Our eyes were bigger than our hands!

Last weekend, Mark and I strolled down to T-Town and painted our house. I think we bit off a little more than we could chew in one weekend, but with the help of friends and family we got it done.
We got into town on Thursday and immediately went to Home Depot (after eating at Wings of course!) to purchase all the supplies we would need to paint a house. Except the paint because we had already purchased it. Little did we know that this would be the first trip to a home improvement store, but not the only trip!
Friday began slowly with a sleepy wake-up call at 7am. After a quick breakfast and a 45 minute drive, we began working on cleaning up the basebaords and walls to tape off everything. This was my nightmare and I could only take so much. Not because I have an aversion to cleaning but because I have an aversion to hundreds of pairs of eight legs and eyes. That's right! They were everywhere and they came in all sizes! Luckily, I have a very sweet husband and a generous Mother in Law who took care of eliminating most of them. After the nightmare was over, the taping began. We taped and taped and taped until the word lost all meaning! We sent Mother Kajdos home about 6pm because Mark and I had planned on putting the first coat of paint on the walls of the office and the guest room. We did not leave till about 11pm. What a first day!
Saturday began with an even harsher wake-up call at 7am. After another quick breakfast, another 45 minute drive, a visit to Lowe's AND a 30 minute search for a Starbucks, we got started on painting the largest area of the house. Kara and I started by painting with a brush and Mark started the rolling. It worked out great for me that he liked to roll and it worked out great for him that I liked the brush work. Matt showed up about 1pm and with all of us working very hard with very few breaks we got everything done, except the master bedroom. Can you believe that we ran out of paint? Kara went with me on the third and final trip to Home Depot to get one more gallon of paint at 9pm. That seemed to finish us all up and we headed home about 10pm.
I bet you can guess how Sunday started! An early alarm at 7am. It was especially hard for Mark since he stayed up to hang out with friends till almost 3am, but we made it down to the house by 9:30am and the clean up began! Mark and his mom removed the tape around the baseboards while I was up and down the ladder removing the tape around the ceiling and painting over mistakes. We left about 2pm with a satisfied feeling and pictures!
All in all, everything went well and I do not want to see another paint brush for a very long time!

Happy Anniversary!

Today is our 7 year anniversary! I know that now we are married some people might think that it is ridiculous to recognize our dating anniversary, but this day has ment so much to us for 6 years. And now we have achieved 7 years together! We have accomplished so much together over these past several years (I can actually use the word several!). We have grown up together, experienced college together, and owned pets together. We have loved together and lost together. We have visited other nations and conquered the interstates together. We also have many of the same friends that have stuck by our sides as well as both of our wonderful families. We have moved numerous times and put up with trash roomates together. We have known each other since 6th grade and we are best friends. The Lord chose to save us, bring us to Him and then bring us together. His unconditional love has taught us how to love each other even when we are angry. I love my Mark with all my heart and I look forward to a lifetime of many more accomplishments with him!

Rainbow House

Mark and I are planning on painting the house we will be renting in Tuscaloosa next weekend. If you have ever painted a room, then you know the headaches that go along with it (and I am not talking paint fumes though they do give me a migraine). Picking out the new color can be fun, but because there are so many other colors to choose from you tend to second guess your first, second, and maybe even your third and fourth choices. Then you get a small sample and a brush, go home and paint a small area, let it dry, and your choice is made. Mark and I spent about an hour and thirty minutes picking out colors for our new place and each color has a stunt double. Next move was to take the swatches to the house and see what they look like in the light up against the walls. We went down there last weekend to test them out. Unfortunately, it is too expensive to buy samples of 14 different colors and we also do not have the time to come back and see what they look like in different lighting at different times of the day. We did do the whole "hey, what do think?" "what about from the doorway?" "how about here in the corner?" and it seemed to work just fine for us. We settled on 6 great colors that work together and flow nicely threw out the whole house. We even eliminated one color completely. We then bought our paint and we are ready to throw down on some hard work next weekend. We are thinking it will take us the entire weekend to complete the job. We plan on doing the prep work on Friday (cleaning, taping, setting up) and we have recruited Mark's parents to help us. Saturday, the actual painting begins and we have recruited help on that day as well. Of course, what ever does not get done on Saturday will be completed on Sunday. We have no help recruited for that day! :)

Please pray for us next weekend that everything goes smoothly and without any hiccups!

