Just me and my pup on All Hallow’s Eve. Had to shoo him into the office everytime the doorbell ring, but otherwise, he did very very well.

Such a cutie peeping out the window to watch the trick-or-treaters…

Couldn’t get him to wear a costume, but he does very well posing next to a candy bowl. (He sits so silly — just like a puppy).

The night was about over around 9pm – only had probably 15 doorbell visits – and I have a whole half bowl of candy left!

Happy Halloween from my part of the world! Normally, this is my favorite holiday, but sadly this year most of our decorations are packed. And, I will be handing out candy by myself this year as Brandon is on a flight to Salt Lake City this morning for work.

I’m jealous when I see all the blogs with the beautiful fall leaves, big bright pumpkin patches…it’s the yard of our rental house that is so darn depressing – it might as well be a graveyard itself! :) All dirt and rock and scraggly desert plants, here’s my sad attempt at brightening up:

Oh, and our super-cute pumpkins we carved WAY too early last weekend? Those are in the trash – mold got ‘em. LOL. Since it is halloween after all, thought I’d post this picture of our pumpkins looking slightly possessed! This is what happens when you use the no-flash option on your camera and you move around while the shutter is closing! Spooky huh?

And yeah, that’s our guest bathroom – we were trying to find the darkest spot in the house to get a picture of the lighted pumpkins. LOL.

Well, I’m off to go start this day! Loving the daylight savings time – for once I feel rested waking up at 6am! Let’s hope it lasts!

They will come! And yeah baby we’re headed to Nashville next weekend!

Our brick is done! A bit of rock/slate/ledgestone whatever you call it will be added this week to the parts with the white plastic stuff (and of course they have to paint the trim, add our porch and whatnot…). But, we’re just dying to see the insides of this place!

You see, we were crazy and bought a house that we didn’t see a model of. Which is just crazy where we came from. In Las Vegas, there are like 6 different houses in every gazillion neighborhood you can walk through, so you can get a feel for each one. So you aren’t spending a gazillion dollars blindly.

Here, they only had one house by our builder to walk through from the 14 they offered! Crazy I tell you!

Back in May, after walking through some other ones in the neighborhood that were under contstruction, Brandon was just not satisfied with what he had seen. As we were driving back towards the development office, he pointed and said "that one. Now, that’s a house. I want that one." Lucky us, it was by our builder.

Not lucky to us, they had just finished the lady’s house and she was all moved in – giving us no chance to see the insides. We tried over and over the 2 weekends we were there, and they still couldn’t get ahold of the lady to ask her nicely if we could just zip through the house real fast. Nope. She didn’t return their calls. (Isn’t there supposed to be southern hospitality in these parts??) We had to settle peeking through the windows and imagining what the floorplan looked like in real life.

And on our last day, after we had signed the documents, we strolled around her property one last time to take some photos. And who did I see in the laundry room folding her stuff. Her. The owner.

Brandon summed it up best at that exact moment.

"When we have kids, and they want to toilet paper some houses, we’re hitting this house first."

So In Love With This:

It’s heaven in a warm mug. Tazo Chai Tea. Add a little cream and a little splenda for sweetness….yummm.

Isn’t it wierd how tea makes you feel a bit sophisticated? (for me anyway). Makes me feel mature, maybe a bit cultured, a bit european.

Reminds me of my travels to London. And the time I had it when I stayed at the Four Seasons in Boston on a business trip…a time when I was too young to be considered a business professional, but I certainly played the part very well. ;)

I can remember the ornate walls of the room, the fresh pink flowers in a silver Tiffany vase, the fine china cup and saucer…the sweet taste of honey and lemon in my tea…the snow flakes swirling around outside.

I thought to myself, "this is it. I have made ‘it’. I am a business woman."

Who knew one sip of tea could make me think of a day over 2 years ago?

I think I’m going to go fix myself another mug before I get cracking on these projects and reports! Back to work…

"Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness." ~ Kahlil Gibran

This Kahil guy obviously wasn’t from the 21st century….

I was on some sort of Dixie Chicks kick the other week. Kept playing the same CD over and over again on the ride to and from work…the lyrics in their song "More Love" kept catching me in my mindless driving…

"We’re afraid to be idle
So we fill up the days
We run on the treadmill
Keep slavin’ away
’til there’s no time for talkin’
About trouble in mind
And the doors are all closed
Between your heart and mine…"

I’m not in need of "more love" by any means (my guy has been home all week!) ;) but the part about filling up our days is what kept catching me. Isn’t that what we seem to always do? There are always dozens of emails to be replied, phone calls to be returned, errands to run…it just never seems to end. This so-called everyday life.

But every passing day I seem to get more "plugged in" to something else.

Meg, a gal at my work, was sipping her coffee out of one of those Starbucks "my view of the world cups" (or whatever they’re called) this morning, and I caught the sentence where it says Americans spend an average of thirty something hours watching TV each week. It made me think, "geez, I hardly ever watch television. I wonder what my computer consumption would be though…"

I literally receive or send an average of 60 emails at work each day. And that’s at work alone. Count in my own personal ones or for citrusblossoms.com and I’m usually topping around 80-90. I sit at work all day long – at a computer – and likely spend 6.5 of my 8 hours on it and using it. I come home and am likely to spend anywhere from another 1-3 hours surfing blogs, doing citrusblossoms.com maintenance, etc. – and I consider this to be my "free ‘fun’ time"…am I CRAZY?!?!

Where in the heck did Life go anyway? I had a feeling I was moving toward a new ‘action plan’ that needed to be implemented in my everyday life (I’m always "in progress" I like to think), ;)  but it’s this kind of truth laid out that smacks me in the face.

I really want to get back to the good things in life.

So tell me oh-wise-blog-reader…are you content with the truth of your everyday life? ;)

Signing off at 11:35 pm – yikes! get me off of this thing!!!