waking up in vegas....

i realize how long it has been since i updated. we have been so busy! i know this looks long, but there are a lot of pics. i tried to keep my jabber minimal. 

the a.c. did get fixed. i spent the week after that preparing for a garage sale. this seriously took all week.  we had a lot of stuff. a lot. and we did extremely well, so it was completely worth it! 

so once we cleaned up it was time to head off to adam and kayla's wedding. too much fun with close friends. it was a beautiful, creative wedding. 

me, tatum, kayla and faye.

sistas' from anotha' motha'

THE VEGAS

for father's day we got p-daddy tickets to the haunted las vegas tour. we are all into the ghost shows and haunted houses, except for kyle...he is a scaredy-cat. it was a little cheesy, but quite fun. we learned lots of interesting facts and all about the haunts in the vegas area. our tour guide has a day job of being an undertaker.  creepy....
when we checked in we all received dousing rods or witching sticks.  the point is to hold the sticks parallel to the ground about 10 inches apart. when they start spinning around on their own in your hand, you are apparently getting ghostly activity.  the scary thing is it really worked, well they spun on their own, i don't know if there were ghosties or not.  this picture was taken at a park down the street from wayne newton's house. this park was haunted because several bodies have been found there and supposedly they have all hung around. also, it was like 110 degrees there at night and the ground at the park was freezing. it was very strange. 

this is part of wayne's estate. there was a house built across the street from his main gate that is supposedly haunted. apparently, some drug lords started building it and selling drugs out of it before it was completed. a 16 year old girl went missing from the same neighborhood and her body was found in the incomplete house. apparently, she was killed in some drug lord war or something... anyways, the house was never finished after that. the story is that the girl haunts the house. we were shown pictures of the house in day and at night. during the day it looked like a normal house, but at night it was covered in orbs (ghost talk). the killing took place like 18 years ago and numerous realtor's have listed it with no success. people that look at the house always come out saying it was hard to breathe and they felt like they were being strangled. the even freakier part of this story is that the address is 6660 pecos. the realtor's would move the address numbers up and down just to attempt some interest in it. 

we stayed at the bellagio this time. this is one of my absolute favorite casino/hotels on the strip. it is just beautiful! we discovered that they also have the world's largest chocolate fountain. here is a pic of the guinness world record certificate. the fountain had all of these glass platters that three different types of chocolate ribbon down. it is absolutely stunning. 

the best part of the bellagio is the decor. the ceiling in the lobby is covered in thousands of glass flowers. they are just stunning, no matter how many times i enter that building, i never get tired of seeing this ceiling. 

the other great thing is the conservatory that changes with the seasons. all of the decorations are made of flowers and are just unbelievable. the fountain was made of flowers. 
this time there was a green house in the center of the room.  you could walk into it and it was filled with birds. 

water tunnels. no, they are not in tubes. it was funny to watch people that would walk by and stick their hands into the water to see if it was real. the water sprayed all over them. well, that's what they get. 
bird in the green house. 

on the last day we finished up with some back to school shopping. my job was to keep gracie occupied while grams and jana shopped for her. we pretty much walked around and put funny hats on our heads and tried to talk jana into buying them for her.  this was at gymboree.  what 2 year old doesn't need a beret? we got bored and watched the tv they had setup for kids. i just do what i am told. so we were sitting there watching cartoons and i heard jana ask where the girls where? the gymboree lady responds by telling her that two of her kids are watching tv. bahaha. this made patty and i crack up, i don't think jana was too happy. 

 


we got home from the vegas way late and then our time was so screwed up living on vegas time so we ended up with very little sleep and then we had to be at work in moore at 8:00. i feel as though things have been crazy since the a.c. debacle and this is the first time i have actually relaxed. yeah, i realize i was just on vacation, but there is very little time to rest in vegas, so much to do. 

okay, we are all caught up for now! 

feelin' hot, hot hot!

i wrote this in red to emphasize how hot it currently is. 

this was the view in my car yesterday.... ridiculous 

we took a lil' trip to moore this morning, actually i do this a lot of mornings, to work in my classroom. i made kyle-boy go along to help unload my fridge. anywho...when we got home it was apparent our a/c was not working...big bummer because at this exact moment our buddies at the weather channel are telling us it is 104 out and pushing 90 in the house. not cool at all dudes (pun intended).

so after perusing the phonebook and calling every repairman from here to the county line, we finally found one very nice old man who has been outside for the last two hours telling us that the whole system needs to be replaced, yet he is continuing to try to get it to jump-start until tomorrow so we can decide how to afford this little detour.  

so much for getting the kitchen done relatively soon. :( my granite countertops are going to have to wait a little while. i'll keep you updated. 

