Moving

We're on our way. Everything is packed, we're shutting off the computer and this won't be updated and we won't be available by email until at least Tuesday. If you need us call either cell. If you don't have either number, you should be closer to us and maybe you'll get those numbers :-)

Wednesday

Richard had two "reliable" guys lined up to "for sure" help us load on Saturday. One cancelled due to a bowling tournament. The other is really, really sick. Now would be an excellent time to get on your knees and pray us a miracle. We really need three guys total. Or more.

Tuesday

We did lots more today. Today was the last day Richard had to work and he got home at 11:30. We packed for a while and realized we needed more stuff so we went to the Budget place and got more boxes, couch and mattress covers and furniture pads.

We filled up the living room.

But yes, we do still have a tiny path through it.

We took apart the dresser and bed frame and wrapped most of the pieces with the furniture pads and sealed them with tape. We ran out of tape again and have to buy more tomorrow.

Now we are just sleeping on the mattress on the floor, turned the opposite way from what it was, to give us a little path in the bedroom too.

This is the walk in closet. All our clothes are out of it. The few left empty boxes, bed parts, suitcases and some stuff we have no room for in the living room are all that remain.

Tomorrow is a day of errands mostly, with some packing.

They're Growing...

...and growing and growing, and taking over not only our meager apartment, but our lives. The boxes that is. Its amazing how much you can put into boxes after you've said, "well, I think that's the most of it".





Here's the rest of the boxes, and Richard in the midst, playing his computer game, as he was all day :-)












As a sidenote, here are some things we thought of today.



*Things we'll be thankful for when we move:
*Not having the toilet rock every time we sit on it
*Being able to open the dishwasher without hitting the cabinet door handle
*Not having to use three hands to shut off the hot water
*Being able to come and go as we please, without a gate entry card
*Not having to dodge speedbumps in the parking lot
*Being cooler than 85 degrees in February
*Not living next door to a murderer and his victim
*Having a stove that has more than one large burner and is level
*Not living our life around when to get quarters and do laundry
*Never seeing another 5 inch cockroach crawl across the living room floor
*Being able to use the microwave without having the dishwasher, turtle light, night light, cell phone charger, coffee pot, toaster, printer, and computer all go off

******Edit on Sunday night: Just hours after we wrote this, after not seeing a cockroach for a month or so, one was crawling across the kitchen counter top last night on our way to bed. Richard He-manned his way on top of the counter top and smashed it with my water bottle. MMMM water just gets more and more appetizing.

Video Games

Richard wanted me to get into video games, so we bought Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). It is great fun and we both love it. He kicks my butt but its still fun. But apparently that isn't a normal enough game for him, so he wanted me to get another one. I picked Curious George. We played it, together, him helping after I die ten times in a row, repeatedly. You wouldn't think the little monkey would be so hard to control, yet I was hearing things from Richard such as "drunken monkey" and "suicidal george". Yes, he's very encouraging. Then he said to take it out, put it back in the box, it was going back to the store, it was just too hard. So he preceeded to drag me into the video game store and explain to them that Curious George was too hard for his wife and could he return the game. As I melted into the floor the manager walked over and started pointing out other games I might try. I told Richard nothing with shooting, weapons, fighting or anything mean, even if it is the good guys fighting the bad guys. He said thats how all the games are. What the heck is wrong with the PlayStation people? Do they not realize there are children (even if they're 25) who have never played a video game before, are just learning how, and do not want to have their minds violated by the first one they play, or any one they play for that matter. I told him it must be a kid game. So what do we look at A Series of Unfortunate Events. Now mind you, I never saw the movie, but that was because they made it sound so appealing. Why would I want to play a game where they already tell me each level will proceed to be more and more "unfortunate". Great, I'm excited. Let's Play. Not. So then I pick up Happy Feet. What could be wrong with a few penguins singing and dancing? oooohhhh and it says you get to belly slide. I need to learn how to do that, a few more pounds and that might be all I'm able to do. Anywho, we got home, I played it, solo I might add, not receiving any help from Mr. Fighting Video Game Master. And I rocked it. I was flying through the levels, but they were not so easy as to bore me or make me feel substandard. It was great. I recommend everyone get the game, its the best.

My Celebrity Look-alikes

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself if you have a really long time to enter all the information you know about yourself and navigate through the abundance of ad offers they try to scam you into.

Tuesday

Little by little we're losing our appartment to boxes.

Yesterday we went to Home Depot to buy more bubble wrap and packed a few boxes.

Today I got out of work real early so we took advantage of the day and packed some more. A good portion of the day was packing and we have boxes by the front door, under the table, all along the ledge to the kitchen and along the wall in front of the book shelves.

There are some bare spots starting to show where we've packed a lot but still looking around its pretty hard to imagine that we have this much stuff in this appartment.

It's going to be insane when Stacey gets her things from home into the new appartment.

Stacey's birthday was yesterday and she got a ton of cards from family and was able to open up her presents that I got her. I'm glad she had a good birthday. I went out trying to find things on her list but a lot were holiday oriented things that were on sale but then werent available so I went and found other thigns that were similar so since she wasnt expecting that she was happy. We also pitched in with both of our birthday money to get one of those gps things because shes been wanting one so badly aznd I have to admit Im sure will come in handy in Virginia. Its a mess up there hahah. I ordered her a new address stamp thing she wanted and she said she's gonna add pics so maybe there will be one of that.

Pretty Things

OK. I lost my pictures. Anyone get just plain white boxes here? Anyone know how to fix that?

I was up til 3 this morning wandering around on the internet. Pretty much just cuz I could, but I came across some very cool stuff.
I love this pic. Its not mine, but what great use of photo editing.

I have become obsessed with buttons. There are thousands of cute things you can do with them, this only being one. If you're ever out garage saleing it and see a jar of buttons buy it and have fun with it...or send it to me :-)
No one can steal this idea before I actually do it. How adorable are these button cookies?

Paint chip art. And its gorgeous.

Sunday

We went and washed and vaccummed out the vehicles today. They're super duper clean for the moment.

Scrubbin bubbles.
I always happen to see the clock at 3:19. I wake up in the middle of the night and see it. I am in the middle of something during the day (like vaccumming out the vehicles) and look at the clock and there it is...my birthday.

The Fruit Pizza I made to take to Justin and Michelle's housewarming party last night. Richard even helped a lot.

Our Combined IQ

We took tests at www.testriffic.com and I got a 127, Richard got a 132 and together we got 142. What's yours?

Wedding pictures

I decided that since I mastered the photo in blog thing I would post some pictures random people took at the wedding festivities, since only the professional ones are up on our photo website. Here are some of my faves....

OK, so I guess I haven't mastered the picture thing yet, seeing as how I have no idea how to flip this. But wow, my hair was really long then. And I still love that shirt... "Just another happy ending". Definintly should have been marketed as a wedding rehearsal shirt rather than some random Old Navy clearance item.

Now of course, since I had a fun shirt, Richard had to try to beat me. Good try buddy.

Is there a more adorable 2 year old?

Excellent bubble skills Matt, but more importantly, what a great shot.

One of my favorite candid shots. I don't remember what it was, but I can tell you it was funny.

Posing professionally by the pond for a picture procured by Penny.

My absolutely stunningly brilliant cake. Absolutely more perfect than I ever thought.

Excellent shot of my light up shoes, Courtney, thanks!

Our "Pottery Barn Signature Photo Mat" all filled up. Good work.

My favorite gift of all.

Brian, Kyle, Me and Richard digging for the last of the Dirt Cake. Possibly one of the best desserts ever.

Our Fabulous Friday

Here is a pic of Richard trying to make sense of the giant comcast bill that came while typing this entry (the rough draft which included a reference about sex which I later edited out while he was on the phone with comcast, you can thank me later).

We went and ate at Olive Garden for a night out to celebrate our 5 month anniversary (last Wednesday) and Stacey's birthday (Monday). Stace has been wanting to go for awhile to get the Chocolate Lasagna dessert. We got our breadsticks and salad and then split chicken alfredo. Stacey told the waitress we wanted the dessert to go and she said they didn't have that kind anymore. Stacey suggests that you all make signs and protest outside your nearest Olive Garden. She is horrified at this injustice.

Then we went and picked up only a few groceries since we won't be here in Jax much longer and we went to Wal-Mart to look for her Dixie Chicks CD. The CD wasn't there but we did buy floor mats for the truck and a shop vac so I can vaccuum the 2 vehicles out every so often.

We watched a few movies tonight also for one of the few remaining relaxing days we have. The rest of our time will be packing boxes up and trying to figure out places to put them but still have room to walk through the living room to the door. So far we have about ten boxes stacked underneath and near the bar, but the living room is so small that we just have a narrow path to the front door between those and the table. And we have three biguns over between the shelves and the chair. The boxes are closing in on us already and we still have two weeks and dozens of boxes to go....

Tomorrow I'll be replacing the fuel filter on the truck and later that night we will be going over to Justin and Michelle's. Neither of us really care to but we figure we might as well at least go over for a lil while before we leave and won't be seeing them again.

Stacey got her fabric that she ordered in the mail today. She is going to make curtains for the new kitchen and re cover the dining room chairs. She was looking for black and white damask, knew exactly what she wanted, but we couldn't find it anywhere. So she ordered some online, its a little different than what she was thinking but we both like it better. I (Stacey) just figured out how to add pics to this so here are pics of our gorgeous fabric. I'm thinking of running a yellow ribbon along the bottom of each valance I make (2). Any thoughts? Yes to the yellow ribbon (our colors are black, white and yellow) or will it be too much?

Right under here where it says "0 Comments" you can click on that and leave us comments and they will be emailed directly to us. Let me know what you think on the yellow ribbon or just leave us some love!

5 Months

Its been 5 months now. Sometimes it seems like more and sometimes less.

Today was a really bad day, right in the middle of a really bad week for me. Rather than complain about it all, I'll just say goodnight.

Weekend Gathering

We both had a fun weekend by spending it with Jake and Christy. We all played a lot of that dance dance revolution game with them and some cards n board games. Its nice spending the time with them because they are closer to our personalities than Justin and Michelle plus we're a lil tired of those 2. lol. Jake wasnt to sure about playing the DDR game and he would laugh at people just like I would but he now likes it also.

We spent most of the day over there today and had a nice dinner with them and finally had to pull ourselves out of their house to come back home with it being a work night. It sucks that we finally found some normal people to hang out with that we both really like and we'll be leavin shortly. Next weekend we'll be running around here trying to pack up everything we can, because this weekend we were supposed to work on that a little but instead spent our time over with Jake and Christy.

Thursday

Yesterday and today were pretty normal.

Stacey was working all day, and ran errands with Melissa (the mom) and Parker (the baby).

Richard got out early from work yesterday and today he had his advancement test. He said it was the hardest one he's taken, so hopefully there's a miracle and he gets high enough to get rank advancement. We won't know the results for about three months.

Stacey's been trying to exercise at least 6 days a week. Yesterday we played two hours of DDR (Dance Dance Revolution - a Play Station game where you have a dance pad and have to do certain steps with music to gain points.) Today we went for a 2 mile walk around the neighborhood.

Tomorrow Richard's supposed to get out of work at 9 am and Stacey's supposed to work a full day, like usual.

Well, that about wraps it up, nothing exciting.

If I won the lottery...

The Georgia man just won half the Mega Millions lottery. Only half. And he decided to take it in a lump sum so its less than that. And taxes have to be taken out. But after that he is still pocketing 80 MILLION !!!! If I won that I would...

Richard
1. Pay off a house
2. Buy a huge truck fully loaded jacked up
3. Buy a Trans Am with mods done to it having close to 500 hp
4. Buy a motorcycle
5. Buy a boat
6. Buy a surround sound entertainment system for the living room
7. Buy a PS3, a PSP and a ton of games
8. Put the rest in stocks and live off the interest


Stacey
0. Put at least 60 Mil in stocks and savings
1. Buy a house with all the things from my wish list on it
2. Buy a vacation house
3. Buy a SUV
4. Pay off my parents house
5. Pay off R's parents house
6. Take a trip to Disney World
7. Buy lots of round trip tickets for Ashley to visit
8. Buy everyone really great Christmas presents
9. Leave random huge tips at restaurants and such
10. Put money aside to get acrylic nails, pedicures and highlights regularly
11. Get a dog

Richard's Life List

Things I want to complete in my lifetime.

1. Fly a plane
2. Work as a mechanic
3. Have a really fast car
4. Skydiving
5. Swim with dolphins
6. Scuba diving
7. Have $80,000 in stocks when I retire
8. Build a house
9. Build a computer
10. Build a Trans Am
11. Learn to pay more attention
12. Enjoy life

Stacey's Life List

Here is a list of things I want to do before I die. I started this list in 2000 and it slowly evolves, you can see I still have a few blank spaces to fill in to get to 100.
Pink-completed
Blue- yet to complete
Black- will never complete
Green - partially completed

1. Get Married - 10/14/2006
2. Have Kids
3. Go to Australia
4. Own a suit
5. Have a small dog - Colby Jack July 2004
6. Have a non spastic small dog
7. Visit Kyle in Boston- August 2005
8. Visit NYC - August 2005
9. Visit Washington DC
10. Go to Cedar Point with Richard
11. Own a vacation home
12. Get fun engagement pictures taken - August 2005
13. Have a red room - Apartment April 2005
14. Name something Magoo
15. Graduate from FBBC - May 2003: Secretarial and Biblical Studies
16. Go mudding or dune driving
17. See a shooting star
18. Wear orange on my wedding day - Lights in my shoes
19. Not worry about tomorrow
20. Not worry about next week
21. Have rainbow underwear - From Ashley: Christmas 2002
22. Have a guy ask Daddy to date me - Eric
23. Get a dozen roses (at one time) from a guy - Richard: April 2006
24. Get flowers from a guy delivered at work - Richard: Valentines 2006
25. Have the first grandkid
26. Have the first grandkid
27. Love Kyle's wife - 2005
28. Go on a roadtrip with a friend (as a vacation, not just driving to get home)
29. Play CB tag - 2003 with Julie, Caleb, Jason, Rick, Mark and Zach
30. Visit California
31. Visit Las Vegas
32. Go back to Disney World
33. Learn how to make strawberry Jam - June 2006 with Mom and Heather
34. Take a photography or interior design class
35. Own a truck - 10/14/2006
36. Memorize a chapter of the Bible
37. Take a guy on a family vacation - Stalker Dan to Iowa 2004
38. Learn a new hobby - Quilting 2004
39. Learn another new hobby - Cross Stitch, November 2006
40. Visit Hawaii or the Bahamas
41. Give our child a name with meaning and/or history
42. Keep in touch with a college friend til at least 2013 (ten years)
43. Go on a missions trip to a foreign country
44. Never live on my own - I did in 2004 at G&G Harris'
45. Have grandkids
46. Live in a state other than Iowa or Michigan - Florida October 2006
47. Eat a whole package of Oreos in one sitting (can be with a friend)
48. Take $300 and go on a spree for me - February 2005
49. Go Skydiving
50. Take a class with Richard
51. Type 75 wpm - 2005
52. Get a job with benefits - 2003 Buckley Law Office
53. Volunteer at my kids' school
54. Own a chair and a half - March 2004
55. Have a swimming pool
56. Have a coffee table - August 2004
57. Be the guest of honor at a suprise birthday party
58. Live within 6 hours of M&D for the majority of my life - 21 so far
59. Go to a major concert - Dixie Chicks 2003
60. Take a trip with Julie - Iowa 2004
61. Have Ashley come to Michigan - My wedding 2006
62. Study my family history
63. Get all 5 memory books back from my family (Given in 2002)- Mom 2003
64. Go on a date with someone random - can't do now
65. Have a TV in my bedroom - 2003
66. Ride in a taxi - Atlanta, GA 10/17/2006
67. Learn to dance (privately)
68. Ride in a hot air balloon
69. Visit all 7 continents - Europe 1999, North America
70. Do a big to-do for M&D's 25th anniversary - Trip to Chicago 2004
71. Be able to wear a bikini in public...without scaring others
72. Make soft chocolate chip cookies - November 2006
73. Be able to run 2 miles consecutively - Fall 2005
74. Take two months off work and galavant - September and October 2006
75. Weigh 125 or less
76. Live in the country
77. Take a Child Development Course - Diploma December 2005
78. Have a striped room
79. Have a hot pink and orange room
80. Have a bookshelf around the top of my room - 2003
81. Do it in my own house
82. Have a garage
83. Own a treadmill - December 2004
84. Own another piece of gym equipment
85. Have a queen size bed - 10/14/2006
86. Have 30 wall clocks
87. Have some one love me the same amount that I love them - Richard 2005
88. Play in the rain
89. Have twins or more
90. Be a mentor
91. Never own a minivan
90. Be able to play a little on an instrument
91. Ride on a motorcycle - June 2005 with Richard
92. Have all of my recipes organized and searchable on the computer
93. Have a guest room - April 2007
94. Have a closet big enough to store and showcase all my stuff including accessories
95. Have a gigantic tub
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.

