TGIF ^ 45868

Weekend,

You could not have come any sooner.  Actually, you could have.  Like about 3 days ago.

This weekend I plan to:
- unpack
- clean
- organize
- celebrate Mark's birthday (a little more)
- hang out with friends
- do some homework (sigh)
- be outside and soak up this weather
- sleep late

xoxo

31 and counting

Hubs turned 31 yesterday!  We celebrated with a little shopping and a dinner at Corner Bakery.  He wanted new running shoes, so we hit up some stores and he walked out with a shiny new pair.  I was prepared to take him somewhere fun and fancy for dinner, but he said he'd rather go out this weekend, when we aren't so darn tired.  So we rented Hangover 2 instead, which we still hadn't seen.  We started it around 9:30... so I of course promptly fell asleep.  I remember waking up at one point and seeing the little Asian guy with them and saying, "wait I thought he was dead..." and then fell asleep again.  Oh well.

I felt bad about Mark's birthday this year because I didn't really have time to plan for it.  Ryan's wedding the week before and all the craziness madness with moving (I couldn't even find a gift bag to wrap his gift in, much less wrapping paper), so I decided to go all out on the birthday cake to make up for it.  Mark LOVES peanut butter, so when I found a recipe for a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup cake on Pinterest, I knew I had to tackle it.  And tackle it I did!  It took me almost two hours, start to finish.  But I am glad to say it turned out pretty tasty!

The birthday boy with his new tool belt, the cake I slaved over, flowers from our new neighbors, a peeking Goose Cat

Whirlwind of a Weekend

My brother got married!  It was a perfect weekend at Horseshoe Bay Resort in Marble Falls.  The weather could not have been better if we had somehow had the power to control it ourselves.  Sunny and 82 degrees all weekend - my only regret was that there weren't more hours to sit by the pool and soak up some sun, cause I could sure use a little tan on my skin!

This week is going to be cra-zy.  I have some homework assignments due, Mark's birthday is tomorrow, my friend from Phoenix is home visiting Dallas, I have dinner with my favorite girls on Wednesday, and I have to go to Denton on Thursday night to take a practice exam for my teaching certification.  Plus, you know, I have to go to work and do the jobs of three people in an office of one and try to squeeze in teaching observation hours.  I need 30 this semester and I think so far I have... four.  I have a feeling the race between now and the end of May is going to fly.

Adventures in Unpacking

When I think about it, I have pretty much been moving or in transition since 2001, when I graduated from high school.  I moved every year in college: from the dorm, to my parents' house, to my sorority house, back to my parents' house, back to the sorority house, back to my parents' house again, back to the sorority house again, to a summer house in Austin, and finally... one more spin in the sorority house before I graduated in 2005 (Hey, rent is pricey in Austin and those Delta Gammas were giving me a deal I could not pass up.)  So after those nine moves in four short years, I entered the "real world" and rented my first apartment.  I lived in uptown for almost two years, then moved to Addison for a few years to save money on rent.  When Mark and I got engaged, I moved into my aunt and uncle's house (empty nesters with a big house and an upstairs that was rent free) for six months and then.... finally.... moved into Mark's house in McKinney in 2010.  We always knew we'd only stay in McKinney for a year or two, so that means for the past eleven and a half years, I've bounced around to places I knew were only temporary --- never intending to stay for more than a year or two.

Whew.  That means my stuff has moved around a lot.  I'm pretty clean and organized, but there are definitely a couple boxes that have been following me around for years, never really getting unpacked.  Take for example, the three shoeboxes labeled "make-up." Now that we've moved into this house, I feel like I am finally in a place where I can settle in and find a place for everything.  No more cardboard boxes stuffed in the tops of closets until I have a place with enough room for them.  So I tackled those make-up boxes this evening.  I threw away a lot - I don't know why I feel the need to hang on to half-empty, three year old mascara tubes.  But I kept finding more and more and more nail polish bottles.  When I had gone through all the boxes, I counted up all the nail polish.  I went outside to ask Mark (mowing the yard again, duh) how many bottles of nail polish he thought I owned.

His guess? 32.  I told him to add 42.  Yup, I have 74 bottles of nail polish.

His response?  That I should start painting my own nails from now own. Sigh. He does have a point.

75229

Three weeks ago, we officially became the owners of this little gem:

Our new home!  I just had to check the calendar to see how long we have in fact been living here, and I can't believe it's already been three weeks!  It feels more like it's only been a week or so.  In those 21 days, we have already had five overnight guests, with numbers six and seven arriving tomorrow.  So I have washed the guest sheets four times already!  Last week, we got new gutters installed on the back of the house.  Two nights ago, we got some torrential rain for a good 12 hours straight.  I found Mark standing outside in the dark with an umbrella, just admiring the gutters work.  He loves the yard.  He's already mowed once, weeded the garden, picked up all the sticks and leaves in the grass, and cleaned out those gutters twice.  In 21 days!  I tend to focus more on unpacking all the boxes on the inside.

Watch for house photos in the near future.  I'm slowly but surely finding a place for everything and getting organized.  Just the other night I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on my laptop and thinking to myself, gosh, I love living here.

Third Time's a Charm

Hello world!  What the heck.  Another day, another blog.  Let's see if this one sticks.

Quick life summary to get us all up to speed:

In the past three months, I've successfully scored a new house, a new job, and - dare I say - a new outlook.  Oh and this weekend, I'm even getting a new sister. I'm looking forward to chronicling the new  adventure.  This is kind of a test post, so I'll leave my fans with a photo from when I got a new brother, last summer.

And... the same crowd, a few years earlier (I'm the cat).