Halloween

Okay, it's nearly Thanksgiving, but I'm a little busy. Anyway, we hosted the fourth (I think) Halloween at our house this year. Those of you who know me know that I LOVE halloween and Eric HATES halloween, at least the dressing up aspect. He's a good guy though and humors his wife. We had over my sister Becky and her family and my cousin Annie and her family. We ate Pizza, went Trick or treating and got rained on a lot! I was impressed with Linday and Alycia because they were diehards. We had dropouts as the adventure went on, but Alycia especially was fine being went and cold as long as she got candy and was told she was cute. A girl after my own heart! Anyway, here are the two of us as Princesses on Halloween. You can see Bryce dressed as Hary Potter in the background with the evil wand that kept poking every one! Annie finally confiscated it until it learned it's manners. :-)

Happy Belated Halloween!

Nellie and Eric

Winston, our 23 year old

I can't post about the furry kids without posting about our oldest and biggest kid, Winston. Winston is our quarter horse and he is my "therapy". when I have bad days I go out to Winston and feel so much better afterward. He is a very sweet, very large, retired quarter horse.

He has this thing he does that I think is so adorable. When he gets excited he does this little dance with his front feet. I wanted to capture it because I am a dork and I think it is cute. Humor me :-).

So here is Winston and his impatient treat dance, sorry it is sideways, I can't get it to flip back up. Grr...

Our Kooky Cats

Okay, so I realize that we are the crazy cat people for posting this, but I have some pretty cute pictures of our crazy cats and what they do.

For starters, Let me introduce you. First came Jinx, she's a Norweigian Forest Cat that we got shortly after we lost Lily. She had followed one of the primary presidency's kids home and she was a really cute kitten so I brought her home and Eric said I could keep her, actualy he just never told me to give her back so..... here she is! She is a large breed cat and so she is perfectly healthy at 15 - 20 pounds.

Maybe not her most flattering picture, but you get the idea...

Well after awhile we realized that Jinx was not a cuddle cat, she sits across the room and stares at you, that's her form of cuddling. I somehow convinced Eric last year that he wanted his own cat and it should be a cuddle cat. We found a rescue group and went to see who they had. Eric fell in love with this little white fluffball that was sleeping in his litterbox. Eric decided any cat that liked his litter box that much would be a good cat. Here's Caesar....

As you may have figured out, they are really active.

They typically play well together, though in the beginning it was a little rough. Jinx used to sit on baby Caesar and she's so big that he would disapear except for one twitching leg or a little bit of tail. We rescued him a lot.

Lately with halloween coming I have been sewing costumes for me and for family. My cats love to sew. It is cute for the first five minutes, but they after lining up the pattern for the fifteenth time to cut it out, Caesar comes flying out of nowhere skidding across the material and eats the pattern. It's cute, but very annoying!

Jinx is typically content to sit and watch. Unfortunately that is usually on top of whatever you are trying to cut out. She thinks she is helping. Nice eh?

Well the cosutmes come out fine so I don't mind the extra paws to "help" out. Practice for kids maybe.

We have a kitty jungle gym that we inheirited from Maggie, and the cats love to climb up to the top, but the other day while I was working in the kitchen I heard some growling so I went to investigate and this is what I had found.

We had our very own kitty totem pole. Jinx had somehow wedged herself into the little hole and was growling because Casesar had jumped on top and was smacking her on the head while she was stuck. How rude right? I love how she is spilling out the front of the hole, so cute.

Finally just a picture of Caesar and I doing homework. He loves to "help" me with my homework all the time. He prefers math to pychology because there are more papers and books to lay on.

After all how can you say no to a face like this?

From Garden Patrol to homework our cats are kooky, but they are family.

