May = Memorial Day

We are approaching a very special holiday, Memorial Day.  It is a day that we celebrate those who have fought and fallen for our countries freedom.  You pay respect to those who have passed on to heaven and you pay respect to all the servicemen and women who give us the chance to actually have the freedom to celebrate this magnificent day.  Yeah people use it as a 3 day weekend and for basically the beginning of summer and to go to the lake and to have parties and whatever else, but truth be told, it is to pay respect for those who have helped make this country great.

It’s odd, I received an email a couple of different times this week with the subject title, “Remember the Reason for Memorial Day” and it is filled with cute little joke pictures that I plan on sharing with you, in case you haven’t see this particular email.  The thing about this email, I’ve received it many different years, it is one I think someone just saves and restarts every year around Memorial Day but this year it hit me harder than it ever has before.  The pictures refer to veterans and oddly enough, I’m going to be marrying one herein, get this 100 days.

Now in the past had you asked me what a veteran is, I know what they are, they are men and women who have served our country, but to me, they were always older than me.  I guess that I’m 26 (I think, I can tell you my birthday easier than I can my actual age) I have had 8 years of veterans that are my age but to me, the generation my dad’s age or older were the veterans.  When PC told me that he was a veteran, a disabled one at that, I laughed because I didn’t think of it that way, he isn’t 70… (and neither is my dad but you get the picture).  So when I got this email this year it just hit me funny, I’m marrying a veteran.

I’ve always had the utmost respect for Veterans and for those who are currently fighting here and overseas for our safety and our freedom but this weekend, I hope you remember what the actual reason for the weekend is and say a special prayer for those who are away from their families, for those families that are here hoping for the safe return of their family members, for those who are now veterans of wars and service and for those who died for your freedom to celebrate this weekend!

Now without further ado, here are the cute comics that made me want to write this post:

 

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DWTS – Season Finale

I actually bet you couldn’t wait for this… No more updates on Dancing with the Stars, at least for this season 🙂 Boy was it action packed! It was a 2 day Event… not like usual where they perform Monday night and then results on Tuesday, no they performed both nights.

Now the Freestyle is the one that everyone waits for all season long, but unfortunately this year’s freestyle was a bit of a disappointment in my opinion. Nothing just screamed Look At Me!!!

I think you’ve gathered all along that I knew Nicole would win, but I wanted Erin right up there with her. Well she actually came in 3rd place. Evan just didn’t do anything for me. He wasn’t bad but to me he wasn’t great either. My mom really liked him but I don’t know, he didn’t impress me.

Anyway at the end of Monday night Erin & Nicole were tied for first and Evan was 5 points behind them. Then Tuesday night they all danced 1 song. This time instead of the judges giving individual scores, they worked together and decided the 1st place got 30, 2nd place got 28 and third place got 26. In that ranking it went Nicole, Evan, Erin. Then they announced the third place person for the season who was Erin. After that Nicole & Evan had to dance off against each other again just for judges scores before the champion was crowned. In the end, Nicole Won it!

1st – Nicole Scherzinger & Derek Hough
2nd – Evan Lysacek & Anna Trebunskaya
3rd – Erin Andrews & Maksim Chmerkovskiy
4th – Chad Ochocinco & Cheryl Burke
5th – Niecy Nash & Louis Van Amstel
6th – Pamela Anderson & Damian Whitewood
7th – Jake Pavelka & Chelsie Hightower
8th – Kate Gosselin & Tony Dovolani
9th – Aiden Turner & Edyta Sliwinska
10th – Buzz Aldrin & Ashley Costa
11th – Shannen Doherty & Mark Ballas

I really think that they should in a couple years have a dance off for the winners, challenge them 🙂 and really see how good they are 🙂

If you’d like to see all the previous weeks scores, click here.

If you’d like me to hush about DWTS for a while, well you are in luck 🙂

Peace love and dancing!

Nicole 🙂

It’s Only Wednesday :(

OMG I swear this week is dragging by, but why is it you ask?  Well it’s because we have possession of our house now!  PC and I are so super excited to get in there and start remodeling making it our home that we can’t stand ourselves!  Of course he is moving in before me but still I’m just as excited.  I’m anxious to put our stuff in it, to decorate it our way, to have pretty tiled kitchen floors, and new carpet in the guest room and, and, and, I might explode waiting for Friday night when we start packing up the trailer!

