Home Improvement- outdoor edition

We scheduled a housewarming party for June 1st, and it was great motivation for us to get lots of house projects checked off our list!  I shared with you that our yard needed serious work when we moved in.  We finished the landscaping in the front and are really pleased with it.  The backyard was a bit more challenging, but we got it done and are enjoying it as well.  There were sections of the yard that needed to be leveled and have new sod put down.  The previous owners had put down winter rye in patches that was dying and looked terrible.  You wouldn't believe how much work shoveling dirt and hauling sod can be!  Whew!  It was worth it, but I hope we don't ever have to do this again. 

Now we are just watering the heck out of it everyday.  I'll be really glad when it takes root and is a little more durable!  I don't even want to know what our water bill will be this month...

The beds up against the house also needed some work.  We decided that with our two dogs we wanted to get rid of the dirt and to not plant things in the ground that they could rip up.  We ended up doing two rock beds with potted plants in them.  The small black rocks we chose were called Black Star gravel and then we went to a rock yard and handpicked a Chopped Blue Ozark stone for the border.  We are really pleased with the way it turned out!

The pictures really don't do it justice, but here are a couple of the final product.

We also had the trim and a few accents on the outside of our house painted.  We wanted to do black gutters, so decided to have the trim painted before we get those installed.  Here are the before and after photos.  The black really makes it pop and we are loving how sharp it looks!

Before:

After:

trim changed from white to black and white shutters changed to black

Before:

After:

trim changed from white to black and siding around back door and upstairs window box painted tan

The last project I had outside was planting some bulbs.  I love ranuculus and anemone flowers, and one day while I was shopping at Sam's Club I saw that they a box of bulbs for those two flowers.  I bought a couple and put over 100 bulbs in the ground a couple of weeks ago.  But, recently I've been finding little holes in my flower beds from what I suspect is a critter digging them up.  I'm really upset!  They are summer blooming flowers, so we'll see in the next couple of months if any of them make it.  I guess next time I'll have to plant in containers first and transplant when they start growing.  Weird looking bulbs, huh?

More on some of my inside projects later!

Rained Out

So I guess I'm in a blogging slump.  It's once again been a LONG time since my last post.  We've been working on the house most spare moments we get, but more on that later... 

My first March for Babies in Houston was at the end of April, during the weekend Houston got a monsoon amount of heavy rain!  Yep, you've probably guessed where this is going.  We had to cancel March for Babies, for the first time that anyone can remember.  We usually walk rain or shine.  It was a major bummer, but still a lot of fun being a part of the largest walk in the nation.

We started loading on Thursday and Friday.  Katie and I were in charge of this process which included moving around 24 foot trucks into our loading zone and parallel parking them.  This was a new experience for me, but left me feeling quite accomplished! 

Saturday we were out at the University of Houston all day setting up the walk site for Sunday. 

 

 

 

Everything was going great until about 3:00 in the afternoon when the rain started.  We suited up in ponchos and kept going.  Only the rain did too...  It started coming down pretty hard and the flooding started.  We had gotten quite a bit done though, so headed to Home Depot to get industrial squeegees and tarps to use for the next day.  People were pulled over to avoid high water, cars were turned the wrong way on the highway.  It was bad.

 

 

 

About midnight on Saturday night we got reports from the Houston and University police departments that the flooding had caused the bayou to crest and parts of our walk route were under water.  The weather report predicted more raining throughout the night and early morning and it was determined that bringing 40,000 walkers to campus in these conditions was unsafe and the walk was called.  We then spent half the night in contacting sponsors, vendors, and teams to let them know of the cancellation.  Being this tired and delerious made for some good memories sitting around in PJ's in Veronica's hotel room with cake for dessert (which we agreed the next moring we ate too much of).  We got about an hour of sleep before getting back out to the walk site at 5 a.m. to begin the process of breaking down and making sure stragglers that didn't receive the news were made aware of the cancellation.

This is what our picnic site where huge tents had been set up the day before looked like when we arrived.  Though the rain had stopped by about 8 a.m., we were immediately more confident in our decision to cancel.  With the damage to tents and the wind still blowing, it would have been a very unsafe environment for our walkers. 

