Maybe I Should Change My Name to I Never Sew Things
Wow. It has been nearly 3 months since my last post. Time has definitely gotten away from me! This post has been in progress for a month as you can see by the date, so a more up to date post will follow soon!
I still love my job. I’m starting to feel like I know what is going on. But only kind of. Lee and I are still enjoying working together, which is great. It is fun to be able to bounce work related things off each other and have insight into each others jobs. It is still a little weird working at the same place - especially since it is such a small office - but it is also a lot of fun!
I took a few days off in July to go on a whirlwind roadtrip with my family to visit my uncle in Indiana for his 50th birthday. I’m not kidding when I say whirlwind. I left Austin on a Thursday morning (on the Megabus! What a weird adventure!) and spent the afternoon in DFW with my mom, grandma, sister, and cousin at iFly. We left bright and early Friday morning for a full day of driving from Dallas to Huntingburg, Indiana. We took a short detour to Memphis for lunch - yum! - and made it to my uncle’s house to surprise him about 9pm. Saturday, some of us spent the day at Holiday World (or Hell as some of us refer to it), while everyone else went to a casino.
Sunday we went to my Aunt and Uncle’s church and then took a dubious adventure to Santa Claus, IN, where we climbed on signs, bought a lot of Christmas ornaments, and met the creepiest Santa Claus ever.
We drove back to Dallas on Monday and then I caught the Megabus back to Austin on Tuesday. It was a really great trip, and I enjoyed getting to spend time with my sister and cousins, but it was quite a whirlwind.
Beyond that, Lee has been doing a few things around the house. We have LED lights in nearly every room now, which is a huge accomplishment because of rooms like our kitchen where there are 9 (yes, 9) recessed lights. And we also have new mirrors and shelves in our bathroom. Hopefully faucets will follow soon and our little mini remodel in there will be done.
We also had couches delivered for our front room last week! We’ve been enjoying hanging out in there - and feeling a little more grown up with our first major non-IKEA furniture purchases!
A Little Job Update
The last few weeks have been a big adjustment for Lee and I. After ~7 months of me working part-time from home, going back to a full-time in the office job has been a big adjustment. I think once my body clock readjusts things will go a bit smoother, but other than being stinking exhausted pretty much every evening, I am loving it!
Lee has worked for start-ups since he graduated from college; I’ve worked in retail and for a massive, global insurance broker, so our work experiences have been wildly different. He thinks the things I find surprising/enjoyable/exciting about my new office are hilarious. Things like meetings where we discuss things that could be done better and figure out ways to fix them. Oh and free snacks. Sidenote, I’ve worked in an office where Mexican coke is readily available for 3 weeks, and I’ve only had two. Be proud.
The job itself is going pretty well! It is taking me a little time to get my feet under me. As sad as it sounds, I’m having to use my brain in a different way than I have in a while. But the good news is, I am really enjoying it! Getting ready to start another week!
Spring 2015 Vacation
Lee and I went on vacation a few weeks ago and I thought I’d post a little recap. Lee posted a bunch of pictures on his flickr account, but here are a few highlights!
We started the trip in Dallas for Lee’s sister’s college graduation and Mother’s Day. It was a really great weekend of family time and celebration!
On Sunday afternoon, we started our trek towards Georgia. We stopped in Vicksburg, Mississippi for the night and then continued on the next morning to Concord, GA, where Lee’s grandparents live. They live on a massive tree farm, which is beautiful, and in the middle of nowhere. We spent a few days relaxing, refreshing, and visiting – well, I did anyways; Lee helped his granddad with a bunch of stuff, like changing the tire on his tractor – before heading north to Marietta, GA.
My grandparents recently moved from Houston to Marietta to live with my Aunt and Uncle so we got to visit with all of them. We spent some time helping my grandparents get a few things set up, but we mostly just visited. We also spent a few hours at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens - it is beautiful and relaxing and I would highly recommend it.
Because I knew I would be starting a new job soon, we decided very last minute to take the trip to Gerogia. Our original plan was to visit family and maybe go somewhere else for a night or two, but we never really made that part of the plan. The night before we left Marietta, we booked a hotel on the beach in Orange Beach, AL and headed there for two nights. It was a great end to our vacation (minus the sunburns…)! Our room overlooked the beach and we spent pretty much the whole time laying out on the beach. We even rented an umbrella that covered us the entire day so don’t ask me why we are both still peeling 3 weeks later. We ate yummy seafood, relaxed on the beach, and played in the ocean. Okay, Lee played in the ocean. I got knocked over by a few too many waves and swallowed a bunch of saltwater and then gave up on playing in the ocean.
We took our time getting home from Alabama; we stopped for beignets at Cafe du Monde and an end-of-vacation/Stephanie-got-a-job dinner at Taste of Texas in Houston, and then spent our last night of vacation at a hotel in Katy, TX. We were only a few hours from home, but we just couldn’t push any further.
Overall, it was such a relaxing vacation. Not a whole lot of activities, mostly just enjoying each other’s company and the company of our families!
Since we’ve been back, we have been going full steam ahead. I’ll post an update about those changes in a few days!
Big Changes!
Some of you may remember that I left my full-time job in November. For the last 6 months or so, I’ve been working part time from home for Edgecase, the company Lee works for, while getting settled in our house and working on my Etsy store. Well, things are changing!
I’ve accepted a full-time position as a Strategist for Edgecase, and I am so very excited! I wasn’t necessarily planning to go back to work full-time right now, but everything has really come together perfectly. Lee sent me the job listing a few months ago when the position opened because he thought it would be a good fit for me. Several interviews and a good bit of waiting later, I start tomorrow! It is going to be an interesting transition for sure, not only because I will be back to working outside the home all day, but also because Lee and I will be working in the same office. We aren’t on the same team, but it is an office of less than 40 people, so we will be close by.
I am so excited about what comes next. And nervous. But very excited!
So. Much. Yardwork.
This is our first spring as homeowners and we have no idea what we are doing. Plus, I’m pretty sure most everything outside was neglected last spring because the previous owners knew they were selling. Those two things combined means it takes us forever to get anything done.
We recently became part of a new campus launch with our church that meets in a middle school; this means that we load all of our equipment in and out each week. As it gets warmer, we are all gross and sweaty once we are done at church, so we have been saving all of our yardwork for Sundays, because we might as well knock out all our outside activities at once. That probably isn’t going to last much longer, but it has been a pretty mild Texas spring. Anyway, we spent the last two Sundays in our front yard trimming the hedges, planting flowers, and mulching. I mean, I’ve been recovering for two days and it still hurts to move, but our house looks so much more loved! Now I just need to keep my plants alive through the summer and we will be good!
Before: (notice the giant bushes??)
After: The difference is way more noticable in person, but I love my pretty flowers!
Lee and I are taking a super last minute trip to visit family in Georgia next week. We’ve been saying we were going to go in the spring for several months and never really picked a time. Because of Lee’s work schedule, we realized we either need to go now or wait a couple months, so now it is! We are really looking forward to getting out of town for a little bit. We’re leaving Friday to spend the weekend in DFW celebrating my sister-in-law’s college graduation (and Mother’s Day!) and then we’ll drive to Georgia to spend a couple days with Lee’s grandparents, a couple days with some of my family and then a couple days somewhere else (we are thinking Chattanooga?). Yay vacation!