Remembering Buster

Last week we lost our "Buster" - CJ's Grandma. We attended her memorial service this last weekend in Seattle and this is part of the slide show that we put together for the service. The service was beautiful and was truly a celebration of her life. We couldn't believe how packed the chapel was with people who couldn't wait to share how she had touched their lives. Overwhelmingly everyone agreed that she had a way of just taking you under her wing and accepting you into her family which was exactly how I felt about her.

We miss her already and we just can't say enough what a great person she was. The very last time we saw her was during our Thanksgiving trip and we blogged about the visit here.... Brunch with Buster and Georgia. After our lovely visit, CJ and I got in some really great big hugs from her before we left. We're so glad that we did because it made for such a great goodbye and a left us with such a good last memory of her.

Buster was such a lovely Grandmother and we can't imagine our Seattle visits without her warm hospitality and her funny personality. CJ and I will really miss her.

Our Weekend

So it's Sunday evening already and I thought I'd do a blog post about our weekend. This like all weekends seemed at least one day too short.

Friday night we worked late, until 9:30'ish. We received an offer on our house which ended up being a super 'low ball' offer. It was disappointing and kind of a waste of time, but at least we are getting bites on the house. While it stresses me out, I know that we'll have it sold soon and am ready to wait the market out if needed. On the way home, we rented a bunch of DVDs and stayed up late watching movies.

Saturday morning we got up early and headed over to McDonalds to grab some breakfast and dine with all of the McDonalds "regulars" which includes many elderly people and one man in particular who was sleeping in his booth. He is there nearly every Saturday and Sunday morning and so we usually have a short conversation with him whenever we see him, but this time he was completely asleep sitting up.

Then we went home and Ciege worked on his laptop (still working on some project stuff) which I sat beside him and watched some movies.

That evening we went to a Steelheads hockey game with Tossie and her good friend Brian. They treated us to the evening out, which we really appreciated. It was a great time and was fun getting a chance to chat with them. The highlight of the evening was this little chubby 9 year old boy who would stand up and dance wildly anytime there was music playing of any kind of beat. This kid had the moves! He did the sprinkler, pop and lock, running man...you name it. It was awesome, really humorous and made the evening really entertaining. I have to admit I was watching the dancing more than the hockey. I would have loved to take a picture of him, but thought it was probably not a good idea to go humiliating him on my blog like that :) When we got home, I had a hankering for some Chinese food, so I made some sweet & sour chicken with pork fried rice for dinner. By the time dinner was ready, it was 11pm. So we finished watching our dvds and ate dinner well past our bedtimes.

Sunday morning we slept the late night off a little by getting up around 10:30am. We had a light breakfast because we were meeting my Mom and Jonathan for lunch at Chilis. Lunch was great. It was nice to sit and chat with them and also nice to get out of the house.

So that was our weekend...it seemed to fly by. I would have loved to drag Ciege out to the ski slopes this weekend but today proved to be quite the lazy day and work really got in the way of our weekend plans. Hopefully we can get out during the evenings this week.

Dull Drums

The New Year has brought along with it some blog-dull drums for me. Either we are doing absolutely nothing exciting or worthwhile, or I am just getting really lazy about keeping this updated...I suppose its a combo of both. The biggest problem is that I'm not carrying around my camera and I find that taking pictures helps me blog more.

So tonight we're at work burning the "8:30pm oil" and I remembered that it has been a whole week since I've posted. And the last post was pretty boring. So I got out my cell phone and shot a picture of CJ hard at work at his computer desk. Today is his 1 year anniversary at Wirestone! This is really cool to us because despite all of the skepticism, we're still really loving working together. You know that you're truly married to your best friend when you can spend 24x7 with your spouse and still be happy. There have been so many benefits of working together. For example, tonight it is really easy for me to deal with CJ having to work late because I can just sit along side him at work, listen to the Smashing Pumpkins, surf, and catch up on my blog. It's great!

And I can't believe that it is already Friday tomorrow. Is it me or is it weird that we're already half way through January? Wasn't Christmas just this last weekend? It really does seem like it.

So I think the main theme this week has been trying to take care of some things for selling our house in Meridian. We're still waiting this market out, hoping that a happy buyer will come right along and love that house as much as we do...and be willing to pay :) Recently we relisted our house the do-it-yourself way through a flat fee real estate agent. We're able to get listed on the MLS for a small fee, which will help us in this slow buyer's market. So I've spent the week making flyers, and creating a "Virtual Tour" for our house.

So besides for house chores and working late this week, not too much excitement to report. I'm looking forward to challenging CJ at some "Age of Empires" this weekend and I'm really looking forward to some skiing. Hopefully I can steal him away from his work long enough to get a little of the white stuff. :) Happy Friday/Weekend!

