Spiderman

Greg is my spider hero. He will kill any spider that crosses my path. He has been BUSY recently.

My spider issues started months ago. Since then, spiders have continually attacked my car. On and IN my car. We have a single lane driveway and a carport. When we have a car parked under the carport at night spiders form webs that stretch from the poles of the carport to our cars. We feel like we are walking through spider webs in the morning getting to our cars. Then I started noticing spiders on my car – on the driver side door, on the hood, on the windshield. This did not happen once or twice. This happened OFTEN. FAR TOO OFTEN. Then I had a couple instances where spiders were IN my car. Having a panic attack on 610 because you are trapped in your car with a spider above your head results in frantic 7:00AM phone call to husband. As if he could really do anything at that point, right?

Spider sightings started to get out of control. After several spiders in one week, I decided to stop parking in the driveway. That seemed to be the source of the spiders. Now I park on the street every night. I am that annoying neighbor who refuses to use the driveway. Greg cleaned and detailed my car. He checked every nook and cranny for any signs of spiders. He found FOUR webs in my car. (No, I do not ever leave my windows down, I don’t know how this happened.) He also cleaned the carport and sprayed insecticide around it. I was so thankful for all his hard work. Then there was a temporary decrease in spider activity. I would still closely inspect the door/handle/windshield every day before getting in my car. Sometimes Greg would walk out to my car with me. So sweet.

Well, the spiders have found their way back to my car. Mostly just little ones. Earlier this week I noticed a small web and tiny green spider on my driver’s side window. Then this morning there was a LARGE black/brown spider doing sprints across my driver’s side door. Then he hid in the mirror. It was 6:35AM. I called Greg from the street. “LARGE BLACK SPIDER ON DOOR” (click). Out comes Spiderman. In his work clothes and all, armed with flashlight and spider spray, he sprays away. Then flushes it out with the water hose. What would I do without him?

Sometimes spiders make me start quoting David-goes-to-the-dentist. “Why is this happening to me?” “Is this real life?” “aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH”

I know everyone is terribly interested in my spider issues. What could be more fun than hearing how I am such a big baby about spiders? Blog material doesn’t get much better than this. Stay tuned for future updates on the spider saga.

And also, a big public THANK YOU to Greg, who has had to continually put up with me and the spiders. You are the best, Greg!

You Win Some You Lose Some

We lost the bougainvillea. It started out beautiful. We made sure to pick the very best one in the bunch. Covered in beautiful pink blooms. About a week later it looked like this. No pink in sight. Complete Fail. I am gonna go ahead and blame this one on the squirrels. Stinkin (flower) bed intruders. Hide'cha plants...Hide'cha shrubs. But really, there are squirrel tracks all around this and they are also attacking my forget-me-not seeds that are just starting to sprout. And we also realized we need a bigger/taller/fuller plant for this bed. I zoomed in so you couldn't tell how embarrassingly small this plant is compared to the size of the bed. We will do better next time!

Even though the front yard is a bit shabby, we are making progress in the back. I am so impatient and I practically check the citrus tree every day to see when I can stop buying overpriced cuties at the store.

See, those have gotta be oranges, right? Or tangerines or clementines or whatever it is that we planted. I hope so because there are quite a number of them on the tree already.

In other household projects, we decided to paint some closet doors this weekend. Here are the before and after pics. First, here is our bedroom, from it's "good" side.

Now the "needs improvement" side.

The painting.

The after. You can't really tell in the picture, but when we put the doors back we realized the trim was definitely NOT white. Shoot.

I guess we know what the next project is! We got 3 sets of closet doors painted but we still have all of the other interior doors to paint. But I'm in no rush to get this done, so the other doors may just stay as is for a while.

Adventures in Gardening

This weekend was one of the best weekends. We had almost the whole weekend free to relax and rest! The weather was beautiful so we took advantage of it and worked outside to plant some trees. We have been in our house for a year, but we haven't done anything on the outside since we have concentrated so much on the inside. First thing to go were the clothes line poles. Yes, we had 2 of them still in our backyard. Greg decided do dig them up. What he found was 3 feet of solid concrete holding the poles down. Those things were in the ground FOR GOOD. They could withstand a hurricane and a tornado. At the same time.

But, strong man was able to get the job done. Way to go!

Well at least he got one pole down. The other one is just getting sawed off tomorrow. No one will ever know there is an extra 3 feet of pole hidden underground.

Next we planted 2 redbud trees. I know nothing about planting or gardening so I hope they actually bloom!

And I couldn't pass up buying a citrus tree. I would love to be able to pick fruit from the backyard. I have no idea if it will really grow or if Houston will freeze again and ruin our plans or if squirrels will have a feast on our crop.

We also planted an avocado tree. I love love love avocados. We buy them at the store every week so wouldn't it be wonderful if we could grow them in our backyard?? This could be a total fail but I am choosing to be optimistic.

We planted a bougainvillea in the front of the house, as well as some forget-me-not seeds that we got from church. I'll post pictures if they bloom. Yay for the first signs of spring!

Snow Day

I am declaring today and tomorrow the coziest days of the year. Why? Let me name the reasons.

