Crazy Storm!

Like everyone else in AZ we got drenched with rain and hail on Wednesday. I was minding my own business cleaning my house and I heard the biggest explosion of thunder in my life! Then I heard what sounded like someone throwing rocks at my windows, I looked outside and it was hailing. I grabbed our camera and took two videos. One of the front of the house and the other in the backyard. You will be able to tell that we seriously need some rain gutters by the front door, and that our lovely backyard consists of dirt and our little tree. We just planted that tree on Saturday and I was so afraid that it was going to blow away but it held strong. You will also notice that everything we had on our back patio was blown over and drug around. Oh and don't mind my occasional narration, I kept getting pelted with hail...

Birthday Boy!

Wednesday was a very special day at our house, Banks turned 1!!! We celebrated by giving him a really big nasty meaty bone that was quite disgusting, but he sure enjoyed it. Don't worry we didn't forget about Diesel, he got one too! Although they each had their own bone, they insisted on arguing over the same one. I thought I would post some pictures of Banks' adventures over the past year so you can see him growing up. My baby is a big boy now, Diesel can no longer fit his head in his mouth, although he stills tries, and Banks can definitely hold his own when it comes to wrestling with his big brother. Banks is almost as tall as Diesel and although he doesn't quite meet his weight of 120lbs, he is a respectable 95lbs. I'm sure he is bound to get bigger, he seems to still be growing! Enjoy the pictures!

This is one of my favorite pictures of Banks, he was so small and cute!

Diesel giving Banks a good sniff when we first brought him home

I think Banks was a couple months old in this picture, Diesel was still not sure if he was ok with sharing me and Brandon with the little runt!

About 4 or 5 months old sleeping in bed with Daddy

Playing in the yard

Brandon was throwing a ball for him to chase

Taking a brake in the shade

Playing with Brandon in the front yard. This is his all time favorite thing to do. He will sit at the front door until Brandon takes him outside to play everyday

This was Diesel's face when we told him it was Banks' birthday and they were getting bones!

We stopped by the lake on our way home from a camping trip to let the dogs swim. Banks had never swam before so he was watching how his big brother did it

He took the leap of faith and instantly went under, I seriously had a heart attack and almost made Brandon jump in to save him! Luckily he popped up after a few seconds and was not a happy camper! He was flopping around like crazy trying to get back to land!

Their all time favorite thing to do together, sleep! For some reason, they like to sleep on my shoes, Brandon says it's because they love me more!

Banks sporting his graduation cap! He was the best in his obedience class and the youngest!

Just a Few Random Pictures of What We Have Been Up To!

So I thought I would post a few pictures of what we have been up to lately. Things have been a little crazy around our house with Brandon trying to finish taking out our wood floor, which is a ginormous job! I feel bad because I can't really help him seeing as we only have one giant jack hammer, and the fact that it weighs about 30 lbs. I mostly clean up the wood as he hammers it out, hopefully we can get the floor finished soon and put in the new floor. I'll post more pictures of the process as we go along. We recently bought an Artic Cat Prowler which is like a golf cart on steroids, it's a lot of fun to take out 4 wheeling and to take camping. We had the chance to take it up to Snowflake for the 4th of July and had a blast taking it out with his nephews, I'll get some pictures and post those too! The fish tank recently got a few more residents, a Blue Angel and a Queen Angel, they are awesome and so pretty! I'll post again soon!

This is the sun setting on the last ride we went on at Queen Valley

Brandon and I in front of the Prowler

This is Brandon cutting sections of the wood before he hammers it out!

The Queen Angel, which may be our new favorite fish!

The Blue Angel, he is about 10" long

The fish tank, or as I like to call it, Brandon's love child!

The fish tank is almost complete! The only thing that we have left to do is stain the canopy that Brandon made and make the bottom piece of the stand that covers all of the filtration. We also decided to change the tank from a fish only tank to a fish and coral tank, it makes the tank so much more interesting. Although we have found out that keeping corals is a LOT of WORK!! It amazes me how much goes into the tank to keep everything happy. I thought it would be fun to give everyone the specs of the tank so you can get an idea of just how big it really is!

Top tank: 300 gallons Tank dimensions: 1 1/2ft x 2ft x 8 ft
Bottom tank(filtration system): 125 gallons
Total rock in pounds: 400
Total sand in pounds: 500
Total fish: 25
Total coral: 30
Lighting: 2 400 watt Metal Halide lights and 1300 watts of LED lights (1,560 individual bulbs!)
Water movement: 7000 gallons an hour

That's not even everything, but I thought you might get a little bored with all the facts. Here are some recent pictures of what the tank looks like! Enjoy!

The tank with the metal halide lights hanging above in the boxes Brandon made for them. The LED's are hidden by the canopy

Here is the Black Tang which is one of Brandon's favorite fish


This is the Sohal Tang, he is really pretty but really mean to the other fish in the tank

This is a picture of a couple of corals and in the center is a rose tip anenome, which are rare.

Side view of the tank

And for some reason I posted this picture again!

