Warfield Ninjas

New Apartment and New blog address

2010-02-10T14:38:00.003-06:00

Pretty much just use http://WarfieldNinjas.com .

http://WarfieldNinjas.com

-Grant

So in everyday terms, our blog moved to: http://WarfieldNinjas.com.

Thanks,

Jess

New Printer!

2010-02-07T21:55:00.001-06:00

Got a sweet deal on a monochrome laser printer. much cheaper per page of printing. This post is quite late from when I got the printer.. but da well..

update: It is a wireless printer.. just have to plug in the power and boom.

Christmas/ Matt and Megan's Visit/New Years

2010-01-04T19:47:00.013-06:00

As I mentioned before, Grant and I went to Houston for Christmas, and on Saturday night we left to go back to Austin. Sunday morning we picked up Matt and Megan from the airport. They decided to visit us for a week, and we were very excited. The first couple of days I had to work, Megan worked on some homework for Med school, and Matt and Grant Played computer games and just hung out. Megan was sweet enough to make dinner a few of the nights while I was at work so I didn't need to worry about it.

One of the Days, Wednesday I think, Matt and Megan took us out to Outback Steak House here in Austin, and we all had Ribs. I thought they were excellent, and it definitley made for a fun trip trying to find this Outback.

Then after outback steak house, we took them out for Gelato Ice Cream at Mandola's Italian Market. We had a blast, the guys working there were in such a good mood gave us so much ice cream that we had to take it home and freeze it, and the atmosphere here is just amazing!

After that we played Cranium, which was fun, but Grant and I both stunk at it, and we decided that we can't play as partners in this game. We both aren't very knowledgeable about people and random facts, and my TV knowledge is very lacking due to the fact that I wasn't allowed to watch TV most of my life. But win or lose we had a great time with Matt and Megan.

Thursday night/New Year's Eve, We treated Matt and Megan to see AVATAR! It was AMAZING!!! We saw it in 3-D, and I honestly think it is one of the best movies I have seen in my life so far. I would highly recommend it to anyone!

After Avatar, we played Taboo which was a lot more to my liking. We kept switching teams, and it was really funny. We didn't even realize it was the new year until it was 2 am. Then we wished everyone a Happy New Year and headed off to bed.

Then Saturday Morning was their last day in town because they were flying out VERY early on Sunday morning. We decided to take them to an Ikea since they had never been to one. We had a fun time walking around and looking at all of the room displays. Matt found a chair that actually fits him which was very exciting to him. Afterwards we were all pooped, and we watched the movie click.

Here is the pot that I got from Ikea for my Christmas tree that is now disguised as a house plant until next year.

We had a great time with Matt and Megan! They were in Austin during great weather, and I hope that it was a good time for them. We can't wait to hang out with them again sometime.

Fun gifts that I learned to make!!!!

2010-01-04T18:42:00.011-06:00

This year was my family's turn to have us over for Christmas, and next year we will brave the Ohio weather and see all of Grant's family there. My family draws names for gifts, but I wanted to give other people gifts too, but we couldn't afford huge gifts so I tried to be creative with what I gave. First and foremost, I have to be grateful that I have such an awesome husband who lets me do what I want most of the time. Also, while I was working on the following projects some of my other tasks fell behind like dishes, clothes, and just quality time. I was determined to finish all of my gifts before Christmas.

Here you can see what happens when I get into a "creative" mood. Everything becomes messy and crazy. Most of the time Grant loves it when I want to entertain myself because then he has time to play some computer games, but I became so busy and obsessed with finishing these crafts that he even told me he misses me which was nice and shocking to hear.

So this year it seems to me that EVERYONE is having babies. I know so many different people that are pregnant that I wanted to come up with a nice gifts that were not too expensive, so here is what I came up with.

I bought everyone some form of outfit, made a burp cloth for everyone, and some booties. I found the templates for the booties on this blog.

http://stardustshoes.blogspot.com/2006/10/cloth-shoe-pattern.html

The templates were very easy to use, and after my first prototype, I actually didn't have very many problems with making them. I made them from flannel with a minky lining and a leather sole. I got a good deal with the leather because I bought a HUGE skirt from the thrift store made of suede which turned out to be the perfect amount.

Most of the gifts above, I could give to the people in person considering I was with most of the people during Christmas, but there were a few that I had to mail, and then people are still having there babies early and everything... They need to be following my schedule ;p

One of my coworkers actually had a baby shower, so I was able to give hers to her in person.

For a Christmas Gift, I made my two nieces a pair of house slippers each out of minky and suede. These were the most difficult things I ever had to make and broke about 4 leather needles along the way. They turned out great, only they ended up not fitting the girls which stunk because I will never make these again. I measured their feet multiple times,but the leather was thicker than I anticipated. I might make them cloth ones some time,but I need my break for a little bit.

Then for the rest of my family that aren't little kids and cannot fit into the booties above, I decided to try a new recipe. I am a sucker for Truffles, so I looked up a recipe. They actually turned out very tasty and very pretty. It took a long time because I made 100+ truffles, but I would definitely make these again.

Here you can see the finished truffles. I got the recipe online and it worked out great after I tweaked a few of the ingredients.

Then last but not least, I made my mom some homemade cookie dough that I froze. This way she has two pounds of frozen cookie dough where all she has to do it cut them and bake them, and that was definitely easy and fun.

I hope that next year I will have as much success as I did this year, but we will see what everyone is doing then rather than having babies.

Breakfast in Bed... I mean the Couch.

2010-01-04T18:29:00.005-06:00

So most Saturday mornings, Grant and I get up around the same time, or I wake up before him since I normally wake up earlier because of my work schedule. Well, a few weeks ago before Christmas, I was sleeping in longer than usual, but woke soon noticing that my space heater = Grant wasn't there anymore. I strain to hear what he is doing and only hear some banging. So, I come down stairs to an annoyed Grant because he was making breakfast for me so that I could have "Breakfast in Bed." I thought this was awesome, but we decided rather than letting me near all of that food upstairs where it was almost inevitable that I would spill it on everything we compromised for the couch which was just as good!

Here you can see my tea and egg in a basket which he at first made fun of me for, but then decided that was really as good as it looked, and he still spent the time making it like that even though it is more time and effort than is really necessary since I can just as easily eat both of the separately.

Here are Grant's pigs in a blanket that turned out GREAT. I also had some of those, but mainly my egg and toast. It is funny how little things like that make such a difference just to know someone cares enough to make you breakfast when cereal could have been enough. It was a great treat!

Different White Elephant Parties

2010-01-03T13:21:00.013-06:00

So before Christmas this year, our young marrieds class decided to have a White Elephant Gift exchange party. We both had never been to a "real" one of these, just a gift exchange at school where everyone is forced to bring in some sort of junk in the correct price range. At the one for the young marrieds, each person brought in one gift that was more of a joke gift. You could either open a new gift and chance being stuck with it, or you could steal a gift that had already been opened. A gift could be stolen 2 times before it went dead and was stuck with that person.

Needless to say, Grant and I were a little bit hesitant about this. Most people were going to just find things from their house and regift, but all of our things were in the storage unit in Searcy, AR. So, we decided that our only hope was to rely on the thrift stores in our area. I think we went to 2 or 3, but ended up getting everything from one.

At first, we were looking for a set of horrible Christmas sweaters we could give a couple so they could match, or even some for us to wear there just because it would be funny, but the thrift stores were greatly lacking, so I assume other people had already bought them out ... tear.

So, for our first gift we could a snow globe from the year 2000 and a star wars VHS box set. They were both in mint condition.

Here you can see a snow globe, but ours looked different. The one we had found was originally $30.00 since it had the old price tag on it. It came in the original box, and it had the letters 2000 with champagne glasses in large blocky ceramic sculptures inside. It was VERY old school ugly, and honestly pointless, but it made us laugh so it was one item that we decided to get.

The star wars set was in perfect condition, and when we bought it hoped that Shea and Anthony Amaro would get our gift because I think that they like Star Wars. Also, after all of the gifts had been picked Anthony even came over to look at the box set and was impressed that we got it for $1.50.

Then our Second gift that we gave away was the worst! Of course, it was the first gift picked out of all of them because of Grant's interesting wrapping job. Grant wrapped the gifts in the obituaries and comics from the newspaper and topped it all off with CAT5 cable to hold the multiple parcels together.

Here is one of the games we found that we thought just looked funny. We have never played it, but figured it would be funny.

Here is the next game that we found at the thrift store which also looked priceless to give!

Then the last but certainly not the least!! I found this stashed in the corner of the thrift store shelf, and it is not a very cool gift. One of the girls, Joy who is a nurse picked our gift first and was completely grossed out because she actually knew 100% what it was used for. We also couldn't assure her that is wasn't used because we didn't know. But since she was the first to pick up any gift, at the very end she picked something else and wasn't stuck with it. It was kind of cool because the Sitz Bath was the gift not to get at the party which made everything fun. It also had some funny jokes affiliated with it throughout the night.

So over all, I think that the thrift stores treated us well in our search for horrible junk that we could give people for this occasion!

We received a pair of boxing gloves that Grant actually liked, and some Computer programming books that Deacon gave away that were left over from his schooling.

That same week my work was having the same type of gift exchange,but you were supposed to get a nicer gift give away, but one could still steal gifts.

I gave a Starbucks gift set close to this because, one I was being lazy and bought it on the cheap at Marshalls, and two everyone at my work LOVES coffee. So, it seemed like a winner. At this work party, there were 3 other Starbucks gifts. One Gift Card, my box set, and another gift card with some coffee. Everyone was going after those and trying to steal them back, but I was able to steal a throw blanket.

Here is the picture of the throw blanket that I got. I was very happy with it. It is a down alternative blanket, and this is now the second throw I own and was very happy with it. I went in expecting a Sitz Bath,but I got a nice blanket. Low expectations are sometimes good.

Then I got to work before Christmas and received this from the owners of the company I work for which was really nice. I have never been a huge smelly soap person,but I am looking forward to trying some of them. I also already spent the gift card on a sweater and two other nice shirts.

Funny and Totally True

2009-12-21T14:41:00.003-06:00

All credit to http://theoatmeal.com/

if you can't read it, just click on the picture to enlarge.

Jessica's Christmas Tree

2009-12-15T17:08:00.001-06:00

Well Jessica is huge into getting a real christmas tree and has definitely let me know that when we have our own place we are not having any of that fake christmas tree stuff in our place. Well my sister also knows Jessica's passion on christmas trees and called me up to show me a mini tree I could get for her for christmas. That would be perfect except I already got Jessica's presents and went over budget as it was. So I told my big sis that I wasn't able to get it for her because of all that. Well my sis would not have that! So my big sis (Amanda) got the tree for us (*cough* Jessica) and I can't wait for jessica to get home and see it.

This is the tree and stuff that came in the package. I came with a picture frame christmas ornament, pack of 12 ornaments and then a set of mini christmas lights.

This is a picture of what Jess will see when she gets home.

I wish I could of been the one to get this for her.. but I'm glad my sister was awesome enough to do this. I think it will mean more than you would think to Jessica.

*UPDATE*

I tried to catch Jessica when she got home.. but was about 2 second late.. da well..

AN AMAZING DEAL!!!

2009-12-04T19:25:00.004-06:00

I LOVE THRIFTING, but since Grant and I are on a budget, we have been trying to not buy anything which includes thrifting. When Simon was in town, he needed some clothes, so this was a good excuse to go as well. We went to two different thrift stores that we like here in Austin, and I would have to say that we found a pretty good haul. I got 3 banana republic shirts, 1 hollister t-shirt, 2 express shirts, an awesome pair of indigo shoes, and an amazing pair of jeans.

The jeans are Brand 7 for all mankind which I knew was a very nice brand, but since they fit great I figured why not branch out and buy my first ever pair of skinny jeans. So I bought these jeans for $6.99.

After a few days of wearing them, I was wondering how expensive this brand was... come to find out this pair of jeans brand new costs $155.00... I could never pay this much for jeans, but it made me very excited to own such a nice pair of jeans!

http://www.7forallmankind.com/store/productdetails.aspx?productid=1001&colorid=101

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-12-04T17:55:00.014-06:00

For Thanksgiving this year, we had a very laid back, fun, and family filled event. It was planned pretty last mintue because none of knew what this week would hold since Tanya's pregnancy was up in the air. So, in the end, we ended up having this awesome celebration with Tanya, Wilson, Mia, Ally, Emily, Shea, Anthony, Simon, Grant, and myself. The men decided that they wanted to eat steak, the females had chicken, and then everyone else brought different kinds of sides, and the rest of the time we played games, ate, talked, and cooed over Emi-chan!

We picked up all of the meats on the way to Tanya and Wilson's here is Grant's Steak that they grilled at Shea and Anthony's house.

Tanya and Wilson provided their home, their beverages, AMAZING cranberry fluff, and Mashed potatoes.

Here you can see Anthony's Steak and Ally ready to go and get some food. Anthony and Shea provided their grill, and two different casseroles.

Grant and I brought the meats, 2 pies, and my favorite wine that we brought to Thanksgiving this year. It is a 2008 Saracco Moscato D'Asti Wine.

Here you can see Tanya drinking now that she is allowed... woot the baby is out.

I think this is a picture of Antony's Steak which I heard was also Great!

Ally and me just chilling... She ate some of my food, but more than anything wanted to see what was going on.

