Good-bye 301 W 6th St (aka - we're homeless)!

With all of the commotion, I haven't had the chance to come on and write much (the meme was about all I could handle), but it must be done. I need to bid farewell to the home that's been Home Sweet Home for the first 4 years of our life as husband and wife.

It's been a good home to us...

• even if we did have to get the NEW air conditioner fixed every SINGLE year that we have been there.
• even though the crappy builder's-issue paint on the walls would scrub off down to the drywall if you tried washing the walls down or wiping off a scuff mark
• even if we did have to see our fire-fighting bachelor neighbor sunbathe himself semi-weekly on his back porch
• even though our loft/office was known to be about 95 degrees in the summer despite our central air

Wow - that didn't sound like it's been a good home to us...let's try again...

• It's the home where we sat on the living room floor and opened up all of our wedding gifts the day that we arrived home from our honeymoon
• It's the home where we've shared all of our heartaches and shattered dreams TOGETHER on this crazy road of infertility
• It's the home where we've hosted many'a game night for friends
• It's the place we've called home TOGETHER, where I was carried over the threshold when we returned home from our honeymoon.

Sunday was a sad, but bittersweet day for us. Our WONDERFUL friends (people from G's work and our church, plus family) rallied together (on the hottest day of the year so far) to move everything out of our house. It is honestly amazing how much stuff 2 people (and a cat) can accumulate in four years. I mean, our house wasn't overly-cluttered or heavily furnished and we're not pack rats by any stretch of the imagination, so we kind of couldn't believe our eyes when it took FOUR trips with the U-haul to get everything into G's parents' barn, aka second garage (thank God we didn't have to rent storage!). And it was jam-packed every time! It shouldn't have surprised us too much, though, considering that we had 19 boxes of JUST BOOKS on the bookshelves in our loft alone...but, we are teachers, after all! After the moving was over, G's parents hosted a cookout at their house (aka our new home). They have a pool, as well, which was a HUGE blessing on a 95+ degree day! Enjoy the pictures! I'll probably post another entry later today if I get a chance!

Moving Day Pictures

You will be missed, 301...onto bigger dreams.

Top Ten

Top Ten signs you know you're moving...
1. You start out packing into nice, neat organized boxes, but eventually you get so tired of it that you see nothing wrong with putting an alarm clock, a jewelry box, towels, flip flops, and toilet bowl cleaner all in the same box.
2. You (oops!) leave the inside entrance to the garage open and suddenly find yourself on your hands and knees, attempting to lure your cat out from under your car with catnip (ok, so that one isn't really a sign of moving, but I thought it was a funny story anyway...)
3. Practically every square inch of your home is covered in boxes
4. Practically everything you've ever owned is packed into boxes
5. Your cat is bewildered and spends approximately 90% of her time huddled under the bed
6. You painfully part with $600 to put dead-bolts on your doors, to bring it "up to code" according to new area regulations, knowing full-well that your dad could have done it for about $80 if you had a bit more advance notice.
7. You live out of a suitcase for a week and a half, quickly remembering that you needed (insert random toiletry item here), but it's already boxed up and sitting somewhere at your in-laws' house.
8. You ate a Betty Crocker mini Warm Delights (for lunch) with a plastic knife because all of your real silverware is packed away.
9. You lived on PB&J for a week because you didn't want to buy any perishables
10. You have one of these in your front yard

Friday Fluff

I love having the "themes" to guide my blog posts, so when I found "Friday Fluff" over at Praise & Coffee, I thought it was perfect for me! It's great for those days when you don't want to talk about anything too serious! Today's Friday Fluff is about my own little (ok, not so little) fluff-ball, my kitty cat! Her given name is Faith Trouble S. - that was so when she did something bad and I told her she was in trouble, she could say, "Trouble??? My middle NAME is Trouble, Sistah!" or something like that...who knows what goes through a cat's head when we're talking to them...

Here is a picture of Faith when we first got her back in September of 2003. This is when I still lived with my parents. She was a gift from Gregg (we weren't married yet) because my cat at my parents' house, Lady, had just been hit by a car.
That's a really old picture...she was probably about 1 or 2 pounds there...now, she's not so little. Actually, she's quite large. 17.5 pounds worth of largeness. DH calls her a fat cat, but I call her my plus-size kitty because I don't want her to get a bad self-image. Cats care about stuff like that, you know...here is a "now" picture of the Faith-meister.
Haha - just kidding! That's a tiger at the Animal Kingdom in DisneyWorld. HERE is really a picture of my kitty.
And in case one name isn't enough for 17.5 pounds of kitty, I make up nicknames for her whenever the mood strikes me. Here are my kitty's other aliases:
Faith, Faithy, Faithy-baby, Faithy-girl, Faithy-kins, Faith-meister, Faither, Faither-doo, and (my personal favorite) Faitherdoodle.

In general, she's just your run-of-the-mill, finicky, neurotic housecat. She doesn't pay any attention to people food, unless you get out a bag of lettuce. I kid you not. A fat cat that loves to eat lettuce. She will actually jump up on the counter when I'm making a salad and "help" me by sticking her paw in the bag (if I'm using pre-cut that day) to steal some to eat (and no, I don't "allow" her to get on the counters, but have you ever tried to discipline a cat before??). Also, she hates people (except hubby and myself, of course). In fact, she'll be gone in a flash if you ring our doorbell. If you turn the key in the door, she'll peer around the corner at the top of our foyer steps to see if it is one of us. If not, you get the "meow - HISSSS" greeting before she runs up the stairs and under one of the beds. The other funny thing about Faithy is that she has a cat-door that leads down to our basement where her litter box is. The only problem is that she barely makes it through the hole anymore...I swear one of these days, she's going to find herself stuck halfway through the hole...and I'm going to be left with a mess on my foyer floor to clean up because she can't make it down to the litter box anymore...she's on a diet, I swear!

Before closing, I'll leave you with one last picture that describes my little Faithy-kins to a tee...here she is doing what she does best...being cute!