I graduated from college May 13, 2005.  That spring semester I moved back home with my parents.  It was a 45 minutes from college to my student teaching school and it was 45 minutes from my parents house to my student teaching school, so to me, SAVE MONEY went through my head and I moved home in February 2005.  Oddly enough, I haven’t left, YET…  It’s boring living by yourself!!  At least at home there is commotion!

There is stuff in my parents basement in a small room of my stuff that I haven’t seen in just over 5 years.  OMG you can’t believe how excited I am to open those boxes!  It’s going to be like Christmas all over again in May!  We have a game plan for this too!!  We have a dishwasher and a sink.  We are going to wipe down all the cabinets and put shelf liners in them.  While we’re doing that the dishwasher will be running and someone washing dishes in the sink.  That way all things go into the clean cabinets clean!  Plus we are painting/re-wallpapering some of the rooms so someone will be busy doing that.  We’ve gotten some new carpet for the spare room so we’ll have to lay that, and the linoleum on the kitchen floor is coming up and we are laying the most beautiful tile!  I’m not excited, can you tell 🙂

 

We were out there the other night changing the locks on the doors and the codes to the gate, I just walked around the house in a glow and wished I’d had cleaning products right then and there!  We were out there again last night showing some of PC’s dad’s friends and again he and I were just like oh I wish we had cleaning supplies here!!!  I snapped a few shots of the original house as it stands right now.  Then while we are doing the remodeling and cleaning etc I’ll try to grab a few shots (if I don’t get yelled at for not helping… LOL) and then I’ll take some once everything is in place.  Please sit back and relax and enjoy the show 🙂

 

On a side note: I clocked it mileage wise the other day… 12 miles from my parents house to work.  12 miles from our house to work.  12 miles from our house to my parents house.  We live in the 12 mile Triangle 🙂
PC gets to clean the pool!
Doesn’t my car look so pretty in the driveway!!!
The office
The kitchen (all lit by skylights)
The Dining room area looking into the Laundry room
The “big” bathroom
The Guest bedroom I also refer to as “My Mother-in-laws” room
Tori’s Room
Our Room (and PC’s butt… lol)
Still our room
PC’s bathroom (and his rear again)
Anyway I hope you enjoy our house… it’s soon to be a Home!
Peace, Love, & Home Improvements
Nicole 🙂

Save

Lights, Camera, Action

Ok you remember this photo right? From one of my posts... Well if not, this was the first photo that I photoshopped for Doti & Wade. I had a good suggestion of using the cloning tool, however so far, haven’t gotten it totally figured out. I found tutorials that told me how and we’ve googled it a couple times, nothing has worked so far so for now, tree line has to stay like it is….

So Then I went and played around with some of the photos again, attempt 2. My goal was to make the inside of the heart show up, the outside Black… well again I found a tutorial, followed the directions and instead of turning it black, I got black and white and inside the heart color. I actually like how it turned out better to be honest than my original thought. Now if i could figure out the dang cloning tool I could get rid of the window in the right corner!!

I think I see a pattern here, I need the cloning tool to get rid of the barbed wire fence but whatever, I like the photo other than that! And that might just be getting to picky on my part, I’m not sure. You only see the one strand….

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iPhone – Never Leave Home Without it!!

I’m really bad about leaving home without my big dSLR camera, although I usually do have my PAS (point and shoot) with me but even then, now that I got this darn iPhone, I hardly bring the PAS out to play. Between the dSLR and the iPhone camera my PAS is feeling lonely but it eats batteries like no bodies business! It’s frustrating when you put new batteries in the PAS and within no time flat it is flashing at you that the batteries are low. =P is what I think about that 🙂 yes I stuck my tongue out at it, very mature I know but whatever (I refrained from saying that’s the way I roll, oh dang there it is).

Well this weekend was hectic just like every other weekend. I swear one of these days I’m going to have a weekend where I do absolutely nothing! You hear me, NOTHING. Mark my words and when I get to that point we’ll have to mark it down on the calendar! But I truthfully don’t see that happening any time this summer… maybe next!

Friday night started out with going to dinner with Kalem & Evelyn and then we shot some games of Pool. I think out of the 5 games we possibly played I only lost 1. Yeah my first game I put the 8 ball where it was supposed to go but it was pure accident. I suck at pool! I only won the others b/c of scratches on the 8 ball or they put it in the wrong pocket.

 

So information about me, I’m SOOOOOOOO not a morning person. My co-workers joke and say not to bug me until around 9-10am because that’s when I actually start functioning and my college roommates always never spoke to me until I spoke first. So PC and I decided to go mow our lawn on Saturday so that we could open the pool while the previous owner was in town to show us all that needed to be done. He wanted to leave my house no later that 8am (on a Saturday none the less). After my house we had to run to his mom’s house to get his stock trailer and so we could get her lawn mower too. We have the best parents! (ours died last week). We were out of my house by 7:15 at the latest and out of his mom’s house by 7:45 and got to our house by 8am. He was so pleased with me. Bear was excited because he got to go also. He had a busy day. I think he probably slept most of Sunday to catch up! Must be nice!

 

Our house has fruit trees. I think there is 1 Cherry tree, 1 Pear tree and 2 Apple trees… I think that’s right. Anyway my grandma came out on Saturday while we were there opening our pool and mowing lawn to pick some cherries. While my services weren’t being used I was helping her pick cherries. We got some Fried Cherry Pies out of the deal. PC was happy!

 

My mom has been in Milwaukee 2 weeks ago and Las Vegas last week for work. She flew into Tulsa airport so my dad, PC and I went to pick her up.

I so can’t help but sing the Willie Nelson song “On The Road Again”

I looked out my window and saw this and thought it was beautiful. The iPhone didn’t do it justice!

Then we stayed over night and went to the NCHA Breeder’s Invitational horse show. My uncle missed the finals by 1/2 point so they headed home on Saturday but they are back at the showing again this week on Wednesday. We only stayed for a short while because Aloha (my dad’s mare) is bred and we figured she might foal Saturday before we left. (side note: my dad leaves town today at 4 for work and our luck, Aloha will foal while he’s gone which will make him upset.)

See the iPhone has limitations, No zoom… so you can barely see the horse down in the show arena showing. Sorry next time I’ll bring the dSLR or get more batteries for the hungry PAS….

PC & me at the BI

So every Sunday night we have a bunch of friends who have Sunday Night Dinners. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to make it since we were still in Tulsa. We did though!! :). For dinner this week we had grilled hamburgers, fried cheese sticks, cream cheese/bacon jalapenos, Pizza dip and there was dessert but I was so stuffed anyway there was no room for the dessert. Afterward we sat outside while PC & Noah played guitar and shot the breeze. Me I stole PC’s laptop and worked on editing some more of my friend Doti’s photos we took of her & her fiance last week until the battery died.

This is their piggies pen 🙂

We ended the night with a campfire and the kids roasting marshmallows.

Peace, Love & Fires with Marshmallows 🙂
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Nicole 🙂

DWTS – Semi Finals

I so know you all are sitting on the edge of your seats for this. ha! :)… but since I started it I have to finish, plus there’s only one more week after this, the Finals and the next reigning champion of Dancing with the Stars.

Erin keeps getting better and better. If nerves wouldn’t get to her she could so win it! I shouldn’t speak, nerves get me too but what I’m saying, she’s doing an excellent job! Erin finally got her nearly perfect. She was one point away… come on Len!! I hope she gets a perfect this season!

Evan goes up and down. One minute he’s on top, the next he’s lower. Now there isn’t much room for lower on the judges leader board but still that’s how he’s been. This week he tied with Nicole for the top spot. They both had one performance that was a 30 and one that was a 29 so they had a total of 59. Evan did have the encore dance this week with his Paso Doble. It seems like that dance gets a lot of encores! It’s a very cool dance in my opinion (which lets face it, this blog is 🙂 ha!).

Chad is really starting to come into his own. I’m not quite sure he’s up to par with Evan and Nicole but he’s sure close! But his fate came to an end this week. He was sent home. (which I hate to see but at least Erin got to stay IMO)

Nicole, come on what can you say, she’s awesome. She really is!

This season has been the best yet I believe. This is Season 10. We’ll have to wait to see the outcome!

Click here for previous week results!

Wedding Party – Kalem

I haven’t forgotten about wedding party introductions, I just got side-tracked with life. Things like that happen!

