The month of Thanksgiving

Ok, I was a failure at the 30 days of home improvement. We have been doing more things at the house, but somehow my camera continues to sit in my bedroom. One day.

The month of Thanksgiving is a really busy one for me at work. And Patrick is having an especially busy time at work right now too. We are both trying hard not to let work completely overshadow everything else, and we are being as diligent as possible at getting most of our work done during normal work hours so that we actually see each other in the evenings and get to keep having lives. So far, so good. We'll see what the end of the month holds. Either way... 2 more full weeks of work before a break for Thanksgiving and I am PUMPED! The only problem with that is the fact that I have done zero Christmas shopping and the stores/malls/etc get CRAZY after Thanksgiving. But you know what, my new motto is 'I can only do what I can do.' I have tried to do it all for too long, it's just not going to happen. The house won't be immaculate every time we have company. The food won't always be homemade. There won't always be dessert (unless it's a bag of Oreos). There may still be a light fixture missing that's been missing for a month now. My Christmas gifts may not be the best ideas known to man. But I'll do what I can and enjoy it and I (hopefully) won't lose my mind trying to do it all. Ahh it's very hard for me to let go of total control like that, but it's time, and I am trying.

On that note, it's the month of Thanksgiving, and today I am very, very grateful for wonderful friends. We spent a lot of time with friends this weekend and I just love it. This week and next weekend promise to hold more of the same. Thank you, God, for authentic friendships.

Happy turkey month!

Christmas card outtakes

I know I know. You're trying to figure out why in the world we wouldn't choose the second one. Aside from the terrible cheesiness of the pose... it's just missing a little something. Can't quite put my finger on it...

(And for those of you thinking 'Christmas cards?! It's barely October!' Hush, you. I got a deal.)

30 days of home improvement. Or something.

It was my intention to set a date in October to have a housewarming party. Turns out, I had too much to do before October 2nd, which was my original date. I was stressing myself out. So we're nixing that. I don't have a new date, but my original plan was to work on the house for 30 days, starting the beginning of September. That sorta happened. We painted the stairs (FINALLY!) Oh my goodness. I haven't been so excited about anything in a very long time. Please, take a gander.

Before:

Dark, high gloss, terribleness.

After:

Light, airy, wonderfulness.

(To the right: the largest art niche known to man. No idea what to do with it.)

Project two: doing some TLC to the lovely fruit covered knobs left to us by the previous homeowners. I know... it's a crying shame that I painted over these beauties.

Final product: Honestly, I don't know how I feel about it. I think the black might be too much contrast between the light (which I don't love) cabinets. Either way, it's serious progress from the peaches and grapes. And the pot rack is black so I thought that might make it more cohesive. There are LOTS of different metals in our home. (See Patrick doing dishes? He's the best.)

And "project" (not really) number three:

A chair for Patrick's office! Ahhh, I love craigslist.

Last but not least, the previous homeowners also left us with this gem of a built in bookcase. They did it themselves, and pictures just do not do it justice. It's terrible. Patrick's grandmother got me some cute picture frames while we were in Missouri last weekend and so they are attempting to hide the bookshelf ugliness. And one of them is housing a picture of sweet little Beckett who we got to meet last weekend. So cute!

So there we are! Hopefully lots more to come. I'm just doing little sneak peeks... I'm hoping to do major before and after photos in the near future with a slightly more 'done' house. And you too can revel in the beauty of the things that the Ballards left for us to deal with on Green Castle. Get ready.

138 days until Christmas

And, per theknot.com, we have been married for 764 days. That is a lot of days. I mean, not in the grand scheme of things I guess, but it seems like a lot when you count in days.

I'm looking for a weekend getaway place in Texas for the fall. Any ideas? Since we vacationed with the fam again this year (not that I'm complaining, it was WONDERFUL), I figure we should do something just the two of us. And (gasp!) I'm not thinking the beach. I'm thinking more along the lines of Fredericksburg maybe. Something where there's nothing on the agenda. Not a big city. A bed and breakfast or a cabin or something. Anyone?

Something like this:

Yeah yeah, I know. That doesn't exactly scream 'Texas'. But a girl can dream.

