Moved In

We moved in all our stuff into the house last Saturday...but we still aren't living there yet. We have no toilets, lights in the bathrooms, knobs for the tubs, etc....so we are staying with my parents. It has been pretty nice though since we get free meals every night. The only bad thing is that we don't get to sleep in our awesome bed...but we'll live another week. We bought blinds last night so if we do decide to sleep at our house we won't have to worry about people watching us. I don't plan on posting any more pictures of the house until we are completely done...partly because I haven't taken any lately, secondly all our junk is all over the place in boxes, and thirdly...my parents computer is so slow it is like torture to download pictures and blog them. So I will wait until the end!

Tired

As you can tell by this picture we are very tired from this house! So are my parents because they work on it all day while we are at work. I took this picture of Aaron on a Sunday afternoon. He was out cold and looked so comfortable under the big comforter.

One Month of Owning House! (AKA Week Four)

Here is our Kitchen. We have a few of the cabinets up, the other were still drying. If you notice we also have green walls, and tile on the floor, and on the backsplash.



Here is our guest bath with the tile in, and also the countertops (marble) ;) and finished cabinets. The only thing they need is the knobs.



Here is the master bedroom with carpet and finished paint. All of the bedrooms are completely done except for changing our lights.



Here is one of the other bedrooms with carpet and finished paint.



Here is the entry way with tile and paint.



Dining room with green paint. Trim is done now, but wasn't done yet when I took this picture.



Here is our Den with the carpet in. Aaron loves it. It is done except changing out the fan, and getting a wood burning stove put in. Also all that stuff leaning on the fireplace is just junk.

Week Three of Owning House!!

Well we got a lot done! But we still have a lot more to go!



Here is the master bedroom. We still hadn't done the edging when I took these.


Here is just down the hallway.


Here is one of the bedrooms.


Here is the bathtub. We got it sprayed with this special paint white, instead of the nasty gold color.


Here is the living room painted.


And these are our new countertops for the kitchen! They look great! We haven't put the sink in yet. We've been having trouble finding one that will fit, but we think we finally got it!

Week Two of Owning House

Here is week three of owning the house! IT is still a work in progess. Next we will probably start painting! We still have to pick out tile, and carpet. I think we pretty much have them figured out though!


This is the kitchen after my dad, Brother Stegall, and Aaron have stripped it. It is now stained too, but I don't have a picture of that yet.


Here is the hallway and my mom cleaning the wall towards the end. (she'd kill me if she knew I put this on here.)


Here is one of the finished walls in the garage.


Here is my dad in the finished garage. He is working so hard!


Bathroom after they ripped out the countertop and sink, and stripped the cabinets.


Here is the entry way after being textured. Ready to paint next!


Here is the dining room all textured and ready to paint.


This is the master bedroom; ready to paint.


Here is the living room with the pile of carpet out of it. That is our new dishwasher sitting over there if you were wondering.

Week One of Owning House

You will all have to scroll down to the before pictures to compare between now and then. These look better, but still A LOT of progress to go!


This is the carpet piled up in the living room before we hauled it off.

The Dining Room after we took our all the paneling and wall paper.

This is Aaron in the entry way tearing up paneling.

This is the kitchen after cleaning, but before stripping and restaining them.

Halloween 2008

At the bank we have a competition between all the branches for Halloween. Our theme was Batman. So we all dressed up like characters from Batman. I was Catwoman. We had the Joker, Robin, Batman, Harliquin (Joker's Assistant), Poisen Ivy, Pengiun, Bat girl and Alfred. It was really fun. We also had the whole bank decorated with bats hanging from the ceiling, a fog machine, and a bat signal. I even made a cd of different batman soundtracks and we played it all day. Oh and by the way...the person playing Robin is a girl. She just had a wig on.

Some Pictures of New House

Well some people were griping because we had no pictures up of the house so here you go! They are totally hidious though because the house is horrible right now.


This is the front of the house. Doesn't look too bad right? Well wait until you see the inside!


Picture of the kitchen. Ewww...My mom has cleaned most of the cabinets off so they look better now. This is before of course.


Another view of the kitchen. We will take out the wall paper. Change the counter tops, get all new black appliances, get tile floor, and a new sink. Also I will probably change out the handles on the cabinets.


Here is my dad working on the garage.


This is the dining room. All that wallpaper will be gone soon!


This is the den with the fireplace. All the carpet in the house is gone now since Aaron already pulled it up. Talk about nasty.


This is the main living room. It is huge. We will put laminate hardwood in here.



This is the pool that we won't touch for a while.


This is the guest bath. It is really gross and so is the other bath. These pictures just don't do it justice. I am dreading cleaning in there. We will change the floor, toilets, the counter top, take out the wall paper strip, and change the lights, etc.


This is just one of the guest bedrooms.


This is the laundry room. Soooo gross! Aaron already ripped out all the nasty flooring and sprayed cleaner in there.