And later that night...

Well, we went over to Jake and Christy's tonight and it wasn't as bad as I had feared it would be. They're both rather normal people actually. And the kids are adorable, if a little overabundant on the energy front. We (the girls) watched a movie while the guys played cards. We watched Stranger than Fiction. It was odd. Good but odd. We made plans to hang out with them again next weekend. Too bad we finally hang out with a normal couple and we're leaving in less than a month. Figures.

Saturday

We did some errands today, groceries and such, and looking for fabric to cover the chairs and windows in our new house. I was looking for your basic black and white damask that is ever so popular these days. Could not find it anywhere. Not at Jo-Ann's or Michael's. Not in sheets or curtains at Target, TJ Maxx or Sears. How rude. So I'm still on the hunt for the black and white damask fabric.

We got Pizza Hut for lunner (lunch/dinner). They've been having commercials for the Cheesy Bites Pizza, which instead of regular crust, has little cheese/bread pods that you can pull off and eat. Sounds okay. Tastes rather nasty. I would not recommend it.

We got home, put the groceries and such away and are headed to a friend of Richard's for the evening. Hopefully his wife won't be too psycho and their kids won't drive us nuts. We'll see. I'm ready for a new city and friends for both of us.

A rare normal day

Well, it's been a slow day compared to what all has happened to us so far. I only had to work half the day because of the low amount of workable's we have and tomorrow I have completely off because it's our ARI day. Every month if there's no alcohol related incidents than the OIC gives us a Fri off. Stacey on the other hand has to work all day tomorrow so I like to bring that up every so often. She's been packing some things here in the apt getting ready to move. I've offered to help but I seem to be more of an annoyance and in the way than helpful. We're both looking forward to the move. Maybe not to where we're moving to, but it'll be fun starting somewhere together. Make some friends that both of us can stand and she can find a job that she enjoys. Nothing else is going on at the moment so I'll end it here.