North Pole, Ohio

We got our tree last night! It's tiny... and by tiny, I mean like 5 or 6 feet. I usually like the 7 to 8 foot ones that are fat and fluffy. But, this one will do too.

I cant post any photos of it yet though because I haven't fully decorated it. I am at a decorating funk. I have tried many times and just dont like how it's turning out. I think i'll try again on Monday when I am snowed in!

That's right, snowed in. Yesterday the high was 25* and that was around 3 pm. Last night when I was going to bed around 10, it was only 15*. 15*!!!!!!! Do you know how cold that is? I thought anything below 30 was cold and that it would all feel the same. Like when it's over 100*, anything over that still just feels stinkin' hot! When trying to pick out our tree all I had on was jeans, boots, scarf, jacket and 1 pair of gloves. That is probably another reason why we got the tree we did. If we searched anymore than the 5 mins it took, we would have been popsicles. When I was paying for the tree, the cashier needed an overwrite and had to wait for someone to come help. This took about another 5 mins. Did I mention I was standing outside the whole time? I couldn’t feel my body anymore and at one point I told him I was only going to last 30 more seconds and if the person didn’t show up, he could keep the tree because I was way to frozen.

Today I went to run some errands and the streets were so slick and snowy. It was pretty scary but I drive 20 miles under speed limit. I bet the people behind me saw the CA license plate and were thinking "LEARN TO DRIVE IN THE SNOW OR GO HOME". I would say "DEAL!I'll leave tomorrow!" Ice was freezing to my window while I was driving and I couldn’t even gain friction to pull back into the drive way when I got home. Matt says it's not even an inch, and that it's going to get worse. I don’t want to be a prisoner in my house all winter!! They news is saying it's a lot colder than normal, so it isn't looking to good.

I'm not sure im cut out for this weather. The dogs dont seem to mind, since they get to play ball in the street.

I did finally complete my holiday décor. Will someone please come and visit me so I can share it?Here it is!

Like that Santa Noel Photo? Well it isn't a photo. It's actually an outdoor flag. I cant seem to find my flag pole and he fit so nice over my normal framed art. All I did was add a little wire to the corners of the flag then attached it to a tack which is hidden behind the frame. Wa-La! Christmas Art.

See these 3 little plates hanging on the wall? I got them at JoAnn's for .79 each since they were 60% off! With the wall clips to hang them, they come out to about $2.30 each. Not to bad! When It's time to pack Christmas away, I will use the plate hooks to hang normal dishes so they really pay off!

On an exciting note, My friend Jessica is coming to visit over New Years and we are going to Nashville and hang out at a honky tonk. Maybe get some food with Tim McGraw or Alan Jackson. I'm pretty excited!! I am also planning a trip home in January! I miss California.

Oh, BTW, my post on Texas is coming. It is a lot to blog so I’m trying to work up to it!

Hope everyone is staying warm!

Wonderful Ohio

I had to send my new camera back yesterday for repairs. It keeps getting an error message when I would try and take photos... It really broke my heart to hand her over. Especially since it will take 7-14 business days to get her back and Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching. I haven't even had her for a month yet!

It also would have came in handy tonight when around 6 pm a swarm of trick-or-treaters showed up at the door wanting some candy. When I saw them, I was almost tempted to tell them that they are a day early and to come back tomorrow...but before I could, I saw a line of them coming from down the street and figured maybe I was the one who had the date wrong. Good thing I still had the candy Dad bought when they were here otherwise the kids would have been outta luck. Then after a few dozen of them we decided that maybe we needed more candy since we were out. We even thought about dressing up in our own Halloween outfit and going door to door just to get a supply for us to pass out. I wasn't planning on getting any until tomorrow witch is ACTUALLY Halloween, but I guess Ohio rearranges everything for high school football games...So now I sit writing this blog with a HUGE bowl of snickers next to me. At least Matt could have gotten some candy I don't like and then I would be so tempted to eat it all.

Looks like we are headed for some freezing cold around here better get out the long johns...

How are you back home?? Oh, you dont say... Why yes, your daily low is almost warmer that our daily high...

