HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUNSHINE!

Today is Kari's birthday so be sure to send her some Happy Birthday cheer.

BIG FALL PLANS!!

So after my last post I was swiftly chastised by my brother and sister-in-law about posting that I had no big plans for the fall. They said that if their visit didn't constitute big plans than they'd just head for the beach. :) To that I said to them "show me the tickets!!" So they booked last weekend and are officially coming to visit DC for the 10 year annivesary in October!

I'm very excited but nervous because literally 30 minutes after she booked her ticket the guest bathroom started leaking and there is now a hole in the ceiling...oops!! So hopefully that'll be fixed by the time they arrive but I told them their room would likely still be pick with basketweave wallpaper.

Jason and Jolene are such a huge part of my life and I am so excited to help them celebrate their 10 year anniversary. They've been through a lot in the last 2 years and even during that time always have taken time to support me and everything in my life. Particularly allowing me to take over their home the week before my wedding so I'm happy to return the favor and give them a place to hopefully relax and enjoy a stress free vacation weekend!

So now we have big plans and I'm really excited!

Keeping up with the Struemphs :)

Well a month later and I'm posting again! Doing such a great job of keeping you up to date on our lives right? :) I blame most of it on being very very busy but then again I do find time to eat and sleep (most days) so I should be able to find time to blog right!

Micheal and I are slowly settling into being residents of Maryland and the great Washington DC area. It still is pretty insane to me to drive past things like the Washington Monument, or the Lincoln Memorial on a regular basis - sometimes it feels like I've stepped out of my life and right into the scene of the next big blockbuster!

Micheal has been taking intensive French training for the past three weeks and I am busy working at my externship and my job. These things plus renovating our house keeps us pretty busy but we're still trying to find time to have some fun! Laura came up and visited this weekend and it was great to entertain our first house guest. :) AND put her to work helping me prime the shelves in my office - Thanks Laura!! We don't have any major plans coming up for the fall except to keep doing what we're doing.

Check out our home renovation blog at http://foreclosure2fabulous.blogspot.com - in the near future I might combine the two but right now am keeping them separate. We'll see how long that lasts. :) Leave me a note to tell me how you're doing!

We're In!!

Greetings all! I'm writing this blog from our new home in Maryland. How crazy is that? We're home owners AND we live in Maryland? The home buying process was difficult to say the least but we're through it and working hard on making this house our home.

So far we've torn down some (but not all) of the wall paper, primed and are going to do some painting this weekend. Our new appliances are here and we are working on getting them in this weekend as well. We've done a lot of cleaning, a lot of throwing away, and a lot of cursing of the previous owners...seriously, what were they thinking?!?

We've been happily married for 5 weeks now and despite the house craziness they have been 5 wonderful weeks. Our wedding was amazing, truly one of the happiest days of my life. I'll post pics soon of our progress.

Signing off,
K.S.

Construction Day 2

Wow it's been a while since I updated! And why is that? Because our lives have been CRAZY!!! We had an amazing wedding, the honeymoon was superb - we got back on June 28th and since then...things have been up and down, side to side, and pretty much topsy turvy.

To make a REALLY long story REALLY short - we haven't closed on our house yet but we're so close it's painful. We are very fortunate that the house is vacant and they listing agent gave us person to start working on it this weekend since we're closing first thing next week. We've been working on it for a few days and MAN is it overwhelming.

There is SO much to do, but it's going to be an amazing house...just wait and see. :)

Comprehensive Exams - Done

Questions sent - I'm done. Will update with things I learned after I get some sleep. I had some funny ones...but my brain is so dead I can't remember them. :P

Comprehensive Exams Day 6

The final day of questions. Today started off on a good note, the sun was out, it was the last day of questions and Laura and were ready to rock it! We saved the ethics question for last because it was the easiest and MAN am I glad we did. I don't have a lot of brain power left to integrate or think creatively, fortunately this did not require much of that at all.

I actually finished the question for the day at about 5:00. I started to get pretty stressed when I returned to the question I did yesterday because I still don't feel very confident about my answer. I will be working on it tomorrow.

Things I learned today:

I work much better when it's sunny than when it's rainy - some people say they prefer to work on ugly days because you don't feel like you're missing anything. I totally disagree, I need something to look forward to when I'm done!

That at a locally owned sandwich shop it takes 20 minutes to toast a bagel.

That doctors are not prohibited from engaging in sexual relationships with their former patients or with other individuals close to their patients. It is up to their discretion.

Music therapists have to be fluent in guitar, piano, voice, music reading, and a few other things...

Dollar store nerf guns can provide endless entertainment for two brain-dead graduate students.

...okay, well it's 2:30 and that was my cutoff time for myself. I've revised one paper I edited last night, hand edited two more which leaves me one more to hand edit. Revisions. Then child paper...Oy...

One more day then I'm free!