It's been a while

So, I know it has been a few weeks since I blogged. But I've been busy!

So, I'll try to catch you up.  

Last weekend I went to Maine!!  Sadly, my husband was unable to go with me (too expensive for us both to go) but it was so nice to be in Maine for a little bit.  While there, I of course partook of the local cuisine.  LOBSTER ROLLS!  I haven't had a Linda Bean Lobster Roll since before I moved, and I've been wanting one...so Laura, me, Mom and Grampi all went downtown one day to have one.  It was SO YUMMY!

 

Laura enjoying hers too.  We were happy :)

So, now to the reason for my visit to Maine.  Janna's graduation.  Yup, that's right.  My BABY sister...who should not be old enough quite yet, graduated from High School.  I can hardly believe it.

Family shot.  Not bad eh?

Siblings

Siblings plus Laura and Caroline.  Caroline is Matt's girlfriend.  We love her :)

Laura laid on the ground to take this pic of us.  What a good cousin!

So here we go.  Graduation time!

Accepting her diploma

No, you're not seeing things.  That is a cigar in her mouth. It's a Cheverus tradition for the graduates to smoke a cigar.  The school used to be all boys, and when it changed to coed the tradition stayed the same.  It's funny to see cigars hanging out of girls mouths wearing gowns.  LOL

Dad, Janna and Mom

All of us.  Matt looks lovely.  It is so hard to get a picture of all of us looking good.  geesh...

Max and Janna (that's her boyfriend in case you didn't gather)

See.  Girls with cigars in gowns.  Weird.

Much nicer.  Pretty girls.  These are Janna's friends.  Katie and Taylor.

It was so nice to be home for a couple of days!  

Also, while I was in Maine I got to see Leah's ballet recital!  Leah is my God daughter.  Her mother and I have known each other my entire life.  We grew up next door to each other.  Leah was my flower girl in my wedding, and her mother, Erin, was one of my bridesmaids.

Like I said, it was wonderful to be home in Maine for a couple of days with my family, but I could not wait to come back home to Texas to be with my husband.  I missed him so much.  It was really hard to be away from him.  Even though I know it will have to happen from time to time, I hope it doesn't happen a lot.  Yeah, yeah.  Newly weds, I know that's what you're all thinking.  :)

OK, so now for the house update.  Plumbers, electricians, air conditioning guys and painters have all been there over the past few weeks.  It's been slow going, but there is progress being made.  The painters especially have been slack in being there consistently, and so our builder is starting to get a little irritated with them...hopefully they'll finish up soon.

 Plumber truck with the piping on it.

It all goes in the ceiling!

More laid out on the floor to be put up in the ceiling

Meanwhile, we've chosen the tile for our floor.  (the easiest and quickest decision we've made so far...)

We've also gone to look at cabinets and haven't settled on that yet.  It will be a much longer process...

Our fireplace is in!

And all the air conditioning vents and stuff.

And the bathtub in the front bathroom, also Ira and Judy's bathtub is in.  My bathtub is not in yet, because it's a big fancy adult one :)  Whoo hoo!  Can't wait to sit in that one with a glass of wine after a long day :)

Here is part of my kitchen.  Our table is going to go along the right hand side wall in this pic (which is the beginning of Ira and Judy's apartment) and you can see the plumbing for the sink and dishwasher under that higher window.  And the vent for the stove up on the left.

And here's the left side of the kitchen.  Note the vent for the stove up on the right.  Refrigerator is going along the wall there which currently you see the garage door through.  Pantry is to the left of that, and doorway into the garage to the left of that.  I know it's hard to see with just the studs, but it'll be easier to see soon!

Here's the house as it currently is.  This is just 2 nights ago.

As you can see, they painted just the front part at our request.  Well, we requested they only do one window for now (we thought they'd at least paint the rest of the house) to make sure we like the trim.  We do--so these are the colors of our house!  We can't wait to see it all painted.

Meanwhile, the shingles have been piled up on the roofline for weeks.  Just waiting.  The painters have to finish before the shingles get put on (hence why Barry is miffed at them) and then after the shingles comes the rock--which we're also still in the process of making a final decision on.  So many decisions!  But we're so excited.

