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!

Patrick is 24!

I have been remiss in blogging, and even worse, taking pictures!

Patrick's birthday was Wednesday. Birthday week was great. We hung out with Patrick's family. We stayed in a bed and breakfast which was super fun with REALLY delicious breakfast. We spent a day at Brazos Bend State Park. We've had several fun meals. We saw the Breens and Hokansons last night for some yummy food at Fadi's. It's been great.

And, of course, he got new Chacos AND a little memoir of his old ones. And some other fun stuff.

And I have zero pictures to show for it. Sigh.

Happy birthday week, Patrick! Thanks for being the best husband! I love you!!

Sometimes I really like The Message

I love the way The Message translates Psalm 30:11-12, but especially 11.

^11-12 You did it: you changed my wild lament
into whirling dance;
You ripped off my black mourning band
and decked me with wildflowers.
I'm about to burst with song;
I can't keep quiet about you.
God, my God,
I can't thank you enough.

That's all.