This may take a while...

I'm living on a construction site.. or in one, I should say. Since my last update we managed to spend a month demolishing pretty much everything and moved in about a week after that was completed. We've got unfinshed drywall on the walls, holes in the floors from where walls used to be, one very moldy basement and enough work to keep us busy for YEARS to come. Despite all of this, we finished two projects and trust me, when your living in chaos any finished area feels like an oasis.

Master bedroom closet BEFORE:

Master bedroom closet AFTER:

Guest bathroom BEFORE:

Guest bathroom AFTER:

So even if progress is slow, it's pretty fantastic when it's complete and always worth the wait!

1. Buy a house... CHECK

This has been the absolute craziest few days of my entire life. We were called home from our one day vacation in N.C. because the sellers were refusing to extend our closing date. We closed in less than 24 hours of finding this out. We were out of state... we were 30 minutes late to the closing because we had been driving 7 straight hours on memorial day weekend and still could not get there in time. Does that sum it up enough?? We bought a house!!!!

There have been very few occasions in my life that I actually experienced pure euphoria. My wedding, our engagement. I'm pretty sure I've been euphoric almost this entire weekend. We drove out to OUR house Saturday early and sat on the back porch.. staring over the fields and trying to convince ourselves that the moment was real. We had waited for this for SO long. We had worked, without stopping, to reach this goal for the last 5 years. We stuck to what we knew and we made it. Woah, what a feeling. I'm in love all over again with my husband. I know this renovation is going to be incredibly stressful but I don't care. At the end of the day it's our house to stress over... and that's all we've ever really wanted.

Before Baby Bucket List

So for the last several years I've been living in some sort of weird, in between place. I was 17 and young and foolish and then suddenly I was 18 and responsible. My now husband (then boyfriend) and I moved out on our own. We started making BIG plans of saving our money and buying a house, of getting married and for me, having children. I guess for me, it was hard to be both young AND responsible so I chose the latter. I spent a few years after that, waiting. Waiting to move out of our little apartment and then to move out of our townhouse, waiting for Aaron to propose.. and then for us to get married.. waiting to buy a house, waiting.. and waiting. This is not to say I don't have great memories of these times but in the back of my mind I was pushing for more. But now, here I am. I'm still young and we've almost achieved every goal we set before us. The logical next step is children right?! RIGHT?! It goes move out, get engaged, get married, buy a house, have a baby, right? Wrong. A light bulb went off sometime in the last few months. I'm going to be able to experience life here soon.. the way we couldn't in our struggling earlier years. Why in the world would we have a baby now? Now when we can finally have some "us" time. So that's what I'm going to do. Let me tell you, it's quite liberating to not be waiting anymore. To just start doing. Anyways, all of that leads up to this:

My Before Baby Bucket List~

1. Buy our first home
2. Learn to speak another language
3. Vacation in Portugal
4. Drive to Florida
5. Visit a real fish market in New England
6. Be able to say "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" while in Las Vegas.
7. Go whale watching
8. Spend a weekend in New York or DC or both.
9. Go to dinner on The Odyssey (the boat Aaron and I had our senior prom on)
10. Have a girls night out with my favorite friends (believe it or not, I've never really done this)
11. Rent an RV
12. See the Grand Canyon
13. Go to Disney World
14. Try to conceive a child while in a foreign country (obviously this should be last on the list :)
15. Stay in the Pestana Palace in Lisbon, Portugal
16. Successfully cook a pie from scratch
17. Learn to use a sewing machine *hey I can check this one off!!*
18. Own a car that I love
19. Jump off a cliff into a natural body of water


So before any of you parents out there get offended, I realize that ALL of these things can be done after having children as well.. or even with your children. But that's not what it's about for me. These are the things I want to do now, no matter how small or weird some of them are. I'm excited to get started.

Reckless Abandon:

Means, just go for it without worrying about anything.

Easier said than done. What happens from the time when you are a teenager about to enter adulthood and the world seems SO full of excitement... and the spot I am now where the world in general, seems almost terrifying. How do we somehow lose the will to be dangerous when we are suddenly unleashed and allowed to be as dangerous as we want to be? What happened to my desire to be reckless? When did things start becoming so complex? I want to do something daring. I want to have good stories to tell my children one day! I don't know what it is yet, maybe skydiving or cage diving with a great white. I'm going to experience the exhilaration of ignoring the consequence of an obviously dangerous decision and I'm going to live to tell you about it!

Goal of the day: start living again, with reckless abandon.

Reaching Towards Simplicity

Is it wrong that I am aspiring towards a simpler life? I suppose most people want to achieve more as they get older. But what is "more" anyways??

These are the things I want:

I want a house in the middle of no where with enough land for me to become a fabulous farmer woman. I want gardens and chickens and a goat or two. I want to can and freeze my food. I want permanent dirty fingernails from digging in the dirt!! *that sounds so gross* I want to become an amazing baker! I want to go to bed exhausted and fulfilled every single night. I don't EVER want to use good customer service again! :) Auh.. these are the things I'm working towards. Not more, but less.

Can't I Just Rent Forever?

Aaron and I are buying a house! Why do people act like this is so exciting?? They must not have actually ever bought a house themselves because this sucks! I apologize ahead of time for my negative attitude. It's very unlike me. I just don't understand why it has to be SO difficult. Never mind, I take that back. It may have something to do with the near downfall of our entire economy. But come on guys, seriously? We're not asking for much!

There is a bird making it's home in the bottom of the pool table we have stored on our back porch. Every morning for the last week I've torn down little bits of moss and grass and sticks. Every morning they are right back in place. I gave up. The bird did not. He's got quite a nice place for himself, er.. herself now? I decided that if that's not a perfect example of God or someone out there trying to teach me a valuable life lesson, I don't know what is. I'm not giving up.