4th of July!

Enjoy!

Weather Video

The weather in Wisconsin is crazy. One day it will be perfectly sunny, and the next day we'll have a huge storm. Sometimes huge storms and sunshine happen in the same day, only hours apart! It's insane! Rain so hard it sounds like your roof may cave in, thunder so loud it shakes the house, lightning so bright it hurts your eyes, and we FINALLY heard the sirens outside of their monthly scheduled tests. All the snow in the winter and so many stormy days in the summer make us really thankful when the sun is out! However, sunny days can also be extremely humid (like 80-90%; it literally feels like you are stuck in a hot, steamy bathroom). Humidity is more miserable than storms, in my opinion.

Oh, and the mosquitoes. They are SO BIG out here! You can feel them stab into you, and it HURTS. And they don't really care how much bug repellent you put on... :(

Enough complaints, time for a video!

Wow, that was fast!

All the leaves are gone.... no more pretty colors. :(

Pumpkins and Leaves!!!

We went to buy pumpkins last weekend!

Jimmy at the Brennan's pumpkin patch. It took us at least half an hour to pick out 4 pumpkins. We're serious about it!

Me and Zorro at the Appleberry Farms pumpkin patch. They didn't have a very good selection... Hey Mom, check out his Christmas vest from 2 years ago! He likes to wear it!

Check out the Fall colors!!!

Pretty red!!!

A view of our street.

More beautiful leaves.

Jimmy is a good photographer!

So pretty!

Our tree stayed green for the longest time. Jimmy and I were starting to get really mad because all the other trees were turning yellow and orange and ours was still green. Then one day, we looked and the whole tree was yellow! So exciting!!!

We finally found it!

So Jimmy and I have begun many quests since we moved to Madison:

1. To find a place that we BOTH love for breakfast

2. To find DECENT Mexican food

#2 is not going so well; I don't think that good Mexican food exists here in Madison. One restaurant will have great beans, but terrible rice. Or terrible carne asada. Or terrible chips and salsa. One day, we will find a great restaurant, but we've tried at least 10 places and they all suck (in my opinion).

Even though our Mexican food quest has so far been unsuccessful, we have finally found a GREAT breakfast restaurant. Madison has a lot of good places for breakfast; Jimmy and I could just never agree on one.

The first place we went to has the most amazing bacon I've ever had. It's super thick, and cooked perfectly! However, the pancakes taste like cat food. It's really weird. We both got sick of this place.

The second place we went to had cheesy grits (SOOOOOO GOOD!!!) but everything else is incredibly greasy, and Jimmy hates it.

The third place we went to makes great blueberry pancakes, and Jimmy really loves their scrambles. I did not care for the scrambles too much so we don't go there either.

When we moved, we found a new place that is right around the corner. We decided to give it a try. It's the most amazing restaurant ever!!!! They have tons of different kinds of pancakes including their infamous BACON PANCAKES! Huge chunks of bacon are put right into the pancake batter, and then you cover the whole stack with syrup and it's delicious. Here are some pictures that we took at our most recent visit:

The last bit of Jimmy's blueberry pancakes. YUMMMMMM

Jimmy's baked omelet! With lots of ketchup!

My sausage patties and eggs..... that sausage is so delicious!

And my favorite: Strawberry pancakes with a TON of homemade whipped cream.

Just thought I'd share these pictures with you guys. You have no idea how nice it feels to find a place that we can both agree on for breakfast!

Fall is here!

Fall is here and it's getting really cold already! In 2 days, the high will be 48 degrees! We have used our fireplace 3 times already, and it's awesome!

Here are some of our Fall photos:

Bailey giving Zorro a nice bath. (See Bailey's cooties on his back? The fur is FINALLY starting to grow back).

Me and Zorro relaxing on the couch. He keeps me warm!

Me and Pepper napping.

Pepper in her Halloween costume. All 3 pets have a pumpkin costume, by Halloween I'll get pictures of Zorro and hopefully Bailey too!

Okay, this cat is the worst cat ever. She always gets up on the counter or the oven and pushes down whatever we leave up there so that she and the dog can eat it.

Cases in point:

-We accidentally left out a pizza box one night and when we woke up, the two of them had devoured 3 large slices of cheese pizza.

-The same thing happened with a milkshake a while ago.

