I'm not going to talk about the condo remodel...

...because it's a somewhat frustrating subject to us. :) Instead, I will talk about how much support we have been given--many, many relatives have given of their time and effort to come down and help us out. Scott, Rachael, Trent, Ray, Karen, David and Martha--you are all fantastic! We really appreciate you!

Last week I found the time to make a wedding scrapbook, only we can't call it that, because I'm not really a scrapbooker. For my wedding guestbook, I had people sign 12x12 cardstock that had pictures of Brent and me on it. I put those in a silver "Our Wedding" special from Mervyn's, but there were plenty of extra pages. So last week I cut out and artistically arranged the cards we got from our wedding. I put on stickers and things and generally tried to make it cutesy. I also put in all the advice that was written down for me at the Lauritzen family shower. After having done it, I was really pleased with it. No, I'm not a master scrapbooker, but it reflects a bit of my personality, as well as all of you who were so generous to us. I made Brent look through it--telling him that he would only have to do it once. I also had my mom and Rachael look through it. I was pleased when Rachael said that she thought it was a very good idea and that maybe she'd do that with her wedding cards! She still had them someplace. I'm not sure how common that is--does everyone out there save the gift cards? What did you all do with yours? I'd love to know.

Okay, since we have a million of these, here is another picture of us from our engagement photos. Sorry folks, but I like putting pictures up and we're too busy to take any right now (see above subject that must not be mentioned.)



This is a picture that I really like and we almost put it on a photo montage wedding invitation. Now it's yours to enjoy!

Just Ranting...

Isn't it funny how it's the ordinary things in life that really take up all of your time? Case in point: people close to me know that we are trying to make our condo a little bit nicer. We had "popcorn" on the ceilings in most of the condo, and we finally scraped off the last of it in January. We've run into a bit of a snag in that we needed to scrape the door frames as well--they weren't properly primed before they were painted--and that has proven to be a long, grueling task with very little in terms of satisfaction. It would be one thing if the paint scraped off easily, but it only does that in about a quarter of the frames. The rest is mind-numbingly slow. And yet, most people don't know that about me--that I have this very frustrating remodeling job that is seriously trying my patience. And when people ask about my life, I either tell them about something completely different, or I tell them how difficult this job is and then watch and see that I am not believed. For instance, my mother-in-law was properly sympathetic when I told her about the remodeling woes. She came over to help us last Saturday (thank you!) and was quite surprised at the work that there was to do. Her words were, "I know you told me, but this really is difficult." Yes, it is. :)

So, just for fun, I've posted a couple of the "before" pictures. Hopefully by the end of the month, you will see some "after" pictures.