Mia and ally wanted to join the fun! they love being involved with whatever is going on.

Finally me holding Emi-chan, I was trying to not hog her so much, but I could just watch her for hours, even when she is not really doing anything.

Simon sporting his new shirt from the thrift store holding Emi-chan.

Here you can see Emi-chan sleeping. She was so chill that whole time it was awesome!

Things that I think are great!

2009-12-02T12:33:00.007-06:00

There are a lot of different things that I like, but lately with Christmas coming closer and closer, I just keep seeing beautiful Christmas type decorations! Here are some of the things that if I had money, time, and a place to arrange them would love to do! It is funny how I have a very modern taste in furniture and art, but tend to like more traditional type decorations for Christmas. I am a sucker for Silver and Red so sorry about the repetition.

Here you can see some beautiful vases being used for ornaments. Now I tend to not use gold very much,but it is the idea that I like not their actual ornaments.

Here is my all time favorite wreath that I have found so far! They are selling it at Pottery Barn for about $85.00 which I know is expensive which is why I don't have one, but I think it is AMAZING!

I don't know if I would do this quite they way they do, but I thought it was a fun way of displaying some fruit rather than using a fruit bowl.

This was to me a GREAT Idea! I love making chocolate chip cookies, so I thought it would be a fun gift to give people pre-homemade cookie dough that is frozen and then they can cut and bake just like store bought cookies only 20xs better!

I think lanterns are always fun, and always look nice. I recently put two lanterns into my sister's room for the make over, and she could easily add some pine leaves like shown above, put them outside on her stairs, and they would look great especially when lit up.

I always like home made wrapping paper, but if you do not have a lot of time then it doesn't always save money. They look nice, but a lot of work.

Here again you can see burlap used to wrap gifts which I guess could be recycling if you just have burlap laying around,but it still looks classy I think.

A kind of Random picture compared to the rest,but I have been looking everywhere for a watch I like, and I still won't get this one for a LONG time, if even at all, but these are very nice and they have them in LOTS of colors for only $65.00 at Dillards.

Most of the things in this room I don't like at all, but I love the three wreaths on the front door, and I really like the garland going up the banister.

Again in this picture, the furniture I find is very horrible, BUT I like all of the windows which probably makes the room so cold you never want to be in there, but anyway, I love the wreaths on all of the windows!

This is the outside view of the room above, and again, I like the three wreaths on the door. I

normally like the garland around the entry way,but in this picture it is not my favorite way.

I would never want this on my house, but I thought it was a nice natural take on Christmas decorating, and since there are no Christmas lights it is more energy efficient I guess.

This picture just looked very classic to me, some parts I like, and some I don't but I thought it was a pretty nice representation of what I normally like for Christmas Decorations.

The Make Over

2009-11-29T21:45:00.023-06:00

Grant and I were lucky enough to be able to live with Tanya and Wilson for about 6 months after Grant and I moved to Austin to find jobs. Tanya and Wilson had been in a similar situation, and they definitley made life awesome by letting us live with them. We wanted to show them how grateful we were in a way that would really help out. We could have just given them money, but then since they have kids it would have most likely gone to helping the girls instead of using it selfishly. This of course is a good thing,but since we lived with them, I knew certain pieces of furniture that they were saving up for which made my job a lot easier.

So, I knew that I wanted to do this make over, but first I had to convince Grant. But before I could do that, I had to figure out how much everything would cost, but I had mentioned it to my mom and told her not to tell anyone because I didn't want them accidentally finding out, but of course, EVERYONE knew about it then. So, I kept getting calls with more and more funding coming in which I was not going to refuse, but made everything a little bit more confusing. So, eventually I had a plan with everything that I wanted, and when my older Sister Kira was in town for a visit we went shopping and got pretty much everything but the furniture. My older brother Daniel went and picked up a bed frame in Houston for us that we had found on Craigslist.

Then came the whole dilemma with Tanya said she would be induced to have her 3rd child (Now Emily Ashlyn Robertson) the 27th of November, so everything was planned around then. My mom and sister were going to visit at that time to help with the girls and the make over, while I was working on the room, etc. But Tanya was induced on Monday the 23rd which was acutally my cousin's birthday which made him happy,but it threw off our schedule! HOW dare Tanya have her baby when it doesn't fit in with my schedule!!!! ;p So anyway, I went to work Monday morning, Tanya went to the doctor's and then the hospital to be induced while awesome neighbors watched the girls. My mom and younger sister were on their way from Houston to watch the girls while my sister was in the hospital. During this time Grant was at our house getting all of the furniture and accessories that I had bought packed along with 200+ other items that I needed. My cousin Simon was also on his way from Houston to Austin with the bed frame from Houston.

When I got home from work to Tanya and Wilson's and all of my stuff had been brought to their house, it looked like a total mess, my nieces kept telling me that they wanted to paint, and Grant and my mom had taken before pictures, had moved everything out of the room, and they had taped everything off! Shortly after me, my cousin arrived and we started painting the walls.

Here you can see the before pictures of their room.

This set up was our problem set up, because of how pictures would hang above the bed, it would mean that once we moved the glider and the crib thingy back in it would look bad. So, we did the reveal so they would see it normally, and then we mess it up and move it back.

Here you can see that everything is taped when I got home from work which was VERY awesome because I had work on Tuesday too, so after work was all I had.

We were trying to take pictures throughout, but we just weren't fast enough since we were all in a hurry to take pictures every couple of moments. We painted and had lots of help! This was the first time that Grant and Anthony had painted, so I hope it wasn't too bad of an experience. We had one little hiccup where the bed frame that we had gotten off of craigslist was adverstized the wrong size. We weren't ripped off price wise, but now we have a full size bed frame in a style that we don't want to keep and are trying to sell it now.

So, Monday we took pictures, moved stuff, taped, and painted. Then we put the wrong bed frame together, took it apart and had had enough for that day. Tuesday I went to work, but Simon and Grant had to go to Ikea to pick up the correct bed frame, so once that was done putting furniture together was most of what they did.

Here you can see my nieces wanting soooo badly to help, but pretty much just being in the way most of the time. But this is what I came home to on Tuesday.

Then I started making dinner for everyone while Grant and Simon followed my instructions on where I wanted everything in the room to be hung. From mirrors to pictures to curtain rods. Here Simon is using the Laser Level.

There were a few times when I thought that Tanya and Wilson might find out what we were up to. For instance, on Monday Mia talked to Wilson on the phone and told him that she is painting with Grant and Simon, but luckily she has a painting set of her own so they didn't think anything of it. Wilson came home on Monday to put the girls to bed, and he realized what we were doing, but he only saw the paint color, and he made sure not to see it while we were doing the other work. Then when I was at the hospital with Tanya seeing Emily for the first time, she kept asking me questions and it was really hard getting around some of them to not make it sound suspicious, but in the end we pulled through it and Tanya was surprised in the end.

Here are the After Pictures!

Here you can see how close the bed and the chest of drawers are, this was not how I wanted it, but this was one of those pieces that Tanya and Wilson wanted in their room for sure. No matter how we moved it, it would not fit better, so we gave them options if they wanted it moved somewhere else, but at least all of the drawers open completely without hitting the bed.

Here you can see everyone in the room after the reveal and the girls fighting over their new little sister. Then we had to move everything to fit the crib and stuff, but eventually it will look nicer again.

And here is the Video with Tanya's Reaction!

Another view from my iphone

My New Addiction

2009-11-10T17:45:00.004-06:00

Grant thought that it was time for me to confide in other people about my new addiction. I don't think that he wants me to give it up since it has not shown to be harmful quite yet, but we will see. Tanya showed me this blog, listed below where this amazing lady writes out all of the deals in most major grocery and drug stores in the USA. She tells you the deals, the coupons to use, and how to completely understand each of the stores and how they function. It is soo much fun getting good deals, but it can also be very addicting. When you get something for $0.20 cents, it makes you want to buy it even though you don't need a certain hand cream, etc. I have been trying very hard to not buy things that we don't NEED unless we are getting them 100% free because otherwise we are still spending more money than we would have without the coupons.

Here you can see a whole group of items that I was able to get for free, some samples, some deals, some coupons, and some I could only have gotten with the help of this blog.
http://hip2save.blogspot.com/

One of the best things about the blog that I use is there are sooooo many free samples to keep up with that for the picture above, I couldn't even keep up with all of the things that I have gotten for free! Here you can see free luggage tags that I got from KLM Airlines. I got one for me and one for Grant which was a fun thing to get in the mail.

Here you can see all of these items I got and only spent $1.32 which definitely shows how much you can buy for a dollar. Clipping and using coupons takes a lot of time,but since Grant and I are on a limited budget, it really helps us out. It lets us afford things that we don't always need, and it lets us have some luxuries like some name brand items and some snack food that we would normally not be able to afford. We have even stopped doing the Angel Food Ministries because we are saving more money with the coupons. We still think that it is a great ministry, and is very good for people who cannot make the time to save money otherwise, but it just hasn't been the right thing for us since I have come to enjoy couponing.

Trip to Searcy Arkansas

2009-11-02T18:16:00.002-06:00

A while ago now, Grant and I drove from Austin, TX to Searcy, AR for a weekend, or better yet two days. We left on a Friday morning when I had taken off of work. We made it into Searcy later that night, and then hung out with my Cousin Simon. We were also very blessed to be able to stay with the Robertson Family (My older Sister's In-Laws) who seem to have almost adopted us since we are treated like we are their children or married into their family! The next morning, Saturday, we went to our storage unit and got winter clothes and random other things that we had been missing. After that, we headed back to Austin, TX and had most of Sunday to chill.

This was driving into Dallas, I thought it just looked like a nice city scape!

This was also in the Dallas Area, a nice body of water.

This is one of the funniest things that I was not expecting! Here you can see a TRANSFORMER! If you click on the picture and look at it more closely, you can see multiple Transformer Logos, and even Autobots instead of expedition or whatever make SUV this car is.

Here you can kind of see flooding on a construction site where they were trying to pour concrete... not the best conditions... this was leaving Little Rock.

In the next few pictures you can see more of the flooding where even equipment was under water.

As stated above.

This might not be the most interesting picture,but Arkansas is not the natural state for no reason! It is always so beautiful.

Speaking of natural, here is the infamous Trash Mountain, that is literally all trash... this is as we were leaving Little Rock to return home.

I love seeing funny animals, and this giraffe with its tongue stuck out really made me laugh! I cannot remember for the life of me where this was taken,but it was still funny to see.

And now after we have gotten home. I am sad to say that all of my clothes that we brought back are not yet put away. Since our return from this trip, I don't think that we have been as busy since we have gotten married, but thus is life.

In this picture, you can see the items that I brought from the storage unit on the left. On the right, are the items that Grant decided to bring back. Also, Grant wanted me to mention that there are still more shoes in the storage unit that are mine, and I accidentally had 3 more pairs of shoes in one of the bins. We actually had more room in our car to bring more home, but we would need somewhere to put everything we bring back, so we refrained. I for one am ecstatic that I have more of my clothes, but am very happy and grateful for all the different things that Grant and I have been blessed with through out our lives and marriage that matter so much more than clothes and shoes.

New Purse!

2009-10-31T23:10:00.001-05:00

Even though I was a total tomboy growing up, I have definitely found and embraced my girly side. I love purses, shoes, and clothes. Grant and I are actually on our way to Arkansas right now to get more clothes out of our storage unit for winter. I decided that this was a good excuse to get in some blogging since lately I have been making a lot of excuses to not blog.
So, even though I love those items, I don’t not buy things blindly, it takes me a long time to make decisions about more expensive items like coats, shoes, and purses. I have waited 2 years to get a coat until it was on sale and I knew I wanted it enough. So, I have been looking for a new purse for some time, but since I am so picky about things I just couldn’t find one I wanted.
Grant and I are now living in the Rivas’s house in Lakeway, and we went driving around to see which stores were in the Galleria by our house and came upon a Marshalls. This is a great store, and I decided we should go have a look. Of course, when I shouldn’t be spending money I find a purse that I really like, but I knew I shouldn’t get it so we went home with nothing and tried to forget about the lovely purse.
One week later, my sister Kira was in town and we were shopping mainly to hang out and went to Marshalls, and I wouldn’t let myself go see if that purse was still there because then I would want it more, and I should be forgetting about it. After our shopping trip, I came home to find the purse that I wanted on the island of our kitchen with a note from Grant. I don’t know why he bought it, but OF COURSE I LOVED IT. We don’t have a good excuse like a birthday or anniversary, but it was such an awesome surprise.
So here are pictures of my new purse in all of its glory ;p! It is a guess purse that normally retails at $115.00,but believe me it was much cheaper than that now, but it still makes me happy to know it was a great deal.

I also got a new wallet, my sister Kira had an awesome one, and mine was literally busting at the seams, but I didn’t want to get the same one that I had before because it would probably break in the same places again, so, I liked how sturdy Kira’s was, so I went to the Stein Mart and found one by the same company but a different look. I am VERY happy with it, and hope that both of my new purchases last a long time!

Young Married's Fall Festival

2009-10-31T22:55:00.001-05:00

The Young Marrieds in our church do a variety of different activities, and this month, the social team decided that it would be a fun idea to have a fall festival which consisted of going to a pumpkin farm and taking pictures, picking out pumpkins, going to our house/Rivas’s house, having a pot luck, and carving the pumpkins. Grant and I were planning on doing all of those activities, but as the time got closer with everyone coming to our house, I realized that we were still too far behind on cleaning so we didn’t go to the farm.
Grant was so excited that we weren’t going since it was farther away from our house than we had anticipated in the first place, but once everything was clean and my portion of the food cooked (Chili and Spiced Cider) everything was a lot better. Everyone came over and we had a better turn out than I was expecting consider we only had 2 couples say they were actually coming. I think that we had about 11 couples show up which was awesome. All of the food was great, and I even got a few compliments on my Mother-in-Law’s cider recipe which made me happy because that means I didn’t mess it up.

Here you can see some of the ladies in the dining room carving some pumpkins.

Some more people carving pumpkins, I am glad that the Rivas house was as large as it was, otherwise it would have been very crowded.

Here is a cool picture that Grant took so you can see a few more people.

Some more pictures of the great pumpkins.

I am not completely sure whose pumpkins this was, but I think it was Andy Luksys’, and it was the biggest pumpkin I think out of all of them.

Here you can see the two lit up, they definitely look awesome!

Here is my pumpkin … I decided to go with something different than the usual face, I got my inspiration from a magazine, and I would say once Grant gave me a power drill to make the circles everything was smooth sailing from there.

Here you can see it lit up which is pretty cool. I was kind of sad that we missed out on the farm thing because I would have loved to have some of those cheesy photos because Grant and I hardly EVER take pictures since it is just the two of us. But I will just have to force him to take more pictures of us because I feel like we haven’t been documenting our time very much.

Talk about a headache!

2009-10-25T16:10:00.000-05:00

So today I spent most of the time trying to figure out the problem with windows 7 not wanting to frikin install. I still haven't gotten a different drive yet but it is killing me that I can't figure out what is going on. I went back to trusty google and researched more and just saw that other people were having the same problem. It is driving me up the wall. I was thinking that maybe mu iso is bad or maybe It is the brand of DVD I was using. Or maybe it what my drive sucks at burning at high speeds. Sooooo I redownloaded the iso and then I even got a different brand of DVD-r and then I burned it with jessica's laptop. Surely that should solve my issue. Well guess what! It didn't! So I took my DVD burner out and tore it apart and tried my best to get to the lens of the laser to clean it.

Cause really that is the only thing left unless it was a different hardware issue, which I couldn't believe that could be it. So I put it together and still no go. Frikin starting to get on my Nerves. The worst part of it all is that around 6 we were having some people over so I needed to figure it out soon. Cause I know I would of been in a weird mood (unsocial, trying to think about ways to fix my problem). So what I ended up trying was boot with a live ubuntu cd again... and then copying all the files from the windows 7 iso to the partition, where I wanted to install 7 to. Then once that was copied I used the 7 cd and booted into the setup but went into the recovery setup and then got to the cmd prompt. I changed the directory to the partition and did a good ol' run "e:\7\sources\setup.exe". Then BAM! it started the setup.. but would it make it past the "windows expanding files" part? Yes it did. Every other time I tried this, it would hang at 0% or 1% and then throw me an error. This time it just start breezing by that part. I was so ecstactic.. You can even ask my wife. Well it finally finished around 5:45 so I'm happy that I got it done before 6. But! I now only can boot into xp or 7. So I reinstalled grub over my MBR. I have my linux now!!! sweet, but windows 7 isn't showing up. So I go into /boot/grub/menu.lst and add a windows 7 section and save exit restart. Well when you add a section, you have to classify what partition it should read for the boot. So I chose the correct partition and restarted the computer. Upon restart I scroll down to 7 and then I get an error that is not allowing it to boot (it can't find the partition or something). At this time Anthony and Shea show up for the shin-dig and I have still not officially fixed my booting. As of right now I believe I can only get into linux (which I already did) and windows xp (which I didn't try yet) Well Anthony wanted to see windows 7 and I'm like yeahhh.... kinda working on that myself. Well him being a geek as well said let us see if we can figure it out.. long story short, we couldn't get it and then just tried booting into windows xp. OH Gosh well once past the grub bootloader I was then met with a windows bootloader that i could choose 7 or xp. Gross I know.. I will figure it out later but I theoretically can get into linux/xp/7 so I am happy.

Ta-daa!

Windows 7 and the headaches I knew were coming!

2009-10-23T15:51:00.013-05:00

DISCLAIMER: if you are not a geek, you will probably not fully understand any of this. And also you need to be a little ADD to stay with my thought process. /end disclaimer

So not sure if ya'll know? But if you are a student (or still have a student e-mail like I still have one) you can get windows 7 home/pro, 32/64bit for $30. Well....... That is a great price for windows 7 but boy does it come with complication for me. So I went ahead and bought it because I have no clue when my school email will go byebye. Well it is a promotion thing through digital river. It is an online download of a 3 separate files that total 2.9 gigs. Which shoot that aint nothin. Only took about 40 minutes to download I think. But I couldn't get it downloaded as an iso. Meaning I couldn't just burn it to a dvd and then clean install windows. What I bought is a upgrade, which you need to have windows vista to upgrade or windows xp. Well I have windows xp because I didn't want to go into the vista nasty world. But I figured I might as well get into the windows 7 I figure that is where windows is going, and I don't wanna get left behind on knowledge of an OS. Where was I... oh yeah well I have windows xp but I still want to keep it while I get accustomed to windows 7. ( for now on I'm just going to call windows 7 ...”7” cause i'm lazy. Also here is the link for the offer http://windows7.digitalriver.com/store/mswpus/en_US/DisplayHomePage?resid=dQJxNwoBAiMAAFa2YYUAAAAK&rests=1256329835913 Well I went to the land of google to try and see if I could find an iso of this version of windows, since theoretically I just payed for the serial key. If I can find the iso no pirating is happening. Well I (when I say I, I really mean my friend matt!!) found a site that showed how to make the three files into an iso after you kinda extracted them. Now you have to use a terminal.. or in windows it is called a command window I think. Omg !!! oh no not the terminal you mean I have to like type out directories!?!?!11 well it is practically copy and paste (ctrl-c...ctrl-v). oh here is the website for the how to make it into an iso. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/how_burn_your_student_copy_windows_7_dvd so I extract one of the 3 files but it crashes with an error.. I'm like well crap.. now I have to redownload 3 gig of info. Well I went back to trusty ol google... which makes me think of this picture.. here

So back to the extraction. I searched on google about the error. ( by the way if you don't know how to do something or you get an error.. just copy and paste to google.) Well it seems a lot of people are having trouble with that error. I found out it doesn't matter to me, because that is all about doing the install within windows[which is not what I want]. So when it did extract I got all I needed from it and followed the how to. Awesome I'm that much closer to my goal of breaking my computer with 7. well when I say break I mean software not physically.

Let me tell you a little more about my story and worries. The reason I'm so nervous is the fact that I'm dual booting Ubuntu 64bit(linux) and windows xp. Well I have GRUB as my bootloader. It is the default bootloader that comes with ubuntu. Well a little more to this. I have 4 partitions on my main OS hard drive. The first being a partition for ubuntu 32 bit version. ( that was back when I was skeptical about 64 bits and compatibility issues.), the second partition goes to windows xp. The third partition went to a stuff drive as I call it. Well I was feeling frisky and I partitioned that stuff drive later on to get a partition for ubuntu 64.. well let me tell ya... I have no problems with 64 bit ubuntu.. frikin uses all of my ram.. another issue with 32bit *sigh*. So anyways once you go 64 bit you can't go back.. who says size doesn't matter?!?!11 ok well I have a 32 bit ubuntu partition that I haven't touched in months. Well that was /dev/sda5 and my 64 bit partition was /dev/sda7. I formated my 32 bit partition and then deleted the logical drive so windows 7 would just see it as unallocated space. Well as soon as I rebooted.. grub is already complaining.. and by complaining I mean it isn't showing anything to boot at all. No windows xp or ubuntu.. head ache has begun. So I'm like screw it I know that there is is formated partition so I put in my 7.iso dvd into the drive and start the death of the life, aka 7 install. Well it is taking for ever and nervous at the same time that I don't accidentally miss the unallocated space wording and format my other partition or something. Well I finally feel confident about it and then boom error it can't read a file. OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!111111. This is where the e-mail I sent to anthony came from which is this: (his reply to my email was "You should blog about this. Just cut and paste this in, it's teh awesome." and now look what you gone and made me do)

*hahha well get this.. my dvd burner is old.. i was even having problems installing ubuntu.. says it couldn't read a file.. but there is a retry button.. so it finally would read the file. (i think my burner is just dirty, which would surprise me.. i've had thru out college) well windows 7 is like .. if i can't read one file your screwed!@!!11111 so i thought.. dude i can just boot off usb.. i have a newer board.. like i don't even think the board is over a year old yet.. sooo i get the install on a usb harddrive.. and then boot into bios.. looking.. only options are harddrive, cd rom,, or frikin FLOPPY!!! who uses a floppy these days... so i'm go to my friend google.. and find out my mother board can use a usb stick to flash bios.. frikin bios!!! so i askmyself why in the world can ASUS not have usb bootable.. tell me that anthony WHYYY! so I yeah.. that is my story of the day. *

So I can't get 7 installed because my dvd burner doesn't work. Well I'm living at the rivas and I was thinking surly andrew has to have a computer or dvd rom around here somewhere? Well he did.. but my computer wouldn't even recognize the dvd rom in bios. So that is a no bueno. So my motherboard can't boot a simple usb, which I know motherboards like 4 years old that could... I can't read the dvd itself. Well I guess I'll just go back to my linux until I find someone with a dvd drive. Anthony is hopefully gonna pull through for me. It is a external usb dvd rom though.. little nervous.. Ok so back to me going back and relaxing in my linux.. ohhhh nooo grub is all like.. what! You want to boot into a OS.. heck no! I'll give you an error 17! well guess who I went to for help.. no not my foot in the screen.. it was my pal google (remember him?) yeah here is a link for what I just copied pasted. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351 OMGZ0RS!!!11 more terminal and now your throwing in a live cd.. whaaaaa!?!?! .. well I had to use the ubuntu live cd to get to a terminal in root and reinstall to the mbr (master boot record). And noww I just wait more .. for what I know is to come.. more headaches!!..

But have no fear! Raid 5 is here!! You might be thinking through all of this, this guy needs to be backing up all his stuff if he is messing around with formating and master boot records and what not.. well let me just say I have a raid 5 setup with all my personal stuff on there. But it still sucks losing your OS to something stupid like a format or rm /*.. haha don't ever do that one.. Well I've spent a lot of time configuring my ubuntu to get it that way I want.. But oh yeah! I just remembered.. 9.10 is coming in 6 days!!!! can't wait for it http://www.ubuntu.com/

what is raid ? or even radi 5? http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/06/11/understanding_raid/1

Sick = Not Fun!

2009-10-12T22:57:00.003-05:00

So, for the last week I have not been feeling well, but I still kept going to work, and taking loads of dayquill/nyquill. Then this morning I decided that I have had enough and need to go to the doctors. Grant and I are working on getting health insurance, so we weren't excited about paying some ridiculous fees since it is all out of pocket. So, I found a medical clinic down the road where they always had walk ins. We went there, were the only ones in the waiting room (maybe because it was a holiday,but not sure), and only had 1 piece of paper to fill out which was incredible.
The nurse took Grant and I to our room as she did the typical question and answer session about family history etc. Then she did this new way to check fever... all she did was run this weird wand thing along my forehead and already had my temperature. Well, after that she checked my throat and was like hmm (not a good sounding hmm) ... I was nervose. She decided that she would test me for strep throat since my throat was red... testing = more money so we weren't too excited about that.
Then we waited for the doctor, when he came in he was a funny nice man asking the typical question, "How are you doing?" Such a duh no brainer... obviously NOT good, but I played nice. He did the typical examination to also say... hmm... in a not good way to my throat, and then left to check the lab work. Grant had Mono two years ago, and so anytime I am sick he ALWAYS claims that I have mono... even though I have not had it yet. When the doctor came back in, he asked me who I had been kissing with a huge grin on his face!!! I was like wait what?! Then he started laughing and told me that I had Strep Throat.
Strep throat has never been fun, but he threw me for a loop thinking I had mono even though he didn't even know that Grant had ever had mono. He just meant that I had been contagious with Strep for the last week and just encase he checked Grant's throat to make sure he didn't have it. So, so far so good Grant doesn't have it, lets hope that he won't get it later. Also, the doctor ended up lowering his typical office fee for us, and we received 25% off because we paid upfront which was a huge happy surprise! Strep throat is not fun, but it is awesome to see God bless us in such crazy and unexpected ways. Also, I am not happy to be sick,but I am happy that I had something that I actually did need a perscription for, because I would have felt very bad to have gone and paid a lot of money for a viral infection that I can't do anything about. I have only been taking antibiotics for one day now, but I am noticing a little bit of a difference so WOOOT!

Angel Food Ministries

2009-09-28T20:39:00.002-05:00

So, this month Grant and I decided to try the Angel Food Ministries. Since we are trying to live on a very limited budget, we decided to participate. For those of you who don't know what it is, it is an organization that wants to help keep families healthy with a more balanced diet. This organization makes foods more affordable for anyone. They buy in Bulk and non name brand items which they then sell to families frozen. You can order online and you chose a host site, and once a month you go pick it up from there. Grant and I got the regular box, and it is supposed to feed a family of 4 for one week. It costs $30. So it feeds Grant and I for a little bit over2 weeks, but I planned the meals so they will be spread out over a month.

