Belly Pictures

Here are a few belly pictures since I have been slacking on my blog writing. I will post some updates soon, especially about our gender reveal party!

Trick-or-Treat

We had our 16 week appointment this week, on Halloween! It is so reassuring to go to our appointments and get to hear our baby's heartbeat. Everything went really smooth and I even gained some weight (at my last appointment I was the same weight as my previous appointment). We were able to schedule our gender ultrasound for the day before Thanksgiving! I am beyond excited to find out what we are having. We are planning a fun gender reveal party for our family and friends the day after Thanksgiving. More details to come later.

Halloween is always a fun holiday and I thought about trying to find a cute pregnant costume to wear. But I decided against it because Halloween was on a Thursday, we weren't going to any parties, and it was a lot of effort trying to decide. I did see a really cute shirt with skeleton bones and a skeleton baby that I wanted, but wasn't sure where to find it.

Because of the awful weather we had Thursday night, trick-or-treat was postponed until Saturday. I was excited to pass out candy for the first time in our new house. I was sure there would be a lot of neighborhood kids and I was looking forward to seeing all of their costumes. However, we only had 6 visitors for trick-or-treat. Grady and Ziva didn't mind, because they went crazy every time the doorbell rang and we had to keep them in the kitchen with a baby gate. But I was a little disappointed at the turn out. Another down side is that now we have a ton of candy that I have been too tempted to eat. And I'm not doing a very good job of resisting. I guess I can use this pregnancy as a little bit of an excuse to indulge a bit.

Here is my 16 week photo. Happy Halloween!

15 Weeks!

So I am a little late on writing my 15 week post. But I am officially 15 weeks pregnant as of last Saturday. My baby is the size of a pear and can blink! I think it's bones are also beginning to form! How crazy is that?! Oh and I have been officialy in the second trimester for a week already!

This past weekend we went home to visit our families and it was my grandmother's 84th birthday! So the whole family went out for dinner! It was great to see everyone. It was the first time I had seen most of my extended family since telling them we were expecting. Of course everyone is thrilled and had a ton of questions.

All of this running around is making me exhausted! Between traveling, sleeping in different places, and working, I am pooped! I need about a months worth of sleep to catch up what I lost. It never bothered me much to sleep somewhere else, but now it's getting harder and harder. At my parent's house we have to sleep on a pull-out couch/bed. I think I woke up more tired that when I went to sleep. Not only is it hard to sleep on, but then my neck and my back get kinks and I am miserable for the next few days. Even sleeping in my own bed is a chore sometimes. Our dogs like to sleep on our bed, which I don't normally mind, but now I like to have some extra room for my growing belly and to stretch my legs.

The only way to relieve my back and neck pain is to see my chiropractor. I started seeing a chiropractor when we lived in Texas and it helped so much with my headaches. Once we moved, I stopped going for awhile, but last January I couldn't take my migraines anymore and started going again. It has made a world of difference. However, pregnancy causes even more headaches, and there are less pain killers that I can take. . . so my chiropractor upped my appointments from once a month to every two weeks. I was a little hesitant to keep going once I was pregnant, but I found out that it can help relieve pregnancy pains and make for an easier labor and delivery. (We'll see how I feel about that during labor and delivery). So every two weeks I go to get my neck and back cracked and it feels amazing for about 3 days. Then all the pains come back. My chiropractor suggested that I get a massage to loosen up my muscles. I would love to get a massage, but my insurance doesn't cover it and it can be expensive.

I also think that my recently busy lifestyle and the stress from my job is making me tense up more and then my pregnant body just can't handle it like it used to. I hope that after this pregnancy, I can get back on track with less migraines and aches and pains. So for now, I will be trying prenatal yoga (I bought a DVD over a month ago, but never opened it), and trying to destress with other means . . .any ideas?

