Our first house.

Well I am finally posting pictures of the house and base. The house is pretty much done being set up. There are still some decorations I want to buy and more painting that I want to do but that will have to wait a few months until we have some extra money. For now, we are very happy with our little house and the setup. Alright here comes a lot of pictures. I will write a little caption above each one.

Here is the sign in front of the main gate entrance

Driving on the main street coming into base

On the flightline

This is our house! Its not really anything special but its great for a first house. Starting in the spring we have yardcare people that will take care of our lawn and trees and bushes. They don't come in the winter because it gets so cold that the grass is dead most of the time.

This is the entry way into the house. I still want to put a mirror or some decoration on the right wall to finish it off.

Here is the living room before and after:

Here is the kitchen before and after. We love everything about it except for our old stove.

Now down the hallway...

The first door on the left is the main bathroom. Its the one I wrote my "Paint Fiasco" blog about a while ago. I wish I had taken a "before" picture but here is what it looks like now.

At the end of the hall is the master bedroom (which is really the same size as the other bedrooms, but it has a small bathroom attached to it). Here is the before and after:

So anyways, that is our house, well, most of it anyways. We are very happy in it! Its so wierd what a difference it makes moving from an apartment to a house...its great! I will continue to post changes as the house improves and I can't wait to see how green everything is outside come spring. I plan to turn the walkway to our door into a nice garden! Well, that's all for now. Let me know what you all think of the house!

7 Months & Counting!

As of today, Jake and I have been married for 7 months! We didn't really celebrate because its not a "big" anniversary or anything. Actually we did go out to dinner so I didn't have to cook, but because of our "budget restraints" our luxurious dinner was held at Taco Bell (HA!).

It's wierd to me to think of how much has changed in the past 7 months. I mean, everything has changed with us...where we live, what we do, our relationship with eachother, and on and on. To be honest, 7 months ago I had this fairytale idea of what being married would be like. I knew it would be SO happy and SO much better than anything I could imagine. It's funny because I was definitely right but not in the way I was expecting. In our short marriage, Jake and I have pushed eachother and grown eachother in so many ways. Marriage hasn't been easy though at all and definitely not what I had imagined. It changes your whole life when there is someone else that you make all of your decisions with and has an impact on even the most private areas of your life. You don't have the ability to make some of the selfish decisions that you would have done before marriage. Everything about you becomes linked to another person. It's strange and I feel like no one could have prepared me for it. When we were dating I felt like we could never be any closer but marriage brought something totally different into our relationship.

But really, wow! This marriage has been wonderful! We've both grown up so much. I really believe that we've helped eachother become better people because we have allowed eachother to see the bad things in our lives that no one else ever sees. And when we do see those areas that maybe need some refining we have the safety of marriage to work through those things and be real. And through all of it, we are best friends. We've moved to a new and different place and don't even feel lonely because we have eachother and have so much fun with eachother. There have been so many times these past months where we have laughed so hard that we cried. Jake never fails to make me laugh.

Since our wedding, God has challenged me with bringing about one of the most stressful times in my life. With a heavy work load at school and a new marriage, I was really challenged these past months. I don't know if I could have done it without Jake. It's so wonderful to have a husband that supports me in every way and empathizes with me when I need it most. He brought home flowers after my important days at school and cleaned the house when he knew I had no time or energy. He took care of me and constantly told me that he loved me and was proud of me.

I cannot imagine being blessed with a better husband. God has taught me so much these past 7 months through our marriage and I know this is only the beginning of an amazing journey!

Jaclyn's visit to Mississippi.

Jaclyn came out to visit this past week and we had an AWESOME time! Most of the week we just relaxed and watched movies while we caught up on eachother's lives. One day we drove into Alabama and spent the day in Birmingham which is a beautiful city. Here is my first picture post that shows pictures from Jaclyn's visit!

This is a picture of the town of Columbus where I live. These are the downtown buildings. They are so cute!

Jaclyn in front of one of the old buildings:

After exploring downtown Columbus, we left for Birmingham, AL. This is the classy house that we saw on the way. Sadly, I have actually seen much worse...

Downtown Birmingham:

It was a great day. We found a Starbucks in Birmingham which made it even better!

A lot of the week was also spent playing with Bailey. I was so happy that Jaclyn got to meet the newest member of the family :) We had a lot of fun!

Pictures of the house and base are next!

Just a quick post.

Hello! Jaclyn is here this week so that explains my lack of blogging. Considering I only see her now a few times a year, I will probably not post a real blog until she leaves on Saturday. I do have few more updates though real quick.

First, Jake and I found a church! I can't believe we already found one! I love it! Our neighbors across the street invited us to go with them last Sunday and its seriously just what we were looking for. Next week we are going to start going to the bible study thats right before service too. Apparently there are a ton of Christian air force couples that go to the bible study so it will be a great way to meet people too.  I am very excited about it! It's been so hard not to have a home church lately and I can't believe we already found the right one. In LA it took us almost 2 years to find our church! Second piece of news, I got my grades back and I can't believe it but I got a 4.0 this semester! What?! I mean I took 23 units! I am kind of shocked that the best I have ever done in college was during the busiest semester of my life (not to mention taking all my senior classes). I don't say this to brag but more so just because I did something that in August I didn't think I could ever get through. God was faithful and never gave me more than He knew I could handle. It's such a wonderful feeling to be done with the semester and know that I finished well.