As you can see in the picture above, most of their food comes frozen which makes it easy because you can either use it right away or use it as a base for a month and just add whatever other things you need. I know that some people say it still isn't as cheap as coupons,but I honestly haven't been able to find very many meat coupons.

Here is their Menu for the Next Month which I think Grant and I are going to sign up for again. We think it is really cool especially for the price. Also, one could also pay with food stamps if they needed.

If your interested, or for more information go to:
http://www.angelfoodministries.com/

The Best Peanut Butter Cups!!!!

2009-09-17T18:25:00.006-05:00

So every once in a while I get a huge chocolate craving, now I am not a huge plain chocolate eater, so most of the time that means that I don't just want a Hersey bar. The problem with this is that most of the chocolate that I like is not that cheap.

Toffifay has to be one of the all time favorites that I grew up with. I know that they sell it at Walgreen's, but I am not sure which other sites also sell it. Well, the other week, they were selling it for

But anyway, I have always been a sucker for peanut butter cups mainly Reese. Well, last year I branched out with these great value peanut butter cups. They are soo great you have no idea. They are not the least bit healthy, but they taste Great!! Well, the other day I really needed chocolate! Grant and I had groceries to buy, so we took a longer drive to Wal-mart just to make sure that we got these chocolates too. We get there get all of the groceries, then we go to the candy aisle to get my yummy goodness, and they don't have them!?!!?! I was sooooo disappointed! We looked again, I was almost on the verge of tears because I had expectations of being able to have them. There wasn't anything else I wanted, so we decided to go check out. I was definitely feeling sorry for myself and moping while we were in line, and then as I was helping grant unload the cart onto the conveyor belt, I saw TWO bags of my peanut butter cups!!! Grant had found two bags and hadn't said anything. At first I was a little annoyed that he didn't tell me at first, but then I was just happy to have my chocolate! ;p

Hanging out with the girls

2009-09-17T14:41:00.002-05:00

Mia and Ally are two of the coolest kids that I know.. I might be a little bit biased,but who cares!?! Since I don't know any that age I can't help it. Anyway, one of the coolest things about living with Tanya and Wilson has been getting to know the girls more than just seeing them once or twice a year. I tried to hang out with them, but sometimes I was glad that I wasn't their parent because all kids can get annoying at times.

Our rule for the girls is to stay on our bed, if they want to stay in the room. Otherwise, they might get into more things that we didn't want broken, and our room was not baby safe I would say! So, here you can see Mia and Ally wrestling... I think that they were fighting over our rings.

When Grant was taking pictures, Mia made sure that Grant had taken a picture of each foot since her nails were painted, and each hand. It was very funny because she was not happy until he had taken them and she could see them.

We would let them play with our rings since they would have a harder time breaking those, and it was soo funny to see their first reaction to them... lets put them on our toes! So, Grant and I were laughing about how many toes of Ally's can fit in one of my rings!

Then as I mentioned before, we would sometimes watch them, and this time I got Ally out of bed because she was crying,but she still seemed groggy.... So, I layed down on the bed again and in about 3 seconds she was out again, so I was happy for Tanya because most of the time more sleep = happier child.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend!

2009-09-14T22:37:00.005-05:00

So, I don't know if many of you have watched the movie Blood Diamond that came out in 2006. It is a great, but gorey movie. In this movie, they show truths about the diamond market, and all about blood diamonds which basically means that in some places in Africa, there are still slaves working in diamond mines. In these mines, they mine diamond which are then smuggled into the system.

One of the great lines that Leonardo Decarpio says in this movie is that the only reason that these people are dying is because of the demand for these stones. The demands that mainly Americans make. Most people in other countries, are not expecting diamonds as our culture seems to.

So, don't get me wrong... I wanted a diamond too!!! But I couldn't live with the fact that someone might have died for a dumb rock... so, i decided to do some research. Now, there is no way that every diamond is a blood diamond, but I wanted to be sure that mine was not one. I found a few online websites that sold different diamonds, but a lot of them looked really shady.

Finally, I stumbled upon engineered diamonds. Most people don't know about them yet, but they are grown in a lab, meaning that they are perfect and don't have the flaws that all natural diamonds have. They are not quiet as strong as natural diamonds but there is a .9 difference in strength. The nice thing about them, is making them in a lab is a lot cheaper, so that made me feel a lot better knowing that my engagement ring with wedding band that is over 1 carat was under $1000.00. I have had my ring for over a year and am very satisfied, and the best thing is that you don't need ring insurance!! They will replace your diamond if it falls out, is messed up, etc.
So, here is one of my favorite eternity bands that they sell, now I won't get it for years most likely,but I can dream! ;p

But their website has some beautiful jewelry on it, they do any custom stuff as long as you can draw or explain what you want. Now, obviously that makes it more expensive, but in jewelry terms, I would see them as pretty inexpensive. Also, their diamonds are considered green, and that is why this company made this years Miss Universe 2009 Crown.

So here is their website if you are interested!!!

http://www.diamondnexuslabs.com/

Belated 1st Anniversary!

2009-09-08T22:42:00.003-05:00

Grant and I had our one year anniversary about one month ago. Ours was August 9th! We had a great time, we went to a restaurant called Manwells which we had a gift card too. We went to Barnes and Noble and got a book, and we also got Cheesecake Factory for dessert. I had a great time, it was so much fun getting dressed up, and especially getting to wear an awesome dress that I had gotten at the thrift store for $10.00 that Grant had not seen yet. We were definitely trying to keep it small because we shouldn't be spending a lot of money, but it was still great! We both still cannot believe that it has been one year.

This picture actually isn't from our Anniversary,but I liked it and thought it was good enough. I actually forgot to have someone take a picture of us all dressed up. *sigh* oh well, next time.

We actually celebrated our anniversary on Friday rather than waiting until Sunday, and boy am I glad that we did!!! Grant got sick Saturday around noon, and was in bed with a high fever, chills, and a bad headache until Tuesday. I guess sometimes it pays to be early. Also, we told the Amaros about this encase they want to try this some time to make sure their anniversaries cannot be ruined anymore!

A New Home - For a little bit at least!

2009-09-08T22:30:00.003-05:00

So, Grant and I are really excited because we have finally found a place to live. We have been very blessed lately with a whole bunch of different things, but here is the story. A family called the Rivas in our young married's class are going to El Salvador for various reasons. They needed someone to stay in their house, and we needed a place to stay.

This means that we get to live there for 5 and a half to 6 months until they are ready to return. We are paying for utilities and they are paying for our internet which is definitely awesome of them. Their House is in the Lakeway Area/ Hill country of Austin. It made me laugh because Grant and I were like, Man, this is a ritzy area... come to find out it is a one of the wealthiest areas of Austin. Their house is beautiful, and later I will add some pictures.

Also, another very exciting piece of news is that I got a different job within my company where I am now the estimator. I help the sales people out with quotes, commercial take offs, and some customer sales myself. The best part of this position is a pay raise which means that the longer drive isn't going to be as big of a deal anymore. Grant and I feel so blessed because this opportunity!

My Dream Home

2009-09-04T20:27:00.006-05:00

So, I have needed things to Blog about, so here is a house that is for sale here in Austin! It is SO beautiful, and there are a lot of things that I just love about it, and so I guess I will share with you why; whether anyone reads it or not is fine. This house is built in the 969 neighborhood where they build modern green homes, the main difference between this neighborhood and the Mueller neighborhood is that they don't have the nice urban flair and the awesome community. This is pretty much suburbia with modern houses.

So for Starters, I love the sleek, modern outside. I love the Stucco and the beautiful dark wood fence.

The porch in the back is nice, but a little bit large; I mean I'm sure you could use it,but for everyday life a little bit large.

A better picture of the porches, I love the window placement in this house.

This is the entry way/ living room / kitchen area. Please notice the awesome aggregate concrete flooring.

The furniture is OK,but I love all the windows/doors.

Their living room area.

Here you can see the nice island and the retail doors in this house.

The Amazing Kitchen, I LOVE the clerestory windows above the upper cabinets so that you don't have to find anything to put above your cabinets, and it lets in great light.

This room is great, the bamboo floors are beautiful, and again great window placement! This room is huge, but of course if I had one this size I would not be complaining.

Another view.

Great window placement, nice drawer pulls, and also the mosaic tiles in the shower are nice. I prefer no tub and just a shower.

Pony wall is also nice, I prefer an enclosed linen closet,but I could deal with an open one like that.

The Guest Bedroom, I like the room, and especially the balcony.

This is the other bedroom that they have as an office/ hang out room.

Another View.

The Guest bathroom, not to shabby, not too small,but still looks pretty classy.

Full bamboo steps are always nice.

Did I mention I love the window placement?

This is the great view from the Balcony of downtown Austin. I think this house is 6 miles away.

In Texas, I have seen a decent amount of car ports rather than garages. I like that you can store a lot of stuff in garages, but here they built in lockable storage which is also nice.

The front of the house, the retail door and the window placement, also the stained cedar portion of the house is also nice.

Some of the other houses in the neighborhood, and also the fun walk way in the front.

I love the Cement planters that they added to their house.

So here is one of the houses that I love, it is definitely expensive, but it is still on the market, and I love it.

http://www.5400senderohills.com/

For Jill

2009-09-04T19:03:00.001-05:00

These are for a friend Jill. Easy photo hosting.

Ally and Me!

2009-09-01T19:29:00.001-05:00

Grant and I sometimes "watch" Mia and Ally. When I say watching I mean, we are at home while the girls are sleeping. Every once in a while, the girls wake up before Tanya gets back, so we try to entertain them until Tanya gets home. Here is one of those times.

Mia and Tanya were shopping, and Ally woke up before they were back. I had just gotten back from work, so she was excited to play with me. The rules for the girls is that if they are in our room they have to stay on the bed. Because off of the bed are so many different things that they can break of mess up the room with.

So, ally and I were talking and playing on the bed, and she would jump around, play with Tanya's phone, and then every once in a while lay down and point at the blanket and assume that I would cover her up. I would, and it was a constant Game. Right now, we are in Houston for the holiday and it is so cool to have the girls used to us and comfortable with us. It will be kinda sad when we get our own place because they won't be as used to us, but that is ok. I have to say it is awesome to play with them,but them not be mine yet.

Fun Freebies!

2009-08-29T12:42:00.003-05:00

Here is a fun freebie that I found while looking on online. You sign up for a e-mail newsletter they send you some granola and a granola bar for free, and then if you don't like the e-mail newsletter, you can always unsubscribe. I e-mailed it to some people, but I wasn't sure who else was interested in it.

http://freesample.naturevalley.com/NatureValley/Default.aspx?source=14181

Tasty Treats

2009-08-27T21:25:00.005-05:00

So, our Wednesday night Bible class for the young marrieds is a small, but fun class. We have finally picked a study, and the youngest... being me, got to teach first. I love food especially baking, so I wanted to make something. Well, all of us are trying to be healthy and some even dieting, so I knew I should take that into consideration. Grant was awesome and helped me come up with different things I could bring to munch on... only problem was each one was fatty and the last resort was always cookies. Cookies are great,but not very nice when most people can eat them and one or two can't and are trying not to. So, I decided that if I brought in strawberries that would be healthy, and I could cover a few with chocolate so we each get one unhealthy strawberry, and the rest would be better and just as good.

I wanted a visual because I forgot to take any pictures of mine, so I am not as cool as whoever made these strawberries, but we can pretend that I was. Mine were tasty and not a pretty,but since no one was expecting it, it was fun. I don't know how well me teaching went, but I know that at least my strawberries were good.

Last Week:

So, Wilson likes apple crumb pie according to Tanya, and I love baking, and Tanya has her hands full with the girls and doesn't always have the change to bake. Thus, I decided to bake a apple crumb pie. I LOVE pies! I was the weird kid growing up that had pies instead of birthday cakes cause they are so much cooler.

I ended up having too much dough, so I made two little pies intending them for the girls, but I ended up taking the to work as dessert on two different days which was an awesome treat! Wilson said he liked the pies, and I thought it was pretty good and an improvement from the first apple crumb pie that I ever made so that is always nice.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

2009-08-23T20:06:00.000-05:00

So, I wanted to go and see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince opening night. I wasn't sure where we wanted to go see it, but we ended up hearing about a place called the Alamo Drafthouse. This is a Movie Theater chain that has locations all over Texas and I think a few out of state. Grant was a great sport, and was very willing to come see it with me at midnight on July 14th which I think was a Tuesday.

What makes this movie theater special, is that you have your own servers as shown above that wait on you throughout the whole movie if you need either food or drinks of any form.

Grant took a picture for me of part of the theater. You can see it is kind of like a dinner theater where you eat and watch at the same time. There is a row of seats and then a small top that stretches across the whole isle.

Here is an example of the table tops. You get a menu at the beginning and decide what you want to order, then they have pieces of paper where you can write the things down during the movie, and if the waiter sees a piece of paper, they will come pick it up and get your order processed.

