After move in pictures

Josh in our living room after we had rearranged the furniture 5 times!

The kitchen


Our breakfast room

This area was an atrium at one time. It deserves a blog entry all on it's own describing what was done to it! Anyways, this was the "storage area" until everything could be moved to it's proper place.

The other side of the atrium

"The Blue Room"/Guest room after I had already tackled and organized it's contents.

"The Blue Room" again

The closet in "The Blue Room"

Josh's "Man Cave"

"My Room"/Wedding Central

I think they heard the cicadas and were trying to figure out what the noise was

Bayla's newest hiding place! We had just hooked up the DVD player with surround sound because we didn't have cable yet, and I noticed Bayla was missing. He doesn't like loud noises, especially the surround sound. I went looking for him and found him just laying there hanging out!

I guess I forgot to take pics of the master bedroom. It'll have to wait til next time.

Stress!

The other day I had written about our moving adventure and when I clicked to post it, something happened and nothing was there. AARRGHH!!! One day I will get to it, I hope. Maybe I'll just post the pics and you can create your own theories of how it went! Ha!

We got moved in. That's the main thing. And believe it or not, mostly unpacked. The living room, master bedroom, kitchen, bathrooms, and "my room" are all unpacked and pretty organized. The guest bedroom and Josh's "man cave" are not really set up. The guest bedroom is ok, but needs some more work. The "man cave" is still a sea of boxes, golf clubs, and deer antlers. But that's his room, therefore, I am not stressing about it. I was stressing about "my room" because for the next two months, it is going to be "wedding central," and I needed my space to be organized. I think I accomplished it fairly well. After we get everything situated, I'll have to take more pics to show the finished product.

We went to the 'burg this past weekend to accomplish more wedding tasks, and I think we are on a roll. Saturday morning, bright and early, mom and I met Josh and his parents in La Grange to take care of picking out tuxes. It was an incredibly simple and painless 30 minutes. Thankfully I took Rach's bridesmaid dress with me and I think we matched the vests/ties perfectly for the groomsmen. After that, mom, SuSu (Josh's mom), and I hopped on 71 to head to Houston. The guys went back to Seguin to visit with Wayne's (Josh's dad) cousin Dale.

We went to Arne's to get party stuff for the reception. Has anybody been to this place? OMG! It's awesome and amazing and there aren't enough adjectives to describe this place! They have anything and everything you could ever want or need for a party or wedding, and it's all really cheap! We got plate, napkins, and forks for the cakes. We also got a hairclip for me. I can't remember if I had wrote about it, but mom and I had spent about two hours on Harwin street looking for a hairclip, with absolutely no luck. We go to Arne's and, boom, there it is. After party supplies, we stopped at Macy's for I don't what, but mom and I got a Starbucks. (As a sidenote: being at the mall and starbucks, you sure wouldn't know that we are in a recession right now!) Our final stop was Palais Royal. I ended up with a dress for the Bachelorette party that I paid $12 for! Oh yeah! It was on sale big time!

Then it was back to the 'burg for the caterer tasting at Mik's. Mmm...you know if John is cooking it's going to be good! (Another sidenote: mom taught John in high school, and he never fails to mention that she always made him write lines!) In addition to being a wonderful cook, he is also highly entertaining! Anyways, on to the food...We tried roast beef, roasted chicken breast, roasted pork loin, chicken fried steak, and chicken Parmesan over pasta. The sides were green beans, onion potatoes, twice baked potatoes, grilled vegetables, and a delicious salad that he makes! Wow! We were blown away with how good it all was! We made some really great decisions and I think everyone is going to be very pleased. I'm not going to say what we chose, so that if you are at the wedding, you will be surprised! We're going to use him for the rehearsal dinner and the reception. And we told him that he has to be there the day of the wedding because he's going to be the entertainment.

Sunday was filled with breakfast and running more errands. We went by my Grandma Elsie's house to collect jars for the decorations. She has so many jars, we barely made a dent with the 30 or 40 we got. We also went by the Kalina's and got to visit with them before we had to pack up and head out. Josh and I were both exhausted when we got back. But I am so excited that the wedding stuff is coming together. Only 2 1/2 more months! Yes! I can't wait for it to be over!

Stay tuned for more fun and adventures in house ownership and wedding planning!

It's done!

Moving day went well! It was incredibly long, hot, and stressful. I took some pics of all our stuff and will post more tomorrow!

