All in the family

Guess who started a blog? These two crazies. Well, more like just the crazy on the left. Check out the Kimmels here.

Apartment Life

Sometime in 2009, Greg and are I hoping to buy a house. Our lease is up in October, so we are praying about where to look for a house. I am looking forward to being in a house, if the Lord allows it. I love going over to friend's houses and enjoying a nice spacious, cozy home. I like to think about decorating ideas. However, I don't want to have my mind so set on a house that I miss out on all the fun we have now. I know there are lots of things about apartment life that I will miss when we are gone, so I am going to take time to list them out so I can remember these fun times.

-I can clean then entire kitchen floor with a dust buster in under 30 seconds.

-Bed Bath and Beyond coupon weeks are amazing. When the mail comes, and it is a BB&B coupon day, my husband will come back from the mailbox with no less than 3 of those coupons. Apparently there are people who check their mail, see the coupon, and then place it in the mail box trash can. I don't know who these people are, but if I saw one, I would probably tackle them, and talk some sense into them. Do you not need things from BB&B? Do you not go to weddings and buy gifts? Do you hate saving money? However, thanks to people like these, we are raking in the coupons and all of our friends are receiving 20% better wedding gifts.

-The pool. Our complex has a great pool. 10 months out of the year it is awesome and just steps away from our door. Greg and I would go for evening swims after work in the summer, or read by the pool on the weekends.

-Free Maintenance! Just this week, I got an email from our apartment asking if we need anything fixed. Leaky pipes? Broken fan? Just call us. Seriously it is awesome. You leave for work, come back home, and the apartment elves have magically repaired everything. I hope that when we have a house people ask us if they can come over and fix things for free.

-Limited capacity for mess making. We only have a certain number of square feet to make messes in. A couple of hours of cleaning can combat even the most disastrous of messes. I am scared of what I could potentially do when given multiple rooms to start craft projects in.

-Greg and I are never far away from each other. It's never like I have to yell, "GREG, WHERE DID YOU GO?". I just turn my head and if he is not in my line of vision he must not be in the apartment.

-Every time we drop the rent by the office we get to pass by the candy bowl and take a treat. I hope the bank sends me a milk chocolate treasure in the mail every time I pay the mortgage.

Oh apartment life, I do adore you.

2 Tags in 1

I have been tagged by Erin to put up the fourth picture in my fourth folder. I think this is a cute picture. It is Greg's Uncle and cousin sitting at the end of the pier at his other Uncle's house, taken last year at the Mattern family Christmas. This is also the pier upon which we got engaged :)


I have also been tagged by Jill to post 10 Honest things about myself. I loved her 10. They were about as honest as you can get and I really admire that. Thanks Jill for sharing!

1) Before I got married, I actually thought that I would somehow be able to look "pretty" all the time. But then I find myself walking around with baggy pj's tucked into my "moon boots" (that my sis gave me and are oh so warm and comfy), with hideous hair, and zit medicine on my face, and I realize.....the secret's out.

2) I am not good having very deep conversations. I would much rather keep things light and funny, as you can tell by most of my blogs. I wish I was more of a deep thinker and admire people who can really pour their heart out with eloquent words and deep thoughts. I usually get self-conscience and over-analyze everything about how people will interpret my thoughts on deep subjects when I try to write them down.

3) I didn't know boys didn't use toilet paper when they pee until I got married.

4) I like to be around people. I think things are always more fun when friends are around. I always wanted to have the kind of apartment neighbors that were like your best friends, that just pop into your house at anytime to watch a TV show or eat a cookie or tell you a ridiculous story. Unfortunately, I have only seen our neighbor 4 times. But I do like to have friends over as much as possible.

5) I like to maintain the image of having a clean and tidy apartment. So sometimes things like this happen.

6) I have tried on a shirt before and thought to myself "I will look really cute in this shirt when I'm pregnant". Anyone else ever have this thought?

7) I don't know anything about politics and don't like watching political news. I feel like I should be more involved and do more research on candidates, especially ones further down the ballot, but I am just plain lazy in this area.

