Moving, Pups, etc.

Well it was a busy weekend. BJ ended up working overtime on Friday - he worked a total of 16 hours! After he recovered from that we spent time fridge shopping (still not sucessfully - I just can't decide!), picking up random things for the move, cleaning, cleaning some more (the house was open for visitors on Sunday to find new renters), organizing, and packing.

The highlight of our weekend was a van full of boxer puppies in the Walmart parking lot. I'm not sure if that's too good of an idea - buying puppies out of a van at Walmart.... but it was fun to play with the puppies a bit. They had three for sale, two boys and one girl - BJ fell in love with one of the boy pups. Good thing we have decided to wait until we have grass to get a dog - otherwise we might have been tempted... :) Plus, we want to have the time to train the dog really well. Right now we don't have time to watch a movie, let alone raise a puppy!

Grandma Murphy's 89th

Here's a photo from BJ's Grandma Murphy's 89th birthday!



We had a great time visiting with everyone and were so happy to be able to take BJ's dad, Grandma, and Shelia out to see the house. Yesterday I stopped by to see the progress. We have shutters, a white frame around the front door, and a lot more of the painting done (the doors and the fireplace mantel in particular).




Two weeks and one day to our move in date! This week I'm going through our list of utilities (phone, gas, electric, water, etc.) and setting up our service. This weekend we'll be buying a new fridge and packing up the house!

Like a Crushed Ice?

We recieved another letter from Juevyllee (our sponsored child) and her mother yesterday. Juevyllee asks, "How does it feel when there's a snow? Is it like a crushed ice?".

She's so adorable. :)

New Move In Date

We have a new move-in date... March 9th! With the weather being so bad things have been delayed a bit, but that's fine with us because we have so much to do! We've been trying our best to actually go through all of our stuff before packing it up, to be sure we don't bring along stuff to the new house that we don't want or ever use. Plus my new goal is to get and stay organized so I've been trying to sort and find realistic places to store stuff (such as the mail - which is never going to actually make it upstairs to the office). :)

BJ and I went out to the house last night (which actually works now that we have electricity - no more need for flashlights!) - and we have a few new additions - namely toilets and shutters. Sweet, I know. :) - Jessie

Icy Days

BJ and I had the past couple of days off (Xavier was closed, and BJ flexed time so that he wouldn't have to drive in the bad weather). We spent most the time going through stuff in our house and starting to pack. We think the cats think somethings up. :)

I've got a cold and it stinks.

Here's some of our snowy day photos....

New Home Picts

There's been a lot more done over the past week or so. Here's some photos BJ took yesterday...

Here's our upstairs hall bath and our laundry room / back hall closet.



Here's our staircase.



Here's our kitchen... :) I'm going to need a step ladder because I can only reach the first two out of four shelves. I guess BJ could hide my Christmas presents us there!



We should in in about 3 weeks!

Trip to Columbus :)

BJ and I had a great time this weekend visiting my friend Jessica and her husband Ryan. I've missed seeing her! I'm so happy that they live closer now. :) Here's some photos....

Me and Jess...



BJ with the pups....



The four of us...



Hanging out...



After our visit we stopped by the house for a visual update... We have all the flooring in now except for the carpet, the fireplace mantle is in (this will be painted white), and the doors are on upstairs. Very fun! :)

House Tour

Here's a little video tour of our house we took today. :) We have more paint and will be getting our cabinets installed this week.

Good Stuff, Bad Stuff....

First, the bad stuff. A few days ago my (Jessie) Grandma "Lake" was in a very bad car accident with a semi. She was air-cared to Toledo, and she's been recovering for the past couple of days from surgery to start reparing her neck / spine, which is broken in three places. Please pray for her and my family.

Good stuff... BJ and I had a great time on our trips this past weekend - BJ snowboarding in WV with the guys, and me in Illinios with my Grandma Marie and Grandpa Rod. I learned more about watercolor painting, ate a lot of really good food, and spent time just hanging out. :)

What our cats do all day....

"Save The Cheerleader Save The World..."

A few months ago Mark Nelson made a comment on his blog about "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World", and how someone should make t-shirts with this on it. I love the show Heros, and thought it would be fun to do just that. There were a bunch of similar shirts on CafePress.com, but thought I'd add my own just for fun... and forgot all about it. So today I come home from work and find a letter from CafePress - and a commission check for $29! Turns out, thirteen people have bought stuff from my "store", from places all over including Hawaii! And I've made another $20 that they'll be sending soon as well! Whoo-hoo!

Want to see my merch? Check out http://www.cafepress.com/modernmerch2007. :)

Move-in Date Approaching!

BJ and I got our approximate move-in date this weekend - March 2nd! It's so crazy to think that we could be in our house in just 45 days! Today they're pouring out front walkway, among other things I'm sure. I had yesterday off for MLK Day, so I spent the day in we’re-moving-soon mode, cleaning and organizing the basement and our closets. My car is currently full of stuff for Goodwill, and I gathered 6 garbage bags of stuff to throw out! We had a lot of junk!

Congratulations Andrew & Whitney!

Congratulations to Andrew & Whitney Jones on their new little girl! She's beautiful!

It looks like a house!

The inside of our house is finally looking like a house! The drywall inside is nearly finished! Here's some new photos including a cutie on the deck, the arch, and some of the insulation we put up this week in the garage.

Insulation Fun....

A week or so ago, BJ and I were showing our house to BJ's dad, and he suggested that we insulate our garage (everything else was already insulated) while we still can - before the drywall goes up. We looking into it and found out that we only had a couple of days to get it done - so on Wednesday evening (in the dark of night with a huge work light) BJ, Jon Lawrence, and I went to town insulating our garage, and it was a HUGE job. We have nine-foot ceilings in the house, so our garage ceilings are 10-feet high. Thank goodness for Jon - we probably wouldn't have gotten it done! It was hard work but fun to know that we had some small part in the building of our house - the rest we have left up to the experts!

Here's BJ and Jon (you can barely see him - he blends in with night) hanging up the insulation....



It's crazy to see the drywall go up in the house (this is our bedroom), because the rooms are really starting to look like rooms!

Annie Chases Her Tail and Then....

Sorry about the horse-scream!

Insulation, etc. (very exciting, I know)...

This is the progress on the house as of Saturday morning. Today is pretty cold, so I'm not sure if they will be working on the outside. We had our insullation blown in sometime last week - hopefully it will save on our heating bills as promised!

In other news, I have the slowest moving cold in the history of colds! Hopefully tonight I'll get some better rest.

You Know You've Been Playing to Much "Ninja Gaiden" when...

The ninja is making me pancakes!

Shutters

I'm so excited to see what our house will look like with shutters that I Photoshopped them in! Here's my creation!

Also, I changed the settings on the blog to take off that moderation thing... that was dumb. :)

More Brick, an Archway, and the Moon!

BJ and I were able to visit our house again today! Progress looks slower now that the outside is basically done, but there still were some cool things for us to see. We have a new archway between our kitchen and family room and some more brick.





I also got to try out my new camera lense tonight with photos of the moon...