My Little Peach

This post was written when on October 15th, 2013:

I cannot wait to find out the gender of our baby. I am officially 14 weeks pregnant and have 6 more to go before our gender ultrasound. We have only had one ultrasound and that was at our first appointment at 8 weeks. Here it is:

According to all of my pregnancy app updates, our baby should be looking more like a baby and not so much like a blob. Even though we don't get to see our baby every visit, we get to hear the baby's heartbeat and that is amazing. It still amazes me that there is a baby in my belly. I am starting to show more, but I just feel like I am fat. I know other people that say they didn't start showing as early as I did and this makes me nervous that I am going to gain a ton of weight and be huge later on. A cashier actually asked me when I was due today and it totally threw me off guard.

But anyway. . .  according to my pregnancy apps, our baby is the size of a peach. It is exciting to read the developments of my baby. Apparently it can make faces this week. Of course all of it's organs are becoming fully developed as well.

Here is my 14 week belly picture!

Hangovers

This post was written on October 7th, 2013:

My life style before pregnancy consisted of going out and having a few drinks on the weekends, or enjoying a glass of wine with dinner after a hard day of work. I didn't think it would be hard to transition to not drinking, but at first it was a little difficult. Not because I was addicted to alcohol, but because social drinking was my lifestyle and I needed to change the way I thought about my weekend activities. After a few weeks it became easier. It was hard when we were keeping my pregnancy a secret and we would go out with friends who typically saw me drink. I tried to hide it by ordering virgin drinks, but it was pretty obvious. Once we spilled the beans to everyone, the pressure was off and I felt like I could enjoy myself more, even when my friends were drinking around me. Every once in awhile I will miss having a glass of wine with dinner, but overall it is definitely worth the sacrifice for my baby.

After a few weeks of not drinking, I started to ponder the idea that pregnancy symptoms are similar to hangover symptoms. It really hit me when we had some friends stay with us for the weekend. Followed by a night of heavy drinking, to my amusement, my husband and his friends woke up the next morning extremely hungover. Not only did I get to enjoy listening to them the night before making ridiculous comments and watching them act like fools, I got to relish in it the next day too. However, the night took a toll on my body as well. Staying out late after a busy day, made me feel like I was hungover! I was exhausted, my body hurt, and I felt sick to my stomach from not eating first thing in the morning. I tried to regain my strength, but all I wanted to do was sleep all day. So like the good pregnant woman that I am, I listened to my body and slept pretty much all day. It did help some, but I was still feeling the effects of my too busy weekend into the work week.

So even though, I have not had a sip of alcohol in 13 weeks, pregnancy can make you feel like you are hungover, especially if you try to do too much and don't listen to your body. So I have learned my lesson and have tried to take it easy, but there are going to be times when I am busy and do have to get a lot done, and will probably feel hungover.

I forgot to take my 13 week belly picture. . . I was going to take one of just the chalk board with a cute saying, but I've been busy and lazy. So maybe it will get posted on here. :)

Pregnancy AKA Whose Body Is This?

This post was written on October 1st when I was 12 weeks and 3 days pregnant. I had some technical difficulties getting it to post.

The idea of having a baby is the only GREAT thing about pregnancy. My ideas of being pregnant were ones that involved shopping for cute maternity clothes and decorating a nursery, not feeling so exhausted that I couldn't get out of bed. No one warned me about the extreme fatigue, breast tenderness, or constant feeling of nausea. Ok, ok, so a few people warned me, but I thought that would never happen to me! My pregnancy was going to be symptom free and wonderful. . . .NOT! But despite all the awful pregnancy symptoms, I am so excited to become a mom and meet my baby! Only 6 more months to go!

