Meet the baby!

I guess there really is no explanation as to why I had to get a baby, but Mark obliged and we would like you to meet Bandit, our german wirehaired baby. I got an "itch" and started looking online for GWP pups, all the locals pups were from breeders and had papered lineage, so they would cost us a very pretty penny, but I found a couple selling purebred german wirehair pups for way cheaper than the $1000 the breeders were asking. However, these cheap pups were in Camp Verde, Arizona. (Mark's brother and sister-in-law, Steve and Heather, were coming out to visit us, and they got to Rawlins before the gates closed. They stayed overnight in Rawlins, but when the gates still were not open by noon the next day, they turned back to Utah, vowing to return when it's not snowing.) When they turned back, Mark asked me if I wanted to head to Arizona and go pick up the pup? The time we had originally set aside was the first weekend of May, we're pretty busy, and it's a 12 hour trip to Camp Verde, and a 12 hour trip back to CO. So, we bought some Dew, gummy worms, sunflower seeds, and some cashews and headed south. (It was snowing so bad in Denver when we left, it was awful. And Mark's work called and said they had an emergency in Boulder-opposite direction- and they might need him to go get some raccoons out of some guys house. So we turned around and waited in Lone Tree for the word to head to Boulder or not. The word never came, so we went on our way.) We stopped in New Mexico for a bit, and then we stopped just inside Arizona to sleep for the night. We then passed a shop saying FOSSILS but it had paper mache dinosaurs eating manequins ( hilarious and odd) and then we stopped at Wal-Mart a 1/2 hour away from Camp Verde, for dog food, dishes, a towel, treats and water. We then picked up the pup, and decided on the name Bandit, and it totally fits him now, he's always running away with his duck trying to hide it. It felt like the longest trip ever on the way home. (We stopped by at the Grand Canyon, it's beautiful and amazing, but not really on the route from Camp Verde-Phoenix to Denver, so the trip was longer going home than it was heading out.) But Bandit was a good puppy, and he didn't pee or poop in the truck at all! Whenever we'd pull over, he would always go then. He was such a good boy! But we finally made it home, and Bandit is adjusting pretty good for being 8 weeks old. So, welcome to our family Bandit! Yayay!

Love- bry and mark

Crafty-ness

So, I found tons of blogs (Thank you Angie and Teri) about making crafty things and I'm going to start trying out some of the cute things. Of course I will post what I create, and where I found the project at. Here are the blogs I found: http://kari-youcanmakeit.blogspot.com/ -- Tons of way cute thigns on this one! I'm way excited to go and start making things.
And this one : http://brassyapple.blogspot.com/ --Again with the cute things! Be sure to check back and see what I try to create, plus I'll still keep you posted on the goings-on here at home. Steve and Heather are coming by in two weeks, that'll be fun!! I'm so excited for them to come to our house!! Yayayay! I'm also going to take pictures of our first Easter, I'm also excited for that!! yay!

Love ~ bry & mark

PS: Oh and here is were I got the wallet tutorial at : http://elily00.wordpress.com/tutorials/wallet/ It's a way easy tutorial and the wallet is super cute!!

Wallet

TA-DA!!!

love <3>

Nice day for a walk and....wallets.

It was nice out yesterday after work, it wasn’t cold, it was sunny, the snow has melted, so I asked Mark if he would like to take a walk with me before dinner. We had to go to the bank anyways, so we walked to the bank and back. I Googled it, it is .8 miles each way, and I like to round up when I achieve things, so we walked 2 miles yesterday. :) That’s pretty awesome considering the doctor’s said it would be about 6 months before I could take on strenuous activity and be fully recovered. The only hard thing about the walk was the talking. When you walk and talk, it makes your breathing change, but things were great, he talked mostly. And it was really nice to have places that are close by the house, close enough to walk to. It felt good to get out of the house and do something, but it felt really good to test out the newly improved heart. After we made it to the bank, we stopped by the park. There is a park one street over from our house, the train tracks go right by the park. We stopped by and had fun on the swings. Then we had a gum race in the little creek in the park. I think Mark won, but neither of pieces of gum made it out from under the bridge. It was really fun to be out and about, and just have fun with Mark. J

Oh, more news! I started paying for the wedding pictures! Yay! About time too! Trust me, I have been wanting these pictures since June 20th, and now I finally have the means to get them! WHY?! Because April is the LAST month of the lease on the apartment! Yay! So we will finally be out from under that stress! I am so glad this is going to be over soon! It really was more stress than it was worth, I think.