It was a grueling day to break down a walk we didn't even get to have with hardly any sleep.  After a year of preparation, it was heartbreaking to not get to experience the excitement of walk day, especially the year of March of Dimes' 75th anniversary.  I think it is more work to cancel a walk then it actually would have been to have one.  We have a great staff team though and made it through together with quite a few memories.  We are looking forward to making 2014 bigger and better, and definitely praying for no rain! :)

 

Want to save babies?

Who doesn't love babies and want them all to be born healthy?  I wouldn't come forward if you don't.  As far as I'm concerned, this is a mission that everyone can get behind.  JW and I don't have babies of our own yet, but one day we hope to.  So, I'm thankful for the March of Dimes because they are working to make sure I have the best possible chance at having a healthy pregnancy and healthy full-term babies.

I don’t just work for the March of Dimes, I believe in our mission.  1 in 8 babies is born prematurely and premature birth is the #1 killer of newborns.  I'm walking in March for Babies because I want to be a part of changing these statistics.  No parent should have to leave the hospital without their baby.  I have worked for the March of Dimes over 4 years now, and I believe in the work we're doing.

This year, the March of Dimes celebrates its 75^th anniversary!  I am proud to be part of an organization with such a rich history of mission successes.  The money we raise is making a difference, and we’ve all benefited from the work of the March of Dimes over the last 75 years.  We conquered polio, discovered women taking folic acid could make a difference in reducing neural tube birth defects and now our grains and vitamins are fortified, influenced legislature to make sure all newborn babies are screened for detectable and preventable disorders, and many other advances that save babies who are born too soon.

I hope you will consider supporting me financially or joining my team to walk in Houston on April 28.  There is no registration fee, so you can join, make your own donation, and reach out to get people to support you as a walker.  You can join my team here: http://www.marchforbabies.org/team/MODHouston.  If you can't walk with us, please help me reach my goal by making a donation. You can do that online as well here  http://www.marchforbabies.org/AHance.   

I've also added a thermometer on the right so you can see how close I am to my goal, and to make it easy for you to join or donate.  Thank you for supporting March of Dimes research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives!

Working Weekend

Happy Easter!  He is Risen!  We had a great day celebrating Christ's resurrection with family.  Jenn was in town and came with us to church this morning.  We love our church and it was neat to celebrate our first Easter back in Houston with a church family that means so much to us.  Then, we went to lunch at Momma Hance's house.  She cooked a yummy meal and even did an Easter egg hunt with fun prizes.  After that, we went over to my parents house for dinner.  Dad his his all-famous steaks and baked beans.  It was delicious!  We are full and TIRED!

This weekend, we were pretty ambitious with the house projects.  We decided to tackle the flower beds in our front yard on Friday.  JW had off of work for Good Friday, and I only worked a half-day, so we had big plans.  Thursday evening after work we went to the garden center to stock up on all the plants we wanted to use.  I had done a lot of research and knew what we wanted.  It barely fit in our two cars, but we made it home with everything.  We went over to Momma Hance's Thursday night too to pick up some of her yard equipment to borrow.

Here are our before pictures.

 The beds were in bad shape.  Mostly hard clay, so they needed to be tilled up, cleaned out, and re-shaped.  JW looks good behind a tiller doesn't he? :)

Then, we had to move the bad dirt, add in some good soil, till again, and smooth it out to start planting.  Jenn came over in the afternoon and was a great help! 

We ended up covered in dirt, sweat, and black mulch, but it was well worth it.  We are very happy with the finished product.  It added so much to the front of our house.  We picked hardy stuff that will mature and grow fuller over the years.  It was neat to do all this work and know we were adding value to our own home.   Here's the finished product!

Saturday morning, bright and EARLY, we had a garage sale!  We had half of a garage full of things we needed to get rid of and family contributed as well.  We listed it on Craig's List Friday afternoon and put out a few signs.  People were in our driveway by 7:15 a.m. Saturday morning before we even had everything out.  It was a successful day, and we ended up making enough to cover the cost of our yard work, so it was worth it!  Our bodies are feeling pretty beat, but it sure was a productive weekend!

Where did March go?

