Mass Updates

Okay, I can't even give an update on my computer because I am SO FURIOUS about everything, so I will just update everything else.

Right after our anniversary, Matt and I decided that we were going to buy a new car. We have barely been thinking about it, and Matt found a car on KSL that he thought was worth a look. We took it for a test drive and talked about price. After the weekend, we called and made an offer. We usually don't think too long about these type of decisions. It was exactly what we were looking for: low miles, newer, comfortable, more spacious, etc. And of course, the price was right. Not exactly a steal, but good enough we couldn't pass it up! Now we are so happy with our purchase. Our 2011 Toyota Camry fits perfectly in the new garage.

After we finished the house, we had no interest in doing any landscaping. Then as some time passed, I became envious of everyone else's nice grass. I wanted to be able to sit outside on the lawn! So we made some phone calls, and after a ridiculous amount of time, finally were able to get a company to come out and install the sprinkler system for a decent price. This is what it looked like before they got started:

One Saturday, the girls all decided to get together for a Girl's Day Out. Jenny and Kamie met up first at 7:00 (too early for me) to garage sale in the rain. I met up with them around 11:00 to head down to Brigham City to meet Kendra and Jenna for lunch at Old Grist Mill. After lunch, we went shopping. Everywhere. Downeast outlet in Brigham City, D.I. in Brigham, and a bunch of places in Logan. We shopped ourselves silly and had to get some dinner at Chilis after we were finished. Then we went to see "The Giver". Jenny and Kamie had to make sure we used up as much of their day out as possible! What a fun day with all the girls!

For Lance and Kendra's birthdays, we got them tickets to the BYU vs. Utah State football game in Provo. We fully expected to lose. After a five hour drive from Logan to Provo in the worst traffic I've ever faced, we finally got to the game. I have never been in such a huge stadium. As anyone who watched the game knows, WE WON! It was sooooo fun. We sat up in the student section with all the other Aggie fans who made the drive and we were cheering like crazy the whole time! We didn't get home until 3:30 AM, but it was totally worth it!

Halloween is coming! This is absolutely my most favorite holiday of the entire year, and Matt and I have been extra excited to get our house all decorated! The first thing I did was pick up my pumpkins! There is an awesome "Pick Your Own Pumpkin" patch just down the street from my house, so I stopped by to grab some huge pumpkins! I only had to pay $5 for the ones that were over 30 pounds and $3 if they were less than 30 pounds. Love it! I bought a bunch of baby pumpkins too. Such a fun tradition, and super fun to support some of our neighbors.

Then I got out all my other decorations. We have been trying to collect some creepier decorations. We are trying to copy the old witch's house on "Hocus Pocus." So we have been collecting candles, old candle holders, skulls, jars and bottles, and of course my big book. I searched everywhere for a big old book that I could pretend was a witch's spellbook. It is actually a 100-year-old dictionary, but it looks amazing! When we get a little closer to Halloween, we'll put everything out on the porch. Hopefully in the years to come, we can grow our collection of creepy stuff and eventually have a full on witch's graveyard with tons of gravestones and fog machines. We'll get there eventually, but I love what we have for now!

Back to the landscaping.... This is what the yard looks like now that the sprinklers are in. The hydroseed was sprayed a few days later and we are patiently waiting for it to sprout. Hopefully we'll see some growth before it gets too cold.

More pumpkins...

We love having a second bedroom with a spare bed in it because we get to have visitors! Last week, my grandma came up for the Aggie vs. Air Force game and stayed the night. It was so much fun to catch up and spend some time with my grandma, even if she was also cheering for Air Force.

This weekend, we were able to invite our friends Natalie and Zach up to spend the night. Nat and I went to Skyline and lived together at Utah State for two years and have become very close friends. She and Zach live in Draper now with their darling little boy, Noah. They came up and we gave them a tour of the house, went for a walk, had dinner, then went and played mini golf and had hot chocolate. The next morning we had breakfast before they headed home! It was so much fun to catch up and get to spend time with cute baby Noah!

Okay, last pictures, I promise. On Saturday night (after Nat and Zach headed home), Matt and I met up with the rest of the Fischer crew, including Lance and Kendra who drove up, for dinner at Pizza Factory. Table for 15 please! Reagan had to sit in between Matt and I. She kept snuggling up to us, and even tried to give Matt a hands-covered-with-ranch-dressing hug during dinner. After dinner, I got a birthday ice cream that I shared with Blakelee. She is definitely a little girl! She was moaning in ecstasy after each bite, and was even trying to grab ice cream out of my mouth when I gave myself a bite! We had yummy dinner and great service before we went over to American West Heritage Center for their fall festival Haunted Hollow. We went last year and had so much fun. This year, Tim and Lance came with us, and even Harrison was big enough to come! We had fun standing in line, with the uncles harassing Brad, Claire and Harrison. Harrison would not let me put him down! He was wearing his birthday batman sweatshirt and was telling everyone that he was Batman. When we finally went into the Haunted Hollow, he was definitely a little scared, but Jenny and I kept talking to him and laughing at the scary people and he started telling all of them that he was Batman! They were all pretty cute when they realized how little he was. After the Haunted Hollow, I carried Harrison back to the car and he talked my ear off the whole way. I love the age that he and Reagan are right now because they are both so talkative! What a fun night! Love spending time with the whole family! So glad that Lance and Kendra could come up!

Sad Day

This update is to tell everyone that I have not been slacking on my blog! I have been working on a project to scan all my mom's scrapbooks and print them for myself. This was harder than I planned for several reasons:
1. The pages were 12x12 scrapbook pages so I had to "convince" my dad to buy a commercial size scanner so I could scan them at home. That took about a week of nonstop scanning.
2. While scanning, I realized that the files were HUGE, almost 1G each, and I have over 300 pages. So I had to connect everything into my 1T external hard drive, and still my computer was way bogged down.
3. Once everything was scanned, I thought I could just upload them to blurb and voila! Done! NOT! Apparently blurb doesn't read tiff files, which is what they all scanned as! Ahhhh!
4. At this point, I had two options. Rescan everything, or convert the files individually. I opted for the second option. I tried to open them and convert them in several programs before I found one that worked. I had to open them all in Photoshop, which took forever because they were such huge files, then I had to resave them, which took even longer!
5. I've been working on converting for about two weeks, and had just finished the first half of the pages when my computer started to get really slow. My macbook is from 2006, when I graduated high school, and has been through a lot. I figured it was tired from the huge project so I finished up and unplugged and shut it down. It did not turn back on.
6. I took out over to expercom, who was impressed it has lasted that long. They called it "vintage". They thought the hard drive was dead, but said they'd look at it. I didn't think it would be a big deal, because I don't feel like I use my computer that much. I was so wrong! In the three days since it's been gone, I've needed it 3-4 different times, and then realized I didn't have it. Then they called me and told me that the hard drive was gone.

I am so sad. I don't know what to do without my computer, and I'm even more sad that I may not be able to recover everything. I backed up my pictures about a month ago so most of those are safe, but all my music and other documents are on that computer. Expercom said they would charge me $100 minimum to TRY to recover anything, and more if it was difficult. I don't know what to do. I can replace the hard drive, but it is an old computer and may not last too long anyway. I could pay to recover my documents and then just use my work computer, although it is a PC and I don't like it. Or we could buy a new computer (probably not feasible after buying a house and new car). So sad!

So I will probably not blog until we figure out what we are doing with the computer situation. I have a bunch of stuff to blog, so when I get back up and running there will be a lot! Until then...