Our visit to Idaho

Okay, so I am a little behind in posts, but I didn't want to write about a visit to the Curtis side without a blog about a visit to the Neves side. Over the summer we went to Idaho to visit Eric's family as well and did an early first birthday for Westley since we knew we wouldn't be able to get away for his ture birthday. We got to run into Paul and Suzy and thier twins while we were there, Lizzy and Lucy (isn't that cute?). After a really long trip getting there, the car decided to have issues in Reno and we had to turn around, we were happy to be with family finally. We played a lot of hand an foot, a really fun game Eric likes to call goofy other names like Ankle and Elbow, or Fingers and Toes. We also played Rummicube which is Lori's new favorite and was pretty fun. It was great to see everyone and be around family, especially nice to Eric to be with family. Westley is getting so big and Eric spent most of his time with his nephew. We both think that Carson actually grew, and Dalton is dating girls now! When do these boys have time to grow up? We can't wait for thanksgiving when we'll go up again!

Happy Birthday Lily!

It was our daughter's three year birthday today. What do you get an angel for her birthday? We went to the temple and spent our evening were we could get closest to her. We also found out an interesting fact. October 15th is our Lily's birthday and we also found out that it is also the official day of "Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day" and has been since 1988, who knew? Had to laugh that our little angel had me in labor for 11 hours before she came which put her right over the line of midnight. She just had to be born on her very own national remembrance day. She's as bad as her grandma Neves who says that because she was born on July 4th, people shoot fireworks for in her honor. Well anyway, I'll list a link for those of you who may be interested, or just plain think I'm making it up. :-). http://www.october15th.com/. Anyway, another year passed and we're still here. We miss her, love her and mostly are very proud of her.

Love to all!
Neves Family

Trip to Bonner's Ferry

A few weeks ago I went to visit my mom and dad in Bonner's Ferry Idaho. Bonner's is about 30 miles from the Canadian border in the panhandle of Idaho. I was there for about 4 days and it was fabulous. For those who have been waiting for me to visit I am afraid that my summer time off, went to my mom. Thankfully you all love her too much to be too mad at me!

This is the big flag that is in the center of Bonner's. This picture doesn't do it justice. It is really quite fabulous!
These are some fawns that were snacking on mom and dad's front lawn. Apparently that is a pretty common occurance. They were very cute. No wonder dad loves it so much up there. There's wildlife in the front yard all the time.
Dad was showing me around the town and Rita and I were in back trying to entertain ourselves.

Dad with a map.... yikes.
This is a view of the valley at Bonner's. It is really pretty.

Mom and I went looking at antique and second hand stores for fun. I found these fabulous dresses. They were very Nancy Reagan and Jackie Kennedy. The one above has a really cute jacket that is hard to see, but it is so cute.
This was my favorite. I loved the band around the center and the detailed eyelet lace at the bottom. So very cute!
I didn't get all of this dress in the shot and the picture is blurred, but take my word for it, it was very nice.

Mom and I had a fabulous time cooking while I was there. Everything from blueberry scones (with fresh blueberries) to enchiladas, to the most incredible chinese feast I have ever made. The dishes from that are shown below. We made orange chicken, fried rice, chow mein, fried wontons and egg rolls. It was so very good!

Mom, Dad, Rita and I went sightseeing and then to a restaurant that was way back in the middle of nowhere. Really pretty though. There was this waterfall behind the restaurant.

On the way home there was such a fabulous sunset that went on and on. Here are some of my favorite pictures.

I loved this shot of the flag at night, gorgeous!

Here are some pictures of mom and dad's house. It is really cute and fun.

All in all it was a really fun trip. We had so much fun and I can't wait to go back again!!

What I do with my time

For those who haven't seen, or had much connection with therapeutic riding it is my life these days. Channel Six, KVIE, decided to do a spot on the center I work at. I wanted to share it with all of you because it is really special to me. I think they did a really great job. I managed to not be in a single shot, yea me!! Though some may recognize my sister Sariah who is teaching in the lessons. For all those who feel like I don't keep in touch, or I never visit, this is why, I live and breathe Saddle Pals, and I love it for what these kids and the volunteers I work with teach me.