I know, I know, I am the world's worst blogger!

Since it has been many monthe since I lasted posted anything on our blog, we have a lot to catch up on! To Brandon's credit he does bug me quite often to blog, but I am just not a blogger, I pormise I will try and be better. Lets start with a little post devoted to Diesel! For my Birthday in January my parents got us an awesome Sony video camera, which I love! I think it was a subtle hint to stop using my phone to take videos since you couldn't see a darn thing. Ok back to Diesel. I honestly think Diesel has a bit of OCD, something will catch his eye or rub him the wrong and he will become obsessed with whatever it is. Things to add to his list are: the Fed Ex truck that he has chased away from the house and down the street, a tire in the backyard that Brandon found for him to chew on, and last but not least cardboard boxes. We will focus on cardboard for this post, every time he glimpses cardboard of any kind he freaks out, zeros in on it, and goes into attack mode! We had a box that was on it's way to the garbage and Diesel spotted it before it made it outside, the poor box never stood a chance. So I grabbed our amazing camera and caught it on tape. You'll notice that Banks could give a darn about the box, all he is interested in is biting Diesel in some sensitive areas while he is busy showing the box whose boss! Enjoy and I promise to blog more!

I'm finally doing a new post!! We'll start with our Christmas tree!!

 It has been so long since I last posted an update on our blog, I'm sorry! I need to be better at keeping our blog up to date, I think I will make that one of my goals for this up coming year. The last two months have been very busy for Brandon and I, but I figured that I would start with how we spent out first Christmas together as a married couple. We will start with my quest to find us a fabulous Christmas tree! I bugged Brandon starting in November how we had to find a tree quickly before all of the good ones were taken! We had decided that we were going to look for a tree on Craigslist because we could get a much better deal on a bigger tree then if we bought one new from the store. So I began religiously searching every day on Craigslist for the perfect tree and every time I though I had found one Brandon either didn't like it or thought we could do better. All I wanted was a descent sized pre-lit tree and it seemed that everyone and their mother had the same idea! I finally wore Brandon down with my constant bugging that we had to find a tree soon or else there would be none left. I think my persistance paid off because he finally agreed on a tree that I had found! Needless to say I found quite a tree!! It was 9 feet tall, pre-lit with white lights, and extremely full!! We jumped in my car and headed out to pick it up. Once we got there we didn't really realize how large of a box was needed to store such a large tree and it was a miracle that we fit it into my little car! We got it home and picked out a spot that we thought it would look nice in and began taking it out of the box. As Brandon started putting the tree together we soon found out that the tree was not going to fit very well in the spot it was in, so we decided to move it into another room of our house. That was a big job! We tipped it onto it's side and each took an end and hauled it into the next room. It fit!! Well sort of, there was no room for a tree topper but that was ok with with me. We had so much fun decorating the tree although Brandon thought it was funny  that every ornament I had bought had glitter on it! I told him every girl loves glitter! Here are a couple of pictures of our fabulous tree all decorated for Christmas!! I have a lot more posts to put up and I promise I will get them done soon!!  

This was just the bottom piece of the tree and it was so huge! I was laughing so hard because you couldn't even see Brandon standing behind it!!

Brandon putting the second piece on and he could hardly reach the top!

Brandon finally gave in and got a chair to stand on because the top of the tree was so high up!! I think this was the point we both realized that the tree was not really going to look very good in this spot!

This is the ornament that my parents got us for our first Christmas together! I love it, it is so cute!

Our tree all decorated and lit! I loved how it turned out! One funny little side note, Diesel got confused by the fact that we had a tree in our house and decided he was going to stake his claim on it by peeing on part of the bottom! It's funny now, but at the time I was not too pleased with him, but who could blame him, he had to go and we conveniently placed a tree in the house for him!

Blowtorch Fires and Tug-Of-War!!

So since it was so cold today, I decided that it would be fun to have our first fire in our fireplace! So Brandon goes outside and grabs some wood and heads to the garage, which I think nothing of because he probably goes in there at least 20 times a day. In the meantime I head to the kitchen to grab the matches and as I am walking back to the fireplace, Brandon strolls on by with a blowtorch! I look down at my matches and think, "Silly me, apparently we light fires with blowtorches in this house!" So I thought I would take a few pictures and share them with everyone, sorry if they are a bit blurry, I snapped them really quick with my phone. Also the video below is of the dogs playing with one of Brandon's socks, which is their favorite thing to do. Banks gets really mad at Diesel when he won't give him enough attention. I also took this on my phone so I'm not too sure how it's going to look, and I have never put a video on the blog, so I hope I did it right. We'll see, I may have to go back and do it differently if it doesn't work. Enjoy! 

Diesel was mesmerized by the massive flames. Banks on the other hand decided he was going to go into his kennel to take a nap.

I still think doing it the old fashion way with some matched and newspaper works pretty good, but this way you get to enjoy the pretty colors!!

Diesel and Banks playing on the couch which they know is not allowed, but it's a bit hard to keep a combined weight of 150lbs off of something when they really want to be on it!!