I do miss those temps...

Welcome Autumn

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz

A few days ago we went on a mission to find the lake by our house. We knew there was one since we had seen it from the highway. Little did we know that is was just down the street and it was beautiful. You would never even know that on the other side of the trees there was a highway!

Welcome autumn!

Daily Ohio Rant

Right now it is 9 am and 35*. The grass and the cars have frost on them.
Our high today is 54*. The high back home is 80*

The average gas prices back home right now is $3.30 /gal while the gas station down the street from us has it listed for $2.44/gal. No complaining there.

As I get to know more about this place, im not so sure I love it as much as I thought.

For the past week, I have been trying to find TV shows like Oprah, The Office, The biggest Loser, The Today Show, Regis and Kelly… and I kept thinking that maybe I was doing something wrong when I was searching for these shows.

Last night while watching the news, a new caster came on and said that it has been 4 weeks now since our cable company has taken NBC OFF OF THERE NETWORK!!!!!! How can you take NBC off the network?? I was sooo mad and 12 hours later I am still fired up. Because instead of watching Regis and Kelly, something I haven’t gotten to do since getting a real 40 hour a week job years ago, I am forced to watch one of the 50 local public broadcast stations. When I say 50, I am NOT exaggerating.

According to the news lady, the 2 networks are trying to get there little issue worked out and hopefully we can get NBC back. Until then, we will have to watch our shows online

Other things I have noticed about the area… no lines at the stop signs. This is probably because no one stops! Stop lights… they have no camera to see if anyone is running red lights, probably because they would be WAY to busy issuing tickets to every single person.

The Bugs… they are HUGE. The mosquito hawks could probably eat Baxter.

So far, I have only seen 3 grocery stores in this entire town, and I haven driving around a lot. In California, we have one on every corner.

I have a long list of stuff I could list… but I guess the point is that it is just a culture shock.
Matt and I were talking yesterday about how we live in the same country that we did before yet it seems like this town is a few years behind in the real world. How could technology and life really be so different from state to state?

Another thing… why are people not friendly? I have not encountered one person who is actually friendly. Some are rude, some have no personality but none are just plain nice!

That’s my daily rant. I am now going to try and find a gym so I can work off the 3 bowls of ice cream I had yesterday.

Guest Room

Matt’s friend, who will be working with him, is coming to stay with us for a week so she can find a home for her family before moving them all out here. We decided to get the guest bedroom, well 1 of them, in order so she didn’t have to sleep on a blow up mattress.

The room is yellow, or as I like to call it, lemon bar yellow. It is so bright. To bright for us, but I don’t really feel like painting it since we don’t plan on living here forever. I still need to get a new comforter to replace the old red one I have, but it will have to work for now.

Here is the “cheery” guest room.

Lock the Doors...

1 week ago our furniture was delivered to our house. All the boxes are officially unpacked, with the exception of a few lingering ones that have been broken down and are stashed in a corner.

We took the boxes into downtown Dayton thinking we could get some cash for recycling them… maybe enough to pay for the gas to get out there. After weighing the amount we had which totaled 300 lbs, we only got 6$ for it!

I would rather have given them away on Craigslist to someone who would haul them away. Would have saved me from fearing of our lives in downtown, especially after I saw the recycle center clerk window had 2 gunshot holes in it!

On our way home, I saw a drive though liquor barn. You pull up, get your booze and tobacco and possible a “pop” and then pull out…

Then before I knew it, I realized this area was MY area… just about 3 miles from my house! It’s weird how such a nice area can be so close to such a …. Not nice area.
It is interesting though. But, opposite of the liquor barn was the cheapest gas I have seen in a LONG time.

That’s right… that sign reads $2.59/gal. Tomorrow it will probably be $2.15…they drop the price like they were going out of business. Gas back home... $3.30/gal

We Made It

Well, we arrived Monday morning tired, stinky and never wanting to get back into the car again.
It has now Thursday (crap, I just realized I missed The Office and Grey’s Anatomy!!If I was back home, I could still watch them) and so far I really like it. The weather has been about 75* and you can defiantly see that autumn is here.