All of the food is made in house, obviously it isn't too cheap, but if you don't get that much food or stuff to drink you should be fine. Also, this was a special occasion!!! The opening night of HARRY POTTER ;p. Anyway, Grant got his really good pizza with spinach, sundried tomatoes, and lot of cheese. Before we came to this we had, had dinner at an elder's house in our church and had met a couple that were missionaries in Thailand. We had eaten a lot of good food there, so we weren't expecting to eat a lot at the movies. I got a chocolate molten cake which was delicious! Sorry I don't have a before picture, but I didn't want to disturb anyone during the movie to have Grant take a picture.

Since it was the Harry Potter movie, they had about 5 to 6 dishes that were English favorites from treackle tart to Mrs. Weasley's onion soup. We ended up not getting them because of the prices, but I did get some butter beer which was a very interesting,but tasty treat. They also have a Harry Potter Feast where you pay a lot more, it isn't on opening night, but all of the food you can eat is included... I just wanted to see the movie as soon as possible.

It cracked me up how this place had it own version of platform 9 3/4. Grant and I are cool enough to have been at the one in London, but this was good enough. Also, you can see that this was after the movie around 3ish, I think, so we are a bit tired.

Oh, one last thing, since it was an opening night production, the gave everyone a piece of film from this movie which was an unexpected surprise.

Grant was trying to show what part of the movie it was from,but I'll just have to tell you that it was Harry and Dumbledore in our part of the strip.

NEW SHOES!!!

2009-08-22T16:28:00.001-05:00

Jessica got yet another pair of shoes.

Jessica wanted me to say "something cool about them" sooo... they have cork on them..

Officially Texans!

2009-08-21T13:13:00.000-05:00

Jess always says that we have nothing to blog about, but that is certainly not true. This past Tuesday we officially became Texas residents. Last saturday we took our cars to get them inspected, which, in the county we live in, there is a safety inspection and also a emissions inspection. Then we found out where we were suppose to register our cars at was closed on the weekends. So Jess took a day off of work Tuesday, thinking it would probably be a half day or something.... welllllll that was wrong thinking. I tried to keep my expectation very low for a day that you have to go to the DMV. Well here in Texas, we actually had to go to the county tax office to get our cars registered and get plates. Well if you are a new resident you get to have a $90 new resident tax as well. But the $355 dollars later we have our cars registered in the state of texas and we received our plates for our cars. Side note, Texas is phasing in new license plates. Well I think the newer ones do not look as masculin at the older ones, and I was hoping for some old ones. Well just did her paper work and received a set of the new license plates. Then I finished my paper work and BAM I received the older license plates!!! AWESOME!!!

There is a sweet picture of the "Rally Racer" as my friend from college use to call it. The funny part about this truck is that I bought it from my brother-in-law that lived in Texas. I registered it in Arkansas but never took the inspection sticker off the windshield until this past Saturday. Now it is full circle and the ol' Rally Racer is in its home state. Well the county tax office was surprisingly quick and easy. Then we went to the DPS (Department of Public Safety). This is the place you get your license. Well we tried to walk in the door but there was a line zig zagged all the way till the door. So after waiting for 3.5 hours and paying more money, we received our 8 by 11 sheets of paper that were our temperary license until then came in the mail after like 3-6 weeks. An 8 by 11 sheet of paper!!!! I guess everything is bigger in Texas. So you have to carry an 8x11 sheet of paper with you where every you go. In the long run it doesn't matter because we are finally Texan residents. Since we are Texans, we can now start to officially say "Y'all", "fixen to", "coke (even though you might be getting a mountain dew it is still the general 'coke'", and all the rest of the southern slang. We can start calling people from the north.."Yanks" haha . Well I might be back with a picture of Jessica's license plate. OHH!! I almost forgot about the best part of our day. The church we have been going to has a young marrieds group. Well one of the young marrieds works at state farm insurance. Well a long story short we are saving a lot of money on our insurance!!!!! Thanks Cody.

On the airplane

2009-06-25T12:34:00.000-05:00

So dan met up with me in Nashville. Then we were both on the same
flight to Cleveland. Dan brought his netbook and thought " why not get
a dandy game of unreal tournament in before we land. " here is a
ictire of it.

In Austin airport

2009-06-25T07:12:00.000-05:00

So I arrived at the airport around 6:30. My flight leaves at 8. I'm
really early, but iwould rather be early than rushed. I saw one guy he
didn't want to be uncool so he wasn't running, but he was speed
walking and I think it looked worse.

Preparing for a Roadtrip/lots of packing

2009-06-23T22:35:00.001-05:00

Well my flight for Ohio leave around 8:00am from Austin, TX. I have a stop in Nashville where I'll actually be meeting up and getting on the same flight as Dan to Cleveland. I added a map at the top of the blog temporarily. I have an application on my iPhone that gets my location via GPS or a triangulation of cell phone towers, and then sends it to a website which then puts a lovely dot on a google map for you. Here is a link ( http://map.phireant.com/ ) for the Map (which is pretty much the same thing at the top of this blog). So this application has to be running on my iPhone in order for the location to be sent. Well obviously I'm going to have to use my phone for other things, so the location will not be exact. But you will get a general idea of where our convoy is located. I'm going to be trying to blog this trip out, but I'm unsure how well I'll do because of other things going on and also I'll be driving one of the 3 26-foot penske trucks.

Young Married's Gruene Tubing Event!

2009-06-23T22:18:00.001-05:00

So the Young Married's Group at our church does a really nice job of planning activities that we can do together. This was another one of those activities. We met everyone at Gruene, Tx.

This was the name of the Restaurant that we ate at with the whole group. It was built on the side of a hill that over looked two of the different rivers that you could choose to float down. It supposedly is one of the most famous areas to eat in this town. It had multiple different buildings like a barn, and other pieces that had been added on. It had a very fun vibe, and our server was great!

We happen to come when there was a festival going on, so there were lots of people in this little town. Grant and I arrived earlier than most of the other people so we looked at the flea market stuff and the antique stores. As you can see, this is a historic village, so it was fun see the dance hall, the old grocery store, etc.

After this we went to the Gruene River Co. Where we rented Tubes, lotioned up, some more than others, and were driven to the drop off point where we as a group went into the water and slowly floated down the river. We decided to go on the Comal River since it was a shorter ride than the Guadalupe River. We hit two water chutes that made us go to parts of the river that had more currents. We had a lot of fun relaxing, talking, and getting to know people better.

Grant and I were surprised how clean this river was due to the fact that this is college activity sometimes where drinking is allowed on the river. (which seems dumb because of how fast you could drowned, but oh well.) There were actually police men in small boats that handed out tickets to people who littered. One of the guys in the group Paul, found a turtle and carried it for part of the trip which was also fun.

Here is one of the water chutes that I mentioned above.

Our Ride was 2 hours long, where we were picked up and driven back to the place we rent the tubes and our cars where parked. We were all pooped and drove back to Austin which is about an hour away from Gruene, Tx. It was an awesome event, but afterwards we were all soooo tired.

Grant hadn't put on any sunblock for this adventure and ended up looking like a lobster. I tried to put sunblock on, but used this mist sunblock and failed miserably. So, I am not nearly as burnt as Grant, but have a few streaks where I didn't rub the sunblock in. So, I have a permanently burnt bikini on at the moment. It was defintiely a fun experience and meeting more people was great too!

Young Married's Camping Trip

2009-04-28T11:27:00.000-05:00

So, Grant and I went on the Young Married's Camping Trip last weekend. We had a BLAST! The day before it had been raining(the first time since we had been in Austin), and so the forecast said it was supposed to be rainy and cold. So, I packed warmer things with me. By the time we get to the camp grounds which are an hour and a half away from downtown Austin, it is hot and muggy filled with lots of sunshine. I think I wasn't in the best mood cause I never get hot, and I was hot. Then there were all these Gnats, and it was a little overwhelming with all of these people that we had met once and lots of new people. Well, I mainly helped Tanya out at the beginning socializing with some people,but not with all of them. Then toward dinner time it got cooler, the gnats disappeared, and everyone seemed to warm up to each other more. Then we all started having fun! the dinner was great, and through out most of the day I had talked to everyone I am pretty sure. Everyone was so nice, and it was really funny to see that almost all of the young marrieds had either their children with them or their makeshift children... their dogs. so that was a lot of fun.

Here is Grant and I being silly... On our way into the Camp Grounds which were pretty huge, there was this allotted area where you could pull off the road and take pictures. Well, I am not the touristy kind, but it really was a beautiful view, so, I asked him to stop. So, we took this picture... which he did not want because he said that someone from the young marrieds will probably see us and he would feel dumb. I assured him no one would and right as we were taking the picture the Georges (who are Tanya and Wilson's Neighbors) drove by... he was not to happy with me lol! The funny thing is, is that I look like a goof since I saw the Georges driving by and Grant looks great in the picture.. oh well!

Me standing by the pretty view.

Grant being goofy and bearing with me while I want him in pictures too!

The view!

I have to say I like this picture, and it is my background on my computer! Woot for amateur photographers.

There were people canoeing, but I missed them in the pictures!

And the last nature photo!

Here you can see the bigger tent that Anthony, Shea, Grant, and I shared, and then you can see the smaller two person tent that Mia and Wilson Shared. Tanya and Ally where there during the first day, and then met us for Lunch on Sunday at Dan's after the church service she went to. We had service at the camp grounds.

Here you can see part of the group of people at the young marrieds. There was a group photo taken, so I hope that I can get a copy, but we will see. On the left is the picnic table that was used to display all the food for an assembly line approach, and on the right you can see part of the main circle of people with the camp fire and everything.

So, as it lot later on the first day, it got darker and cooler which gave it a nicer atmosphere in general. A few guys(Paul, and Ryan) who had their dogs asked Grant and I if we wanted to go on a walk. They took us to this really cool inlet of the lake where you could go cliff diving and just a fun place to swim. Now it was almost dark, and we were there only for the dogs, so they threw the ball into the water and let the dogs go and fetch. When we were almost ready to leave, Paul threw the ball one last time and the dog missed where he had thrown it and didn't know where to swim to retrieve it, so Paul mentioned the we should find a stick to throw in the same area so that his dog(Dixie) would get the ball. So all the guys but me start going around in the dark searching the brush and area of the trail for sticks. So, I guess Paul lifted a rock, and literally picked up a baby rattle snake without it biting him, dropped it, and then told us all about it. Well, after Dixie got the ball, Paul ended up bringing the snake back to camp where it was gutted, and the skin was cured. My first rattle snake experience.
Then we played a new game called knock which was a lot of fun, and then went to bed later that night.

The next morning there were some crazy tools that they used for cooking. You can see the huge iron skillet on the fire which was used to make bacon, and eggs. Then you can see the dutch ovens(had never seen them before either) where they were cooking the biscuits, and later gravy was made too! It was a great breakfast!

Here you can see Mia, who was still sleeping after everyone else was already awake,but she slept in a Tent with no problem so that was good.

Wilson ended up waking her up due to the fact that he wanted her to see what the whole camping experience was about with the whole camp fire cooking etc.

It took Mia a while to wake up,but Maizie was right there ready to welcome her since she had been up for hours already!

Just a fun shot of Mia while she was waking up. It was acutally kind of chilly, but that is how camping is supposed to be, so it was nice after all that I had brought warm things!

Here is Mia after breakfast and after our church service all happy and awake in Anthony and Shea's tent while we were all trying to clean it up since it was time to start heading out.

It was definitley a fun filled weekend, it was a little overwhelming at first, but a great experience nonetheless!

Life Updated

2009-04-27T13:18:00.000-05:00

Hey Family and Friends! I know it has been a while since I have updated, but there has not been that many fun or exciting things that have been happening lately. So, for our life update, Grant and I are currently staying in Austin, Texas with Tanya, Wilson, Mia, and Ally. We love the church here and especially all of the people in the Young Marrieds class. We are currently looking for jobs in this area and other areas in case there are other openings. Here are some pictures of the first time we went to Dan's with the Roberston Family since our stay in Austin began.

Here you can see Mia not happy about something, I think that she wanted some of Wilson's Malt shake.

Ally felt it was necessary to try some of my chocolate shake. Grant and I were planning on splitting it explaining the huge size, but Ally too over. Also, she had no problem sucking correctly and getting more out than the rest of us could manage.

The size difference was just so funny to see hence the pictures.

I hope that you are all doing well, and that we find jobs soon so we have some more exciting things to post/write about.

25 Things...About You & Your Spouse

2009-02-17T19:39:00.000-06:00

♥ What are your middle names?

Spencer & Rebekka

♥ How long have you been together?

We started officially dating in fall 2006 until now!

♥ How long did you know each other before you started dating?

Years, have no clue exactly when.

♥ Who asked who out?

Grant asked me.

♥ Whose siblings do/ did you see the most?

We see mine more, but that is cause he is my older brother’s best friend.

♥ Do you have any children together?

Nope.

♥ What about pets?

None.

♥ Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?

Attention, I am more extroverted and want a lot of attention, and he is introverted and is fine with being alone all the time. Just took some talking and all was well.

♥ Did you go to the same school?

Grant went to Mogadore High School, and I went to CVCA/LCCS

♥ Are you from the same home town?

No, Grant is from Mogadore, and I lived most of my life in Tallmadge… so very close.

♥ Who is the smartest?

I probably have the most book smarts, but I think Grant has more down to earth logical smarts that I probably need more of.

♥ Who is the most sensitive?

