Dreaming of Fall

I am SO ready for fall. The crisp, cool air. Spiced ciders and hot chai tea lattes. Crunchy leaves in bold, autumn colors. The oranges, the browns, the deep reds. Pot pies, homemade chili and stew. Hot rolls, fresh from mom's oven. I'm ready for Halloween. Jackolanterns, corn stalks, bales of hay. Chilly autumn nights where the stars shine bright and the moon hangs low and golden. The anticipation of the other holidays to soon follow, Thanksgiving with family crowded around a festive table, talking over mashed potatoes and candied yams. Christmas with old fashioned ornaments hanging from a brightly lit tree. Cheery presents wrapped merrily, awaiting to be opened by eager hands. Apple pies and kaluah, fruit cake and lebkuchen.

And now for something completely different:

Panic: Undue

I've begun to realize that I'm becoming increasingly more panicked at the thought of getting older. Birthdays never mattered over much to me - I like them, I like the attention and the celebration and of course, the presents - but the number itself wasn't a big deal. I often forget how old I am and have to stop and think about it when asked. 27 isn't old by any standard. However. I keep thinking of that impending big number. 30. That's not old, either. I know plenty of people in their 30's and I certainly don't consider them to be old. But the prospect of MYSELF joining that group....Yikes.

Nick just said "2042" which absolutely FREAKED me out. I'll be 61. On the one hand, I'm way excited to be there. What will the world be like in another 34 years? How far will technology, medicine, laws, values, etc progress? Will there BE any progression? I read a book series by JD Robb (it's Nora Robert's alter ego). The series is focused around a New York City police lieutenant in the homicide department and each book is all about her current case. I enjoy the book, murder, suspense and just enough romance to keep it light and fun. It's certainly not educational or earth shattering, but I enjoy it and reading should be fun. In any case, this series is set in the future. About that time frame I mentioned above, 2042 or thereabouts. She writes about such things as cars that can go on autopilot. They can fly. They have this deal called an autochef. You choose your food item from a menu (based on food available on hand) and it prepares it for you, etc. None of these things seem unreasonable or too far fetched for me to grasp, so it doesn't distract me from the book. I often find myself wondering how far we'll progress in those 30-some-odd years. Will I have an autochef or it's equivalent? Will prostitution be legalized, licensed and regulated?

Anyway, I've gotten off track from my original point. I keep finding myself increasingly concerned with getting old and, oddly enough, saving money. I have this internal panic with myself that I need to save as much money as I can. Which is great, because we're building a really nice savings account that will come in handy should anything happen.

Well, I sort of lost track of where I was going with all of this, but there you go. My thoughts are often scattered and a bit jumbled.

Scentsy!

So, I'm doing something I've never done before and never really considered before. I'm going to join the Scentsy team and become a consultant. A gal I met through a guy Nick works with (Nick works with Cobi and Kyme is Cobi's wife) is a Scentsy consultant, so I had her help me throw a party. It wasn't a very big event, just a few people ended up being able to come, but I had such a great time. It've very relaxed and just a good time. There's no sales pitch, Kyme just set out her product and kind of hung out - she was there to answer any questions we had (how does it work, how long do the scents last, etc). The product really sells itself.

I'm just simply in love with it. It's so easy to use and well, I just love it. It doesn't cost much to get started and it's really low pressure. You have a sales quote that they'd like to you reach to remain active but if you don't, oh well. No fee, no penality, no loss of future commissions. You simply go inactive and you get to keep your kit.

My friend Susan is coming up from Ohio at the end of the month and she & I are going to meet with Kyme and sign up! Scentsy is fairly new and while it's taken off here in the west, it hasn't quite caught up in the east yet. Susan will have a huge market all to herself. Hopefully it's a hit!

Boise Anniversary

Well, Friday marked our one year anniversary of arriving in Boise. So much has changed since that time - shall we recap?

we got here and moved in with my parents until we could find a house. Nick & I really expected to only be with my parents for about a month, hopefully less. Unfortunately, our credit was worse than we expected and it took some time to clean up. Thankfully we made a killing on our Enumclaw house and had enough money to pay off all our debt and be credit card free. I started my job at Cunnington Leavitt towards the end of July (and since then have gone through numerous changes at work, including a name change - we're now Cunnington & Associates). Nick started his job at EDS in August I believe and then started school just after that.

We finally started looking at houses and ended up putting bids on 3. The first one the sellers came back with a ridiculous counter offer and we walked away. In hindsight, I'm glad we did. It was a cute house, but where we ended up is so much better. The second house we bid on we loved and the seller accepted our offer. We got some terrible news at inspection - water in the crawlspace. And not just a little water - a lot of water. We finally ended up walking away from that house (but we had to go to court to get our earnest money back, as the seller felt she was entitled to it and we disagreed). FINALLY we bid on the house we're in now and we couldn't be happier. We love our house, it's perfect for us.

Yesterday we spent doing some HGTV type fixs to our house. Lots of brass fixtures - the fireplace surround, the light in the front hall, all the doorknobs. Brass doesn't fit with our style or our decor. So, off to Lowe's we went and bought some Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint and started covering it up. We did the fireplace surround, two sets of doorknobs and the light in the front hall. It is SUCH an improvement and so much cheaper than replacing all the knobs.

Well, continuing on with our events since last July - Nick's family came up from Florida in November to do our annual Christmas at Thanksgiving. It was great to see every one. We've been attending lots of sports games of my nieces and nephew - I love watching them play and decide what they want to do. We were hoping to go with the Beesley's to Europe to visit family in May but we decided that a trip of that expense ought to wait until after school. We're just juggling too many financial balls right now. It was hard to pass (especially when I saw all the fun we missed out on) but it was the adult thing to do.

Nick's doing incredibly well in school - he's often one of the first (if not the only) in his class to pick up and understand the more complex ideas, several of his classmates email him for assistance with the home work, and last quarter he pulled in straight A's. I know it's hard for him - he works from 6:00 am to 2:30 pm M-F and then attends school from 6:00 pm to 10:30 pm 3 nights a week, plus he has to make time for homework, housework, oh and ME.

I guess that's about it. We'll see what this next year brings us!

Happy Anniversary

Well, today marks the 3rd year of our marriage. So far, so good. No major drama, not gigantic hurdles that we've jumped over. Some would says - oh, 3 years. That's still practically newlyweds. Remember, though, that we've been together since for just about 11 years now.

What's changed since we took that trip down the aisle 3 years ago? Well, the biggest change of course is that we moved states. We left our home in Enumclaw last July and set course for Boise. We landed a little west of Boise, in Meridian. Nick's also enrolled in school. He's in his 4th quarter of school and has 2 more years to go.

Not much else has changed! We're so boring! I know many of you are anxious for babies....not yet! Maybe soon - who knows? We have no set plan on that, so when it happens, it happens but rest assured that I'll be singing it from the hilltops when it does happen! :-)

So, that's my anniversary blog. Not so exciting - in fact, we're not even doing anything today for our anniversary. Nick has school tonight and I'll probably go to the gym. HA!