"Journey" by Patrick Gilgour

I regret to inform you that this is blurry and terribly done and does not do my husband's Journey belting abilities any justice. And it's sideways and apparently I'm not very youtube-literate. But it's worth it. (Please, watch to the end.)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LITWsqQUrv4

Thank you, Matt and Alyssa, for getting married and allowing me to see this. And see all of your fine brothers dancing skillz. And, sadly, not see Jon get to a 'level 6' where apparently he just wants to dance. :-)

Best day of the week: Benday!

Last weekend we got to babysit sweet Ben. Ohh my goodness, I love that kid. He is precious.

Please see below two of my favorite people in the world:


Activities involved:

• Climbing the stairs roughly 893045890348590 times with numerous attempts to nose dive down on his own. Thus giving his babysitter many near-heart attacks. But look at that kid, he wanted to climb the stairs, no chance I was saying no! (Don't worry, I was very careful.)
• Taking a nap. Ohhh this was a favorite for me. He fell asleep on my bed with me. Precious.
• Cuddle time post-nap
• Lots of pointing and saying 'dog'
• Lots of trying to share Cheerios with the dog (we were dog sitting also)
• Playing with the knobs on the bathtub and being really impressed when the water came out
  
• Baby pool date with friends Landon and Ryan, where the fountain was quite intriguing (My favorite part: the swim diaper was on backwards, so it was too narrow in the back and showed half his little bottom, in a very sumo wrestler fashion.)

You can stay with us any time you want, Ben!

Answer: 'complete mechanical failure'

Question: The #1 thing you never want to hear your mechanic say about the transmission in your car.

Sigh. The rodeo is no longer with us. Below you will see a picture of Patrick selling my car. The rodeo is now with someone named Raz. Or something like that. Thank you, Raz, for buying a non-functioning car.

Me: "Aw, Patrick, we have so many memories in that car."
Patrick: "We argued a lot in that car."*

:-) It's all about the sentiment with that one, folks.

**Disclaimer: He wasn't talking about, like, last week. More like about 2004. Or something. Maybe not 2004, but that's my way of saying it was not last week.

ANYWAY, my parents bought me that car on August 20th, 2003. Like 3 days or something before it journeyed to College Station with me to begin my life in Aggieland. (whoop) And sat in lot 40 for 99% of it's next year of life. (The good news is that when your car is half a mile from your dorm and therefore never gets driven, it keeps the 'new car smell' for a long time. That's really the only good news.)

So we embark on the 'find a new car' journey. And we are very lucky to embark at a slightly less hectic pace, as we are currently borrowing a car from my dad. (Thanks, Dad!) I would like to add that when someone else is paying for the car, say, your dad, it's really a more enjoyable shopping experience. (Thanks, Dad!) But in fact this time around, what with the purchasing it ourselves, not quite so much bliss. Plus it wasn't really in the plan right now. But that is ok, we are prepared, Patrick has done about 82930489032 hours of research, and we will hopefully be driving a 4runner (the car of choice) home very soon!

Goodbye, Rodeo! I will not miss your severe blind spots. But I already miss your paid-for-ness.

Confession.

I am a worrier.

I need to say it again just to remind myself how dumb it is. I am a worrier.

We talked about it tonight at church, but the more I think about it, holy moly I am a chronic worrier. How ridiculous. Let's think about my life right now. Two stable incomes. A beautiful house. A really great marriage that I thoroughly enjoy. Wonderful (and I do mean wonderful) friends and family that I can't get enough of. A very, very comfortable lifestyle. What in the world do I have to worry about? If you got in my head, you wouldn't know I have it so good. You wouldn't know that I get plenty of sleep, eat three meals a day, get up to a reasonable commute and work daily with people that I really, really like. Drive my reasonable commute home to a house that I love, see my husband who is my favorite person alive, spend my evenings either relaxing with him or with friends, do a decent amount of traveling to places that are wonderful.

And yet.

