Taylor Swift!

Last night I got to go see Taylor Swift in Concert!! I went with my friend Christine and we had SO. MUCH. FUN! We may be 27, but are really still teenagers (especially me) at heart. Call me crazy, but I love her music. Yes, it is emotional and dramatic at times, but who cares. Our seats were up in the balcony, but in the front row, which doesn't get much better than that. We both sang along with every song and had a blast :).

P. S. Video evidence of our fun below ;) (You can't really see her, but she is in the center bright white light, in every picture and video I took, all the spotlights just washed her out)

Weekend and Louie

May is a very popular birthday month with the Grysen's. Michael's is the 13th, his uncle's is the 14th, his dad and Ryan (bro in law) share a birthday on the 18th, and his cousin Curtis has a birthday on the 19th. So we decided to go to Dallas Friday night and hang out with everyone on Saturday in celebration! We had a lot of fun playing with our nieces. As Hannah and Abby are getting older its really fun to see their personalities come out more. Its pretty cute to hear them call me "uncle kaywyn" in their little 3-year-old voices and I know I will miss hearing that when they are older and can say it right. Saturday evening, we all had dinner with birthday cake at Katie's house and they invited my family too. Both my family and Michael's family have been getting together more and its really cool that everyone gets along and enjoys each other. My brother Vincent even came over since he was at a convention in Dallas that afternoon. 

Kristen reading to the girls

We also got a new foster dog this weekend!
His name is Louie and he is 10 years old. He is very calm and sweet and gives me hope for Gaius calming down finally in about 6 years :).
His story is that he has had the same owner for his whole life, then all of a sudden they are moving and can't take care of him anymore so they gave him to the rescue. We are not sure if the move is forced (like going into nursing home) or they are choosing to move, but the vet found 2 types of ear infections in both ears and a bacterial skin infection that causes sores all over his body so someone was obviously not able to give him the care he needed. They also had not given him heartworm meds in several months, but thankfully he tested negative. He is a super sweet dog and we think he prefers women because he attached almost immediately to me and pretty much ignores Michael. He is very obedient, great off-leash, and someone even has taught him to stay off furniture! Having an older dog that is trained will be a nice change for us. The only thing we have to work on is getting him to lose some weight, he is about 8-10 pounds overweight.

Hopefully he finds a good home soon!

Summer Garden and An Ottoman Project

Michael planted our summer garden!

The left is tomato plants and the right is cucumbers and green beans. Last year, the tomatoes and green beans did really great so we figured we would do more of those and the cucumbers are an experiment.

And in our 3rd bed, the strawberry plant is still going strong!

Of course, you cannot plant a garden without proper supervision :)

So quite a while ago, Michael found this ottoman and decided that he wanted it in our bedroom next to our window so that Gaius could "supervise" the backyard while we are at work. It was a good idea, except for the fact that it came from our neighbor's curb and it was not really a very good color or in the best of condition. Here's what it looked like:

I wasn't all that excited about it, but Michael really wanted it so I said what the heck. I had plans to recover the cushion, but that wasn't going to work out.  So Michael found a really good tutorial online on how to make a slipcover, and finally after months of it being in our house looking terrible it now looks like this!

Pretty much like 1000 times better. I originally was just going to use one fabric all the way down, but the fabric I bought wasn't wide enough so I added the lighter fabric on the bottom and really liked how it turned out. I did however, make the mistake of not making sure it lined up perfectly at the corners and didn't realize what I did until the very end. Soooo I just turned the really bad side against the wall and figure no one will look at it except me and Michael. Plus, Gaius doesn't really care. Maybe if it gets to bothering me too much I could rip out all my seams and re-do it, but for now, I am ok with it not being perfect. :).
Here is is next to the window, if you look really close, you can see how the light fabric at the bottom doesn't quite line up.