impromptu friday night photoshoot.

Taylor is really the only one who gets dressed in this house regularly, because he has to go out in the world to work everyday. But Emer and I, it's rare. He lives in footie pajamas and I am the sloppy housewife cliche and wear sweats. Although sometimes we like to get him dressed up to go out since we do have some real cute clothes for him. We decided to do that tonight. And then of course, we had to take a million pictures. Here are the highlights and when I say highlights I mean like, every single one:

sweatpants and frozen lakes.

On Friday night we headed over to Bear Lake to visit my Grandma for the weekend. If you don't know anything about Bear Lake, you should get to know it, because it's probably the only beautiful thing in southeast Idaho, and the most beautiful thing in Utah. (the two states share the lake). ANYWAY in spite of being beautiful, the towns surrounding the lake are tiny and in the winter, there is next to nothing. So sometimes when we go visit her, she'll have me stop and pick up a few things for her before we leave civilization. On this particular visit, she asked if I could stop and pick up cat AND dog food for her.

It was very convenient because when Roscoe barfed in the car (like I knew he eventually would) we were driving through Soda Springs so we stopped to clean it up in the parking lot of a grocery store, and I decided to run in and grab cat and dog food. Now, mind you, when we left Idaho Falls, I decided to put on sweats because who wants to wear real clothes while riding in the car for 3 hours? NOT ME. So I go into the store and as I'm lugging the box of cat food and the giant bag of dog food I think to myself, "WOW I look like a loser right now. Wearing sweats in public, in a small Idaho town, buying pet food on a Friday night. And this is my life." When I get up to  the cash register the first thing the cashier girl says to me, [very enthusiastically in an Idaho accent] is, "DOIN ANYTHNG FUN TONIGHT!?!" and I was so caught off guard for several reasons. So I just said, "no." But what I wanted to say was, "I'M IN SODA SPRINGS BUYING CAT FOOD IN MY SWEAT PANTS, WHILE MY HUSBAND CLEANS DOG BARF OUT OF THE CAR, WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING ON IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW?!"

Idahoans are so dumb. They say things like supposably. And I'm not saying this because I'm bias, I really saw on the news (which wow, you should see the local news here, it is comedy gold, it's like it's produced by elementary school kids from 1996) that Idaho is ranked SECOND TO LAST in Education and also, only 1 in 10 Idaho students will get a degree. Now yes, I am a college dropout, but if you pulled me and 10 of my friends from high school I would be like only one of two that didn't get a degree.

But that's just a side rant. So our weekend with Grandma went well. We helped her drive her 20 year old dog (that she inherited from her twin brother when he died in 2006) to the vet to get put to sleep. Nobody was really sad about it because it was a really big relief, dealing with a dog that old is no bueno.

Then as we always do when someone dies in our family, we went and bought pie.

my cute grandma

Then Taylor gave my Grandma's OTHER dog a hair cut, and then decided to give Roscoe a haircut too.

"all that remains of my old life" -Roscoe Dash

And the lake up there was still frozen so Tayl took a thousand trillion billion photos because snow is still more a novelty than a nuisance to him. But I wasn't as annoyed cause it's Bear Lake.

Then we went home:

Also this:

Lately in our mediocre lives.

Recently I was going through my old instagram photos from last year and it made me sad. I've always said that our life was mediocre, but really until we got to Idaho, it wasn't. I mean we lived in England for 3 months, then we lived in Savannah for a year and there was always something fun to do. The beach, good eatin', historical landmarks, events at the park, going crabbing, St. Patricks day festival, New Years Eve, 4th of July, road tripping to Charleston, kayaking, fishing etc.

It's not to say that I'm miserable here, it's just you never realize how good you have it until afterwards, and perhaps, I hope I will feel that way about Idaho when we leave. (Cross your fingers that one day we leave!)

And now, the purpose of this blog was to update with the actual mediocre things that we've been up to. Which most of you, I will warn you, it is boring, but it's for my personal records. Since Taylor is always printing our blog at the end of the year, our book from 2012 was much smaller than our book from 2011 (and it had four months less!) So I am going to make a better effort, maybe.

I'll start from where I can remember in February
I started a new job! Nothing fancy, but I definitely don't hate it, and that's important. I am a full-time receptionist at a car dealership here in Idaho Falls. I've been here for about a month now and it's going well. But it's given me a reason to hate Mondays again, so that's fun.