I can talk myself into a panic attack at any moment. Isn't that RIDICULOUS?! I can talk myself into it. And I do. Oh but it gets better! Once I talk myself into it, I can't talk myself out of it! The mind... it's crazy. I realize my life won't always be like this. I realize this is a season. I can assure you, I've had my share of seasons. I've had my share of days where I wasn't overcome with things that are wonderful about my life. And here is the worst part of my confession: the times when something is seriously wrong are the times that I worry the least. My mind focuses on something real, and I deal with it, and somehow I block out all the worthless worrying over things that don't matter. (You should all probably step away from your computers now, lest the lightning bolt that will soon strike me somehow to get to you; I'm pretty sure saying things like 'I live best when some major crisis is taking place' is an open invitation for God to test me. I take it back. Really.) Trust me, I don't desire a crisis. I just desire not to worry. Not to have any anxiety. Ugh.

On a happier note... I get to do a little babysitting this weekend and you KNOW how I love to sit on a good baby! Ha... I know. That's a terrible joke. But I really do love babies, so I'm all over it. Maybe I'll get in a picture or two.

Love to all! Feel free to just scroll through my posts in your google readers. They have been of little use to you lately.

One of my more lame posts

I'm exhausted. Two weeks of whirlwind vacationing. So wonderful, so worn out.

We got to go to Baltimore this past weekend to see my wonderful family. It's one of my favorite places to be. They are such great people. We had to cram everything into a pretty short time, but I think we did it. We had snowballs and crabs and lots of family time. And we came home with Berger Cookies so all is well in our world.

This is my first full week of work in quite some time now. Blah. The great news is that I now get to work normal hours again! YAY!! Oh it feels so so so good to come home in the daylight. And have time to do something other than eat and sleep in the evening.

Ok that's all I have right now, there's a couple pictures of Baltimore to come but I'm too lazy to get up and do all the plugging in that it takes to upload them right now. :-)

Have a great week!

Happy 2nd anniversary to my fantastic husband!

I don't know how 2 years flies by so quickly but it does! We spent the day today sleeping in, unpacking and cleaning up some, doing a little shopping and going out to dinner. We'll end the evening with some Big Bang Theory season 1 I'm sure. :-) Sounds perfect to me.

Happy anniversary, Patrick! I love you!

CANCUN!

What's that? You're all friends with me on facebook and you've already seen these? Oh well! I'm far too proud of myself for actually having pictures to post to let that stop me. Blogger is being a little weird today so I'm in a strange order with these. I also didn't manage to get a single picture of Patrick's family but I promise they were there! Ok, confession. I took all of these in a span of like 3 hours. That's the only 3 hours I remembered my camera. The rest of the time I was far too busy lazy to take pictures.

Us getting ready for dinner! Of course, we were going to have someone take our picture at dinner, with both of us in it, but it seems I'm a failure in the picture taking department and I forgot. And I'm going to spare you our attempts at taking this one of us together ourselves. It's rough.

Beach!! Ohh I love it.

I'm fairly certain that I actually value the infinity pool OVER sliced bread, so I'll go ahead and let that cliche rest.

Patrick spent every waking moment in the pool. Not kidding.

:-) I like this one.

"Take a picture of me doing a cartwheel!" This caused a girl down the beach from us to ask her significant other to take a picture of her doing a cartwheel. And Patrick was a little worried that he would need a redo because her legs might be straighter than his, but no worries! Apparently she's not much of a gymnast and her legs were bent so we only had to take one.

Our resort. Westin Lagunamar. It was really nice.

Seriously. This is the life. I could do this forever.

View of the hot tub and beach from the pool.

At the pool. Loving every minute of it.

Vacation is my favorite thing on earth. Hands down.

The one where I confess that I'm a Spicy Pickle-aholic

Well... my countdown has been altered a bit. The reason I was counting down to the end of June was because everyone who had gotten the $8000 tax credit for purchasing a new home had to close by then. But it appears that will be extended. Ugh. That's all I'm going to say about that. However, I'm going to continue to pretend like things will get substantially better in July, and here are the things I intend to start working on when that time comes. (After two vacations, that is!)

