Snow!

We have been getting our first significant winter snow fall the past few days. It's been pretty awesome not having to dig my car out in the morning.

Starting to feel like Christmas :) If I get home from work with some energy, I'll post some house/snow pictures tomorrow.

Thanksgiving

Jared and I spent our Thanksgiving weekend down south with his family this year. I was lucky enough to get the Wednesday before the holiday off so we were able to make to to Jared's mom's house in Corydon that day. Then on Thursday we drove a little more to Owensboro KY and ate our traditional meal at Rachel and Andy's house. I dodged the bullet this year with not cooking the big holiday meal. Big thanks to Jared's mom and sister, it was delicious!

Friday was spent back in Corydon and then on Saturday we drove down to Nashville TN to see Opryland and the Charlie Brown Christmas ice sculpture display. I wasn't expecting the ice to be colored, that was really neat surprise. We took a bunch of goofy pictures.



We drove back late on Saturday night so we could decorate our house for Christmas all day Sunday, but unfortunately I woke up Sunday morning to a fever and sore throat. So I ended up missing work on Monday and Tuesday, and I'm still battling a cough and stuffy nose.

Jared and I were finally able to put up the tree and decorations on Wed and Thurs. . . .and yes, putting up the stockings on the fire place was just as exciting as I imagined it.

I am McLovin!

Funny story I just wanted to share. . . (just a warning that if you haven't seen the movie Super Bad you probably won't understand why this is funny)

It's Saturday night and Daniela and I are in the check out line at Jewel buying beer for the boys. While she is getting her i.d. checked I'm watching the person in the next register buy a 24 case of Bud Lite and I'm thinking to myself "That kid is so not 21." After Daniela finishes paying I tell her "Look at that guy in the next lane, I bet you he's not 21" and about 4 seconds after that we see the check out lady take his i.d. and say "Sorry, but I just have to check something, we don't get a lot of people from Hawaii around here." At that point he had this deer in headlights look on his face and Daniela and I start cracking up. I couldn't help myself as we walked past his lane I said quite loudly to Daniela "I wonder if the i.d. says McLovin on it?" We laughed the entire drive home.

Piano Pictures

The piano arrived this morning! Since we had to replace the fish tank we had the perfect spot in the living room for the piano next to the stairs. The first thing I want to do is reupholster the bench. . .yucky green. I also just realized after doing a google search that piano lamps are very expensive, and most of them are a bronze/gold color which I don't really want. Guess I'll have to do some more searching.


I just wanted to share this picture because Boo is so cute. :-) She has found a new favorite sleeping spot since we've been having fires in the fireplace.

The Piano

Jared and I made another house purchase today! We went out and bought a small satin black used spinet piano. I've been looking at pianos online for a while, but it's only been in this last month that Jared and I have gone out to look at them in person and play them. What a huge difference that makes. I found many pianos that looked so incredibly beautiful, but when you sat down to play them the keys were not responsive, sticky, or the sound was super "tinny" (I'm not even sure that's a word, but it's the best I can come up with to describe the sound)

To top that off I never knew how expensive pianos are! A new piano was about $4250 and almost all the used ones I found (that I liked) ran around $2500. . . .yeesh. Well the one we bought was considerably less expensive, came with a free tuning, free delivery (that I haggled :), and a one year warranty. I think we got a pretty good deal.

We are not professionals by any means, so I think this piano suits us. We wanted something we could play around with and eventually force our future child to take lessons at. :D So if little Jared or Kristen Jr. shows some talent down the road, then we will pay the 4k for a nice new piano. . .till then, I'm happy with what we got.

The piano is getting delivered tomorrow so I'll post some pictures soon.

The Moat

It rained solid for about a week straight last week (and I believe the night before I took this pictures we got 2 inches alone) and the moat was a raging rapid.



It's actually not that deep if you compare it to the older picture. I believe in the 2nd picture there is maybe a little less then an inch of water trickling down. What I thought was cool was how fast the water was moving.

And on a side note, no Jared and I are not worried about our future children being swept away. As soon as it stopped raining the moat went back to normal, and we're not going to let our kids play outside when it's pouring rain.

Furniture!

The Butlers finally have some grown up furniture! Last weekend Jared and I went to Darvin to check out couches to finally replace the green "stab you in the back with a spring" couch. Yes college friends (specifically Aaron, Tim, Ross, and Devin) we still have that couch. It was originally Devin's, then he moved back to Vermont and Aaron Tim and Ross inherited it, and finally Jared and I when we all left IU. I should also mention that the couch was second hand when Devin bought it. . .it has seen many butts.

Of course Jared and I didn't agree on anything, but we finally found a couch and love seat that we were both pretty happy with. So while we were at Darvin, we decided to look at tables. . .just for fun. Dangerous words! We've been looking at tables for about a year now and we have never found one that we both liked. Of course they have a new table in that we haven't seen before, and of course we both love it. But we were only going to get the couch and love seat. So we decided not to buy anything that night, sleep on it all, and remeasure the living room to make sure the couch would fit the room. Jared went back to the store Monday night without me and bought the couch and love seat.

So Thursday night we moved the old couch and the over sized chair down into the basement. We decided to keep it because sometime in the future we will finish the basement and we will need furniture down there. Better the old couch then nothing at all right? Well, Friday morning when I woke up and walked downstairs, I was surprised to find the kitchen table and chairs were missing. In it's place was a note on the floor from Jared, which he must have left before going to work that morning. He bought the couch, love seat, table and the matching hutch/server (he is so sneaky). True it was a bit much, but that's why we've been working so hard right? Jared didn't want to take the risk of the table and hutch not being there when we went back in a few months to buy it.

Our family room/kitchen no longer looks like our old family room/kitchen. All this new pretty stuff; it's just so amazing, I love it so much. Merry early Christmas to the Butler House! It all feels too good to be true.

And for the icing on the cake I got to unwrap all my Grandma's china and put it in the hutch. Service for 12 is a ton of dishes to wash (Dinner plates, luncheon plates, dessert plates, soup bowls, ice cream bowls, coffee cups, saucers, the list goes on)! Unwrapping it from the news paper really did feel like Christmas in October.


The table is counter top height and has six chairs, we had to send 2 of them back because they were damaged. The table has leaves that fold under on each side so when they are all up the table is an oval shape, and will seat eight comfortably I think.


Here is the new love seat, the couch looks exactly the same just with three cushions.


This is my favorite one. Since we don't have a formal dining room I think this "wine server" works great as a hutch for Grandma's china. I was shocked it all fit in it.