Hi faithful blog readers... if you exist anymore.  It's been over a month since my last post!  I hate that, but we've been staying pretty busy.  So, here's my attempt to capture what's been going on.

We moved!  At the end of February, we were so blessed to have the help of friends and family to move us a few blocks down the street to our new house.  Moving is A LOT of work! I didn't do a great job getting a picture of our whole crew, but here are a few.

Jenn came down to help us on the first weekend we had the house.  Adam let us borrow his truck and we made a big dent in getting stuff taken down to the new house.  She was a huge help!

JW and Dakota making a trip.  

We had some great friends and parents help us make the big move the following weekend, and by the end of Saturday, February 25th we had everything in!

I mentioned how much we didn't like the indoor-looking palm tree plants that were planted in the front and back beds, so our moms pulled them right up and put them on the curb.  Love it! :)

Joey's dad came over the next weekend and helped us install cabinet hardware, add towel bars and toilet paper holders in the bathrooms, install smoke detectors, outdoor light fixtures, and hang curtains and things on the walls.  He was a huge help and we learned a lot from working with him.  He's moved a bunch of times so had a lot of helpful tips.

One weekend in March, I baked some small loaves of banana bread and we took them around to meet our new neighbors.  We have enjoyed getting to know them so far!

Since moving in, we've had some issues preventing us from doing laundry...  

 We had to have an electrician come out to install a new outlet for our dryer to be hooked up.  We realized when we tried to hook it up for the first time that there was only a gas dryer hookup and not a large enough outlet for an electric dryer.  That got fixed finally last week, but we've since discovered that there is something wrong with the drain that discharges the dirty water from the washing machine.  Our garage flooded this weekend when we tried to use it. I haven't been particularly thankful our washer and dryer were in the garage until this happened.  Oh home ownership!  We did a few loads of underwear and other necessities at my parents' over a week ago, and our fingers are crossed that the plumber coming tomorrow can get us up and running  pronto!

We did some fun stuff in the month of March too that was unrelated to the house or moving. 

We celebrated my dad's birthday with family dinner and a mini bundt cake tower for dessert.

Taylor came in town for a weekend from Lubbock.  It was fun to hang out with him and to go watch part of Hunter's baseball tournament together.

 Our Harley girl turned 3!

We took Hunter and a friend on a tour of Minute Maid park as a gift we gave him for his birthday.  They were cute and we had fun spending the morning with them.

We saw Tim McGraw at the rodeo with some sweet new friends from church.  The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo is a pretty big deal and a lot of fun.  We grew up going every year, but hadn't been in years.  It was a blast!  

 JW also started playing in a men's baseball league with Adam.  They had a scrimmage a couple of weeks ago that Nana and Papa came to watch with me.  I hadn't watched JW play since high school.  I still have a crush on my man in his baseball pants.  It will be fun to go to games this spring.

We sure haven't sat still much over the last month since we moved, but we are loving our new home and are so thankful.  There are a lot of projects, but we've come to learn that home ownership involves a lot of work to get settled but is very rewarding.  Here's to hoping I can do a better job updating more consistently in April!  Thanks for sticking around!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day friends and blog readers!

We feel so blessed to celebrate our love today with a set of keys to our new home.  We love each of you very much and are very grateful for your role in our lives.  Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Big News!

We have some big news.... We're buying a house!!!  A lot of you probably know this by now, but I still  want to write about the last few weeks so we can remember this process.  The Lord has been so faithful to direct and provide for us every step of the way.  I love being able to look back at times when the Lord's provision has been so apparent.  It is comforting to look at life and know that He has provided before, and He will do it again.  This is one of those seasons I know we will look back on and be reminded of God's faithfulness.

This all happened really fast.  We met the man who owns the house we're renting over the Christmas holiday for the first time.  We had communicated by email as he's on a work assignment in Brazil, but had never met in person.  While he was over, we started talking about the upcoming months and his plans.  Our lease will expire at the end of May, and he wasn't sure if he'd be returning to Houston and need his house back or not.  He mentioned he would let us know in the next few months.

So, we decided to start looking at the housing market so we'd be prepared if we needed to move again.  After crunching some numbers, we decided we'd prefer to go ahead and buy a house rather than lease again.  We started doing some research online thinking we'd be ready to buy in the next few months.