1. A little more house fixing-upping (I've bought some furniture on Craigslist that needs a little work, but so far, no time to do it.)
2. Plan a housewarming party! We reeeeeally want to have everyone over to see the house, and we haven't done a whole lot of entertaining since we bought it since I haven't been home much at all. So that's up there on the priority list.
3. Get to work earlier and leave earlier. I seriously say this ALL the time, but I'm really going to try to do it this summer.
4. Do a much better job keeping my house clean. I figure if I'm actually here some, this should be easier, right? I hope so. I did a much better job of it before we moved into this house. Granted, the townhouse was about half the size of this one. But still.
5. Cook dinner again! I actually like to cook these days, but I just don't have time. So I intend to make meals and sit down with my husband (and others!) and eat them. Good times.
6. Please no one (including you, Patrick!) remind me that this is a resolution I consistently make and then decide I don't particularly want to do: get a little physical activity in. Ugh, this does not sound fun to me. I'm not a fan of working out/running, etc and there are so many other things I'd rather be doing with my time. But it seems that a person should take care of themselves some, so I'm saying I intend to try. A little.
7. Find some slightly more healthy recipes. All the things I love to cook are terrible for you. And honestly, that really doesn't bother me at all, I'm not a healthy food person in any way. But my husband is, and I continue to douse him with heavily buttered foods, so so I'm putting this on the list.
8. Get back on a better budget. I was SO good about this when we first got married. But with the work thing, getting to the grocery store has been challenging, and I'm just tired. So we eat out wayyyyy more than we used to and that needs to stop very soon. The good news is that I get overtime when I work like this. But I'd rather be saving it, say, to replace the carpet I despise than on eating out. And that's a major confession for me, because I would typically get on a soapbox about eating out so much, but I am very guilty in this department here lately. Mostly because there's this place across the street from where I work called the Spicy Pickle and I LOVE it. I mean, love.

Ok. I also plan to put pictures on here. Add that to my list. My blogs have been very boring lately and I do apologize. This was really more for me than anyone. But at least I'm still counting down to vacation!! (Side note: I am going to see a doctor on Wednesday to see if there is anything they can give me for the severe motion sickness I've been having before I go on our trip. Just in case there's something I'd like to do while we're there that involves, you know, something other than sitting still. So pray for that!)

Back to cleaning!

This one's for you, Kelly.

(See the bottom of the screen. Don't say I never did anything for ya. :-) )

Just for my own sanity, I'm going to update my countdowns:

Cancun: 28 days!
2nd anniversary: 35 days!
Baltimore: 38 days!
Missouri: 84 days!

Wedding season is upon us. Our schedule is quickly filling with weddings and showers. I do love wedding season.

My birthday weekend was wonderful. I took Friday off (I know, I've mentioned that a lot of times now. It's necessary.) and it was lots of fun. We slept in, had breakfast, went to the pool. Then I went and met several of my friends who are stay at home moms and their babies at the splash pad. At which point I made the terrible decision not to wear sunscreen. I never, EVER don't wear sunscreen. I am a sunscreen stickler. But I didn't think I was going to be there very long, and I was wet the whole time so I couldn't really tell I was getting hot. Typically, when I get some sun, I can't really tell until after I go home and shower. This time, I got to the parking lot and could tell my shoulders were very, very red. Bad sign. So it hurt very badly and then I got some sun poisoning which really stinks. I had a fever and I felt awful. But anyway, despite all that, it was a great weekend. And another reason learned as to why I need to always wear sunscreen.

The upcoming weeks of work will probably be the most difficult I've had in 3 years. I'm not sure we've ever been this busy as a company, and while there is an end in sight, it's kind of hard to see. So these weeks will be very challenging, as I'm already kind of burnt out from the long hours we've been working the last couple of months. But that's ok, we will get through it, and we will do so with lots of overtime! :-)

In other news, season 4 of the West Wing so far hasn't lived up to the first three. Let's hope it starts going uphill soon!

I need to find something to make for lunch. I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend!

Oh, and a major, major praise: I've had a headache on and off for about a week now, and this morning I woke up feeling great! Woo hoo! Could be that my wonderful husband fixed the one set of blinds that wasn't up in our bedroom so the sun no longer shines in my eyes and I no longer wake up squinting. Either way, hooray for good days.

It's my birthday and I'll cry stay home from work if I want to!

I'm not working today. I can't remember the last time I was this excited. I love the people I work with but this has been a rough stretch.

Have a fabulous day, blog world! I hope the clouds go away soon so I can get some pool time in!

countdown season is upon us!

You know how I love a good countdown. I'll get to that in a minute.

