A Little of This, Some More of That

Whew! What a year!
2008 proved to be the most crazy filled year ever! Never in my life have I had so many changes happen in 365 days. Is that all there were this year 365 days?

Due to two crazy months and in order for me to fully document them, I am going to write about our newest adventures one at a time.

Back in November Paul and I were driving home from church discussing the lessons and the talks of the day. We both agreed that we really loved our ward, and that it would be difficult to leave it once we found a house. We figured that we would find the house Heavenly Father wanted us in, and whatever ward boundaries that landed us in was meant to be.

We had resigned ourselves to homes in Pflugerville, TX because they were more in our price range and still close to Paul's work. We found one house that we thought would work for us. Neither one of us had that "This is it feeling" but we didn't have a bad feeling either. We started writing our realtor an e-mail late one night telling her we wanted to put an offer in on the house, but we still kept looking on the internet for other possibilities(you can tell we weren't completely sold). It was then that we found OUR house, in a neighborhood we didn't think we could afford in the ward boundaries we didn't think we could stay in with a yard we didn't think we could have. We quickly revised our e-mail and we looked at the house the next night. It only took us a couple of minutes to decide that we wanted it. For anybody who knows us, there were no pros or cons lists or taking our time on this. We just jumped in.

So one month later we were ready to close on our house. After a few false starts with the actual closing (supposed to close on the Friday before Christmas, didn't happen till late the next Monday) we were home owners! Now the more time we spend in it, the more we are convinced this is where we are supposed to be.

(don't judge us in this picture...we had a long day of painting)

I typed this yesterday, so some of it is outdated.

8 TV shows that I watch:
1. House Hunters (what can I say.. I have house hunting on the brain)
2. Office
3. Big Bang Theory
4. Simpsons
5. Destroyed in Seconds
6. Dirty jobs (I want to feel better about my current employment situation...it could
always be worse)
7. Bones
8. House

8 Things I did Yesterday:
1. Slept in (Hooray for Veteran's Day)
2. Spent 5 hours looking at houses with our Realtor
3. Took out the trash
4. Vegged on the couch
5. Went for a run
6. Ate Dinner with Paul
7. Created our ward evacuation plan
8. Did some Laundry

8 Places I love to eat:
1. Quizno's
2. Schlotzkey's
3. TGI Friday
4. Olive Garden
5. Johnny Carino's
6. Outback
7. Corona Village
8. Mother Mae's

8 Things I am looking forward to:
1. 5 o'clock
2. Thanksgiving!!
3. Being done with the house hunting thing
4. Moving into a house
5. Finding a new job
6. Pumpkin Pie!
7. Cold weather
8. Creating some TX traditions

8 Things on my wish list:
1. A house
2. A puppy
3. A yard
4. Kids
5. Cool weather
6. A vacation
7. A jeep
8. And While I'm dreaming... A self cleaning house!

I am not a huge Halloween fan. A couple years ago my in an attempt to get in the spirit of Halloween, my coworkers and I dressed up for the holiday.

I chose to go to work as a mouse. My logic behind this was that you could still get your work done with homemade ears and a foam tail, and it was relatively original. I spent a couple of days working on my costume i.e. ears and tail. Well I made the ears just fine, but the tail ended up looking more like an elephant's trunk than a rodent tail. So I switched it around and went to work as a pachyderm. I tied my trunk to my face and tried to breath through my mouth the rest of the day. It was fun, and I got a lot of laughs.

The plan this year was to dress up like a bull’s eye. I would wear a red shirt with white circles on my back and have on an arrow headband. I didn’t really think it would fly at work, but I was hopeful.

Which brings me to my original reason for posting this.

"Costumes are not acceptable work attire, certainly not to conduct business with the general public. It’s a state agency, not a carnival".

Chock it up to one more reason why I love my job! Maybe I will just go as a disgruntled employee instead.

Saturday morning started out early. 6Am early to be precise. This is not unusual during the work week for me, but knowing it was a Saturday made it very difficult to roll out of bed and get ready.

My goal for the morning was to run the Live Strong 5K in down town Austin along with a bazillion other runners/walkers. The previous day I had picked up my running packet with running bib and Live Strong T-shirt. I was most disappointed to find out that they had given me a size medium when I had asked for a small. I even tried to shrink it the night before, but it was still HUGE and a little damp the next morning. So I opted to forgo the Live Strong paraphernalia and just wear my Gobble Wobble 5K shirt from last year's race. I didn't want a parachute effect from the ginormous shirt ruining my time!

Paul and I met up with our friends Rebecca and William and we car pooled down together. Since there was a soccer game that day, Paul opted out of running with us so he could be refreshed and energized for his soccer game. It worked out well because he took our pictures and also held all of our stuff while we ran (he also scored a point later in the soccer game so his plan worked). He must love me, because he woke up early and stood in the chilly morning air waiting for us to get done. What a guy!

I loved the run! The first minute of it was difficult as we tried to maneuver around people, but once we got clear of the walkers, we could really take off. I attribute the ease of the run to the fact that I was passing people. It really felt like I was this amazing runner, when I passed them (granted they were probably cancer survivors or something, so I am now just a cocky jerk). Towards the half way mark I lost Rebecca and William. I knew they were planning on slowing down somewhere in there, and since I was on a roll I just continued my pace.

I was pumped to find out that I had beaten my Gobble Wobble time, and hadn't embarrassed myself by tripping and falling flat on my face (it wouldn't be the first time). It was a neat experince and I look forward to many 5K's to come!

5 hours later our soccer game started. Paul had given me permission to miss it if I wanted since I had run earlier in the morning. But I couldn't leave my team another girl short and possibly make them forfeit. I played a whole 90 minute game and even had a few steals and good passes.

That is where my amazing-ness ended. The rest of the afternoon I was in a zombie like haze, and had very few complete coherent sentences.

In the end I slept well...real well!

Here we are before the race (yep we were taking pics during the National Anthem).

No kidding there were a lot of people. It took us over 3 minutes just to get to the starting line once the race had started!

This is what the finish line looked like for the die hard runners. Wide open!

Aren't they cute holding hands at the finish?

Tired, but so worth it!

Monday Paul and I had a visitor from the wintery land of Laramie, WY.
My friend and colleague in grants, Sheela, came to Austin for a conference and since she was in town we had to get together! After a weekend of shooting e-mails back and forth, we finally met up Monday evening for dinner. It was sooo good to see her!

Sheela and I had put a lot of time and effort into the first Homeland Security Grants issued to Albany County. Along with actually managing the grants we also had to account for every little thing that was purchased with HS funds and put inventory stickers on them. We had a lot of time to get to know each other!

It was really nice talking to someone who appreciated what I did at my old job and knows what I am capable of. She agreed that I am being underutilized currently at work and gave me some much needed encouragement with my job search!

We have been away from WY for 9 months now, so we wanted to hear all about little Laramie. New restaurants have opened (it's a small town so getting a Chili's is a huge deal), City and County Government continue to have their moments of drama (as usual), and she told us who had retired or is threatening to retire. It was nice to catch up!

We had a great dinner and enjoyed the beautiful weather and great company.

Seeing Sheela again made me just that more excited to fly home to CO and WY to see more familiar faces.