Home Improvements

Scott decided since he was in the 'groove' he was going to start knocking out some projects and the first place he started was our laundry room. It's big in there, but that's about it. There are no cabinets, shelved, closets.. nothing. So I've always just had my detergent and what ever else hanging out on top of the washer and dryer. It drove me nuts. So finally we got a cabinet and Scott thought up and idea for a table across both units. It only took him 2 days to get the frame built and get it tiled. We still have a little more work to do before we are completely done, but I think it looks great thus far!

Tile work is exhausting

Next stage is the back splash and grouting! All in all, it went pretty quick and was relatively painless. I told Scott he didn't realize he would have to turn into a spider monkey to finish the back part there :) We are pleased with the way it has turned out so far. It's nice to have one thing we can check off of the "To-Do List".

Baby Update

Scott and I headed to the doctors office yesterday a little timid as to what would be happening this visit. I knew a few basics - pee in a cup, get weighed, meet the doctor. But that was about it. I have a cousin in Nevada who is due literally the same day as I am (I think our grandma's had something to do with that) and she's already had 2 ultrasounds. So I was hoping for one and Scott was hoping they would just tell us what we're having. He's not the most patient person in the world at times... No ultrasound, no gender. But we did get to hear Baby Nelson's heartbeat. Still high, in the 160s again. Daddy is sure there is a precious baby girl in there, me on the other hand.. I'm not so sure. Sometimes I still have to tell myself, you're pregnant, this is happening. I thought for a while boy and my SIL has called it a 'he' from day one, but I've never been set in stone.  Tuesday, March 26th at 9:30 we get to find out! We can't wait.

Scott has been tinkering around in the nursery making sure everything is up to par. He wasn't pleased with the fire alarm in that room, I don't know why exactly, so he replaced it. He's checked vents, the closet doors, he's measured for furniture.. He's excited and seeing him so excited makes me even more excited for what's to come. We've been trying to decide on a nursery set. Good grief, I didn't know there was so much that goes into a crib, dresser, and changing table.. I think we've got a color down and that's about it. And why are they so damn expensive?! Scott tells me, get use to it toots!

I thought I grabbed my camera cord to add a few other pictures from Jackson other than the ones on my phone, but this is what I've got...

 This first three pictures are from the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar.

The place has been around for years, 1937 to be exact, the saddle seats are the best.

They have live bands and a dance floor and awesome food. Scott and I stopped in for lunch and sat around for awhile before we went walking the streets again. My mom calls this place, her old stompin' grounds when she was my age :) 

This, as you can tell, is a lovely whiteout we experienced on the Teton Pass. The first picture was taken about 3 minutes before the second. If you look closely in the third picture, you can see around car coming down the pass and one in front of us. It was nuts.

Jackson was great, we strolled in around 5 or so on Friday and checked into our room. The room I got was awesome, we stayed at The Lodge by Best Western, they did a multimillion dollar upgrade last year and updated everything. All the rooms have 3D tv's, new bathroom upgrades, ect. I made sure to get a room with a fireplace and it was saahweet! We picked a place for dinner and just came back to the room that night. Saturday we were kinda lazy and didn't head downstairs for breakfast till later and after we just walked through town, went in different shops, looked at crap we will NEVER be able to afford and wondered who the heck would ever buy stuff like that. lol. This last weekend was winter fest and the cutter races out to Melody Park, so the joint was packed beyond what it normally would be with just skiers. We had a great time just walking around, taking selfies, looking like tourists. We had a fabulous dinner at the Gun Barrel that night, the parking lots of our hotel and the restaurant are attached. And came back to the room and watched the most ridiculous show on A&E called Flipping Vegas. It's hilarious, watch it some time! When we got up Sunday it had snowed about 3 inches and was still coming down, so we got up had breakfast and then jetted not long after. That's where the whiteout pictures come into play. I was grateful we had a new, bigger vehicle and that Scott was driving. I just sat in the passenger seat, praying, and eating cucumbers... Ha! Needless to say we made it safe and sound.

Scott was missing Boede one day a few weeks ago more than usual and came up with an idea of making silicon wristbands for him. So he called me while I was at work and had me make something up and get them ordered. They came to the house while we were gone and we were excited to get home to see them. They turned out so awesome.  They say, In Loving Memory of BP "Stay White". Anyone who doesn't know Boede, let me explain. There were no goodbyes with him, his parting words for you were always "stay white". We figured why not put this on these bracelets, because it's not goodbye and we wanted people to smile when they wear it. 

I know a couple of you were friends with Boed, if you would like one, please let me know. I would be more than happy to get one to you. Our goal is for everyone who loved Boede to have one.

Oh yeah, this bad boy came in the mail yesterday too...

Oficial! 

Hope all is well with everyone!