Since we were trying to have a baby, I was very aware of my body and certain symptoms. Every month I would wait anxiously until I could take a pregnancy test. Actually we were really lucky that it only took a few months. I had taken a pregnancy test on the first day the little fine print on the package tells you there is a 64% accuracy rate. It was negative. And actually I didn't "feel" pregnant at all. I felt great! Better than normal around that time of the month. Matt and I were headed home for the weekend and since there was a possibility I could be pregnant, I didn't want to drink but didn't want to look suspicious in front of our families and friends. So without telling Matt, and literally right before we were walking out the door, I slipped into the bathroom, graciously peed on a stick and. . . . surprise! It was a very faint line, but a line none the less!

We were so overwhelmed with excitement I don't even know what we did next. There was some jumping, crying, and screaming before we rushed out the door to visit out families. We were so happy that we were able to tell them that day!

However, there was already one pregnancy symptom brewing . . . breast tenderness. I already had this every month anyway so I didn't think much of it. Well..... pregnancy breast tenderness gets a ton worse than regular monthly hormonal breast tenderness. I couldn't sleep on my stomach for weeks and forget about changing clothes..... TORTURE! But once I was in my 8th week it started to get better, but hasn't totally gone away.

For a few weeks I felt like I had a lot of energy and was bouncing with joy. Then around 6 weeks it hit me like a ton of bricks. Just getting out of bed was a chore and forget being productive at work. My brain was foggy and I struggled to stay awake (not being able to have caffeine makes this a ton worse than I could ever have imagined). It took all my energy at work, that I usually fell asleep on the couch when I got home. Then I was in bed by 8:00 every night. I must say that this gets better too, but I still get tired if I try to do too much. Just going to the grocery store wears me out some days.

Another pregnancy symptom that I haven't had too much of is mood swings. I think that I have been pretty good about this, but I am sure if you ask Matt, he will tell you something different. I have been know to cry at lame commercials and watching Ellen puts me over the top! Matt will walk in on me balling my eyes out because someone won a 50" television. Then I start laughing because I am crying at the most ridiculous things, and then I am laughing and crying. That is just too much. I will admit that I have been a little more argumentative and defensive at times. And I don't think these emotions are going anywhere soon.

I have been one of the lucky ones that has not had much morning sickness. I had a little bit here and there but never actually got sick. I know some people who probably spent the entire first trimester with their head in the toilet who hate me right now. I did get nauseous when I didn't eat enough but as soon as I ate I felt better. Now what I was going to eat was a different story. I have the strangest food aversions.  I didn't want to eat vegetables, but only wanted pizza, macaroni and cheese, and anything starchy. This made meal planning difficult, especially since my aversions changed every day. But luckily, this seems to be getting better too.

I will be moving into the second trimester soon, and I am excited to get rid of some of the first trimester symptoms, but I am sure more symptoms will pop up.

School's in Session

It's hard to believe that it is almost the 2013-2014 school year and that I have completed one entire year as a school psychologist. I am not going to lie when I say last year was a rough one, probably the roughest that I've ever had, and there were days that I felt completely overwhelmed and unprepared. There were some days that I didn't want to come back to work and could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even though it was rough, I learned a lot about myself, the school district, and my capabilities. I am excited to say that I know this school year will be better. I know what to expect and I know how to prepare for it. Of course there will always be challenges and things that pop up that I am not prepared for, but hopefully being prepared for other things, can help minimize the stress (which usually looks like me running around like a chicken with its head cut off)!

Even though it was hard coming back to work and getting in the swing of things, I have already compiled a list of my evaluations for the year (significantly less than last year) and started working on social skills lessons for several groups that I plan on conducting. I have revamped our forms for Functional Behavior Assessments and Behavior Intervention Plans to make the process quicker and easier. In the next few days we have some trainings, which I am not too excited about, but at least it will get me out of my office (that I share with 8 other people and leaves little to the imagination in terms of confidential conversations). I plan to begin working on background information for my evaluation reports this year and as soon as school starts, I will begin testing students like my life depends on it. Actually, my life does depend on it, since this is where my paycheck comes from. If I get a head start on testing, I should be able to spend more time in classrooms, conducting consultations and working with students that need additional assistance. This will all make for a happier, calmer school year, that I know I will appreciate as well as the teachers and staff that have to put up with me.

