Recap of 2009

Thinking back over the last year, Shawn and I have realized that 2009 was a huge year for us!! We've been truly blessed in so many ways! I thought I'd do a quick month-by-month recap of some of the things that happened in our lives.

January: I read my first Stephen King book, The Stand. We wrecked Shawn's car and became a one-car family.

February: Pretty low-key month for us. Shawn played some rugby. I read 8 books. I crocheted a bit. We went to a yummy restaurant and Alki Beach for Valentine's Day.

March: I went to Colorado for the Romp to Stomp Out Breast Cancer. Some of our best friends, Jarid and Sarah, came to visit us for a week. I started my long-term sub job.

April: Our church's young adults' group got started and we met some people who have become very good friends. I went to Ohio for a long weekend with my family (and was finally able to meet my soon-to-be-sister-in-law). I kept reading and subbing.

May: I was still subbing! We watched our peas sprout. We spent Memorial Day weekend in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

June: My sub job finally came to an end. We went to a fun auction where we spent way too much money (but at least it all went to a good charity, and we got awesome stuff out of it). We went to North Carolina for my brother's wedding on the beach. I drove up to Ohio with my parents to hang out for a few days. Then Shawn and I met up in St. Louis for my friend Shannon's wedding (and college girlfriends' reunion). Yep...June was busy!

July: We started the month in Denver! I got my online teaching job. We went to all 3 Cleveland Indians games at Safeco Field. We survived a heat-wave of 100+ temps with no air conditioning. We began the process of buying a home.

August: I began my new job. We had our offer on a house accepted. My parents came to visit us for a week.

September: We went to Maui for a week! (It took a couple blog posts to write about the trip.) We went snorkeling while in Hawaii. We closed on our house and became homeowners! We spent lots of time painting.

October: We moved into our house! We got settled in (with unpacking, doing yard work, more painting, steaming the carpets, etc.). My job became full-time. We joined a gym. I turned 31. We threw a housewarming/birthday(s) party.

November: Shawn turned 32. We locked ourselves out of the house. We bought a lawnmower. Shawn's family came to spend Thanksgiving with us, so we had seven people in the house for almost a week. We also had some friends over for Thanksgiving dinner, so the total for the meal was 12! We bought new chairs.

December: I did more reading. We decorated the house for Christmas. We celebrated our 2nd anniversary. We hosted a game night with some friends. We flew to Ohio to spend the last week of 2009 with my family.

All in all, we were pretty impressed with 2009!! New friends, a new house, a new job for me, fun travels, spending time with family....there's not much more we could've asked for! God has been very good to us. We're excited to see what 2010 will bring!

New Chairs

Before family arrived, Shawn and I decided to get some new chairs! We knew when we first moved in that we didn't love our furniture arrangement in the upstairs living room. We just didn't like the fact that the big couch was sitting in front of our big picture window, so we talked about finding some chairs that would go in front of that window instead. Here's what the living room has looked like for the last six weeks or so.Earlier this fall, we had taken a little trip down to the "local" IKEA, just to see what they had. I fell in love with a chair that was actually out of stock at that time. When I checked the IKEA website, it wasn't listed, so I eventually decided that it must be an old model that they were phasing out. So I chose another model that I thought would work well with our furniture.

A couple weeks ago, we headed down to IKEA again, with the intention of going home with a couple new chairs. We thought we'd leave with two Ektorp Jennylund chairs. Instead, when we got to the store, we discovered the Karlsvik model that I had fallen in love with before! And this time, the furniture had a tag on it that said "new!" So that's what we ended up buying...two Karlsvik chairs. They only come in one color, and it actually works pretty well with our current color scheme.

Of course, we realized that the chairs wouldn't fit in our car, so we had them delivered a couple days later. This weekend, before Shawn's family arrived, we rearranged the furniture. We put the loveseat downstairs in the family room, and we moved the sofa over to the little "half way" by the stairwell. Then the two new chairs went in front of the big picture window. Here's what our living room looks like now:

I'm loving our new chairs! They're really comfortable, and they look good. :) And if you have an IKEA near you, the Karlsvik sofa is on sale this Saturday for $199 (instead of the normal $299). I'll admit...I'm tempted to make a trip to IKEA again this weekend! :)

Halloween Bummer

I realized that I never blogged about something that happened on Halloween weekend. That Friday night, we went to our friends' apartment for a little Halloween party. Hmm...I never blogged about that, either, did I? I wasn't feeling super creative, so I wore Shawn's stuff and went as a Queen City rugby player.
Shawn was much more creative than me, and he went as Professor Chaos. (He said I should tell you that I "was a good minion.")