I am definitively the most sensitive… I like to blame it on the fact that I’m a girl.

♥ Where do you eat out most as a couple?

Taco Bell/Wendy’s

♥ Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?

We went around Europe last Christmas and that was fun!

♥ Who has the craziest exes?

ROFL, since I dated one of other person besides Grant I actually have an EX… he doesn’t have any Exes.

♥ Who has the worst temper?

My temper is annoying because I just cry and then no one can understand me, and Grants probably would be because he only says something when enough has built up to make it worth saying something.

♥ Who does the cooking?

I do most of the cooking, but Grant can and does sometimes cook, and it is always great!

♥ Who is more social?

I am more social in general, but when Grant is around friends and family he can definitely get more social.

♥ Who is the neat-freak?

I am more of a neat freak, but Grant is more OCD about random things. I still have cycles where it gets dirtier and dirtier and then I clean it up etc.

♥ Who is the most stubborn?

Not sure, I would say Grant, but I probably have random times where I am more stubborn.

♥ Who hogs the bed?

Me, I mean not horribly, but yeah.

♥ Who wakes up earlier?

As of now me, but it all depends on if I’m working otherwise I am always up last.

♥ Where was your first date?

We watched a sunset, ate cereal, and drank tea at Heber Springs.

♥ Who has the bigger family?

Me… by far!

♥ Do you get flowers often?

On very special occasions.

♥ How do you spend the holidays?

Well, before we always went to Ohio and were unfortunately cold, and spent time with both families… now, we might have to change our habits.

♥ Who is more jealous?

Neither, we both don’t like jealousy and decided that we would just trust each other and not freak out about hanging out with friends, etc.

♥ How long did it take to get serious?

Not sure… A year?

♥ Who does/ did the laundry?

I do the laundry, but that is because I like doing it! Well, if I do not have to go to a laundry mat!

♥ Who’s better with the computer?

Grant of course, he is the COMPUTER engineer.

♥ Who drives when you are together?

Grant always drives unless we are on a road trip and he needs to sleep.

My Internship

2009-01-11T13:51:00.000-06:00

Grant and I have really been blessed since we have graduated from college! The day before we moved out of our apartment in Searcy before Christmas break, we found out that I had gotten an Internship with the firm Cromwell Architects Engineers. They are the largest Architectural and Engineering Firm in Arkansas. I was very excited because not only are they a very well known firm, but they were actually paying me for my time which is very scarce for Interior Design internships! I started it on Monday, January 5th, and so far I have completed the first week. It is such a wonderful environment, and it is such a productive firm because they have all of the engineers, architects, and designers all under one roof working together on all of the projects. I wanted to show some pictures of where I work now that I have a break.

This is the outside of the building that I work in which is across from the Little Rock Court House. As of now they are only using 2 of their 4 floors, and renting out the other 2. In case they need to expand from their number of 120 employees they can.

2009-01-11T13:48:00.000-06:00

The front of the building.

Here is the reception desk if you need help, and behind it is the management area.

Here you can see the Reception/Seating area.

2009-01-11T13:39:00.000-06:00

This is part of the management area.

Another view, of the interior design part... to the left is an island conference table that we use a lot for different activities.

This is part of the interior design area, you can see the wall of binders from different companies that we need for specifying certain products.

A different biew of my cubicle, I am also lucky that most of our main wall is a window, and sunlight is just such a blessing.

2009-01-11T13:35:00.000-06:00

My name tag... WEIRD!

This is my Cubicle that I have in the Interior Design area. I try to keep it clean, but I won't be there forever, so there is no point in bringing in loads of stuff from home.

Another view of where the architects are; you can see how there are nice windows surrounding most of this firm.

This is part of the first floor where the architects are located! It has more of a loft look with cement flooring and open ceiling cavities.

Good Times

2009-01-08T00:55:00.000-06:00

Well I was just looking through old videos and for some reason this one really was making me laugh... a lot... Maybe it is just me.. but i don't care. take luck!

An Icy Affair!

2008-12-26T01:19:00.000-06:00

During Finals week, it became really cold and we got lots of freezing rain! They had to reschedule some finals since Arkansas cannot truly deal with this much ice. Here you can see our balcony.

We were kind of nervous about our car being parked so close to the street since most drivers don't know that they are doing. It is so crazy how you can see the 1/4 to 1 inch thick ice that covered everything!

You can see how far it goes all the way down the streets and throughout Searcy and other near by cities.

I have heard about yellow snow, but what about blue snow??

My College Graduation!!!

2008-12-26T01:14:00.000-06:00

I graduated college from the University of Central Arkansas with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interior Design on December 13th with Suma Cum Laude! Some of my family came into town, and the Roberstons were kind enough to house them since Grant and my apartment was too small to fit more than Grant and I. Grant also graduated, but he was done officially on the 20th, but he decided not to walk.

Me getting ready for graduation.

Raya getting ready as well.

Everyone walking to the building on UCA's campus... I was already in line.

The whole area which is in the Farris Building.

2008-12-26T01:07:00.000-06:00

The stage before everyone was seated.

My name on the program.

Simon came down to take a picture of me like he was my dad or something; so, I was slightly annoyed!

I graduated with honors which made me number twenty three to walk, and after that most of my family had other things to do, but fortunately the ceremony was only one and a half hours long.

2008-12-26T01:01:00.000-06:00

2008-12-26T00:51:00.000-06:00

My family after my graduation looking for me.

Once I was done and meeting my family.

A lot of my interior design class mates.

A group shot!

2008-12-26T00:41:00.000-06:00

After Graduation

2008-12-26T00:33:00.000-06:00

The chaos of my apartment with too many people in it.

Me doing dishes after graduation.

Angie and Simon talking.

Kenny talking with my mom, this was the first time that Kenny and Angie met my parents and more of my family.

2008-12-22T16:01:00.000-06:00

After my graduation, before we went out to dinner, Kenny and Angie came over with their kids to hang out.

Kale hanging out in our room with Julia while she worked on sudokus.

Archie and Abby playing on our office chair; we didn't have any kids toys so they were improvising well.

Everyone having conversations.

Thanksgiving in Austin

2008-12-22T15:40:00.000-06:00

The morning after we arrived in Austin... everyone was still waking up, but the food was amazing.

Mia and Ally on the way to the park.

Simon digging the sandbox that they had. This playground was really cool, and it had a lot of different things to play with.

A nice picture of Wilson and Ally on the swing.

2008-12-22T15:37:00.000-06:00

Marvin and Ally Swinging.

Grant, Simon, and I swinging on the swing, it was a disk swing at the playground which was a lot of fun.

Another cute family picture of the Robertsons.

A Picture that I really liked of Grant and I.

2008-12-22T15:33:00.000-06:00

A cute laughing picture of Ally that reminds me of Roki.

A cute picture of Tanya and Ally; Ally is so calm and happy most of the time.

Simon and Mia on the slide. The guys had an assembly line with Mia. One of them would be at the top, and the other would bring her up to the other person and so on.

Grant and Mia on the slide.

San Antonio

2008-12-22T15:28:00.000-06:00

The kitchen table area with Ally and Grant.

Mia on HER bed that she slept on all alone.

The master bed room.

The living room area.

2008-12-21T22:59:00.000-06:00

The bar/kitchen area in the Resort.

The huge bath tub with Mia and Ally enjoying it.

This was the first morning in San Antonino right before we headed out to start exploring.

A very beautiful duck that the girls were fascinated with.

2008-12-17T19:10:00.000-06:00

Mia looking at ducklings at the River walk.

Lots of ducks and water to look at.

There was a boat that you could ride on the River walk as well.

Right before we were going to eat.

2008-12-17T19:00:00.000-06:00

Roki's amazing food.

We all just got our food at the Casa Rio which was also a recommended place by something to Roki, and it was very good as well.

Here you can see the pigeons that came to feast on all the food dropped by the girls. The only problem was the once the girls saw all the birds, they started to throw more food on purposed, but if nothing else it was fun to watch.

The Alamo.

2008-12-17T18:47:00.000-06:00

Roki and Mia having a blast!

By the river walk, it really was beautiful, and there were so many different shops, restaurants, and things to look at.

The Ducks were an instant hit of course!

San Antonio was a very beautiful and tourist filled place to visit, they even had their own horse drawn carriages.

2008-12-17T18:42:00.000-06:00

Here are Tanya and Ally about to get the Famous Mango Ice Cream recommended by Bill Clinton himself.

I tried Tanya's Mango, and it was really good, but I still decided to get Chocolate Ice Cream, and Mia got a little bit of everything!

While in San Antonio, we went and Visited Marvin's sister, and while there we had a lot of fun and met a lot of new people in Tanya's other family.

Here is Grant helping me at the resort to make a lemon Meringue pie, it requires a lot of stirring, and it was so nice to have him helping me.

More Austin

2008-12-17T18:30:00.000-06:00

Daniel and Marvin bonding while playing their various computer games.

All of us before some meal, not sure which one.

Grant and Simon taught Mia how to turn on and off an iphone, and they even put on some different applications that she could use. For instance, they had a few finger drawing applications that she enjoyed.

Just chill out time; who would have thought 5 people could fit on that couch?!

Thanksgiving Meal

2008-12-17T18:25:00.000-06:00

Tanya and Sarina preparing the turkey before the meal, obviously.

Those of us present at the Amazing meal!

More candid pictures as we just started eating/drinking. I love how Tanya and I are doing the exact same thing!

A view of the girls, and may I point out the amazing Cranberry fluff that Roki made that was absolutely AMAZING. Needless to say it was gone before the night was over.

2008-12-17T18:22:00.000-06:00

Mia and Ally during Thanksgiving... doesn't look like they got that much food, but they did.

After the meal, the guys did the dishes! It was awesome!

Tanya, Mia, Ally, and I sat there and watched, talked, and joked with the guys.

All of the desserts that made us fatter, and made Marvin have to take extra walks.

Mia's Birthday Party!

2008-12-17T12:01:00.000-06:00

After Thanksgiving, We had all planned on having Mia's Birthday Party. Sarina and Tanya made the cake, we bought our gifts, and the rest showed up. Mia had no clue what was happeneing!

You can kind of see the banner on the wall that says, "Happy Birthday." throughout the day Wilson and Tanya were telling her happy birthday, and she just smiled. Tanya is bringing the cake, and she still is oblivious.

Tanya had to help Mia blow out the candle... she seemed nervose about it.

All of us excited about her hopefully blowing out the candle.

After the candle was blown out, and Mia was allowed to "dig in."

2008-12-17T11:56:00.000-06:00

This was right after Mia first tried the amazing Ice Cream cake that Tanya and Sarina made.

Another cute picture... to bad Ally is missing.

For a while she was a lot to just sit there and eat her cake, and I think she was happy.

Simon enjoying the party!

2008-12-17T11:53:00.000-06:00

Here you can see the gift from Marvin and Roki, a miniature cooking set including an apron that matches Tanya's. So now Mia can truly help Tanya cook and bake!

Mia had such great expressions while opening the gifts, it was a lot of fun to watch, and she had us laughing most of the time.

This was Daniel and Sarina's gift which were these cool water colors that were clear until they hit paper... needless to say, she figured it out.

Grant, Simon, and I gave Mia a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head set, and this is her figuring out how to add and subtract items. *The next morning we saw her trying to fit those yellow glasses on Ally*

Train Ride & Park

2008-12-17T11:48:00.000-06:00

After Mia's Birthday Party, Wilson and Tanya decided that we should take Mia on a train ride. This is a train that takes about a 2 mile drive(if I remember correctly) around a nice park in Austin. It is a safe, train that according to Mia needs to go faster. We had a lot of fun, and it was very inexpensive. While waiting for the Train, there was the whole park and play ground area to explore and to have fun in.

Here are Grant and Simon playing with the xylophone that they had there in the park.

Ally on the swing being happy.

All of us getting ready to leave for our upcoming adventure.

A nice picture of Grant and I that Roki took.

2008-12-17T11:42:00.000-06:00

Here is a cute Family Picture! I thought it was funny how much more excited Ally seemed, but we all know that Mia was very excited as well.

Sarina and I waiting for the train to come to a halt so we could board.

Grant pushing Mia... she had all of the men wrapped around her little finger and would decide who was worthy enough to push her.

Sarina and Ally swinging together. There were not very many of the swings for the younger kids, so Sarina was improvising.

2008-12-17T11:37:00.000-06:00

Here is a random statue that was in the middle of the park, and everyone thought this would be fun!

I just thought that this picture was so cute!

Here is the front of the train that we drove on.

Here is the group of us except Marvin and Roki who were sitting in front of us, and I think Roki was the one taking the picture!

Project!

2008-11-21T08:45:00.000-06:00

These are the pictures of my model that I made for my Advanced Interior Design Class. This is the design for the UCA Business Building Bistro Area. This building is being built as I write this. Grant and I are about to leave for Austin with Simon, so I don't have more time to write right now.

One More to add to the collection

2008-11-20T18:14:00.000-06:00

Calphalon is frikin awesome. First of all just for registering for over $500 in calphalon products we received a santoku knife for free. Then if you buy over $500 in calphalon products one can receive a free $120 stir fry pan. OMG!!! We got it!! We bought a pot and pan calphalon set after our wedding and spent a lot on it but figured it was a great investment, especially with me loving food. Then we actually were registered for this pan for the fun of it and dang we just got it in the mail for freeeeeee! We also got a calphalon stir fry utensil safe for up to 500 degrees F. Hot dandy! eh?

