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!
Well...it looks like we are getting a house! It has all happened so fast that many of you may not have even known that we were house-hunting. My head is still spinning! We started looking at houses with our realtor on Saturday and by Wednesday we had made an offer on the one that we absolutely love. The offer has been accepted, and now all that is left is to get the inspection complete on Monday afternoon. If all goes well, we will be closing on March 12th and moving in on March 22nd! Here is a picture of the house, and I'll post plenty more soon!
What a joyous time it was for us as Patrick and I were able to enjoy our first Christmas together as a family! It was a wonderful one!
We started out spending the weekend before Christmas with my family in Andrews. We ate a Christmas dinner with my parents and my sister before tearing into all of the presents. It was a great time. After our "Christmas" we decided to go to the movie theater to watch National Treasure 2. It is a very good movie, and if you haven't seen it you should!
On Christmas Eve, we headed back home so that we could have our very own Christmas celebration on Christmas Day. We had a great day. We slept late, ate another Christmas meal, and opened presents. Even Kaiko enjoyed that part. She loved digging into her stocking full of goodies from "Santa". (Yes, she is 28 in doggy years and she still believes in Santa...Shhhh)
Patrick worked throughout the rest of the week before we headed to Austin to have Christmas with his family over the New Year's weekend. It was good to spend time with everybody again. We even got to see Brien and Jeanie and hear all about their honeymoon trip to South Africa! We were bummed that Michael, Christie, and Courtney didn't make it, but we had a great family Christmas. Once again, we ate a Christmas meal and opened presents. Wow! How blessed are we to have so many great family meals over the holidays!
capture a Christmas card picture with Kaiko"
This is our Christmas Card picture after
giving up on Kaiko being included.
Opening presents!
For quite a while now, Patrick and I have been discussing the possibility of moving to Georgia for me to go to grad school. We both love the beautiful state of Georgia, the University of Georgia has an amazing Instructional Design and Development master's degree, and we figure that if we want to be adventurous and try something new, now is the time.
This past weekend, we had the opportunity to visit Georgia to check out grad schools there. We spent a day in Atlanta and checked out Georgia Tech before heading to Athens to check out UGA. It was a great weekend, despite a few transportation problems in the beginning(we missed our flight out of DFW and had to wait on standby).
We really enjoyed the time we spent in Athens. It's a very neat city. It's small(only about 100,000 people--I know some of you will laugh that I think 100,000 is small but when you are comparing to Dallas, it is) but because it is a college town, it is full of things to do. The downtown area is amazing--tons of restaurants, shops, and places to hang out. Even better than that, downtown is located across the street(literally) from the UGA campus. I would be able to walk there after class! Athens has also been voted the #1 College Music Town because of all of the live music. Every day of the week, there is music somewhere. We really enjoyed being there, but the logistics of both of us getting jobs in a smaller city cause a slight hesitation with moving there. We'll just keep praying and see where God takes us!
While in Georgia, we also got to spend time in Atlanta. While we enjoyed the tour at Georgia Tech, I just don't think that the program is exactly what I am looking for. In Atlanta, we were able to visit the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. It was pretty amazing! Part of it reminded me of the aquarium in Japan that we visited while we were there. These aquariums are just so large!! We also walked through Olympic Park and took pictures in front of the Coca Cola Museum before catching our flight home. Overall, the trip was a success. We had a great time, and though we don't know much more about where we will be in the next year, we do know that God will open up doors for us.
Georgia Tech Tower
Georgia Tech's Football Stadium in the midst of bustling downtown Atlanta
University of Georgia Arch -- pillars stand for wisdom, justice, and moderation
Herty Field -- home to the first collegiate football game held in the state of Georgia
View of Downtown Athens from campus
(Puffy had to visit his Penguin cousins, of course!)
Olympic Park
