Better late than never-

First Year in Review:

Last month, Don and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. It was the most life changing year yet. I'll give some brief highlights:

April 2008: Got married on the 4th, drove off on our honeymoon the 5th. Went backpacking for a night, camping, horseback riding and drove in 7 (I think) different states. A week later, we were welcomed back to Chicago in a true Windy City fashion- snow. On April 12th. Yep. The rest of the month flew by with me working and Don in school.

May: Went out one last time with my friends at a hometown bar. Then went camping one last time with some other friends just before my birthday. (one last time = as Illinois residents, not visitors) Had my 24th birthday, for which Don made me a cake and we did something else, just not sure what. And packed. Did A LOT of packing.

June: Finished up the camping trip, and came home to pack some more. The 2nd, we picked up our U-haul and started loading up as much as possible. Just before 8 am on June 3rd, we left our Illinois life hoping for something better. We had no jobs lined up, and we were going to live with my parents. But at that point, anything was better than the life we had in Dekalb. Don was unemployed, and I was a manager at McDonald's. There had to be something better out there for us. We arrived at our new life 11 pm, June 4th. A few days later began our frantic job search.

July: Don began his job right after the 4th of July weekend. I began my job July 14. We had lots of fun hitting the beach with family, and hanging out on weekends. July 30th, we signed papers and put down our earnest money check for a house. We also began the preapproval process.

August: Don's 28th birthday! We went out for breakfast, took a nice bike ride, and I got him a Lowe's GC. And Buster turned 11! Got approved for the house, and everything was supposed to start near the end of August.

September: House still not started yet, and we went through some bumps with the home loan process that wasn't communicated with us. We also survived our first hurricane! Of course, it had to be the worst one to hit Houston in 25 (?ish) years. Luckily, we lived on the "good" side, and didn't experience that much. Power was out for 12 hours, no flooding, no damage. Couldn't say that for the other side of the road. It's weird how some things were left untouched, and some were just destroyed.

October: Our house started construction! We took many many pictures along the way. We also went on our first Texas camping trip Halloween weekend. Nice place, but too many thorny burrs. It was a slower month for us.

November: Our first Thanksgiving away from "home". It was still good. That's about it, another slow month.

December: Didn't start off well, we had to take an unexpected drive back to Illinois, under very unfortunate circumstances. We also experienced my company's Christmas party (waaaaaaay too much money spent there). Had our first married Christmas together, away from "home" as well. It was low key, and low pressure. Pretty nice. The very end of the month, however, just before New Year's, my truck transmission went out. Great.

January: Had to deal with my truck transmission being out, luckily, it was totally covered under the extended warranty I had purchased for it. Score! We found an EXCELLENT deal Jan. 1 on furniture, so we purchased our kitchen table and chairs (with bench!) and sofa sleeper with recliner. On the night of the 12th, we loaded up the U-haul once again. On the 13th, we closed. Not without some drama before though. But after 2 hours of closing, we finally got the keys. After we closed, we celebrated with a lunch at Steak N Shake :) and I got my truck back from the shop too! We picked up my truck, and proceeded to unload our U-haul to move into our first home! I'm proud of this, because we worked hard and were able to purchase our first home 7 months after moving to Houston. At the end of this month, I won that 42" plasma tv, too :)

February: On the 5th, we celebrated our 4 year dating anniversary. The rest of the month, was spent just getting settled in.

March: Quarter life crisis? Don and I signed up for a motorcycle class. We completed it, got our motorcycle licenses, then Don and I bought a brand new motorcycle.

April 2009: We spent our anniversary weekend in San Antonio. AWESOME! We went to Sea World, Riverwalk and the Alamo. We had such a great time, we can't wait to go back for a visit again. A week later, I bought my own motorcycle :)

And that was our first year in review. Quite a bit changed for us, and it was all for the good. My birthday is coming up Memorial Day Weekend, where we have plans to go camping. I can't wait! (for the camping, not my birthday, haha)

Finally!

Finally, some news! Don's always wanted to get his motorcycle license. My brother needed to get his motorcycle license. So they took a class together. I signed up too! All 3 of us completed the class, and it was so much fun! And I learned sooooo much that made me feel comfortable to ride. Not bad for a beginner with zero experience. I only missed one point on each the written and riding test (alot of people missed multiple points on the riding test). Don scored perfect on both tests.

The class was Saturday and Sunday. We both went to get our official license on Monday. And since Don needs a more reliable vehicle, and they can be ridden pretty much year round down here, we went and bought a motorcycle! Brand new 2009 Suzuki Boulevard S40. It's "red" and white (I think it looks more on the pinkish side)

Little by little...

that's how our house is starting to become our home. We bought some bushes (or shrubs, whatever) to put in our backyard. The sunflowers we planted 2 weeks ago in our little flowerbed have sprouted up, along with the other flowers we planted.

This weekend, we will probably finally plant our garden. We are planning to grow tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, asparagus, and some herbs. We're still working on the grass for the backyard, however.

And, we may be painting soon. So far, we've only picked out a color for our living room. And it was such a hard decision! But I know it'll be fun for the rest of the house too.

We're just about 1 month away from our 1 year anniversary! Time has flown by.

Lucky streak...

Don and I will be seeing Kenny Chesney here in Houston on May 3rd! I won tickets on a local radio channel!!! Wooo!

We get set up for internet and cable on Monday. Finally!

Next weekend, we'll be planting our garden! This past weekend we bought an avocado tree and planted that. Hopefully I can get some exciting video up of that.

Now it's time to start dinner. Don's a trooper for putting up with my cooking. It's not bad, but definitely experimental. Let's try this with that... So tonight I'll be cooking chicken breasts on top of long grain wild rice and bacon, diced tomatoes and black olives. We'll see how it goes. It usually ends up good :)

A brief update...

It's 9 days until we get internet. Right now, we're using my parent's internet. So, I'll give a brief summary of what's happened:

We closed! We got our keys at noon on our closing day, and moved in that afternoon!! We've been busy busy busy getting all the necessities we couldn't forsee until actually moving into our home. So far, so good. I can't wait to start updating everything to how I want it. The house is still a work in progress, but that's just fine with me :)

A great new addition to our living room is our 42" Plasma TV! I won it in a drawing at my gym!! I still can't believe it, and we've had it for over a week!

And here is a video tour of the house. It's just the basics now, but soon it'll become more like our home :)

Why stop at just a dash of frustration?

(an older pic, before the sod was laid)

So, our loan officer thinks everything will be fine. But, we are 5 (well, 4 and a half) days from closing, and our loan is up in the air. I can tell you I will be on the phone tomorrow, getting some straight answers.

I'd like to think it will be ok. But I'm just so frustrated, I can't see beyond what I'm feeling now.

:::sigh::: Hopefully I can post some good news tomorrow. I'm getting so anxious to be in a house of my own!

Add just a dash of frustration....

There are less than two weeks left until we are supposed to be in our house. It’s getting exciting. We have bought our refrigerator, couch, recliner, and dinette set. Things seem to be shaping up nicely.

It was a little bit aggravating today however, when after buying our living room and dinette set and getting a U-Haul from my brother in law, we found out that we have to go to a completely different location to pick them up. We were told to pick them up preferably within 7 days and they would give us a couple extra, but not much more. That information was not disclosed to us at the time of sale. But, since the store was having a sale on all the items, and if we paid in full today we were also given an additional 40% off, we didn’t immediately ask for a refund. So tomorrow (well really today) or tomorrow (Saturday) I’m going to try to get the U-Haul again and get that stuff picked up.