Thanksgiving is always one of my favorite times of year. I mean, of course it is...it's all of my favorite things in one place...family, food, and football. This year we spent the holiday with the Shopoff family in Austin. We had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner(thanks to all of the awesome Shopoff cooks) followed by an even-better beating of the Aggies(sorry, Jeanie...but not really...ha!) Hook 'em horns! Here are some pictures from the trip!
Yes, the band did march off the field and leave their shoes
I love you!
I know...I know...it's late to still be talking about Independence Day but late is better than never, right? I've been meaning to get these pictures up but I just haven't done it.
Patrick and I had a great 4th of July this year because we got to spend the holiday with Patrick's brother and sister-in-law and our beautiful niece, Courtney. What a wonderful time! On Friday, we spent the day relaxing and catching up before we went to a BBQ at our friends' house. We had a yummy dinner and lots of fun chatting with everybody.
We then headed off to watch the Frisco fireworks show at Pizza Hut Park. What a show it was! Courtney had previously been very scared of fireworks, but this time she really seemed to enjoy them. She was very excited when she saw the pink ones because "pink is my paborite color"(she hasn't quite mastered the 'f' sound. Too cute!) The"pireworks" were gorgeous. Here's a few pictures of the night.
On Saturday, we enjoyed a nice brunch and then headed to the park. Even though it was still fairly early in the afternoon, it was already blazing hot. We enjoyed some time at the playground before heading home for some rest and cold water. After resting a while, we decided to take Courtney to the Dallas World Aquarium(if you haven't been, you should go...love that place!). She was so excited and kept saying that she wanted to find a "pink pish because pink is her paborite color". How adorable is that! Here are some pictures of our adventures at the park and the aquarium. Thanks for coming to visit us Michael, Christie, and Courtney!
I know that it has been FOREVER since my last post and I apologize. Patrick and I have been so busy ever since moving into our new house in March. It seems that every weekend is another project...
I wanted to give you a few updates on what's been going on. First of all, we tiled our guest bathroom(with help from my awesome Uncle Terry) and it looks GREAT! Unfortunately, I don't have the "before" pictures because they are on Terry's camera. I do have the "after" pictures for you to admire. Before you do though, you have to imagine a dingy, yellow-tinted linoleum floor on the bathroom(do you have an ugly picture in your head yet?) Now, look at this improvement...
Now that the tile in the guest bathroom is completed, it's time for us to tile our master bathroom and the laundry room(more weekend projects!) I know it's going to look great in the end and be well worth all of the hard work. Thanks, Uncle Terry!
In the midst of all of this hard work, Patrick and I took an evening for ourselves to celebrate our FIRST ANNIVERSARY! I know what you're thinking...what?! Already?! Us too! The year has flown by and what a great one it has been! Here's a look back on some highlights that happened in our first year of marriage(I'm sure I'll forget lots of stuff...sorry)...
- June 2nd, 2007 - We got married
- June 4th-10th, 2007 - We honeymooned in Vancouver...GORGEOUS!
- July 7th, 2007 - What a day! Shopoff family adds one when Heather marries Kevin AND McHam family adds one when Ashley marries Justin
- August 27th, 2007 - Jessica starts her new job as a 1st grade teacher in Frisco ISD
- November 29th-December 2nd 2007 - We visit grad schools in Georgia to check out the idea of moving there
- December 15th, 2007 - Shopoff family adds ANOTHER when Jeanie marries Brien
- December 22nd, 2007 - McHam family adds ANOTHER when Casey marries Josh
- February 2008 - We decide not to go to Georgia and start looking around at houses
- March 12th, 2008 - We close on our first home!
- June 2nd, 2008 - We celebrate our 1st anniversary!
As you can see, we spent much of our year at other people's weddings and wedding showers...ha! What a special year it was for both of our families! Here's a picture of us on our anniversary...
Some of you may remember back to when I posted a few months ago about discovering baby bunnies in our yard, and now we have discovered more wildlife. Under our front patio, some birds have created a nest and now it is full of baby birdies. Patrick laughs at me but sometimes I'll stand in the front entrance and look through the window and watch them. They're so interesting to me! I even decided to take some pictures...here are a few.
Now that you've gotten the random updates from the past few months, hopefully we can stay a little more up-to-date. Since it's summer, I have a little more time to sit around and work on this. Speaking of summer, I should probably go enjoy some of it before it flies by...
Last weekend, we decided to take a break from the weekend house-projects and spend a weekend camping in Beavers Bend State Park near Broken Bow, Oklahoma. What a great time! The area is really beautiful and the weather was wonderful. It was nice to spend time in God's creation and be reminded of his awesomeness. This was the first time that we have been camping since we got Kaiko, so we decided to test her out with the camping thing. Even she enjoyed it! She slept great in the tent, went hiking with us, and was friendly to all of the other campers. We did find out what kind of guard dog she is though...in that she isn't one at all. Raccoons decided to try to invade one of our tubs of food in the middle of the night. Was she the one who alerted us to the raiding critters? No. She just kept right on sleeping. When I got up and discovered what the noises were, was she the one to get out and chase them away? No. She looked up for a second before returning to her deep sleep. Ha! Oh well...it was a great time anyway. Here are some of the pictures.
I know that these pictures are long overdue, and many of you have been begging for me to get them up here. Well...you will be at least partly happy, because I am finally getting some up.
