LOTS of Changes…

I know I haven’t been very good at blogging lately, but in my defense…we’ve been kinda busy. We were finally able to close on our house about 2 weeks ago and I think its safe to say we are pretty much settled in. The dining room furniture is coming this weekend and I still need a mattress for one of the beds upstairs…but other than that, we’re pretty much done. I need to do curtains in the bedrooms and breakfast area and new seat covers for the kitchen chairs…but I haven’t really had time to fabric shop.

I finally got a job…the day before we closed on the house…great timing, huh? Cy-Fair ISD finally called me back and I am teaching World Geography (yes…thats 9th grade) at Cypress-Ridge High School. At first I was really hesitant about this and quite frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to it, but now that I have spent a week in inservice and have been working with my team for a week, I feel much better about things. I’m still nervous about switching subjects, but I know once I get going and get in my groove, I’ll be fine. My classroom is very slowly coming together. The rooms are alot smaller than what I’m used to in Bryan, so thats a big adjustment for me. The more I think about it, the more I’m leaninig towards a “less is more” mentality. This is partially due to my lack of time to decorate before school starts on Monday and also the fact that they don’t make neat posters for World Geography like they do for World History. I think I will just use posters on a day to day basis to show the kids if they apply to our lesson. I have quite a commute everyday…about 35-45 minutes every morning and afternoon…which sucks…but I’ll get over it. I have to get up about 5:00 every morning and my goal is to be at school by about 6:45 everyday. School starts here at 7:25…talk about NUTS! But getting out at 2:30 will be nice! We’ll see what this year holds…when I started teaching World History I wasn’t thrilled about it and I came to absolutely love it, so hopefully the same will hold true for World Geography.

Back to the house…we are absolutely loving it! We did some painting in the first couple of days and we are really happy with the new colors. The kitchen is green and the dining room and study are kinda an apricot-y (yes…i made that word up) color…its called toffee crunch. We are planning to paint our bedroom and bathroom in the coming months and that will probably be done in a shade of chocolate brown. All of our appliances are in and it has been so nice finally having a washer and dryer. We went a week without one and it was not easy! You know you’re getting old when you get excited about getting a new washer and dryer.

This is pretty much what we’ve been up to for the last few weeks. We went to Dallas last weekend for a wedding (Cortney’s…my friend since we were little kids). It was absolutely beautiful and so was she! After the wedding, we came home and went to the Astros game for Biggio’s jersey retirement ceremony…that was pretty stinkin’ awesome!

Thats all for now…I would put some pictures in here…but I can’t figure out how…we got a new version of our blogger thingy and I don’t have the patience to sit here and work on it…sorry.

The Weekend is Here!

Its been a long week, but I am happy to report that my hubby is completely 100% finished with his Master’s degree!  He finished classes and exams this morning and will walk in graduation in August.  I’m so proud of him for working so hard and finishing so quickly.  He gets to celebrate finishing school at the Astros/Red Sox game tonight with my cousin, Jeff and I am going to hang out with Alison & Ben.  We’ll celebrate for real after graduation in August.

Things are still going well with the house.  The major problems that the inspector found have been completed and a few really minor things we are going to complete with an allowance from the sellers.

Thats it for now…its about time to leave for our evening of fun.  Have a good weekend!

Still Waiting…but getting closer!

In our last post, we had just made an offer on a house.  It took just a couple of hours to reach an agreement on the sale price and the house was ours!  Everything has gone fairly smoothly since then.  The house was inspected today and no major problems were found.  The only things that were found were some issues with the roof, but because the house is so new, the builder should fix all of that without any issues.  I would love to post pictures of the house, but I need to wait until the house is 100%, totally OURS.  Right now, closing is still set for the end of July…and NO…I have not started packing.  For those of you that know me…you know that there is absolutely no possible way I can live with my house in boxes for the next 5 or 6 weeks.  The 10 boxes of stuff from my classroom are bad enough.  This will probably shock many of you…but I probably won’t even start packing until mid-July.  For goodness sakes…I’m home ALL DAY LONG…what else will I have to do?

I’m working on picking out paint colors for the house and I think I’ve settled on green for the kitchen & breakfast area and a shade of gold for the dining room.  I think the study, entry, and living room will probably stay the neutral khaki-ish color that it currently is.  For our bedroom…I may leave it the neutral khaki, but I think I’m leaning more in the direction of a slightly warmer tone.   As for the upstairs…gameroom, bedrooms, & bathroom…they are staying the color they are until we have a reason to paint them.  And that won’t be for a couple more years.  Sorry to let you down.

