hello Murano!

Deal! This weekend we bought a car.  Not just any car. My dream car.

I have wanted a Nissan Murano for just about forever, but they were always out of reach.  We luckily stumbled upon this amazing vehicle for just the right price (a tiny bit under budget in fact!). I am SO in love with this car.  It is way more than I expected we would be able to get and I almost feel like I don't deserve it.  Throughout this whole thing I have been reminded once again how selfless my husband is.  He puts himself on the back burner so that I can have a nice and safe vehicle.  Of course he wants/needs one too, but he is holding off until we are in the position to add another car payment.  Yes this is our car, everything is ours, but I will be primarily driving this beauty around town.  Seeing a smile on his face and the way he encouraged me to "get what I want", "if you like it, let's get it!', "do you want to come home from work to this in your driveway tonight?", "you look great in this car" makes me smile.  I am so lucky to have him.

This Murano has everything I wished for (and thought I couldn't have) and more.  I've got to say-I've never had heated seats...but now that I do I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back :).  It drives like a dream and has the comfiest leather seats I have ever sat in. It has dual sunroofs, XM radio, and a cool little camera that shows me where I am going when I back up.  I know this all may sound normal to some of you, but let me remind you that my previous car had crank windows. Don't get me wrong, I will always cherish that car because my dad and grandfather picked it out, but it is an amazing feeling to drive this new car.

Sayonara crank windows, hello most beautiful car ever!

Without further ado, here she is!

new 4 wheels

The search has begun!  For a new car that is.  We have been talking about getting a new car for me for a couple years now and right now is finally the time! I am pretty excited about it.

I have been living on AutoTrader.com and CarMax just looking around to see what I like.  I'll bring random ideas to Matt and he either agrees or vetoes. I need him.  He is a car man.  Well, he is an everything man but he knows how to fix just about anything on a car and he knows what car companies are good and not so good.  Me? No clue. I just know what cars look pretty from the outside.  I know what cars my eyes are drawn to every day I am out driving.

My "want" list started with:

-SUV

-A/C

-AWD/4WD

-Sunroof

-CD player

-Power locks/windows

Pretty easy, right? Well after searching my list has expanded to this...

My new and improved "want" (wish) list:

-All of the above PLUS:

-Heated seats

-Automatic start

-iPod plug-ins 

-Leather would be double plus

Obviously, I don't "need" any of these things and realize I very well may not get them, but it's nice to dream.  Car searching is so fun!

We are going to look at some of our picks tomorrow night. Here's to a new car!

working on your birthday?

I have to admit-I was little bummed when I realized I worked on my birthday AND the day after this year. Who wants to be at work on their birthday? Not me.  BUT I actually had a fantastic birthday today and a lot of it was because I was at work.

Matt has been working nights so he woke me up in the middle of the night on his way out the door to tell me Happy Birthday first thing :).  I got to work to see my friend Amber carrying in a cake pan and a big pink gift bag. She had baked me a yummy strawberry cake and brought me an amazing blanket for my birthday.  I LOVE it! Everyone at work was so sweet.  They were wishing me a happy birthday and sharing the bday cake.  Icing on the cake? (no not the actual cake, just metaphorically speaking) I am precepting a new nurse on the unit and she has been rocking the socks off her orientation plus we had a pretty manageable assignment today SO she did our whole assignment (while I kept an eye on everything of course) and I was able to get some chatting time in with the other nurses. The babies were very sweet and gave me a bday gift of an un-eventful day. So thankful :).

One of the highlights of my day? Matt brought us Chipotle for lunch and met us down in the cafeteria to eat with us! It was so awesome.  So add together an awesome non-eventful day at work where I actually had time to catch-up with friends PLUS getting to see my sweet hubby for lunch? Pretty stellar.  My burrito bowl was delicious too.

I finished out an awesome day at work and then came home to a card from Matt which he had added for me to come wake him up.  I felt horrible to wake him up in the middle of his sleep so I just awkwardly sat on the side of the bed and stared at him for awhile.  Once he woke up, he had a cute surprise gift at the side of the bed for me.  An awesome swim suit and a brand new lens for my Canon! It's a 50 mm lens which takes awesome pictures. I am so excited to play around on it. Best husband ever.

Now I am lounging on the couch with my new blanket with Jax on my lap and playing with my new camera lens.  All of the sweet texts, calls, and messages today from all of my family and friends were amazing.  I feel so loved :). Thank you all!!

kudos to my other half

So...have I mentioned how awesome my husband is? I have one more reason to be proud of him because Mr. Hot Shot just got promoted at UPS this weekend!

