F+???

So it has only been a month since my last class. I guess I would have failed had it not been a self paced learning type of thing. I did learn how to post images this week! Week 6 wasn't too complicated, so I am including the link here: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/sixthweb.html. Now you all can admire my lovely web site.

This weekend has been lots of fun! Saturday I spent most of the day with my sister as her assistant! One of her friends threw a portrait party and people could sign up and bring their kids for my sister could take their pictures. My sister has been taking pictures for years now, but is finally starting to get a photography business up and running. So I went to help with shading and reflecting and that sort of thing. It was a lot of fun and she did such a great job. Her pictures are really good! Take a look at her new blog: http://eastendportraitphotography.com/blog/ She'll have more pictures up soon and if you want to link to her personal blog, you can see all kinds of pictures of her daughter on it. She's going to do awesome!

Today we celebrated Mother's Day and my Mom's Birthday! We went to a great wood fired pizza place and it was nice enough to eat outside. We sat in shade, which was good because it warmed up to 90 here today! Then we went back for ice cream cake at my mom and dad's house. We had lots of fun watching little Violet run around with loads of energy. Now we're getting ready to have some dinner and unwind with the season finale of Survivor. Hope everyone had a great weekend and look for more posts soon. Maybe. If I have time!

Pictures!

So I haven't done my homework for the last two weeks. BUT I will try to do it this weekend. Luckily, no one is actually looking or grading my homework for my HTML class. It makes it a little easier to know that I can catch up on the last two weeks and no one is going to fail me for not doing everything on time!

We had an Easter egg hunt a couple weeks ago at my parents house. We all had baskets and we each had to pick up at least one egg (those were the rules). The best part about it was seeing Violet pick up the eggs and then alternate who she was giving them to. One went to her Daddy, one to her Mommy, one to Grandma, one to Grandpa, etc. It was a great day! We dyed Easter eggs and we all contributed to our Easter Lunch - a taco bar!! It was quite tasty and we all enjoyed ourselves some tacos!

Last week I was in Twin Falls for our Annual Board Planning & Development meeting. This year is a great time of year to visit Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls. These falls are actually higher than Niagara Falls - crazy, huh?? The pictures below are when I was there on Wednesday night - one is looking down the canyon and the other is looking directly at the Falls.
We actually got some more done in the garden this weekend! We bought some seeds and some starters for a few different veggies: peas, lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, beets and onions - green and yellow. YUM! So it will be interesting to see what does well and what doesn't. Everything seemed to be pretty easy to plant. We also planted a couple perennials in two pots out front. I think we might eventually plant them in the front garden bed, but we need to do a lot of work on those until we plant anything permanent. So hopefully these will do well in the pots until we get them in the ground. So that's what we have been up to lately. I think the days and weeks keep going by faster and faster now that it is warming up. I guess that happens when you have more to do! I think Mat and I have been hibernating for the last few months!

Fifth Week

I just finished my 5th week of my html class: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/fifthweb.html. I think I am kind of getting the hang of it, but there is still so much to learn. I like the pace of the class because I don't feel like I need to spend hours every week learning and reading. So now that I have that finished, I am going to head out to the grocery store to get supplies for our Easter Taco Bar!

My family has decided to do a Taco Bar for Easter! I think it will be great and I am really looking forward to getting together. I can't wait to see our niece - she is growing so fast! So that's our weekend. We'll eat some tacos, dye some eggs and watch Violet hunt for Easter Eggs. And maybe Mat and I will hunt some eggs ourselves.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! I'm off to shop!

Square Foot Garden Boxes

If you don't know about Square Foot Gardening, you can do a search on Google Books to see a limited preview of Mel's book. It is an interesting book and I think it should be a pretty good way for us to do things. I guess we'll find out by the end of the gardening season!

Yesterday we built the boxes. Here they are in our yard, waiting to be placed strategically.

Today we mixed up the ingredients to make Mel's mix. This book says to make your own soil instead of trying to improve on what you already have. So we did exactly what Mel said. We bought a tarp and mixed up vermiculite, peat moss and compost.