We are heading back to Beaumont for the weekend…yes…we were just there last weekend too.  Last weekend we went to the Yankees/Astros game and then spent Father’s Day with my family and now we are on our way back.  I’m leaving Thursday with my mom and we will spend most of Friday getting Monica’s house ready the bridal shower we are hosting there on Saturday.  My life-long friend is getting married in August and we are throwing her Beaumont shower on Saturday.  That afternoon we will go to a 3 year old’s birthday party and then Sunday we will hold family birthday parties for the month of June at Nana’s house.  Now that I think about it…I’m not sure that I have spent a single weekend at home since summer started.  Hah…oh well.

The only thing we are still waiting on for the house is final approval from the lender and I’m fairly certain they have every piece of financial information and documentation that the two of us have.  Oh and I’m still waiting on a job…keep praying please.

Happy Weekend ya’ll!

The Waiting Game…

Well I must say that alot has happened since my last post. School is finally over for the year and my first week of summer vacation was wonderful! I managed to get my classroom packed up and moved out and it only took me 9 boxes. How in the world did I manage to fill 9 boxes after only 2 years of teaching? Those 9 boxes have now added quite the decorative touch to our living room!

Summer vacation (for me) is in full swing. I started it off with a horribly long medical school graduation in honor of my cousin in Houston last Saturday. After the party, we headed to Beaumont for the week and just hung out with the family…it was so great to just relax. We didn’t do a whole lot, but it was a great week. Sunday we went to church at the beach with Nana & Papa and got to have Mama Teresa’s pizza afterwards! That afternoon we hauled dirt to level out the ground behind the house and then set up a big above ground swimming pool for the kids for the summer. It was HOT HOT HOT, but putting the pool up wasn’t that bad. Monday, my mom and I ran errands in Beaumont and went to Amelia’s softball game that night. After the game, my mom and I went to Monica’s house to help her do some redecorating and we didn’t get home until 3 AM! Coming home that late we had to be extremely quiet so the dogs didn’t go nuts when they heard us so it made me feel like some rebellious teenager sneaking into the house way past curfew or something! Tuesday we took Amelia and Harrison to Moody Gardens in Galveston to see the rainforest and aquarium. It was really pretty cool. Oh and of course we took a trip to the candy store on the strand…after all, you can’t go to Galveston without visiting the candy store. Wednesday we shopped with Monica for stuff for her house and Thursday my mom and I drove to Clear Lake to meet my dad at his police chiefs conference. Thursday night we drove to Galveston for dinner and then Friday morning my mom and I did some shopping and had lunch together at Lupe Tortillas. I came home Friday afternoon and man oh man was it great to be home. We enjoyed a great seafood dinner with Jeff and Katie and then a double date trip to Target! What can be better than that? In my opinion…it was a great way to start my summer vacation.

Poor Matt is kind of bachelor-ing it for the first part of the summer as I do all of my traveling. I’m home this week, but then off again next week with Becky and the kids out to Camp Bandina in the hill country. Man…its going to be a busy summer.

Now for the exciting part. As you probably already know, Matt and I are in the process of looking for and buying a house. So, Saturday morning we got up early and drove to Katy to look at houses with our real estate agent. We have been to Katy a couple of times before to look, but now that we are finally into the month of June, we are looking seriously. Both of us had pretty high hopes for Saturday’s search and we were successful! We found a house that we both really like and the price was right. After looking through everything on our list, it was still at the top, so we decided to test the waters and put in an offer. Its an aggressive offer, but it was a good place to start. Its a great house with a HUGE backyard! The house appears to be kinda boring because the entire house, inside and outside are the same color…neutral and boring. It needs LOTS OF COLOR…which I am ready to do! We are both kinda nervous and anxious to hear something.

And now…we wait.

VERY exciting news!

Well, its official…Matt and I have officially started house hunting! We are focusing our search in the Katy area of Houston and are really interested in some new construction that we have found in the Cinco Ranch and Seven Meadows areas. We are looking at both new construction in these areas and “used” houses. We are so very, very excited! We are looking for 3-4 bedrooms, hopefully a study/office, formal dining room and a relatively large, updated kitchen. One story, two story, we don’t really care and we would love to have a big yard, but unfortunately that seems to be too much to ask for in Houston. We are so excited to finally see the end to our renting days. We are beyond ready to have space, usable closets, a garage, a yard…more even more than all of that…we are ready to have something that is OURS. I am working on getting all of my stuff together to begin applying for jobs in school districts around Katy. Its all very exciting until I think about having to pack everything up again (in my house & classroom)…I absolutely HATE moving. Oh well…hopefully this will be the last time for quite a few years. Thats all from here, have a good week and happy Valentine’s Day!