With that being said, I feel like I can take on any challenge and am looking forward to positive changes this year! Bring it, 2013-2014!

Summer Time

As school psychologists, Matt and I are lucky to have some time off in the summer. As much as I would love to have the entire summer off, we are lucky to have occupations that allow us about 6 weeks off between June and July. Unfortunatley nothing can prepare you for starting work again after that much time off! As we just started work Monday, I think it's going to be a rough week. I have mixed feelings about our work schedule for the first few weeks before the students return. On the up side, we have Fridays off. But on the down side, we have to start at 6:45 in the morning! And Matt and I are not morning people! Either way, we accomplished a lot this summer!

Ziva is now 8 months old and mostly house trained! Which is wonderful for us! She is still a puppy though and I dont trust her alone for long periods of time. She barely fits in her cage anymore and refuses to go in willingly, which makes it a difficult struggle when we want to leave the house for anything. So we have been trying to block off sections of the house for Ziva and Grady to stay in while we are away. We'll see how this works out. . . . .

Grady and Ziva sleeping in the car (they look so innocent)

Puppies have a lot of energy and we wanted to give Grady and Ziva a place to run outside, so our first (and biggest) summer project we to put up a fence in our back yard. We were originally going to hire someone to do it for us (since we don't know the first thing about putting up a fence), but it was crazy expensive! So my in-laws offered to help us get it started so we could save some money! We had the supplies shipped to our house and we rented an auger to drill holes in the ground for the posts. We could not have done it without the help from Matt's parents! After they left, we had the holes dug but still had most of the fence to put up. We didn't think it would take us that long, but the following week the weather had a different plan for us. The temperature rose the the low to mid 90's for a few days and then it rained and stormed almost everyday for over a week. We wanted to finish the fence before we left for our vacation to Hilton Head, SC, but that did not happen. We thought that when we returned the standing water in our yard from all the rain would be gone, but no such luck. We heard that it rained a ton while we were gone and a few storms came through. Then we started to worry if our fence would still be standing when we returned! Luckily it was and only a few fence posts needed adjusted! We finally finished getting the fence up about a week ago! Then we spent the rest of our break filling in the post holes, planting grass around the areas we dug up, and installing the gates. Matt tore down the small existing fence. It took almost our entire summer, but now we have a wonderful fence we (and the dogs) can enjoy.

Part of our fence

 

More fence





The only down side is that a bunny made a nest inside our fence and now we have baby bunnies in our fenced-in yard! We have to be careful to cover the nest when the dogs are out or take them out front on the leash. I am all for saving the bunnies, but I am ready for them to leave the nest.

One of the sweet little bunnies



In the middle of our fence project we took a short trip to Chicago to visit our friends Danielle and Nathan who were visiting from Texas. We had a blast seeing the city and it was great to catch up with good friends! Our trip to Hilton Head was great too! We had a nice relaxing time by the beach with our friends from Lima, Dan and Erica. We went biking, kayaking, and had lots of great food and drinks! The weather was beautiful for most of our trip (the last day it rained) and the beach was beautiful! We also took a short trip home to visit our families with our dogs and we went to Cedar Point with our friends Ryan and Dawn.

Chicago

 

Hilton Head

 

 

 

So, that about sums up our summer break! It was packed full, but totally worth it. We saw a ton of our friends and accomplished so much. It is great to have the time off to be able to refresh and work on so many projects!

Home is Where the Hearth Is

If you read my last blog post, you would know that our new puppy Ziva has been keeping us busy! As she has gotten older her behavior is improving. . . some. She has gotten better with potty training and now sleeps through the night, so Matt and I can get a little more rest.

