Shop Till I Drop

I'm driving to Houston tomorrow to go to the...


Whoohoo! I love going to the Nutcracker Market and shopping till I drop (literally). My mom and I end up shopping from 10am to around 6pm straight with a short break to eat a lunch brought from home. My feet get sooo sore and tired but it is totally worth every aching step to see the convention center filled with a glorious array of Christmas gifts and home decor items. Hopefully I'll find a few Christmas gifts to mark off my list. Happy shopping!

Busy, Busy, Busy

The past couple months have flown by! Michael and I closed on our first home in September and moved in a couple days later. Things haven't slowed down since. We're loving our new home and all the extra space we have to spread out. It's a welcome change, might I add, that we have a house now. We've spent the last 4 1/2 years in an apartment while Michael finished up school and during those years we ached for a home of our own. God has greatly blessed us in giving us a wonderful home and fantastic neighbors.

I'm now working on decorating which is fun but completely overwhelming. My house is a blank slate for all the decorating ideas I have rattling around in my head and what do I do?...I freeze, go blank, crumble. I guess it's like that ol' elephant my dad always used to tell me about...take it in small chunks. I'll get there eventually but it sure would be nice if I could get over my fear of hanging things on the walls. I've been reading a few blogs on home decor to inspire me. I love Nesting Place and all the neat ideas of no-sew curtains and more. This woman can do wonders with a hot glue gun!

Speaking of new home stuff. Since we've never owned a home we've never lived in a neighborhood (except when we were growing up of course). Since we've never lived in a neighborhood of our own we've never noticed people who decorate their homes for Halloween. This October we were AMAZED at all the people in our neighborhood that decorate their homes and yards with spiders, zombies, caskets (yes, I said caskets), and the like. I was totally blown away by one house that had spiders that were at least 3ft by 3ft crawling up their house and caskets in their yard. There must have been 6 or 7 spiders. There was one house, though, that took the cake for the most ridiculously decorated yard. This house had 9 of those inflatable yard characters along with what seemed like 10 pumpkins sitting on 4 bales of hay. Come on, do we really need 9 inflatable yard characters lined up side by side around the front and side of a corner lot? It completely amazed me. Now I'm just wondering what Christmas will be like. I hope we're not going to be dragged along into "keeping up with the Jones'". Supposedly a couple of our neighbors are making gigantic candy canes for each of the houses on our street (there are only 7 houses on our street). I'm still pondering outside lights and if I want us to go to the trouble of putting them up. We'll see as it gets closer.

Catch Up

Wow! So much has happened in the last month which has kept both of us so busy I haven't had time to write. Where should I start? I guess I'll just hit on the major points like our 4th wedding anniversary and buying a new house. Yes, you heard me. We celebrated our anniversary AND bought a house.

Our 4th wedding anniversary was July 10th. Michael had the day off work so while I was working at my home office he surprised me with a beautiful flower arrangement, a balloon, and some chocolate covered strawberries. He was so sweet to take the time to pick out the flowers and the vase and have the florist put the arrangement together. What a thoughtful man! I took July 11 off from work and we went to Granbury, TX for the day to shop around the historic town square. We had a great time together just strolling along the sidewalk and popping into stores.

After I finished with work Michael took me to dinner at an Italian restaurant we had never been to. The food was good and because it was our anniversary the waiter brought a free dessert. It was funny, though, when we were seated at our table and noticed that ALL the people at the other tables had white hair. We laughed to ourselves because we figured we must have looked out of place being as young as we are. Oh well, we didn't care. The food was good and the atmosphere was very quiet (no young kids or babies) which made for a romantic evening.

Our lease is up at our apartment the middle of October so toward the end of July we figured it was time to start finding a realtor and begin the house hunting process. A friend recommended a realtor so we set up a meeting with her to "feel her out" and then we decided to have her be our realtor. She set us up with a website that posted available houses in our market and price range as they came available to help us in our hunt. Michael and I spent many nights going through hundreds of house listings before we narrowed our options to around 12 homes. We set up an appointment with our realtor to look at the houses a couple weekends ago and after exhausting the 12 or so homes we figured we'd have to begin the process again with web searches because none but 2 houses we saw that day appealed to us. That's when our realtor decided to show us some new home communities we didn't know of. She took us to the cutest neighborhood of Cape Cod style houses which we fell in love with. There was a spec home that was in the process of being built and we liked the floor plan. So, we're buying the spec home and it is scheduled to be completed August 26th. We found the house just at the right time, too, because it's at the stage where we can still pick out some things like carpet, tile, etc. while still getting the house at the spec home price. Michael and I went to their design center this past Monday and picked out the carpet and extended the tile to all rooms except for the bedrooms. We're so excited! We truly feel that God led us to this house at the right time and that He is opening all the doors for us to walk through.

Now, on to buying the refrigerator, lawn equipment, etc. Poor, poor credit card.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Test #2: PASSED!!!!!

It's official! Michael is now a licensed pharmacist! He will begin working at his own pharmacy soon instead of with another pharmacist. We are both very excited!

Test #1: PASSED

I just ran to the mailbox to check and see if the results of the first part of Michael's board exam came and it did...he passed!

Now we're just waiting on the results of the second part which we should hopefully know by the end of this week.

iMac

Michael and I finally bit the bullet and bought a new computer.  So, I am now blogging on our new iMac.  Isn't it beautiful?

I still have so much to learn about Apple computers since I didn't grow up with an Apple but I'm getting there with Michael's help.

Pencils down

Michael finished taking the last of his licensing exams on Monday. He said it was very tough but I'm sure he passed. Now we just have to wait for the results. Thank you to everyone who was praying for him and for following up on the results.

Our anniversary is Thursday so we're planning a nice meal out and then Michael and I are taking off work on Friday for a trip to Granbury, TX. I've been wanting to go to Granbury for a long time and Michael and I are finally getting to go. From what Michael tells me it's a cute town with a historic square that has tons of cute shops. I can't wait! This will be a nice get-away from our usual routine of work/study/testing even if it's not a get-away to a far off place. On second thought, if anyone wants to chip into the "Send Michael and Katie on a fantastic vacation to Tennessee" fund we would be more than happy to accept donations! Hahahaha!