Dayton is covered in trees and it’s so pretty to look over and see miles and miles of trees and not tell where the city is…
Tuesday, Mom and Koko and I took a drive to a small town called Waynesville. This town is older than Ohio. They had lots of little shops to shop but most where country style décor. Back home, our little shops are more shabby chic.

When we got home from Waynesville, the moves had just got done unloading all of our stuff off the truck. Since then, we have been unpacking. I cannot believe how many boxes we had for our tiny house. As we were unpacking and trying to put things away I realized a lot of my kitchen stuff wouldn’t fit! How is this possible? We went from a 900 sqft home to a 2800 sqft home and I don’t have enough space for my old stuff? My mom is actually quite impressed that I had all this stuff because looking at my house; you never would have thought I did. I was just well organized.

I wish I could say that I have dropped 10 lbs over the past few days from running up and down 3 flights of stairs, but I haven’t. If anything, all the calories I am burning is making me more hungry! So I swing by the kitchen on the main floor just before heading down to the last. It also doesn’t help that the movers put half of the stuff that should have been on the 3rd floor, in the basement and the stuff in that is in the basement is put on the top floor. I guess I can thank them for letting me get a workout.

Tuesday was also Our 2 year anniversary. I wasn’t expecting a gift since we had just moved and life had been so hectic, but my husband was good to me. The first gift, I got a disposable camera. 36 exposures! I thought this was for sure a joke… a disposable camera??? Film?? I kept asking him if there was a REAL camera around here somewhere… There was no way I would be able to find it if it was hidden in this house. The next day, a UPS truck showed up at the door. Matt said he was there to drop off a video card he ordered for his computer. I went about my business and didn’t think twice about it. 5 mins later my brother runs down to the basement and says, “Stevie, come quick… there is a HUGE scratch in your dining room table. I think the movers did it” I said, “We have sat at the table many times in the past few days. There was in scratch in it”. Since I was in mid-screw putting up a curtain rod, I took my time. He kept saying, “ YOU NEED TO COME UP THERE AND LOOK” finally it dawned on me… I stared at him for a minute and he started smiling. Rule 1- never send the brother, who can’t lie to save his life, to try and get me to believe something happened to my furniture!

So when I ran up there I saw Matt holding a gift… as I unwrapped it I saw the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

The new Nikon D90 with 2 lenses and two 8 GB memory cards. I was IN LOVE. I am not even ashamed to say I shed a tear. This camera even does video! And the quality is great!! I thought I would have to wait forever to get a new camera and even then I never thought I would get the one I actually wanted, since it was kind of pricey. We had some fun with the camera...jumping photos! My favorite.

Since Last night, I have been snapping away. I have even caught the C-130 planes that fly over our house… They are so close I can touch them. Well, that’s how I feel at least.

The first time we heard them, we were all in different rooms of the house. All of us started running for the front door, some of us falling down the stairs… or if you were my mom, you were doing the duck and cover on the kitchen floor thinking you were going to die. It was pretty cool. The plane looked to close that we could reach up and touch it.

We have also been waking up to the Air Force Revelry trumpets playing at 7:30 am each morning… kind of nice. I rather wake up to that, then a dog licking me telling me they need to go out and go potty.

Today we took a trip over to the National Air Force Museum and got to go up close lots of planes.

We even toured the presidential air planes including the Air Force 1 that belonged to President Kennedy. This is the same plane that carried his casket home.

Rule #2- don’t take photos of the outside of an Air Force building. Your camera may be confiscated. Luckily, I got to keep mine. Inside photos are ok… outside, not ok.

Well that should bring you up to speed for life in Ohio. Oh yeah, I should mention that gas here is $2.79 a gal. That’s right… $.70 cheaper than California.

I will post photos of the house soon. It isn’t fully unpacked and put together yet. I hope to finish after the family leaves. Here is the front and back though...

Tomorrow we are going to have Chili Spaghetti! Famous in Cincinnati, but Dayton has it too! I plan to do lots of stairs tomorrow to work that off!