Drying on the Clothesline

• In our quest to eat healthier, I've discovered how great the Recipezaar website is. For every recipe, it gives you the Nutrition Facts, which was my initial draw to it. However, upon further inspection, I discovered that it has a great search engine. You can search by ingredient, and then filter by how many calories it has, other ingredients in it, or several other factors. It's pretty great!!
• Speaking of eating healthier, have I mentioned how much I dislike the word "diet"? I'm not on a diet. I'm trying to make some lifelong changes to my eating habits. In my head, diets are crazy and impossible to follow long term.
• You may remember a while back when Nick hurt his paw. He has now split a toenail on his back paw, so he's running around on 3 paws again. (You can sort of see it in the picture below...) The picture just doesn't do it justice though, because it's HILARIOUS when he runs around like that. It wouldn't be so funny if it seemed to stop him at all, but he still chases squirrels and runs laps around the yard like this.

• I'm feeling much better now about my job situation than I was a few weeks ago. I've had several interviews in the last week or so and I'm feeling hopeful that one of them will work out. So I'm happy to report that the job search seems to be moving along at least.
• Tuesday night, we were going to turn on our air conditioning. Our hope was that we'd be able to sleep in on Wednesday morning (I had the morning off and Aaron had the day off). With the air on, we wouldn't be hot and miserable in the morning AND we could have our windows closed, meaning we wouldn't have to listen to all of the neighborhood dogs bark all morning long. (We love dogs, but one thing we will not put up with is our boys barking for extended periods of time outside!!) Sooo.... we turned the air conditioning on. After a few minutes, I heard a sort of whining sound. I asked Aaron about it, and he said it was probably just the compressor since there was so much moisture in the air. But then the noise started getting louder and I asked Aaron to go check it out, because "it sounded like it was about to explode." Sure enough, the fan wasn't working, so the air conditioner was overheating. It looks like we'll be without air conditioning for a while. It's been in the upper 70's to mid 80's in our house for the last few days. Luckily, there's a slight cool down in the forecast for early next week.

Knotty Pine

I got my first flat tire on Friday. The road we take to Ames is closed for construction, so we take gravel that takes us almost directly to work instead of detouring out of the way. On Thursday, they put new rock down. On Friday, I got a flat tire. Do you think there might be a connection?? Since I was driving on gravel when it happened, I was getting thrown around a lot anyways and had no idea that I was driving on a flat tire. I noticed something odd when I got back on a paved road, but I was a couple blocks from work, so I just drove the rest of the way, even though I was pretty sure it was flat. Turns out, I'd already been driving on a flat for so long, it didn't really matter.

This picture illustrates how long I'd been driving on a flat tire. Half of the word on the side is worn off (actually over a 1/4 inch of rubber had worn off) from driving on the side wall. Oops!! Thankfully, there was minimal damage otherwise, so it was fixed pretty easily!!

Lazy Dogs

I don't understand this!!

If anyone could shed some light on why such an employment policy might exist, please tell me!!

Lamp Shades

Thanks to my wonderful husband, we went from this:

to this:

What started out as a pile of dirt in the street in front of our house, became this great raised garden in the backyard. We have broccoli, tomatoes, chocolate peppers, grean beans, carrots and even watermelon growing!! I don't think that our garden has brought quite as much excitement as my friend Dana's, but we're definitely looking forward to enjoying the fruits (and veggies!!) of our labor in a few weeks.

It won't be soon before long.

Aaron and I had the pleasure of visiting Adam, Dena and Emma over the last couple days. Although we got very little sleep, we had tons of fun with everyone, especially our crazy niece. We hadn't seen them since Easter, and it's amazing how much Emma has changed since then. (Adam and Dena are pretty much the same!!)

No one prompted her to do this and we're not really sure why she did this. I just happened to catch it on camera...
Aaron's drawing of Emma on the MagnaDoodle. You can't really tell from the picture, but she thought it was pretty great.

Curly Grass

Attention Bock grandchildren!! Do you remember this??

Aaron and I bought some of this at Menard's the other day when we were buying exterior house paint. Once we got it home and used some of it, the smell immediately reminded me of playing in Grammie and Papa's basement. My grandpa had some soap just like this at the basement bathroom sink. We always liked using it as kids, because it has pumice in it, so it was totally cool and different.

It's amazing how strongly scent can be tied to memories.

Solar Lights

This week has been very challenging for me...

In the last few years, I have put on a substantial amount of weight. Now, most people tell me that I'm crazy and that I'm still super skinny. I'll admit that I may have been on the "too skinny" side of the scale before, but my "badonka-donk butt" and "thunder thighs" are really starting to flourish!!

Previously, I had been able to tell myself that I was just too busy with school, work, wedding plans, etc... Since I haven't found a job yet, I'm only working 20 hours a week at Gateway. So this week, I decided that I no longer had any excuse not to get my butt in gear. I have been counting my calories all week and was initially disgusted by how many I was eating in a day. But by the end of the week, I've already whittled my calories down and discovered some very tasty, low calorie snacks. I have also spent quite a bit of time being hungry :-D

I (we've...I love my supportive husband!!) been trying to be more active as well. Taking the dogs on walks and bike rides. Tonight, we went on a five mile bike ride. After how lazy we've been over the last few months, 5 miles was quite a distance. Especially considering that the last half was against the wind. The walk down the stairs to let the dogs out when we got home almost had me falling flat on my face.

Here's hoping that my willpower holds up and the donut around my middle disappears!!

Calorie Counter

"A Few Reasons Why I Love my Husband."
by Blakely Mortvedt

1) When we're going somewhere special together, he tries to coordinate outfits with me.

2) He refers to the tie he's wearing in this pictures as his "polka-square" tie, because he wore it the same day I wore my "polka-dot" dress.

3) Instead of complaining when I want to watch "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" for two hours, he just retreats to the basement and watches his shows while he irons.

4) I miss him when he's gone.

5) He's an awesome TV-watching-cuddler.

6) He makes me smile.

7) He makes the best popcorn ever!!

Rose bushes

We tried to have a "doggie sleepover" last night. Normally, the boys sleep in their kennels overnight. It's as easy as saying, "Bedtime boys!!" and they run downstairs and into their kennels. With it being so easy, you might ask, why would we try anything different?? Well, because 1) Steve was being so cute, just laying on his pillow, begging us with his eyes to let him stay. 2) The dogs have us wrapped around their little paws. 3) We're kind of lazy sometimes, and the basement seemed to far away.

After last night, I can say that it was a one time event. I think they tried to be good, but the mix of dog paws and hardwood floors isn't a good one. Plus, we had the windows open, so they kept reacting to everything they heard outside. And they always have to know what's going on with mom and the guy, so if we moved around on the bed, chances are, they had to come over and see what was going on.

Lesson learned. Doggie sleepovers are not fun.

R.I.P. Mark, a.k.a Mark-o Polo