Grady and Ziva waiting by the door

 

Grady and Ziva sleeping in the kitchen

 

She stole my chair outside

 

Posing for a picture

Since Ziva has been better behaved, we have had a little more time to work on our house. When we first moved in, we painted the living room and the den. We wanted to paint the hallway, bathrooms, and our bedroom, but ran out of time. The first thing we did after we moved in was to paint the hallways. We found out that painting takes a lot more time than we originally thought.

When we planned to paint the living room, we thought we could finish in one day. Well, it ended up being a week project. We had to buy all the supplies, including a 10 foot ladder to reach ceilings, and calculate how much paint we needed. At first we decided to tape off all the corners and molding so we did not get paint everywhere. Once we finished one section and took the tape off, we realized that tape was not working at all, so we had to go back and touch up all the spots where the paint leaked through. Then we found out that our 10-foot ladder wasn't tall enough to reach the ceilings safely, so out we went to buy another ladder. We had to shove them in the back of my little car which in itself was a hilarious ordeal.

Just standing on the ladder painting the trim along the ceilings was interesting enough. It took us 4 times longer than we thought, but we finally finished painting the living room and den just in time for us to move in.

Painting the living room

 Grady was supervising our efforts, but you can see the light wall color here

 

Matt painting the den

Our next project was to put in a fireplace in the living room between the built-in bookshelves. Originally we thought we could take out the cabinets ourselves, but after 20 minutes of trying and failing, we realized we did not have the right tools to do that. So we hired someone to take out the shelves in the middle of the wall. It took the guys a really long time to get them out so I am really glad we had someone come and do it.

Here is what it looked like before.

We used the middle shelves and cabinets in our pantry for storage.

 

After we had the cabinets/shelves out, we had our gas fireplace installed and then Matt built a frame around the fireplace. Matt did most of the work on this and he did an awesome job. Of course there were some hiccups along the way, but that is expected, especially since neither one of us has ever completed a project like this. After the frame was built, we added stone around the fireplace. It sounds like it was a quick and easy project, but in reality it took us about 2 months from start to finish, since we both work full time and are usually too tired after we get home to work on stuff like this. But here is our finished product:

 



 

I think it turned out great and now we can enjoy a nice warm fire on all those cold Ohio winter nights! Especially if we have any more winters like this past one (actually sometimes I think it is still winter, since this morning the temperature was 35 degrees!)

 

We have a lot more projects that we want to do around the house, but it will probably always be a work in progress. Now that the weather is getting nicer, we want to put up a fence in the back yard for the dogs and for privacy. I'll keep ya posted on how that one goes :)



Shift Work

Having a puppy is a TON of work. More than I ever thought. When we got Grady he was already 5 months old and he was a lot of work, but nothing compared to our new puppy, Ziva. It is a full-time job keeping an eye on her to make sure she does not chew on something she shouldn't, pee on something she shouldn't, or poop behind the couch. And she moves so quickly, its hard to keep an eye on her. I know it is hard now and it will only get better from here, but some days I am too exhausted to care! I have asked Matt several times, "If we are this tired now, how is it going to be when we have kids?!?!?!?!" His response is usually, "We will be even more exhausted!"

How can you not love that face?

Ziva is very cute and she is totally worth all the late night trips to go "potty" and the crying in the early hours of the morning. Matt and I have tackled the chore by taking shifts. We take turns getting up with her in the middle of the night. When we get up for work in the morning we have to take shifts to get ready for the day. Sometimes we even have to eat dinner in shifts in order to keep an eye on her or take her out. So we have managed the whole, "I'll watch her, while you rest" scenario. Our coworkers keep telling us this is "good practice" for when we do have children. I just keep thinking to myself, "Practice? This is having children!" But I am sure anyone with human kids is laughing at me right now.

The only real downfall to it all is that now our new house smells like puppy pee. We try our hardest to keep an eye on her to catch her before she squats, but we don't always catch her and I am sure there are spots on our carpet that we have missed. Every time we think we are making progress with the whole house training thing, it seems the next day we have a huge setback. Since, Matt and I are psychologists, you would think that we would have the whole behavior management and reward system down. And we do for the most part, but its a lot easier said than done. We give Ziva rewards for going outside, but no matter how many times she goes outside, it seems she goes more in the house!

