I PASSED!

YAY! I passed prelims! WOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!

In other exciting news, we bought tickets to go to Cambodia to visit my sister over Thanksgiving! YIPPEEEE!!!!

It's just been a day of great news!

(We also had a fabulous time camping, and I plan to post some photos, but immediately upon our return we had to turn to super-fast-overdrive-fix-the-basement mode, and we still haven't finished it yet (and its a busy week with work), so I haven't downloaded photos yet. I did finally get the DSL set up today, so we have high-speed internet--YAY! The wireless router is not really liking the new DSL modem yet...still working on that part...but at least it doesn't take half an hour to check email)

Weekend Away

Well, Andy and I are closing in on two years of wedded bliss :-). To celebrate, we will be away camping this weekend...so we'll return to blogville sometime next week.

(Also, we're supposed to have our DSL internet service activated sometime on Monday, so hopefully checking email and adding to the blog will happen more regularly, too!)

Current Project: Basement

On the home improvement front, we are currently working on our basement. We have a renter who needs to move in by September 1st, so suddenly the basement has taken priority. One half of the basement is finished...and I just "finished" one half of that space--"the bedroom"--today. As you can see, I even made curtains, all by myself! (And yes, I know they're not quite even...I should have washed the material BEFORE sewing, apparently...but ask me if I care about that extra half-inch...)


The "living room" half of the finished half is still full of boxes and stuff, but is basically ready once we move our stuff out and vacuum. Before all this activity, yesterday we sprayed the entire basement with Raid to hint to all those creepy-crawlies that it was time to move out. Then, vacuuming up the dead spiders in the finished room was oh so much fun late last night. :-P

The non-finished half of the basement was similarly sprayed, but not yet vacuumed, because it requires a great deal more work first. We (mostly Andy) have been scraping this lovely wall, which had some lovely mildew-y-ness/peeling paint, etc...then we'll be painting it with a mildew-attacking white primer/paint. And THEN we'll vacuum up the cobwebs and tackle the floor, which appears to have not been cleaned in at least five years. After that, it's on to moving furniture and storage stuff back into this room, and then, hopefully, it will be ready for our renter to co-occupy with us.

Visitor

Old friends...we go together like bookends :)

Me, Sarah, & Aubrey enjoying a visit/reunion

Sarah stayed with us three nights...not long enough, but it never is. Here we are enjoying a relaxing afternoon of paddle-boating.

new appreciation

I never thought I'd say it, but...yay for dial-up!!!!

I think it takes a few weeks without internet at home...then the realization that even though you ordered phone service, you can't plug your computer in for that trusty old dial-up connection because your house phones are actually hard-wired rotary phones (which means they don't have a jack that you can "unplug" them from)...to truly appreciate dial-up. And I appreciate it :-).

While Andy was away this weekend, in addition to unpacking and cleaning, I tackled the rotary phone issue:



And, for settling-in updates, here is Cera's...errr...Liz's....errr...Alex & Katie's...well, we'll just call it Ananaha's room for now:


And, the nice new concrete steps:

Mr. Fix-It

I have discovered in recent weeks that I was lucky enough to marry Mr. Fix-It. Not only is he wonderful in nearly every other way, he also either knows how or is happy to learn how to fix nearly anything!

So, since moving to the house, Mr. Fix-It (with the help of friends and family) has been busy...

...getting rid of the jungle of weeds that used to surround the house,


...replacing a chandelier, and re-wiring messed up switches and outlets,

...putting up shelves...

...and most recently, taking out and replacing crumbling concrete steps.



Thanks Mr. Fix-It!

Photos of the house!

Hi everyone!
No internet yet, but we finally have some pictures to post of the house. Here it is, as handed over to us a week ago!


The living room:


The kitchen:


You probably noticed that these photos are mostly sans-stuff...not an accurate view of what the rooms currently look like, as we are still covered in boxes in most rooms. We've been working hard on improvements and putting stuff away, so more updates (hopefully) soon to come...

Moving Update

Hi everyone. We apologize for the long delay in posting. We are now living in the house, and as of tonight will be entirely out of the apartment--goodbye wonderful 500 sq ft apartment that we loved!

We are still living with boxes everywhere, of course, which means no pictures yet...they are still trapped in the camera and seeking an escape route (i.e. the USB cable that I conveniently packed...somewhere).

Hopefully we'll have internet at home soon--at least some dial-up by tomorrow, and we're planning on DSL in a few weeks.

Hope everyone else around here managed to survive the over-100-degree heat the past week. Sheesh! Thank goodness for the rain last night...