I have time to write :)

I know I know I'm a house wife, how do I not have time to write in this blog?  I'm sure all my lady friends can stand with me and say, the house doesn't clean it's self, or decorate its self, or fix its self or cook for the hubby. Ok I'm not complaining I love my life :) I just wanted to give you and excuse as to why I haven't written in a while.

So now I'm sitting in our one bedroom deluxe suite looking out our window at downtown Toronto on our all expense paid anniversary trip, we are at the ShangriLa if you wanna look it up. I'm on the room provided iPad so I can't post any pictures, and my phone isn't set up on a plan for out of the country. I promise I'll add pictures soon(seriously) Jabin is at a customers plant listening to their presentation. I'm not really sure what it's all about though. So technically this is a business trip that I got to tag along on and it turns out its on the same weekend as our anniversary.

Let's get started, what has happened since the last time I wrote.... A CRAP TON!!!! Let's go back a few weeks. My mommy came to visit on oct 5th. We had so much fun I know she was dreading the flight (common between my momma and Jabins momma) on oct 6th Jabin had to leave the house at 4 am ish to head to the airport for Vegas. He went to the IBIE conference with Rob and Bryan. Ok back to moms trip. On the 6th which was her birthday, Hallie ran into her room, jumped on the bed and gave her, her good morning happy birthday licking! It was great! My days mix up but I think that's the day we went to Beak and Skif apple orchard. That was fun, we did a hard apple cider tasting and mom who doesn't drink downed a glass of sweet apple cider. We also tried apple fritters for the first time, yummy! The  next day we went to Jabins work for a tour of the plant so mom could see what he actually does even though he wasn't there.  That night I took her out for her birthday dinner at Ancora and needless to say she loved her food. Pretty sure we both gained a few lbs why she was here. Then it was time for her to go home. She left on Wednesday and Jabin came home that night.

When Jabin got home he had a surprise for me! He had a signed Top Chef menu from Gordon Ramsey for me! I know the trip was exhausting for him but I think he had a good time. I also go a water bottle that you put fruit into so you can have fruit infused water, yum! Jabin was only home for a few days before we were off to Kansas City!

We planned a trip to KC to go to Kerry's wedding. We got in town Friday afternoon and grams picked us up and took us to dads. There we picked up Judy's car and went to Jason and Sandy's new house to see the babies! Most of all we got to meet our newest niece Miranda. She is precious! I also managed to run around with Waylon and break his bed (it popped out of the frame) Then we headed off to Curtis' house to unpack and unwind. We had to get some BBQ so we went to Oklahoma joes, oh how we miss BBQ. I taught our little bean elaina how to launch things from the end of a spoon,  so funny! She is so smart. Then came Saturday, we got up early and went to our favorite diner in Gardner, Todd's. Then we headed back to the house to get ready for the wedding. all dressed up and ready or celebrate we were off to the wedding. It was a great wedding, very Kerry like! Kerry looked beautiful and AJ was very handsome. The ceremony was quick and to the point as I believe they planned. I started tearing up when I saw Kerry's sister Tracy trying to hold back her tears. Then we had a little time to do things on our own before the reception started so we went to grams. Jabin met my uncle jerry who I hadn't seen myself in over 10yrs. It was really nice and I'm glad they got to chat.

Then off to the reception, what a party! Lots of dancing and laughing that is for sure, and I'm pretty sure my daddyo was feeding Jabin drinks. I must say the caters for the reception were probably the best I've ever experienced. Jabin and I got to participate in the anniversary dance, our first time!!! And I even got Jabin in the photo booth!!!!!!!! You all know how much Jabin likes photos so I was extremely impressed when he didn't argue about the photo booth. He really is so good to me. I was happy that I didn't have to  participate in the bouquet toss though :). (The first wedding Jabin and I attended together I caught the bouquet so it must be true because  a year later we were engaged) I'm pretty sure we danced our dinner off, between dancing with my dad and Judy we got a workout, it was so much fun!!!

