Chuck E Cheese

Chuck E Cheese has always perplexed me...what does the "E" stand for? And why isn't it Chuckie Cheese? I have a kindred bond with him, given that my name is Sarah E. Buffington (or Sarah E. Salt once upon a time), but my E stood for something...Esteggleget. I don't remember the spelling, you'd have to ask Lacey. Anyway, we took Ally to see Chuck E. last night. She had a pretty good time, although the dancing machines kind of freaked her out. And apparently Barney did something to piss her off:

Our House (in the middle of our street)

Here's what it looked like when we first bought it:



And after all Matt's hard work:



We have a lot of ideas still, more work to come, but it's a lot of fun!!

Crack is Whack

I have a training update: On Saturday we ran (jogged really) a whopping 10 miles, which is the farthest run I have ever done in my life. That puts my grand total for the past 4 weeks at 63 miles. And please don't take any of this as my bragging. This is completely and totally as motivation for me to keep truckin'. Even if the scale hasn't budged, I know I've accomplished something.

This leads into my realization that I haven't blogged in two whole weeks. Please forgive my absence. Last week I went on a work trip to St. Louis. I found the experience to be pretty positive, even though I was gone during the hectic week we had to be out of our rental house and officially moved into our new (and I can say OUR) home in Mt. Horeb, WI. We are now officially Mt. Horebites. And Wisconsonites, too, I suppose. Mt. Horeb is a cute little town that reminds me of the Logan, UT I used to go visit when I was younger. Before they had a Chilis or a Red Robin. And the house, which we will get pictures up sometime, reminds me of my grandma's house, in a good way. I want to redo the bathrooms, but I almost feel like ripping out the gold 70s linoleum would be betraying the very soul of this house. I'm sure I'll come to terms by the time we have money to renovate.

Back to St. Louis: don't go for a drive by yourself to see the arch at night because you're bored. I pulled into a gas station to get an energy drink and was told by a couple of people working there that I should probably leave the area soon and then on the way out to my car, a man approached me and offered me something in his hand. I looked at it and said, "I don't even know what that is." He said, "It's crack baby." I had never seen crack in my life before. It kind of looked like a dried up booger or dried glob of rubber cement. Anyway, I said, "No thank-you" and went back to the hotel.

I'm glad to be back. I finished my 6 month requirements and so will be getting my next pay bump and my first review. I am a little nervous for that because I still don't know the ropes, but we'll see how it goes. And mostly I'm glad to be back with my family. Matt has worked REALLY hard getting this house ready and still has lots of projects on his to-do list.

Ally is going through a fun mimicking phase. She is still a crazy, full of enery girl with 0% Stranger Anxiety. We went to a friend's house to watch the BYU foootball games yesterday. She was crawling all over this man (who was the father-in-law of one of the game-watchers visiting for the weekend, both of whom we had never met before)and bouncing on his stomach while he tried to watch the game. And she warmed up very nicely to a woman whose necklace she stole for the duration of the game. She likes to dance. She likes to sing made-up songs. She likes to help me put laundry into the hamper. And she likes to help me sweep.

Training Update

As of yesterday, I have run 29 miles in two weeks. I know what you're thinking, "Really, Sarah? You couldn't just suck it up and run 1 more mile to make it a nice even 30?" Well, yes I could have, and no I didn't thank you very much.

Escapee

Friday while I was at work, Matt was working hard loading up our stuff to move into the new house. He put on a movie for Ally and began making trips to the truck from the basement. When he went in to check on Ally, she wasn't there. The little stinker had opened the garage door, climbed down the two tall steps, walked out of the garage down the driveway, then walked down to the neighbors two houses over. This story is only amusing because she wasn't hurt or lost...thank goodness the neighbors were out and stopped her from going any further. My daughter needs a GPS installed.

Nathan's Home!!

Look who's back! He was able to call me on his layover in Dallas. I can't wait to see him in person. Hooray for the Natey Baby. (And hooray for uncropped pictures and random people in the background!)

Saturday is a Special Day

My Saturday began at 6:15 when my alarm clock went off. Matt then said, "Oh honey. I forgot you were going running this morning. I arranged to have people help me pull out that fence this morning." This is me annoyed because I go running EVERY Saturday, so how is it that he forgets about every other week? I get up, go get a glass of milk and come lay back down. He says, "I'm sorry you can't go running today." To which I say, "Oh, I'm still going running. This is your problem. You should have found someone to watch Ally." (I know I'm a bad wife). But eventually, we arrive at the conclusion that I am not going, so I send a text to Sarah W. to let her know that I won't be there because she and I are the only ones planning on going this week and I make a mental plan to go running this evening. Then about 7 am I get a text message from her asking if I'm coming. I check my phone and sure enough, the original text I sent is still sitting in my outbox with a big red X over the message. Awesome. I made her get up early on a Saturday for nothing (I'm a bad friend). But she is amazing and ran 6 miles without me. You rock!
When Ally wakes up, I decide we should try something new today, so I blew up her little pool and filled it with water. Unfortunately, the water comes out ICE cold and she didn't want to get in it. But she did have fun throwing everything she could find into the water. Then we took a nap. Matt came home from his fence pulling at about 3 PM (wow! That's hard work, babe!) and wakes me up. I realize that my foot kind of hurts and I look and sure enough, I must have stepped on a thorn while setting up Ally's pool because I have a nasty splinter and my foot is already swollen. But it's on the bottom of my foot and I can't reach it so I have to ask Matt to perform emergency surgery on my foot. He's pretty handy with a sewing needle and tweezers. Who knew?
Matt left again to go pull out carpet at our new house (Oh yes, did I mention we are now homeowners? No, I guess I didn't. I guess I was waiting until we actually closed, so now it's official. We bought a house in Mt. Horeb, WI) and I decide to be green and walk to the grocery store. I took the big stroller and shopped until the bottom was full and wouldn't hold any more. Ally was really good and enjoyed the adventure, even if mommy did pinch her skin in the stroller straps and left a nice red welt. (Now add bad mom to previous list of Bad Friend and Bad Wife). All in all, things are going well and we put in Cinderella to cuddle on the couch when a wave of nausea overtakes me. I don't know if it was something I ate or the medicine I take, but I was hugging the toilet pretty hard. Reminds me of how I'm not looking forward to morning sickness ever ever again. So now scratch off the list running because I feel horrible. Matt finally comes home after a long day of work. Turns out the upstairs carpet is glued down making it 10x harder to remove than originally thought. In the meantime, I finish feeling yucky and we finish the day reading stories to Ms. Ally....well, almost.
Matt notices that the neighbors are out, so we decide to be neighborly and go sit out on the driveway with them. I have never heard the men talk so much. Amazing how liquor and beer will do that. Anyway, they were good for a laugh and told us how they were happy/pissed for us that we bought a house and congratulations/screw you for leaving. haha. And that was our Saturday. Tomorrow I start a 12-week training program for the half marathon so if you see me and I'm not running, I'm in big BIG trouble!