I've been challenged...

Yes, I've been away for a long time... not really away, just away from my blog. I don't have a camera readily available to me (that's one of my sorry excuses) and I was feeling like I didn't have much to tell about anyways.. But two days ago I was chatting with an old friend, (not that she's old really--just one teeny tiny year older than me--but from way back when--you know what I mean, right?)... Anyways, we were chatting online and in catching up with her I'd say something and she'd say "I didn't know that. You should have blogged about it..." (or something very close to those words). She gave me lots of encouragement (thanks Patti!) and then challenged me to blog at least once a week for 4 weeks and see how it went. Then after I'd accepted her challenge to me I wasn't even sure I remembered my password. But my old brain didn't completely desert me today and I figured it out and so here I am doing my first blog in quite awhile..
So here are a few of the things that have happened over the last few months that I should have blogged about probably:
In April we had our 30th anniversary! We couldn't go in April but went the first weekend in May to our timeshare in Park City for a few days and enjoyed some time together alone. It rained almost the whole time we were there so it was kinda gloomy out, but one of the days we went up to the Olympic Park where they had the ski and bobsled/luge races. There is a nice little museum about the SLC Olympics there that we enjoyed too. Also in May we got a new car! We traded in our Camry for an 08 Nissan Altima. It's a little sportier (tho still a 4 door) and definitely has more engine power (which Rick LOVES and is the main reason he wanted it). I was a tough sell on it (truthfully I just about had a breakdown but we won't go into that..) cause I didn't want bigger payments (who does, right?) But he won and is like a little boy with his new shiny car still, especially when he gets to race it a little. He "smoked" an Audi one day and came home all excited; He also took it up to 140 mph for just a few minutes and I hardly noticed because it was so smooth. I did notice when he slowed back down to 75-80 and it seemed like we were just crawling tho. LOL
I had been saving and planning and plotting for quite awhile (most of the winter) to get the living room repainted and recarpeted, so probably to appease me and help keep the peace Rick finally took an active interest in this project and gave me the "OK, I'll help you with it" sign. So hooray, we painted and painted.. the walls are now a tan color (Behr "Parchment") with a focus wall being RED (Ralph Lauren "Red Red Wine"). And the new carpet is in! It's a tan color too, but oh, it's so cushy and soft and comfy to walk on. We love it! The new furniture is still waiting to happen. I have his Okay on it, just I haven't found the perfect sofa yet and I have an aversion to spending so much money all at once I guess.. Sometimes it really is a curse to be so practical and frugal!
We got the garden planted the first part of June... Kinda late but since our weather was so unusually wet and cool most of May and June too it didn't really seem to matter. We got a few vinyl grow boxes and are trying some square foot gardening this year. It's finally starting to really grow the last 2 weeks since it's warmed up into the 80's and 90's. We also picked what seemed like TONS of strawberries from our strawberry patch. We enjoyed lots of them just fresh, made lots of smoothie drinks, froze some and I made 4 batches of strawberry jam. Yummmmmmy!
I have a few pictures from some of the above happenings, just they are on my daughter's camera and won't download onto my computer so I haven't got them at my disposal yet, so hopefully I'll get them next week when she gets home from her vacation and be able to get a few on here... And then I have one more GREAT piece of news (I've saved the VERY BEST for last you see.) But I am tired and it's getting very late and so you'll have to just wait another day or two to find out. But it'll be worth it I promise!