Fun and Business and Stuff

We are home now! Nicholas left on Sun for TX to spend a week training for his new job and on Tues I left for Destin with friends to spend the rest of the week having fun. I didn’t see any point in staying home by myself all week with nothing to do and it seemed like the perfect time to spend a few days with my best friend that I’m going to really miss when we move. We also invited a girl we met in zumba along and we had a blast! Nicholas didn’t have nearly as much fun as I did unfortunately, I guess learning about technical stuff doesn’t have the same awesome factor as floating in a pool on a sunny day.

At one point on Friday this exchange took place.

N- “what are you up to?”

Me- Ahhh beach.

N- Blood born pathogen training. MUCH more fun than the beach.

 

I still think I won that one.  

I have a few pictures but Mari and Maria took a lot on their cameras and have some good ones. I have to get them because Facebook has made it a lot harder to save pictures that are uploaded on there.

This week will be spent eating what food is left in the house and packing up everything that isn’t already in a box. We pick up the uhaul next Monday and head to Birmingham on Tues morning.  I’m sure it will be a busy week getting all the last minute stuff taken care of before heading south. I can’t believe it’s finally time to hit the road.

Project Time

When Nicholas got home in March we knew we had to get the house ready to go on the market so we did a lot of cleaning and organizing. Of course that involved cleaning out the garage and putting all the tools away which was a sad day for all involved. Since then we’ll  randomly mention how much we miss building but we couldn’t decide on anything that would be worth pulling all the tools out. Yesterday was the day though. I built chairs last year and at the time I really didn’t like the way the back was designed but figured I would give it a try anyway, well over time 2 of the chairs have broken and we would rather start over with a different design then try to fix them. We’ve also decided to lower the table so that standard size chairs will fit instead of the altered taller chairs. Yay woodworking.

A day of woodworking     always starts with a trip to  Zaxby’s before heading to Lowes for supplies. I must find the closest  Zaxby’s in Bham.

 

 

The garage was all clean and perfect when we started.

It didn’t stay that way for long! The chair that we decided to try out uses a 2x4 for the back and legs and the piece needs to be cut out with a skill saw.

After a couple of bad cuts and a quick trip back to Lowes for another 2x4 N had it under control and we were good to go!

The 2 backs with the side aprons and front legs.

Now it looks like a chair!

My new sander. It is AMAZING!! We have named it…

Sandasaurus

the sanding pads counter rotate to reduce vibrations so my hands don’t go numb after a few minutes of use. On the downside it’s pretty heavy so my arms still get tired. It is a super nice sander though and I was so excited to finally get to use her.

So much for that clean garage. We had to use N’s truck as our work bench since we took the table apart and the other work bench isn’t deep enough to put the miter saw up there.

And it was kinda covered in the rest of our crap.

I’m going to make a cushion and will be covering the seat in fabric but we wanted to bring the chair on inside just to see how we like it and really decide if we want to make more with this plan or try something else.

If we go with this plan and make more they will be stained the same color as the table so it all matches. We probably won’t get around to doing anything else until after the move because after sitting down to look at out calendar for the next few weeks we won’t have much free time. It sure was fun to get out in the garage for a few hours together though. I always forget just how differently N and I do things until we start woodworking. LOL We had a few moments where we just ended up staring at each other because we were coming at a problem from 2 completely different angles and it took a minute to get on the same page. I think it just adds to the fun.

Hail and Fair well

Or as we call it in the CAV, the ol’ Hail and Bail, hail the new guys in and say fair well to everyone bailing. N has been with the same troop our entire time here at Campbell and Friday night we had a H&B to honor a few of the guys coming into the troop and a few of the people leaving. We expected N to get a Saber because that’s the standard gift but since N has been there so long he got a super special gift that is really cool. The Commander gave a little speech about Nicholas and said what a great worker he is and called him a “quiet professional, but if you mess up he’ll call you dumb” and I wanted to fall out of my chair giggling. I took a video but it was a back yard BBQ so it was a little hard to hear over people talking and the kids. I did get some pictures though.

Nicholas and his Commander

At attention while his orders were being read. I wish you could hear the video better because it better because their Australian guy was the one reading. I might try to upload it later just to see if it will work at all.

His gift. This is a replica pistol and really cool looking and that’s a troop photo on the back from Afghanistan.

It was hard to get a picture of the plate but it has his call sign and dates of service.