Until next time

-M

Changes are a comin'

One clearly wasn't good enough...

So I thought four more should do the trick. 

Typically I'm not one for going overboard on anything... * cough cough* yeah right. So why wouldn't I have taken FIVE pregnancy tests?! Sweet Baby Nelson will be joining our family sometime in August. Scott and I are thrilled out of our minds and can't wait till we find out what this peanut is. I had an inkling the 17th of December that something was out of the ordinary so I thought I'd take one just to see what happened. I decided to take it after Scott left for work, I thought for sure he'd think I was losing my mind. I was getting ready to leave the house for work and while I was waiting I kept singing the lines of Eric Church's "Two Pink Lines". And boy was I not expecting the two pink lines I got. I sat there in shock and started crying tears of joy. But I didn't want to get over zealous about it, so I called Scott and he's like, grab some at lunch and we'll try again at moms house. I agreed and we got another positive. I'll never forget the ear to ear grin he gave me. We did another one that evening and two the next day. Finally we decided, this is happening!!

Keeping it a secret from my mom was the hardest. She was making the weirdest comments that week, for instance Scott and I bought a new car that same week...

and we were meeting at her house to head to the dealership together, she asked if we were coming over to tell her she was going to be a grandma... Uh, no mommy, not till Christmas! We decided since we were having our entire families over for Christmas, Grandma's included, that we would tell everyone together. So we took a picture of 2 dog bones, the boots Scott and I got married in, and a baby pair of cowboy boots in front of the tree. Luckily I was smart enough to write on the back "Coming in August" "Can't wait to meet you Grandma" and things of that nature. When we gave them their cards, and had them open it - they had NO FLIPPIN' CLUE what was going on! Someone even made the comment who's boots belong to who... Whaaa??? My dad's girlfriend finally put two and two together and blurted out "They are going to have a baby!!!!!" My mom started bawling like a maniac, Scott's parents, grandma's... It's all on film too :)

As for this mommy-to-be, not an ounce of sickness! Wahoo! Sure there are days when I've just felt bad, but there hasn't been any morning sickness (11 weeks and 6 days as of 2/7/2013). I feel so fortunate! Only thing I've noticed changes in are I'm exhausted and want to be in bed by 9 or 9:30 and I have to eat every two hours or I feel absolutely famished. My feel like I'm showing at this point pretty good, to the point where I can't button my pants anymore (It's selfish but I'm struggling about that whole process) and I feel like I need to purchase bigger tops. It's probably not all that extreme, but I notice. And so does Scott, his favorite term is "load". How's the frontal load today?? Thanks jackass! :) He's been extremely helpful and I feel so blessed to have him as my husband. He's cooked, cleaned, done laundry, shoveled snow a boat load of times, cooked lunch.. I could go on and on. He's a gem. And in the middle of all this crap, I caught the flu that's been going around! He quarantined me to our bedroom and he slept on the couch for 4 days.

I felt so guilty for being such a slob for weeks and weeks on end so I wanted to do something nice for him. So starting the 1st of February, I've been doing the 14 days till Valentine's day- giving little, cutesy gifts and on the 14th he gets the voucher for our 3 day getaway to Jackson Hole. With everything that's happened the month of January; a baby, sickness, losing our dear friend... We NEEDED a break. And Jackson is one of our favorite places to go in the winter. He deserves it for taking such good care of me. And he needs to get his mind off of losing Boede. We talk about him everyday. It's still so unreal and hard to deal with. I'm looking forward to a little break away.

My next appointment is the 19th, so when I get the report back from that I will give everyone an update! And I'll share some photos from Jackson!

Until Next Time, 

-M

The Unthinkable

There are things in life that I believe will truly never be understood. They aren't meant to be in this life. Maybe when the time is right, but for now all we have are questions.

I'm sure everyone is aware of the incident that has unfolded in our community yesterday January 16th, 2013. That man happens to be a great friend of mine and Scott's. He's also Scott's co-worker, the same man that Scott has lived with the last three years while he was running the road crews. We know him, we care about him, and we love him. Currently Scott and myself are in complete and utter shock, dismay, a blur. Call it what you will, but we are beside ourselves. Words could not fully describe the emotions, the hurt, the anger that we are experiencing.

To those of you who only know what is going on from what the media is telling you... Please know there is a bigger picture. Please remember no matter what happened last night, Boede Paul is human. He has a mom, a dad, brothers, sister-in-laws, nieces and nephews, and a year old son. That baby will never know his parents. Not for one moment am I justifying what has happened, but I do believe there are no bad people. There are simply good people who do bad things. Boede is one of the greatest people we have ever had the pleasure of knowing. He has been a guest in our home, a guest at our wedding, and most importantly a friend to Scott and I when we needed it. He is kind, gentle, down to earth, funny, and just an all around good person.