Kalina Family Reunion ~ 2008

This past weekend was the Kalina Family Reunion at the Inn of the Hills in Kerrville. We've had it there every other year for the past 8 years. It was a little small this year, but we still had lots of fun. The whole family picked me up in SA Friday morning. The came to SA in mom's care and then we had to transfer everything to my truck so we could all fit along with everything we had packed. You would have thought we were going for a week! After some crying and screaming, and lots of luggage maneuvering, we finally got on the road and made it into town around 1. Dad and Ryan were dropped off at the golf course, while mom, Rach, and I grabbed some food and ate lunch by the river. After we checked in, we went to the pool. The Inn has two pools...one at the hotel, and one down by the river. The one by the river never has anyone there, probably because you have to walk a ways to get to it. When we got there, there was only one other family there, so it was nice and relaxing. The water, however, was freezing! And the wind was blowing so it made it even colder! I didn't stay in the water long, so I laid out and got some much needed sun for my pasty white skin.

By that time, some of my other family members had made it in, so we sat by the pool at the hotel chatting with them, and killing time before dinner. We ate at Mamacita's! Yum! I know that it's a chain, but the one in Kerrville is by far the best! We had some drinks and enjoyed way too much chips and salsa. After we got back to the hotel and our dinner had time to digest, we trekked our way across the parking at 9:00 at night to Dairy Queen to chow down on some blizzards. This has become a sort of tradition for us at the reunion, so of course we have to continue it, no matter how full you are or what type of diet you may be on!

On Saturday, Dad and I got up early to go shopping for essentials like coffee and watermelon. The morning was spent visiting with family, and some card playing. Lunch at the hotel was good as always, and of course, I ate way too much. It's dangerous to offer desserts on a buffet and then offer 30 different desserts. We all got dinner plates and loaded up on one of everthing. After lunch, mom, Annette, and I took Josh to the Ingram Dam. He had never been there, and I have been raving about it for awhile, so he wanted to see what it's all about. Basically, the river is dammed in Ingram. But the cool thing is that you can slide down! And then crawl back up and do it all over again. Or you can hang out in the river behind the dam. We discovered it probably 10-12 years ago, and love it. But be sure to take a crappy bathing suit or old shorts because they will get torn when you go down. We didn't go down, but we hope to head out there one weekend. We then went back to the hotel to load up, and Josh and I came back into SA. We got up early Sunday to start cleaning the house, which is in the previous post.

I didn't take a whole lot of pics, but these are some I snagged from Rach. When I get a chance, I'll post some of the ones I took.

The house is ours!

The house is ours now. Josh and I went over there today to clean. Let's just say they only vacuumed and even that was half ass! My parents and Ryan showed up around lunch to help. Mom cleaned the fridge, thank goodness, because it was disgusting! Josh and I cleaned windows, window sills, baseboards, above doors, ceiling fans, and vacuumed. I cleaned the bathrooms too, which was about as disgusting as the fridge! Ugh! I think we went through two containers of Clorox wipes! Josh swept and washed off the deck. Dad changed the locks for us and made a list of what he has to bring next weekend. Ryan kinda did whatever we needed him to do. Before we left for the day, Josh and I had a little fun with the red wasps that have taken up residence in our eaves. We got some heavy duty spray, and prepared ourselves to run like hell if they started to attack. We got lucky that they all were a little drugged up when they flew out, so there wasn't too much excitement. I have to go over there this week to finish the kitchen, breakfast room, and utility room. Saturday is the BIG day...moving day! We've got a U-haul rented and I'm almost all packed up. Not too much left to do.

We went to Home Depot Saturday evening when we got in from Kerrville to pick up some things we needed. Oh my gosh, what a trip! It was one thing after another. First, was the water hose. We decided we should probably get one. Then we thought we should get a spray nozzle. You'll notice in the pics below that there are large rectangles with different colors of paint. Apparently, the previous owners wife did the painting, and she didn't move furniture, she just painted around it!! Yeah, who does that? Anyways, they did leave some paint for us. So, while we were at Home Depot, we decided to get a paint brush. But then we decided to get a paint roller in addition to the brush. And they we felt like we might need paint thinner. It just kept snowballing! But we had fun, and are really excited about this adventure we are about to start.

The front

The front
Entry


Looking into living roomThe "blue room"

Guest Bath
Guest room
Guest room

Looking into breakfast room and kitchen

Master bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom/Bathroom

Kitchen

Backyard

Backyard

Outdoor grill and sink!!

I have a house!!!

Yes, that's right, Josh and I are houseowners!! AAHHHH!! I can't believe it!

I haven't mentioned anything, because I just kept waiting for the bottom to fall out like the last one. I didn't want to jinx anything! Luckily, this all went pretty smoothly. We closed this morning at 11:00. It is still all too surreal!

So, the plan now is to clean this weekend and then we will officially be moving in on the 19th. Stay tuned and I will hopefully post some pics this weekend.

We also have the Kalina Family Reunion this weekend in Kerrville, so I'll probably post some pics from that as well!