Hotel Breinholt Booked Again!

This weekend we had the pleasure of having our friends Joey and Kira visit from Houston. They came in Friday and stayed until Tuesday night. We ate at lots of yummy places, played lots of Mario Bros Wii, and just had fun hanging out. We had so much fun with you guys. Thanks for making the short journey to spend part of your Spring Break with us!

Heath also has Spring break off so we are just trying to get some stuff off our to-do list this week. That's pretty much it right now.

Visitors at Hotel Breinholt!

We had a great weekend with Heath's family. Thursday night Mom, Dad, and Ron drove in from Ben and Mer's and we took them to Trudy's to eat. On Friday we headed down to campus so they could see where Heath spends his days (and to visit the world's largest collection of things burnt orange- The Co-Op). After that we ate a place called The Mellow Mushroom which was one of Ron's favorite places from his mission- and there was one in Austin! Pretty cool for him. Next we took Ron to the Apple store so Heath could talk his ear off about all things Mac. Then we started our trek to find a movie theater that played The Blind Side which ended in an even crazier attempt to find one that played Avatar in 3D. We ended up watching Avatar, and it was pretty good. I think the visual effects were amazing, but I wouldn't say it was the best movie I've ever seen. Saturday Ben, Mer, and the girls came into town. We sat off to eat at this place that Ben has been dying to try- The Salt Lick. It was pretty good BBQ, but I'm not sure it lived up to its hype for everyone. Then we did a little shopping at the Round Rock Outlets- Mer and I love that place! After that we went home and hung out. Sunday started off with me getting to church early so I could talk to one of the bishop's counselors. Guess who got a calling? Primary, here I come! Then we just spent the rest of Sunday eating and hanging out. That night, after the girls went to bed, we had an exciting game of Super Mario Brothers Wii. It was great. I think we played one level a bazillion times. Monday morning we said our goodbyes and our house has been too quiet ever since. We miss you guys! Thanks for a great long weekend. We had a blast!

Best Sydney quote of the weekend: "I just want you and Xhaxhi to be my parents". Hehe, made our day. Poor Syd, she thinks we'd be cool parents. Little does she know.... :)

Best Malla quote of the weekend: Anytime she would walk around the house and say in her sweet little voice "Xhaaaxxhi" "Haaallllaa"

BEST WEEKEND EVER. Welcome home Ron! Thanks for everything Mom and Dad! We're so glad we got to see ya'll!

In your opinion....

Okay, so we've filed our taxes now and thanks to Uncle Sam it looks like we might be able to get that dining table after all (Yay for the whole new homebuyer credit thing). But, I have a problem. There are like three that we like. So why not throw it to the bloggers for a little help. Which of these tables do you like and why....


I realize that they are all similar but at the same time they are very different. I'm leaving the details out so as to not form any sort of bias. So, let me know what you think and thanks for the help!

Why DOESN'T money grow on trees?

Because if it did, I'd buy this little beauty....

Another great Costco find! But alas, we've exhausted our spending funds after the whole buying a house thing. Who would have thought? But if this ended up on my door step, I wouldn't mind. ;) It would be nice to have more then two people able to sit at the table- you know, without pulling up the desk chair.

Things are going good here. We had my parents stay this last weekend in Hotel Breinholt. We all went to the UT basketball game (we lost), and then drowned our sorrows in the greatest mexican food ever at Trudy's celebrating Lindsey's birthday (Matt's friend from high school). All in all, a great weekend.

Also, we are looking forward to Mom, Dad, and Ron coming down from Utah in March! It's been two years since we've seen the Ron dude and Kami's wedding (in October) since we've seen Mom and Dad. We look forward to our visits!

Hope everyone's New Year is going well. Love ya!

Our New House

We finally closed on our house January 15, 2010. The house buying process was pretty easy peezy until we got to closing and then the bank selling the house became pretty greedy and we had a long 2 week fight with them. NEVER deal with Chase bank. They are horrible. But all in all, it wasn't that bad, and we are very happy with our new home. Now to the good part... pictures! Blogger makes it kind of hard to organize so they might be out of order. (Captions are underneath the pictures).

The front at night. I will get a better picture later.

Welcome to our home!

Our New Address!

Our front window before being frosted.

Front window after being frosted. Yay for privacy!

The powder room at the front entry.

This is our bedroom.

More of our bedroom and new furniture.

Our new dresser.

Our bathroom.

Our closet.

Under the stair storage. IT IS AWESOME.

The dining room with our tiny table. Looks like we need to save up for a new grown up table.

The right side of the kitchen with our new appliances (A Christmas present from my parents- We don't normally get gifts like this but they took Mattie to California for the National Championship game and they don't like doing for one without doing for the other, so Thanks to my families obsession with UT football (and their love of course ;)) we have new, beautiful appliances.) We LOVE them. They really finished off the house.

The left side of the kitchen. Our stove/range was damaged when it was delivered so we are waiting on a new one.

A view of the whole kitchen.

Another view of our Living Room. Our bedroom is the door to right of the front entry.

View of Living Room from Dining Room. Complete with lazy dog.

View of Living Room from entry way. It is long and narrow so we had to get creative with the couches. Notice our lazy dog sleeping on the couch again. :)

TV area in Living Room.

