making progress

If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last month since we became homeowners, is that we had NO idea what we were getting ourselves into! Ok, well maybe my husband knew a little more than I did, but I was so busy and focused on understanding the process to buying a house (paperwork with the bank, inspections, insurance, etc) that thinking about all the little (and big!) things we would want to do to the house, was the farthest thing from my mind. Buying, becoming owners and fixing up a house is a journey! For the most part it’s been exciting and a lot of fun, at times stressful when things don’t go as planned. We have already learned so much throughout this process; there are so many things I would do differently next time, or things I now know to look for in the next house (i.e.-buy a house with good windows and blinds!) but we love our house and we love getting to make it our home, even if it’s going to take a while. We’re practicing patience…or my husband would say…I’m practicing patience.

One of our biggest painting projects for the house was painting the downstairs den. It was a HUGE job, but my amazing hubby took his time and it looks amazing! We are still working on putting that room together, getting the shelves back together, curtains made, our new furniture arrived, etc. My goal is to just get one room finished. I think i'll feel a lot better after that happens. We have made a lot of progress with the house and a lot of the rooms are almost finished, but I would love to have just 1 room completly finished! Once we've made a little more progress, I'll post a lot of before/after pictures of the house.

Den-BEFORE (Painting)

 Den- AFTER (Painting)

My husband has been working so incredibly hard on our house! I love being able to see him do something he loves and I know the finished product, even though it may take a few years, will be well worth it! I'm excited to be able to have friends and family over for cookouts and parties, looking forward to having houseguest now that we finally have a guest room, and I love knowing that the "spare room" is going to get to be a nursery some day. Its so nice to finally feel at home and settled, after several years of not feeling that way. 

The house is taking up a lot of our life...but we still have a lot going on! Ben has been working part time for a contractor, which has been such a blessing. We are still looking for full time work for him, but in the meantime, God has blessed us so much with Ben being able to work part time and still be able to work on our house.

I have finished my 2nd semester of grad school! I'm so thankful to have a few weeks off before summer classes start. So far I've made straight A's the last 2 semesters, which I'm kinda shocked about, but so excited! When I started grad school in the fall I was a little concerned about starting that and a new job and having just moved back to the US and dealing with immigration stuff and how I would be able to handle everything, so I'm extremly proud of myself for doing as well as I did. I have 2 more GT grad classes to take this summer to complete the course work for my GT endorsement for my licensure, however I'm also taking 12 other graduate hours via the ESL Academy through Henderson State University. Yep...it's going to be a crazy summer for me! But it will be worth the pay raise next year, plus I'll have 2 new endorsements for my teaching license, which professional I feel is a good move.

We placed membership almost 2 weeks ago at Little Rock Church. The journey to find a church home in LR was long, but we are so thankful that God lead us to Little Rock Church. We have made so many good friendships there already and we really look forward to getting involved and building new relationships through the church family. I'm thankful we have found a place we can grown and to know that when we have kids they will be surrounded by such a loving and encouraging group of people. 

I can't believe the school years is winding down, although there is a little part of me that is SO excited it is! I love my job, but these last 9 months or so have had so many big things going on it will be nice to have a break from work and have one less thing to think about, for at least a few weeks. 

Alright, my lunch break is up...time to get back to work. More house updates and photos to come!

house update & my 90 day challenge

 I've been a slacker with updating about the 'house' progress, but lets face it...I have a full time job, plus moving and getting settled into a house could be considered a second job, so I've been busy. We are loving it though! Most of it...except all those lovely little things you discover about your house, that you didn't think to check or relize when you were looking. Oh, well...to late now! I think when buying a house you should be able to spend one night/day at the house before closing on it. I know thats weird, and when it came down to it I probably wouldn't actually want to, but there is so much you don't really know when buying  house until you are actually living there. Thankfully, we haven't run into anything major, just things that are going on the list that we didn't think of at first, or in some cases things that were on the list that have been moved up to the top. For example, in our master bath we have this old exhaust fan that has a heater built into it and its on one switch, so when its on both the heater and fan are on. Its old and lovely, and works ok. But I'm just thinking ahead to summer, when its already hot outside I'm really not going to want to have that heater/fan on after I get out of the shower. Also, although it works ok...apparently my hubby and I like much hotter showers than the former owners becuase when we shower, the wallpaper has started peeling off the walls. Yep. Which in some ways is great, beacuse at some point we were going to take it down. Oh, the joys of owning a home!