Then we went next door to a bar to meet up with some friends. Paul, Janelle and Jenn were next door ready to dance more and catch up. It was great I know we both really missed our buddies!!!

Sunday I had to see jabin off to the airport, I didn't feel like we had enough time together (blah blah blah I know) but seeing one love off to see another love, my sister wife Allison!!!! I got to grams and was scooped up by my bestical! A big hug with a few tears! We hadn't seen each otherwise over 5 months and for us that's a life time! But honesty once we were together it was like we hadn't spend a minute apart. We hung out with the fam that night and it was really nice to relax and enjoy our time together.

Monday was filled with mani - pedi's with Al and Grams, then off to see baby Miranda again. We didn't get much time there because Gram needed to get back to go to a funeral I think. That night a lot of people came over to grams. Mom, Randy, Cole, Brandon, Jason, Sandy, Waylon, Miranda, Allison, and myself. We watched a slide show of Uncle Jerry's adventures to Costa Rica and a ton more place, it looks beautiful. It was really nice having all of those people together, bitter sweet because I know jabin would have enjoyed himself too. Then..... Allison had to leave, I made it short and sweet when I really wanted to bawl my eyes out because 1 day isn't enough with her!!!!

Tuesday was more time with Grams and Jerry and then off to Jason and Sandy's. I went with Sandy to pick up Waylon and the look on that kids face was priceless, "wait a sec, she isn't suppose to be here!" It was great. Later that afternoon I took Waylon's 3rd birthday pictures. Can't belive that little monster is already going to be 3!!!! After pictures I got to do the best thing of the whole week, (sorry if that offends any of you) I got to cuddle Miranda and be cuddled by Waylon for a good couple hours straight, melt me heart!!! Then it was dinner time, yummy! My bro can cook. Then I was sad again, they had to drop me off at dad's, and so what I was sniffling in the backseat with the 2 kiddos. I miss all of our babies! Waylon, Elaina, Kinley and Miranda!!!

Wednesday was pretty crazy, Breakfast with Maggie catching up on so many things and I can't believe she is due in January! It was great catching up and chatting about everything! Then I was suppose to do lunch with Kacie, but she is a very busy lady and we just have to squeeze her in when we come back in December. Then it was dinner time with Janelle and the rents, and then off to the hot tub to catch up with Janelle (sounds a lot more provocative then it actually was :) That was much needed Janelle and Nat time. The greatest thing is that I have so many wonderful friends! I just wish they called lived in NY with us!

Thursday, day of leaving :(. Good thing is that I got to see my dad off to work, and my mom and randy, and then spent the rest of the morning eating and chatting with Judy and Tracy while playing with lil'miss kinley! She has changed so much! She's so big (but actually tiny) hard to explain, shes precious. Then to the airport, that's the worst part, leaving. I have to admit I was ready to come home and spend time with my hubby, I missed him.

Fast forward to the next week. Jabin's CFO asked me to come in and organized the layout of their gluten free production area. And to many that sounds like a daunting task but to me it sounds like a dream job! It has been great I spent 3 days drawing maps, and planning when and where things will be moved to make it a more functioning room. Honestly I keep waiting for someone to tell me "no, you can't do it that way" or "that isn't a good idea" but all I'm getting is a 100% praise and support. It's amazing to be supported 100% in this project. It looks like it is going to develop into a whole plant organization project....one room at a time!

Then came this past Thursday, the day we left for Canada. We got an opportunity to go to Toronto all expense paid for our anniversary. We stayed in the most amazing hotel i have ever seen. We stayed in a 1 bedroom, 2 bathroom suite on the 7th floor. The staff was amazingly nice, and everything said Mr. and Mrs. Jabin Olds. Even the room provided ipad that I originally started this on said "Welcome Jabin Olds" and the TV's all the staff called us that, it was amazing!!!!!!