Anyways, I have more updates but like I said, Jaclyn's here so I'll post more this weekend. Hope everyone is having a great week!!

A new year and a paint fiasco.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to my first blog of 2009.

I know that I have yet to post a picture blog. Honestly, I am dreading the hassle of charging my camera, loading the pictures to my computer, and then uploading them to blogspot. It’s kind of the last thing I’ve wanted to do the past few days. I do realize though that nobody has any idea what my house and town actually look like. I really am going to try soon to get over the hassle and go take pictures. Bear with me on that…

As for the past few days, I’ve been busy as usual; not a very fun kind of busy though.  I’ve just been doing more unpacking and organizing, and with a house this big it seems that something always needs to be cleaned. Yesterday I unpacked our last box! I’ve totally snapped into wife mode too. I have cooked every meal (excluding breakfast) for the past 6 days, and by cook I mean really cook not just heat up frozen food. I’m always picking up after Jake and Bailey and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Really though I don’t mind doing any of it. It makes me feel good to make Jake’s life a bit less stressful and I personally LOVE a clean house.

New Years Eve was extremely uneventful. We never imagined how having a puppy could change our lives so much. I mean she is so little that we can’t just leave her whenever we want to, at least not for more than an hour or two. She just needs ‘round the clock attention. Anyways, because of her we couldn’t really go out on the town to celebrate (that’s kind of a joke considering the town of Columbus); we were just planning on staying in and watching a movie or something. I would have loved to watch the “Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” concerts but sadly cable tv is not here yet. Around 9pm though, some friends of ours called and said they were bored too so we ended up going over to their house until midnight and playing wii games. It was pretty fun but there was not really any New Years celebrating or anything.

I should probably tell the story of what happened on Tuesday. It was one of those awful scenarios where you are so upset and crying and then there is nothing left to do but laugh. 

Okay here’s the story. You probably remember me saying how ugly our bathrooms are in the house with the bright teal tile half way up the walls and in the shower. Well, Jake and I decided that we would try to paint the tile white and make it look better. After talking to people at the paint store, it seemed like painting tile was not the best idea. We however decided to try it anyways. This was last week and the tile painting took about 5 days. To our surprise the tile turned out great! It was night and day difference in the bathroom. Here’s where it went wrong. We thought that we would now paint the wall itself a nice color to contrast with our new nice white tile. We picked out just a neutral tan color to paint on the walls. When we started putting it on the wall it was coming out this really awful color and was not covering the white paint behind it. We just figured that was nothing to worry about and that it just needed another coat. Well after 3 coats, the wall was still blotchy and discolored. The worst part was the color itself. No joke, it looked like someone took poop and wiped it across our walls. Not a great look for the bathroom… We spent 2 straight days trying to paint numerous coats to make it look better. Throughout this, our brown paint (which wasn’t even supposed to be brown) just kept getting worse looking. Finally when I realized the mess we had made I broke down. It was awful. Jake was upset too because he had spent so much time on the tile only to have the bathroom look worse than when it had teal tile. After crying, we sat on the floor looking at the hideous walls and all we could do was laugh. I mean this was the saddest, ugliest looking bathroom you could possibly imagine. At that point it was funny to us. We knew that we could not possibly spend any more money trying to fix up a dumb bathroom so we had to either use what we had to fix it or just deal with it. Wednesday I went on a mission to try and fix it and came across the idea of sponge painting the walls. This actually worked. I just used a lighter color paint and used a sponge to add a layer over the brown. The unevenness of the brown paint even added to the effect of the sponge painting. To be honest, it does not look amazing or at all how I ever wanted it to look but it is much better and at least something I can live with. Anyways, that was my fiasco this week. It sounds kind of silly now that I’m writing it out but it was just awful at the time.

For an update on Bailey, she has grown so much! It’s so weird that she is growing so fast that we actually notice a difference like every day. She is such a smart dog and has already learned her name and how to walk on a leash. Today she started learning the “sit” command and was doing a great job already. She is now starting to sleep most of the night in her crate which is wonderful for us. We were having to get up every 2-3 hours to take her outside but now its only once or twice a night. The only problem we are having with her so far is her biting. The vet said she is getting in her molars and that is why she wants to chew and bite everything. It’s extremely annoying though and she doesn’t quite understand what she can and cannot bite. Jake and I are trying not to get frustrated with her because we realize she is just a puppy and is teething. Anyways, pray for our patience with that…puppy teeth are sharp!

Other than all that, Jake and I are doing good. Jake is anxious to start working (the base has been on holiday break and goes back on Monday). I am excited because Jaclyn comes out to visit on Sunday! It will be so nice to have some family out here and be able to show her around. Maybe she can force me to take some pictures for you all ;)