Chillaxin' in the Backyard

I'm updating my blog from the comfort of our backyard on this 85 degree Saturday.  Heath has the charcoal burning down in the grill.  We have some steaks and corn on the cob about to be thrown on the grill.  I'm drinking a Mike's Hard Winter Blackberry, Heath is drinking one of his IPA's.  I love this time of year in Las Vegas.  Not hot and not cold.  It's perfect.

On Monday morning, we are having our soft water and reverse osmosis system installed at the house.  The water in Las Vegas is horrible.  The only times we get to use soft water is when we go back to visit family in Wisconsin/Illinois.  It will be the greatest thing ever once our house has everything installed.  My skin and hair will look and feel so much better.

After the installation is complete, I am taking Carleigh to the preschool around the corner from our house.  Carleigh recently got a new teacher in her room at her current daycare and I do not like her at all.  This young lady acts like a child and is a borderline bully when the children are having a tough time.  She mocks Carleigh and the rest of the kid's in her room when they are crying after falling down or are just upset in general.  It's just not something that is acceptable for me.  We kept Carleigh at this daycare after we moved, even though it was way out of our way, because she had a really great teacher.  Since that teacher moved on to a different job, it's just time for me to take Carleigh out of her current daycare and get her to a place that's much closer to home.

After work yesterday, Carleigh & I went into Target so I could buy The Sims 3.  I've loved playing that game since the original game came out.  I still remember playing the Livin' Large expansion.  I have Sims 2, but it wasn't that fun at all.  It was enough to cure your boredom for a short period of time.  The Sims 3 is fun and time slips away from you quickly while playing.  I was going to buy an expansion pack with the game, but decided not to at this time.  I wanted to get used to the features of The Sims 3 before I bought anything else.

In other house news, we are going to paint Carleigh's room purple.  She has been stuck on this idea for a month now.  We brought home some of those paint sample sheets from Home Depot this afternoon.  Carleigh is picking out colors that are just a bit darker than your normal lilac color, but not as dark as midnight purple shade.  We also have plans to paint our half bathroom downstairs and the accent wall in our kitchen/dining room.  Carleigh's room takes top priority.  It will be a lot of fun painting her room since she chose purple.

That's all I have today.  I'm going to enjoy the rest of my Winter Blackberry drink before our dinner comes off the grill.

Mind Your Own Business

One thing that really gets under my skin are people who try to tell you how to handle your life.  I work with this woman who feels the need to criticize anything and everything I do.  At lunch, she will take a look at my food and say things like, "You're eating pasta?  That's going to make you fat."  This woman is at least 80 lbs overweight.  So for someone who weighs far more than myself, don't give me nutritional advice.  I count my calories on a daily basis and know what I am eating.  I do not judge her for eating those sodium-loaded Ramen Noodle cups every single day.  If someone wants to live off of Ramen Noodles, go for it.

This woman also tells me instead of driving to San Diego, our family of three should fly because it would be cheaper.  I'm not sure what planet she lives on, but it costs so much more to fly then to drive.  Even if gas was $5 a gallon, it would be far less expensive to take the five hour car ride then to get on an airplane and pay $465 round trip for the three of us.  I get it, the plane would get us there faster, but why spend hundreds of more dollars when it's easier to take a car?  I'm not a fan of getting groped by the TSA agents.  And has anyone flown with a pre-school aged kid?  It's not exactly fun...

I am the only person she criticizes on a daily basis.  I'm not exactly sure what I ever did to her, but it has gotten so annoying.  I'm not sure if it's jealousy or what.  She never acts this way towards the other woman we eat lunch with.  If she doesn't stop with her nastiness, my inner bitch is going to come out and she's not going to ever want to be in the same room as me.  I could stoop to her level, but what would that prove.  It wouldn't be too hard to move my lunch schedule around and go at 12:30pm instead of 12pm, but it would suck because I really do enjoy eating lunch with the other two women.  Since I don't feel a workplace should be treated like high school, I'm not going to put the other two in a position where they have to chose who to sit with at lunch.  That's just childish.

If I don't show up at lunch, maybe she will start judging and criticizing someone else.  Her toxic behavior will slowly start to infect everyone else.  I can't avoid her completely because we are on the same team.  So I have decided that the best way to avoid any of her bullshit is to take a later lunch.

