and make comments on some profound topic? We the readers then think they are some sort of superhero for being able to handle all this in their lives, yet manage to stay current and "with the times" and maintain a blog. I have to remind myself that people are just painting a glamourous picture of a not so "unique" life. We still find them interesting though....Just some random thoughts...

I have an office, too! :-)

I thought that I would show everyone my (Amber's) office, too! Fun with the new camera! :-) I enjoy having an office and being in the new building on campus. I dont have any spectacular windows and decor like Jason, but it is mine! Jason is more "tidy" than me, as you can see! I have a lot of papers and marketing materials in varous places for my job. Thanks for looking!

A Work in Progress...

We have moved onto the next project, our one and only full bath. Notice the lovely stenciling - a nice "country bumpkin" feel! Also notice the GINORMOUS toilet! It is not only raised, but elongated, too! YESSSSS!!!!!! It is brand new though, so it is staying. We also do not have a tub - only the shower stall, complete with handicap bars and all! Jason has begun utilizing his drywall patching skills in patching the hole where another rusty medicine chest was randomly placed at the back of the bathroom (the couple who owned the house raised 8 children there, so I am sure that mirror space was hard to come by - hence the randomly placed medicine chest!) Also, Jason has begun taking out the floor which is so old it is chipping away in some spots, but is also really sticking in others. We visited The Home Depot last night and purchased a new fan (the current one is about 100 decibals and still doesn't work), new flooring, paint (color to be a suprise :-))and new baseboards (we had commercial plastic/rubber ones...) We are so excited to be continuing the renovations and I am so proud of Jason - what a hard worker! He is so persistent and willing to learn all sorts of new things! Way to go, honey!

We'll try to take some other pics of the rest of the house and post them since many of you haven't been able to see it in person yet!

The first home project - 1/2 bath!

We worked dilligently to complete our first project in the home - our 1/2 bathroom. If you can't tell - we got a digital camera!!! Thus, the many new picture posts! So, the "before" pics are not ready yet - still in the 35mm camera. But, the transformation is incredible! This bathroom started off with hideous country blue flowered and polka-dot wallpaper, a rusty medicine chest, and big ugly oak strip with giant ball light fixtures. We had to try and work with the yellow tiling, so we think we did our best to make it all "work." Jason did a great job learning how to patch holes in drywall. There was a lot of scraping and sanding as well due to the thick wallpaper glue residue. I am proud of my sewing job on the curtains. It is hard to tell, but the fabric is striped with the yellow of the tiles, the blue/green of the walls, and the brown of the rugs. All we need now is some artwork for the walls!

My new office color!!! It's called dry sage. Better than white! Now the creative juices will pour out! Hopefully...

Wedding day fun!

Testing uploading pics... This is the best day of our lives - December 18th, 2004.

Friday morning chaos...

So, what could Amber have been doing to have lost a diamond out of her wedding ring, you ask???

Well...since there was some chaos in the bathroom on friday morning, I am guessing that I lost it in during or after the "incident." So, I am ready for work - showered and basically ready to go. I was warm blow drying my hair, so my shirt wasn't on yet. Jason was brushing his teeth while I was curling my hair... His eyes got wider and he froze as he watched me juggle the flaming hot iron (now dubbed the evil stick) as it got caught in my hair and proceeded to fall! My instinct was to grab it - not thinking about how incredibly hot it was. I pulled it towards my middle to try and catch it. I sizzled the side of my stomach but managed to eventually grab the evil stick by the cord. I stood in shock and let out some high-pitched scream I am sure. In the midst of the shock I don't recall the rest of the events entirely. Jason mumbled many "are you okay's" and I think I responded with many whiny "it hurts really bad" comments!

I needed to get to work (if you know me you also know that I am not a morning person and only get up early enough to just make it to work on time), so I was running around like a mad-woman ocassionally shrieking in pain in in denial that I had a pretty serious injury! I kept saying "what am I going to do? It hurts so bad!" I could not let anything touch it - even the air on it killed. So, I scrambled to assemble a lunch and headed out the door in pain, unsure of how I'd cope with the injury once I got to work (especially wondering how working with my shirt half-way up was going to go over at the office!)

Then, cut to Jason's previous post, my morning got even better as I totally LOST IT in the car when I realized that I was missing a side diamond of my three-stone wedding ring! We raced back to the house and tore it apart. I was an physical and emotional wreck at this point. The burn was welting and growing into its enormity (I have an approximate 2" by 4" welt") over time. Defeated, Jason headed to work, and I headed to a daze of wondering how this pleasant Friday morning turned into such a chaotic, painful, and overwhelming experience.

I was in no state to go to work and was in quite a bit of pain. I bandaged myself up in non-stick gauze with triple antibiotic, doped up on Tylenol, and made a visit to our friends at Koehn & Koehn Jewelers.

I still am wearing the lovely guaze and medical tape get-up, and don't forsee forgoing it anytime in the near future. It still hurts quite a bit! Hopefully it won't be too doosy of a scar!

That's all for my first fun-filled blog post! Sorry, I won't be injuring myself in bizarre ways just for your entertainment - the posts might be more mundane in the future!

amber

Diamond in the rough...literally!

Ok, so for those of you who didn't know, last Friday Amber was driving to work and got about 3 blocks away from home and noticed one of her diamonds was missing from her wedding ring! Needless to say we were both sad and upset and we looked everywhere for it. Well last night as I'm about to shop vac our bathroom floor (I'm tearing the floor out) I noticed some little spec on the floor that sparkled. I bent down and what did I find????? The Diamond! Amazing how God heard our prayers and had me find it in the most unusual way. I wonder what lesson we are supposed to have learned from this? Maybe trust, and patience. Anyways, we are glad to have it back....especially Amber!

Testing 1...2...3.

Ok, an attempt to master the digital and figure out placing images on our blog. The plant in my office became the test subject.

Internet geeks 102

Remember when being on the computer, knowing how to do computer related things meant you were a huge geek? Remember when just being online meant you had no life?

Well, now it's just the opposite! Amazing how things turn around. Who knows, maybe someday tight rolling our jeans and flannels will be cool again! We can only hope.....