Friday, the day I started this (now finishing on Sunday at home) Jabin went to work for a few hours while I took an awesome bubble bath while looking on the city of Toronto. Jabin came back with some awesome gluten-free cupcake in hand that were for me :) (company he was visiting was a gluten free company of some sort I don't know all the details) Then we went to an authentic Italian restaurant with the owners of the company jabin visited. When I say authentic I mean authentic, again I ate things I NEVER thought I'd even try, not sure if  i'd try them again though. Cold cut plate, smelt (fried sardines), burchetta (bread, cheese, mushrooms, truffle) and carpaccio (thinly sliced raw meat, lamb), jabin's dinner plate was duck egg pasta, I had buffalo stuffed ravioli with crema and foie gras. Then we had dessert, something chocolate with pigs blood, mine was some jelly type deal with pistachios and jabin got tiramisu. We were stuffed after all of that, then off to the room again.

Saturday was our Celebrating our anniversary. We had pastries fire-side in the lobby of the hotel for breakfast, then we walked a few miles to a place called LakeView Restaurant. There we had Poutine (gravy covered fries) We had fresh cut fries, sweet potato, gravy, bacon and peameal bacon (Canadian bacon) with cheese curds. Very good, very rich. Then Jabin got a burger and I had either famous cornflakes chicken on a club sandwich. Needless to say I'm glad we walked 2 miles to get there, because that meant we had to walk our FULL BUTTS all the way back. And then dinner time around 8 we went to a fancy Mexican restaurant and drank quite a few margaritas.

Now we are home and happy to be home. Its always great to get away but coming home is nice too. Our baby Hallie was happy to see us!

This House is feeling like a Home!

So most of you have heard about our naughty dog, Hallie and eating my 5HOUR rolls I made, here is a picture of the cooling rack after she ate them, this rack was over flowing and this was what was left.


Needless to say my first estimate of 6 rolls gone, has to be wrong. The pup couldn't even lay right on the floor. She laid on her side and moaned for an hour or so. Oh lets not leave out the stinky doggy farts too.

 


Of course I can't leave out more pictures of that little booger.

I also caught a shot of a pretty humming bird making a meal of our houstas. 

So this week Jabin's parents were here and we had so much fun! It was nice to show off our house to family. So we picked them up on Wednesday evening. Unfortunately that had a few issues with the flights, they had to change planes twice instead of once like usual. All in all they got here and everything was okay! Wed night we showed off the house and had dinner.

Thursday, Larry, Debra and I got around and together after Jabin left for work. We went to Jabin's work for a tour to show it off to the parents.



Then we went to lunch at a diner by DeIorios.

Friday, Jabin got up way too early for me to make everyone cinnomon rolls!

 They were very yummy!

Later we went to the Adirondacks. Spent part of the day in Old Forge and then headed off to the Secret Waterfall. I'm pretty sure its one of my favorite spots!



We also stopped at Fourth Lake



We were pretty pooped after all of that but we went to dinner at Ancora anyway. Larry and Debra got to experienced Calamari and Utica Greens for the first time. The calamari wasn't a hit, but the greens were.

Saturday we went to Joan's Diner ( our fav now) and then headed off to the Great New York State Fair. Ended up not being so great and there were so many people there! It was nice seeing everything but I think we all expected a little more. We left around 3pm and headed home. Jabin had to go into work a do a test run that was rescheduled 3 times I think. Larry went with Jabin to help around 11pm and I think they got back around 12:45 but I'm not sure, I wasn't awake.

Sunday was a day of hanging out and relaxing enjoying each others company. It was nice to just relax because we were exhausted. Oh wait, relax? nah we pulled weeds and Jabin mowed the lawn. Debra made a crockpot meal that was awesome, I made my pretzel and strawberry dessert. The whole trip we ate very well.

Monday was a sad day, I had to take them back to the airport :( . We left the house at 6am and got to the airport with time to spare. All in All it was a great weekish, its nice to see family after 3 months of seeing no one we know. I'm not complaining I love our life here but family is always nice.

Since they have left I have been getting back into my groove of things, and by that I mean crafting!
Here is another pic of our shelves, they look better now that they have stuff on them!

I have been working on both a wreath and a baby shower gift for our dear friends Justin and Bria. I won't post the baby stuff pic because Bria reads this :)

Here is the wreath.

 

I have a few ideas for some things involving barn wood, and fancy that we have a barn in our back-side yard It doesn't belong to us, but I bet if I asked nicely they'd let me have a plank or two. The wood is beautiful!

And we can end on this note, I am so happy we grow moss naturally! It's so soft!

Just a few things I see!

So I've been on a smoothie kick lately and these are a few of the yummy ones  I have made!








Oh and Hallie LIKES them too!







This is the ankle while waiting in the ER. They gave me a shot for anxiety and tension and it was worse then the sprain, the shot didn't hurt but whatever was in the medicaine took my breathway and sent the most awful pain through my chest, I will NEVER let them do that to me again. I was bawling. You can ask Jabin, I was complaining more about not being able to move my arm and not being about to  breath then I did about my ankle, it was AWFUL

 this is from the 1st morning we had in the house!

Oh facetime what would we do without you! These kids mean so much to us and we miss them so much! They both have the best smiles. Elaina was a little shy and Waylon just wanted to talk to "hallie boogers" thats what he calls her.





Each morning I have my cuddle time with the baby!














ooooooO.... this was very yummy, its a canolli from Cafe CaNole. The owner does a few things at Jabin's work. This was so yummy!!!!!!!!

Hallie also gets to spend time outside a lot now, it is never too hot! She loves it and she does so good without going out of our yard.




Here is the super ugly wallpaper I peeled FOREVER but the end result is so much better! Ill need to take a pictures once we are done with everything, furniture wise.




One day I came home from shopping and this was my view from my car into our backyard, I love it, this is the best part!

Jabin gets his cuddle time in at night! 

Oh and down below this is some of my salsa I made. Ive never made salsa before and this was pretty darn good I must say! It's a little spicy but good!

 

Long Time No Write!!!!

Well well well, SO SO SO much has happened since the last time I wrote on here. We have official been in the house for 4 weeks! We moved in on July 11th! Overdue for sure, we couldn't have been more happy and excited to get in, I was so excited I managed to throw myself down the stairs at our attys office :) GO ME!!! It's a total Natalie thing to do!

The day we moved in I packed up all of our things in the hotel and headed to the attys office to meet up with Jabin so he could finish signing the last of the papers. He was at work and running a little late so I ran in to tel the atty he would be just a few minutes late, and on my way out, I wiped out! Cried for a little bit managed to get to my car on my own and sit there thinking to myself "you've had 2 months to sit on your ass and do nothing and have a hurt ankle and the DAY you get to do something productive you throw yourself down the stairs!!!" Jabin got to the atty office and I just start bawling in my car, and he takes a look and then says "we are heading to the ER", um excuse me?!? No! We will not be doing anything other then signing papers, doing the final walk-through and then maybe we can go to the ER. We had waited too long to postpone any longer. Turns out it was just a nasty sprain, not as bad as last time so thats good, no crutches, but an air cast for a while. That night we rented a redbox movie, ate subway and slept in our living room on our air mattress.

The next day the movers came to the storage units and pack it all up again and move it into the HOUSE! They brought 6 guys with them and we were loaded and unloaded in about 5hrs. It felt so good to lay in our own bed that night!

Since the day we moved in we have been working on unpacking and updating rooms. Needless to say Hallie loves her new home, she roams around and she gets to watch over her unfenced yard. I work on projects out on our table in the backyard and Hallie is great about hanging out with me and not leaving the yard. When Jabin takes her out to potty she is never interested in leaving our yard, we are pretty lucky she is very well behaved.

I may be skipping forward a lot but it's the most recent thing we have done. We (ME) started peeling wallpaper about 3.5 weeks ago. We are lucky that the first owners primed the walls and then put up the paper properly. But the half up the wall boarder, that was a different story! I used a mixture of hot water and fabric softener a 1:1 combo and a puncturing tool to take down the paper, on 3 walls we had half wall of paper and a boarder and on the tallest, biggest wall we had floor to ceiling paper, UGLY PAPER! It took me about 2 weeks to peel the paper and pick off the border, then what I couldn't get off, or where I peeled too deep I did drywall mud to even it out. Jabin sanded all the mud and then primed the mudded areas. We even patched our first hole :) . Then I washed all the walls with soapy water to get any left over glue or yuck off the walls, and that took forever. I'm sure it was because all I wanted to do was paint, but we made sure that we did everything we could think of to make these walls look great, we wanted to prove we can do these things, we don't need a professional. It gives up a sense of pride. It's OUR home, and we've made it that way.

