Remodelers

so i am supposed to be blogging this experience. and i haven't been. but i promised i would start. liz and i are both currently unemployed and my mom has been wanting to do some work on her house for over a year now. so with these powers combined, it has turned into a project headed up by liz and me. it has been quite an experience so far and we are still very much in the beginning stages.

we spend a lot of time like this trying to figure out what in the hell we are doing:

thankfully, liz is a designer so she knows a lot of this stuff. i'm really good for bouncing ideas off of, though.

and we have been doing some basic wallpaper tearing down, ceiling scraping, etc.

we are really just ready for demo to begin. like the real demo that involves sledgehammers and destruction. it will be good times. this little house deserves it. mom and dad deserve it.

Birmingham

so i know this is so late coming but (drumroll, please)...we moved to birmingham (i'll pause for your gasp of surprise).

we were a little turned around and upside down about the whole announcement thing because david wanted to make sure that everyone he worked with knew that we were moving before i could blog about it or anything, and they didn't all find out until the thursday before we moved, sooooooo. anyway, here we are.

i am really excited about this little stint in our lives. it's funny. i never thought we would move to birmingham. i never really wanted to be the person who settled back down at home (and i take comfort in the fact that i like change and that we will move on at some point), but i am looking forward to just being somewhere for an extended period of time.

so here's my top 8, bottom 4 of the whole thing:

top 8:
1. getting to be here when my sister and brother-in-law adopt their little baby boy. i could puke i'm so excited about this. and just being here for all that goes along with that.
2. one of my oldest friends, morgan, had her first baby - shepard - yesterday. and i actually got to go see them (not 3 weeks later, the day she had him)
3. last saturday night getting to hang out with my BEST friends in the whole world and knowing that i didn't have to "go home" the next day. this is home now.
4. getting to see more of caroline.
5. getting to work for my mom and finally getting her house remodeled (after 12 years of planning)
6. rick and bubba
7. going to a church with the most incredibly inspirational, and ridiculously challenging pastor i've ever heard speak. a church that is giving up all their "indulgences" and is taking on the ENTIRE country of india by way of compassion's early childhood survival program. a church that believes feeding the poor and taking care of the widows and orphans is more important than talking about it. (if you can't tell, i'm seriously jazzed about this place)
8. getting to stay in town for one half of our family holidays.

bottom 4:
1. awkwardly running into people i went to school with (unless it was planned because we're still friends)
2. alabama fans
3. now suddenly having no excuse to miss anything
4. nothing to do past 9 pm

UPDATE:
5. missing the peters (how can i even forget that?!?!) and liz and charlie...and while i'm at it: brant, trey, garret, alvin, nick, rachel, hannah, christi and john :)