Matt and Ziva

One huge positive is that Ziva and Grady love to play and will chase each other around until they pass out. It is so much fun watching them run around the house and enjoy each others company. It's also fun to watch Ziva dive bomb Grady while he is sleeping :) Grady doesn't think that part is so much fun though.

 Sleeping on the couch

Either way, if this is practice for kids, I feel like I can handle that. I know it will get better and Ziva will learn quickly. But until she does, we will keep on doing shift work.



Man's (and Woman's) Best Friend

As many of you may know, Matt and I are dog lovers. We rescued our dog, Grady, from a shelter when we lived in Texas. Immediately, I thought it would be fun for Grady to have a friend. For a short time we had another dog, but unfortunatly it didn't work out. So we have been talking about getting another dog sometime soon. At first we decided to wait until we moved to Ohio to avoid the stress of a big move. Then, once we were in our rental house, we wanted to get another dog but weren't allowed in our lease agreement. Now that we have our own house and are getting settled in, we thought we would start to look around at the shetlers in the area to see if they had any puppies.

 Grady at the park

 

Grady taking over our bed

 

I have been looking periodically in the past and noticed that not too many puppies come through the shelters. And the ones that do come through are usually adopted very quickly. So I thought the process would take some time to find the right puppy for us. However, I looked at all the shelter's websites the other night and found one that had three female husky/setter mix puppies up for adoption!

 

I was so excited that I emailed the shelter right away and wanted to come out the next day to see them and potentially adopt one. But, apparently there is more red tape to go through to adopt form certain shelters than others. I did not realize that I would have to submit an application and be approved before allowed to adopt a puppy. I think this is a good idea to make sure all dogs go to a good home, but I'm not used to this process and hate playing the waiting game.

 

Either way, I started filling out the application: Do you own or rent your home? Do you have a fenced-in yard? Do you have other pets? What are the names of your pets? Who is your vet? Do you have children? Do all family members agree to have a pet? Yikes! This process was starting to stress me out! I started to feel like my ability to raise a dog was on trial and I started doubting my ability to effectively potty train a new puppy, let alone remember all those vet appointments, heart worm pills, grooming schedules, and exercise regimens. Hmmm.....what am I going to be like when we have children? Oh well, I'll figure that out when the time comes. :)

 

So I made a trip out to the shelter to see the puppies. The people were really nice and asked me a few questions, then let me play with the puppies. They let me pick my favorite one and put it down on my application. They said they would have to check my vet reference and would let me know soon if my application was accepted. Wow, that was easier than I thought. But when are they going to let me know? The suspense is killing me! After seeing the puppies it was hard to leave; they were so darn cute with their floppy ears, and wagging tails, and pointy sharp teeth.

 

This is the one I picked out. This picture was taken from their website.

 

And now we wait.

 







Privilege

To think about where I was in my life one year ago is just crazy. I don't know that I can even process all of the changes and how every detail has impacted my life in some way. Last year at this time I was living in Texas and working on my internship so that I could graduate. I still had a few months of hard work before the end of the school year. In that time I was working on planning our wedding and we were trying to make ends meet financially. I was starting to apply for jobs in Ohio and had no idea of what my future held or what my life was going to look like.

Now, I am living in Ohio, Matt and I are married, we just bought a house, and we are working on fixing up things around our place to make it our own. We are both working full-time as school psychologists in the same district and have so many responsibilities, that I forget what my life looked like only one year ago. If you would have told me that I would be spending hours picking out new paint colors and trying to figure out how to paint 14 foot walls (which is a puzzle in itself) I would not have believed you. I do know that it took a lot of hard work to get where we are today, but it was also a lot of luck. We were very lucky that we were hired by the same district at the same time and we were very fortunate to find a rental home so quickly. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go to graduate school and to move to Texas just because we thought it would be fun.