Nicholas is looking forward to having a room in the next house to put all his Army stuff on display, I think this is really a cool piece to have out.

And now a few pictures of N with his favorite dog. She really needed some attention and made sure he was well aware of it!

They had a little convo about how spoiled she is.

And then they took a little puppy nap together.

Ki was glad to me in my lap instead.

Tomorrow I’m heading to GA to work at the shop for Mother’s day and Marklin and Derek are heading up here to get ready to head to the Derby on Friday. I’m sure they’ll have a fun weekend. I made sure that N knows I expect LOTS of pictures of all the crazy hats!!

Our new house

We spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Birmingham getting a feel for the area and house hunting. We had a list of about 15 houses and by Friday afternoon we had narrowed it down to 1 house that we really liked. Some houses didn’t have fenced yards, some houses didn’t have a yard at all, and some houses were in areas of town that weren’t the safest looking and with N working nights we want to be in a good area. After we realized we only had one house we really liked we decided to check on Craigslist.com just to see if any new houses had been listed and we got lucky! There was a cute house in the neighborhood we really loved and there was a street listed but no house number. I decided to take a picture of the picture of the house that was online and drive down that street and see if we could find the house and it worked! After talking with the owner we found out that he would be in town on Sat and would be able to show us the house before we headed to GA. We went to look at the first house at 9:30 and loved it, the guy that lives there now is an interior designer so he had the coolest stuff in there so we took a lot of pictures of the inside of that house because it was decorated so well. The house had a lot more personality and was a cottage style that we loved but we ended up going with the second house because it was bigger and had a better lay out and a huge basement for storage and we can use part of it to do wood working. We are thrilled to find something that we really love in a great historic neighborhood. We think our land lord will be really great to work with also, he told us all about the neighbors and how great they are so I think we will be really happy there.

The formal living room right as you walk in the front door. The doorway leads into the den area and you can see the kitchen door to the side. The den has a set of french doors that lead out to the side deck.

The kitchen is all updated and has new appliances.

The back deck. The decks are awesome. Down the whole side of the house there is a deck with privacy and right now there is a hot tub but the land lord is going to remove that because his dad wants it use it and that’s fine with us.

There is an alley behind the house that has a driveway that goes off of it and a garage under the house. The basement was our biggest selling point because it was so big. We’ll be able to store a lot of stuff down there. The only problem with the house is that it’s so much bigger than where we are now that we don’t have enough furniture! We’ve always lived in houses with small living rooms  and now we’ll have a formal living room and an nice sized den. I guess we’ll have to start looking around for a few new pieces so that will be fun. I’m looking forward to decorating a new place. I have some ideas in mind, it will be fun.

Finally some pictures!

Pictures are so much more fun to look at than all the boring words!

The back yard! We finally have good grass in the back, it only took 3 years. Unfortunately the front hasn’t faired as well and is still pretty patchy.

The garage. Not a spec of saw dust is left in there!

The nook in the kitchen. We did have our big pantry here but our realtor suggested that we move that out so it would make the room look bigger and move this in there instead (this was in the dining room before). I think it looks pretty good in there.

N was getting our plates ready, he had just cooked breakfast. I think I’ll keep him.

N’s room. Yes, that’s a BB gun and it’s usually put away.

The catch all room. That’s where the pantry is now, it’s a little annoying to remember what food is still in the kitchen and what got moved in here. We walk back and forth a lot.

Today we went down to Gallatin, TN to do a little people watching and get out of the house. We both needed a break and we like going down there to the big Sam’s (yes, our life is REALLY that exciting, it’s ok to be jealous) and they have a nice mall. There’s also another nicer shopping area up the road with a Home Goods and I saw that they had opened a World Market and I’ve always heard they had some cool stuff so we went in there to check it out. I found this rug and fell in love. I had to take it home with me. We don’t have anywhere to really put it in this house where it wouldn’t look out of place but I’m sure I’ll find a spot in our next house. It’s so pretty!

We had a good time getting away from the house today. We are trying to decide what we are going to do next week. We are thinking we’ll swing down to Birmingham for a couple of days before heading home for Easter. Get a feel of the area and maybe look at some houses. I talked to a company and got a huge list of rentals in our price range and thanks to Google Maps street view I was able to get an idea of how some of the houses and neighborhoods look and that was great. We have a few that are promising right now and I’m sure we’ll find something we are really happy with soon.