Well, a few days into our "research" we found a house listed online that was down the street from the one we're in now.  It had been totally renovated, was in an area we clearly like, and was in our price range.  We got in our car at 9:00 that night and drove down the street to see it.  It had just come on the market.  There wasn't even a sign in the yard.

I called the listing agent on my way to work the next morning, Wednesday, January 9.  They told me that the house already had three offers on it.  I asked if it was too late for us to see and and put an offer in.  They said as long as they had our offer by the end of the day, they'd consider it.  So, we called the realtor we'd worked with last summer when we were looking for our rental.  She was leaving town the next day, but was available to show us the house that afternoon.

We met her after lunch and really loved the house.  Every surface had been redone... new dark hardwood floors, granite counters, stainless steel appliances with tags still on them, beautiful tile, bronze hardware and fixtures; all the colors and finishes we would have chosen if we had been renovating the house ourselves.  I was still pretty skeptical at this point that we could get everything we needed to in order so fast.  JW was pretty convinced we weren't going to find something this perfect again and that we needed to move on it.  So, we talked to our parents, who were all unanimously supportive and encouraging, worked with our realtor and a loan officer who rushed our approval for financing, and put in an aggressive offer about 10:00 that night.  We gave it all up to the Lord, praying that only if this was His will that our offer would be accepted.

We got a call before 9 a.m. on Thursday saying that the sellers had accepted our offer.  Our realtors were on their way out of town.  But, we worked with them long-distance and met with our loan officer, who may be our favorite person in this whole process, and signed the contract Friday afternoon.  By Saturday we were under contract!  Wow. Scary, but exciting!

We had the house inspected the following week, where of course we learned all kinds of things about our 1959 house.  That was overwhelming.  We prioritized the repairs we wanted done and sent our request to the seller.  They agreed to our list, and now we are only 10 days away from our closing!

We'll do a final walk through to inspect the repairs that were made next week.  We are also still working on researching and choosing home insurance and a home warranty and negotiating our way out of our current lease.  But, we're almost there and can hardly wait!

This whole process has been a roller-coaster and a whirlwind.  Sometimes I still can't believe we are doing this.  It has been emotional and draining, but we feel so blessed.  JW and I have learned (and are still learning) to work as a team and to be diligent in challenging things to make sure we continue to make the best decisions possible.  We are also learning to trust.  To trust that God is sovereign and faithful, and that He's got it all under control.

Home ownership, here we come!  Let the adventures begin. :) 

Post-Christmas Celebrations

Our celebrating didn't end on Christmas.  The Roush's drove down to Houston the day after Christmas to stay with us for a couple of days.  It was so great to spend time with them!  This was their first time to see our home in Houston.  We went out to dinner the first night they were here with some of their other Houston friends and went to look at Christmas lights.  The next day the boys went to the new Top Golf in Houston and me and Meg went to Harwin for some bargain shopping.  She got a cute new Baylor scarf that she's wearing in the picture below. 

Every year, JW's family goes to see a movie while Uncle Teddy is in town.  It worked best for everyone this year to do that after Christmas.  Our house is pretty central, so we offered to have everyone over for pizza before the movie. 

Nana and Papa- Aren't they the cutest?  I love this picture.

Uncle Teddy's first time to meet Cason

Jennifer and Sarah

Then, that weekend we drove up to Montgomery for Jenn to get baptized at her church there.  It was really special to get to celebrate that with her.  Starting this year, she is working for the church part time with the youth.  It was very cool to see all the kids come up and hug her after the service.  She is already very loved and going to make such a meaningful difference in students' lives.

After the service, Jenn had us over to her new house for lunch.  She made yummy tortilla soup with cornbread and dessert.  We all left there very full.  It was special to get to be there with her.

And, to wrap up 2012 we spent New Year's Eve over at the house of some new friends from church.  Aaron and Marianne host the community group we were a part of in the fall, and we have loved getting to know them.  Here's a picture of just the girls from that night.

2012 was a really great year.  Looking back at all we had to celebrate, we feel humbled.  We are thankful for the blessings and opportunities given to us and look forward to a wonderful 2013.