Update

Here is what we've been up to this week:

Monday: We had a super busy day at work and during the evening, I had dinner at Shari's with a very close person to me. I had such a nice conversation with her that went until late in the evening. She and I were able to talk about some things that had been causing distance between us and I left feeling closer to her than ever before.

Tuesday: Exhausted from having stayed out late the evening before, I pretty much just struggled through the day. We woke up later than usual, rushed to get out of the door, and felt pretty disorganized. Craig had to stay late tonight to get some work done. When we got home, I had a mountain of dishes left over from Sunday night which I procrastinated and Craig and I cuddled and watched TV before bed.

Wednesday: Was a much better day, but we're still feeling the effects of a busy week and not enough sleep. Work is going really well for Craig and I. During the evening, I finally took care of my dish mountain, ran a load of laundry, and we got caught up on some episodes of our favorite TV show.

Thursday: Wow, is it Thursday already? Today we got up way too late because I snoozed my alarm for nearly an hour. Way too late for us this morning was 8:30am, so we rushed to get ready and out the door so Craig could make his 9:30am meetings. During lunch, we went to the car wash and spent some time trying to remove a years worth of dirt and grime. We've been super negligent on our car washing, and it felt very good to get this off of our plate. We originally planned on having a date night tonight, but I think Craig is going to work late...so we'll have to postpone that until this weekend.

It Snowed!

When we got up this morning, we went to the living room and saw the most beautiful snow landscape in our backyard. Our trees were covered with at least two inches of snow. CJ promptly suited up and went out front to shovel our driveway. Check out the pyramid of snow he made in our front lawn....although it may be hard to tell in this picture, the giant mound is as tall as our lamppost...

Our Obsession

Ok, we admit it...we're nerds. After a long hard day of sitting at a computer programming, our favorite thing to do is to come home and sit at a computer playing games, surfing the web etc. I guess you could say that we live on our computers. During our holiday vacation we rediscovered "Age of Kings", which is a pc game which was released in 1999. In our 'old days' we used to play this game for days. Since it had been a while since we played, it was great to dust off this classic and play each other again. Each game generally takes 2-3 hours and we've been known to play 5 games or more at a sitting. This game is great. CJ and I both start out at different sides of the map. We have to gather resources and then we can purchase an army with those resources so that we can attack each other like in the picture shown above. It is great fun, and we just finished a four hour session. (CJ won all the games tonight)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! What a great year 2007 has been and we are so excited for 2008. Here are some notable things that happened for us this year....

1. January: Craig left 7+ years of Micron and began working with me at Wirestone...and has never looked back!
2. February: We began blogging and have really enjoyed having a place to record all of our thoughts and keep in touch with family.
3. March: We made an offer on a house we found in the Boise foothills.
4. April: We put our house in Meridian up for sale (still on the market) and I turned 29.
5. May: We moved into our new house and CJ found his pet frog.
6. June: We took a road trip to Oregon for Nona's family reunion weekend.
7. July: CJ became an OLD man and turned 30.
8. August: We hung out in our new house and enjoyed some lazy summer days.
9. September: We finished working on a parttime programming project and traveled to Orem Utah to see the Smashing Pumpkins play.
10. October: CJ took a trip to Las Vegas for a work conference and we had a pretty uneventful month.
11. November: We went to Las Vegas for the annual work retreat, spent Thanksgiving with the Seattle Sweigarts, and Bachelor had his barbed-wire accident.
12. December: We went to Arizona to celebrate my Grandma's 70th birthday and enjoyed the holidays.

Phew! It has been a busy year. I think that as the years go by, things just keep getting better and better. CJ and I are really loving our new house and having so much fun working together.

For the past few years I haven't really made any New Years resolutions. It seems that if you setup New Years goals, you're so much more likely to not accomplish them. But the problem with not making goals, is that you don't actually accomplish anything either. You have to set a goal to meet that goal, but if you don't set the goal then you will miss it for sure. So I figure that our chances are better at accomplishing some things if we actually set some goals this year. Here are the things that we will be working on...

1. We're going to strive to eat healthier and attend the gym.
2. We're going to make an effort to keep our car clean and clutter free.

Small list, but I think goal #1 is pretty challenging on its own. Goal #2 is a little thing that will really help us feel more organized. One of the things I am going to try to do this year is to set little weekly goals that accomplish the bigger goals. Hopefully we can keep our resolutions, but really any progress in those areas will be a win for us.

Happy 2008 everyone! We hope this year is even better than the last for you and we send you our best wishes and love.