CFRI Day 1

The CFRI Conference kicked off yesterday and Mandi is there with CysticLife doing us proud. If you'd like to check out some pictures from day 1 please click here.

Enjoy!!

Flash Me Friday - "The Garage"

This week's addition of Flash Me Friday call for pictures of our garage (or wherever we decide to park our rides). Our garage is about as standard as they come except for the awesome built-ins that we were left with from the previous owner. I absolutely LOVE the extra storage, although I guess it would be nice to not have to squeeze our cars in the tighter space. Every time we get out of the car or truck we have to take extra caution to avoid any door dings. But, it's the first two-car garage I've ever, so I better stop my complaints :)

View as you pull in the driveway

Two peas in a pod

Extra storage

All that we have in our garage out of storage: bikes, extra tiles and A/C filters

Close-up of our preferred choice of transportation

Are you interested in also participating? This brainchild of Jen over at The Groettum Familyblog is going to be a weekly series in which we have to take a picture of her choosing without any cleaning up whatsoever. If you want in on the action, please visit here for the "rules".

What the _____?: July 29th, 2010

A while ago we started a little contest on this blog in which I post a picture and whoever comes up with the most clever/funny/witty/etc caption gets put into a drawing for prizes at the end of the year. Still don't have everything figured out as of yet, but we do know a couple of things 1) There will be multiple prizes 2) I love the participation so far 3) If you think your submission is inappropriate for others to see, you can always email your answer directly to me at ronnie@cysticlife.org :) 4) I've literally LOLed all weeks so keep it coming!

This week's picture:

Alright, what do ya got!?!?

Last week's photo with the winning caption:

Winner: "First kisses are always a little awkward"

submitted by Suzanne

2nd: "Ok, whoever has the biggest tonsil stone doesn't have to do the dishes tonight aaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwww"

submitted by Kellie

3rd: "They say that, "more than a mouthful is a waste" but it looks like ya'll are gonna have fun trying!!!"

submitted by Carollyn

Video of Special Date Night Song

As promised, here's the video from the concert a few nights ago. If you need a refresher on the back story, please click here. Thanks again to Ernie Halter, you made the night quite special.

"Count The Days" for Ronnie and Mandi

Count The Days

Just got back home from a great date night with the wifey. We agreed that since we're such big home bodies we would at least plan a date for each other every month. July was my month so I "planned" to take Mandi to a concert and then reverse happy hour. I say "planned" because it sort of just became my date night as we were already planning on going and because reverse happy hour was Mandi's suggestion. Dangit, I really need to step it up!

Anyway, we went to a show featuring Nameless Prophets, Ernie Halter and Tony Lucca. Our buddy Jay is the lead for the Nameless Prophets so it was definitely nice to go and support him. We were both very excited to see Ernie Halter as well. He actually sang "our engagement" song (which was the song that was stuck in our heads during our engagement and also the song we put our engagement photo slide show to). The highlight of the night was when Ernie dedicated that song to Mandi and I. Our buddy Jay tipped him off to the fact that we dug that song and that it meant a lot to us. He was nice enough to point us out and sing the song, "Count The Days", directly to us. I wanted to put the video up, but for some reason it won't download. I'll make sure to put it up here soon though. For now, you're stuck with just pictures from the event :)

Landscaping for Dummies

As many of you know, Ronnie and I moved into our first home when we got married. We've posted a few photos, and I know we've raved about the yard. Our backyard is like a little oasis in the middle of the desert; grass, green, plants...the works. It is so wonderful....until you have to try to keep it alive in July, in the desert, when you're a landscaping moron.

Ronnie has been doing a great job. Using well over what environmentalists would consider our share of water, Ronnie's successfully kept the yard alive with gallons upon, gallons of it. The plan so far has been: water it, mow it, and hope that everything lives. The plan has worked well for the most part. The grass is green. And (most) of the plants are still living.

Last night, we decided to move from just mowing and watering and tried to tackle hedge trimming. I'm sure our neighbors watched in disbelief as tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum haphazardly cut back the bushes in our front yard. At one point, I realized I was cutting a bush without even really watching where/how I was cutting....it was at that point I realized we probably should have waited til it was even darker, so no one could witness this embarrassing attempt at landscaping. Most of the time Ronnie was using the hedge trimmers, he was laughing. "How's this?" he'd ask. "I have no idea," I'd respond. Talk about the blind leading the blind. I'm sure neighbors cringed as I'd bend down to pick up the debris, with my face just inches from where Ronnie was throwing around the hedge trimmer - talk about trust....or stupidity!

Anyways, after a few hours of cutting, raking, pulling and picking up, the yard does look better...in our opinion (I'm sure landscapers across the country would laugh at the shape of some of our bushes).

So here's to learning curves and giving it a good old college try. Anyone have any landscaping tips or horror stories for us?? Help us out or at least make us feel better by telling us how badly you stunk before you got the hang of it!