Update

For those of you reading this that don't know a lot about us or what's going on recently here it is:

• We just had our one year anniversary August 9th
• We bought a house in Provo
• We have a silky terrier named Nala (and she is all the kids we need right now)
• Alyssa got a new car....finally
• Jake works at the Provo Sizzler as Kitchen Manager
• Alyssa works at a care center doing Housekeeping
• This summer we went on vacation to Oregon in May and Lake Powell in August
• Jake's Birthday was the 24th...Happy 27th!!
• Mason Steven Kimball was born June 26th (alyssa's brother)
  

Those are all the BIG things that happend this year, so far. Right now our main focus is our house. We just got a new couch and painted the living room. Jake is Really into building and refinishing furniture and stuff like that. Since we've lived in this house he's made: a shelf for our room, shelf for the guest bedroom, really pretty shelves for the living room, a coffee table that lights up, and an end table for the living room. We live a couple blocks away from the D.I. so when we have the money and a day off we go there to see what he can find to refinish. It's amazing too because if we go there with something in mind it magically appears. (The coffee and end tables for example). We also got very lucky the last time we went there. We went to look for a very small end table and found a magazine rack that would look perfect....and we found a set of 4 chairs in really good condition, that were the exact chairs we have with our table...who knew, we needed extra chairs...not that we have company too often, but at least now we can accomidate.

Another exciting (more like freaky) thing recently...we've started to find a lot of these really big ugly brown spiders that chase you...so we looked them up online. Hobo Spiders. Turns out they really are as scary as they seem. They are huge for one (maybe about the size of a quarter, legs included) they're eyes bug out so that's just gross. And their bite is pretty bad. You get a sore that turns into a boil that's all red and sore around it and it's about an 18 month healing process. I wouldn't be so worried about it but like I told Jake "Usually, they say 'it's more afraid of you than you are of it' well, Hobo Spiders will chase you so it's more like 'it's NOT more afraid of you than you are of it'." SCARY!! So what are we going to do? Not kill the other spiders first of all (internet said pestisides were bad because it kills off their enemies) and get sticky spider traps. I guess that works pretty well. If we still find a lot of them we will call the bug killer guys, the professionals. That's $90 for them to spray/fog, whichever, and put out traps. 3 month guarentee. I'm pretty freaked out so it might be worth it. Other things you can find in our yard....frogs (we hear them at night) snakes (garden and water...we're close to a river. Jake found one about 2 1/2 ft long, spiders, and birds....in our attic. I can't tell you how many dead baby birds we found over the summer. I was so sad. We tried to save one but our efforts failed. Having our own house is so much fun!! I can't wait to see what the winter brings.

Well, I guess that's a start. I'll try and keep things pretty updated. I'll post some pictures below of some of the things I've mentioned.




Jake and Alyssa in the kitchen






Lake Powell. Alyssa made a picture in the sand while everyone else played water volley ball.






Our baby, Nala. She never looks at the camera.








HOBO SPIDER!!! (it looks scarier up close)