So meanwhile, back here at home where we currently live, I decided it was time to go through our closet again.  Which actually has never been good since we got married.  See, when I moved into Tres' room, his closet was already full.  We did work on it for a few hours and got it to a manageable state, where it has stayed for the last 2 months.  But I was starting to crack again.  It's so crowded!  Plus, all my clothes were not in our room yet.  Half my clothes were still in my old bedroom which now our 15 year old niece, Laura, is living.  So because my clothes were still in there, Laura had no place to put her clothes.  So anyway, I knew our closet could be better.  However, I figured we'd just wait it out until we moved.  Just a few more months, right?  But I wanted Tres to go through his tshirts.  He has SO MANY and hardly wears any of them.  Well, he went through his tshirts, and then we moved on to the hanging clothes, and then and then and then. Well, you know how it goes.  We ended up doing the entire closet.  It's WONDERFUL.  I can actually walk into our closet now!  It took almost an entire day (he had so many books and other junk in there that had just built up over the years that we couldn't really use it as a bedroom closet.  It was more like a storage closet) but it was so worth the work.  And now one less thing we have to do when we move.  Now we can just move it all, not sort it too.  We gave away a ton of books, and 3 bags of clothes between the 2 of us to Goodwill.  

So anyway...here he is.  My husband (yes he's back there)  He told me to start piling his clothes on his lap so I didn't have to hold them as we sorted.  And I was joking that he was disappearing behind his clothes.  So we thought we should take a picture.   He couldn't even see over the top.  This particular pile is of winter clothes, which we won't need again until we're living in the new house.  So we opted to pack up all our winter clothes and put them in the barn.  Less stuff in the closet!!

So, I know it's hard to tell.  A) Because there's no before picture.  And B) It's really hard to determine how big everything is...but this is SO much better than it was.

This ENTIRE bookshelf was full of books that he didn't want anymore and hadn't read in years.  Look at all the space!

And these shelves were so packed full of our clothes and other things (that are now on the shelves pictures above) that the blankets were all crammed in the corner on the floor.  The shoes were in a pile on the floor on the right hand side, and the entire floor of the closet had stuff all over it, I couldn't walk all the way in to it without having to climb over everything.

And...we could only use the top hanger because there was a folded up massage table behind the lower on, which prevented any clothes from being hung up.  Now everything has a reasonable and practical place.  Ahhhh.....

We still have to keep Tres' leg machine in the closet because there's no other place to put it.  But that's why we made a special room in the new house off of our bedroom, just for his exercise equipment so it doesn't have to live in the closet!!

In other news: I started my new job this past week.  If you hadn't heard (because I didn't broadcast it) I got fired at the law office a few weeks back.  Long story short, it wasn't the job for me, and the job they originally hired me for changed into something I wasn't qualified for.  They originally told me they'd train me and give me the time to learn it, but that quickly became obvious that they didn't have the time or the desire to do so, and so they just fired me.  But it really was a relief.  Not fun to be fired, but a relief not to have to work there anymore.  It was stressing me out.  Plus, 2 weeks ago was my last week at The Little Gym.  :(  Sadly.  It was so hard to leave, but the right decision to do so.  It was an hour for me to drive there.  But God is so good!  The week I was finishing up at The Little Gym, a friend from church called me to tell me that she thought I'd be perfect to work with this other family at church!  They have an adult daughter who cognitively is somewhere between a 3 and 7 year old depending on the situation.  And they need someone to come 2 days a week to assist her.  Take her to her job, take her out to lunch, to get her nails done, swimming, to the movies, to the museum.  Etc.  Perfect!  So I had my first day on Thursday, and I think I'm going to love it.  She is so funny, this girl.  And her family is wonderful.  And once I get familiar with it all, I think it is going to be a great fit.  Plus it allows me time to do my Mary Kay (which I've already done one party and have 2 more booked!) so I'm very excited to be actively working my business.  (and my husband is going to Seminar this year with me in August...very excited about that!!)

Anyway, I think (FINALLY) that is all the updates for the moment.