Trash or Treasure

It never fails to amaze me how much junk a person can collect in one year. And by a person I mean Mark and me together and individually.

When we moved to Atlanta, I did not realize how much stuff I had collected over three years. I had something around 8-10 garbage bags of clothes that I donated and double that amount of trash bags full of trash. Bar stools were gotten rid of along with countless other odd items still left over from my high school days. I was pretty satisfied with the work that Mark and I did on weeding out the needed and not necessary.

Now that we are moving again, I have begun the same process. I have not started packing, packing, but I have started to clean out boxes that were never unpacked in the first place! I must assume that if a box full of items was not useful for the past 10 months, it should be tossed out in its entirity. Unfortunately, my curiosity gets the best of me and I have an uncontrollable urge to find out what these unuseful items must be! In the end, it turned out to be very educational and rewarding.

There were many exclamations of "hey, that's where the staplers were!" and "I forgot these pictures existed! Look how tan I am!" and my all time favorite, "what the hell is that?!" I never thought that I would need to unpack, to be able to pack, just to unpack again!

Memorial Day Weekend

Mark and I traveled to Mobile, AL for Memorial Day weekend. We had a fantastic time! This was Jade's first marathon car trip and she did very well!

We arrived Thursday evening just in time for dinner. Even though we had not been to Mobile since last Summer, nothing had changed. Friday, my Dad had to leave after work to go to a conference in New Orleans to speak about a medical precedure on Liver cancer. He practiced his speach for me Thursday night and it was really good! My mom and I went and had pedicures done Friday afternoon, after that, Mark and I went bowling with Josh and his girlfriend, Jamie, and then Mark, Mom & I went to eat at Wings! It was a great day!

Saturday, we all went to eat at the Oyster House! Then we came home and watched a movie with Mom and Dad. On Sunday, we went to church at Grace and heard a wonderful sermon on happiness. It was so good to see some old friends and to meet some of my parents friends. For lunch, Josh invited Mark and me to eat at BWW with him, Jamie and her daughter. You can never go wrong with BWW. Sunday afternoon my parents took a nap and we went to Home Depot to pick out paint colors for our house in T-Town. That evening, I played a round of cribbage with my Daddy and he won best 2 out of 3. Believe me that is not a good thing! He has bragging rights until our next match!

Unfortunately, we had to leave Monday afternoon, but not before Mark and I had a wonderful morning full of conversation and coffee with Mom and Dad. I cannot wait until I am able to see them again!

Ok so a lot of stuff has been happening, but I have been too busy to blog so this might be a long one!
A few weeks ago, Mark and I made a trip to Birmingham to see family and friends and to also head to Tuscaloosa to look for a place to live. I had done lots and lots of research online trying to weed out suitable places that would also accept our Rottie. I found this one (that's right, one!) apartment complex that had lax enough rules on dog breed and size and also looked amazing! We were also informed, from the plethora of info that Alabama sent Mark, about a realestate company that rents houses amd apartments among the usual realestate activities. Fortunately, the houses for rent did not look that bad online. Sorry I cannot say the same for the apartments for rent! Mark called both of these places and scheduled appointments for us to check them out.

The apartment complex was awesome! They were nice people and the apartments were very spacious, some had hardwood floors, and came with a one car garage attatched to each apartment! The price was right as well, but we still had to meet with the realestate agent. On our way we talked and decided unless a house blows us away completely, we would be heading back to the apartment complex. Well, a house blew us away! Given, we only looked at two houses, but I had looked at thirty online and none of them compaired to the garden home! I am also very excited to inform you that we sign a lease this week and we will be moving in two months!

It is such a cute house! It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms (just what we wanted!), a two car garage, and a fenced in square of land out back for Jade! They also did not mind our dog!

Praise the Lord! He answered our prayers and blessed us with a more beautiful home than I could have imagined! Did I mention that we get to paint it!!