All the Things I've Been Meaning to Say

I’ve had plenty of material to blog about lately but have been so busy that I haven’t found the time to do it yet. Now that Christmas is over, I finally have some time. And speaking of Christmas, ours was quite wonderful. Although we missed our family terribly (no more Christmases away from them- ever!), it was fun to get all the packages in the mail and get moms' and dads' Christmas cookies and treats out here in Iowa. My husband got me a gift certificate to a day spa here in town for not just one but TWO massages. I will be calling later today to make an appointment to enjoy one of them as soon as possible. He also got me an “Our First Christmas” tree ornament that has our names engraved and has the year on it and has a place to put a picture of us in it. We found a wedding picture that we could use in it and hung it on the tree Christmas Eve. It is a close second for my favorite gift, maybe even a tie for favorite. The other favorite would have to be Mordecai, my new gnome for the yard. I had been wanting one for soooo long but couldn’t fine one I liked but my mom found me one and he’s perfect.



I also got some fake Uggs but in a different color than this (I didn’t want real ones until I could see if I liked them), a movie night basket (for both of us), slippers, fleece vest, a jello cookbook like I wanted and gift cards to Old Navy and Olive Garden. I did really good this year!

Rob did really good too- he got a trip to Florida to see the Daytona 500 in February from his wife. I was able to use our airline miles for free tickets to Florida and my parents let us use their timeshare so we don’t have to pay for lodging and I bought tickets from Ebay to see the race. Even though the tickets were a bit of a rip-off, not having to spend money for flights or lodging makes it seem a lot better. He got some other nice gifts too including new slippers, a beanie, gift cards to Old Navy and Lowes, a shirt, and The Bourne Ultimatum movie.



I made a roast that I added carrots and potatoes to and then we had peas and rolls with it. It turned out pretty darn good and it was super easy.



Last weekend, I made a TON of cookies (about 14 dozen) to make up plates of goodies to take to the neighbors, coworkers and friends. We still had a lot left and received some too from our parents so we’re going to have to store some in the freezer so they don’t go bad. And we’ll be able to have cookies until June this way- not bad!



Rob has been busy working some in the basement because our plan is for that to be our next project and we would like to start right after the first of the year. We set up one bedroom as our temporary media room and office but it is ridiculously crowded in there and we desperately need more space. We don’t know what to do about the flooring situation there and that is what has held us up. There are two issues that make just about every type of flooring impossible. The first issue is the existing asbestos tile that we can’t remove. If that were gone, I would love to just have concrete floors in the basement and then use rugs to warm it up. The second issue is moisture coming up through the ground and that makes everything else (carpet, tile, laminate, vinyl, etc) a bad choice. There is one product I found that I think would be a great choice- they are interlocking tiles that come in a variety of styles, including bamboo, which I really like- but they are a little pricey. Really, they aren’t too bad but we have a lot of area to cover which makes it too expensive for us right now. So we’ll just leave the tile in place and put rugs down for now to make the space usable and save our money up for some different flooring later. But be expecting more stories about our basement renovations!