Jessica's Project Space

2008-11-20T18:06:00.000-06:00

So lately Jess has been working on her project... Thank goodness I'm not a clean freak hahha. But her models are coming out to look really good. I love her.

Portfolio Madness

2008-11-10T10:55:00.000-06:00

For my interior Design Major, I am required to have an internship before I graduate; technically I can walk, and then complete my internship, but I have been looking all over Little Rock for one. I am wanting to Intern at an Architecture Firm, but with the job market the way it is, it makes it a little bit harder to find a job like that. So, I had an interview with Polk, Stanely, Rowland, Curzon, Porter architects, and I was very excited about this interview. They said that they didn't have enough work to have an intern, but they offered to still have an interview... which is good practice, and they would look over my portfolio and give me some pointers.
Now, making my portfolio was not a very easy task mainly because I didn't have any good ones to look at as reference. The ones my teacher had were ones that students left behind... I don't know how they got jobs leaving their portfolios at school; oh well, needless to say there were not good ones none in the right format etc. For my portfolio, I had to have an actual porfolio book that is at least 11x17. We were to display our work in it, and most people just take pictures of their boards and art and literally tape or glue them down on paper. They also take "nice" paper and put that on the pages to make it look nice. The only problem is that all of those projects ended up looking like a scrapbook rather than a portfolio. So, I had a lot of work to do to avoid the scrap book look. Grant was very understanding about the whole me wrecking the apartment and stressing over this whole project. It is a scary thought to think that a portfolio could be the difference in your getting hired or not. It is also very hard picking out which pieces to include and which ones to leave out.
The day before my interview my acutal portfolio book came in, and it was the wrong one, so I had to find a last minute different one to work just for this interview. I wasn't very happy about it, but there was only so much I could do. Then I went and had my interview, it went great. The interior Designer on staff there was so nice and great, but they still didn't have work for an intern. One of the partners, Mr. Stanely wanted to meet me, but he was in a meeting before and after my meeting, so that was a bummer. The only disappointing thing is that they couldn't tell me how to improve my portfolio. I was hoping that they would butcher it so that it would evntually after a lot of modification turn out amazing, but they couldn't tell me anything to change which is good and bad.
So now, I still don't have an internship, but I have a semi completed portfolio that still needs some tweaking,but I have one interview under my belt which is a plus. Also, making a portfolio is a requirement one of my classes so it is nice to think that I am ahead in that aspect at least.

Desks!!!

2008-10-31T12:02:00.001-05:00

Right before our trip to Austin was Grant's Birthday. I eventually decided to get him a 24'' Flat Screen monitor since he always used mine, and there was a pretty good deal on a dell one. Well, once we each had our own Monitors, there wasn't much room to have duel monitors on a desk that two people share. Grant and I had been talking a while about getting a second desk since the desk that we had was one from Ikea which we were both completely satisfied with it, but it definitely got crowded. When we first got married, it was my desk with some of Grant's things on it, but once he got his desktop it became his. Now I wasn't against this, it was more of an observation than anything. I didn't HAVE to have a desk, I just used the kitchen table, but constantly having to clear off the stuff I was working on for each meal was a little frustrating. Needless to say, we decided it was time for a new desk. Luckily by the time we decided this, it was almost time to go to Austin for Fall break. We knew we wanted the same desk that I already had but with a different wood veneer, but this desk brand new was $85 with a $25 glass top. So, we didn't know if that was money we should really be spending right now. I was randomly looking at the Austin Carigslist since it has so much more stuff than the little rock one, and I found the exact desk that we were looking for used for $40. So once Grant got home from work I asked him about it, and we contacted the guy! He had not yet sold the desk and was an awesome seller.
While in Austin, Grant and Simon went and picked up the desk from the seller, and later that day I went to Ikea with Wilson and got the glass top which had gone up in price, but still cheaper than having a top custom made. So, we were very excited that we saved $40 on this desk! Woot! We ended up bringing a lot of Tanya's stuff to Austin including her bike, so, we just strapped the desk (taken apart) on the bike rack. Everything worked well, and we eventually set up the desk. Now our apartment in Searcy is very little, and our only goal is for everything to fit since making it look pretty isn't the highest thing on our priority list, but here are some pictures of the desks.

Here is my desk after Grant removed literally 96% of the stuff on the desk... his stuff. We both hadn't realized that so much was his, and we were laughing so hard since he had literally taken over my desk and made it his own. Sorry about how messy it is here, but we just wanted to post the pictures, and desks aren't ALWAYS clean.

Here is a picture of Grant's new desk. you can see the lighter color wood and the glass top. His desk also looks messy,but like I said we weren't going for picture perfect here.

Here again you can see his set up of his laptop with sitting next to his desk... maybe this is as close to dual monitors that he can achieve right now lol.

Here is where the problems have also began- chairs! I had a nice office Chair and so did he, but before we didn't have two desks so there was no point in having two chairs, so Simon and Austin were nice enough to house the other chair since they had the room. Well, right before we bought the new desk, Grant's chair broke! so, we have been sharing my chair and this papasaun chair stool with an extra cushion and two pillows... not the safest thing. So, everytime one of us is alone we are always claiming the chair.

Here is the beloved and much coveted chair. So Grant and I have been looking a different used desk chairs, but most are too over priced, and we don't NEED one right now.

UCA Tragedy

2008-10-27T00:17:00.000-05:00

As some of you may have heard already, University of Central Arkansas or UCA where I attend had a school shooting yesterday(Sunday). I was not on campus since it was a Sunday, and I am not exactly sure what happened, but students on campus were told to stay in their dorms and apartments. There was a shooting where two students were killed, I don't know either of them, but I am praying for their families; four suspects are in custody. So far all we know is that classes are canceled this Monday, and please just pray that everything gets worked out. May God bless you all.

Austin Trip

2008-10-26T19:12:00.000-05:00

So as many of you know, Simon, Grant, Julia, and I went to Austin for our Fall Break. This is a first for Harding, so it made it a lot of fun. We left for Austin on Thursday afternoon, and were there until Sunday afternoon! We thrifted a whole lot, went to Mueller to see a Wallace and grommet movie and the parks of course!!!! OH, and we went and saw Tanya and Wilson's beautiful new rowhouse. I helped them with some of the design of the inside,but nothing major. So here are some of the few pictures that we acutally took while in Austin!
Here is Simon pushing Mia around... I guess she was getting tired of moving the toy herself and sitting backwards is soo much cooler!

The neighborhood kids were very nice, but always wanting attention. Here is Tyrek showing off his mad climbing skills.

Simon supervising the play time making sure everyone shares... and he think

Mia riding all by herself.

Mia drawing some beautiful pictures.

Shoes are so much cooler than chalk!

When Simon and Grant first came out to watch Mia play outside, all the kids came running to come play since they were all wanting attention.

When Mia found out that Simon and Grant would watch and play with her outside she started to gather her chalk. It didn't matter that they were spilling out of her green bucket or that she had multiples of every color... she had ALL her chalk with her-enough said.

Julia helping Mia answer the phone... Mia would take a phone, and the rest of us would call it to talk to her, but she kept accidentally hanging up on us.

Mia talking with Simon on the phone.

Mia in her PJs playing in the dining room where Simon's bed was.

Julia helping Mia again with the phone.

Ally Looking scared!

Ally looking nervous because of Grant's creepy expression.

Ally Happy-ish with Grant.

Tagged by Sarina Grasham

2008-10-07T15:51:00.000-05:00

Here's the rules:

Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your blog along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
Tag five other people to do the same.

from object-oriented software engineering

"In addition, skills in plumbing, wiring, and roofing are needed to build a three-bedroom home, and inspections are essential."

So this is what grant pays Harding for... such amazing knowledge!!! :p

I tag Jill Robertson

New Computer

2008-09-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

Warning: I am horrible at English grammar and I am A.D.D with my writing, so HA!
Well we now have a new computer. It is frikin awesome! I like it at least. So the dirty specs of the computer. Well I have some pictures of the components of my computer for those of you who are visual and nerds. So here it goes.
Just joking... before I get to that, I have to tell you why we got this computer seeing as how we both have a laptop each. Well my laptop is definitely dated. Still works but not for CAD or games really. Jessica's laptop does all that, but while she is as school I can't be doing any work with CAD (I'm taking CAD class for anybody that is lost). Also I've been dreaming of getting a desktop up again, because laptops are cool but just something about a desktop makes you feel all soft,warm and fuzzy inside. I've been wanting to get a raid 5 server going as well for security of pictures and other files I have. My friend Dan has a raid 5 and I'm jealous. Also I like to computer game when I have the chance. I'm probably leaving some things out but awww well.
OK! so, here are some pictures of my new powersupply. It is a Corsair 750 watt. You may say "oh my gosh he doesn't need that big of a powersupply." I'll agree with you as of right now. I don't need it but I would rather have it then to little. I had a powersupply from my old desktop, but I ruined it running a 220watt peltier on it and also the rest of my computer. It works but just not right. It didn't regulate the power and keep a good enough 12volt line. So here is the beauty that stole my heart. It can run much more than I need but also know that I will probably be upgrading in the future and also if i'm lucky getting a how lot of harddrives. yummy.

As you can see, this only has one rail. Most of the newer powersupplies have more than one rail for safety concerns but it's not 100% right. Also a lot of them advertise that they have say 4 rails but in truth they fibbed. (read hardcore reviews and you will see the truth) If you do have the multirail powersupplies most likely you have only a certain amount of amperage you can pull through certain powerconnectors. With one rail it all comes from one source and no worries. I'm probably no making sense but trust me, it makes sense in my head. haha

This is my beauty of a processor. It is a AMD X2 BE2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz AM2 dual-Core processor that I got for 25$ shipped. Awesome deal!!!

Since my processor was OEM it did not come with a heatsink. So I did some research and ended up with this heatsink. It has a 92mm fan and it keeps my processor nice and cool for probably the best price for that type of heatsink.

The motherboard I got was an ASUS M3A78-T. There are some nice things with this motherboard. First it can handle the processor I got which is a AM2 (dual core) and it can also handle the newer quad core (AM2+). So if I decide to upgrade to a quadcore then I am able to. Also it has the newest chipset out from amd/ati, the 790gx. It also has onboard video (HD3300 video card chip) with sideport ddr3(extra memory for the video card). It has 5 serial ata for later raid setup and also an external serial ata for any external drive that I may own in future. Just a typical good mother board.

My brother-in-law (weird cause he was always known as friend dan not brother-in-law... haha NICE!) well anyways he hooked me up with some ram for the computer. He sent me 2.5gigs woot for free. and a 200 gig harddrive for a longterm*cough* borrow. You'll get it back. I'm thinking of getting some ram in the future. It's so cheap these days.
So onto the harddrive huh? Well I was using my 120 gig old western digital that i have banged around too much and it was sLOWWWww!!! but I had a computer up and running a day before dan's shipment arrived. I had to borrow a stick of ram from a local friend for the night but I got the computer up and running. As I was saying about my harddrive it was messed up. So I figured gosh i want some space to dual boot windows and linux and then some space. So I bought a 1TB western digital. And I didn't get that crazy of a deal on it at all cause i wanted a good one. the 7200.11 not the older 7200.10 that you usually see crazy rebates with. Well it is also serial ata and not just ide like the 120gig. So let me just say GLORIOUS amount of harddrive space. I also figured I could down size my main Operating systems harddrive and put this 1TB to the raid system if i get a couple others. So right now I have about 150 gigs to windows then 150 gigs to ubuntu and the rest is just a stuff drive. What stinks is the fact that after the format of the drive there is only about 930gigs of space. I guess I can handle that. haha.
A picture for good measure.

Well I was bummed about the video card that was onboard on the motherboard. I mean I don't expect much from onboard cards, but I heard praise about this one. Well long story short is I found out all the praise was from people with monitors smaller than 24". Well luckily we own a 24" wide screen lcd. The only problem with that is whatever video card you have needs to have a lot of memory on it and the onboard didn't. I believe it would be great for anyone that has a 22" or less but for the amount of area on a 24" monitor it needs a lot of memory to render all of it. I was getting page tearing even on my own blog site with it loading the pictures and the dark background. So I guess I wasn't satisfied with the onboard video and it really bummed me cause I expected the onboard video to surely be enough. Well It wasn't really esp for a video game I play with a friend from back home when I have some extra free time. So I researched probably two whole days, Jessica can vouche for me and she was probably feeling left out in life cause I just felt I had to find the best thing for what I needed. I ended up with a Sapphire Radeon HD4850 with 1gig of ram on the videocard. If you have a 22" or less that is way over kill but if your like me, you will need the extra ram. That pushed the price up but man the video is amazing! I'm am reallllllly pleased with it. I played a video game "Crysis" with all the settings to high and a resolution of 1900x1200 with smooth playing. This video card is awesome!!!

I have never had a wireless mouse or keyboard. Well now I do. Jessica and I watch some movies everynow and then and it is so annoying to always have to get up if we want to progress through the movie or even pause it. It is also very clean looking on the desk without the cables. I also got the keyboard and mouse on sale with a rebate. sweeet.

So here are some pictures of my actual computer with everything in it. If your wondering abotu the rust looking area in the back part of the case... welll... that is rust. Let's jsut say, never put a chevette heater core in your computer case that might leak water in the bottom of your case. poo on that.

