Beaumont

Well, it's official. I have left Virginia and become a Texan for the foreseeable future. So far it's been pretty nice I must say. Started my new job, which is probably going to be pretty interesting. I never thought I'd grow up to be a sanitary engineer!

Still just waiting to see when we will actually close on our house. Luckily people down here are very nice so I've got a place to stay in the meantime. It is definitely going to be a long three months until I get Dave down here though. 

Well that's new!

Apparently I'm not doing so well with the two weeks between posts. This month has been pretty good so far. Conference is pretty much a highlight of any Mormon's October. There were some really good talks and I made pumpkin muffins to keep us awake. Super yum! The next weekend Dave went off to North Carolina to help a friend move out of his house down there. At this point it's looking like we're going to get a housemate for a while. We also babysat a cute puppy (well, dog. He is 3) while his owner was on a business trip. He and Stella got along really well. I also took a business trip down to Houston. No I did not look at houses while I was down there although I did drive by the temple. I worked my normal job for two days in the office in Houston with the SeaRiver people I work with regularly. And the next two days I took a class that explained how refineries work. Which is really helpful to know when so much of my job depends on how well or not all the units are running. We have also been to a pumpkin patch, corn maze, and been apple picking. And we went for a fall drive on skyline. Whew, it has been an unusually busy month. But lots of fun. And we've still got Halloween to look forward to!

Bye bye September!

The leaves are starting to turn outside. It's actually pretty gorgeous weather, although between work and helping Dave with homework I don't get to spend that much time outside. We've actually had a couple really cool thunderstorms since we moved into the new place and I've decided I actually like this house for thunderstorms. The kitchen has a really good view and you can hear them pretty well, but the bedroom is more underground so the thunder is pretty well muffled. Much as I like thunderstorms, I don't like getting woken up in the middle of the night.

This week was another fairly average one. Dave and I had a choir concert on Sunday that was actually pretty decent. He got to go to the Temple with the youth on Friday too. Which was fun for him. Me being stuck at work just met up with them when they were done for dinner at Cafe Rio. Yum!

Yesterday we went on a 3k hunger walk and got to go to the ExxonMobil company picnic. It was circus themed and was actually kind of fun. If we end up going next year I think we'll just skip the show parts and do all the activities. Luckily it wasn't terribly freezing and rainy like last year. We didn't win any prizes though. But I did get this cute monkey! We named him George.

Fall has arrived!

Apples are on sale at the store, I've made my first pumpkin dish (pumpkin apple streusel muffins), and it's starting to get chilly in the mornings.

Routine has been pretty standard, work, school, homework, etc. Not even many super exciting things happening on the weekends at the moment. But, I'm sure that will change soon like it always does!

New Place part 2

So we've actually moved in now! It will take until next post probably to post real pictures of the place because we still have quite a few semi unpacked boxes hanging around. It was a pretty rough time getting everything over. We had lots of help from the ward moving all the furniture and big stuff but it really is amazing how much stuff gets left behind when you just don't have enough boxes to pack everything up at the same time. We finally managed to get everything except Dave's snowboard out on Monday so when I finally make it back to clean I should be able to clear that out. It actually does fit in my car. Not terribly excited about the clean up though. I don't want to know how many roaches I've been cohabitating with.

The New Place

So the exciting story of this week is we got keys to the New Place. Yeah, I still think of it in capitals for now. Our new lease began on Friday. So a lot of my week went into measuring and making a schematic so we could decide how to arrange the furniture and I got permission to paint, so I picked out paint and spent essentially all of Saturday painting. I don't think I give painters enough credit, my entire body is sore from painting today. And I'm only about halfway done! (Luckily?) there are only 7.5-8ft ceilings so I didn't have to use a ladder to get the upper corners or anything. It made the process much faster. However, we still have a lot to go to get the apartment ready to be inhabited. And I'm going to have to get used to living in a basement again... Definitely going to need to find some really good bug repellant/insecticide again.

Dave spent the week in North Carolina visiting a buddy. We'll have to see if I can get him on to post his adventures and pictures and such. All I know is he took Kiwee (the bike) and says the winding way he took was about 1700 miles of riding. And that it was supposedly really pretty. Guess I'll find out as he edits his pictures.

More moving fun in the works for this week!

Time flies

Hard to believe summer is almost over. In two more weeks Dave will be back in school. Doesn't feel like it's been long enough yet.

This week was fairly standard for what's been going on. Had a double header in softball, barely lost both games. We played really well though. Went to King's Dominion on Saturday, had a good time until it started raining. But, the threat of rain did keep the number of people down a bit.

I had a team building activity at work on Friday which was fun. We went to a driving range which keeps score like darts. Out of the five of us teeing off from my tee, I won one game which I was very proud of.

The most exciting thing going on is we're moving in the next two weeks! Yay! Should be pretty exciting. Similar sized apartment for $200 cheaper than we're paying right now. It's the basement apartment in a house so we'll have access to a yard too! Stella will like that. Not as terribly excited about the whole moving part of the move though. I don't think I know anyone who really likes packing and unpacking though so that's pretty standard.

We'll have to see how it goes though