Potlucks

We had our potluck at work yesterday.  I had entirely way too much to eat, but couldn't resist trying at least one bite of everyone's dish.  Since I had too much to eat yesterday at lunch, I barely touched my dinner.  I found a Grape Salad recipe on Pinterest and brought it as my dish.  I wanted something simple to bring and this was it.  You more than likely already have all of the ingredients in your home to make this.  I stuck to the basics.  Cream cheese, sour cream, vanilla extract, and sugar.  I only used red grapes this time around.  Once I was done mixing everything together, I added the crushed Butterfingers.  The Butterfingers give this salad the extra crunch.  Once I brought my dish into our meeting room and took the tinfoil off, everyone went crazy and wanted to know what I had made.  After everyone gave it a try, I had everyone telling me they wanted the recipe.  Not bad for having never made this before and taste testing it on my co-workers.

This Grape Salad will probably turn into my next comfort food.  Yeah, it's not the healthiest thing in the world to eat, but what's the fun in life if you never eat something like this once in awhile?  One of my co-workers suggested using yogurt and crushed graham crackers in the recipe which would work really well too.  I'll give that a try next time.

With all of the overtime I worked last week (17 hrs), it was nice to end my week with a potluck.  My manager informed us that we will still have voluntary overtime available next week too.  Definitely going to take advantage of that.  I had my performance review earlier in the week and it went well.  My manager did mention she wanted me to take on more leadership roles, but did not go into detail as to what she would like me to do exactly.  I hate taking charge of something because it might step on the toes of another person.  I'll figure something out while I work on my portion of the review which is due on March 7.

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

It's Been Too Long

Happy 2013!

It's been way too long since I have updated my blog.  My sincerest apologies.  I lost interest in my blog and realized I needed a topic/subject that will keep me motivated to blog about.  Over the past month, I've really been into trying new recipes found on Pinterest.  I'd love to start reviewing some of these recipes on my blog.  We have a potluck at work this Friday and I found a delicious looking recipe for Grape Salad.  Since I've never made it before today, I'll be using my co-workers as my taste testers.

Speaking of work, we are back on voluntary overtime.  Since I am addicted to overtime, you know what I'm doing from 5am-5pm Monday-Friday.  The extra money is so nice.  Especially while saving up money for our landscaping in the backyard.  I'm really tired of looking at dirt and rocks.  I will never understand how people can live in a house for years and never do anything with their backyards.

The weather is getting nicer here and I'm really looking forward to spending a majority of our days outdoors.  Heath & I are going to buy a Weber grill next pay period.  We would have bought one sooner, but the Jaguar needed new tires and an alignment this weekend.  Since we don't put cheap junk tires on our vehicles, the new tires ate up pretty much my entire paycheck.  The car rides so much smoother now with the new tires.  The alignment was all out of whack from the previous owner, so I am so glad we were able to get this all taken care of this weekend.

I'm really looking forward to blogging more often.  Not once a month or once every six months.  There are so many recipes and DIY projects I want to do this year.  It will keep me busy and give me something to blog about.

Visitors (Family)

My in-laws are in town until Thursday.  They got in late Friday night, around midnight.  It's been a hectic weekend here.  Every time they come out, we do a lot of shopping.  We didn't do too much shopping this time around.  At least not yet anyway.  We went to Target for a Halloween costume for Carleigh and a couple of decorations for the house.  We had lunch at Cabo Wabo inside the Planet Hollywood and also checked out the conservatory at Bellagio.  This morning, we went up to Mount Charleston to enjoy some gorgeous views and good food at the lodge.  My in-laws have never been to Mount Charleston and it's something you want to skip when you're visiting.

Heath is on PTO all week while his parent's are in town.  I didn't have enough PTO yet, so I will be back to work tomorrow morning.  No big deal to me.  Everyone wants to run here, run there and it gets exhausting after awhile.  We are a chill family and have no problem hanging out at home.  So it is a huge change for us to go to a bunch of different places in one day.  My in-laws also rented an annoying minivan and crawling in and out of that thing is a pain in the ass.  In order for me to grab the seat belt, I have to be some kind of contortionist just to get buckled in.  I can't wait to drive my Jaguar and ride in something comfortable tomorrow.

