Letting Go...: 2011

A Few of My Favorite Things

5/29/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 0 comments

We've been in Dallas for almost two weeks (crazy how time flies) and we're getting pretty well settled in. More on that soon- with photos. But for now just a little list of a few of the things that make me happy to be in Dallas:

1. The Lake House- thanks D&P
2. Listening to Kidd Kraddick in the Morning on KISS FM - I've listened to him since I was in middle school and he still cracks me up!
3. The beautiful sunsets at White Rock Lake
4. Getting to have lunch with my mom on a random Friday afternoon
5. Fun local restaurants like Jack's Backyard
6. Help unpacking from my mom-in-law
7. Taking a hot shower and not worrying about the water temperature decreasing in 5 minutes - this happened ALL THE TIME at our Colorado house
8. A sweet Bikram Hot Yoga studio just down the street
9. The little dog park at our apartment so that Pep can run around with new puppy friends
10. Free WiFi- from our apartment complex

There are other benefits of being here too, like the general awesomeness of being near most of our family and many of our life long friends, but this is just a short list.

I heart Texas :)

Moving Update

5/11/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 0 comments

It's been a bit since I've posted, but it's not due to laziness... I swear. We have been busy little bees here in the Horn household. For the past few weeks, we've been traveling, packing, finding a place to live and generally doing anything and everything moving related. Here are a few pics of the progress so far:

After we packed away her kennel, Pepper kept laying in the spot where it used to sit. You can see the grooves in the carpet below her. I think she was a little bit sad.

This is what my bed looked like while I sorted through all of my clothes. Yikes!

I had segmented the bed into four quadrants- 2 were for things to keep, one was for donations, and one for consignment. It was very "Clean Sweep"-esque. Does anyone still watch that show?

Michael was a little sad at the whole process... Let's be honest we all were (including Pep), but we're also really excited about getting settled in our new digs.

Since this is our sixth move in less than six years (Yikes again), we decided to hire professional movers. We moved ourselves when we came to Colorado, and although it worked out fine, it was really challenging. This way, we ensure that our things will be well handled and hopefully will cut down on nicks and scratches that we incurred last time. We will still carry a small U-haul with us that will hold our outdoor gear like bikes and climbing equipment and skis as well as few high price items like our clothes and jewelry.

Yesterday we drove through some horrendous weather to pick up the U-haul in Golden, which is a suburb of Denver. It had been beautiful here ever since we got back from St. Lucia (a new blog on that soon), but of course the day we started the major moving, a HUGE storm came through and dumped snow! This is what our drive in to Golden looked like:

CRAZY!!! I kept telling Michael that I feel like we live in Narnia... where it's always winter and never springtime! But after getting through all of that, we were able to pick up our sweet little U-Haul! Yay! Michael was able to pack in it under an hour, which was awesome! Way to go, babe.

Here's the rest of our hoard of boxes, ready to be packed up. We staged everything in the garage for the movers. They just had to deal with the furniture and packing the kitchen.

As we speak our awesome team of packers is loading everything up, and should be on the road again by 3 or 4. They are fantastic and from Houston. Needless to say, the wintery drive in was a bit of a shock to them and they are hoping not to have to chain up on the way out. Here's a picture of Doc wrapping up the couch. AMAZING!!

Dallas here we come!

Consumption

4/20/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 0 comments

I revealed yesterday that we will be moving back to Tejas this summer, but realized I forgot to mention when. We will hit the road for home on May 16, 2012. Yes, that's right, we have less than 1 month before we vacate our precious little Colorado home and as with any move there's LOTS to do.

The first thing I wanted to ensure was that we get rid of a bunch of the items currently lingering in our fridge, freezer, and pantry. I was inspired by this entry from Sherry over at Young House Love, my uber favorite blog to follow. So yesterday we made a list of all things food in order to diminish our grocery bill and our stash and to ultimately lighten the load when we move.

Here's what we've got to go through:

Breakfast options:
Cream of Wheat
Oatmeal
Grits
Cinnamon Rolls
Homemade banana nut bread
Bisquick (for pancakes or biscuits)
Greek Yogurt

Lunch/Dinner components:
African potatoes- 2 servings
Chicken- 6 breasts
Tilapia- 4 fillets
Whole Wheat Penne- 1 box
Brown rice- 2 boxes
Pasta sauce- 1/2 bottle
Quinoa- 1 1/2 servings
Lasagna noodles- 3/4 box
Edamame
Frozen corn

Condiments/canned goods:
Canned chicken/tuna- 6 cans
Black beans- 1 can
Cream of broccoli- 1 can
Cream of celery- 1 can
Diced tomatoes- 1 can
Tomato soup- 2 cans

Fresh fruits/veggies:
Carrots- 2 bags!
Lettuce
Butternut squash
Tomato
Mango
Oranges
Apple
Pears

Snacks:
Hummus
Crackers
Almonds
Lots of baking stuff!!