We found places for the boxes and we started filling those bad boys up. I think they look nice and I hope that it will really help to cut down on weeds. Oh, I sure hope.

Oh and Onions! We planted these last summer and they are sprouting now. Hope they turn out tasty!

Finished!

So I finally finished my homework for this week: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/fourthweb.html It took me awhile to read through the lessons, but I did get it up! One thing I don't love about this free class is that you have to click through a million pages. For example, you will be reading about font color on a particular page and then it has five different links within the article that you need to read to really understand that particular page. So it is a lot of back and forth, back and forth. I am learning html for free, so I really can't complain! I actually started this homework on Saturday morning, but then have been distracted all weekend by various projects.

My first project was part of a spring cleaning that will play out over several weeks. I'm all about organizing and having things nice and simple. I started with the bathroom, which desparately needed to be cleaned anyway, and I bought some drawer organizers from the dollar store and got everything in its place. You wouldn't think that it would take me that long, but I did clean the whole bathroom and organized part of the linen closet in our hall. The bottom half is for another day - it holds all our games and my crafty things. So I felt like I got a ton accomplished just on Saturday.

Sunday was spent getting our supplies together for our garden boxes. Mat and I are going to be Square Foot Gardeners! I have this book called Square Foot Gardening and it is a fun little book. It is all about getting the most out of a small space garden. I don't know how great it will work, but we're going to find out! We actually built the boxed on Sunday night and finished everything up today. I decided since we were lucky to have some great weather in the 60s that I would take a vacation day! WOOHOO! Today was so busy though! I think my next vacation day needs to be on a beach. :) We went to Costco, two grocery stores, made breakfast for the entire week, made dinner for tonight, mixed up our soil and filled our boxes. THEN we even went to kickboxing. My legs are tired. And I am tired. At least I know I'll sleep great tonight. But before I can do that, I'm going to put a separate post with some pictures from our new boxes!

Ladies, don't be sad that Mustache March is over. There is always next year.

Back Again!

Another week has flown by! Sometimes I just blink and the week is over. I'm always happy for the weekends and thankful that I have lots to do at my work. Not only does the time go by fast, but I don't worry about losing my job right now!

So this morning I tackled my third week of html. I know this is going to take quite a while to master, but at least I am really getting the hang of things. http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/thirdweb.html I just figure that everyone has to start somewhere. Websites really didn't just make themselves up! It is kind of amazing to think about how much work is put into a simple website and how much more time it must take to create a working, interactive website.

This weekend is probably going to pass without any gardening. Again. But the weather just isn't going to cooperate with us. We still have a while until it is time to plant Summer veggies, but I did want to get some Spring veggies in the ground. We're still slowly gathering everything we'll need to create our raised beds and the mix we'll be putting in them. I am just getting antsy and want to get started!

Tonight we are going over to Alana and Ken's house for a little SingStar, probably some Wii Sports activities and maybe even a board game or two. I'm planning to bring a snack for us and can't quite decide on a recipe. I was thinking that I might make this stuffed jalapeno dip that sounds delicious. I'll let you know what I decide! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

2nd Week HTML

This morning I sat down for my second week of learning about html. So here is the link to my new web page: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/secondpage.html. Fancy stuff, huh?



It is pretty interesting learning about html and I look forward to doing more in the future. I am just going to take it nice and slow and learn a little at a time. Maybe someday I will even have my own website that I created from scratch!


For Mat's birthday this year, we drove about an hour outside of Boise to get to a tubing hill and went tubing for 2 hours! It wasn't too packed and we had a lot of fun. It was just as scary as I thought, but I still had a good time!


I wish I had a better lens to zoom in on Mat as he was flying down the hill. You probably wouldn't have wanted to see any of me screaming and clenching on the tube as I flew down the hill at warp speeds.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! I'm off to scan in some pictures from the pre-digital camera days.

HTML and Waterfalls

So I picked a different waterfall picture to enter in the contest! HA! I tricked you all. It was a last minute decision and I just thought, "what the heck?" So I ended up with this one:

So who knows? I probably should have gone with another one, but that's okay. It was really just for fun!

So I've decided that I am going to teach myself HTML. Or at least try. I'd like to at least somewhat understand it and it would be really cool if I could actually make my own website someday. I would imagine that it won't be that easy, but it is something I'm going to attempt. I found a free 10 week class on about.com to learn it. You really can't beat free! They suggest using geocities' free websites for your practice for your homework. So here was my first assignment: www.geocities.com/gbldp/firstweb.html. Pretty darn impressive!! The one thing I don't like about the lessons is all of the advertisements. But I get that is the reason the lessons are free, so I'll just have to deal with them.

In other news around our house, I'm getting that Spring Cleaning Bug. I want to go through all of our rooms and get rid of things and organize and tidy things up. It doesn't mean that I am actually going to do all that! It was just a thought. One thing I've been looking into is doing something with our closet. UGH. I can't stand our closets and I want to rip all the clothes into shreds every time I have to go get something to wear. So we've been discussing options to see if there is anything we can do to improve the efficiency of our closet.

Now I'm off to create a grocery list for tomorrow and maybe talk closets with Mat. Sounds like a crazy afternoon!

I Need Spring!!

This morning it is 22 degrees outside.  I think when March hits, I start to get really impatient for warm weather to kick in.  I want 60s and 70s every day for a few months and then I will gladly welcome the 90 degree weather for a couple months.  I'm just tired of being cold all the time.  I think it is supposed to be 50 tomorrow, but then cold again this weekend.  Which is just another weekend that we probably won't be working in the garden because it is cold.  We'll see though - maybe it will turn out to be nicer than we expected!

I haven't decided on a photo yet for the contest.  I think I might go with the waterfall picture because it might be different from other people.  I really like the beach one, but feel like so many people have shots of the beach.  I need to pick though, I think I have to enter this weekend.

I had to go to our kickboxing class last night by myself.  :(  Mat's back is hurting and his work sent him to the chiropractor yesterday and he has to go back again this afternoon.  I guess he thought that it wouldn't be a great idea to jump and twist and turn?  It is interesting wearing my heart rate monitor.  Our class ended up being about 48 minutes long and my average heart rate was 142 and my peak was 168.  So my monitor says I burned 673 calories.  I don't know how accurate that is.  They always say the machines aren't accurate at the gym, so who knows if I actually burned that many calories.  But at least I know I am getting a darn good workout.  I'm trying to remember now what my monitor said after our walk on Tuesday night.  I think it said I burned 275 calories on our hour long walk.  It was interesting on our walk because Mat's heart rate going up this hill was 108 and my was like 130.  He said that my heart rate is higher because I'm a girl and smaller than him.  I think maybe I'm just not in as good shape as him!  And I am older.  :)

I think it will be interesting to see if my heart rate changes as I improve in the class.  I already can tell I'm getting better because I don't have to stop as many times as I used to.  So I know my fitness level is improving.  I wish I would have had my heart rate monitor when we started.  

Guess that's enough of that.  It's Thursday!  Almost time for the weekend...

Help!

I need opinions please! Travelocity and Snapfish are doing a "Where would you rather be?" photo contest and you are supposed to submit your favorite winter getaway. The official rules state: JUDGING: Qualified Entries will be judged, in the judges’ sole discretion, on the quality, creativity and how well the Entry fits with the theme of the Contest. At the end of the Contest Entry Period, judges will review all eligible Entries to determine the Grand, First and Runner-Up Prize entries (“Finalist Entries”). Selection of the winning Entries will be based on the following judging criteria (“Judging Criteria”): (a) 40% Creativity, (b) 30% Photo and (c) 30% Composition. In the event of a tie, the tie will be broken based on the highest score in the “Creativity” Judging Criteria, continuing thereafter to Quality of Photo Judging Criteria, as needed to break the tie.

So I was thinking about entering a photo, but I can't decide which one I like. So I want to know what everyone thinks. It did say submit your favorite winter getaway, but it didn't specify anything else except that you can't include any identifiable people. Which is pretty funny because I looked at some of the entries already and there are a ton with people as the subject. Another mention - 80% are beach photos. So I only included one and it was a sunrise and not just a beach. So what does everyone think??

Mexico #1

Mexico #2

Mexico #3

San Diego Zoo

Waterfalls Outside of Portland

Yuck

Snow in March!  It's all melted now, but when I woke up the ground was a sparkling white.  It kind of made me want to go back to bed!  But at least it is Friday and I have the whole weekend to look forward to and enjoy!  Tonight Mat and I will go to kickboxing and then head home for a little relaxation.  I think we've decided to pick something up on the way home for dinner, but I don't know what yet.  

Tomorrow we'll be at Cory and Christina's house to celebrate Cory's birthday.  Probably play some games and have dinner.  I don't know what we'll do during the day.  I usually just find little things to do around the house that take up most of the day.  Sometimes I don't know how I do it!  I've been thinking about a little Spring Cleaning/Organization, so I might start on that.  We'll just have to see!

So that's us.  Exciting stuff!  

Still Kickin'

Here I am!  I know, I know.  It has been forever and ever since I blogged last.  My last post was after Thanksgiving!  Can you even believe that?  So I don't have many good excuses.  My main excuse is that December came and went in a matter of seconds.  With shopping, holiday parties, celebrating Christmas, it was like there wasn't even time to sleep!  And then I think it was just that I hadn't blogged in so long that it would take forever to catch up on the last month, so I kept putting it off.  So after some encouragement from a fellow blogger, I decided to get back into the game!

So here I am!  Mat and I have become devout kick boxers.  We started in the fall, but just went once a week for a month or two.  Then December came and the gym was basically abandoned for a good three weeks.  So starting the first of January, we made a commitment to our kickboxing class and have attended 3 days a week (with the exception of a couple missed days here and there) for the last 2 months.  We are so dedicated to our class that we bought our own gloves and we even bought heart rate monitors!  It's the hardest I've ever worked out before, but it is really getting me in shape!  Our heart rate monitors just came in the mail today, so I haven't even seen mine.  I do love toys!

So this morning I woke up around 4:30 to a strange clicking noise.  So I got out of bed to investigate and could hear something, but didn't know what it was.  So I got back in bed and kept hearing the noise.  It sounded almost like a drip, so I got back up to investigate.  I put my hand on the wall and sure enough, the wall was wet.  DANG!  So I woke Mat up and I felt bad because it was his sleep in day - he didn't have to work until 6am.  But he got up in the attic and looked around and couldn't see that the roof was leaking.  So now he is at home waiting for his dad to come check it out and see if he is missing something.  We're pretty sure it is not a pipe since it rained all night last night.  So I am keeping my fingers crossed that it isn't anything that is too hard to fix or requires us hiring someone to fix it.

So for all of you out there that enjoy recipes - Mat and I made one of our favorites last night: Quick Chicken Corn Chowder.  I found it on the cooking light website, which is where I get most of my recipes.  It really is a fast recipe, especially if you get a rotisserie chicken from the store and you don't have to cook the chicken.  I've been working on my personal cookbook, which is basically a collection of our favorite recipes.  This one is in there and we've made it quite a few times this winter.  

So that's about what we're up to.  I wish it was more exciting, like we were on a secret mission.  We did both have birthdays!  Mat threw me a kind of surprise party and it was the best Mexican Fiesta in the world.  There were chips and queso and salsa, tacos, taquitos, margaritas, mexican beer, and on and on.  I even had a pinata.  It was definitely the best birthday ever and Mat put so much time and effort into it.  He really is the best husband in the universe.

I hope everyone is wonderful!  I'll try to get back on here more often than the last few months.  :)