I am so glad that we did move to Texas and I would not trade it for the world, although it caused a lot of stress and I know it would have been easier if we went to graduate school in Ohio, it was worth it. Now that we are back in Ohio and getting settled into our house, I am reminded of the road we took to get here. We had a lot of support from our family and friends. And even though we have stressful jobs and I doubt myself at times, we are fortunate to have jobs. And we are fortunate to afford a nice house and simple luxuries that others do not have. I am reminded by this every day but many times I take it for granted. I get caught up in my own life and my own troubles and I forget that I am privileged to have the opportunities that have shaped who I am today. I was able to go to college and graduate school, to move across the country, to have a beautiful wedding, to have a reliable job, and to have a loving family and many friends.

Even just thinking of how far I have come from one year ago, I realize that it was a difficult battle to get where I am. But I am privileged to have that battle, because so many never have the opportunity to go to college, graduate school, or move across the country. Yes, my experiences have shaped who I am but sometimes I need to remind myself that I am lucky.

Movin' and Groovin'

January 21st, 2013

I promised myself that I would be better about writing my blog this year! The past few months have provided numerous ups and downs in our crazy life. To shortly recap, we have been working full time (this has contributed most to our high stress levels) and looking for a new house to buy. We found a house we LOVED in late October/early November and put in an offer. After a short negotiation period, our offer was accepted and we just moved in last weekend! (With the help of a few of our amazing friends.)

 

our house

So now we are trying to unpack the mass chaos and find some order in our lives. When we received possession of our house, we planned on moving in slowly in order to fix up some of the things in the house. We wanted to get in and paint a few rooms, while moving smaller boxes of things in order to make the move go more smoothly. Well. . . . .we are not good planners and it took us way longer than expected to paint, therefore, nothing in our rental home was put in boxes. We recruited a few of our friends for a particular weekend to help us move, so we had to light a fire under our butts to get us moving. We starting packing 4 days before the big move. When our friends arrived, most of our rental home was still unpacked. I am sure our friends loved our lack of organizational skills. Especially when I started telling every one to shove things in random boxes and not to worry about labeling anything. It all worked out and everything was packed and moved in one day. I had to go back to the rental house the next day to clean up and pick up a few odds and ends. So all in all, our move was a huge success. Even if every one was a little on edge by the end of the day. :)

 our friends in our crawl space

Now we are in our new house and finally getting around to finding all of our belongings. I love opening the random boxes to find my blender next to a box of tampons. It's great fun! Yesterday I FINALLY found all of our kitchen stuff and plan on going to the grocery store so we can start to eat more than fast food everyday. We were starting to run out of options. Our dinner decisions started to sound like this, "Well hunny, what do you want to eat tonight? Wendy's....again, McDonald's .....again, or should we just pick up something from the gas station? Gas station sounds good!" We are pathetic!

 our piles of boxes

We also bought a gym membership the beginning of January when they have all those deals like... "Join today and we'll throw in a free month's membership, with a free t-shirt, and a side of grueling pain and agony, paired with guilt for being suckered into a year membership and never setting foot into the gym!" We were all about the guilt because we have not yet set food in the gym. Actually it was a really good deal.... you paid $3 for the first month and then had to sign your life away to commit to a membership for an entire year. Matt and I are overachievers, so we went with the two-year membership that claims to be cheaper in the long run. We probably need to start thinking about actually going to the gym.

Well... I am headed out in the bitter cold to go to the gym and the grocery store. It is sooo cold here right now! I think the temperature is 17 degrees but with the wind chill it feels like -2 degrees! I am kind of hoping for a "cold" day off school tomorrow. Just one of the perks of living in Ohio. I am still not quite adjusted to the cold from living in Texas for three years, but if anything will get me adjusted quickly it will be this weeks weather forecast!