Pioneer Day Weekend

My family went to Kanab area over Pioneer day weekend for some R&R and dune riding.  I drove up early Saturday and spent the day hanging out with them and celebrating Jeremiah's birthday.  The parents took the young kids to a swimming center around noon and came back around 4. It was definitely a good day.  I wasn't brave enough to take a quad out on the dunes but Kayleigh and I took the kids out on the Rhino (suped up golf cart) a couple of times.  We had chicken tacos for dinner and german chocolate cake for dessert.  Here's Jer's cake and candles.

Jack took full advantage of the fact that parents weren't watching as closely as normal and proceeded for pick his nose for quite some time.  I didn't feel like being a mean aunt so I let him do whatever.

Ellie kept her bathing suit on for a bit but eventually peed and had to have her diaper changed.  She absolutely refused to let anyone put pants or shorts on her.  She also found a bag of Doritos to snack on before dinner and I'm sure she fell in the dirt a couple times.  This is how she got to be in the state that she's in.  During dessert I was taking pictures and asked her to start making faces and this is what I got.

This girl has the cuteness of Callie and the antics of Jackson.  It'll be amazing if Hillary and Jeremiah can keep their sanity with a 4th!

Justin

On the same weekend as Pioneer Day Weekend, my friend Justin came in to participate in the Las Vegas 48-hour Film Festival.  I had off-handedly said that he could stay with me since I happen to have an extra room for guests and storage, mostly storage.  It was so good to see a friend from SLC but it made for a long weekend.  Justin arrived Friday night and calls me and asks if I want to go to a magic show.  I start laughing at him because it reminded me of the cliche pickup lines about magic.  Turns out he was serious.  I can't remember the name of the casino, but it was sketchy.  A lot of the decor reminded me of the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland.
The show was ok.  There was a magician, a mind reader, and then a juggler.  The juggler was by far the best. The other two acts were quite obvious with their tricks.  After the show, Justin and his posse used the theater for part of their film so I stuck around and watched.  I called it quits around midnight and paid for it the next day because of the drive to the dunes.
Justin was still filming when I got back home around 1:30 AM and left my house the next day around 8 so we didn't have a lot of time to hang out but I'm grateful for the time we did have. He called me by surprised and asked if I wanted to grab some food.  We went to In-N-Out and talked about his adventurous weekend.

His group won 2nd runner up for Best Film!

Lots!

Here's a few things that have been happening in my neck of the woods! 

This is way old, but here's a pic of Jeremiah helping me move in.

  Jonny (Jer's brother) helped me move too but the only picture I have of him if a rear view.

About a month after I moved in, Callie came with me to Vegas and us girls hung out for a few hours.  She took a few pics on the dam and the picture of this hotel.  She thought it was cool because it had a knight on top and the outside looks like a castle.  She planned on showing it to Jack later.

About a month ago my coworkers and I were all pulled into a large area of the office and were told that we were being taken over by Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.  Not everyone was happy about and a few have jumped ship, but they're giving us all the same pay and there's also overtime available so it's not all bad.  I'm so-so in my reaction.  Some days I'm angry and others I'm not.  I won't be underwriting anymore and I really enjoyed doing that.  For now, I'm in Vegas for 3 years so I'm going to make the best of it.  55 of us are all in the same training class this week and it's going painstakingly slow.  I feel like I have a good grasp on things and am ready to start testing so I can prove how awesome I am.

I had a roommate move in at the beginning and June.  She's a bit older than me and also has a cat.  It's been a weird situation at times.  I absolutely hate the cat. I did however show the house to another girl last week and she's asked if she could move in.  She's going to UNLV for law school and is probably 23/24.  She seems like a really cool person so she may help even out the other roommate. 

Watkins out.

Post Rescinded

I had a bug guy come today to look at my situation.  He said it's not bugs and I'm allergic to something in the house.  I kept telling him that the red bumps are still appearing even though I stayed out of my living room for the past two nights.  He's convinced it's not a bug problem.  I'm only halfway conviced.  I had him spray anyways since it's starting to warm up.  If it IS an allergic reaction, then I'll have to wear long sleaves, pants, and socks around my house until whatever I'm allergic to goes away. 

Tisivors

I had my first visitors this weekend. Horrible, disgusting, irritating bed bugs! I don't know where they came from or why they're here, but I know where they're going.

 I'm cringing even as I post this picture, it's so gross!  Work was really slow today so I asked to take a half day so I could get the problem taken care of.  At first I thought it was an allergic reaction to something, but there's nothing new in the house that I'd be allergic to.  I didn't think the bugs were possible because I've been here a month and haven't had any issues.  The only new fabric I brought in was a pillow case and some ties I bought at Goodwill for a craft project.  Honestly, that could have done me in.  Here's my bites.

I've bug bombed my room and the room next to it because I read that the bugs usually just go through the walls to the adjoining room.  Hopefully they have nowhere to go. I'll also be bombing my living room since the pillowcase was there also.  I bet you're starting to scratch yourself now.  You're welcome!

This is why I love Thursdays!

I usually can't watch them all in one night, but I try!  Thursday night is the only night during this whole house organizing time that will sometimes do nothing all night and not feel bad!  

Project Numero Uno

I didn't like the color of my kitchen cabinets so I decided to restain them. Had I known how long it would take and the mess involved, I would have just left them. I don't think the original color is horrible, I just thought it would look way better with a different color.

This is how my kitchen looked for almost a full week. The sanding took forever! I already had a palm sander but it broke on me so I bought a new one since I wasn't about to hand sand over half the cupboards. Luckily, Walmart has them for $25 dollars! My kitchen table needs to be resanded so I thought the investmest is more than worth it.