The painting is almost complete! My hubby is finishing the downstairs den as we speak, then we need to take the wallpaper down in the dining room and our bathroom and paint those and then we are finished with the painting! Until we decide to tackel the paint on the outside...but that is a ways down the road. My mom is in town this weekend to help us make some curtains, hang some things, etc. She is AMAZING! Its nice having our own personal decorator! We have/had some good ideas, but my mom is so great at helping our ideas come to life. I can't wait to see what it looks like by the end of the weekend, I'll be sure to share pictures!

So, changing gears a bit...I'm starting my 90 day weight loss challege today with Body by Vi! I had never head of the 90 day challege before, until sometime last year I think right around the time we moved to LR, a friend of ours in Texas had been doing it and she looks amazing!! I still don't know of anyone close by that is doing it, which sucks a little bit, but I know I have a great network of friends and family that are always supportive whether it be via email, texts or in person. I'm really excited to see where this adventure will take me over the next 90+ days! I feel like I have always struggled on and off with my weight. I think when we got married we both got a little "too" comfortable if you know what I mean! Plus with everything we've had going on in the last year since moving here etc, we've had a lot of stress which has not been good for me or my body, and it shows. We kind of decided when we bought our house, that it was going to be a fresh start for us and for me I really wanted to work on me as a part of this fresh start. And a huge part of that is losing some weight! I've done it before, I can do it again and I'm excited to be apart of the 90 day challege to encourage and support me as I reach my goals. As for goals, I'm still working on the specifics! But overall I just want to be healthy and lose weight, mostly for myself but also for my husband and our future kids, our family. God has given me a beautiful life and a beautiful body. I need to make sure I'm treating this body he blessed me with, well! So I can live and enjoy this beautiful life he has blessed me with! 

If you want to know more about the 90 day challenge, please let me know! I would love to have a friend join me for encouragement and accountability!

Moving Day!

I don’t particularly like moving. I mean, who really does? I think I’m good at moving…all the packing, getting things organized and utilities set up, etc… but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it. My good friend, Kristi can tell you…I was just not with it on Saturday, which was our big moving day!


The last 10-11 days since we became homeowners have been a blur! We spent most of last week packing, moving little bits here and there, picking pain colors, cleaning, painting (ok, yes the hubby did MOST of the painting!) oh and yes, I worked all week and it was testing week! So by the time moving day got here, I was already exhausted!

We had some AMAZING friends come help at all different stages during the move! We could not have done it without them! And of course my WONDERFUL parents! They brought a U-Haul trailer from Memphis with furniture to fill our giant house, the rest of my stuff we had been storing at their house, and all of my childhood belongings! We seriously have the best friends and family, ever.

We are slowly, but surely unpacking and trying to get settled. Our house is still a BIG work in progress. We got about half of the house painted before we moved in, so we still have a bit to go. There are a lot of little projects here and there we want to do (changing light fixtures, etc) and some big projects (adding retaining walls to the backyard, re-doing the kitchen, etc). There is a part of me that just can’t wait to have it all done and by done I mean, unpacked, decorated, and labeled, but I know this is going to take some time, so I’m just trying to relax and enjoy the process. In the meantime I’m spending a lot of time on Pinterest, plotting/planning what each room will look like! And I’ve got enough boxes and plastic tubs to go through from my parent’s house to keep me busy for a while. One of my goals for our home is for it to feel warm and inviting, and functional but not cluttered! I’ve done cluttered before and I refuse to do it again. Just because we have moved from 700 sq feet to almost 1,900 sq ft does not mean I need to fill our house full of “stuff” or as my husband puts it, “We don’t need to have a picture hanging on each wall!” He’s right…sometimes :)

We will be having a garage sale with some friends in May. Hopefully we will be able to clean out some junk and make some money!

I’ll try to update soon with some photos of our work in progress. In the meantime I can’t wait to see what else home ownership has in store for us…hopefully no more toilets overflowing, which lead to my hubby having to rip carpet out of a bathroom at 10:30 at night! Yes, that really did happen, and yes it was our 2nd night in the house! Good thing we were planning on ripping the carpet out of the bathroom anyways…so this just gave us a jump start (and why on earth would someone put carpet in a bathroom anyways?!?)

Surprise...we're homeowners!