First, you should hear the story of our house hunting adventure. Patrick and I have been talking about buying a house for a few months now. We decided that we would try to move into a house after our lease is up in May. We figured that we should start looking a few months ahead of time to be sure that everything was finalized before our lease ended. We drove around on our own for a few weekends in February looking at different neighborhoods and areas trying to get an idea of where we wanted to be.
We decided to go ahead and get a realtor to begin showing us places, because we had no idea how long it might take us to find "the house". I was really worried about being able to find a good realtor so I began to ask around at school for recommendations. One of the teachers across the hall pointed us toward Katherine. I called her one afternoon and just told her what we were looking for and gave her the addresses of a few properties we were looking at. From the very beginning, she was just absolutely incredible! She answered all of our questions and told us she would meet with us on Saturday to start looking at houses.
So we met with her on Saturday, February 16th, and we spent the ENTIRE day looking at houses. After looking at more than 10 properties, we had found a few that we "decent" but none that we absolutely loved. Katherine told us to go home, look online for more properties, and call her on Sunday. We called her the next day, and again we spent the day out looking at more houses. We found one house that didn't have any "negatives" to it, but it wasn't just amazing either. Katherine told us, "This is your first home. You have to love it!" We talked that night and realized that we didn't love it, but it was the closest to what we were looking for. I decided to look for more houses in that neighborhood. I got online and began hunting. I came across another house in the neighborhood that was a lot bigger and seemed to be a better layout. Patrick told me to go with Katherine on Monday(I had the day off) to look at the house.
Monday I showed up to the house and Katherine had already been looking through the house for a few minutes. She met me at the door and said, "This could be it!" I wasn't convinced until I walked inside. Sure enough, it had everything we wanted. It had an office, very open floorplan, large master bedroom and bathroom, great kitchen, and a decent backyard for Kaiko. It even had an added bonus, a gameroom upstairs! I was immediately convinced that this was the house. I LOVED it! I called Patrick and told him to meet us at the house after he got off work.
Patrick met us at the house and after he walked through, he said, "Alright. Let's make an offer." We both agreed...this was what we were looking for. We met on Wednesday(remember this is only 4 days after we started our real "house hunt") and put in an offer. On Thursday, we negotiated a bit and our offer was finally accepted. We closed on March 12th, the week before my Spring Break. We figured we would be able to paint, get some work done, and move in over my break.
It was a crazy week of very hard work! I painted all of the baseboards in the house, which doesn't seem too terribly bad until you consider that if you paint the baseboards, you have to paint the doorframes and if you paint the doorframes, you have to paint the doors. It quickly grew into a huge project! It was well-worth the work, because it really did make a big difference. We also painted the master bedroom(twice after we had a paint color disaster the first time) and the guestroom. I couldn't have done all of the painting without my mom and dad here to help! We also did some yard work, fixed some of the fence(thanks, Dad!), and some cleaning. All in all, it was a rewarding week after the work was done.
Next came moving day, April 22nd. It was the most amazing move I've ever experienced! Within four hours, we had...everything loaded into the truck at the apartment, everything unloaded into the house, beds put together, and washer and dryer hooked up. It was quite impressive! I owe it all to Patrick's parents, my parents, my uncle and the awesome help that he brought along. THANK YOU!!! Of course, it didn't hurt that I was my organized self and had everything perfectly color-coded and mapped out. ha!
So, we are happily settling into our new house now. We have successfully completed our first major home-improvement project, a trash drawer replacing one of our kitchen cabinets(I say major because it took major work and two weekends to complete) but it does work now! We are still decorating and unpacking the last of the boxes, but I know that will go on for quite a while.
Here are a few pictures of our house, and a few pictures of us working on the house. Once everything is really decorated and together, I'll add more pics of the inside. Enjoy!
The front...it'll look much better with some yardwork!
Living room...painting baseboards
Master bedroom...pre-paint
Master bedroom...post-paint
Mom painting the guestroom
I know...it looks like we were painting ourselves.Some of it really did go on the wall, I promise!
The boys...resting after all of the moving.
We found a nest of baby bunnies in our yard while we werepulling weeds. There were probably 5 or 6 in that hole. Cute!
Our neighborhood parkOkay, so I'll be the first to admit that Texas weather is usually a little weird and always unpredictable. But this week's weather has been the epitome of weird and unpredictable!
On Monday, it was very rainy and cloudy or as we call it in my classroom "icky". Monday night, the rain turned into snow, and we awoke to a snowy morning on Tuesday. Thankfully the roads were okay so it was school as usual, or atleast as usual as it can be when you have twenty-one Texan 7-year-olds who never see snow. ha! We took the students out to play in the snow for a few minutes and by afternoon it was gone. Wednesday it was back up to about 60 degrees again, and we took the kids out for extra recess to enjoy the beautiful day. When I got to school on Thursday, I could tell it was going to be another "icky" day. It rained all morning, sleeted through lunchtime, and by afternoon there were GIANT snowflakes falling at a rapid speed. We all left school as early as possible to get home before the storm got worse. When I was driving home, the blowing snow was coming down so hard that I couldn't see the white lines in the road. It was nuts! Thankfully, my school district called last night(Thursday) and decided we would have a 2-hour delayed start today. It was super nice to sleep in a bit. I think I could get used to a late-morning start!
Of course, now as I sit here 12 hours later, the only evidence that there was ever any snow are the few melting snowmen leaning over in the yards of children everywhere. Well...I guess that is Texas weather for you! Here are some pictures of the winter wonderland!
