Crib board!

Every Thursday, a group of us gather at Barley Brown's to play cribbage. The group seems to be growing steadily, which should be fun. Because of this, more crib boards are needed. Well, since funds are a little tight right now, Brandie and I decided that girl's night last night would have a different twist...we made our own crib boards! Seriously. And they're awesome! Brandie cut two 24" x 5 1/2" boards out of a board of blue pine. Than we went to work sanding, drilling out the peg holes (thanks to Randy Scorbi for his crib board template!), and putting varnish on the boards to make them nice and shiny. Here's the end result (you can click on the pictures to make them bigger):



That was the top, now here's the bottom:



And what else would handy girls like us use for pegs but...



That's right...screws with the tops painted with nail polish. It has some flair to it, I think. And you've got to love the way the varnish brings out the blue in the wood. So now Brandie and I each have nifty new crib boards, for free, all with only about 2 hours of fun work. Molding wood into a beautiful, usable object is very satisfying, and I look forward to the opportunity to build more things with Brandie. Good times!

And now it's time to get ready to head to Barley's for crib night! Later!

Welcome to our blog!

Well, kind of "our" blog. Nathan doesn't know we have this one yet. Ha ha ha! But he will.

I decided that it was time to get a blog that our family members and friends could view without having to sign up themselves (ala MySpace or Facebook) so they can keep up with what's going on in our lives. So here we are. And now for an update on our lives:

Nathan just recently got hired at the Baker City Herald, the local newspaper, as an advertisment designer. Basically, he gets to design a lot of the ads that are seen in our paper, which is really cool, because design is part of what he went to college for. So he's super excited to have this job, and it's great to have him come home from work in such a great mood every day!

I'm still working at the dispatch center here in town. I really like the work, and am super excited to be back on graveyard starting Friday. I never thought I'd like doing shift work so much and I never thought I'd enjoy working in Public Safety so much! I would love to eventually get a job as a School Resource Officer, which is a position that may become open here in Baker in about 2 years. That would allow me to work with students of all ages, all school year long, and then get to be a regular officer during the summer. Right up my alley.

In other news, we are offically homeowners! Marla left us her house and I was also the beneficiary of a life insurance that allowed us to pay off the rest of what was owed on the house. It's a nice little house that we'll say in probably until we have our first kid, which hopefully won't happen for a few years! This is a 2 bedroom, one bathroom house, a little too small to have more than two people living in. But it works for us! We also purchased our first brand new car, a 2007 Subaru Forester, which I love! We never would have been able to do that if we were still having to pay rent or had a morgage.



Between work, gaining a house, and buying a new car, we've had a lot of time to hang out with friends. I've lost count of how many bbq's we've had in our backyard this summer. It's been great! When we first moved to Baker, I was really worried about whether there would be any people our age to spend time with. Now we have a large group of friends that we spend time with several times each week. We've tubed the Powder River several times (including an extra tube for a cooler full of beer of course!) before it got too low to tube without bruising your butt. We also went camping up at Eagle Creek with a large group of people early in the summer, and are planning another trip up there for the last weekend in September, before it starts snowing. Anyone else want to come along?! The great thing about this group of friends is it's very much "the more the merrier"!

The middle of September will find us up in Seattle at a Mariner's game with Nathan's dad, sister, and her husband. So excited! The M's have been doing really well this season...that is, until they played the Angels. But hey, what do you expect when they play the #1 team in the league?

Our puppy dog, Bandit, is just about full grown now, but is still very much a puppy. He's recently discovered a new game; he dips his front paws into his water bowl outside, and then goes over to his very large hole in the backyard and digs. Lather, rinse, repeat. Evidently the water makes it either easier or messier to dig...either one is probably fine with him. He's also recently found a love of swimming. Nathan took him to the 203 pond to fish, and at one point Bandit was out in the middle of the pond, swimming after ducks. So I'm thinking he's going to be a water fowl dog more than an upland bird dog. But we'll see, this fall will be his first bird season.



The days here are starting to cool off a little, so the other day I busted out my mountain bike and have been riding all over town instead of driving my car everywhere. My car actually hasn't left the garage in 2 days. Yay for saving on gas! It's also a great way to workout without having to go to the gym, although that will be starting back up more often now that I'm on graveyard again. It's a lot easier to find the time to get to the gym while on graveyard.

Well, I think that's about it for now. Stay tuned!