8) The other week while watching What Not To Wear, I the girl in need of fashion help displayed in the 3 way mirror, 2 of the exact shirts that I own. Greg looks at me and says, Hey I think you have that shirt. Yikes!

9) I am my mother. Now, understand, mom is amazing and would love to be able to be the kind of loving mom, wife and person she is. She is so creative and talented, has amazing taste, is an excellent decorator, and is completely selfless. Now I don't live up to all that, but I see all the time in the little things I do that are just like her. My sister and I used to tease her incessantly about her obsession with all things beige or brown...BORING. Now guess what color I love? Yep, that's right. Also, last week I bought a plastic mini file-folder from the Target dollar spot to carry around in my purse. I labeled various section - coupons, receipts, gift cards, etc. And then I realized my mom probably has that exact same thing in her beautiful brown purse.

10) I still haven't used my crockpot.....Yeah....I know.

The honesty tag was sort of fun, so I am tagging the following people who don't blog as often as I would like, and I would like to read more :) Chelsi, Melissa, Jenny Perot, Cody (if you read this and would like to take up blogging again), Liz Ramsey, Emily Smith, and Stephanie Turner.

Happy 2009!

I'm back. It has been a long blogging break for me. With holiday preparations, travel, family time, and just enjoying the break I haven't made time to blog. I had a lot I wanted to blog about around Christmas, but I will just have to do a catch-up/summary blog since it has been so long.

It has been wonderful to have off work for the past 2 weeks! That is the longest break I have had from work in a long time. I did have to work on Friday, but only for four hours so I still felt like I was on my break for the rest of the week/weekend.

Greg and I started the Christmas break by going to Waco to have an early Christmas celebration with his family. They showered us with gifts and were so sweet. His sister was really thoughtful and put together cute boxes for us with slips of paper where we would write kind words to each family member. It was a special addition to the family Christmas. After coming home from Waco, we "moved" into my parent's house for several days, even though they live in Houston. It was a blast to hang out there playing games, watching Christmas movies, looking at Christmas lights, going to the Christmas Eve service at Church, opening presents and eating lots of sweets. We also did a mini advent celebration where we all took turns reading verses of prophesy, the birth of Jesus, and other verses about the promised Savior. It was a great chance to focus on the true meaning of Christmas. Also, since my sister and I were both with our Husbands' families for Thanksgiving, we had a Grosse family traditional Thanksgiving meal on Christmas day. It was delicious. And of course we celebrated my Mom's birthday that afternoon. Yep, she's a Christmas baby. We finished off our holiday by going to Greg's extended family's annual Christmas reunion. There were so many kids this year. 3 new babies had been added to the mix so that was fun to watch all the little ones. Oh and I almost forgot, the next day my parents took us to the Transiberian Orchestra concert which was amazing! They were all extremely talented and it was so different than any other concert or performance I had seen. I would definitely recommend it! Here are some pictures from the various Christmas events. I am so sad I didn't get any with my family!! I don't think any of us remembered to take pictures.

Greg's Mom-

Hollyn opening presents-
(by the way, Hollyn recently discovered that she can stick out her tongue. She has been showing us her new fancy trick for about a week straight)

Greg's Dad-

Christmas in Waco-

Our first together by our tree-

Mattern Christmas Reunion-

Me snuggling Brody-

Also, I know that I have been tagged by Jill and Erin, so the responses to those tags will be coming soon!

Aggies, Don't Hate Me

Cause I made this.

On purpose.

But then we sawed off the horns and at them. So it makes it ok. It was for my sister's graduation. However, cakes apparently don't do well after a couple of hours in the car. By the time we got to Austin, the cake no longer looked like it did in the picture. Does anyone remember the cake scene in Sleeping Beauty? If not, just picture a landslide of icing upon a severly deformed longhorn.


Oh yes, there were tears. At least we captured the "before" picture. I decline to post any "after" pictures :)


Here is the pretty UT grad below.

