Christmas starts early here....and a big graduation for a cool guy

This past weekend was very busy in the Harrison house.  We had Christmas with my mom, sister, and brother-in-law on Friday.  Andrew and I hosted Christmas this year (and actually the first time since being married).  We had such a great time and felt rather spoiled with all the gifts we received!  It was Piper's first time opening Christmas gifts and she loved it.  She is pretty spoiled herself. :)

The next day held two special occasions: Adam (Andrew's brother) graduating from college and my mother- and father-in-law celebrating their 29th wedding anniversary!  We are very proud of Adam.  As cliche as it sounds, he's got a bright future ahead of him. :)  And as the card we gave his parent's said, "The two of you together, what a great idea that turned out to be." :) 

 The happy graduate and his proud brother. :)

Adam and his fiancee, Christina.  Aren't they cute? :)

Wow. Has it really been that long?

Can you believe it's December already?  I know I can't.  We're slacking a bit when it comes to posting updates, but Andrew and I will do our best to update more frequently.

To catch everyone up, we got Piper on October 10th.  We absolutely adore her.  We are convinced she is the cutest and smartest puppy ever (no, we're not biased ;) ).  She has us both wrapped around her little (actually, rather large) paws and she is quite aware of it. 

I just recently taught her the command "sit".  She learned it in a day and a half.  Thank you, Milk Bone.  Andrew didn't believe me when I told him she knew how to sit, so he made me do it a couple of times to prove it. :)  Yes, our dog is a genius. :)

She is also potty trained.  She has the occasional accident because she doesn't realize she is longer then the average dog, and misses the pad.    But typically she'll sit by the back door when nature calls and patiently waits for me to take her out.

She loves playing in the leaves outside.  Having a fenced backyard is a blessing, because she LOVES running around.  She also loves playing tag.  She will run from us until we touch her, then she chases us until she touches us.  It's amazing what she knows, before she's even 4 months old! 

Here are some pictures of our precious pup.  She is growing so fast!

 

Her trip home, and first time being out in the "real world".

Her first night home, resting on daddy.

Our little model. :)

Yep, she's always that cute when she sleeps. :)

We are so blessed to have her in our life.  We knew we'd love her, but the amount of love we have for her is far greater then even I expected.  So what if she has 4 legs and a body full of fur?  She's still our first baby. :)

The newest member of our family

This is our puppy, Piper!  The breeder sent these pictures to me this evening.  Isn't she precious?!  We are looking so forward to bringing her home (we're getting her Oct 10)!

 

 

Happy Birthday Hollee!

Today is my sister's birthday!  I went to the city she lives in and we did some shopping, mainly for the puppy (she bought her the cutest dog bowl today....yeah, it's her birthday and she's buying stuff for our puppy...thanks Hollee and Shane! :) ) and went to lunch at Fazoli's.  Love that place.  She had a coupon for a free desert so she got the triple chocolate cake.  It looked super yummy, and because she's so nice, she took half home in case Shane wanted any. :)

 

At Fazoli's. :)

Last Saturday we took her out for her family birthday lunch at Fuddruckers.  Then we went back to their house so she could open her gifts.  She is rather spoiled.  (Kidding!!  Or am I? ;) )  It was a lovely day. :)

 

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.

-Marion C. Garrety

My favorite pic of her and I when we were little.

The last shot we took today, she complained of appearing to be the "center of attention" in the rest.  It's not easy centering the picture, when you're in it. :) 

I hope you have a happy birthday, Hollee!! :)

Our first home

Andrew and I took the 2nd biggest step into adulthood (1st being getting married :) ) and bought our first home! The timing was a little unexpected, considering we were only 6 months into our 1 year lease of our apartment. Fortunately, our landlord is also a Realtor, and was more then willing to let us out of our lease if we purchased a house through her. The house hunt began quickly after finding that out. We looked at a few houses before deciding to take a look at our home. There were so many costly improvements made to it within the last few years (new roof, new central air unit, vinyl siding and windows, new fence around the back yard). The price, along with the improvements, made it hard to pass up. We went home that night and talked about whether or not we would want to make an offer. We both saw the house as our home when we walked in; we didn't feel that way with any of the other houses we had looked at. The next day we made an offer, our offer was accepted, and we all signed the papers to get the process started. We had to wait about a month, but we finally moved in on August 3rd, with the much appreciated help of my my sister and her husband, as well as Andrew's brother and his fiancee.

Of course, the current owner had lived in the home for 25 years, and the interior was very much dated. Andrew and I have been working nonstop on making it our home. The first step was taking the horrid wall paneling down! Thank God they only used nails to hold up the panels rather then gluing it to the wall. It took over a month to get the ceiling painted, walls spackled, sanded and primed, and the 2 coats of green tea leaf in our living room, hallway, and entry.

Last weekend Andrew's parents came over to help put new baseboard and casing up. We are so thankful his dad knows how to do everything, and very well, otherwise we'd be stuck with our ugly brown trim! (We tried painting one white, it didn't looks so good) We still have about half of the trim and baseboard to put up, which should be done in a couple of weekends. Once that's completed I'll post some before and after pictures of our homes transformation from living in the 70's (this house was actually built in 1983) to the 2000's.

Here is a picture of our home! Ignore the landscaping, that is a spring of 2010 project. :)

More pictures and posts to come....