underlining was there!

It didn't transfer the underline! I swear it was underlined while I was typing....I'm not crazy!

our house as it is today :)

I don't know how to get this to stop underlining so I'm just going to post this! I decided to put up new pictures of our house. It feels like not much has changed since I posted last and the parts that have changed are in a worse state! But I hope you enjoy looking at where our house is at in the process! The next step for the living room is to buy curtains...they will be about the color of the sheet that is now giving us privacy in the living room. The blue couch is temporary. It is our friend Daniel's who is living with us for a bit...This is the vanity in the bathroom - I painted the walls taupe and didn't like it in the bathroom so I painted the walls again. I'll post those pictures with the next round...
I picked out this shower curtain - I thought it was fun and cute.
This is the part of the house that looks worse...Ben tool out a whole wall so there is drywall dust EVERYWHERE! We are working at getting the last of the wallpaper off the wall that is on the left side of this picture. Once that is done then we will texture the wall (the drywall under the wallpaper wasn't textured at all) and then paint! Right now the idea is to paint the walls orange. That pretty fall-like orange.
This is our beloved kitchen....The plans for this is to leave to doors off (we were going to paint all the cabinets and doors and put them back on with new hinges (the old ones were no good) but we decided that within the next few years we would like to completely gut the kitchen so it seemed pointless to us to buy new hardware just for a couple years and go through the trouble of sanding and painting all the cabinets. So I am thinking I will paint the inside and outside of the cabinets that are on the wall right now and then paint the walls and let it be until we redo everything.
This is our dining room - one of my favorite parts of this house is my fruit bowl - I love walking into the room and seeing fresh fruit - I love the colors and the feeling of seeing freshness right there on my table :)
So that is it - wow the underlining came back...I thought I got rid of it...oh well! I just went to Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel with Miranda to spend the last of the wedding gift cards...so I will be posting pictures of the great decorations we got there! I am definitely more excited about my house now! Thanks Miranda! I am going to paint more in the bathroom now...we have goals of what we want done by Thanksgiving so expect some more pictures by Thanksgiving!

Love to you all :)

Closer to being a home!

I am in my living room (I'm refraining from calling it my new living room so I can get used to it being mine). It is starting to look more like a home and not a storage room! More boxes got unpacked today and I actually made a meal! Until now it has been make a sandwich, don't eat dinner at all, chips and salsa for dinner, go get something out, or order a pizza. We did try last night to cook in our oven but that ended up with the house filling with smoke and very bad smells! I'm thinking we didn't clean it good enough so back to cleaning it again! So today I used the Crockpot. I am getting more used to saying our house and walking around it has been getting more comfortable. I'm hoping to feel like I'm home when I come back on Saturday. Which brings me to my next subject....my work trip!

I am leaving tomorrow for a work trip in Tucson. I will be gone until Saturday morning. I don't like leaving my husband - but I will be taking my little sister with me to stay with my other 2 sisters' apartment. All 4 of us will be together again! I could have stayed at the hotel my conference is at but I decided that this would be more fun. Joanna, my youngest sister is on fall break so she doesn't even have to miss school :)

I need to go to bed now but I will post pictures of the changes we are making to the house as soon as I find the cord for my camera - I think I know which box it is in but ya never really know!

Our New House!

Ben and I bought a house! We signed on it 10 days ago and now it is sanitized and partially painted...a work in progress. This has been such a fast process for us! We made an offer September 3rd and signed September 26th! Just 23 days after we made the offer. We first had to rip all the carpet out which Brian and Ben did such a great job! The house definitely got better after that stuff was out. Brian even took all the tack strips out all himself! That made the house safer and look so much better too! And after taking out the baseboards in one room, which seemed to be a much easier job then the tack strip, I couldn't believe he did it all! Last weekend my family came over to help us paint and we got SO much done! They were such a help! I'm going to be cleaning up the floors from all the paint supplies tomorrow so that the furniture can come in.

I am sitting on my couch tonight for the last time in our first apartment. I'm actually tearing up a little thinking about not living here anymore. I have grown to really love this apartment and I am so comfortable here. This has become our home. I have my routine of what I do here and how I do things. I like our furniture set up (well it's kinda all moved around now to make moving easier and things are boxed up) but I really love this place! I'm afraid of the house because it seems so big and empty. It is about 800 square feet bigger than our apartment (that is nearly double by the way) Thankfully God provided some circumstances where we were able to get more furniture, appliances, and things the house needed for what we could afford! That has been really cool to watch and be a part of God providing for us. God is so so good! We are excited and happy but also stressed and adjusting. I am looking forward to this new stage - homeownership. I just didn't even imagine it would come so soon! alright...I need to go to bed. Our days are long now with all the work to do at the house. I'm tired but it is a good hard tired after a day of working hard! I love it!

These are some pictures of what the house looked like when we bought it...I will take a camera tomorrow to take pictures of the work in progress.

In Sickness and In Health

Last night I just went down and a head/chest cold took over my body. I had been loosing my voice all day but after dinner my chest hurt, head hurt, throat was then on fire, and congestion had finally gotten to where I could blow my nose (before it was all in my sinuses behind my nose and I could not get it out). On our way home he stopped at his parents to get their humidifier for me - and oh my gosh that helped so much! So anyway....we got home and I just laid down on our couch. That is pretty normal but when I'm sick this also involves moaning and constant needs. Ben set up the humidifier and did whatever I asked of him with absolute love and care. Made me tea and wasn't frustrated when I then fell asleep. He simply waited until I woke up and offered me the tea. He made sure I had Kleenex right there, water, and tea. When I asked for my blanket he got it. When I asked for a cough drop he got it. I had everything I needed and felt so loved and taken care of! When I went to sleep for good last night I could hardly breathe and my head totally hurt but I knew I was loved and taken care of. It was one of the most safe feelings ever and I love my husband for being so so so good to me! I only hope that I can take care of him that well when he needs me. So - this post is for you my love!

Freedom

"In my distress I prayed to the LORD and the LORD answered me and set me free!" This is how I have been feeling lately. I feel like there are so many ways my life could turn out and I so badly want to live a life out of grace and love and freedom. I have witnessed lives that are lived for God but out of fear. I hate fear.

1 John 4:18 "There is no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear. Fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." I want to be made perfect in love! I know that I will never be perfect on this earth but I believe that I am righteous and that is enough for me.

I feel that my husband and I are living this life so well right now. We love each other, we talk, we fight, we reconcile, and we aim to see each other as Christ-in Laura and Christ-in Ben even when we are having our worst days. We are incredibly happy and feel so blessed with what God is doing in our lives and what he has provided for us. We definitely are not perfect - we are learning what it means to be a wife and a husband.

As I read my Bible more I am finding myself falling more in love with Jesus. I decided a few months ago that I need to set time for me and Jesus. That our relationship is not going to just "be deep and meaningful." I knew that I would need to put an effort into the relationship. Spending time with Jesus is deepening our relationship and therefore making mine and Ben's more full. I am just scared of who I can be without Jesus. I am afraid that I will try to control my life. I am afraid that I will hide myself from others instead of being real and truefaced. I still pray to Jesus and ask him to keep me humble and trusting him. But I still worry about what other people think of me. I hate that about myself but it is true and I think that if I acknowledge it in myself I can start letting God change me and take that fear away from me. I am done with it.

In my distress I prayed to the LORD and the LORD answered me and set me free.

Getting Ready for work

I am blessed to have a job that doesn't start until 9am at the earliest. I wake up around 7 so I have almost 2 hours - and a lot of times I push it and go in late so I have more time all to myself! (My husband has to be at work by 7 so he is up and gone before I wake up)

I usually start with a glass of OJ :) sometimes I make coffee but other times I just enjoy sweet orange juice. I usually see what is on the news...if it's a good story I'll watch it (NBC Today show is the typical). I am reading through the book of John in the Bible and am loving reading this in the stage of life I am at. A morning read helps set my day at a good pace.

I always like to delay getting ready for the day. Partly because it means I have to change out of my sweats and partly because it means that I have to leave my house. In the morning I want nothing more than to stay in sweats and take it easy. Right now I'm in the keep delaying the inevitable and watch the news part of my morning. A story about infertility and that maybe eastern medicine can help it.

I love my little living room and the cozy couch I get to snuggle on every morning as I read, watch the news, send emails....whatever it is I choose to do.

I'm looking at my schedule for the day - my work lives only in a schedule. It's not too busy, not too full. So hopefully I will come back and write about how it went or how my evening is going. I need to clean my floors while my husband gets his hair cut so I will be alone again. Ok...I kinda need to leave in 30 minutes and I'm not ready. :)

This is my morning, my second favorite part of my "everyday" day.