Oh, it's Master Matt, if you don't mind

It's true.

He is no longer a student.

He's all grown up and fully assimilated into the business world.

(And I can host your next birthday party.)

I'm so proud!

And he only makes me call him Master sometimes.

The move

Well today is officially our first full day in the new house. We moved all of our stuff yesterday. We had people from church show up to help us move in which was a great help. It took about 1 hour to get it out of the truck and into our living room. It should now only take us three weeks to get it out of our living room to a more permanent location.

In general though, we've been moving along. We put the appliances in and had the cabinets and carpet installed this week.

We put in some new lighting fixtures in various locations in the house. Yesterday we also had some friends come through town that have been planning to stay with us for some time. That really added to our urgency to make the house livable. Livable included things like put some doors on the bedrooms and bathrooms, get a shower curtain up, get a light in the bathroom, put blinds on windows, etc. We got a lot of it done but not quite as much as we had been planning. One example is the doors. We were planning on putting up white doors. Unfortunately there just wasn't time to paint the doors, so for now, they just had to go back up. Because we're lucky, we got the the laundry room door on our room-complete with a hole for the cat door.

Turns out, somewhere in the home renovation, we lost a 30 in X 80 in door. How do you lose a 30x80 door? I'm still not entirely sure but I am sure that we have no idea where it is and that our room is not private to cats, children or small burglars.

Latest News

Well things have been pretty crazy around here. What have we been doing? Well, what haven't we been doing? Well we haven't been sleeping, eating properly, showering, brushing our teeth, doing our homework, traveling, playing frisbee at the park, going on walks, and most tragically, riding our bikes. Pretty much all we have been doing is working on the house.

Thankfully, it's almost over. This week we have some new cabinets coming Tuesday, then we have new carpet coming on Weds. Then we have a few more finishing touches to put on before moving on Fri. It's none too soon either. Besides the fact that we would go crazy and probably light the place on fire if it dragged on much longer, we have good friends from Virginia that are coming into town on Sat and are staying with us. (Bryant and Kristy, if you're reading this, we'll at least have a door on the bathroom by the time you get here.)

Anyway, the last two days have been much better because we've started finishing things. Yesterday we finished the half bath downstairs...with the exception of the toilet and the sink. We also have all of the trim painted and back up except for in the kitchen. We still have a nice long list of things to get done, but it's nice to finally start finishing things.

The trim is now all up except in the kitchen. That was a big task and required a lot of leg work; it would go something like this. 1. Go upstairs. 2. Measure new trim piece. 3. Go downstairs to garage and cut trim piece on saw. 3. Go back upstairs and fit trim piece and realize it it still too long. 4. Go back downstairs to garage and cut piece again on miter saw. 5. Go back upstairs to re-fit trim piece. 6. Realize you cut too much off trim piece and it is now too short. 7. Try not to curse. 8. Start over.

We also have all of the walls painted except for the bathroom upstairs and the touch-up work that needs to be done. Note: the walls are not as green as they look. In fact oddly enough, even though both rooms were painted from the same can, they constantly look different shades from one another.

Anyway, Friday's the big move and we're exited. I can't wait to unload the truck, lay down on our new soft carpet and take a nap.

Well don't you clean up nicely

This is our bathroom. He's vivacious.

This is my Matt's father, to whom we are forever grateful for lending his experienced hand. He was our personal slave and he worked hard (well into 3:30 AM on Saturday night, along with my diligent husband and brother-in-law).

This is Matt's talented mother, who worked and weeded and painted and with whom I ran many trips to Home Depot and Wal-Mart with.

This flower bed (as well as the others lining our entire house) was filled with weeds. (Example below.)

We gave it a nice face lift. I even have a pretty little flower planter now, THANK YOU LEANNE!

She also taught me how to obtain my own green thumb

We worked hard and I am very happy that hard work often brings such grand rewards. (I even learned how to prune. Dustin, you'd be so proud.)

So this is the before of our kitchen, if you have forgotten.

And after screwing over a billion screws,

and taping,

and sawing (This is Eric, who drove long hours and stayed up late and drove home all in a weekend just to help us. We love Eric.)

and laying tiles, you get something like this. Only cleaner.

"Honey, it's like one of those shows"

is what our neighbor said to his girlfriend upon entering our home. Even though from the pictures things don't look half bad, up close this house needs some care.

We accomplished a lot in the past week (thanks to help from some very generous parents, and a good sister who brought three lovely children and made us popular with the neighbors).

We've grilled (in our own yard).

We've demoed:

The nasty cat smelling carpet is gone, as well as the baseboards.

The poorly installed flooring (including the screws holding the bulges down) is/are gone.

We've vacuumed up all of the staples and items liable to puncture.

We've thrown some paint around.

And it's all been very gratifying.

Do you like it? You can visit.

This is a house.

We liked it.

So we bought it.

Do you like it?

It's getting made pretty right now.

There's even a room for you to stay in when you come.

Birthday Bash

Well I'm officially 27. It was a good birthday. Nicole threw me a bit of a preemptive on Thurs. night. We went out to dinner and then had cake and a really nice evening at home. For my birthday Nicole made me a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that was really good.

The reason we didn't spend as much time celebrating on Friday was because we had a concert to get to. It was for a band called the Temper Trap. They actually put on a really good show. It's been a while since I've been to a concert. As good as the Temper Trap was, I would say my favorite part was the opening band. Not because they were musically inclined, but because of one person in particular. The opening band was a six-piece--pretty rare for the entry level indy market. So what do you get with six pieces that you don't get with four or five? A full-time tamborinist -- that's what.

Most of you are probably skeptical of this setup and are asking questions such as: doesn't he get tired playing that tamborine? How entertaining can a tamborine guy really be? Well the answers are: no, not when he's double fisting tambos like Animal from the Muppets, and: it depends on if it's the beginning or end of the show and how many beers he's had while he's been on stage.

(When he's not fist shakin' he plays a mean air guitar.) Anyway, the concert was good and all in all a successful birthday. Thanks for all the kind wishes from everyone out there.