Don't know Professor Chaos? On South Park, he's the alter ego of the character, Butters. We like Butters. And Shawn's costume was pretty spot on. See?We had a good time at the party with our friends. When we came home that night, we went straight to bed. On Saturday morning, Shawn went into the kitchen and made a discovery:Yep...broken window. Fortunately, it's just the outside pane, so we haven't had to be in a huge hurry to replace it. When we went out onto the porch, we found a few rocks that weren't there the last time we were on the porch. There were also a few small, dirty dents in the siding. So...our conclusion is that someone (probably stinkin' kids) was throwing rocks at our house on Friday night. Bummer. Here's the rock that seems to have done the damage to our window:

Shawn's New Toy

We were hoping to be really productive today. One of our major things on the to-do list was to do a little more painting. However, we realized that we had the wrong paint, so Shawn headed off to Lowe's.

He did come home with more paint. And some bags for our leaves. And a new toy.

Since before we closed on the house, we've been keeping our eye on lawnmowers. Although we've had lots of people assure us that "now is a great time to buy a lawnmower," we really hadn't been seeing any good deals. But when Shawn went to Lowe's this afternoon, he found that the mowers had finally been put on a good sale! He called to let me know about it, and I checked the reviews online. People have had a lot of good things to say about this model, and when it was all said and done, we got it for less than half price. I'd say that's a good deal. :-)

D'oh!

When we were given the keys to our house, we really didn't get much. Shawn and I each got a copy of the front door key, and there was one spare. That's it. We weren't given a key for our back door or our garage door...so we could lock those doors, but we couldn't unlock them from the outside.

Our front door has two locks on it...the main door lock and the deadbolt. One key worked both locks. Lately, just to save time, I've gotten in the habit of locking the main lock from the inside before I leave the house. That way, I only need to use the key to lock the deadbolt.

This evening, Shawn and I headed out. On my way out the door, I locked the main lock from the inside. Then Shawn came out and closed the door. And then it occurred to us to wonder which of us had brought our keys. Um...that would be neither of us. D'oh!!

Our neighbor was outside at the time, working on her yard. Since every window and door in our house was locked, she gave us her phone book and a recommendation for a locksmith she's used before. While we waited for him to show up, Shawn and I did a little weeding, and we kicked around a soccer ball (that Shawn found in the yard of the vacant house next door). Once the locksmith arrived, it was almost scary to see just how quickly he was able to get through our front door. And since he was already here...Shawn asked him how hard it would be to get keys for the rest of our doors. Turns out, the locksmith was able to change the locks on our back door and garage doors very quickly, and now we can use our front door key on any of them! He also gave us an additional spare key, which is nice.

So...getting keys to those doors was on our house to-do list. We just didn't realize that would be something we'd be checking off our list this weekend!

Bad Blogger!

Wow...I've really been slacking with the blog posts lately! If anyone actually still reads this regularly...sorry about that. We've had a lot going on, frankly. Let's see if I can quickly catch up.

More than a week ago (October 17), Shawn played an awesome rugby match. He was named "Man of the Match" (basically the MVP of the game) and he even scored a try! In rugby lingo, that's basically a touchdown. And for the position that Shawn plays, that's fairly uncommon. I would liken it to a Linebacker scoring a touchdown. It's certainly not impossible, but it's not something you see every game. In fact, until that game, I'd never seen Shawn score a touchdown in a "regular" game of rugby! (I saw him score once in a 7s tournament.) I was on camera duty that afternoon, but his scoring play was on the other end of the pitch, so I didn't get a picture.

Things are moving along with the house. We've finally gotten all the doors re-hung (after taking them down to be painted), the outlet covers back on, and the stairwell railings reattached (again, after painting). Shawn picked the color for his "Man Room" and bought paint last weekend...now we just need to start painting. (He picked #2, by the way.)

This past Saturday, we invited a bunch of people over for a "Housewarming/Birthday(s) Party." We had a lot of fun! It's really nice to actually have room to have a bunch of people over, and I'm already looking forward to doing it again. We had way too much food, so I've been eating the leftovers all week. I bought Tostitos and salsa and pretzels. I made a tray of carrots, celery sticks, and strawberries, and we had also apple slices. I made a Caramel Toffee Fruit Dip, which was super yummy! I also made Cinnamon Chips, which were awesome alone or in the fruit dip. For more sweets, I baked a pan of brownies (nothing special...just from a box), and I also baked a loaf of banana bread. Don't worry...I didn't forget the meat. :) I made super easy crockpot meatballs, and I also made these really good bacon-wrapped-turkey-bites. Sadly, I took almost no pictures at our party. Our friend Thuy made us a housewarming cake...isn't it cute? :)