My BFF!! came to visit me all the way from Vegas. Well technically she only came from Lehi, but still. It was a blasty. We love eachother and her baby is the COOLEST! and best dressed, even Joan Rivers herself couldn't deny it:

After that weekend Valentine's day was approaching, and to be honest, I don't really care about Valentine's. I think it's much more fun when you're a little kid or you have little kids. I don't HATE Valentine's it's just silly that it's a commercial holiday that gives women a sense of entitlement to expensive gifts. But still Tayl got me roses, which looked like regular roses so I didn't take a picture of them because nobody really cares, except me. And ON Valentine's I threw this little ditty together in like 30 minutes:





 Then the following weekend we headed up to SLC, because said BFF's parents were having their mission farewell. That was sad for me because they are literally like Chicken Nuggets to me. and Chicken Nuggets, is like my family. The trip up there was ridiculous because we learned that Roscoe gets car sick and so he barfed like 12 times. Twice on me.

The last little bit of February, the dogs were a real hassle. Roscoe kept losing his teef. And then one day I came home for Lunch and the dogs had gotten into some of Tayl's specialty dark chocolate I gave him for Valentine's SO, I was freaking out and had to rush them to the vet. Which was 0% fun and 100% expensive. But they are alive.

And other that near death experiences and visits from loved ones, nothing else new exciting.

Oh and I made this wreath on Saturday and BARELY took down the Christmas-y one. At first I thought it was too plain. Because I literally went to Michael's and randomly grabbed stuff. But it turned out pretty good. I like it much more now that I've gone in and out of my door a few times:

That's all the mediocrity for now, folks.

Roscoe Dash.

OH MY GOOOOOOSSSHHHHH YOU GUUUUYYYYYSSSSSSS....

We are alive!

Barely.

Basically what happened is that my battery on my laptop wouldn't hold a charge and so it had to stay plugged in all the time. But then my charger stopped working so I couldn't use my laptop and if I can't watch TV while I blog, then it ain't happening.

Anyway, I'll try harder now. But I figured it would be a good time to go ahead and introduce the latest addition to the Giddens' clan.

He's established a fairly strong presence on facebook and instagram, but not on our blog. So without further ado, I present to you:

Roscoe Dash

He's the cutest puppy in the world, after Lux of course.

Let me tell ya'll the story of how this sweet poopin machine came to be a part of our family.

I knew I wanted to add another canine to our clan, it was pretty depressing to watch Luxie throw her own toys in the air and then chase after them. Also, let's me be totally honest, I'm THAT girl. The dog girl. I am obsessed with dogs and I have been basically since I came to the earth. If I could have 75, I would, but I'll save that for 50 years from now when I'm ready to be featured on an episode of Animal Hoarding. So ANYWAY, you may remember a post in which I tricked people into thinking I was pregnant but it was actually that we were going to adopt my aunt's havanese. Well, in the end my aunt decided she couldn't part with her dear doggy. And I don't blame her, but in the end I was glad. Because Roscoe is my sweet baby angel.

The plan was that we were going to get a new puppy after the holidays so as not to add additional stress to our holiday traveling. SO Naturally I began browsing online, I checked the shelters to see if there were any hypoallergenic dogs for adoption (there weren't, those get snatched up pretty quick) and then I looked on ksl.com and I stumbled upon some "Shorkies" that were available locally and they were so cute, I was dying. I contacted the people to ask if we could just go "LOOK" at the puppies, and they said yes. I called Taylor and told him I would pick him up on his lunch break to go "look" at the last puppy they had available. We got there and immediately fell in love. I told the lady that we would not be able to take him until after the holidays and she said that was fine. But then Taylor suggested that I take him home for "just a little bit" just to see if Lux liked him. So I did.

Lux mostly liked him. Sometimes she just wants him to shut up and leave her alone, but she lets him know. As you may have guessed, I never took him back. I just kept him.

Having him has been fun, and frustrating. He has so much energy and is growing SO quickly. He's already bigger than Lux. He's almost getting that we don't go potty in the house, and I'm proud. His favorite food is anything. His favorite band is Journey. His full name is Roscoe Dash, after the rapper.

The naming of this dog did not come without much suffering. We changed his name about 3000 times, and I called him Puppy and GirlGuy, like a lot. Nothing felt right. We tried to name is Russ for awhile. But that sounded so wrong whenever I said. I really liked Roscoe all along, but I felt like people would judge me. But then, I didn't care because he's my dog.

Anyway, I'll shut up. We love him. He's snuggly and he's my sweet fat boy. Here are more pictures: