Two Long Weekends

I didn't have to work last Friday and neither did David. We texted between classes. David: "What do you want to do with the long weekend" Becca: "Strip out all the carpet!!" David: "I'll help you strip!"

I raced home after classes and removed all small furniture and other items from the rooms. David walked in. "Wow, ok." Such a trooper. Then we got to it. Ripped out all the carpet, pulled tack-strips, scraped glue, pulled out washer/dryer and removed linoleum.... Nice way to spend a Thursday night. Friday brought even more fun. Then tile laying. We grouted last night!! Washer/dryer will go back in tonight, thank God because the laundry is piling up and we are having friends drop by for a quick weekend visit starting Friday afternoon!

On Friday we picked up a friends Puppy for the weekend. The dogs got along great and the puppy just wanted to play, play, play with the big dogs. She was small but could hold her own! It was fun having a puppy for a few days but I forgot how many times a day you had to take a puppy out to go potty. And how they get to playing and forget about peeing until it's go time (thankfully my neighbor was unperturbed). Our wonderful neighbor and friend and doggie sitter just got a new puppy. She lost her faithful Worthless about a year ago and just adopted a little lab mix something or other and named her Utah. Utah and our puppy for the weekend Bee, played and played and played. In and out and around the yard and into the doggie house and back around the yard.....

We are spending Thanksgiving with friends (the same ones that have Bee, the pup!). We started celebrating holidays with them a couple of years ago. Neither of us have extended family in the area so we cook up a big meal and invite the other "mis-fits". It's always fun and GREAT food!

On Friday we are heading to the Renaissance Festival, courtesy of CBI in the morning. Then we have friends from college that are heading in for a quick visit! We haven't seen them since we made a one day round tripper up to Dallas for a wedding a few months ago. We are excited to have them come down... but did give fair warning about the house being under construction. = )

I have two weeks of classes and one week of finals and then I am FREE for about four weeks! I'll still be working but I won't have home work or studying or commuting to do. Just baking, cooking, cleaning, running laundry......

5 weeks

As this week ends I look forward to the last five weeks of classes!! In those five weeks I will have:

2 business analysis quizzes
2 business analysis exams
1 business analysis excel assignment
2 business law exams
4 monetary economics quizzes
2 monetary economics exams
2 monetary economics reports
1 monetary economics semester report/presentation
2 accounting quizzes
1 accounting exam
2 marketing exams
4 marketing quizzes
1 marketing report

Nothing like the end of the semester push. So forgive me if I become overwhelmed and disappear for the next five weeks. Following finals, of which I believe I should only have to take 4, I will have 4-5 weeks off from classes before starting up again.

I am introducing my friend, Hannah, to the family I have been working with since May. I will have to take two accounting classes next semester which will prove to be quite overwhelming if I continue to work three days a week. Hopefully Hannah will work out with the family so that she can pick up one day a week for me and also provide back up for those weeks when I'm just barely pushing through.

Our little garden is getting HUGE!! We have little cucumber the size of a mans thumb, little green beans and little melons just a bit bigger than grapes. It's so fun to watch them grow and we can't wait to pick 'em and eat 'em!! The pics here are about a week old. We have been having great sunny days and the fruit/veggies are thriving.

A few weeks ago, my neighbor allowed me to pick a lime from her tree in her front yard. We used the tasty lime in beverages and on fish. Then I planted a few seeds. And now I have an itty bitty little lime tree! I am most excited about this. Lime trees are supposed to be really
hard to get started. This little guy is doing really well though. I have no idea how long it takes to get it mature enough to actually produce limes but we'll see. My neighbors lime tree looks more like a bush and is always heavy with limes.

David's been out of town since early Monday morning. He's had a class in Dallas. Today is the exam and this evening he finally gets home. It's the longest trip he's taken this year so we have all been missing him! Sunshine especially as he runs with her in the early morning hours.
Walking with me just doesn't cut it for her any more. She's been restless and grumpy.

