Who doesn't like Pie??

Seriously!? There is a pie out there for every single person:
Fruit
Chocolate
Vanilla
Lemon
Sugar-Free
Gluten-Free
Vegan
Organic

There is no end to the kind of pies you can make. And all this pie talk brings me to my "IDEA" that some of you may have read on FB.

I want to start my own little at home business of making and selling pie!!

Isn't that the best idea ever?! I'll start out by just practicing, since I haven't had the oppertunity to bake in quite sometime. I'll bring the practice pies to Matt's work and let the guys test them for me. (I think I'll find plenty of willing particpents, they know my baking skills and I havn't heard a bad word about anything I've brought in before.) Oh did I mention that cheesecake is in the pie family? Yep and it will be on the menu as well. It's going to take sometime and little (lot) a bit of money to get started, but I think in the long run it will be good for me. It will give me somthing to do on a daily basis besides sitting around on my tushie forever.

Some plans for after I get this thing up and going:
Shipping. I know there is a way to ship temperature sensitive foods. When my little pie business gets going I'll figure out exactly what that is, and I can start shipping pie out to people, over night. It will of course cost more...but be totally worth it!

Oh and one of the best selling points, especially up here in Portland, is that all of my pies will be home-made with only locally bought ingredients. It will cost more for me, therefore more for you. BUT I know how much Portland loves to buy local. =)

I really hope this idea works. I like baking, I love pie, and of course wouldn't mind a little extra money. =)

I'm not completly sure on a name for this little business. But I'll come up with something. Or I'll have a contest on here and who ever comes up with the most original creative name gets a free pie. Haha, we'll see.

They were playing with the cars. =)

Sad and Lonely

So, talking with Peggie and Matt...we've all decided it's best if Peggie stays in Utah. She's got so many more oppertunities there, and she's doing amazing in school. I would hate to disrupt that with dragging her back to Portland. I am completely ok with this. The problem is...well see I posted an ad on craigslist for friends, pathetic I know. And it seemed to work out. I had 7 people respond. 2 didn't write back after I did. I asked the other 5 to all get together at once and have a ladies movie night. We all needed friends so why the hell not right? Well only one ended up able to come to that movie night. That's fine, I did ask only 3 days before the planned day. So I made plans for next week. A full 7 days before the movie night. The one who showed up to the first movie night still talks to me and we are still making plans to hangout. The other 4 havn't written me back. Sigh. I know this is all pointless and annoying crap that you don't care about but, for the moment..deal. Then I had plans to go to a play group today for church. But that didn't work out. So all plans I had for human interaction have gone down the drain and I feel like crying...again, because I already have a little.

I've thought of trying to host a foreign exchange student. I've talked to Matt about it a little, but we havn't talked about it extensivly. I think it would be awesome! Maybe we could get a kid just for the spring semester of school. Of course they would be in school so they wouldn't always be around, but they would be here earlier in the day. Give me someone to drag around to the Saturday market. Or if school is canceled, we could go to the mall. But now it's sounds like I'm ordering a live-in friend.  Haha even more pathetic than craigslist. There are a few things holding me back from persuing the exchange student route. First, the fact that Matt and I are so young, with an infant...would we actually qualify to host a student? I know any kid would LOVE to live in Portland, and we are right on a bus line so it's about perfect. Second...do we have enough money? Matt managed to support me, Elliott, Holly, Gabriel and himself rather well for 3 months. And an exchange student would have their own spending money, so all we really provide is a roof over their head, a bed, food and transportation. Which brings me to my third problem...transportation. We have one car, and I don't even have a license. I'm thinking that might cause a problem. But will it? We live on a busline. The kid will be in school during the week so there's not many places they can/will need to go Mon-Fri. And if they do we could probably get there via bus.  But I'm sure a car of my own would be plenty helpful. What if there isn't a bus (school or public) that could get them to and from school? I can't take them.  Oh! and what if they get in trouble at school?  Or hang out with the "bad kids" and drink and smoke and do stuff they aren't supposed to? How am I supposed to dicapline them only being 2-5 years old than them? Which 15-18 year old is going to listen to a 20 year old. It would be like their older sister trying to get them in trouble. And another thing...what if they don't like me? What if they're a little stuck up bitch? (Pardon my French...no pun intended.)

