Well, since tomorrow marks the beginning of another school year, I thought I would take the time to give you a brief overview of my summer.
Most of June was spent doing things to the house. We had briefly placed it on the market, but after not getting much interest, being frustrated with our realtor, and realizing that we really didn't need to move, we decided to stay. So...I decided to finally make the house our home. I'd held back a little because we never planned to stay here for very long and then when we thought about putting our house on the market a little over a year ago, we put all of our pictures away. So it had been a house for us, but not a home for awhile.
It all started with the garage. Those of you who have visited know that the garage was a disaster and couldn't even be walked through very easily. Well, a HUGE thank you to my friend Katie. We tackled the garage together and spent 8.5 hours organizing and now it looks awesome and can fit my car!
After cleaning out the garage, we had a huge pile of stuff to get rid of, so over Father's Day weekend, my mom and I had a yard sale and got rid of a lot of it. What didn't sell went straight into the back of my dad's car and on to Goodwill. Love it! At the end of June, Jason and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary by going to Rockport, TX (near Corpus) and staying in a bed and breakfast for a few nights and exploring the area. We went to the aquarium and the USS Lexington both in Corpus and then went to the beach in Port Aransas.
In June, I also spent a week in Oklahoma visiting family and friends that ended with a train ride home.
Beginning in July, I started watching a 31/2 month old baby named C.J for a family that we go to church with. It gave me a lot of practice in how long it suddenly takes to do EVERYTHING! We went shopping, to the grocery store and to pick his sister up from daycare.
In mid-July some of the girl cousins came to visit! We had a great time and went crazy shopping! Jason left town for the weekend. :) We had such a good time, we decided to make a cousins trip an annual thing. Can't wait for the next one.
Throughout July and the first part of August, we continued to work on the house. I decluttered every single cabinet, drawer and closet (this happened before the yard sale, by the way). We replaced all of our mini blinds with the 2" wood blinds, I updated all of our pictures and put all our frames back out, I ordered our wedding album (that is a long story) finally, we bought new furniture for the guest room so that our company doesn't have to sleep in the living room, Jason completely relandscaped our front and back yards complete with irrigation system, and we covered our back patio! Whew! We were busy. We still need to clean up in the back a little bit and they are coming this next weekend to put flagstone down. Then we will order our patio furniture and we will be finished with the outside. We do want to replace the fence, but that will have to wait. Below are the pictures of what we have done. I know the outside pictures are kind of dark, but I had to get this done tonight and that was the best I could do. Hope you like it!
I just remembered that we also got a new dining room table that will expand and seat up to 8. I love it, but I'm too tired to go take a picture. If you want to see it, go to Mandy's. She has the same one, but with different chairs and I don't have the bench.I also am in the process of applying to grad school at UT to start next fall. I took the GRE on Monday and did fine, so the process can continue. I am hoping to get my masters in Special Education in the area of autism and then either get certification to be a diagnostician or a BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst), which would allow me to do ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) therapy with students with autism. We'll see what happens! A lot can happend in a year.
I think that catches you up. I got tired of posting pictures on this because it is slow, so I will also put some on Facebook. I hope you are doing well!
