Tried to ramble, ended up venting

While house hunting we found a house that we love (that post posts on Friday.) I want nothing more than for that to be our house. I think it's perfect for us. I don't know if I have the words to express how much I want that house. But I don't want it if that's not what God has for me. I can't see the whole picture. He knows the end from the beginning. So I still haven't changed my prayer, "God if this is the house for us, we thank you for it and we know it will be ours. If this isn't what you have for us, please shut the door." I want to be where God wants me to be, even if it isn't in that super awesome house (but I really want it to be in that super awesome house.)

 

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I just got slighted at work. I really don't understand dishonest greedy people.

 

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If you're old enough to remember to bathe and brush your teeth without a reminder, then you're old enough to know that the dishes need to be washed without a reminder.

 

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Pet Peeve: walking out of my bedroom in the morning and smelling last night's dinner because the trash can lid was not shut/the trash was not taken out/ the dirty dishes are still in the kitchen with the nastiness on them.

 

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Maybe it's just me: What's the point of putting away all the clean dishes that somebody else washed if you're not going to wash the dirty dishes in the sink? Did you want the dish rack to be clear for the next person to wash the dishes? Thanks, but no thanks. Instead of seeing it as a kind gesture, I thought it was rude. My daddy would call that a job half done. We would get in trouble growing up if we started a job and didn't finish it.  Maybe it's just me.

 

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New family rule: She who cooks does not clean.

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Funny how my ramblings turned into venting! Oh well. By the way, somebody tell everybody that lives in the Count apartment that dinner is cancelled for tonight. We can't all be bothered to clean, I can't be bothered to cook.

 

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I woke up at 5 a.m. scared out of my mind because a group of guys were outside our window talking in Spanish. Picture this: pitch black, I can't see anyway, all of a sudden you hear noise that you can't understand and it sounds like it's right over your bed. Y'all I popped up swinging! It took me about 15 seconds to realize they were speaking Spanish and not a secret code for killers and that they weren't inside.

House Hunting: Loudon Lane

On Friday we went out with our realtor to look at six houses. It was my first time meeting her- she's a crazy old lady that reminds me of my MIL. She had me cracking up the entire time. We had two houses on the same street, so that's where we started.

MrC and I pulled up at house #1. It was a duplex. We didn't realize it was a duplex when we put it on our list to go see. We really don't want uber close neighbors, but we were willing to look at it. We saw the realtor driving down the street, she slowed down, and kept driving. We sat there all types of confused. She texted MrC and told him to drive down the street to the next house. When we get to house #2 she said "that other one was a duplex? We aren't even going to waste our time there." Well alright then!

House #2 was small. I don't mind small at all because I can maximize space. The homeowner was there so she pointed out where everything was and said she was going to go sit in the backyard while we looked through the house. Our realtor sat down in the kitchen. No go 1: The house smelled like smoke. Not like somebody had just finished smoking. A deep nasty smoke meaning they had been smoking in there for 10 years. It was gross. No go 2: there was no central air. No go 3: We were too tall for the basement, which means it isn't livable space for us. We would be confined to entertaining guests in just the living room. Good point: there was a huge jacuzzi in the master bathroom. No go 4: it was green. A deep emerald green. I hate the color green. No go 5: even though they had 4 bedrooms set up (2 on the main level, 1 in the basement, and 1 in the attic) we would only be able to use 2. I am not going to buy a house that I can't stand up straight in.

We also didn't like Loudon Lane. The street was narrow and in disrepair. If we had a cookout, our guests would not be able to park comfortably on the street without the fear of returning to a missing side mirror. Also, folks were flying down that street and being rude. Not the place for Mr and Mrs Count.

Houses 3 and 4 tomorrow.

Age 25: The Year of Hobbies

I finally figured out a theme for my 25th year of life! I'm going to try out some hobbies. I went the library on Saturday to get a book on upholstery and got distracted with home style books. I already have a personal design book that I put pictures of rooms/clothes/hairstyles that I like, but I got some professional people's books. I also got a book on cross stitching and a book on crocheting. I was on my way to check out when I realized I forgot the book on upholstery!  I went back and got that too. That's going to be a mommy and me project. I can't wait to get started. I already found the chairs I want to reupholster, I'm probably going to buy them this week. We found a hotel furniture liquidator and they had these super cute chairs for $15 each. I think that's a pretty great price for a first attempt. I have a lot of design ideas for our house, and I think I'm going to get a lot of our furniture second hand and fix it up. We don't have kids yet so it's the perfect time to experiment with all sorts of things. I ain't got nothing but time!

