Hey there and happy new year! It's been a little over 2 months since I last checked in because nursing school is keeping me so busy. By the time I'm done with my 12 hours of studying for the day, the last thing I want to do is type out a blog post... plus, my life doesn't change much day-to-day. Boring!
I realize I haven't shared any photos of our new house so I'll make a point to do so in the future. However, I have a few pictures I can share today that show the intermediate steps of our home improvement projects so you'll get a little peek into the money-pit we call home!
Just recently, Trevor and I adopted a 4 year old pup from our local humane association - we named her Maggie. She's as sweet as pie and is the perfect dog for us. Talk about unexpected, though! We just went to put in a general application to be approved for future adoptions and saw her sweet face. We met her and had submitted an application to take her home before we left. The day after Christmas, they called and told her she was all ours! She's from Mississippi and is slowly adjusting to the -30 degree windchill days we have around this time of year but her favorite thing to do is to cuddle with us under a heating blanket. We are so blessed to have a happy, healthy pup like Maggie!
We've also been staying busy with fixing things around the house. Before we even bought the house, we knew that we'd need to work on some landscaping before winter hit because the soil around our house was sloping towards the foundation which was basically sending the water down the footings and making our sump pumps (yes, two!) work overtime. We had about 5 different basement people look at the house while we were in escrow to make sure it wasn't an expensive issue... and thank goodness it wasn't: all we had to do was hire a landscaping company to come take out our walkways, truck in two dump trucks full of soil, spread it out, and regrade everything so the water flows away from our house. After being stood up by a company earlier this fall, we found a local place that agreed to do the work within our budget if we would take out the walkways. So we rented a jackhammer (uh, yeah, check that off the bucket list!).
And then found out that 1) our neighbors are incredibly tolerant of jackhammering noise. Nobody complained, not once! and 2) idiots lived here some time before us and decided it would be really cool to layer concrete over concrete over concrete. This meant, there were areas of the jackhammer project that required us to get through over a foot of concrete - which we had to do in layers. It's funny to think about now but it was FAR from hilarious when it happened.
We've also done a lot of painting around here! We painted our bedroom less than a week after we moved in (because Trevor wasn't enjoying sleeping in a pink bedroom) and I've been slowly - SLOWLY - working on painting all of the trim in the house white since then. Here's a look at our bedroom with grey-blue walls and white trim...
...and the built-ins in the hallway.
During Christmas break, I had a chance to sit back and gather my thoughts about where I want this house to go, updates wise, and I made out a "short" list that I'll be sharing with you soon. It's the list of things I'd like to get done in the next six months, which makes me believe that I am crazy. You'll understand when you see just how long the list is!
School starts up again this Sunday, the 5th and our clinicals start on the 7th. I'm really excited to get back into the hospital and work with patients but I'm also incredibly nervous that I'll be partly responsible for the care of my patients in a capacity I've never had before. Butterflies in my tummy doesn't even begin to describe it!
At the same time, I'm also so excited to see my nursing school friends again! We've all only met in person once - during orientation last September - but we've been working so closely online through discussions, projects, readings, and exams that I feel so much closer to these 29 people than I do to some of my friends who are local! Some of my classmates are arriving on Saturday, some on Monday, and we have a couple of dinners already planned for us to just catch up on life. It's corny, but these people have kept me going through the content that I couldn't wrap my head around (hello, nephrons and acid/base balances!) so it's going to be great seeing them all in person again.
Christmas and New Years were pretty low-key around these parts, so I don't have much to share... however,
I want to know how yours went! Did you get to spend time with family from far away? Did you get some great gifts? Did you fall asleep before midnight
like we did?
I'm not apologizing for being so absent the past couple of months because I am working so hard at school getting to a point of reaching my dream, but I am letting you know that I've thought about this little blog and all of you, my readers, often during my break. I can't promise that you'll be seeing a lot more of me around here, but I can promise that if you follow me on Instagram @YouAndMeAreWe that you'll get more real-time updates and none of this two-month-catch-up stuff! I'm notorious for sharing pictures of house projects, school stuff, and sleeping dogs - come join me!
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