Good bye Slinky

Getting ready for work this morning, making me lunch, I found myself going into the garage for a reason I had no idea.

I saw Slinky laying in front of his house. It looked like he sensed I was coming and lay there looking at me like he normally would when that was the case. When I got in there he didn't lift his head or make any sort of movement, yet he was looking at me. Something was up!

I called his name and clapped my hands. Nothing. I started to approach slowly, afraid. When I touched him and didn't respond and was rigid. I kinda screamed from the shock.

Tim and I just buried him in our back yard. Sent him off with his hammock, an apple and his treats.

We laid him on his hammock.

Apple next to him and sprinkled the teats around.

We can see him resting from our sliding glass door

and the kitchen window.

Making our house a home

Tim and the guys lived in the house for nearly 3 before the two of us met. Granted, it was new when they moved in, it was still a guys house. Tim did a good job making sure that the house stayed manageable, the carpets stayed rather clean, no holes in the walls and no funky stuff happening to the place that would normally happen with renters.

The walls were the manufacture white color with smudges and chips, the carpet has gotten stretched out, the garage has stains all over from our beloved pet Slinky (ferret). A bunch of random things around the house that got left here when the guys moved out, the college furniture has continued to hang on and the yard too had only been maintained to keep from getting any worse.

This is not me saying that anything could have been different for the better, I congratulate them for keeping it as nice as they did. Tim working full time and the other guys working on grad school and jobs of their own, it would have been a big job to do too much more. Props to the guys!

All this to say, here and there in our dating I started doing little things to improve the place, further setting me up  for the big things I get to do now. Truly making the house our own. We started together with a pretty awesome clean slate.

* Those white walls? Yes, we have no gotten to paint our master bedroom, laundry room, downstairs bathroom, entry way and our kitchen. Our guest bedroom downstairs is very soon to follow, as I already have the paint.

* Stretched out carpet? We will soon see about getting someone in to come and trim the excess.

* Garage? I have organized and gotten rid a bunch of the random stuff that doesn't need to be there.
Unfortunately, not much can be done about the floor stains, I think. I will have to look into that more. First we need to build Slinky a much bigger and awesome cage to live in all the time, rather then living free range.

* Furniture? We have gotten rid of a few things, several couches and other things. We got our selves a "new" couch, thanks to the Rocklin yard-sales and it matches the Lazy Boy arm chair we had.

* The yard? Oh my favorite thing of all! The grass was completely weed filled and in awful condition. The ground didn't drain and had many potholes in it. We killed it, dug it all out, filled in the ground with good soil and reseeded with a local grass blend. A bunch of the bushes that were in the yard originally, Tim and I tore out to replace with nicer things. It feels like we are starting to have a little paradise back there.
   >> We also have built a vegetable garden bed. Still have to fill it with dirt from the worm farm, but we will soon be able to grow our one veggies :D I can't wait!

I would say we are well on our way at this point to making our home totally awesome.

If you would like to see the progression our our house please feel free to check out our pictures on Jaime's facebook.

Well, three posts in one evening, I am pooped. Time to hit the hay.

Birthdays

Tim's birthday is May 5th and my birthday is May 16th, thats 11 days apart. Kind of fun! It makes the event seem even bigger and makes celebrating a great time.

As some of you know, we had a joint BBQ birthday party at my parents house. My parents, Cara, G&G Hoyt, Tim's parents and his grandma Eileen & a few of our good friends. We had a great time hanging out, eating and chatting.

~ For Tim's birthday, the two of us went to Lassen Natl. Park to go snow camping. We left Friday evening and camped on a snow bank at the visitor center parking lot. The next morning we got together our backpacking packs and started our hike up the road, up the mountain. We were fortunate to have a couple miles of paved road, but had our snowshoes clipped to our bags for when the snow started.

We had a lovely "sack" lunch picnic that we ate sitting in the middle of the road. Warm and sunny, sheltered from wind and not a worry of cars because the road is closed. After lunch we continued our hike through the snow up the rest of the mountain.

All the lakes up there are completely frozen over and snow covered. Its so pretty! To those don't know there are lakes, would probably walk right over them continuing to not know. We came to our destination between the two lakes at the Bumpass Hell parking area. Because of being nearly at the highest point of the park road, most of land is very exposed, minimal tree coverage. The wind was especially bad and so we had to find a good shelter.

A large cluster of trees found to be just what we needed, we set up our tent. Still the wind was a real issue, so we didn't really get to explore as we had planned before and hung out in the tent the rest of the afternoon. Got out to make some dinner, but that was an awful time and ended up eating our "hot" meal as less then lukewarm. And went to sleep super early, putting hand warmers in our socks to keep our toes warm.

Sunday morning we woke up to calm winds and lovely sunshine. Much warmer! Had odds-and-ends for breakfast because oat meal was no longer worth it. Packed back up and had a wonderful walk back down. Seriously, the walk was quite lovely! Beautiful surroundings and wonderful weather.

We did it! Snowshoe backpacking.

~ My birthday tomorrow. I am going to be 25!!! Last day of class before finals. I am probably going to have myself some breakfast outside, sitting in the lovely adirondack chairs Sandy gave us for my birthday. Not sure what I will do with my afternoon. Then Tim and I will go to a lovely restaurant in down town Chico called Broadway Heights.

Good times :)

About time

I now have my page set up the way I want to and I can finally send out my new blog to you all. I hope for all your cases, I can stick with this and be good at keeping you all updated.

Love you all! And here we go :)