And I have been starting yet another project. I’ve been trying to find a wallet that will hold my checkbook, my credit cards/ID cards, and my new envelope system (Dave Ramsey program). And, I cuold get an awesome one, for $20!! No way! So, I went online to see if I could find a pattern or a tutorial on how to make a cute one. I totally found a tutorial for a way cute one! I borrowed Angie’s sewing machine (Thank you Ang!!) and I went to JoAnn’s to find fabric (they have “Fabric Quarters” for $1.50 for 18”x22”, and that’s enough for ½, so I bought 2 colors/patterns, one for the inside and one for the outside.). I tried a practice wallet first, just to get the idea of it down, and for the practice one, I didn’t really do a good job. The stitching isn’t strait, the edges are all sticking out, and the end “product” is lumpy, I didn’t press out any of the creases,a nd I used only one color of fabric, so it’s hard to see the different parts, and there’s no zipper (I didn’t buy and extra zipper), so yeah the practice one looks bad. But the new one, I measured, I wrote down parts of the steps that I changed for my wallet design, I pressed the creases, I added the zipper, I did the interfacing on the real one. It looks way nice, and way cute! I love it! I made some changes to the steps, I use more of both fabrics, rather than all of one and just a little of the other. Mark even says it’s cute. So that has been my latest project! I am so very excited about it, because if these keep turning out as cute as the first one did, I have a new gift idea. (Christmas is only 8 months away, people!!) But, we’ll just have to see if I can keep up the cuteness. I'll getom some pictures of the real one I did up here soon, our camera is currently in Utah, Mark left it behind after his fishing trip last weekend. (The practice one just isn’t worth uploading the picture, trust me, it’s pretty ugly.)

Love ~ bry and mark

Free time?!

(I hate it when the Internet Explorer quits and I lose everything I've just typed, I lose all ambition and don't want to do anymore blogging!)

So, in my past weeks of "house arrest" I have been trying to find things to do. I've cleaned the house, I've mopped the floor, I've done the dishes, I've done laundry, I've watched movies, and I've even played Nintendo. Recently, tho, these tasks have become mundane and boring. So, in trying to find new things to do, I started going at all the boxes containing my jewlery and makeup. All are in seperate boxes because I moved to Utah, then to the apartment, and then finally to the house. So I got to tossing out lone earrings, broken necklaces, unused bracelets, and the like, when I came across the jewlery I wore for the wedding! I was so excited that I found it all, and I didn't want to lose any of it again. I wanted to display it and put it somewhere that losing it wasn't possible. I came up with the idea of a shadowbox! So, I got one of my bridal pictures, and some of the ribbon from the wedding, and all my jewlery and stuck it in this shadowbox. Mark says it looks great, I say it looks like I got lazy and just pinned all this jewlery up next to a photo. But oh well, it's on the wall and that's where it's staying because it was such a pain to get up on the wall, I didn't even take it down to get a decent picutre of it!

Also, in my wanderings of the house, I found Mark's box of stuff from his room. I found all the little funny crap I made him when we were dating. Like the picture frame that I scrapbooked and all of our photostrips from the photo booths. So I hung the scrapbooke picture frame on the wall, and even hung the little Love You saying I got at Seagull Book, so here is also a picture of that. Once we get the wedding photos, I'll put one in the upper left hand corner, and one in the bottom left hand corner (it'll look more even that way!)

love always, bry and mark <3

haircut!!!

I got a new haircut! I've tried to change it up a few times a few months ago, but it never turned out right, and I was never totally in love with the hair cut. So I finally broke down and went to a hair salon other than Fantastic Sam's. So I brought a whole bunch of pictures of what I kind of wanted, and the hair stylist had a lot of fun cutting my hair. I, more or less, just wanted to get my hair cut in a new style, new fashion, I wanted something new, and I got something completely new, and I LOVE IT!!! So here are before and after pictures. And then, one of me and Mark! :) Yay for new things, and for feeling great after something so small as a haircut, or a new shirt. It really is amazing how something like a haircut can change a lot. I feel really good.

love always, bry and mark <3

post surgery

Yayyayayayayay! I'm feeling good! Anyways, to fill everybody in, I went in for open heart surgery on February 3rd. That was a Tuesday. That Saturday, I went home. The doctor's said everything was looking good, and I could go home. We were all kind of nervous about my coming home so soon, but it all worked out in the end. Everything started getting easier and better. So anyways, I will tell you of the surgery. I went in for open heart because the dcotor's saw a 20 mm hole in between my baffles (little tunnels for my blood that the doctor's created when I was 2, in the first surgery, to correct to defect I was born with). When the doctor's went in for this surgery, the discovered the cardiac cathiterization was incorrect, the hole wasn't 20 mm, it was 3 inches. All the work that had been done in the previous surgery was undone, the doctor's have no idea when the damage started or even how. But the open heart surgery suddenly went from prevenative/precautionary to life saving. So instead of using the gor-tex to patch up the hole in my heart, the doctor's used inert animal paracardium. They took a part of an animal heart and sewed it into my heart to fix everything. But - everything is fine. I am doing great. things are so good! I went to church yesterday even! I didn't teach my class of 5 year olds, but I still went to church. We just look at everything and see a big blessing. What if I had been pregnant? And they discovered the 20 mm hole that turned out to be a 3 inch gap? We're very grateful that didn't happen, and that everything happened the way it did. Thank you all for everything, for all of your prayers and fasting. We love you all!! Take care - love always, bry and mark!