Check it out.

http://www.californiaheartland.org/video/909_3_saddle_pals.htm

Love to all!

Nellie

Blank Page, Big Pressure

Well, we're finally breaking down. We've joined Myspace, Facebook, and now finally we are creating a blog for our family. Deep breath, it'll be okay! Background on Eric and I... We're both born and bred Californians, Pretty much grew up in the Sacramento Valley. We met six years ago through our good friend Jared Willis. I thought Eric was drop dead gorgeous, but really had a chip on my shoulder when it came to men and dating (I really wanted to graduate college before I got involved with someone), and Eric apparently though I was pretty confident and sassy which I guess was a good thing. However, he was anti dating as well. We stayed good friends for awhile, though as we both looked back on things we both realized early on there were some pretty strong feelings that we both ignored. Finally, while I came home from BYU-Idaho on Winter break we went on our first date, his Christmas dinner and then to play Lego's back at his house afterwards. I thought it was awesome! We hung out for the whole break until that fateful day of January 1 2003 when we went sledding. We went with Jared, his brother Clint, and their cousin Candace. Eric sledded down the hill first, and then Candace, then I went. Unfortunately, I swerved just enough to jam my foot between two boulders that were coming out of the snow. My foot stayed wedged as I flew from the sled, twisted and fell on the opposite side of the boulders. Eric was determined that I had sprained my ankle and was being a baby. I was determined not to cry in front of my guy friends so I screamed a lot instead. The boys pulled me from the mountain and when I finally was home again I knew it was totally busted. I ended up cracking my ankle on the diagonal for six inches, which was mended with a plate, and then crushed the other side which was repaired with screws. From there it was pretty much history. I never made it back to BYU-I at least not until I was picking up my stuff because I was getting married. We were married in the LDS Temple in Oakland on June 21 2003. Since then we've done a lot and gone through a lot. We lived in a dinky apartment, lived in a huge house, and bought a first house. On October 15 2005 we were blessed with a little girl named Lily Lynn. She was only with us for 45minutes since she was born prematurely at 24 weeks. She is our little angel and we both miss her and look forward to seeing her in heaven one day. December of 2005 we adopted our first kitten, Jinx, a Norwegian forest cat, which basically translates to one BIG cat. She is 18 pounds and the vet says she is perfect weight, though Eric lovingly calls her "Princess O'Plenty". I'm not sure she loves it... Last June we adopted our second kitten, Caesar, a Blue point Siamese Rag doll cross. Because of his Rag doll genes he is also a pretty big cat, though he is much more slender than Jinx. Finally last August we adopted an American Quarter horse named Winston to round out our funny little family.

Right now we work a lot. Both Eric and I are total workaholics! Eric is working for EMCI a commercial air conditioning company as a lead installation technician. Basically, the way I understand it, he is responsible for making sure that his team gets everything wired, balanced and calibrated on these amazingly large machines. He tries to explain it to me but I am not as smart as he is! I am working as a volunteer coordinator at a therapeutic center in Orangevale. I love it! I am responsible for coordinating about 150 people every week. It is a challenge but I love my job. I do work in a barn and that can be physically draining, but I also get to ride whenever I want so that is fun. I am also in school again, finally, after taking four years off. I am finishing my associates degree in psychology by Jan 2010. It is VERY slow going because I can only take so many classes while working full time. It is about 1 semester a year. When I get my associates I will transfer to a 4 year university for my bachelor's. Eric in the meantime is very supportive and sweet. He walked me very slowly through my math class this last semester, I couldn't have done it without him.

We've been trying to have fun lately too. I have been working towards showing my retired horse Winston in Western Pleasure at some local shows, and Eric is getting back into golf and loving it. We spend free weekends at the ocean whenever we can, and visit Eric's family in Idaho whenever possible.

Well, I never was accused of being short on words. I hope this is the first of many post! Love to all!