Ok I'm done with that long and boring subject for a moment.

And now Elliott is awake so I must go. =)

Yep, she's a thumb sucker. =)

Just the 3 of us.

Elliott is helping me write this one, because she decided we should wake up a whole 2 hours earlier than normal. Thank we normally wake up around 9, so waking up at 7 didn't completely kill me. It also helped that when I went to get her out of her bed she was happy and excited to see me. =)

She is getting so big! She rolled over the other day. Rolled from back to belly, and then back again. Rolling from belly to back again was deliberate, you could totally tell she knew what she was doing. She's such a chunk, turning into the cutest rolly-polly you've ever seen.

Mom, Holly and Gabriel left on Sunday. It's just Matt, Elliott and I in this big ol' place. It almost seems to big now. The biggest thing I don't like about this place is the spiders. There are a million of them out back, and it seems that I am getting bitten by them, but I'm not sure when. I just randomly find new bites. And all the bites would be covered by shorts, that's where they all are. In my hip area. It's crazy.

I made bananananananananana bread today. Elliott helped. And by helped I mean hindered. She sat nicely in her bouncer for the first half of the making part, then decided she was tired of sitting in her bouncer. So I ended up finishing mixing with her in my arms. I of course had to put her back in the bouncer to put the bread in the oven...which pissed her off. I think she's just jealous that she can't have bananananananananana bread yet. =)

Lazy Days

We've got most of our stuff over to our new place. The kitchen is complete and unpacked. But the livingroom and bedroom are messy.

Did I mention that Elliott is laughing now? Well she did one day but hasn't since (about 3-4 days ago) I got some of it on video. She's been cranky since that day, teething. She drools through 2-3 bibs a day. She's only taking 15-30 min naps so she's always tired.

I made an ad on craigslist for friends. Strictly platonic of course. And I had about 6 replies (all female of course, because I obviously didn't ask for males.) so I am going to start a weekly or bi-weekly movie night. It should be fun. It will have to wait until next week because it's too late now. =)

FIRE!!

Oh wait. False alarm!

Two nights ago we woke up to the sound of the building's fire alarm, at 3 in the morning! Who knows how long it was going on before we woke up. But Holly, Matt and I all came to realize it was on at about the same time. We got sweaters and flip flops on. Made sure to grab a blanket for the baby and grabbed the portable hard-drive that has all our pictures. Matt kept saying it was probably a joke by some immature jerk. But I think the risk is too much to take. We then walked down all 6 flights of stairs. Elliott and Gabe were both awake, but were happily confused. Elliott ended up falling back to sleep in my arms as we were standing out on the sidewalk.We're not sure why the alarm was going off but as we walked back in the building the firemen said it was false. (Thankfully we could take the elevator back up to the 6th floor. Can you immagine walk UP 6 flights of stairs at 3 am?!)

I don't see how grown people can be so freakin immature as to pull a fire alarm just for the hell of it!! Especially in the middle of the night. People need to grow up and get life!

Ok vent over. =)

There' s No Place Like Home.

As many of you know, we are currently residing in an itsy-bitsy little tiny one bedroom apartment. It is approximately 550 sq feet. Perfect for the young newly weds we were when we moved in last September. Not so perfect for the parents we are now. There is just not enough room for the 3 of us. Our lease is up September 30th. So for the last month we've been out apartment hunting every chance we get. We've toured more places then I can remember. We go on craigslist often, searching for 2 bedrooms (or larger) that are in our price range.

After touring about 10 places we decided that among those 10 there was one that we could handle living in. We planned on going back to this one place that we could handle and turning in applications. The night before this was planned I once again got on CL in hopes of finding something better. I did.