So this year, although I am now three years out of college (seriously?! how did this happen?!), I am mourning the days of finishing finals and going home. Or staying for summer school, or going on a study abroad, or doing an internship, or whatever. I'm mourning having a summer for some reason very badly this year. It really seems like it was yesterday. Maybe I'm just really in need of a visit to College Station. We haven't gone back in way too long now. Anyway. Sigh.

I also need to confess that I am only blogging to distract myself from watching the West Wing. I am almost a full season ahead of Patrick and I feel like I shouldn't watch anymore because it's going to take so long for him to catch up and I really prefer watching WITH him. But anyway.

Back to the countdowns! Here are the exciting things coming up that I get to count down to:

My birthday, which I plan to take off of work and I am beside myself with excitement because it's been so so crazy: 5 days! Weather permitting, I intend to sit by the pool and do absolutely nothing that day. Preferably with a pina colada. I'm pretty sure our neighborhood pool doesn't have a pool boy, or a tiki bar I can swim up to (although they should really consider adding that and taking out the giant slide all the kids use) so I may have to save that part for my backyard but that's ok. Patrick is off too, it will be fabulous. I. can't. wait. Honestly. Can't wait. I think my blood pressure is rising as I type out 'I can't wait' over and over out of sheer excitement.

Memorial Day, which constitutes yet another fabulous day of no work: 15 days!

Cancun: 43 days!
Oh how I love my beach vacations. They seriously get me through the year. Here is a little taste of what I'll be doing in 43 days. Do you see that infinity pool?! Heaven. I'm certain they did it right and have someone ready to bring me a pina colada AND I bet theirs even have those little umbrellas in them. Mmmm the beach.

2nd anniversary to my wonderful hubby: 50 days! Again, I don't really understand how time goes by that fast. It can't have possibly been that long. Surely I should still be wedding planning. Except I'd really rather not. I mean, it's fun and all. But marriage is better.

Baltimore: 53 days! Baltimore in the summer has got to be one of my favorite things ever. I mean I also love Baltimore at Christmas so it's tough competition. But there are snowballs in the summer. And crab feasts. And I just love the summer anyway, so throw in some family, and you've got yourself a good time! Pretty much any excuse to not wear shoes, I'm in. Summer allows that. Not everywhere though. I wear shoes to restaurants and work and stuff.

Last day of the madness that has been work for at least two months now: 45 days! (Yeah, it happens while I'm in Cancun. But it should be fine, all the prep work will have to be done before then anyway.) THANK YOU LORD. This stretch of work has been insane. This countdown is the one that's most constantly on my mind. Can you believe that? Over the beach?! What has my life come to? Oh yeah... I'd just like to remember what it's like to see daylight on a weekday. And not bring work home on the weekends. Blah. But anyway, an end is in sight and I can't wait!

Missouri: 99 days! (Seems far away, but it's Labor Day weekend so it's still the summer and it counts.) I haven't ever been there in the summer so I'm pumped. The weather should be a step above the blizzard they had last year when we visited. Although to be honest, I thought that was fabulous because I sat inside with Patrick's grandmother all day, under blankets, reading several years worth of Martha Stewart magazines. It was really quite nice and relaxing and the blizzard really made everything beautiful.

And just because I can: 222 days until Christmas. :-) I won't make that a regular countdown until probably October. But there's a website where you can look it up that I've been using for a couple of years now and I figured their hits are pretty low this time of year and I wanted them to know their work is appreciated. So I visited them and posted for you fine people. Better start shopping!

Well. I'm 99% sure I'm not going to be able to avoid watching The West Wing tonight. That's ok, for my birthday, I'll ask him to catch up. It's just so suspenseful! Plus we don't have cable. So it's really my only option.

5 days, people!

she blogs, she blogs!

I know, I know. I'm ridiculously behind. And I'm lacking the pictures are cute new house so deserves. And the family members are getting annoyed. :-)

Well let's see. I haven't been on here since mid-March. We closed on the house at the end of March, and spent the next several weeks driving 30 minutes over here after work to get started painting and doing some minor fixing up. I'd say on average we stayed around until midnight or 1 am, and Saturdays were very, very, very long days. BUT of course it's all worth it. The place looks good. There's still so much to do, and I really wanted to post some 'after' pictures that looked completed. But I may just have to let you see how my life is really going and not just a fancied-up blog showing. Ha!