And finally, in other big news...I've gone full-time with my online teaching job! Technically, I made the move to full-time two weeks ago. However, neither my boss nor I knew that until last Wednesday, since HR didn't bother telling either of us that the paperwork had been processed. I also still don't have my company computer or my VOIP phone, so I'm not yet able to take on a few of the new responsibilities that come with being full-time (and that will more easily allow me to actually work 40 hours a week). I'll admit that I'm not super thrilled that I don't get some of the "normal" perks of being a full-time teacher (I only get 5 vacation days the first year, plus 7 or so paid holidays), but it should be an interesting experience.

So...yeah! I think that's pretty much it for us these days. Oh yeah, and my birthday was yesterday. It kind of snuck up on us, so we didn't really make a big deal out of it. Shawn and I went out to dinner at one of our current favorite restaurants for pizza and a few games of pool. It was a good night. :)

More Paint Choices

Before we moved in, Shawn and I managed to paint the living room, the office/guest room, the master bedroom (including the "dressing area"), the stairwell, and both the upstairs and downstairs hallways. Oh yeah, and all the trim and all of the doors upstairs.

We do eventually want to paint both bathrooms, and I'd like to paint the downstairs family room. But the next room on our list is the 4th bedroom...the one downstairs. AKA, the Man Room. Or the Preparation Room. Whatever you want to call it. Basically, since I've known Shawn, he's let me know that he would eventually love to have a room where he can keep all of his outdoor gear...camping gear, hiking gear, rock climbing gear, outdoor clothing, trail maps, technique books, etc... He loves the idea of having everything well organized and easily accessible in one room. When he's ready to go out and do something, he can use this room to prepare for it (hence the "preparation room" name).

So when we bought this house and it had that fourth bedroom downstairs, I figured it would be the perfect opportunity for Shawn to have his preparation room. (By the way, I just call it the Man Room because I think it's funnier.) Let's be honest...I love the idea of all of his "stuff" being out of the way of everything else. I also like the idea of keeping all of that dirty equipment downstairs and away from the main living area. That downstairs bedroom gets bonus points for being right next to the garage.

Before the move, we just ran out of time for painting the Man Room. At the moment, all of Shawn's outdoor gear is in the garage. (It's okay...we can't park our car in there right now anyways since the door is broken and needs to be replaced. Had I mentioned that little detail yet?) We want to paint the room before we bring in all of the gear and the tall shelves that will house it.

I told Shawn that picking out a paint color for this room is his job. I'll gladly give input if he wants it, but ultimately, the choice is his. He started out with these nine colors as possibilities.

After he and I discussed the options, he went to get samples of some colors. He had narrowed it down to four. These are our choices.

#1 is Aspen Gray, #2 is Stone Mason Gray, #3 is Porcelain Shale, and #4 is Mountain Smoke. (Do you see any trends in the names of these paint colors?) Once these dry and Shawn picks a color, we'll paint the room! I'm hoping to get it done this week. But let's be realistic...I'll be happy if it's done before Shawn's family arrives for Thanksgiving. :-)

We Need Rakes

I'm sure the fact that it's the middle of October hasn't escaped your attention. And unless you live somewhere with absolutely no deciduous trees, you probably know that we are very close to that time of year when the leaves decide they've had enough, and they all come tumbling down. Since both Shawn and I have been renters for quite some time, we don't really own anything for taking care of a lawn...that's what landlords are for. But of course, we no longer have a landlord. It's all up to us now to take care of these "minor details."

Yeah...something tells me that raking the leaves isn't going to be such a "minor" detail for us. Do you remember this picture I posted a month or two ago? It shows a very small part of the very large tree we have in our backyard.

Although both Shawn and I really like this tree (okay, I'll admit it...Shawn likes it way more than I do), a very large tree comes with some very large leaves. Like this one.

Now, you should keep in mind that this is actually a fairly small leaf for this tree. This was just the biggest one I could find that had already fallen to the ground. Many of the ones still attached (and especially the ones much higher up) are easily double the size of this leaf. And there are lots of them! Maybe you can kinda see it better in this picture.

So that explains part of what we're up against. Have I mentioned (or have you just noticed it for yourself by now) that this is some kind of a maple tree? Maple trees have "helicopters." At least, that's what we called them when we were kids, because as they drop from the tree, they spin around and look like helicopters. You know...these things:
Well, our very large maple tree with its very large leaves also has very large helicopters. Again, that was one of the smaller ones. And not only are these helicopters rather large....there are thousands of them!! All those brown things in this picture are helicopters, and again, this is just a very small section of the tree, near the bottom.