This is my video card.

Ram and processor heatsink

Powersupply

Well if you actually understood me through my horrible grammer and spaz thinking.. I'm not reading over this to correct anything and I'm going to sleep right now. I'm tired.. night. Also this is for you wilson for the comment you left.. hope your doing well

New Toys

2008-09-12T15:39:00.000-05:00

So Grant has been talking about getting a desktop for at least the whole summer if not longer... So, he finally got it. Once he decided to get it, and had done all his research, he bought everything for it.

Here is his old case with some of his new stuff put in it already.

He is doing something on his laptop, and we were both laughing at the fact that we now have two laptops and one desktop... more computers than people in our apartment... we would make Daniel and my dad proud! ;p

Grant always seems to be a very logical kind of guy and gets annoyed when others don't share his gift of logic since we all know there are people like that out there. Well, the only time when Grant is not logical, is when he is being lazy. So all of the plugs were taken my his laptop and new desktop,but he needed my laptop over there so of course the next closest outlet made sense... I got to deal with the fact that one couldn't open the fridge without hurting someone or something.

Just another picture...I was laughing so hard when I saw this, cause this isn't the normal Grant!

Grant mainly bought the things for this desktop because his laptop is definitely dated, and now my laptop is the only thing that can play his favorite game, team fortress 2, and CAD. He is now taking a CAD class, and when he has time to work on his homework, I am in Conway , an hour away, with my laptop. It just wasn't working out, so this was a great solution!

Just showing all of Grant's boxes and stuff. I was so happy that he finally got his desktop!

Him doing stuff in the Bios... "tweaking as he says"

Just the lovely mess, but it didn't bother me, he was happy, and I had a GREAT book to read!

Grant getting all excited!I think it was almost working at this point... even though in these pictures he was missing a few parts that he was going to borrow from Dan which were in the mail and coming the next day, but here he was calling up his friends(Austin) seeing if he could get random stuff (Ram)to make it work just so he had something. It was just too unfair to have everything but one or two items, so he used them even if they weren't the best.

The inside of his case, I know what the jist of the things are,but I just smile and nod, I'm just glad that it all works and he is happy!

Me happy in my corner of our apartment with my book!!! (Just and FYI, I was rereading The first king of Shannara which is written by Terry Brooks and is my ALL TIME FAVORITE author of Fantasy.. definitively better than Tolkien! )

OHHH, last but now least, here is another example of Grant's non logicality due to desperate need... he had a network card from Dan that had been modded... it didn't work for his purposes, so I don't know if you can see, but here is a network cable running from the corner of our bedroom all the way through the main traffic area of our apartment to his desktop! When I pointed it out to him we were both CRACKING up because he hadn't even noticed...he had a need.... internet, and he solved the problem. Oh, well, everything is very pretty and organized now, and I finished the amazing book so everyone is happy!

Funny Things

2008-09-12T14:38:00.000-05:00

Now that Grant and I are married, people always ask us what married life is like. I would say it is great, I mean it is more work,but when you are both trying it makes it so much better. But there have been a few adjustments which most of them are an issue because of how small of an apartment Grant and I have. We are both very happy with it, and for the money it is more than we expected, but we have one bedroom, one bathroom, and one large room that has the kitchen, living area, and desk area in it. So, we first of all just barely fit all of our things in this place, and then when we are both here it can get crowded. Since I am here more than Grant, when he left certain things laying around I would put them away thinking I was doing him a favor, but then he would feel lost cause it wouldn't be where he left it. So we had to sit down and talk about the best solution because it is definitely too small to leave things everywhere cause we both trip over stuff. Well, we have found out that if we have designated places for Grant's things then when I put them away they are always there and we are both happy. Grant also wanted his own bowl and Fork... he had the fork, but I will explain that later. Also, with most of the money that we got from our wedding, we bought an expensive pot and pan set, and they are so amazing! We are very pleased with them so we are posting some pictures of them here.

One of the pots that we were using to make Ramen noodles...sorry for the dirty stove top.

the box.

Some of them laid out.

This is Grant's bowl and his "bamboo" fork... this was from when he lived at three Harding drive... it looks nothing like bamboo, and it is burnt on one side, but whatever... it is HIS fork! LOL!

Me happy on Sunday after we found Grant an acceptable bowl that could be claimed as "his."

Brötchen

2008-09-07T00:17:00.001-05:00

I was really Craving Brötchen, and I have been looking for a good recipe, so this is the best one that I have found. I was pretty excited about it! Here is the website where I got the recipe from. They take a long time to make,but I would say they are definitely worth it!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/German-Brotchen-Rolls/Detail.aspx?prop31=1

So Many Blessings!

2008-08-29T12:33:00.000-05:00

I have classes in Conway, Arkansas which is about one hour from Searcy where Grant and I live. At the beginning of school, I was having to drive three times a week, and it was going to be really expensive with gas. But this last week, I found out that a class I had taken previously at Harding was considered the equivalent or substituted for this 3-D Art class that I was enrolled in. Now this class would have been fun to take,but all of the materials would have been very expensive, and it would have been my most time consuming class, and the teacher had a VERY hard grading scale. When I heard that I didn't have to take this class anymore, I was so relieved. Now, I am only having to take 9 hours which means that I can come only twice a week which saves on gas, and that is one less class that I have to pay for. Also, I got this approved on the last day to get a full refund, and the head of the interior design department took the paper work to the registrar for me so I wouldn't have any trouble! Then I found out that I only had to spend 5 dollars on my books for this semester, and I have an interview today for a part time job. If I were to get this job, then Grant could cut back at least one of his days and could focus more on his school work since I am taking less hours and have so much more free time than he does. So many great things have been happening that it is hard to remember them all!

PAPER WORK!!

2008-08-29T12:26:00.000-05:00

After the whole apartment thing happened and was semi cleaned where it was livable, Grant and I had a lot of paper work to get done. For instance, new drivers licenses (which took us over 3 hours since the servers randomly went down), my new social security card, assessments of our vehicles, new car insurance, new tags, the titles in our names, my new student ID, my named changed at UCA and at Harding for records, our bank accounts put together, Finally being able to process our FAFSAs and hoping that we will still get some grants, me looking for a job, and other things that I have forgotten. Once we had the majority of our paper work done, school started for me, then for Grant, and then we still had to move the rest of his stuff from Simon's room to our place. We literally had paths to move around in our tiny apartment, but after a few days of just straight organizing we now have a decent looking apartment. We would have it looking nicer, but we will only be in this apartment until December, and so we aren't putting shelves up, or other things that would create holes in our walls, so organization has become very impressive here. But now that those things are done and Grant and I don't have to travel anywhere for a while and schools is slowly becoming routine things are starting to settle down.
It is definitely crazy to think that soon we will start having to look for jobs and moving again, but I'm sure we will be fine since God will take care of us.

Our Trips and SURPRISES!

2008-08-29T11:14:00.001-05:00

After our honeymoon in Florida, Grant and I drove to Nashville and stayed a night with Kira and Andrew which was definitely a lot of fun! Then we drove to Ohio to pick up Julia and help her pack and get her ready for Harding. We also picked up a U-haul trailer and put mattresses, plants for people, and other odds and ends. We also met with our photographer and saw his amazing pictures! Then we drove back to Nashville and spent the night with Kira and Andrew again, only this time Julia was with us. Then the next morning we went on to Arkansas. We made it around 3 or 4 pm depending on what time zone you live in, but not too late,but we were all tired. We got back to our apartment to find the following things!
Now I had warned Julia that our apartment wouldn't be very clean because I had been living there and right before we left for Ohio we had moved some of his stuff in just so that Simon would have a little bit more room at his place since Grant's stuff was still there. We got to our apartment to find that they had replaced the linoleum floors. Now, this was a nice thing considering I had a pretty level table and it wobbled so much on that floor since the concrete wasn't level anymore. Also, before the linoleum was an ugly yellow ( which I was later told was a cream but was so saturated with different dirty that only scrubbing for a few hours would show the true color.) with lots of holes here and there. So them replacing it was nice since now it is a more neutral color, but we were never told that they were going to be doing it or we would have moved our things to make sure they had the room to do it. Also, whoever laid this floor seemed like it was their first time, because I am pretty sure I could have done a better job, but here are some of the pictures and problems that we found.

Here you can see that the glue that they used had gotten on their shoes and they tracked it mainly all around the bathroom, and no matter how hard I scrub, I cannot get it off.

In order to lay it right, they had to move our fridge out and they just put our food where ever they say fit, not caring to put it back or that everything in our freezer got thawed and then refrozen and some of it we cannot eat now, or that they put stuff all over where our computer things were.

Here you can see the dust everywhere from sanding down the concrete floor underneath so that it is smooth. I also had a carpet sample that I used as a doormat that was only inside to keep things from being tracked inside, well, they left it outside and was already moldy by the time we got back.

We do not own any cats, but I guess under the stove or the fridge they found these toys and we first found them on our stove not caring about how sanitary or not that is.

This is a kind of gross picture, but these are our paper towels that they used for their clean up job, which wasn't very cool either.

They used our trash can with our trash bag, threw that away and still left trash for us to have to throw away.

They had moved everything around and just weren't very careful! My table has a very thin veneer on it, and now it has a lot more scratches and dings than when we left.

Here you can see how haphazardly they placed everything and all the dust everywhere that they didn't bother cleaning up.

Here you can see all the bubbles in their actual laying job, but at least it looks better and doesn't have any holes, but when laying flooring especially carpet, one really wants to be careful of where seams are put. Now some flooring you can heat weld and then it doesn't matter where seams are other than aesthetic reasons,but they put the seam right down the middle of the space and directly under the sink where you would stand to do dishes, and the seam is already coming up.

Some more dustiness.

How lovingly they stacked our things.

Before we left, we had purposely turned off the air conditioning,but when we returned it was set on 68 which was colder than we keep it even now cause it is expensive. So, we got back from the long drive, and I had to go help Julia with her last minute schedule changes and other errands which Grant tried to get somethings accomplished after this mishap. Well, no one wanted to take blame everyone just pointed fingers at everyone else. We wanted them to come and clean up, but they wouldn't be able to do that for a week or so, and we had to live there so we ended up having to do it. They said they wouldn't be able to do anything until the energy bill was here before we could get some taken off for the air being off, and they even tried to blame this whole issue on us saying that on the paper work it said we weren't moving in until August 15th. Well, the lady telling us this was the lady who had walked us through our apartment and had signed all the paper work with us, so we didn't understand how it was our fault that her paperwork wasn't updated in time. Needless to say, it was the first exciting thing that happened since Grant and I have been married. We lived through it, and we will see which items we get reimbursed for.

Other Honeymoon Things!

2008-08-27T08:03:00.001-05:00

These are the rest of the pictures from our honeymoon, they are a little late,but better late than never!

Here is a different sand scultpure that I really enjoyed!

We went walking on the beach, and we saw some pretty cool things made out of sand. This is such an example, a crab!

This is us on the beach on the way back to our resort; a different lady offered to take our picture which was really nice of her.

Grant wanted me to smile as I was walking, and right then a huge wave hit me, and I guess that was my reaction, and Grant wouldn't let me delete the picture.

This is one of the smaller motel/resort thingy that had a fun sand castle too.

We saw a man with a metal detector walking around on the beach for a few hours at a time on multiple days, but we never saw him find anything,but he really could have. Well, while walking on the beach I found this quarter without a metal detector so HA metal detector man- I am a rich woman now ;p!

A jelly fish that we saw on the beach.

A sea turtle out of sand.

Probably my favorite sand sculptures; they looked really good from far away, and they are still better than I could do, but the pyramid and the sphyix is always cool.

Grant and my room was on the 12th floor, and the resort had 25 floors all together which were the penthouse suites, but they were all still under construction. But we still went up and took some pictures of the view.

This is another picture from the 25th floor, and you can see how Grant got a little bit pink *cough cough* from the sun.

This was the second pool that they had on the other side of the resort that wasn't attached to the beach.

They definitley had a go cart track which was 9/10th of a mile which is pretty impressive, and Grant and I were considering doing that, but we just never thought of it and never ended up doing it.

This pictures is a little out of order, but this was a wedding that was happening on the beach which we noticed from our room which is a kinda cool idea.

This is the view down from the 25th floor.

Me out on the porch, being happy.

Grant smiling, but truley wanting to eat,but I wanted to make sure that there were enough pictures of him as well.

This was before the wedding began, the photographer was sweeping this huge heart in the sand, and we couldn't figure out what the purpose was until the wedding started, and then it all made sense.

One of our dinners outside.

One of the most pretty and sunny days that we had!

This is us taking pictures again!

The sky bridge that took us to the office and the other pool.

The view...

I think that this was the more kiddie pool, but this is Grant going for a swim.

The pool at night.

Me being crazy social!

Nasty sea weed from the ocean.

Grant swimming in the ocean.

Tanya and Wilson got us this cool candle, and we burned it a whole lot, but one time I was clumsy and spilled it,but it looked kinda cool on the granite. When it was cold we just got it off easily so no worries.

Me loving the water and the beach lol! Breaking dawn is a very addicting book!

Grant being really social!

The one day where it was overcast and we had a power outage for half an hour or so. It took a while for us to get our door card swiper working,but eventually all was well.