Ta Da!

whew! what a mess! we spent the entire day yesterday painting the kitchen. we had to pull everything out of the cabinets. which made another mess. i did get to de-clutter, which is sadly one of the things i really like to do. anything that we have not used in the last three years is getting the boot. we had a lot of help moving into our house (which i am very thankful for), but i have had no clue where a lot of our stuff is. now, we know where everything is and what we actually have.  

the goal is to make this area look more like a built in hutch. there will doors on the bottom and the top center. we are going to leave the top outer cabinets open and use the shelves. i got this idea from a magazine, i have no shame in using someone else's designs. 
today we took a little trip to builder's warehouse. fun place if you are into that kind of thing. we are definitely going with the white subway tiles for the backsplash. i know that is a lot of white, white tiles, white backsplash...but it is going to look great! 

 i like the one in the center, kyle likes the dark one on the top. what do you think? the tile behind all of this is what is on our floor. 

-i have been notified by several people that our comment section is not working. this should be fixed, so try it again. :) 

everything old is new again.

if you know me you know i cannot sit still for more than 5 minutes and i have to be doing something at all times. well, kyle made the mistake of leaving me alone one day, so i took it upon myself to take the hammer to the kitchen and start my next project.

 here is what we started with:

it may not look that bad to you, but trust me a 50 year old kitchen that has had nothing done to it can be quite gross. you just can't see it. 
i attempted to hammer off the scroll -ey (sp?) molding above the window and got it most of the way, but kyle had to finish it off for me. this is after we took off all of the cabinet doors and sanded down the bases and drawers. it looks a little p.w.t (poor-white-trash) at the moment, but i have a vision.
kyle put us on budgets for the summer and my weekly allowance went to this beautiful baby, i am referring to the paint sprayer. it is awesome! such a clean finish! i did do a lot of work too! we had a hard time sharing the spray gun. 
this is as far as we got tonight. no more golden 60's stain for us. thank the lord! i hated it! 

just wait until we get done with it. 

wickedly, wonderful weekend.

whew, what a weekend we had. i took a spur of the moment trip friday to ikea in frisco, tx. i am totally in love and sold on ikea. so much stuff, such a little price. some of my great finds include laundry room hamper/clothes sorter for 2.00, cute napkins for .49, new kitchen knives for 4.00, duvet to accent our bedroom for 19.00, outdoor rugs for 9.00. like i said it is wonderful. 

all of these items are necessities of course. ;)

saturday i was up bright and early for the fireball. i placed seventh overall and 2nd in my age group. which i am totally cool with. what i am not okay with is the number of people that registered as walkers and chose to run. i like to call this cheating. it is just not right to those of us that kick our booty's to win the walking part of the classic only to be bamboozled out of our correct walking placement. 

...totally kidding, but seriously, seriously? anyways, ada rotary will be hearing my complaint. from what i have been told though quite a few have already had a gripe session. 

we spent the afternoon at our friend's nate and susie. we taught with them in ada and all four of us moved to the city this summer. well, actually they live in choctaw, but it is close to the city. we had planned to go to uco to watch fireworks, but because of the sudden weather change we did not. instead, we decided to have a small cookout with adam, kayla, ben and kelsey. we ate, played games and ate some more. 

sunday i recovered from my crazy weekend and kyle did the golf thing. 

today we worked in my classroom again. it is finally getting there. i did bring home a yucky, old, yellow rocking chair left in my room and am in the process of painting it pink. i will post a pic of how it turns out. that's all for now! 

One of the best things

about moving into a new house is all of the wonderful house-warming presents we have gotten. like these really cute plates from my wonderful friend Vanessa. i think they are adorable!

or this really cute table and mirror from mi madre.

there are lots more, but this is all i had time to snap on my way out the door for a-town. i promise to do everyone justice when i get home!

i am walking in the annual fireball classic. i just do the walking 5k and have participated in it for the last 5 years. last summer i even got first place female in the 5k...let's hope i can keep my streak going! wish me luck!