A New Home - For a little bit at least!

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

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

These are for a friend Jill. Easy photo hosting.

Ally and Me!

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!

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

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

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.