Birthday Surprise!

Look at the right side of this picture and you'll see my great birthday surprise from my wonderful husband.

In case you didn't catch it above, here is another picture. It's something for all to share.

See it?? IT'S A PIANO!!!!

Kyle apparently orchestrated this fantastic birthday scheme over the course of a couple of weeks. He researched pianos, scoured stores and craigslist, and finally found the perfect one for our home. Then, he coordinated with three of his buddies to move it into our house while one of my friends took me out to lunch, which Kyle also organized. I had no idea what he was up to. Not even when he insisted that I go to lunch when my friend Amber asked me. And I still didn't have any clue when there were little oddities that came out on Saturday morning during our walk with G. Like when Kyle said that he would need to help his friend Erik move something into his new place while I was out to lunch. So that's not so odd. But what was a little interesting was that then he announced that his friend Aaron, Amber's husband, would be coming with her to the house. I was happy to hear this because then Kyle would have something to do while I was out. Kyle then said he hoped he'd be back in time for when Aaron and Amber came. So I suggested he go to help out Erik right when we got back from the walk. But apparently Erik wasn't ready for the move yet and wouldn't be until closer to lunch time. Interesting...but still, I thought nothing of it. After taking G to training and then cleaning a little bit, Kyle left and Aaron and Amber arrived. Amber and I left, and Aaron said he was going to go get lunch while he waited. Funny thing was that he just sat in his car while Amber and I drove away. Still, didn't think anything of it. Amber and I had a great time catching up during lunch. I never suspected a thing. So imagine my surprise when we walked in through the garage door and the first thing I see is a piano with a big red bow and Happy Birthday sign! I had to take a double-take before it clicked. It was a great surprise! To say the least. :)

The whole day was so wonderful and enjoyable. Kyle made me breakfast, we took G for a long walk and then to training. We went browsing for baby stuff and then out to dinner to Texas Roadhouse. Mmm! Ribs! and rolls! And then cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory!

The day was made even better by all of you. Thank you everyone for making the day special for me! Your messages and calls made me feel so loved. And thank you, Kyle! I love you!

New Additions to the Green Family

Yes, that is additions...plural. No, we're not having twins. But it may as well be since the additions are two babies. It's just that one happens to be a furry, four-legged animal.

So I think everyone knows now that we are pregnant with a healthy baby girl. We are still working on names and appreciate the suggestions that have come our way so far. Luckily we have about 4 months more to come up with a list of possibilities. Things have been going really well so far with the pregnancy. I'm feeling good and starting to show. (see belly shot below) Clothes are definitely not fitting like they used to. And thanks to my friend Beth, I have been able to put off buying maternity clothes because of the BeBand that she told me about and still feel comfortable in my clothes.




We have been able to feel the baby move which is still kind of a trippy, yet wonderful thing. Ha. It's still weird for me to think that there is a little human inside me. But I am often reminded of it because of the strange movements I feel inside. Not to mention being able to see my stomach move when she kicks or punches or whatever she is doing in there. A baby is a true miracle. We cannot wait to meet her!

So the next addition to our family is a puppy named G. (Think latest Gatorade commercials - high-energy drink for a high-energy dog. haha.) She is a 4-month old German Short-haired Pointer. She has lots of personality and LOTS of energy. Kyle is excited for her to get a little older so he can train her to go bird hunting with him. In the meantime, we're keeping busy trying to teach her the basics like "come" and "stay" and our favorite "leave it!" That last one is still a challenge for her since everything turns into a game for her. We're not sure why our shoes look more appealing to her than her toys. In spite of getting frustrated with her for not listening, she does often have her cute moments, and so we keep her around. :P Some of our favorite entertaining moments with her include her pouncing on just about everything and playing fetch. Fetch is funny because we'll throw one tennis ball and it'll be in the same area as one or two other tennis balls, so the fun ensues when G tries to figure out how to get two balls in her mouth. Most of the time she finally grabs just one and comes back to us. Other times, she is dancing around the tennis balls for a while trying to figure out how to keep them all to herself.

Here is a picture of Kyle enjoying one of the rare and precious moments when G is sleeping. Enjoy it while it lasts, honey. All five, maybe ten minutes of it. :)

It is official!

So it is official. We are officially homeowners as of Monday, July 20, 2009. After a long, and hairy, closing process, we can finally move into a house and not feel like we're stuck with what we got cuz we don't want to have to change it back when we leave.

Some things we learned during this process...
Choose your title company carefully. They make all the difference in the end. (that's a very long story. unfortunately we didn't have a choice in the matter cuz it was a bank-owned property and the bank chose the title company for us. we'll ask for a ... more professional co. next time. 'nuff said.)

Be sure and give yourself plenty of time for things to go wrong before you have to move out of your current place. (we're very fortunate that we had two weeks between closing and move in/move out time. if we didn't have that buffer, we would be much more stressed now.)

Keep a copy of everything.

Be patient. (without this one, we would have gone crazy months ago.)

Pictures soon to come. :)

Word to the Wise ... Watch Where You Spray!

This very well could be the funniest moment in our married life so far. Let me set the stage...

Me - preparing to bake cinnamon rolls ; getting ready to grease the pan with canola oil spray
Kyle - holding a bowl of ice cream in one hand

Me - having trouble removing the lid of the spray because it is greasy, and I'm laughing at myself for not being able to pull it off
Kyle - telling me how to get the lid off the spray can easiest -- by bending the lid off, rather than pulling it straight off

Me - holding the spray
Kyle - bending the lid off with his free hand

Me - face full of canola oil spray because the lid hit the squirter on the way off
Kyle - laughing uncontrollably

Me - laughing now too
Kyle - still laughing -- happy I'm not mad ;)

Word to the wise ... remove your own lid!

Here's another quick one

Alright, another quick update here. We hit our first 100-degree weather day today! Hooray! Okay, so maybe not so much a hooray as an "Oh dang. Here it comes." But the weather people say it'll cool back down to the 80's by this weekend. I hope so. Something amusing that Kyle and I enjoy here though is the weather reports, especially during the summer. It is always some variation of, "It's gonna be hot. And maybe a chance of rain. But definitely hot!" My favorite may have been today's channel 5 news commercial: "We reached the triple digits today. How many of those days are we going to be seeing this summer?" Let me see, umm, maybe like everyday for the next 5 or 6 months! Seriously, is that supposed to get me to watch the news later just to find out how many HOT! days we're going to experience? Sorry channel 5, didn't work for me.

Anywho, on a brighter note...We celebrated our one-year anniversary last weekend. Thank you, thank you. No applause needed. We have had a fun first year together, and we're looking forward to another great year ahead. Kyle was so sweet and surprised me with a beautiful arrangement of flowers with a note that said: "One spectacular rose for one spectacular year." (Sorry sweetie if this embarrasses you. It was so sweet though, I had to share it. :) ) I surprised him with a carton of Super Loaded chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. We also were able to celebrate by using gift cards Kyle got from work at Borders to buy ourselves 4 new books, 2 for each of us. Yes, perhaps a bit nerdy and not necessarily everyone's ideal first-year anniversary celebration. But we loved it. We both love reading and love being in bookstores, so it was perfect for us. Wouldn't have had it any other way. Plus it was Easter weekend. So what better way to spend our first anniversary together than by celebrating being sealed for eternity and reflecting on the Savior's gift to us of eternal life? No better way!

And one last quick update... we have put an offer on a house! It is a short sale, so we now wait for the bank to tell us if they accept our offer or not. But we are super excited! It is in a great location and is a great house. So wish us luck. Better yet, pray for us that the right thing will happen. We are very excited about this house, but know, especially with a short sale, that anything can happen. So we're trying to keep calm about the whole thing. But it's a great house! :)

Well, that's all for now. Oh except... I am about to begin teaching one, maybe two, more students violin. That will bring the total to four or five (respectively). Okay, now that's all I can think of. Chat with you later! See ya, from the AZ'ers.