Our TV currently has a football game on.  Packers vs Houston, I think.  We are not a football family, but my father-in-law loves his football.  I'll share my TV this week.  I usually have reruns of Bridezillas on while waiting for the new episode at night.  Football is much calmer than a bunch of screaming, crazy ass bitches.  Just not as entertaining.

Carleigh went out and bought a bike this afternoon.  She has a pink & purple Barbie bike with purple tassels and basket, a bell and of course training wheels.  We also got her a purple helmet.  We are going to take her out after dinner to ride her new bike.  She was riding it around Walmart, but was getting in the way of all the people who were trying to shop.

The rest of this week is pretty much go-with-the-flow.  Not sure what we will end up doing.  I'm working 6am-2:30pm to make sure I have more time to spend with family.

Baking Day

Today is my first official baking day since moving in.  There is an aroma of banana bread spreading throughout the entire house, and surrounding homes, currently.  The next tasty treat on my to-bake list is pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  I could probably bake some chocolate chip cookies today too.  That might be way too many sweets in our house for just the three of us though.

My Christmas list has measuring cups as a top priority.  I would love to get a really nice set of stainless steal ones.  The current ones in our kitchen are okay, but the handle on one of them is falling off.  I think it was from the heat of the dishwasher.  Brand new measuring cups will make my baking days even more fun.  A cute apron from Flirty Apron's will too.

We are having a chill day in our household today.  Heath & Carleigh are out in the backyard working on the landscaping.  Carleigh is playing in the rocks while Heath does the hard labor.  I'd go out there and help, but I am busy watching the oven and getting ready to bake more tasty treats.  It will be so nice once the backyard is 100% done.

Work life is the same as always.  I'm back in training again and once I am proficient in my new skill, I can work a bunch of overtime.  I miss all of that extra money on my paychecks.  That overtime will be nice for Christmas too.  Carleigh has already started telling us what she wanted from Santa.  It's nothing crazy and over budget, thank goodness!

All Moved In

We are all moved into our new home.  We have been here almost two weeks now.  It's so nice to finally have a place of our own.  It doesn't feel like we live in Las Vegas anymore.  We are so far out from everything.  It's amazing.  The "nosiest" thing you hear out here is an airplane when they are on the flight path that skirts past our community.  We used to live two miles from the airport, so we used to hear a lot more airplane noise before.  Airplanes don't bother me at all.  So I guess we really don't have any noisy things out this way.  Unless you want to complain about the noisy crickets.

Our backyard was kept as a rock/dirt pile like a typical house out here.  Heath & I wanted to work on the backyard ourselves, but once we started digging back there, we realized how much of a mess it was.  Every time we would dig in one section, there were huge rocks.  I don't mind the smaller/average sized rocks, but some of these are big enough to throw at a window and bust it up.  We have decided to go the landscaper route.  We don't want to keep our backyard a pile of dirt and rocks.  We want some grass back there, especially with having a kid.  Carleigh needs a place to play.

There isn't much to really update, so I'll throw in some pictures of the interior of our home.  Our blinds have been ordered and will be installed once they are done.  Our windows are naked until later this week... I hope!

This is the entry way into our home.

Carleigh's bathroom.

Carleigh's bathroom counter area.

Walking down the hallway, into Carleigh's bedroom.

Kitchen.

Dining room.

Dishwasher and a corner of our kitchen island.

Fridge and pantry.

Sink & mirror of our downstairs bathroom.

Another shot of the downstairs bathroom.

Laundry room.  Huge thanks to my in-law's for the washer & dryer.  These appliances play a tune when your laundry is done.  It's so cool.

Living room.

The view you see once you come in the front door.  We have a very open floor plan downstairs.  We love it!

Going up the stairs towards the loft.  I plan on having a "second living room" up here in the near future.

Master bathroom counter.  We have a medicine cabinet on both sides.

Shower/tub area.

View of the master bedroom from the huge walk-in closet.

View of the master bedroom from the bathroom.

Carleigh going up the stairs.

Stove/microwave.

Third bedroom.  This will be a guest room until we decide to add baby #2.