And N just went walking through the house looking for his bottle of Texas Pete, he finally found it in the office. We need to move and unpack SOON! lol

A clean house

Is annoying! We can’t find anything! Everything is all packed away and “organized” to the point that we can’t find a thing.

Here is an example, N will start walking around the house and finally I’ll hear “Next item up on the game of ‘Where the Hell is It’ ………”. I almost choked on my water over that one. Then we were in the kitchen and he was trying to find the cereal and said “instead of ‘Minute to Win It’ we have ‘Minute to find it’ now GO!!! Awww your time is up, the item you were looking for was in the basket in the clothes hamper in the office, better luck next time”. I was double over laughing, then I actually did choke on the cereal I was eating.

The house does look fantastic. I was going to take pics this morning after the realtor was finished but my camera battery was dead. I’ll do that tomorrow. We have all the paperwork done and the For Sale sign will be in the yard first thing tomorrow morning. We are hoping to get a few showings this weekend. We have a couple of friends who have sold their houses pretty fast in the last month so we are pretty hopeful that things will go the same for us.

I’m really glad to have everything done around here though. The house wasn’t in bad shape, we keep it really clean and pretty organized but it’s all the little nit picky stuff like cleaning the dog hair off the base boards. I’m thinking strongly about getting some of that plastic wrap stuff for furniture to wrap the dogs up. All their dog hair is my biggest problem. We enjoyed spending a day doing nothing after our crazy last week. I’m glad that’s over. Now we just need to get this house sold and find somewhere else to live. Good times.

Birmingham, AL

I hear it’s a nice place and we are about to find out first hand because we will be moving there in June!! The last week has been a wild ride! We worked together to put in applications to a few Life Flight companies and within 48 hours Omni Flight gave Nicholas a call to set up an interview! We spent Tuesday looking for interview clothes and had terrible luck finding any suit jackets that would fit Nicholas across the shoulders and not just hang on his waist, we knew anything we bought would have to be altered so we decided  to make a trip down to Nashville on Wed  to shop around more at the bigger malls. That didn’t end up happening because Tues afternoon Nicholas received a call from the guy that would be interviewing him and he found out that the interview would be happening at the hangar and not in an office setting and he wanted to do the interview on Friday! A quick call to Derek confirmed what we were thinking about business casual and we headed back to Belks on Wed morning to get the boy a pair of dress pants and a tie. We were really lucky because earlier this year I found a nice dress shirt at Old Navy marked down to $3 and everything else we bough was also on sale so we didn’t end up having to spend very much on dress clothes and the boy looked sharp! I wish I had been able to get a picture of him all dressed up but he left around 7am on Fri morning for the almost 4 hour drive down and he decided to change once he got there so he wouldn’t look like someone hit him with a wrinkle bomb.

We didn’t want to get our hopes up too much before the interview because we were shocked number 1 that he got a call back so fast and we knew that he could get down there and either hate the job/hate the people/hate the area. We were just looking at it as a good first step in the right direction and it would be nice to get that first interview out of the way. Thankfully Nicholas ended up loving everything and he got the job! He will be working for Alabama Life Saver and he is really excited about this change in career. It will be the polar opposite of everything he’s done up to this point and he thinks it will be a nice challenge. However now it feels like someone pushed the fast forward button on our life and we have A LOT to do and we need to get it done NOW.

We have less than 6 weeks before they want him in TX to start a training class and we have to get this house ready to go on the market and packed up. We were expecting to have more wiggle room so things moving so fast is a big surprise. We’ve been doing a few things here and there around the house but just taking our time and now we are out of time! We are planning to rent in Birmingham for at least a year to make sure that is somewhere we want to stay long term so we are praying we find a house in a nice area with a fenced in yard that we can afford. We are also praying that once we put that For Sale sign in our yard we’ll have people flocking to see it and we have a contract very quickly.

We are looking forward to the move and career change but as with all changes we are nervous. We’ve been here in Clarksville for almost 6 years now and we know the area and have a great group of friends, we’ll be leaving behind our “comfort zone”. It will be nice to be so much closer to home, our drive will have 2 hours shaved off of it and I’m thankful for that! We’ll also be closer to our friends at Rucker and the beach so we consider all of that a plus.

So that’s our life right now, we have lists a mile long of all the things we need to take care of so if you don’t see much of me it’s because I haven’t had much time to be online. We are still planning to come home for Easter though and can’t wait to see everyone!

And now I want to take a nap because just reading back over that makes me tired!