Saturday, December 15, 2007

Happy Holidays

It has been a little while since I have written, so I thought I would take some time today to blog. First off, you are probably wondering if we got another dog. No, we did not. I just thought I would put up a picture of this little guy cause we have been dog-sitting him for the last week. Our neighbor got him a couple weeks ago, but she had to go to Orlando for surgery, so we have been watching him while they are gone. He is a Maltese puppy, about 10 weeks old now. You can't really tell by this picture, but he is tiny. He probably weighs about a pound, if that. He and Divot are best friends. They run around and play all the time. It worries me a little bit because Divot is about 15 times his weight, but so far the little guy has proven to be pretty tough. We will only have him a couple more days, then he will be able to go back home. Coco will be really happy when he leaves. He is a little bit too wild for her.
It is just one more week until we will be heading home for Christmas. We are going to leave early next Sunday morning and make the 12 hour drive home. We will be home the entire week of Christmas, then we will probably be heading back to Arkansas that next Sunday. At work I only get Christmas day off so I will have to use 4 vacation days. I will have to go back to work that next Monday, then I will get another vacation day on Tuesday. We are really looking forward to coming home for the week. It will be nice to spend time with family. It is probably going to be a little bit colder up there, but I am kinda looking forward to it. Hopefully there will be some snow. The weather here has been pretty miserable for the last week or so. For the last 5 days it has been raining almost constantly. It has stayed warm enough so it doesn't freeze. Today it has been raining all morning, but I notice that it finally turned to snow just a little while ago. The ground is actually almost covered with really wet snow, but it won't be around for very long. I am sure it will all be gone by tomorrow. Snow doen't usually stick around for very long around here. The bad weather has given me plenty of time to spend with my big Christmas present. A few weeks ago I finally broke down and bought a new TV. We were still using the one that I had in my dorm room at college. We got a Samsung 42" Plasma TV. It is awesome. We bought an HD antenna at the store so we get all the local channels in high definition. Who would have thought that an over-the-air broadcast could be clearer that what a DVD is? We also got a great deal on it. I have been shopping around for TV's for over a year now, and I just always kept waiting because they kept getting cheaper and cheaper. Last year I almost bought a 32" flat screen from Sam's Club, but I am glad I waited. We got this 42" TV for over $300 less than what I would have paid for that one a year ago. We also got a free DVD recorder with the TV. So far I am really happy with it. I did a lot of research, and read a lot of reviews online, so I pretty much knew what I was getting. I think all of that waiting and deliberating was well worth it.
A couple months ago I made another purchase that has turned into my new hobby. I got a .22 Ruger Pistol and a membership to an indoor shooting range. I have been going there almost every weekend. .22 rounds are pretty cheap so I don't have to spend a lot of money every week on ammo.
I haven't ridden my bike very much since it has gotten cold. I have had it on the trainer a few times, but that isn't very much fun. I would rather freeze outside that have to ride on the trainer.
Well, I hope everybody is having a great time getting ready for Christmas, I know we are. We wish you all a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thank you to everybody who has commented on our blog, or sent me an email. It is nice to hear from you.

-Deric

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Coco and Divot are all ready for Christmas. Coco is ready to help Santa this year while Divot looks a little too preoccupied to do anything!
Merry Christmas Everyone!

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Our new dog!



Well we got a new puppy! Her name is Coco and she is such a good little girl. We bought her from one of the girls I work with at the salon. We dog-sat her while her old owners were out of town for Thanksgiving. A few months they wanted to sell her. When Deric and I had her for that week we just knew we had to have her. Div and Coco are getting along pretty well. They are the same breed but she is about half the size of Divot. She is a little scared when Divot comes running after her. He is huge compared to her, I would be scared too! :) It is going to be crazy with 2 dogs but for some reason it just feels right.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

More Pictures

Here are a few more.





Pictures

This past weekend we had our pictures taken. I thought I would post some of them so you could all see them. They were actually taken outside of J.B. Hunt. Hope you enjoy.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Our First Anniversary

Hey, this is Deric.
As most of you know we just celebrated our first anniversary on October 21. We weren't sure what we wanted to do, but we just wanted to relax and have a good time. We decided to go to Devil's Den State park and hike some of the trails and have a picnic lunch. Devil's Den is only about 40 minutes away from where we live, so it would be a nice day-trip. We had a beautiful day. We couldn't ask for any better. It was sunny and about 75 degrees, and a little windy. We took Divot along with us as you can see. He really liked running on the trail, and turned out to be a better hiker than either of us were. We were hoping that the leaves would be changing and we could get some good pictures of the fall colors in the Ozarks. However, we had a pretty warm fall and the leaves hadn't really started changing yet. Amanda packed us a picnic lunch and we ate at Devil's Den, then we drove further south to the top of Mt. Gaylor to see the sites looking down into the valley. It was a really nice day, we had a lot of fun.
We headed back home and just had a nice evening at home. Here you can see Amanda in our kitchen, getting ready to pop open some champagne. She is standing next to another part of our anniversary gift to each other. Yep, that is our new stainless steel refrigerator. All of the rest of the appliances came with the house, but we didn't have a frige. One of the guys at work was selling an old one because he was moving, and I am always looking to save a few bucks, so I bought it. Unfortunately it was white and didn't match the rest of our kitchen. The entire year we always said that we were going to buy one, but we never did. Well, Amanda decided that a year was long enough to wait, and we went ahead and got one. When they delivered it to the house we got some bad news. The new frige was too tall to fit underneath our cabinets. I had measured it, and it should have worked, but for some reason it was about a quarter inch too tall. I bought a hand planer and my boss helped me plane down the cabinets enough to just slide the refrigerator in, and now it looks really nice. So our stainless steel kitchen is finally complete.
It has been a few weeks since our anniversary and now the leaves are really starting
to change. This past spring we bought an Autumn Blaze maple tree to put in our front yard. We moved into a new subdivision, so all of the trees were these little sticks staked up in the front yards. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go a little bit bigger. I wanted to set the bar higher and see if any of my neighbors would follow suit. Unfortunately, none of them have yet... maybe next spring. Here is a picture of the front of our house taken a couple days ago. You can see the leaves on our tree have completely changed. It went from pretty warm, to really cold in the matter of a few days and the leaves changed really fast. Our tree still looks kinda thin as far as the branches go, but hopefully next year it will really fill out.
Well, it is time for me to end this blog entry. I hope you e
njoyed the pictures.

-Deric

Miller Lite

Divot discovers how much he likes Miller Lite.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Getting ready for the hoildays


Hey this is Amanda.I have already started some holiday shopping. Christmas is going to be here before we know it. We are really looking forward to my parents coming for Thanksgiving. It is going to be nice to have family around. Our next trip home will be for Christmas. We hope to spend time with both family and friends. I am looking forward to the Indiana snow this year, and Deric wants to go out to the fields at his mom and dad's to shoot his new gun! We are really missing the nephews and niece. I am sure they are all going to look so big. It is hard to be away from them for such a period of time. This picture we have up is from last Christmas. Hopefully we can get a better picture this year. Talk to you all soon!

Halloween

Little Divot is ready to pass out candy to the kids on Halloween!!