So last weekend we bought the paint and painted the whole living room. This room is very large and you all will realized why it took so long once you come visit us! With being tall Jabin and I have never really need a ladder to paint and even if we needed to be all little taller we never stood at the highest step you can stand on on a ladder to paint. Some parts of the room Jabin had to stand at the highest rung of the ladder and then be on his tippy toes. His calves were very sore the next day. We are perfectionist about painting now too. Jabin edged the ceiling with a little brush, two times around and then had to roll the higher parts while one the ladder twice. And I panted the baseboard and main walls twice. We ended up using 3 different colors and it turned out awesome. I do have to give all the credit to Jabin, I didn't think 3 colors would work, but this room looks amazing! Now the house is finally feeling like our home, it looks like us!.

Jabin's parents, Larry and Debra, will be heading into town in a few weeks, we plan on going to the NY state fair, its close in Syracuse. We might also go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, which isn't too far from us either. It will be nice to show of our new digs to family. I have the guest room all set up also. It happened to be the color I wanted it so no painting needed.

Well I have more to say and I have pictures to show you guys but I don't have the time right this minute, they will come soon!

Long Time no SEE!

Sorry it's been so long since our last post, and even our last post was kinda boring minus all the waterfall pictures. We plan to go hiking again soon! Next time we will for sure not forget the mosquito spray! We both looked like we have chicken pox and we were definitely scratching too much!

So many things have happened and I'm sure you are all wondering what is going on with the house. Well we have some great ideas of DIY stuff and we are actively going to Home Depot to plant our next project. I have been reading a bunch of blogs on how-tos for the house and they all seemed to come back to this book

 it's pretty awesome, we both have been flipping through it today.

Also we have picked out a color scheme for the house we think, not sure of the hue of everything but this is the scheme! They look different in person, we are both pretty excited about them!

The past few days we have had some nice weather, yesterday it was pretty nice, cool breeze and some sunshine. We decided to go eat on the patio at Babe's and enjoyed some local beverages. I think this is Jabin and my new fav for local flavor. 

There was a thunderstorm today, so that is probably why its so darn humid today. We walk out of the room with our sunglasses on and the fog instantly. We went to lunch at Voss', I must say I LOVE their hotdogs. This is a chili dog I got and Jabin really likes their burgers. We will have to take you when you come to visit us!

This pic is a normal shot of Daddy and his baby Girl! They like to cuddle a lot on the weekends, she is so smiley with him :)

This is why we can't go nice places, my hubs like to lay in booths :)

Oh yeah more about the house. Well good news we think..... hopefully our Realtor is serious when he says that we will be in the house this week! It makes us nervous because this week hasn't started yet and there are a whole 7 days in it!!! We have advised them that we have to be out of this hotel by Tuesday, Monday can be our last night here because of the Boilermaker Run, the hotel is booked and its the only one in town that allows dogs. We need this to happen for so many reasons! Sanity being the major one at this point. 

We need a closing day so we can set up everything! Utilities, moving men, EVERYTHING!

Other then that, what else has been going on?

Last Monday I asked Michelle if my visit to Jabin at work were annoying, against the rules or whatever else you could consider it and I was met with a pleasant surprise, "No it's not a problem, actually would you like to work while you are up here?" So last week I was back to the working world, just to help them catch up on some things. It's pretty nice, I can go in when they need me and if I'm not avalible then I don't go in. They really are the nicest people!

Well I guess that's all I have right now, until next time!

Adirondack Mountains...Take One!

I don't really have the energy to write a blog right now but I can show you some pictures!