The guest bathroom upstairs.

Another view of the guest bathroom.

The larger extra bedroom (AKA The grandparent's room- hint, hint- come visit!)

Another view of the larger extra bedroom.

My home office in the loft area.

Another view of my home office/loft.

The smaller extra bedroom/ Heath's Office. (AKA The Longhorn room)

Heath's study area in the smaller extra bedroom.

New front door hardware.

Old door knobs. I am not a fan of gold so these had to go.

Our new beautiful bronzed oil door knobs installed by my very own handy man Heath.

Old Sliding Door Handles

New Sliding door handles

The jungle up front that we need to tame.

My new nemesis- the common weed. I will kill them all!

Ally loves her new backyard! And we love not having to take her out on a leash!

So there you have it. We love our new home and have enjoyed getting settled and making it our own. The best part- Not having to move for like 5+ years and not having to live in an apartment! We feel truly blessed right now, especially as so many others struggle over in Haiti to survive after that tragic earthquake. Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected in any way by this sad event.

If you haven't already, please head to one of these sites and donate for the recovery and rebuilding of Haiti. Every dollar helps. We did the really simple text option and it will just add our donation onto our cell phone bill.

www.helphaitinow.org

www.redcross.org

www.clintonbushhaitifund.org

We took home more than gifts this Christmas...

We took home the cold virus! Yep, we've done it again. Both of us have some nasty little upper respiratory yuckiness, although Heath is just a little congested and I've (as usual) got the full blown virus fun. So I have been trying to get lots of sleep and drink plenty of fluids which has left no time to blog about what an awesome Christmas we had. So here we go...

Thursday night we headed over to Ben and Mer's for our annual Christmas Eve Bash. This year we had the pleasure of having the J's, Cody and Bandaid there also. We had a breakfast buffet for dinner and I must say Jeremy makes the most awesome omlets ever. Then we let the girls open their gifts from us (and my parents) since we don't see them on Christmas day. After that, it was the Breinholt Nativity Christmas Devotional Spectacular via Skype. All and all it was a very fun time. We left a little earlier than we would have liked because surprise, surprise we had gotten snow that whole day and the roads were a little slick as the day went on. Us Texans don't do too well driving unless it is bright and sunny outside :)

Then Christmas day I fought the urge to wake everyone up at my parent's at 5 a.m. and let them sleep in until almost 8! Man, am I good daughter/sister/wife or what? :) So we got up and opened presents and hung out for awhile and then we got packed and headed out toward Wolfe City. My grandma and aunt wanted us to do Christmas with them this year there and so we packed the car with humans, packages, and dogs alike and headed out on the now thawing roads. My grandma wanted to do dinner at her house (which is right next door to my aunt's) so she prepared an all out feast for us all. It was a tough time for them as they were struggling through the holidays without my cousin Colin, but it was great being there with everyone. After opening presents at my Aunt's we went off to Gran's for some much needed rest (the whole waking up at 8 was catching up to us) and then we headed home the next day. That was also the day I woke up with the dreaded sore throat. After that we just lounged around at mom and dad's playing with our new trinkets. Then on Sunday we headed back to Austin so we could get some paperwork into our lender...... because we close in 5 days!!

So here we are in Austin, 5 days away from closing, and couldn't be more excited! We can't wait to be in our little home together and make it our own.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year. May all your dreams come true!

Or a dead lizard.....

Wow, so out of all the boring posts I've written, I thought at least the "We're getting a house" post would get more buzz. I must be down from three readers to one. Maybe this will be more entertaining, but I doubt it. We've been in Keller for the past three days or so. Friday we drove in and then Saturday we went to a Casa Manana play with Mer's family and the girls. I haven't been there since like elementary school field trips. It was a pretty cute play minus all the smoke in the air for the lights. My eyes couldn't breathe through all of it. Other than that it was the best seeing the girls light up when Santa would come out. Ah, to be young again.
After the play, we headed over to Mer's parent's house and hung out for awhile. Mer took the girls home to put them in bed, and Ben stayed with us so he could watch the Cowboys game. We decided to spend the night over at Ben and Mer's so we took Ben to my parent's to get our things. Heath took Ally out and she was acting weird after that. She kept roaming in a circle around the couch. Mom thought it was because she knew we were leaving. I was thinking, "The only time she does this is when she has snatched something up and knows she's done wrong." So she jumped on the couch next to me and I opened her mouth and behold, there was a small piece of a stick in her mouth. Looked almost like a root of a plant or something. Then I looked closer, my eyes got wide, and in my best disgusted girly girl voice exclaimed "Or a dead lizard!!!". I was holding in my hand a tiny, shrunken, dead house lizard....from my dog's mouth! Yuck. I promptly threw it away, washed my hands, and reminded myself to not get "kisses" from Ally for a long time. Dog's do the darndest things!
So after all that excitement Sunday we went to church and then headed over to our friends Scot and Amy's house. They recently bought it about 7 months ago and we have yet to go and check it out. We had a great dinner, had fun catching up, and had a little friendly competition on the Xbox. Good times all around. Looking forward to more fun this week. Merry Christmas!