Like I said, this is a pretty awesome tree. It's a formidable thing to have growing in our backyard, and it will provide plenty of shade for us in those warm summer months. But I have to say...I am NOT looking forward to cleaning up after it in the fall!! Maybe we'll get lucky and all those leaves and helicopters will just blow right over our house and into our neighbors' yards. A girl can dream, right? :-)

Domestic Saturday

This was our first Saturday as homeowners...and we definitely dived right in to the "domestic" activities! Well, I will admit that we did sleep in first. But then we went grocery shopping together (I don't normally do this on Saturdays, so Shawn usually doesn't go with me...but I hadn't gotten around to it yet this week). There's a Safeway less than half a mile from our house, so that's nice!

We picked up a carpet cleaner while we were at Safeway. Once we got back to the house, I actually went out to lunch with a friend of mine (at the Applebee's that's also less than half a mile from our house!), while Shawn stayed home to get started on the carpet cleaning. He said that our power actually went out for a little while, but he did already have one room done by the time I got home. As I'm typing this, we've gotten 3 of the four bedrooms done, and the downstairs family room. Our plan is to do the living room and the hallway right before we go to bed tonight, and then we'll do our master bedroom after we get up in the morning. Here's Shawn cleaning the office/guest room.

One thing that we really love about this neighborhood is our friendly neighbors! Shawn met a neighbor while he was getting the mail this afternoon (about 8 mailboxes are all together, right across the street from our house). This neighbor, Jim, let Shawn borrow his lawnmower! So Shawn mowed our lawn this afternoon. It was definitely a job that desperately needed to be done!
While Shawn mowed the lawn, I actually cleaned out the car. It's so nice to have a driveway to do things like this in instead of dealing with an apartment complex parking lot! And some neighbors that we had met a couple weeks ago (the first weekend we had the keys) drove by...and honked and waved. Such a nice feeling!

And then....we thought we'd spend a few minutes pulling some weeds. We ended up pulling out tons of weeds from our front yard flower beds! I didn't take any pictures since we were losing the sunlight, but it looks so much better! I'll take pictures tomorrow. Our next door neighbors also came over and introduced themselves while we were weeding. I had met the mom, Wendy, earlier, but her husband, Mike, and their daughter came over, too. He made the mistake of telling us that he's a contractor.....what a handy neighbor to have! :-) He's also offered to let us borrow some of his lawn stuff (like a trimmer) until we have the time and finances to buy our own!

So...that was our Saturday!

Getting Started!

Whew...today was a full day! Shawn, of course, had to go to work all day, but my plan was to head over to the house for a little bit. Before driving over, I stopped by our storage closet and put a few boxes in the car to be taken to the house. One really nice thing about living in this condo is that we were able to leave a pretty good amount of our stuff in plastic Rubbermaid boxes in storage, so we don't have to repack all of that!

Once I got to the house, I unloaded the car and then started taking pictures. I was thinking of them as "before" shots of the house, so I tried to get fairly detailed. I'll probably try to put them all in an online album pretty soon so I can share them all on here without overwhelming the blog. I don't think it's really sunk that the place is ours, even though I let myself in and I was there alone today for the first time. Maybe once the furniture's in....

I also took the opportunity to put the sample paint up on the walls. We're going to kind of "wing it" in a couple of the rooms (that we don't care so much about getting just the "right" shade), but we had picked out two colors for the living room and two colors for the master bedroom. My plan was to get the samples up today so that we can see them dry tomorrow and make a decision. Hopefully we'll get lots of painting done this weekend!

These are two options for the living room:

And these are two options for the master bedroom:

In non-house news, my job has just exploded this week! My boss called me on Monday to ask if I'd be willing to take on a new course that already had 77+ students in it. I agreed to do it! The course was transferred Monday night, so I started digging into it a bit yesterday. It wasn't until today, though, that I really began to see the mess I've inherited. I won't bore you with all the details, but the previous teacher of this course (and actually, I got another section of the same basic course I've been teaching, too) did some STRANGE things with this class! There are exams worth zero points. There are discussion board assignments that aren't actually graded. And I realized tonight that there are assignments that have been submitted in the wrong places and given completely incorrect grades. This should be fun. :-) But it's more than doubled my student load in the last few days...which means more pay, of course! I'm not sure the timing is the greatest (getting so many extra students the same day we close on the house), but it'll all work out!