Matt got hired on at UPS Freight last October (or September? hm) as a driver.  He was quickly promoted to a supervisor after management saw him work and heard about him through the grapevine.   The only downside to that was that he had to start on as a part-time supervisor.  Technically, a part-time supervisor can work no more than 30 hours per week...well that wasn't so great.  They quickly realized they needed him there more so his bosses kept fudging and finding ways around the rules to get him more hours.  A couple months in, corporate put an end to that and said they needed to limit him to 30.  Ok, fine. We will follow the rules.

In the beginning of March, they started training Matt for a position that one guy does full-time and that only Matt's boss knew how to perform.  It had to do with the planning of all of the routes for all of the drivers at UPS. Matt's boss ended up being promoted and was being transferred to another terminal so that left only one person to do the plan. SO what did they do? They chose Matt to train on the plan so that he could be back-up if they needed him.  This is how it was the whole time.  He was called "part-time" getting limited hours and a moderate hourly wage for doing the same, if not more, work than the full-time supervisors.  

In February, he took a test that could qualify him for a full-time position.  Everyone there wanted him on full-time, but a position had to open up first.  They had some issues with his first test so we had to wait around for him to be able to finish.  Once he passed this test, he could continue on with the process.

On Friday, Matt asked if he could take me out to dinner because he had good news.  I was hoping and praying it was that he had heard back from his test.  Once we got to the restaurant he says, "Well, I don't really have good news.  I was just really hungry and didn't feel like making anything at home." Ha! Oh that comedian of mine. He went on to tell me that everything had started happening really fast at work that past week and he had found out he had passed his test and then had been interviewing with regional managers, HR, and corporate all week long for a full-time position.  He was hoping he could wait out to tell me until Friday and then know by then if he had the position.  Well, everything didn't get pushed through fast enough so he didn't have as big of news for me as he'd hoped.  He was thinking maybe next week he'd hear the good news.

We went to a wedding in Tennessee this weekend for Matt's cousin.  We were walking into O'Charley's on Saturday afternoon to grab a bite before the ceremony and he got a phone call from his boss.  He told Matt everything had gone through, they wanted to hire him on as a full-time supervisor, and he would start Monday on the in-bound shift! YAY! 

We are so excited and relieved that everything turned out the way it did.  It was so hard to be patient, but I am so glad it all worked out.  I am one proud wife :).

new yard

The beautiful weather has motivated us to start our plan of fixing the yard and doing some fancy new landscaping around the house. To be honest, I didn't really know if we would get started on it this year.  Last year really wore us out with all of the house projects, but a Winter full of no projects has left us invigorated and ready to tackle the next one!

Matt is the master-mind behind all of this of course.  We've spent time outside just standing barefoot in the yard-me listening to him ramble on  explain what exactly he envisions for the front of the house.  Our grass is a mess.  A big mess.  We had been talking to our neighbors one night last summer about it and he had said that the previous owners used to have really nice lawn, but once they started putting the house on the market he kind of let it go.  And it shows.  We have a lot of patches of thicker/crabgrass type of grass that looks horrendous, lots of weeds, and a bunch of random slopes and divots that need repaired.  Actually, during the housing inspection before we closed on the house the inspector said that the slope in the front yard was dangerous and we should ask that to be fixed before we moved.  Well, we didn't think it was dangerous, just annoying but we knew we would fix it.

Yesterday began the start of Operation Yard Makeover.  I know it will probably take a couple years to get it looking really good, but baby steps are good for now. Yesterday, Matt went around and bought an aerator, fertilizer, and herbicide to get the process rolling.  Today, he went to Lowe's and around to a couple landscaping places and made a plan.  He is getting 2 yards of dirt delivered to our house tomorrow to start filling in some of the slopey-weirdness out front and to level out some ground in the back too.  Once that's in he will seed it.  We have to wait a couple weeks before we re-seed everything.  Right now all the weeds are dying a slow death.

Dandelion's dream

I LOVE when Matt gets into his "work-mode" with the house stuff.  Once he sets his mind to it, he's off.  I am so lucky to have him around :). I peeked out the front door today and caught him at work.

Digging up around the meter and placing a cover over it so he can level everything out.

Ha! And then he comes around the corner with the mower to mow down that area before the dirt comes tomorrow.

Stalkers...

In true Matt fashion, here is him with his beloved level.  If you remember reading my post about my gallery wall and him insisting I use levels to get everything just right, this will make perfect sense :).

Here's to a better yard!

dog days

What a gorgeous weekend! This weather is absolutely fantastic.  The past week in the mid 80s? I don't mind at all! I have actually laid out in the sun 3 times...which has done wonders for my desparate need for a little color :).

Our weekend started out with Saturday Extravaganza.  My friend Amber and I go to Kiwi Fitness and do the 3 classes (BodyCombat/BodyStep, BodyPump, and BodyFlow) while the boys go play racquetball.  We all meet up for a mexican lunch afterwards.  We actually got to sit outside on the patio this weekend! The sun shining on my yummy taco salad was heaven.  Afterwards, they both came over to the house and we spent some quality time with the sunshine and the hot tub.  So fun! Later that evening, we went up to Lafayette to see our mom's and to have dinner with our friends Lauren and J Dan.  We ended up going back to their house after and had a couple drinks on the patio.  Well, the girls did.  J Dan watched basketball while Matt was passed out on the couch.  Sleepy boy. His crazy schedule finally got to him :).

On Sunday we grabbed breakfast with my mom and nephew and then headed back to Indy.  After a traffic jam and detour,we got home 2 hours later.  Matt took a nap since he had to go in to work that night and I took Jax and went over to Amber's.  We have been wanting to get our doggies together for awhile now to see how they interact with each other.  She has two big, cute, lovable labs.  We all went on a walk and the dogs did fantastic! Amber's black lab, Tonka completely disregarded that Jax was even on the walk.  He kept stepping on him and running into him.  Poor guy :).  We went back to the house and I grabbed my camera to get some good pictures of her dogs!

Be prepared for lots of dog pictures...

Les Mills Quarterly

This weekend Matt and I and a bunch of other really awesome people traveled to Chicago, IL for the Les Mills Quarterly!  A Quarterly is an event hosted 4 times a year (get it? quarterly?) that puts all of the Les Mills group fitness classes together all in one day.  It started at 8 am with BodyPump and then went straight to 5:30 pm with classes back-to-back (yes we had a lunch break). It's also an up-skilling event for all instructors and also open to non-instructors. The classes are presented by the national trainers and presenters of the specific classes.  It is really awesome because these people are the ones who are the presenters on our DVD's that we learn the new releases off of.  The coolest part? One of those national presenters who was up on the big stage on Saturday was our very own Laura Wilson.  She is the owner, an instructor, and our leader at Kiwi Fitness!  

I talked my friend Amber into going with us after she joined us at Kiwi for our launch back in January.  Our launch was basically a mini Quarterly.  She loves Les Mills classes too and I knew she would love this event.  I am SO glad she experienced with us :).  Matt also came along.  I was so happy to have him there.  He is such a supportive husband and having him there by my side was so awesome.  He did a lot of the classes and even tried a class I never thought I'd see him do..BodyStep! It is basically a step-aerobics class-but more hardcore because it's a Les Mills class :). He actually wasn't too bad! One of the other girls there got a nice video of him.  He is such a trooper. There were 20-some of us there on Saturday representing Kiwi Fitness.  The whole event was amazing and I will never forget it! Can't wait until the next Q!

Dinner and drinks the night before at Harry Caray's in the hotel

Our group!

Love these boys :)

YES! We have arrived :)

Freezing cold walk to the gym from the hotel

Coffee 

300 BodyPumpers!! So cool

so tempting to buy all the clothes..darn marketing 

We found one of my friends' dads at the Q! He takes classes up in Lafayette and was really excited for BodyCombat :)

Kiwi goes to Quarterly!

My super-awesome-rockstar-of-a-husband. Love you!

Amber! Waiting for BodyPump to start!

Ok so the guy turning around is Glen. Glen Ostergaard. The program director for BodyPump.  I was in awe. 

Sheldon-also a presenter for BodyPump and on our DVDs

LAURA! Love her. This was right before she hopped up on stage to present for BodyStep.  She gave Matt a shout-out during the warm-up :)

Proof Matt did BodyStep :) Love him.

After re-fueling at the lunch-break...ready for more!

aaaaannnndd he's out.  Lunch break + a space to lie down= Matt is alseep

Laura presenting for BodyAttack!

8 classes and 9 hours later...we made it!