promise I'm still here!

I know it's hard to believe, but I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I have some major blog-guilt, though. I feel like such a poser reading other people's and commenting and never ever updating my own. But here goes nothing-- a quick update and a few pics!

Life is consumed by working on the house and trying to make it move-in-able. I am very thankful to my almost-sister Catherine for helping us so much in the last week-- she's made the work go much faster and much more enjoyably! We've gotten a lot accomplished and last weekend Matt made the executive decision that though these laminate floors may be "DIY" for some, they aren't for us. So we've hired a friend with experience to do them for us, and he hopefully will have them finished this week! It felt great to finally decide to stop stressing over that and just pay someone else to do it. It will be well worth it. My parents came up this weekend and helped us so much with little details around the house and with LANDSCAPING!! My mom brought lots of transplantable (if that's a word) plants from her yard/garden and we bought a few more at Lowe's and worked all day in the 100 degree weather and the results are BEAUTIFUL!! Sadly, I haven't had my camera on me all weekend, but I promise we have one large bed and 2 small beds filled with a beautiful variety of perennials, colorful annuals, varying groundcovers, and other miscellaneous bushes and things. It's so beautiful!! So we are basically all set to move in as soon as the floors go down. YAY!

Dining room a few weeks ago:

Dining room now: check out the beautiful blinds!!

Kitchen last week (bad caulk job around countertops made the paint there a disaster...eyesore):

Kitchen now (notice the new white molding to disguise the caulk! Oh, and the stove actually works without electrocuting you!)

Pretty blinds make my bathroom very spa-like!

So in non-house news...let's see, do I have any? We've tried to hit the pool (Matt's parents have one) as often as possible, often as we're coming home from working on the house. We've started swimming laps, which I must say...if you absolutely must exercise, swimming laps is the way to go. You still get tired and sore, but at least you don't SWEAT!!! And you can stop and take breaks and float whenever you want. It's a pretty sweet deal. We'll see if I can keep it up througout the summer.

We finally watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last week and I really liked it. It was long, though. But really good and it made me cry a lot. Last night I watched In Her Shoes. It was good, but much longer than necessary. Anyone have any recommendations for things I should add to my Netflix queue?

I've had lots of good baby-holding the past few weeks. As Jolene pointed out so subtlely, I neglected to blog about seeing her and her baby (and husband) and posting pictures I took. I did indeed enjoy her visit a few weekends ago and LOVE her adorable little baby, Anahi! How could you NOT love this face?

I also got to hold my friend Holly's baby yesterday (no pictures). I took Maggie (the baby) outside to see Lola and a train happened to be passing by at the time. Lola started barking (probably at the train), and Maggie started giggling hysterically (she's about 6 months old). This caused Lola to bark more, which made Maggie laugh more. This went on for quite some time and was possibly the most adorable thing I've ever witnessed. Heart, be still...

Now I need to go catch up on my blog reading, then get ready for the week. And figure out a way to take a vacation. For free. :)