We got early release from work today.

Tomorrow is a snow day. It is technically a "work from home" day, but that is fine with me.

Homemade cookies are in the oven. I am using the recipe my sis posted a while back. Can't vouch for the cookies yet but the dough is delicious. Don't worry I tested it a couple times. And then a couple more times.

It is supposed to snow soon and I am a native Houstonion and that makes me excited.

The Office is on tonight.

We have leftovers and homemade soup ready for tonight and tomorrow.

I brought home the extra copy of the Insanity workout video from the gym at work in case Greg and I suddenly get tired of being warm and comfy on the couch watching a movie and eating hot chocolate cookies and decide we really want to sweat a lot and become sore and exhausted.

I have pancake mix in the pantry and I am not afraid to use it tomorrow morning.

I don't know why half of this post revolves around food.

I reealllly hope Greg does not have to go in to work tomorrow.

Ok I need to get ready for the snow.

Happy 2011

I can't believe it is 2011! I am thankful for a great 2010 and looking forward to this next year. Greg and I enjoyed celebrating the new year with the couples in our Bible Study. We have been with these couples for about 2+ years now so it has been really neat to develop those relationships and grow in our walk with the Lord together. We are really blessed with some great friends.

This year I am really excited about our 2011 goals. I have never been good about setting and sticking to goals. This year I hope to improve, but I feel like we are definitely off to a better start. Tim and Kristen have been a great inspiration to us in how they set goals. We typed out all our goals in all of the various categories (marriage goals, spiritual goals, household, financial, fitness, personal, ministry, etc). One of our marriage goals is to do Sunday night talks - this idea also came from Tim and Kristen. Each Sunday we discuss the week's plans, discuss things we are reading / learning, pray together, and things like that. I hope it will be something that we stick to and will really grow our marriage.

In other news, these are some random things we have been up to lately.

We are now addicted to Settlers of Catan. Thank you Brandenbergers.

This is a craft I did a couple of months ago. I saw this on a crafty blog and copied it. It was so easy to do. How come I didn't think of this before? Use a picture frame as a dry erase board. Genius. I really enjoy using it and I feel like it has helped me keep dinners more organized. I also made 2 of them for Christmas gifts.

The Event.

After Lost ended, I wasn't really ready to move on. I still held on, hoping for a miracle. Season 7 please. Best tv show ever. I want to go back and watch them all again. So what?

I heard The Event was a mix between Lost and 24. Three episodes in and I completely agree. I think I am hooked. It isn't taking the place of Lost, but it is definitely good. I don't even think they have finished season 1 yet. We watch it on Hulu because we don't have tv channels because we are cheap and that's how we roll. All I'm saying though, is they better not stop making this

show mid season, or decide to make only one season and leave me hanging. I feel like it is not that popular though. I don't know anyone else who watches it and I'm not sure why. Does it come on a weird channel or something? Does is get really lame by episode 4? Is everyone sick of Lost and 24 type shows? Anyway, I like it. A lot.

2nd Annual Youth Group Slumber Party. Boys were at our house, girls were at the Allemans. I was a little nervous that when I came home in the morning our house might not be recognizable. Thankfully, everything survived and Greg had it all nice and clean when I came home. At the girls party we ate pizza and oreo balls, played Charades, Mafia, Apples to Apples, and watched a movie. So fun! I didn't bring the camera to get any pictures of the girls, but here is one of the guys playing rock band. I was worried our house would be so lame since we have no channels, our dvd player is broken and we don't have any cool video games. But jr. high boys all have those things so luckily they brought them!

That about wraps it up. Too bad I didn't make any 2011 goals about being a more frequent blogger! My monthly-ish posts will have to do for now.

Christmas Celebrations

We had a wonderful Christmas this year and got to have some great family time. It started out the week before Christmas with the annual Mattern Family Christmas Reunion. There is always a great turnout and it is always good to see family. Too bad we only get to see most of them once a year. Since Jameson and Michelle are getting married this summer, hopefully we will get to see a lot of them mid year.

Greg and I stayed several nights at my parents house over Christmas. It was so much fun having a full house. My sisters were there with their families and we had a blast playing games together. There were also 3 dogs running around the whole time which just added to the excitement.

We were especially glad to get in lots of Kyler time! He is so smiley and can sit up now. He is so much fun. We got some practice feeding and bathing him and snuggling him.

Since Lauren and I were both with away for Thanksgiving with our husbands families, we did the traditional Grosse Thanksgiving dinner on Christmas day. Then after dinner we went on a walk outside to look at the Christmas lights in the neighborhood. It was COLD. But hey, you know what sounds great in the cold? A polar swim! So Greg, Cody, and Chloe decide that when we get back to the house they are jumping into the freezing cold pool. Chloe jumped in first and she was so fast I didn't even get a picture of her. I managed to (sort of) get Greg, and got a great shot of Cody.

Later that night we ended up playing hours and hours of Catch Phrase. As we got tired the game just got funnier. We finally had to call it a night.

I am thankful for such a great Christmas spent with family and time to relax, laugh, and celebrate Christ's birth.

We Know Christmas Fashion

When we go out, we know how to look good. Real good.