So, yesterday we bought a house!! Yes, you read that correctly. Man, it was hard keeping this secret, but it all happened pretty quickly and here we are, homeowners! We've been looking online and with our realtor off and on for a while and at the end of February we were driving through a neighborhood in Midtown that I had heard of, but never been through even when I lived in Little Rock several years ago. We had seen the particular house online and liked it and thought it had potential but we just weren't sure about the neighborhood because we had primarily been looking in West LR. As soon as we pulled up in the driveway I had a good feeling. We went through it, and from what I can remember we were both pretty quiet, taking it all in. We went home, talked and prayed about it and called or realtor to see if we could look at it again the next day. We went back the next day and it just felt like home...well home, that needs some work and a lot of wallpaper taken down! We made an offer that night and that's when the fun began. I left that next afternoon for a women's retreat in Texas, so we got to spend that weekend negotiating while I was in Texas and the hubby was in LR, and by the time I got home we were under contract! The next few weeks were a blur with all the typical house buying stuff, inspections, appraisals, etc. Everything went so smoothly! We still wanted to keep it quiet, just because there is always a chance that these kinds of things can fall through, so we only told a few family and friends, but man it was hard keeping it quiet!

We are SO excited to finally own a home and can't wait to make it our own! The home is 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, it has a large open kitchen and 2 living rooms. It has SO much space! I think that may be my favorite part! For almost the last 3 years I have lived in 700 sq feet or less, so I am just beyond excited to finally have some space!! We are excited to have a home we can grown into for years to come. The home has only had 2 owners, the last owned it for about 30 years and took such great care of it. It's very outdated and has lots of lovely wallpaper but we're ready to tackle it! We're going to start with painting this week and then hope to move in next weekend. There are a lot of little projects and updates we want to tackle, the kitchen, backyard, etc but we are going to take our time and enjoy the process! Here are some pictures of our new home. These are the 'before' pictures...I can't wait to see how everything turns out!

Closing day...with a SOLD sign!! And a whole lot of rain!

Living room to the left of the entry

Dining room

View of the living room/entry from dining room. I LOVE the huge window!

Kitchen with eat in dining room

Kitchen

Downstairs den...this may be our favorite room (once that lovely paneling is painted!)

Master bedroom

Smaller bedroom- this will be an office for now, and one day a nursery (not any day soon!)

Guest Bedroom

Master bathroom

Hall Bath

So, thats our house!! The before pictures anyway. I've been pinning away on Pinterest and we've picked our color pallet (I think!) so I can't wait to see how our ideas come together! If anyone in the LR area are in the market for a new home, we have an AMAZING realtor and mortgage guy that we would love to refer you to!! Stay tuned for lots of renovation updates as we make our new house our home.

Vegas Baby...and a Green Card!

 So, lets just skip the chit chat and get to the good part! Its official...my husband is a permanent resident!! Praise the Lord!! Last week we had our immigration interview in Memphis. We had been praying that it would go smoothly and we would get an answer on the spot, and God blessed us abundantly! From the minute we got there, we were in and out in less than 30 minutes! We were the first couple called in, our interviewer was very friendly and comfortable to speak with. He went through our paperwork, asked us some questions, looked at our binder and then printed out this lovely little sheet that granted by hubby his green card! The real thing should arrive in the mail in a few weeks...and yes, he will actually have a "green" "card" its similar to a drivers license.

This was THE binder! I worked on this for quite some time. Yes, its complete with color coordinated tabs...I am a teacher after all. This is pretty much like a scrapbook of our relationship. It has photos and lots of documentation of our life in Australia and in the US all that lovely stuff to show immigration that we are actually in love, married and all that jazz :)

So after our interview we were off to Las Vegas! This was my first trip to Vegas, and to be honest I probably would have loved Vegas a lot more a few years ago when I was young and single or had an endless amount of cash. I don't gamble, I don't party, I don't shop at high end stores, etc...but I did enjoy the yummy food, the outlet malls and the warm weather! We were so busy trying to fit as much as we could into a short amount of time and with all the wedding events, the 4 days flew by!

We did make it to Arizona and to the Grand Canyon, which was a whole day trip...600 miles and about 10 hours in the car, but totally worth it! 

 Yes..that is my hubby out there on the cliff, and yes...I was freaking out the whole time!

 Breathtaking!

The whole reason we were in Vegas was for my Aunts wedding. It was a beautiful day and she was a beautiful bride! The whole afternoon was so fun. I'm so glad we got to be apart of their special day.

The rest of our time in Vegas was spent seeing the Hoover Dam, dinner at Max Brenner in Cesars Palace, an AMAZING restaurant and chocolate bar that was a favorite of ours in Australia, shopping at the outlets and a stroll down the strip. All of that followed by a 3am wake up call and 6am flight home...at the time that seemed like a good idea. Overall is was a nice getaway and fun to spend time with family and friends that we don't get to see often, and now we can cross Las Vegas off the list.

