Home Improvement

I feel as though we have done only good things to this house so far. Chances are, you have all seen my old post about our new house. If not, skim through it to get a feel of the place.

We are fixin up a few things here and there, getting some new furniture to spice up the place a little, fill in the blanks, and make it feel more like home. We are also redoing the back yard, attempting to plant some grass and doing pretty well with a tiny vegetable/herb garden.

Witness:

BEFORE

PLOWING UP THE DIRT

A BIT OF PATCHY GRASS STILL IN PROGRESS

We have just a couple new pieces of furniture but I love them! They were both very good bargains(thank you yard sales and craigslist!) and I feel like they just complete the whole living/dining area!

LOVE my new yellow chair! So does the kitty...

Adorable pub table that perfectly matches our bar stools!!!

It's all still an improvement but we are working on it. I hope by this time next month we will have thick, beautiful, green grass and a completely decorated and furnished home!

Where are all of you?

I have to say; I am a bit disappointed with how well my friends and family have been keeping up on their blogs, which is why I started this whole business to begin with. I enjoyed that I didn't have to log onto Facebook to see how the people I love are doing and what their day to day life looks like. I enjoyed that I could read about their thoughts and passion here on their blogs and feel like each picture and each word was put here for me to read. Sadly, no more updates have been given for at least 4 months from anyone in any direction and it saddens me and discourages me from updating my blog. I figure no one will be reading any of my posts since they've given up on their own. Still I push on. I don't like Facebook. It is not personal or where I can store any of my thoughts or passions. It is hardly somewhere I feel like the ones who love me should know my day to day life and know where my life is at. So, if I am slow with my posts, know it is not because I don't care about my blog... because I do. It is solely because I may or may not believe at the time that absolutely no one out there is actually paying attention anymore.

 This summer has been full of moving and job hunting. My days are spent babysitting a sweet almost three year old named Aven who is just the coolest three year old you could ever meet. Love him to pieces. Regretfully though, it has been my mission to find a job that can stabilize my schedule and give me a full time doing something besides picking up puke and wiping bottoms.Not that I don't love doing that or anything... I just figured there will be plenty of time to do all that later in my life when the kids are mine.

Other than the moving and the job searching and the babysitting on the side, how about I fill you in on what else has been going on with some photos and some subtitles. Are you still with me?

Not that anyone is really out there marking their calendars or anything, but our kitty, Ramona, had her 2nd birthday in the end of june. I just lit a candle, stuck it in some wet food, and almost burnt her whiskers off then called it good for the day. We love her a lot.

Next up is Independence Day weekend. I've been noticing that hardly anyone calls it "Independence Day" anymore, which is what it is. Though it is the "fourth day of July" calling it that is defacing it's definition. Therefore, every time I refer to Christmas to many of these people who say "4th of July", I will call it "The 25th of December" just to see if they get annoyed.
Anyway.
For the holiday, we went to Phoenix for the weekend where we got to spend some MUCH needed time with many people who we have missed! We spent the day swimming in the pool at Dugan's Mom's place and I got to catch up with my dear friend Jessika whom i have not gotten to see since the beginning of April when her baby was born. I know it is horrible. The valley is hot... we try not to go down there very often. One more person we got to see was my sister Hillary. I am SO excited that she has moved back to Arizona (finally!) and I can (try) to spend some more time with her. The trick is getting her up to flagstaff to see me every once and awhile. (this is a battle I may never win with my peeps). So here's photos:

FUN! FUN! FUN!

Moving on.

Next up is Jessika's wedding and our Housewarming party.
Jessika, whom I have been close friends with for 7 years (holy moly!) got married a couple weeks ago and I had the unexpected pleasure of attending!  put on a pretty dress, drove to Mesa, and attended this little but beautiful Rustin wedding.

On top of all this, we have had a couple good nights where we go get milkshakes and nights where we invite people (now that we have the room to entertain them!) over to our house and laugh and share stories and have a good time. We had a small housewarming party that went very well and everyone enjoyed themselves.

To wrap it up, I will leave you all with a delightful photo I took of my husband sleeping at 4am the other morning. Under his pillow. What a goober.

Thank you, whoever out there still believes in blogs and took the time to read! Happy sunny days everyone!

Home In Progress

Recently we moved from 1000W Forest Meadows, an apartment way too small for our large personalities, to 1104W Overland Pass Dr. We LOVE our new home. It is a townhouse located about three miles away from our old place and in a much more secluded area, while still giving us access to all the nearby stores and restaurants. In this new place we have:

a nice spacious backyard for Odin to run around in
a living area AND a dining area
3 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms
a garage
Lots of storage space(something our apartment was seriously lacking)
DOZENS of running trails
A laundry room
lots of windows for natural lighting

a doggy door connecting our bedroom to the backyard(AMAZING!)

Some of our favorite things about this place are, of course, the doggy door, the yard, and the fact that the master bed and bath are downstairs and the other two bedrooms are upstairs giving us more of a "living together but separate" feel with our roommates. We have a pretty good family atmosphere in this house but it is nice having our personal space back.

Odin is absolutely loving all the room he has now to run around. All day and night he lets himself in and out through the doggy door and we are constantly playing some form of tug of war or fetch when we go out back with him. The running trails in this area have been a great surprise. We are closer to the Flagstaff Urban Trail System now so there are a lot of paved paths we can take. Our favorite time of day to run is either before 7am or after 7pm because any time between those two hours are too hot for my Husky!