This is just one angle of our bedroom. It has some water damage but my dad has already fixed one hole as you can see and all that has to be re-textured, new baseboards and painted.

Anyway...so those are just some of the pictures. There are more of course and I will try to post more as we work on it.

Our New House

Well we closed on our new house today! We had to sign a million papers and then it was done. The most money I have ever spent in my life! More to come I'm sure for the renovating. We now have to redo the whole house and then we can move into it. I will take before and after pictures, but won't post them until after I have the after pictures. Otherwise everyone will be grossed out. It is a three bedroom, two bath with two living areas. It is on six acres! Woohoo!

Obama Citizenship

I know this is long...but it is good. I really don't like Obama and do not want him to become the next president. I totally believe this as well!

FableHaven

I recommend this book to everyone who enjoys fantasy young adult books. My in-laws got us into these books because all the kids were reading them. Then they bought Aaron the first and second book for his birthday. For the next two days all Aaron and I did was read them. They are about a brother and sister who have to go stay with their grandparents who they have only met a few times. This is because their grandparents are the keepers or protectors of a haven for fable creatures. It is really a well written book and one of the best I have read lately. Nothing beats Harry Potter though! There are only three out right now and I'm sure there will be more. We have only read the first two because the third isn't out on paperback yet and it is so expensive in hardback so we are waiting so we can own them. So if you enjoy reading and you haven't read them already...enjoy!

Fireproof Trailer

Here is the trailer for the movie I described below.

Fireproof

Aaron and I went to see this movie Fireproof with my parents. It was a really good movie. It is about a couple who are struggling with their marriage because both are kind of selfish and other reasons. They are going to get a divorce. The man's dad gives him a challange to put off the divorce for 40 days and follow this book that he gives him. The book has him do something different for his wife each day. It was just a very uplifting and inspiring movie. And I definitely recommend going to see it with your spouse. I have to say that even though it isn't the best acting ever, and wasn't made with tons of money it was still worth it. It definitely made our marriage a little better. And it doesn't hurt that the main actor is Kirk Cameron; I always had a crush on him from Growing Pains. ;)

Laughing Quadruplets

This video is so funny. I know a lot of people have already seen it, but I think it is the cutest thing ever!

Everybody Loves Raymond

We really think this episode is funny. Good thing we don't argue this way or our house would be a mess!

Hurricane Ike

Even though we live in East Texas, Hurricane Ike went right over Tyler. We didn't receieve anything compared to those that lived in Galveston and Beaumont, but we still got some very strong wings (50 to 60 mph), rain, power outages, and trees fallen everywhere. Aaron and I are house sitting for some people that live down the street from my parents so we were out there through the whole storm. We stayed at my parents even though the lights were out at their house and the lights never went out at our apartment. My mom feeds us so we were okay with it. We just basically read books by flashlight and Aaron and my dad kept wandering off into the storm to check on a million different things they could think of. The top of this huge tree fell in my parents drive way so we have to drive around it. My parents also have a generator so we ended up turning it on around 6:00 that night and spent the rest of the evening watching movies and having dinner. It ended up being a pretty cool day! We even drove around a little bit after the really strong winds to see the damage around the neighborhood. A lot of big trees down and some even fell on power lines (hence the reason the lights were out.) Other than that I think our area was pretty lucky!. Here are some pictures from my parents front porch. Here is the big tree that fell in their yard. I also took a little bit of video on my camera. Sorry it is so badly done. The wind was blowing me pretty hard so it was kind of hard to hold it still for too long.

Hunting

Well it finally happened. After three years of marriage, Aaron finally got me to go hunting with him. We went hunting for wild hogs. It was an interesting experience. First we had to go out there and put the tree stands in the trees. Then we went back out there later and had to climb up in the tree stands. Well I am afraid of heights so that was not my favorite part. To top it all off I had forgotten the off to keep the mesquitos off of me. Needless to say I was being eaten alive. Luckly Aaron had this camo thing that hides your face. So I put that on and also his Hat to cover the top of my head (yes they were eating me there too). Then I had this long sleeved shirt that I put over my arms. So I could hear the mesquitos but they couldn't get to me. Aaron had no problems because they don't eat him. And he was so excited for me to be with him. We waited...and waited...and waited. But no hogs ever came which means we got out there too late. It got dark and we ended up hearing something moving out in the woods...which could have been anything. So we ended up leaving and had to climb out of that scarey tree stand in the dark. I managed to get some fun pictures to document the fact that I did go with him...even if we didn't see anything!





Here we are before we left. That is my parents dog Shadow that never leaves anybody alone.


Here I am with my face camo.

Jumping Pictures

We were trying to take those classic pictures where you are in mid air jumping on the beach! We tried and tried and this was the result. These are hilarious to me. This is Aaron's sister Sarah and Lindsey and me. We we finally got one of us in the air...well you will see.





We finally got one....and our heads were cut off!



This is a random one of Sarah that was great