So, about that BIG update I mentioned last time...tomorrow it all becomes "official" and I can fill you all in! 

best valentines day gift, ever

Most girls get chocolate and flowers on Valentines day...I got something even better!

Just a few days after my last post...on Friday, February 15th to be exact...we received my hubby's work authorization card!!! Praise the Lord! This was what we had been waiting on for the last 4.5 months! He is now able to work in the US and we were able to get his drivers liscense. The very next day we received our letter from immigration with our interview appointment date! Another, wonderful day! Our interview is scheduled for March 20th, which is less than a week away. We are SO excited this process is finally underway and close to being over! My hubby has been job searching for a few weeks now, with a few leads. We are continuing to pray that God leads him to a wonderful job that he will love! We have been overwhelmed by the love, support, and prayers from so many family and friends. God is faithful.

With all of this going on, we are finally starting to feel more settled into our life in Little Rock and in the US. We have found a great church to be a part of and met so many wonderful people through out that process. We have been able to spend time getting to know different areas of Little Rock with a little house hunting. We are settling into our routines, spending time with friends and really enjoying our life here. They say the process of moving is one of the most stressful things a person can undertake in their life. Whoever said that is right!  But try moving across the world...twice in 2 years (did I do that math right? and does that make sense? lol)...that is WAY harder than moving across town! We've certainly had our time of adjustment and settling into our life here, but I really think after 9 months of being here, we are starting to feel settled and it is feeling like home. To be honest, although I lived in Australia for 2 years and called it home, there was a part of me that never really felt settled and at home there. I tried to, I really wanted to, but with living with my cousins and then in our tiny flat the first year of our marraige, I just felt so unsettled for so long. I'm not really sure if I even realized that at the time and I certainly didn't know the impact if would have on me. But i'm getting there. I know, now that I wasn't suppose to be settled there, because God had a different plan for us and I'm so thankful that He did.

So thats just a little bit about whats been going on with us. We have a few other "BIG" things stiring in the pot...but I'm just not quite ready to spill those beans yet :) give me a few weeks and NO we're not having a baby! Why does everyone ALWAYS ask that when you are a young married couple?!?! Right now we are enjoying married life, before kids!

Next week is my Spring Break....FINALLY! We are headed on a vacation...aka- holiday for all you Aussie friends :) to Las Vegas for a few days to enjoy some time away in the sun, with family but also celebrating my Auntie's wedding! I am beyond excited, I would have started packing last weekend but I'm pretty sure my hubby would have laughed at me! Other than our trips to and from the US/Australia to visit family (I don't count that as a vacation) and our trip to Branson last Thanksgiving, this is our first vacation since our honeymoon. I LOVE to travel...hence how I ended up in Australia in the first place...and in the last 3 years I've taken fewer vacations than ever in my life, so I'm just a little excited.

Maybe my next update will be from Vegas :) and if not...I'll be sure to update again soon with some BIG news!

Happy [belated] new year

 I so wish I was better at keeping up with my blog. I'm pretty sure I wrote this same thing at the beginning of last year! To be honest, I do think about it often. I actually put it on my to do list, but that list is always incredibly long and there are too many things that take priority over the blog. I really am going to try this year to make it a priority. I love being able to go back and read post from several years ago and see how much has happened in our life and where God has lead me (now us). I want to be better at documenting our life not only for us to have, but also because this is such an easy way to keep our family and friends overseas updated with our life.

Since Christmas, we haven't had a lot going on....just waiting. We are still waiting to receive my hubby's working authorization. By law the government is required to issue work authorizations within 90 days of filing a visa. We are somewhere past 120 days, i've stopped counting. I'm kind of at a loss for words. I could sit here and write about how incredibly frustrating dealing with immigration is, because believe me we know, this has been our life for the last 18-21 months. But crying, complaining, getting angry, being frustrated doesn't help. We just have to let go and give it to God. He has great plans for us, plans to give us hope and a future.

I'm trying to look at the bigger picture. And maybe in a few years, I really hope we can laugh about all this immigration stuff! I know that immigration will always be something we will have to deal with being an international couple. I love my husband more than I can put into words. And even through all the ups and downs of an international marriage, I would not change any of it, because my husband is more than worth it.

Other than our immigration situation, our 2013 is off to a great start! We are loving our life in Little Rock. I look forward to the many adventures and blessings in store this year!