We went up to Austin on Saturday to attend the graduation. It was the best graduation ever! Under an hour. Really. Unbelievable. I didn't even have to bring my graduation-survival-kit (magazine, electronic sudoku, cards, etc). We hung out with my sister and Cody, played with their new dog, then stayed at my Dad's cousins' home and enjoyed a few rounds of catch phrase. It was a fun time haning out with everyone. Here is the gang below.

Now I Know Why People Pay for Pine Cones

I thought it would be a fun thing to collect pine cones, glitter them, then put them in a bowl on our kitchen table. I was inspired by Becky's post. It would be an inexpensive, pretty decoration. Besides, who would pay to buy pine cones at the store when you can find them outside for free? Um, I would.

We went out Sunday afternoon to collect pine cones with one of our couple friends from church. We couldn't find any good ones at first, just the small, smashed, lopsided ones were all that were left. Guess the black Friday crowd hit up all the pine cones before we got there. I knew we should have come earlier. Our husbands were so sweet to try to get us some fresh ones. They were using the frisbee to knock the real beauties out of the trees. Pretty funny to watch as they were determined to get them down. We finally hit the jackpot in the Japanese Gardens. Lot's of good ones there. We filled up our bags then headed home.

Pine cones are so Christmasy. I love them. Oh, but apparently baby roaches do too. Who would have known a small colony of roaches had taken up residency in the pine cones I collected? I unknowingly sat the whole car ride home with a bag of roach-infested pine cones upon my lap. That is sick. When we got home to form the pine cone line-up to determine who would make the bowl, I began placing them in a height line. That's when they came alive. Each one had 3-5 bugs in them. Greg was so sweet. He violently shook each one until all the bugs came out. We are not talking microscopic slow-moving bugs that you can flick out the door people. We are talking small roaches that can do 0-60 in a millisecond. Has anyone ever played the arcade game whack-a-mole where you hit the moles with those big soft mallets? It was like watching Greg play that game while I yelled their various locations. Left knee, 10 o'clock! Above the towel, by your foot! He's getting away! After an intense roach-war, finally all the casualties were removed. I sprayed all the pine cones with bug spray, then placed them in air-tight zip lock bags in case any of them had decided to lay baby roach eggs to carry on their legacy. After a couple hours of suffocation I figured they were all dead and began the glittering process. Here is the final product. I added a bag of bead fillers from hobby lobby.

Buying pine cones might not be such a bad idea after all...

A Happy Thanksgiving

"So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness." Col 2:6-7

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend in Waco. We spent several days with Greg's parents, grandma, brother, sister, and her husband and baby girl. We also got to see some cousins on Thanksgiving day. There was plenty of good food the whole time. We played games, shopped, made bows for the Christmas tree, entertained Hollyn, watched football, talked, ate, and laughed. We took plenty of pictures too. The group shot above took about 15 attempts to get a good one of everyone. There were also probably 50 or more shots taken of Greg and/or Jameson jumping while posing with the frisbee. I'll save those for another post. I should make a collage of all the jumping pictures of Greg. I probably have 100 on this computer.

I am so thankful all the undeserved blessings in my life. I have a wonderful husband who is funny, kind, servant-hearted, and loving, having a wonderful loving family, the best in-laws anyone could ask for, plenty of food to eat not only on Thanksgiving, but everyday, a warm place to eat it, safety and protection, living in America with all the luxuries I take for granted daily (running water, electricity, living in peace without daily fear for my life, freedom to worship and speak openly of Christ), a stable job, our church, so many sweet friends that God has brought into our lives, our newlywed Sunday School class, my health, a mind to read and study and think on God's word, the Bible, excellent Bible teachers, and most of all, the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ.

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thes 5:15-18
Now if I could only learn to continually give thanks. I have so much to be thankful. This verse clearly states that it is God's will for me to give thanks in all circumstances. Yet sometimes I still find myself complaining. That is the exact opposite of giving thanks. I have been really convicted of that recently. Whenever I hear myself complain, this verse comes to mind and I realize I am in direct opposition to God's command here. Thanksgiving is a good time to reflect on all those things God's has given and remind myself that I should be doing that daily, in all circumstances.

I hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving!