I know I am a slacker

Hey everyone if anyone still reads my blog. I have had a really busy last couple of months with school and a lot of other stuff going on in our lives. Our deck started to collapse after the winter and it has been a chore getting it rebuilt. Luckily we are so blessed to have wonderful family and friends who helped us work on it. We can never thank them enough and today it finally was finished.

Here are the before and after pictures. Ugly deck on the top, pretty deck on the bottom. I am so glad that it is done and that this deck is so much better than our other one. When we tore up the deck we found out that they had used untreated wood under the deck so it was all rotted. We are grateful no one hurt themselves on the old deck. The new one is made of treated wood and Treks which should last forever. Eventually we will have to replace the fence. Apparently they did not believe in levels.

In non-deck news my semester went better than I suspected. I have to say this was my hardest semester with classes and all the unexpected things that happened this semester. I had five papers due within a month of each other one being 15 pages another over 20 pages. It was just really stressful. Fortunatly I did well enough to stay on the Dean's List. In addition I got my 23 page paper back and my teacher thinks that it is good enough to submit to the student journal at the U. I am thinking that maybe I will submit it. My dad says that the worst that could happen is that they say no to publishing it. I need to fix some things and maybe do some more research but I think that I will try.

Well I am looking forward to the rest of my summer with no school and my next semester will be easier with only three classes. And I can catch up with all the things that I wanted to do during school including talking to people. Hopefully no one has taken my inattention personally. Between school, the deck, and other stuff going on I have a hard time remembering my name sometimes.

New Roses

So after the winter I found that three of my rose bushes had died. I was sad because one of them was a really pretty one that smelled really good. So I am going to replace two of them and I have to decide what colors I want. So I am asking for your opinion. The ones that survived are lavender, a dark red, yellow, and orange. I lost the yellow, white and a multi-colored one. I am thinking about maybe getting multi-colored ones. So if you have an opinion let me know. I am also thinking about tearing out my laurel bushes that did not do well this winter and putting in butterfly bushes. We will have to see if I do or not.

A little bit smaller

So about a month ago I decided to start Weight Watchers. I always told myself I never would, but I was not having a lot of success losing weight by myself. I never wanted to go to meetings or have someone weight me and then discuss with me what my weight was, so I did not join. But now they let you do everything online, so I figured what the heck. I was not happy with my weight and it was time for me to change that. Well I have to say that I am now a believer in Weight Watchers. I reached my first weight goal of losing 5% of my weight. I have lost the same amount that I did two years ago, but in a month instead of eight months. The program has really helped me to limit portion sizes and watch what I eat. I still have a ways to go to be at the weight that I want to be at, but I am encouraged by my results so far. Maybe the will put me on a commercial. So we have a lot of big changes going on in our lives right now. One is that my parents are moving out. They have been living with us for almost three years and two weeks ago they signed on their home. I am so excited for them. Their new house has a huge garage and a hot tub. So next weekend Jason and I are going to be by ourselves in our house. We are not going to know what to do just the two of us. Well we do have plans. We are changing some of the rooms around. I am making one of the rooms into a craft room for me to keep all my yarn, flowers, wreaths, and paints. Also because my parents are moving I am changing my garden this year. I am not planting as many tomatoes. Although I say that now, but I always pick up plants, you know because they need a home. I have already planted peas, which the birds have been eating, which is annoying. I am going to plant beans this year and some lettuce. But no squash, Jason and I can not eat that much zucchini. Well that is what is going on. We are just really busy right now. I am trying to get all my papers written. I have 5 and only on more month left to do it all in. Heres hoping that I don't flunk. Sorry this is one long paragraph, I keep putting spaces and the stupid thing just puts it all as one paragraph.