So we took this list and created the following list of meals for the next week:

Tuesday- African potatoes and rice
Wednesday- Stuffed Red Peppers
Thursday- Chicken stir fry
Friday- Italian tilapia with pasta and asparagus
Saturday- Lasagna with warm pear salad

I am also planning on making a carrot cake to get rid of our hoard of carrots; Michael will be making fresh juice all week to whittle down the collection of oranges; and I made an awesome mango smoothie to utilize the mango and all of my remaining Greek yogurt.

In just one day, we have already started to obliterate our list, and we should only have to buy a few things to get us through the week. WOO HOO for forward progress!

Making it Official

4/19/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 1 comments

For the past few months, I've had a hard time generating blog entries, because much of what we've been discussing and pursuing has related to a recently publicly revealed decision: WE'RE MOVING BACK TO TEXAS!

The decision to return has a great deal to do with the end of Michael's commitment to the Army Reserves. When he left active duty to join the Reserves, he was granted a decreased time commitment (from four years to two) as well as stability, meaning he wasn't eligible for deployment during his entire stint in the Reserves. This has been such a blessing, as one 15-month deployment was quite challenging and something we'd rather not revisit.

Michael's required Reserve commitment, and thus the end of his stabilization, ends this September. If he were to resign with the Reserves, or any other faction of the Army, he would again be eligible for deployment, a risk we just aren't willing to take. In light of the resulting decrease in both pay and benefits, we would have a hard time maintaining our lifestyle here... so, sayonara, Army... and Colorado.

Add to that, the opportunity for Michael to work for his dad's manufacturing company, A. C. Horn & Co., and the answer to where we'll start our next stage of life was easy: The Big D!

We are currently working out the details of where exactly we'll be living, but we're most interested in the Lakewood and Lake Highlands areas of Dallas. We'll be sure to keep you updated on where we finally land, but for now we're working on packing up all of our things here and saying goodbye to the wonderful friends we've made in Summit County over the past two years. Colorado will always have a special place in my heart.

Songs for Japan

4/01/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 0 comments

My heart goes out to the people of Japan, including our American soldiers who are currently serving overseas and assisting in the clean-up efforts.

As I was browsing music on iTunes tonight, I discovered a fantastic album that has been compiled by dozens of artists all in support of the Japanese Red Cross. There are 38 songs on a single album for only $9.99.

Check it out!

Obsessed Much?

3/09/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 0 comments

There is a silent killer in our home which invades during the winter months... it's called...

STATIC ELECTRICITY

It's so bad that about a month ago Michael was leaving the house and decided to give me a kiss on the cheek before leaving. Innocent enough. Except that I was typing on my computer with my earbuds in, and when he walked across the carpet and kissed me, an electric shock rocketed through my head and OUT MY EAR! Instantly causing me to burst into uncontrollable tears.

That night, we decided to employ a little machine which we'd purchased last season and never used...

OUR HUMIDIFIER

And since then, Michael has become obsessed with it. He checks on it regularly throughout the day to make sure it still has enough water. He even called to me tonight, from the shower mind you, to see if I could check on the water level and fill it up. Needless to say, I declined and informed him that it could wait until he got out of the shower.

It's really quite humorous.

However, I must admit there has been a drastic change in our quality of life as a result of this little guy. Gone are the days of electrically-charged good-byes. Hallelujah!!!

A Case of Mistaken Bedentity

2/25/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 1 comments

This story starts quite a while back... back to the summer of 2009 when Michael and I first moved to Colorado. That summer we packed up all of our belongings and hauled them to Breckenridge where we promptly unpacked them ourselves.

Fast forward to two nights ago in February of 2011. I had stripped the bed during the day and washed the sheets, but had yet to put them back on at 10 p.m. After having guests for a few weeks, we were really tired so we opted to sleep on the guest bed, which had nice clean sheets on it thanks to Michael's sister, Suzanne.