With Kalem we get a rather interesting story. The groom actually met him through me, the bride, but they have become friends. Woohoooo! Since of course Kalem is my BOM (Brother of Mine). When I started for the company I work for, I worked in Corp AP (Accounts Payable). They were (and I think might still be) working on a process of changing all of our companies branches from one system to pay bills to another. The old one was LPCS (Lpix) and the new was EPS. Corp AP actually worked out of GEAC (geeack) and EPS. I know it’s confusing but you learn LPCS screens even when you never use them. Anyway back to the story: Kalem worked on the EPS helpdesk. Anytime purchasers or AP would have issues in EPS they would put in helptickets for the EPS helpdesk. There were 2 of us who did my job (I input vendors into EPS/GEAC (which downloaded to LPCS) so our branches could purchase/pay vendors). There were 2 before I was hired, I got one week of training from the gal I was replacing and then I had to rely on notes and Amy. Well I’d only been there a month and Amy left so I relied a lot on all the helpdesk people. One of them was Kalem. On Friday’s they’d go out to lunch and started inviting me and the rest is history, I finally developed friendships! Yey! They especially loved my quilts I made, I’ll have to share sometime ;).

So at the same time I’d been dating a guy for a really long time (as we all know if you’ve read previous posts) and things were going down hill very fast. One day Kalem said that I should come hang out with him, his wife and their friends. After a loooooonnnnnnnggggg time of offering I finally went and we ate at a Thai restaurant called Kinnaree.

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Say Cheeeeeeeeeeze

So you’ve read that we got ourselves a Bear (dog). If not you so have to stop everything you’re doing and go check it out, NOW!!!

Did you read? Huh huh? did ya? Don’t lie to me. You know where liars go, don’t you???

**waiting**

Give up?

The White House.

Ok so that’s a terrible joke and really old but I don’t care. It’s Friday and that’s the way I roll. Yes, that’s becoming my ever popular phrase. To bad people couldn’t get paid for every time I say that because unfortunately, I say it, a LOT! Oh, Ball!! (haha, if that doesn’t make sense, read this)

**I’ll wait again**

Ok anyway back to the story, ok wait on me, I think I’m going to have to read what all I wrote so I know where I was going with this…..

(Jeopardy Music playing while I read to entertain you)

Ah, yes, Bear. So I told you in the post above about our new dog that he smiles. Boy does he Cheez-it up too! If you didn’t know him, you might think he was gritting his teeth at your like he was mean and going to bite your leg, but this dog is the most lovable dog! I finally caught a photo of him. Actually, I was trying last night and I kept missing him b/c he’d duck his head away while I had my camera phone out so I kept saying keep smiling and I FINALLY caught him.

I swear he’s not growling, he’s smiling! His tail was wagging!
but he could sure get his bluff in on you.

We actually took him out to the house a few weeks ago while we were mowing and he loved it out there. I think he’s ready to move. Morelli still doesn’t like him. I’m not sure where Morelli is going, with us or staying at my mom & dads. He’s actually my dog but he’s always lived at M&D’s so who knows. I think I’ll let him decide :)So after the crazy hectic day I had yesterday, after work, we headed to my friend’s house. I told you Saturday I went to Doti’s bridal shower, well her wedding photographer canceled on her that week. She found another one but doesn’t have time to drive to her hometown to get another set of engagement photos taken and doesn’t want to use one of the originals for the papers, etc so she asked if I’d be willing to take a few of her and Wade. I told her absolutely so PC and I headed her direction after work to take photos. Their place is beautiful and has a great setting for some outdoor photos! By the time we got home and made dinner/ate I only had time to work on one photo. PC made me shoot all in Raw so I’d have to learn photoshop :). Smart idea but also a pain in the butt :). Oh well, I’ll survive :).

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I Can’t Brain Today……..

I have the dumb!

So do you ever have those days when you wonder, “How did I get out of bed this morning without hurting myself….?”

No? Just Me? Ok I thought so!

So much has been going on this last week I’m not sure how I’ve figured out which direction I’m going and which direction I came from.

1. Bridal Shower and getting presents ready (not for me though, still to early).

2. Dinner with Mother-in-law.

3. Getting Tbug where she needs to be.

4. Selling dishwasher in parents basement (for a dollar, best deal of the year).

5. Making sure PC gets all his college classes for spring semester done since this is finals week (So far he’s looking at A’s, Yey!).

6. Signing papers on house. (Mi Casa es Su Casa 1 & 2)

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