The stain that I used didn't require anything to be wiped off, but it did have to dry for 6 hours between coats. The second coat was giving me issues-the stain was drying faster than the first coat and was really tacky. I think the reason may be because it was an opened can I was using. It was annoying so I opened a second can and things worked out better. Here's the final color.

It's not as dark as I wanted and a little more red than I wanted, but it works. There's definitely room for me to improve my staining technique, but for now, I'm calling it quits!

Overboard

Why do you people let me do this?! Below are pictures of the dishes that I own. I think I have around 6 of each color and there are 4 colors. I get like this all the time; I see an awesome deal and buy way more than what even 2 people should own.

And that's not all. There's more in the cupboard. I unpacked all my kitchen boxes and found only 2 bowls. 2! After Christmas 2008, I also bought white dishes from Walmart, so I have two massive sets of dishes. The bright side is that since I'm getting roommates, it's not a big deal if anything breaks.

On a sadder note, here's my first casualty of moving. When I was unpacking I grabbed it by the handle and all that came up was the handle!

HELP!

Jenny left a comment on a post from about 2 weeks ago asking about my house situation and I didn't want to answer her because I didn't want to jinx anything. The process is right on schedule and I'm in the process of buying this house here.
It's 4 bed, 2.5 bath and 1600 square feet. It looks like a 1 car but it's really a two that you park bumper to bumper. The appraisal came in lower than what I offered so I'm waiting to hear if they'll accept the appraised price and should hear something today.
I've already picked out colors for the living room-any and every shade of brown with touches of green and blue. The big debate I have is my bedroom. I want the walls a light gray, the bedding is white and most likely the furniture will be black.

I picked my accent color as gold-ish yellow-

I bought the above plate at Pier 1-inspired idea from this photo:

I pulled some things from my room and put all the colors together and took a picture to see what it could look like. My picture is more accurate of the color than the pier 1 picture.

Will those colors look stupid? Obviously the golden yellow won't be a main color, just accents of it around the room. I did think an aqua blue would be an easier color to coordinate.
Your thoughts? I don't want to spend a ton of money but I'm ok with spending for furniture that I plan on keeping for awhile. I need someone with a cuter style to tell me what to do and I'll just agree to it.

Vampires!

My new vampire obsession is Vampire Diaries. It's a TV show on CW with THE hottest guy in the world. I personally think he should have played Edward. Anyways, I just finished watching the show and visited a favorite website of mine and saw this:

So...uhm...yeah...

Let's just be honest here. My summer sucked and I didn't do anything blogworthy so I didn't blog. Then I was out of habit and I stopped taking pictures. It's been a gradual downhill slope but it's been noted. Let's be honest with another thing. I don't necessarily blog for anyone else but me and my future family. This is my way of keeping a journal because I've never been the "Dear Diary" kind of girl.

We'll start at Disneyland because that's as far back as I can remember. It was the trip from Hell. For me personally it started with the forgotten sweatshirt and the crappy gas station hot chocolate I bought. As I was driving I got a call about the tickets being wrong and I half expected my mom to tell me that the trip was cancelled and to turn around. But no, us Watkins are stubborn and we trudge ahead. We ended up switching the tickets for annual passes (I still don't understand the logic.) I met up with Hillary and fam in Barstow and left my car at Flying J to save gas. We get there pretty late and grab the kids and bags and make it to our swanky hotel "The Menage"-no joke. We laughed about it the whole weekend. I personally hurt my pinky toe and thought that tennis shoes would be the best way to go. I was so wrong. I totally just needed flip flops. Anyways, after a few exhausting fun filled days, Saturday arrives and my dad leaves to go get something from Jason's (Jeremiah's brother) work. He calls and tells us his truck is broken and we're stranded. Long story short, my dad goes to Barstow with Hillary and Jer and drives my car back to CA. Sunday morning Kayleigh is dropped off at the airport and we head back. We're about an hour away from Barstow when Jeremiah calls and tells my dad that he's been stranded at the Flying J-it's become the most popular place for us in Barstow. We get Jeremiah and he and my dad drive back to CA and my mom and I go to Kingman where I drop my mom off and drive back to Vegas. Here's a few pics from Disneyland that I stole of Hillary's blog.

This little girl was a con artist when it came

to talking us into buying her cotton candy.

On to Christmas. I had planned on working straight up until Christmas Eve because I was taking the week after off. I ended up getting sick with the worst cold known to man. I went to work Wednesday morning and lasted only 2 hours before they all told me to leave and I knew that if I waited any longer it wouldn't be safe to drive. I went home and slept. I only got up for the bathroom and water. I didn't go home early because the Vegas Mission Home had asked if I could bring packages back to Kingman so I wasn't able to leave until 2 pm Thursday. We had our big dinner Christmas Eve and it was DE-licious. I think Jer cooked the meat, that man has some mad skills. People should be his friend just to get some BBQ off of him. We did the Christmas story with the kids-I think only one of them wanted to play their part. The next morning we woke up early and loaded cars and headed over to Hillary's so we could all open presents together. We were able to take turns talking to the boys while the unwrapping was going on. The rest of the day was spent playing with new toys, eating delicious snacks, and playing the Wii. Best Christmas ever.

For New Years I went to San Diego to spend it with Lohol. Traffic was horrible! It took 7 hours to get there instead of the expected 5. It was way worth it though! It was great to spend time with Lohol. We went to Legoland with most of her family-here's a few pictures from that.

Since Chelsea and Ryan were in Kingman for New Years, I drove from CA to AZ to spend the weekend with them. We tried to see Avatar but it didn't work out so we just ended up playing Settlers :) Here's a video of Jack & Ellie from Sunday morning. It may or may not work, it's a known issue with blogger.