I’m worried it will quit snowing any minute so I probably jumped the gun to take this comparison photo, but just in case we wake up tomorrow morning and it’s all melted.. here it is.

          

More Snow!!! It’s supposed to keep this up for a while.

          

Here’s a picture I took out the back window a couple of hours ago.

While it may not look like much, snow in Texas is rare not to mention in March! About 5 years ago when we first moved into the house it snowed on Valentine’s Day, and we thought that was late in the year for snow. I’m worried we’re going to miss out on a Spring all together and go straight into Summer. I hope not because Illianna has lots of cute little clothes to wear, but I am armed with two different sized swim suits.

          

Ryan and I were talking about the website last night. We really want a new design and I thought my mother was going to do it, but it seems that she’s quite busy with other things. I think Ryan is going to attempt Photoshop again. He does a pretty good job.

I have been super busy with my job, but wouldn’t want it any other way. I love being back here. The drive this week has been a little tough because we haven’t been able to carpool. I don’t mind it in the mornings, just in the evening. Traffic is never bad, but I just want to be home and not deal with all the morons on the road. Every time we venture around the neighborhood we end up having a conversation about how horrible the drivers are in the area. Thank God for each other. We would have gone crazy long ago without the other.

I’m making friends at work which is so cool. It’s the little things that really make a difference. From doing all the temp work I’ve done for the past few years, it’s been difficult to make friends. I have a girl here who I have a blast with ‘lunch is never long enough’. We’re going to have her and her fiancé out to the house for a BBQ once the weather is a bit more predictable. We’re doing dinner this next weekend with a co-worker and his wife. There is also a housewarming coming up for another co-worker. It’s just so cool! Seeing as how we typically stay at home and don’t go to bars or clubs, it’s difficult to meet people that we like. I’m sure if we did the bar/club thing we wouldn’t meet anyone we were interested in knowing anyways. ‘There’s a little elitist attitude for you college people.’

Our house is really coming together. We were able to purchase some bookshelves we’d been eyeing for quite some time. We were able to show the long overdue respect to our books by getting them off the floor. Ryan was so proud putting them away. He’s always wanted a library, and now we have one. We’ve already used it a couple of times. The candles provide just enough light to be able to read in the cozy makeshift chair. The house is so relaxing. There’s nothing better than taking a bath and then snuggling up in the library. I believe we’re getting a king bed next.

          

We have been super busy. We’ve moved into the house. Finally… a month later… we got our key back from the builder. The carpet was replaced ‘what a mess’ and various painting, caulking, fixing, and re doing had to be done. We’ve already painted most of the rooms. We took advantage of the fact we didn’t have to be careful with our old carpet. Painting without having to worry about a drop cloth was nice. It’s finally starting to feel like home. I’ve been burning candles as much as I can and slowly have started putting up the few nick-knacks we have. The house is very bright. It’s so clean and relaxing.

We’ve been quite the handy couple. Ryan’s been quickly learning how to use various tools. We’ve found that Home Depot is a very very evil place. We attempted to install hardware on our cabinets in the kitchen ourselves. We thought that was a good idea, but it’s turned out to be a bad one. The first handle went on a little crooked and the second one is level but the holes are too close together so the actual hardware won’t go on. Soooo now we’re going to pay a pro to come in and fix our mess. But other than that and the scare of me thinking I broke my sink in the master ‘long story’ things have been going well.

I’ll try and post more later but don’t hold your breath.

          

We are managing to stay busy. Last week was a lot of running around. My dad got a look at the progression of the house. We had Ryan’s family in town that we never get to see and that was nice to have a visit with them. I don’t know that group well, but they’re easy to get along with. Now I feel more comfortable in making a trip up to see them.

I’m applying for a permanent position here at ACEP. I don’t know if it will end up working out for me or not. I really enjoy the work environment here. Everyone does a really good job and I can tell that they’re happy. They seem to treat their people very well. That goes much further with me than actual job duties. It would be a bit of a drive from the house, however, most of the people working here are from Keller. I’m not going to stress about it. If it doesn’t end up working out for me here, there has got to be something else out there.

We’re going to be attending NBAA again this year. That’s coming up in October. I’m really looking forward to it. We’re going to hit the static display this year at the airport and walk a few of the planes. Last year we didn’t know that was going on until too late. We’re also going to Discovery Cove. We are going to hit SeaWorld too. This will be a marine vacation this time. I’ve researched a bunch of the different restaurants in the area. We should be eating good! And I’m not talking about the horrible touristy stuff, which is all around where we’ll be. We’re staying at a much better hotel, location wise, than we did last year. Last year although the hotel was very nice, it was in a not so nice neighborhood. The closest eatery was a diner type place that when we walked it we could feel the grease floating in the air.

Ryan’s high school reunion is going to be the same weekend we get back from Orlando. We’re both looking forward to it because we’re very comfortable with where we are in life. It always feels good to be able to go “neaner neaner” to those who used to torment you in high school.

          

Our house is slowly but surely coming along now. We are very excited. Every weekend we drive out to see the progression. Unfortunately this past weekend not much had changed from the previous weekend. There still isn’t a frame up. However, they have plenty of time, and we figure that they are pushing ahead on some other homes right now rather than ours.

We’ve been in frequent contact with the DFW Design Center. They have been a bit of a pain. It’s just adding a middleman to the mix and they are never well informed.
They called to tell us that the carpet we selected was being discontinued and that we had to choose another carpet. We went out to look at other options and the 4 others that there were initially were gone also. There was not a color or quality that was the same to what we chose. We left in frustration and made a few phone calls to the builder, our sales guy, and the design center. We were then told they did have enough carpet. Then we were called and told that the carpet would be coming from 3 different dye lots.

THEN after many more trips to look at different carpet samples and many more phone calls we were informed that they did in fact have enough carpet for our house.

From our various phone calls we found out that the design center just was not doing their job. If they’d gotten all the information about what was going on before contacting us, we could have saved about 8 hours of our time.

Hopefully there will be no more situations like this. We’ve already experienced a similar situation with our cabinetry ‘going through a reselect process and getting mixed information from the design center and builder’.

I’m still pleased with Highland homes due to the fact that they are usually the ones that fix the problem and are always trying to accommodate us. Just beware of middleman.

          

We bought a new house! It\’s a Highland Home. We\’re having it built from the ground up and are very excited about finally getting out of apartment living. We\’ve had enough of poor maintance, outrageous rent, and the smell of smoke coming up from our downstairs neighbors. So far our experience with Highland has been ok. The initial sales rep we spoke with didn\’t have a clue. She told us that features were included which actually weren\’t. They have however, thrown those items in for us at no charge. So right now there is a clean slate and we\’re starting to roll on the project. We\’ve finished our consultation at the design center and plan on meeting with the builder later this week *hopefully*. Click here for pictures of our very own pile of dirt.