Have you never made a mistake in your life? Have you never had poor judgement when things got bad? Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but again, bashing a person you have never met makes you no better of a person. Instead of wasting energy on telling the world what a horrible human being he must have been, pray for his family. Pray for his baby boy. Pray for Angela and her family.

Things are only going to get worse before they get better. Both parties involved have years of healing and even more years of understanding. Why? At this point, we can ask till we are blue in the face. We will simply never know. All we know is this is happening. This is real life. And at some point, we have to deal with it. We are going to have to come to terms we will never see Boede on the Earth again. All we have are the memories of the good times. That's what we want to hold on to. Not the mess and chaos of last night. The person in that pickup truck is not the person we know and love.

I can only pray for comfort for the Paul family and for the Shultz family. I can ask God to please ease some of our pain and hurt. I know He is there, and I know He is listening. I can only hope that Boede is safe and without pain. He is free from his suffering. All I can ask for now is that Boede looks down on us and realizes how many love him and how much we miss him.

Today is hard, tomorrow will be harder and the next day will be harder than that. Pray for peace. For everyone.

Family Pictures 2012

Should have known when the first picture is this

 behavior that it would be a long day :)

You see what I mean... Hot.Mess.

I am deathly afraid of birds and they were hovering 

this bridge. I almost died. 

Photo Credits: Hilairy Jayne Photography.

Check her out!

Private Time

So I've been thinking about the topic of taking our blog private. Have you ever actually taken the time to see where your 'viewing audience' is from? I was messing around with settings just by chance and it's disturbing! So I think it's time. I know my readers are rather few and far between, but those of you who do want to be apart of our little Nelson News, send me an email - chrimare@isu.edu. I'll get you on the list. I'll probably wait a little bit before I actually do the deed, but for now, you have all be warned :)

Hope you all had a great holiday season! My family and Scott's family had an amazing Christmas, one that will not soon be forgotten. This topic is a separate post in itself - stay tuned! We both had two consecutive weeks off, at the same time people, that never happens! So we were able to hang out a lot and do a whole lot of nothing. It was so great. It's not often we can just be together and relax. I think we may have gotten our of our sweats a total of 5 days. Laziness at its finest!

A few weeks before Christmas I had my friend, Hilairy, take some family photos for our christmas card. I kept looking through them thinking.. Wow, this group of 4 is a total wreck! Diesel is eating his leash, eating Ruger's leash, trying to run away, at one point Ruger drug me to the ground in the rocks and I fell to my knees. It was a lovely, frigid day! I'll post a whole mess of them on my next post and you'll see what I'm taking about.

Happy New Year friends! 

Nearly Christmas

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. Time keeps passing quicker and quicker and I wish for just once it would go slow. As children we want nothing more than to be 'older' so we can drive, and date, and so as we wish. If I could go back, I would say "SLOW DOWN! Enjoy it while you can. You're never going to get this back. Ever." That's my philosophical version coming out! Ha

Speaking of Christmas... We are going to have both sets of families, both our grams are coming too, over to our house on Christmas Eve for dinner and gift exchange - it should be a great Christmas. Our first married and the first in our home. 

As I sit here and think back on 2012... Man, it has been an amazing year. Started the year off engaged, bought our first home, a wedding and a new last name, and oh yeah - a diploma! I am finally a college graduate - Maren Nelson, B.S. HE. What a long time coming. There has been blood, sweat, tears, and more foul language directed at school than I can count. I am grateful for the chance I had to go to college. So many people don't for any number of reasons and all I can say is, why?? Your education is something no one can ever take away from you. It's yours. And when is it a bad thing to be educated? I look forward to continuing on with this academic journey and I'm excited to see what Grad school has to offer me. I am currently up in the air a little bit about what program I want to be in. I want it to be something I will and can use here in Idaho. Since Scott and I don't have any plans on leaving, I need it to be something I can find a job with here locally. Wish me luck.

Other things going on in the Nelson home... Scott got invited last week to go on a private pheasant hunt in Utah with his company, so he was pretty jazzed about the opportunity to go. Sounds like he had a great time doing some manly bonding outside of work. While he was gone, the boys and I stayed at my moms house. I think she enjoyed the company, we haven't had a sleep over in a few months :) One night while I was there, someone plowed into her neighbors recycling bin and then into our mailbox. She was so mad and there was nothing I could do about it to fix it at the time so I did my best and taped a note onto it for the mailman! Haha. We ended up having to put it in a bucket with rocks and sand.. Cant do anything with the concrete till it warms up. It busted that sucker off right at the base! Some people really suck.

Hope everyone is doing well! 

Merry Christmas friends, hope you all have time to be with those you love and cherish the most.

-M