There was an add for a 2 bedroom 1.5 bathroom TOWNHOME for only $875 a month. 1200 sq feet! It just so happened to be in the area of town that we wanted to stay in. So we decided to visit this place before heading over to the apartments we had settled on. I called that night and left a message. Matt called the next morning and made an appointment to tour the townhouse. We were the first appointment of the day. Got there at 10:30 am. The outside was not impressive. The paint on the sign was peeling. The next door neighbors had boxes and a stroller on our shared porch. I was NOT impressed.

However, as soon as I walked through the door I fell in love. You walk in onto a landing. You can either go up, or down. There are only about 5 steps going down into the living room/dining room. Once in the living room you can turn back to the stairs and notice a closet under the "UP" stairs. Also known as "The Harry Potter closet." And it is large enough, that even someone a little over 6 feet can lay down comfortably. There are two sliding glass doors that lead out onto a patio that is walled so no one can see in. It's the perfect little patio for a BBQ and patio table/chairs. The kitchen as almost triple the counter space we currently have. It has a full size oven, dishwasher and full size fridge. All things that we have not had the pleasure of using for the last year. Off the kitchen is the laundry room with full size washer/dryer and the half bathroom.

Now lets go up stairs. As you reach the top a hallway takes you to the two bed rooms. Peggie's is the first door on the left. It has two closets. One has shelves that go all the way to the ceiling. The other has one shelf and place to hang up clothes. There is also a sliding glass door that leads out on to a rather large deck.

If you go through the door at the end of the hall you'll find the master bedroom. You'll find yet another sliding glass door (Leading to the same deck mentioned above...is big!) This room is large enough for our queen sized bed and a full sized crib. We also have two closets There is one shelf that goes through both closets and then a wall from the shelf to the floor that separates the two sides. Both sides have individual clothes racks. (I won't have to shove his hangers aside to get to my clothes!!) We also have our own private entrance to the bathroom. (Which can also be reached from the hall)

I was not the only one who fell in love with this place. After viewing the up stairs we went back to the kitchen and Matt asked if we could fill out applications then and there. The two ladies giving us the tour reviewed our apps and said that everything looked good and that we can basically call it ours! Right now we are only waiting on the reviews from our current and previous places of residence. We'll know Monday for sure if we got the place. I'm not worried. We'll be moving the 9th of September, giving us plenty of time to move and get settled. And to get back to the old place to do a nice good deep clean.

And speaking of the 9th...It's our one year anniversary. And it's also the day we plan on signing the papers and making our marriage legal. =) It's going to be one heck of a busy day! We'll have our car, mom's van and a friends truck, so we'll be able to get everything moved that day. (We don't have that much stuff) The moving will happen in the morning. Later that day is when we'll sign the marriage license and legally become Husband and Wife. We'll then go out to dinner and celebrate. No unpacking, that can be done later. We'll just make sure that our bed and Elliott's bed is set up so we have a place to sleep.

I am so very excited!! (If you couldn't tell)  I went online and googled "floor plan designer" and found a free 7 day trial of a really cool program, and I made a floor plan of our new place from memory. I showed it to both Matt and Holly, they agreed that the floor plan is perfect. (Not exactly to scale, but it will at least show you what it looks like.)

First Level ^

Second Level ^

And here is a picture of Elliott. Just because I love showing her off. =)

Keeping Tabbs...

Thanks to my amazing friend Emily, we now have a new name! Yay! I guess I could wait for more suggestions, but...well I won't. =)

I'm sure you are all smart enough to understand why the name "Keeping Tabbs" is so perfect, so I'm not going to explain it.

So, on to other more important news. My mother has given us 100 dollars to make everything legal. I've done all the research and we will be going to the court house Next week to get the license. Once that is in our possession and the waiting period is other (3 days after the license is issued) then we will be going to the court house again with Holly and one of Matt's guy friends, as witnesses, and we will be signing the papers. Although that will be our our "legal wedding" we will not be celebrating that day. To us, we have been married since September 9, 2009. That is our wedding day. The day we go in front of the judge to legalize it is just a technicalities, that day wont be remembered.