We still don't have cable, so Patrick and I entertain ourselves by watching seasons of the West Wing. If you haven't watched them, you are SERIOUSLY missing out. We're in love. It's fabulous. It's fast-paced and witty and... we're in love. Oh, I said that already? Hm.

The world is exploding with babies around us! I got to meet Beau and Dax yesterday. Holy moly. So adorable. Plus a super cute nursery and a fantastic looking mommy. Good times all around. There's another set of twins to be met in the future, so that will be tons of fun for us come the fall. (No, NOT ours! I'll go ahead and mention here that I get questions about 4 times a day about when we'll be having children. I'm sure it's because literally everyone we know has them. I'm not exaggerating, I never do that. Ok that's a lie, but seriously. We get lots of questions. Which really doesn't bother me, but you, my blogging followers, will stay informed. I promise. Don't expect an update in this area any time soon. Sorry.) And then we get to meet Baby Hokie after that, and there are more babies coming at work, and I'm certain I'm leaving someone out because seriously, I think everyone I know is having babies and I love it! (And Leslie, you can no longer be the one that says 'we're not!' :-) Which in itself, is quite exciting.)

Anyway, that was a very long parenthetical aside there, and then another one. That's terrible grammar I'm sure. Oh see, I did leave one out. Courtney! Get ready for more parentheses. (by the way, Courtney, my husband is the one that noticed you were having a baby on facebook and got all excited and called me into the office to look which I found very humorous because I believe the extent of his interaction with you before that was him suggesting where you should get pie. But congrats!!!)

Ok, really. I need to quit that. The parentheses.

Patrick leaves for Arizona on Saturday. He'll be hiking the Grand Canyon for Team in Training to raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma. I've said that before, but there's another shoutout. He's pretty pumped. I think it's great, though I'm not so pumped about staying in this new, big house by myself. We'll see how that goes.

Oh, and Patrick's Grandmother visited this past weekend! That was fun. She was our first out of town guest. I mean, she didn't spend the night here in our house, but she came over for dinner so it counts. It was very nice to see her. Hopefully we can get a trip to Missouri planned in the not-so-distant future.

I just had to go back and catch a ton of spelling errors. Which means it's time for bed because I am typically a champion speller. Have I ever told you about how I was THIS close to winning the school spelling bee in the third grade? It's true. Deborah beat me and it was completely unfair. I got vacuum and she got marshmallow. Anyway, it was dramatic. A story for another time.

Night!

Kind of a bummer

So this has been kind of a bummer of a week. We found out a relative has cancer... I won't go into it here but ugh. Turns out, I probably will not be joining Patrick in Arizona this summer as planned. The cost to do so would be somewhat outrageous. And I haven't been feeling so hot kind of off and on, so that's getting old. Oh, and work got ridiculously crazy busy and probably won't get under control again until July. Sigh.

Well... at least we'll close on the house in a couple weeks.

Oh yeah... we're buying a house. :-)

Oops. As I mentioned... I've been quite the blogging slacker. We're buying a house. :-) We close March 25th. Our lease isn't up until June so we have time to paint and do a little bit of fixing up before we have to move, but of course we'd like to get in asap!

What's that? You'd like to see pictures? Well ok! The only ones I have are from the house staged with other people's furniture, and to be honest, they're a tiny big deceiving. There is some work to be done. Nothing major, it's definitely a nice house. But the paint colors look a whole lot better in the pictures than in person and the paint job isn't fantastic so that will go first and foremost. But here you go! (Ahh! There's a front porch!)

That's the entry way/view into the dining room. Love the stained glass.

View of the staircase.. we love all the moulding.

Living room (fireplace!)

Kitchen

Master bedroom. While those built ins right in the middle where the tv is look nice, they actually are not. And since the room is not huge, we are getting rid of them, as they stick out quite a bit into the room.

Bedroom two. Probably the pink and Disney will have to go. :-)

Bedroom 3. I LOVED Madeline as a kid!
"To the tigers in the zoo, Madeline said 'Pooh Pooh' " Anyone??
There are several murals... sadly, they go as well.

Office

Back yard

More pictures to come once we actually live there and you can see OUR stuff in it! Yay!