-We had literally JUST finished eating McDonalds and were sitting on the floor close to the fireplace. She got on the couch, knocked over the McDonalds bag, pulled out a fry box that had a few fries left and proceeded to eat the french fries RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. Zorro ate a couple, but the cat definitely did the dirty work and ate the most. They had no shame.

-We purposely left out an empty pizza box 2 nights in a row and both nights she knocked them down (she thinks we didn't learn our lesson the first time).

That's all for now!

Corey Visits

Corey came to visit us from August 4-August 11! Here are some pictures from his visit!

Yay Corey!

Harley Davidson Museum

In front of the Miller High Life Bus at our Brewery Tour

Enjoying free beer at the Miller Brewery tour!

In front of the Wisconsin Capitol

Ummm, can I pet the cows?

Wisconsin State Fair chocolate covered bacon and deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Wisconsin State Fair famous cream puffs!

We fed Corey a LOT of Wisconsin fatty foods. It was a delicious week! We miss you already, Corey!

The House Blog

Finally, I have gotten around to blogging about our house! Here is a picture of our super cute mailbox.

Here is a picture from the outside. The house is a duplex, so there is basically a mirror image of what you see here on the other side of the tree. There is a really nice family that lives there. The father brews his own hot sauce in his basement and he gave us a bottle of it. It was painful just to smell it, so we gave it away to someone who actually enjoys eating food that is spicy enough to make you cry.

When you walk through the front door, you enter the living room.

 

Another view of the living room, this time looking outside.

 

Downstairs bathroom, really small, but it gets the job done. Sorry it's sideways, but I'm too lazy to edit the photo and flip it right side up. Just turn your head!

 

All of you California folks are probably like “what the heck is this?” It’s called a basement, and it’s where we keep all of our junk, our washer and dryer, and where we go if there is a tornado. Here are the stairs leading down to the basement.

Here is another view of the basement. We still have a lot of laundry to do!

 

Here’s a picture of Jimmy in the kitchen. I cleaned up 3 piles of dog vomit, so he cleaned the kitchen. I hate cleaning the kitchen so it was a fair trade.

 

Here’s a picture of our pantry.

 

This is our family room and the new couch! It’s awesome because the two end seats recline, and then the 2 middle seats share an ottoman.  AND, everyone has their own cup-holder! We got a really good deal on this couch; it was on super sale at the furniture store.

 

Here’s a picture of our backyard. It’s really long and has a lot of plants and trees!

 

Upstairs bathroom!

 

Extra bedroom/Jimmy’s Office

 

My office. The people that lived here before us painted this room yellow. I like it, it makes the room look happier!

 

The closet in my office has shelves in it. We call this closet “Jimmy’s Law Library” because it’s where we can conveniently keep all of his law books in one place.

 

Our bedroom, and apparently we needed to do laundry!

More Snow and the Christmas Tree Hunt

So the snow is still falling, and everything in Wisconsin is looking beautiful. We are on a winter storm warning starting tomorrow evening (Monday, the 8th) and ending the next morning. They are warning that we may get 6-12 inches during that time period! That's ALOT of snow...I hope we don't get that much, it would really suck. It takes FOREVER to drive places, and I'm always afraid I will slip and fall when I walk. Here are some pictures that we took in the last couple days.

Here is a picture of Bailey on our balcony. The balcony is completely screened, so he can't fall off or anything. These are the little flakes that were small enough to fit through the screen and cover the ground. Bailey seemed to like the snow! He was out there for a while, and I had to chase him back in because we were letting all the heat out of the apartment.

In Wisconsin, going to a christmas tree lot and picking a tree is lame. A lot of people cut down their own trees here. We found a place that is only about 20 minutes from our apartment, and we went to check it out. It was REALLY similar to the apple orchard in that you walk around and there are rows and rows of trees to look at. 

Here is Jimmy at the tree farm. Those little trees in the background are not ready to be taken yet!

Jimmy and I are dumb, and didn't realize that walking around and finding the perfect tree, cutting it down, and dragging it back to the car would take AT LEAST an hour. We did not wear proper clothing. I wore rain boots (no insulation) and he wore tennis shoes and jeans. WE WERE FREEZING. Seriously, I couldn't feel my feet. But this is a picture of Jimmy inspecting the tree that we eventually decided on.

Here is a picture of me sawing our tree down!

Jimmy dragging the tree back to the car. It was uphill and took forever.

The workers put the tree through a machine that wrapped it up. Here is Jimmy carrying it to the car.

Here is the finished product!

Love,

Ashley