The next morning we arose rested, refreshed and (practically) hearing little birdies chirp outside the window. We both remarked how astonished we were to have slept so well in our guest bed, especially in light of the fact that we'd both recently noticed a decline in our slumber on our mattress.

After much discussion and wrinkling of eyebrows, we decided to switch out the mattresses. We'd rather sleep on the other, more comfortable mattress, even if it was meant for guests.

And that's when it hit us!!

As we stripped the guest bed, including it's mattress pad, we realized that it was in fact the original mattress which we'd purchased when we lived in Texas!!!!

WHAT?!?!?

How could this colossal mix up have occurred? Not that we desire to give our guests a poor sleeping experience, but most people save their awesome mattress for the bed they sleep in every night, right?

All we can figure is that when we first moved in, we were a little frazzled and must have put the wrong mattress in each room. As you can see below there's quite a difference between the two, but apparently we missed it...

Thankfully our mattress has been returned to its rightful place and will be waiting for us this evening!! YAY!!

Visitors, visitors, visitors...

2/24/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 0 comments

Hey world... I promise that we have not fallen off the face of the planet. On the contrary, we've been very busy hosting wonderful guests for the past month- hence my absence from our blog. Here's a short recap of the friends and family we've been hosting since January.

In January, Ben, Bekah, Averie, and Hailey Cairns loaded up their sweet mini van back and came to Cod-er-ah-do for a whole week! Bekah had never been skiing before, but after one lesson she was a natural (not that I was at all surprised). Averie also got to learn "skaping" with Uncle Mike, although she wasn't a huge fan.

The third day the Cairns were here, we got to spend an entire day sans kiddos skiing with Ben and Bekah thanks to the awesome Belly Button Bakery staff (that's the weirdo name of the childcare center at Copper). That evening we took further advantage of the Bakery by dropping the girls off at Kids' Night Out and then had a lovely dinner at CB Grill. It was great to have such wonderful life long friends come visit.

A couple weeks later, Michael's parents came to visit and packed in 5 full days of skiing. We were able to ski with them all but one of those days, which was a real treat. We didn't get many pictures, probably because we were concentrating so much on skiing, but here's a classic one of Doug in his sleek new helmet and goggles.

The day after Doug and Priscilla left, we traveled to Steamboat with new couple friends from Michael's Reserve Unit, Mike and Quincy. Qunicy's aunt had a sweet condo that she let us borrow for the weekend. It was a blast to go on an actual ski vacation and get to ski for fun all over the mountain.

Also, Mike works for Naked Juice, so we had an unending supply of the stuff!

Our final visitors of the month, were both of Michael's sisters and our brother-in-law, Richard. We didn't get to ski with them much, but we had a blast chatting and eating Girl Scout cookies every night. Again, there weren't many pictures taken, but here's one I sniped from Leslie's Facebook page of her and Suzanne.

We're visitor-free for a few weeks until my sister comes for Spring Break, but it sure was fun having so many awesome guests. Hurray for winter!!!

Good Bye Christmas Tree...

1/06/2011 - Posted by Nicole - 1 comments

Today I began the process of taking the Christmas decorations down at our house and I remembered that I'd wanted to blog about some of my favorite Christmas ornaments. I realize it's January already, but I basically didn't blog the entire month of December, so here is my belated blog.

In my family, we had a really fun tradition of giving/getting Hallmark ornaments every year as the first gift of Christmas. We would also purchase ornaments wherever we went on our family vacation each year. Both Courtney and I had a huge collection of ornaments by the time we left the house.

Our small house only accommodates a little 4 foot tree, so we don't have all of our ornaments on display, but here are a few:

This is a Hallmark ornament from 2007 which Michael and I both purchased for each other since we'd adopted Pepper at the beginning of that year.

These cute bears were purchased this year at Copper as a tribute to our time teaching little ones at ski school.

These snowpeople were given to us by my mom in 2005 when we got married. They hang at the top and are the last two ornaments we hang.

Mom bought this Hallmark Pooh Bear for Michael because he loves honey!!

This ornament was from 2004, the year we got engaged! I just love the little fly on the leaf! So cute!

This is one of my childhood ornaments- a sweet little Precious moments figurine that's pretty heavy, but so pretty.

I bought a series of these ornaments in Russia this summer. I just love the shape of the little churches.

This gorgeous panda came to us from Michael's parents straight from China. There's also a bell and a ball that have the same intricate detail.

So there's a little insight into our family tree... and here's what the whole little package looks like: