Aruba Anyone?

With Jason's job we get a free vacation this spring. We are going to go to Aruba. I have been researching the area (but ignoring the Natalie Hollaway stories, just don't want to think about that when getting ready to travel). It looks very relaxing. We have been to the Caribbean before so we know what to expect. Beaches, shopping and relaxing!

And my favorite part about vacationing:

The pink one looks delicious!

My least favorite part of vacationing in the Caribbean:

Oh well thats why I love these:

Next vacation that I am planning:

IRELAND

Snow

I worked Monday night when the snow started to fall. Now, when I went to college I got to see a lot of snow, however I never drove in it. Snow days in college consisted of us walking to the nearest store and loading up on essentials. These essentials were not bread and milk but some other type of liquid :). Being from the beach I never learned to drive in snow. We never got snow and when we did I just stayed home or caught a ride with my parents.

So at about 730 in the morning on Tuesday I left work to drive home. I live about 15 minutes from the hospital but only about 5 of those minutes is on a major road. The freeway was not bad conditions at first. As I'm driving I started thinking "Man, I can totally drive in snow! Awesome!" NOT THE CASE. The snow starts pouring down. I exit the freeway on an exit I thought would have a lot of traffic and therefore be a little easier to drive in some previous cars tracks. Well, no traffic! I mean not one single car on the road at all. It took me 45 minutes to get home, and this included me fishtailing about 5 times, skidding god knows how many times and having to stop once just to calm myself down. (I know I am a sissy but I am a beach girl. Give me a tropical storm and I will be fine driving but the white stuff, not so much!)

I made it home and took Isabelle out for a little while. She has never really played in the snow. Her new nickname is now Snowbunny. She loved it. She ran around, rolled in it, ate it, and just enjoyed playing in the snow.




We ended up getting about 5 inches in our neighborhood. When I woke up to go to work Tuesday night it had stopped. Jason and Joel had gone out to check the roads for my drive to work. They came back and basically said that there was no way I was driving. So Jason drove me to work and picked me up this morning. The problem now is black ice and people that think it does not exist!.

Here are some pictures when there was about 2 inches or so on the ground.

So tired!

So I am back to working night shift for like the next month. Plus: more money, not as crazy as day shift Negative: lack of sleep, all the crazies come out at night in the hospital. I only slept for 4 hours today after I got home from work and have been up since then. This is what I look like after 4 hours of sleep.


NOT so Pretty!
Oh well, hopefully I will get used to it. Unfortunately by the time I do I will be back to day shift.

Jason and I are still working on our house. We finally got a new bed. It is huge. We found a dresser that we are in love with. We probably will go pick it up this weekend. It is very vintage looking and it is big. Our room has vaulted ceilings and is big so I guess the large furniture will work. I finished painting the living room. I still have a lot more painting to do throughout the house but at least I am getting some of it knocked out. I have recently become addicted to zgallerie.com. Such cute things. I have also become a regular at TJMax's Home Goods store. Great things for the new home. I also (much to Jason's liking being the penny saver he is) have become a huge fan of our local thrift store. This store is huge and it has tons! Some days are great but sometimes I do not find anything (it does not happen often). The thrift store supports the local rescue mission so my money goes to a good cause. Hopefully in the next 5 years I will have finished decorating but by then we probably will be moving!

Oh goodness, so tired. I am going to take a nap so I can stay up all night in order to sleep all day tomorrow since I have to be at work at 7pm. Oh the life of a nurse!

I'm back

So the holidays were crazy. For Christmas Eve we went to Jason's parents. It was a good time. We received a washer and dryer from them. Super nice and very pratical. Unfortunately since we bought the home we now no longer receive gifts of fun stuff. Christmas day we went to my parents. That was a lot of fun as well. We received many gifts including a lawn mower (well that was Jason's because everyone knows that you will not find me mowing a yard anytime soon). Unfortunately, next year we will not be traveling. I have to work Christmas next year (this means I get Thanksgiving and New Years off). Plus, it is exhausting to travel almost 400 miles in a three day period. Here are some pictures of the house and tree. We did not do too much this year because of moving and everything. Normally our house looks like it threw up Christmas, but this year not so much. However, we were the best decorated house on the block! Okay, yes we are the only occupied house on the block, but whatever!

Boo! Redskins (who are not a playoff team, haha)

My nurse snowman

Baby Eli's ornament

Our wedding ornament from honeymoon

I love pink flamingos

You can not have Christmas without a Christmas Story

Link's first ornament

My Belle

Isabelle's ornament

The fireplace, not too much on it this year.
Our tree!
The house (Jason did not do many lights like he planned because of the rain and timing with having to put them up, but beware next year because he is planning already) This picture excludes the Christmas Story Leg lamp that he placed in the upstairs center window

Caroline Panthers ornament! Yah, we are a playoff team!

We had a bunch of friends come visit this past weekend. It was a fabulous weekend filled with great times. It was nice to be able to hang out with everyone and have enough room in our home for all. Here are some pictures of the crazy times!

Lindsay and I

Kate and Lindsay

Umm, UNC and Duke hate each other! Guess what

though, DUKE is # and UNC is #5 HAHA
Part of the 891G crew (its the apt # from college)

Kate and I (if you have not

noticed the pictures are in the Man room of the house)

Lindsay in my sweatshirt (I am not well endowed and she definitely is so its a tiny bit small)

Kate and Dan

Jason and I doing "Blue Steel"

Eww, boys have cooties!

Joel and I (I wonder how much Joel drank at this point, hint look at the eyes)

Beni and I (before he started making incoherent noises at the table)

Great times!

NO time

Due to moving and working I have no time to post new pics and stuff. I also hurt my foot and have to make time to go to doctor this week. I will try to post soon.

UGHH PAINTING!

I spent 6 hours yesterday painting and I have only finished one wall. Now granted it was a big wall with the fireplace so it required a lot of cutting in, etc. I am heading back of there in a bit to tackle the master bedroom, which will probably take me twice as long because of the vaulted ceilings. I am vertically challenged and the ladder is not that tall so I might have to make a trip to Lowes to get a new one. Oh to spend more money! Also, I think the community posted a memo that we were moving in (it is a large golf course community) because I swear about 20 cars drove by and numerous people walked down by the house while I was there. Our street is a dead end so there is no reason for them to being driving down it. I think we are the new freak shows on the block since we are the only ones living on this new street! I will post pictures soon when I have reached a stage that I fill comfortable with showing off my painting skills.


In the meantime I thought maybe I post some pics of my babies, I mean animals. They are like babies to us because we do not have kids yet.
Eli, is the first child. We adopted him in Harrisonburg my senior year of college. He was a stray that was in the townhouse neighborhood we lived in. One snowy day he was wondering around the house and I let him come in and since then he has yet to leave. He was an outdoors cat until we moved back to VA Beach. Since then he gained a lot of weight (a mixture of digestion issues that require him to only eat organic food and lack of exercise). But now that we have the new kitten he has become quite more active and has actually lost 5 lbs, which is a huge victory for him. He is a sweet, talkative cat who is likes his space unless he wants to cuddle which means having a 25lb cat in your lap.

Isabelle is our German Shepard mix dog. Jason's mom found her roaming around Colinsville, VA jumping in front of cars. She was pretty shabby until his parents fixed her up and then we adopted her. She is protective until she knows you but once she knows you she will never forget who you are. She is very active and loves stuffed animals (well loves to destroy!). She is well trained and knows lots of tricks.


The finally edition to our family was a surprise to me. For my 26th birthday Jason got me another kitten. He said he got it to curb the talks about having a baby (which he can no longer curb because we now own a house which is what he wanted to wait for). We thought the kitten was a girl so we named her Zelda because we love old school video games in this household. It was Jason's choice of name but I thought it was cute. Well Zelda was a girl until she turned out 8 weeks and we noticed she no longer was a she. Zelda then turned into Link. Well Link is a crazy one. He gets into everything. And he loves to eat. You can find him usually trying to get into trash, sink, etc. just to find something to eat. This obsession has now led us to start calling him Squishy because he has some pudge.


He is what they call a Bigfoot cat because he has lots of toes and claws.

All the animals get along great. The cats bath each other and the dog plays with both of them. One happy family!

Our first house!

Today is the day we close on our first house!

It originally was set to close last Wednesday but the builder forgot to get a certain permit and we had to push the closing date to today. I guess that is what happens sometimes when you buy a new construction home. We were really upset because he had almost two months to get this permit and waited till last minute. With the holiday the offices were closed and he could not get it signed. UGH! So we played phone tag with our realtor and our broker. It was not a fun day. Alas, we pushed the closing date to today and actually got a really low interest rate for doing it. The government decided to buy up some mortgage securities on Wednesday (our original closing date) and that let us get a lower interest rate. So in the end we ending up better off closing today.

We went to Lowes on Saturday and bought paint for the house. We bought a pretty green for the living room fireplace wall and the rest of the living room walls will be a color called Gray ghost which is a light brownish-gray. We also bought paint for the master bedroom which will be an aqua color (our master bedroom decor is beachy so that color fits). Our friend Joel is also moving in with us (we like the company and it gives Jason a friend to play with) and he chose a Carolina blue for his room. I told him he could pick any color because I'm really laid back about paint colors. Jason was not happy that he picked Carolina blue being we are DUKE fans. Oh well!

I will eventually buy paint for kitchen, half bath downstairs, dining room and entry way halls this month. I just need to figure out what colors I want. Jason keeps disagreeing with me on colors but I think I will just paint it whatever I want and he will deal with it. :)

While at Lowes Jason and Joel looked at all the Christmas decorations. Jason said for every dollar I spend on paint and decor he gets to spend equal on Christmas lights for the house. This could get scary. I might have to get the whip out and control him because I can see our house resembling the Griswolds from "Christmas Vacation." Since we are the only house occupied on our street (there are 10 other new houses on the street that no one has bought yet) Jason thinks we need enough lights to blind the entire block. I hope it does not end up looking like this house!
Hopefully I can keep him tasteful.

So, after 8 years, 2 dorm rooms, 7 apartments and 1 townhouse we are finally getting a home. It has been a long road of moving pretty much every year for the past 8. We have lived in cramped dorm rooms with no ac, small college apartments with many stinky guys, 1 large townhouse with 1980s decor, a small 1 bedroom apartment in a not so safe neighborhood, 1 beach apartment where we were robbed of most of our possessions, another beach apartment that required daily workouts to get to and a really nice 3 bedroom apartment that we called a temporary home in North Carolina till we close on the house today. I'd say we are grateful for all that we have been given in life and look forward to many memories in our first house!

The house (the porch has a fan on it, so Southern!)

Part of kitchen, minus stainless steel appliances

Part of living room

Our hay filled yard (just until we can get some grass to grow)

The formal dining room

The view of the lake from backyard (there are

also tennis courts, pool, playground and volleyball area down by lake)

Kitchen again ( I really like glass cabinet)