While I am awaiting final confirmation from SHSU, I expect to be graduating in May!! David and I are more than ready to see my education complete. I love school and learning and will probably continue to take classes for most of my life. However, school will no longer require so much time and energy after mid-May 2010. I'm not sure what I am going to do once I graduate. I asked David if it'd be ok if I just sat and stared at a wall for a few weeks. He said it'd be fine because he knows after a few hours I'll be bored and out searching for a fabulous job that I can throw myself into. Clearly I'm not so good at sitting about doing nothing.

I am most looking forward to FINALLY being able to upgrade my goofy green carpets to some sort of (hopefully) bamboo! We have been saving and anticipating since we moved in 2 years, 1 month, 1 week ago. We have a few things to do before we can start but it's getting closer. We hope to finish the tiling in the guest bath room and the laundry area in the next few weeks. First, we need to do a bit of painting in the guest bath. = )

Pics of our garden from this morning. =)


Our little inside garden grew right out of our little starter boxes so I asked David to build me something that could be in the house for a while and then if the plants got too much could be moved out side. So now I have two of these little guys in the kitchen.




Our outside garden looks great! We should have fruits/veggies by Thanksgiving. How cool.

I, David, am not sure what we have started. We now have more seedlings than what our little 4'x4' garden can handle. Of course the lime will not be in the garden. The seeds for the lime were harvested from our neighbors lime tree. We should start a show. "Gardening on a dime."

GRACE

I have very little time for things beyond classes, work and studying. Last night, however, I climbed in bed before David (which doesn't happen much but I was beat and he was "on his way"). It takes a bit for me to fall asleep and the few times I've gone to bed only a few minutes before Hubs, I've been rousted just as I'm passing out and then it takes twice as long to get back to sleep.

Opportunity to read FOR PLEASURE!! Wow, I don't remember the last time although it's been within the last two weeks I think. I have been slowly working my way through "What's So Amazing About Grace?" by Philip Yancey. (Also rare because I typically peel through a book a day when I'm not in school and working part time.)

Last night I read this passage that has stuck with me, it followed a short story about a woman who watched her father act horribly to others including herself and how she passed it to her kids who in turn passed it to yet another generation:

"Grace is unfair, which is one of the hardest things about it. It is unreasonable to expect a woman to forgive the terrible things her father did to her just because he apologizes many years later, and totally unfair to ask that a mother overlook the many offenses her teenage sun committed. Grace, however, is not about fairness." (pg 80-81)

Wow. I'm not certain I've heard it put in such a manner. All the time we hear "it's not fair!" or "it's not my fault!" often saying such a thing ourselves and yet ....

Smelly Dog

Tuesday evening I tried to put Sunny-girl to bed. She refused. Weird. So I stuck my head in her crate. *gag* It smelled TERRIBLE. (Normal people think this is normal - she's a dog. I typically wash the dogs bedding though, weekly. It's rare the bedding smells much because of the regular washing with added baking soda to the wash and vinegar to the rinse.)

Some how we must have missed a washing or something. She smelled terrible too. So I cleaned the crate and decided to deal with smelly dog the next day.

No doggie shampoo.

I found a website that said: mix 1 part clear antibacterial soap to 1 part white vinegar, mix well and wash dog. What the heck, anything would smell better than her nasty coat.

Surprisingly I LOVE the results. Today is Friday, and Sunny-girl is a dogs-dog. She will roll in anything dead, play in any amount of mud she can find, lay about in the yard where ever it's most messy (although she has standards, she does stay out of their waste - thank God) and so on. She still has no nasty odor. Despite rolling in something quite dead on our Wednesday evening walk. Her collar, on the other hand still stinks, despite soaking in solution.

After having such success I am looking into mixing laundry detergent now too. I purchased a huge bottle of it a few weeks ago while it was on sale and I had a coupon but when it's gone I'm seriously thinking about just mixing my own. So we'll see. The shampoo though - it'll be a huge money saver. A little goes a long way and it's really inexpensive to make.

(picture of Sunny coming up from a nice roll in the grass)

11th Day of Gardening.

We are both really excited about how well our garden is doing. We got loads of rain for about four days (I think we got about 6-8 inches in 4 days) and it's not been great for our tomatos but everything else seems to be thriving.