Stay tuned this week for adventures in house hunting! We went to see 6 homes on Friday. For some reason I have eight million and twelve things to blog about this week so I'll probably be posting twice a day, 

Currently Reading

August Daring Cooks Challenge

I totally forgot to actually post my Daring Kitchen meal this month. Probably because I had yet another failure. The August 2010 Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n' Bites and Anula of Anula's Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

I chose a potato cheese filling because I needed something that I already had at home!

 

I won't post the recipe I used (it wasn't one of the hosts' recipes) because it was so bland and we ended up throwing half of the pierogi's away. I will say there was a major positive from this month's daring kitchen challenge. I have finally learned how to work with dough. Look at that picture- it actually looks like it's supposed to! Normally I have a super sticky mess or a super hard mess. The dough making portion was extremely successful! The more I made, the better they looked (look in the back, those are some jacked up looking pierogi!) so this was a semi success!

Ramble the week out

My boss is back and she had a meeting with the lady that can't seem to get her work to me on time. Three people from our department met with her team. We'll see what happens. I have a file due today and I've yet to see it, so I'm about to send an email to check, even though she hasn't responded to what I sent her yesterday. Hmmmm, seems like business as usual. I hope she surprises me and does her work this month.

 

Update: She just sent me an email back. Today's report isn't ready yet. She's gonna call and figure out the hold up. Mmmmhmmmm

 

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I've been learning more and more about faith, trust, and doubt this week. It's crazy and exciting. You can't grow unless you go through something and this time of growth has been amazing. A house in 2010 is definitely happening.

 

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I have not gotten a proper nights sleep all week. Tonight I'm taking my butt to bed! Last night we went for a walk. We weren't paying attention and by the time it got dark, we still had 2 miles to go before we go home. We had to walk on the parkway like vagabonds. When we looked at our total mileage (there's an app for everything!) we had walked 6 miles during our almost 3 hour walk. We really need to pay more attention to where we're going!

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My hair has been a mess this week, but my eyebrows are on point! I need to do a deep conditioning treatment and I'll probably keep it twisted all next week. I'm going to get my mom to order us some more hair products. I'm pretty sure I covered the bill the last 2 times. If anybody has some Kar.en's Body Bea.utiful or Qhe.met Bio.logics coupon codes, email them to me please!

And the winner is...

I'm going to ask MrC to pick a number, 1-8. (There were seven comments on the post, and 1 from the previous day. I numbered them in the order I got them)

He picked 3. Now let's see who the winner is....

GOALDIGGER!

And the even funnier part is I was totally planning on using her suggestion. Her family has seafood Fridays with game night. I'll probably do pizza Fridays because MrC doesn't love seafood as much as I do. It also probably won't be on my 30 before 30 list because I don't think I'll allow my toddlers to eat pizza every week! Email me your address and I'll order our subscription to Cooking Light!

I was reading a blog, or an article or something and the writer said that after every time their family sat down for a meal together, they read the Bible after. When you get physical food, you get spiritual food. That is going on my list. MrC and I never eat at our dining room table, but when we have kids, this dinner on the couch stuff is over.

You talking to me?

This turned out to be a really good weekend. On Friday I was having a tough time. I was filled with doubt and fear. It was a mess! A twitter friend whipped me into shape and then I spent some time in prayer to get myself back together. Yesterday we were going to hear our friend preach. He was being ordained as a minister and yesterday was his first sermon. He did such a great job y'all! I was so proud of him. It was like he looked into my prayer journal and wrote that sermon for me. I am still replaying portions of what he said over in my head, because I needed it so much. His sermon was on faith. Since I grew up in church I've heard sermons on faith a million times. But it's nothing like having your peer break it down to you how they understand it. Some of the thoughts floating in my head from his message:

 

"Replace the word faith with confidence. Faith is your confidence in God keeping his word. That's why the verse says without faith it's impossible to please God. If you never have any confidence in anything God says, you think He's pleased with that?"

 

"As Christians a lot of people have this mentality of 'ohhhh if I just have a little bit of faith, hold on to this little bit of faith.' You've been a Christian for 20 years, you don't have enough confidence in God to know He's gonna do what He said yet? You should have enough faith for you and your neighbor!"

 

"Faithfulness is not loyalty. Look at the parable of the talents. The servant that Jesus called wicked was loyal. He came back to Jesus and brought him back exactly what he was given. That's loyalty. But Jesus wanted him to multiply what he was given. To take what Jesus gave him and produce more to be given out. That's faithfulness."

 

"Jesus always talked about how he couldn't do many miracles in the town where he was from. Why? Because they people never believed him for anything. All they saw was the man they grew up with. They didn't have any confidence that he could do anything even though many of them had seen and heard of him miracles. Don't let your low expectations be the reason why nothing ever works for you."

 

He also tought on being fruitful and multiplying but I haven't even had time to fully process that yet, so I won't even try and type that up yet.

 

Y'all this stuff is going right in my prayer journal after that pitiful doubtful faithless prayer I wrote on Friday. Thank God for his grace and for sending teachers with good word! I'm about to text him and thank him again for teaching on that yesterday because if for nobody else, it was for me! Now I'm mad I didn't pull out my church fan and start waving at him while saying "preach boy" and "that boy is good!" I've always wanted to be one of those "extra" church ladies. LOL

 

You too can win!

I love magazines :) My obsession with magazines started in middle school, the entire top half of my locker was stocked with magazines. My classmates would come check them out like I was the library. Now I have shelves of magazines on our bookcase at home.  The other day I got my Cooking Light renewal letter and it said 2 for the price of 1. When I renew my subscription, I can gift a subscription to another person. Sooooooo, I want to give it to one of you guys.

All you have to do is leave a comment with your favorite family tradition growing up and/or your favorite tradition you have with your own family. I don't know how I'll pick the winner. Maybe it'll be my favorite comment, or maybe it'll be the comment I decide I want to start in my own family. I guess I should be fair and do a drawing and pick a random winner. It's my blog, I'll do what I want. Maybe nobody will even want the subscription and I'll end up gifting it to my sister. We'll see. Winner announced Tuesday!

p.s. SimplyB- your comment from yesterday will be entered!

All I do is win!

(title has nothing to do with this post, lol)

 

I didn't get home until late, so I never got to schedule the videos for today. So instead, I shall ramble!

 

The winner for the suggestion of the addition to my 30 before 30 list is....Jameil! Jameil suggested starting a family tradition. If you know me, you know I'm all about family traditions. If you know MrC, you know he's all about crushing my hopes and dreams so he hates family traditions. One of my family's traditions is going to the movies and having Christmas brunch together every Christmas morning. I'd love to have a tradition for our own family that we do every single year (sounds like I need to do a post on this). Well, let's tell Jameil what she won! Jameil you have won a 6 1/2 inch santoku knife! Your wish for a sharp knife for your birthday has been granted! If you email or DM me your address, I'll order it and have it sent your way. If you think I'm a crazy stalker and don't want to send me your address, I'll keep the knife! Win-win :) 

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I don't know why I still try and talk to some people that I know are going to frustrate me. I seriously need to stop it. I was trying to have a conversation with a friend, and I guess she thought I was asking for advice, but I was just sharing. This is how it went:

 

Me: We have 4 houses we want to look at. I'm excited, so we'll see what happens.

Her: What kind of houses are they?

Me: Well one is only 3 years old, so it's pretty fancy, but the houses in that neighborhood are so close to each other and...

Her: Well you have to compromise on something

Me: *side eye, continues my sentence* ...and MrC doesn't like houses being super close, the other 3 houses were built in the 70's...

Her: 70's! Ugghh, that's too old. I like everything to be new and fancy

Me: *side eye of death. continues my sentence* ...and I really like old houses. I like that they have character and stories in them. You can always update appliances over time. And I like the trees and yard space you get with older houses.

Her: You like that kind of thing? I don't

Me: *I ain't saying another word because clearly this is her moment to shine.*

 

I ended up calling my momma so I could talk out the situation like I wanted to. When I talk to my momma she'll say "are we sharing stories, or do you want feedback?" Thanks ma for knowing how to listen without constantly throwing in your unwanted opinion. Let me at least look at the houses and tell you what I think before you give your opinion. Geez!

 

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That being said, housing progress is being made. Pray for us y'all.

 

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My money situation still hasn't been fixed at work. I don't want to go to my new supervisor and be like "where's my money man" when she doesn't know anything that has happened. I want my boss that I contract for was in the meeting in which my raise was discussed and approved to bring it up to her first and then I'll be able to follow up. Does that make sense?

 

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Listening to  "the battle is the Lord's" by Yolanda Adams is not recommended while driving, but if you manage to get through the song without crashing your car, you'll be so relaxed and ready to face the day :) I think I'll put that on my wake up in the morning playlist. Anybody have a morning playlist? What songs do you have on it?

 

 

Lovely indoor activities at MOA

You have to get a stranger to take a picture of you while on vacation. It's not a vacation if you don't. We were in the tunnel at the aquarium (MrC recorded it for y'all).

There was a really cool jellyfish exhibit at the aquarium filled with mirrors and cool lights. The pictures didn't come out well, but this one did!

MrC had me standing in the middle of the walkway for fifty eleven million minutes posing for the picture. I got tired of waiting and of course that's when he snaps the picture.

SpongeBob and Patrick were there!

I don't know why indoor theme parks aren't more popular. They can stay open year round and people can be comfortable while they wait for rides! Seems genius to me. Rich people, please invest in this.

Tomorrow, we'll have videos! And pictures of turtles doing the nasty!

Downtown Minneapolis

MrC and I in downtown Minneapolis. Which is really dead on the weekends. We just wandered about because there was nothing to do down there. So we stopped and posed for a picture.

Y'all like my unicorn fur vest from Neiman Marcus? It was on clearance for $250! What a great deal!

They were running toward freedom from lame downtown Minneapolis. I begged them to take me with them. We were pointing toward the glorious mecca of Mall of America.

And you know we all needed to stop and acknowledge how awesome my hair looks here. My sister did a great job! In the background is pictures of the Nickelodeon theme park in the MOA. More pictures tomorrow!

Birthday Wrap Up!

And I'm back! I'll have pictures tomorrow. Thanks for all the birthday well wishes! Now I have to decide which of the suggestions I want to add to my 30 before 30 list and figure out what prize I'm going to give out. If you follow me on twitter, you already know what's been going on, but now a brief recap for those who don't.

 

On my birthday work friend texted me to tell me her mom passed and asked me to tell everybody at work. I didn't take it very well. I got really sad and then I got angry. I fully expected her mom to recover. You couldn't tell me Beth wasn't going to walk out of that hospital. MrC could tell I was upset and he came to pray with me, but I didn't want to talk to God, so I let him do it for me. The next morning I couldn't go to work. My coworkers are so negative about even happy situations (all day Wednesday I had to hear "ugghhh, it sucks that you're working on your birthday") and I didn't want to start being negative with them. I emailed them about what happened and then spent my day watching sermons that we recorded and talking to God. By midday I felt a lot better and spent the day emailing encouragement to my coworkers.

 

My sister came over Thursday night to do my hair and because we were all riding to the airport together in the morning. Friday my sister hopped on a plane to Orlando, and MrC and I hopped on a plane to Minnesota because he was taking me to the Mall of America!!!!!  We had so much fun y'all! When we got there, the rental car people upgraded us to a Malibu. I want that to be my next car, so I was happy to drive it. When we pulled up at the hotel, there were police cars and caution tape everywhere. There was a chemical spill so we had to go down the street to the Hampton. We went back to the Crowne Plaza the next morning, but we liked the Hampton much better, so I think we'll go with them from now on. MrC asked the Crowne Plaza people why they didn't notify any of their guests that the hotel was closed or when they reopened and the guy had no answers for him. He ended up refunding us for one night of our stay! An $88 refund!? Yes please!

 

Like I said, pictures tomorrow. We did shopping, the amusement park at the mall, and the aquarium at the mall. It was a great 25th birthday!

Happy Birthday to Me! And my daddy! And the President!

It's My Birthday!!!!!!! Happy 25th Birthday to me :)

 

 

30 Before 30

1.     Buy a house

2.    Have no school loans

3.    Have my early childhood education certification (this is what I'm going back to school for next year)

4.    Have at least two children

5.    Return to my pre-pregnancy weight within one year (I've seen my family in action. I need to set goals. I had a shorter time listed but somebody started judging me so I bumped it up to make them feel better about their weight)

6.    Take a cooking class

7.    Go to Hawaii

8.    Go on a group vacation with at least 2 other couples

9.    Have a spa day

10.  Go bungee jumping (And by bungee jumping, I mean don't mean a cliff or any of the super dangerous ones. I enjoy staying alive.)

11.  Swim with the dolphins (I have mixed feelings about playing with captured animals. I don't want to be the one they decide to get their aggression out on)

12.  Serve in  a soup kitchen

13.  Pay for a strangers groceries

14.  Have XX,000.00 in our savings account. (I don't know y'all like that, y'all might try to stick me for my paper)

15.  Become a  godmom (I've been on a campaign to become somebody's godmomma for the longest. I have a pregnant friend now, I've already started my plan!)

16.  Eat at every Mexican Restaurant in my town

17.  Host a family holiday meal with place settings

18.  Have eaten at at least 5 celebrity chef's restaurants

19.  Walk a really long race, but maybe not a marathon (I need help picking a length.)

20. Grow my hair to bra strap length

21.  Have clear skin (My skin needs to stop playing. I haven't had a clear day since I was 11.)

22.  Own all 12 seasons of "Murder She Wrote"

23. Go to a professional Ballet production

24. Go on another missions trip (I don't know if I want to do this by 30. We're going to have little babies and I don't know if I'll want to go overseas for 2 weeks)

25. Learn how to cross stitch and successfully make one item

26. Learn how to crochet and successfully make one item

27. Restore a piece of furniture

28. Have 5 filled prayer/praise/study journals

29.  Learn how to make dough from scratch (I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it is a disaster when I make dough)

 

The items in red I'm not sure I want to include on my 30 before 30 but I couldn't delete them because then I would need to come up with 4 more things instead of just 1.  As you can see, my list has only 29 items. I decided to let you guys pick #30. The person with the winning suggestion will get a prize!

It's my Birthweek!

It's my birthweek! On Wednesday I'll be turning 25 :) I'm also supposed to be posting my 30 before 30 list on Wednesday, but I'm still missing a few items.

 

I had a pretty good weekend. I had 57.5 meltdowns about the nursery because I kept getting emails/phone calls/excuses from all the people that can't work this month. I know a lot of people go on vacation in August, but you're really going to be out of town every Sunday in August? And you didn't show up to work your Sunday last month? Alright, have fun. On Sunday I went from having 6 people scheduled, to having 2. I need a minimum of 4 to open both of my classes. I sent out some quick emails and got the 14 months and under class fully staffed, and I figured I'd deal with my room on Sunday morning. MrC set up my room for me while I was in the back taking a test for another ministry, but he had to go do the lights because the teens were conducting service that day and had a bunches of skits and dances lined up. I was sitting in the hallway with my kids because we're not allowed to have just one teacher in case something happens. I saw one of my friends that works in the 2-3 year old class and gave her an award winning smile and casually mentioned I didn't have another teacher. She came in to help me :) After the teens finished with skits and dances, MrC came back and said he'd stay and help us in the class too. It was the best Sunday ever. My honey and my friend and 12 adorable toddlers. I did have to repeatedly explain to MrC that even though it was gospel rap, he was not going to play that to my class of toddlers. Some parents are old school and I do not need any complaints about me! We watched Dora and listened to classical music versions of songs like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. My friend also begged me to hurry and open my daycare so when she has her baby in December she can bring him to me. I would love it if I had my daycare this year, but I want to go back to school first, so The Count Family Daycare is still a few years away (but I've already picked my building and everything.)

 

Anyway, I'm ready to celebrate my birthweek so I've scheduled work day excursions every day this week. Eyebrow threading, bikini waxes, and lunch with friends are on deck throughout the week! Yayyyy! My birthweek has gotten off to a great start, I pray it continues to be awesome.