I, personally love my kitchen and just the space in general. I am still trying to get my things where I want them to be and to get my pictures hung but for the most part, there is so much more space here that I am at loss of what to do with it all!

Alright, I will stop talking now and just show some pics of the new house. I will leave out the boring photos like our bathroom decor and the laundry rooms. If you really want to see those things you'll just have to come visit.

 Dugan's gardening area in progress

 Living room from the bottom of the stairs:

 From the top of the stairs:

First half of the bedroom:

 Second Half of the Bedroom:

I also left out pics of the upstairs bedrooms and the bathroom up there. Its pretty standard stuff. Fun, spacious and so much more comfortable!

We are in love with our new place and the new situation we have. It's good to be home.

Now come Visit!!!

Packin'

Currently packing everything we own into boxes so we can move three miles down the road. Dugan's been gone at drill for a week and a half so I am double busy. Boxing up things, cleaning, organizing, AND ontop of all of these things, staying consistent with a 4 week bootcamp that Rachel, Andy, and I are doing(3 and a half hrs cardio, strength training on the legs&butt, arms&back, and the abs with a weekly running goal of 15 miles). We're into week two and so far loving it!

So here's a couple photos so you know what is up in the Eckstein household:

 And with all the hard work and packing, this is what little help Ramona is being. Lazy kitty. This is why we call her "meatloaf" because she is just about as useful as a meatloaf sometimes...

FIlling Our Time With Adventure

Our dearest friends Amanda and Jim Mocco came to Arizona for a vacation last week and we had the pleasure of showing them around our beautiful state. It's hard to explain what Arizona is like to other people because it's a place that you just have to experience in person. There are red rocks to mountains covered in pine trees, rolling deserts littered with cacti to open fields for cows to graze on. It's a whole different world out here and I just love showing it to everyone I can.

We missed our friends the Moccos dearly, as we have not seen them since we left Fort Drum last year. Jim spent a tour with Dugan in Afghanistan so the two of them have a brotherhood for life and we just can't keep the brothers apart for too long. We kept ourselves very busy with traveling to some of the hot spots here in our home state like the Grand Canyon(Dugan's first time, too), the Red Rocks of Sedona, Downtown Flagstaff with HollyAnn and Seth, and of course, good ol' Payson to show them our roots.

I hope it's not another year until we see Amanda & Jim again but who knows what this next year will bring. Hopefully we can come together more often, but even if we don't, we know to cherish the time we do get to spend together.

New York- A quick vacation

Set out to Brockport, NY last week for a quick adventure. My dearest friend, Elyse, who also surprised me for Christmas, happened to be getting her Bachelor's degree and I needed to be there to support here. That's a huge accomplishment and I needed to show her that I was totally there for her... and also I missed her to death. So, i'll try not to bore you with the details but it goes without saying that I had a great time going back to New York and getting some time with the grass and the flowers.


We did lots of things while I was there.

Like I said, boring details but I like the details and I want to remember them.

Here's some photos to describe what we did so I don't have to:

Attended Elyse's graduation.

Celebrated Elyse's accomplishments with a party thrown by her family that had lots of food and drink and cake/

Saw The Great Gatsby in Theaters. I begged Elyse to go with me for like 4 nights in a row. Thank goodness she actually liked the film and didn't hate it!

We went to "wing night" out at one of the Bar&Grills in downtown Brockport.

Such a goofball:)

 We had a bon fire out at the Catlin's Farm. So nice to get cozy next to the fire after a long 5 days of freezing weather!

blue tongue from our slushpuppies on the drive to Buffalo

Went to the Lilac Festival in Rochester. There are just fields of lilacs and people set up tents and there is a bunch of food and live music and all kinds of merchandise.  A very beautiful place!

There are a lot of photos of just me and Elyse because I recently realized that there were very few out there and I needed more. It was SO nice being close to my dear friend again. I am grateful for her and so proud of her in graduating. I know she is going to do great things in her life!

I enjoyed going back to New York. It was good to run in the rain and smell all the flowers growing all around me. It's a completely different world than Arizona is and I almost forgot what it was like being there. The buildings are older, the people are grumpier, and the land is greener. I'll be going back again, i'm sure. Who knows when that will be. 

My trip home was nothing short of traumatizing. I had a delay in one of my flights causing me to miss my connecting flight and landing me in New Jersey for the night for 4 hours of broken sleep so I could make my 6:00 flight the next morning. It was a miracle that I got a hotel that would book me and that the airline would pay for it. It might be awhile until I fly again.\

Before I go, I just want to quickly say here, so that everyone can see it, that I am working on being more positive. In the negative situations I have in my life all around me, being positive is the only way I am going to keep my head on straight. I am a pessimistic person and overall way more grumpy than I should be. So I am trying to fix that. I've decided to look for the good in all that is around me, even if the hand I am dealt at the moment is total crap.

When I woke up at 4:30 in New Jersey- far from home and so under rested, I looked out my window of the room of my hotel and saw a beautiful sun rise coming up over New Jersey. It was my silver lining and I am glad I was looking for something positive to get me through my long day of travel.

I have another adventure coming my way next week when our friends the Moccos come for a visit. 

Tata for now, everyone. Hope your weekend is splendid.