Shy guy down my dress

So today we went to Jason's cousin's wedding and during the reception we helped watch our niece and nephew. They had little Disney figures and Mario figures to play with. My niece kept trying to put Minnie Mouse down everyone's dress, she is only 2 so it is cute now. But my nephew could not find his shy guy figurine, we looked all over the gym for it and could not find it. His mom said we would look after the reception was done. So Jason and I went home and I was sitting on the couch and there was a lump on my leg. I grabbed it and it was the shy guy. My niece had stuck it down my dress and I did not know it, when I took off my belt it feel down. Lets just say we all laughed hysterically and that is the first time I have ever had a Nintendo character down my dress. You have to watch out for those shy guys you never know where they will end up.

A first for me

So today was my first time being rear ended. The car is just fine and I am fine too. I was getting on to the freeway and had to stop for a pedestrian who had the right away. I was stopped and all of a sudden someone hit me. My head hit my seat, so I have a little headache, but there is no damage to my car. The girl said it was because the road was slippery, but I am pretty sure that it was because she was on her cell phone. Well I hope that does not happen again. Although everything is fine, it was still really scary.
Other than that everything is going fine. I am busy with school. I am also really excited to get out into the yard and get some stuff done. My tulips and hyacinths are starting to pop up. I am going to try and plant some peas this weekend if the weather cooperates. I am just really excited to have nicer weather. We have a lot of stuff we want to do around the yard and I want to start getting it done. I just hope we get to keep the spring weather for a little bit and don't go straight into the summer heat.

Waiting for the end of winter

This month has been hard for me. School has been harder this semester because I can not get over being sick. I had one cold right after Christmas and then a week after I got over that I caught another one that I still have. It is frustrating being sick for almost a whole month. I went to the doctor and was told that there is basically nothing that they can do. I don't have pnuemonia so I just have to suffer through it. So I have had no motivation to do school work and I feel incredibly behind. It will be okay, but right now I am just a little overwhelmed.

So with school and other things that have been going on Jason was nice and brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers to make me feel better. I thought they were so pretty and perfect. Jason is really good about getting me flowers and he picks out really pretty ones.

The one thing that has been sort of fun, is that Michaels has all of their spring flowers out right now. I love the spring flowers and it makes me antsy for spring to actually come. Well I made a new wreath formy living room that I am pretty excited about. I worked on it before the Super Bowl (which was a pretty good game this year). I saw the big purple peonys and just thought they were so pretty and I have been thinking I needed a more springy wreath for the living room.

Well anyways that is about all right now. I am hoping that the next time that I write I will have something more exciting to write about before everyone starts sleeping when they read my blog. Maybe I need to write about something crazy like some blogs. If you have ever blog surfed you will know what I am talking about. You can kind blogs about pretty much everything, a lot of stuff I have never even heard of before. Maybe I will write about our state legislature, that is a short ride to crazy town.

I am way behind

So I am way behind on writing on the blog. One excuse is that I was busy with finals and then Christmas. The next excuse is after Christmas I got a bad cold, which is trying to turn into bronchitis, so I have not been doing much lately. Well I survived finals, barely, and got my grades right after Christmas. I got 4 A's and a B+. Not too shabby. The B+ was in Constitutional Law, so I was pretty happy with that. Next semester starts next week. I am not ready yet. I want another week. Right now I am taking a senior writing course, Chinese Foreign Policy, Interest Groups, and Globalization and Resistance. It should be an interesting semester. I am trying to decide if I should drop a class and take something different or stay with what I have.

Christmas was wonderful. We had a great time with our families. Jason loved the telescope that I got him. He has been able to find a couple of stars so far, but it is going to take some practice for him to see everything that he wants. He got me two hours at a spa. I am looking forward to that. I get to pick what I want to do. I am thinking right now about doing this hydrotherapy thing that they do. I have done it before and my skin was so soft after wards. I am also thinking about doing a seaweed detox wrap. I have always been interested in doing one. The ironic thing is after I going to the spa and being wrapped up in seaweed, we are going to go out to sushi so I can eat fish wrapped in seaweed. Mmmm, sushi.

Well I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year. I don't have any resolutions yet this year. I never stick with them anyways. I am just going to stick with the goals from last year of doing well in school and getting done as soon as I can with school. I have just 10 classes left. Yahoo.