Granite Countertops

We LOVE them! Here are some before and after pictures.

Kitchen Before

Sink Before

Sink After

Kitchen After

Next up is our tile backsplash. We think we have picked out the tile. We are installing it ourselves so it may take a while! We'll keep you posted. We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Lately

We have been busy lately as usual! Here are a few things we have been up to:

1. We have been involved in the same Core Group (small group) at our church for the last 3 years. The people have become some of our closest friends and we have enjoyed watching everyone and their families grow. This year we are the leaders and it has been great! It pushes me way out of my comfort zone, which is good for growth. God continues to bless our families and friendships. Yesterday some of us participated in "Baskets of Kindness" with our church and a local mission partner. We put together baskets with food for families to have for Thanksgiving, then we had the privilege of delivering 2 baskets to different families.

2. This year we are having Thanksgiving at our house. My mom and stepdad are coming here to celebrate with us. I'm so excited to be able to host a holiday at my house for the first time ever! It has been fun planning the meal, putting together the table decorations, and shopping for the food. I bought a turkey for the first time in my life! Hopefully we will get a little shoping while they are here, and of course we will eat well and watch LOTS of football.

3. The exciting thing in our life lately is that we are getting granite countertops installed tomorrow! We have been wanting to update our kitchen for a while, so we decided to start with the countertops. We are using a company in Atlanta that was recommended by a friend and they have been wonderful so far. We went to Atlanta to pick out our slab last week which was lots of fun and interesting to see their warehouse. We should be able to use our kitchen again on Tuesday. I hope everything goes well! Hopefully in the near future we will be replacing the floors and appliances. Kudos to Chad who did all the research and made all the phone calls to find us the cheapest company!

4. I have to brag on my husband for one more thing. Let me start by saying that he is not naturally handy, but he is trying really hard to learn. After 3 years of our doorbell not working, he fixed it! I'm so proud of him for persevering. It worked for a while and then the other day it stopped again. We think we know what the problem is now, so he will be fixing it again soon!

*Update: He fixed the doorbell after I typed this! It's working again.

Furniture

We finally got our bedroom furniture and we LOVE it!!! Unfortunately we noticed a few flaws when we got it home. I called the store right away and they will be replacing it hopefully in November. After getting it all set up in our bedroom, I now see several other things I would like to change or fix in the room to make it just perfect. Hopefully, we will work on those soon. Here are some pictures:

9-Drawer Dresser

Lingerie Dresser

Chad's Night Stand

Tara's Night Stand

Night Stand up close. I love the detail!

Our bed all made up (which does not happen very often, but I love when it is)

These are some willow tree figures that our parents gave us. For now, they are on our night stands, but we hope to put them together when we rearrange a few things in our room.

For those that don't know, we had a miscarriage about 6 weeks ago. I was 13 weeks pregnant with twins. We were pretty devastated at the time, but the Lord has helped us through every moment since then. He has put wonderful people in our life to love and encourage us and each one has been such a blessing. The willow tree figures were given to us in rememberance of our twins. I just love them and I love that they are the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning when I wake up.

I'm planning on sharing more about the miscarriage later because I'm still working on finding the right words.

New Sofa and Chair

They are here and we LOVE them!!! We picked them up yesterday with Chad's parents help. I know the tag is still on. Chad keeps asking if we can take it off, but I'm not ready to yet. Here are some pics. Chad was sitting in the other chair on the phone so he got to be in some of the pictures.

View from the front door.

View from the kitchen/hallway.

The new sofa! I love the color and thankfully Chad does too. It is so comfy and soft!

The new chair. It glides and swivels and is super comfortable. It's hard to tell in this picture, but it's a herringbone fabric.

Our bedroom furniture is still not here! It should have been here several weeks ago so we are a little frustrated. We were told yesterday it should be here mid-September. We'll have pictures when we get it. I guess we just have something else to look forward to.

Washington D.C.

This year for our vacation we went to Washington D.C. I had never been and Chad had only been for a few days when he was younger. We knew that it would not be a luxury vacation and we would be hot, tired, and have very long days. It turned out to be everything we expected and more! We were HOT, TIRED, and my FEET HURT from all the walking. It was all worth it though to see this beautiful place and learn so much about our nation's history. Here are a few pictures we have to share:

Lincoln Memorial

U.S. Capitol

World War II Memorial

Washington Monument

White House

Our days were jam packed so we could see as much as possible. Of course, I had a strict schedule for us to follow including where we would eat lunch and dinner each day. We did pretty well sticking to our schedule and got to see everything we wanted to, but had to cut some things short because of time. It was pretty impressive overall and Chad and I both LOVED all the beautiful architecture of the buildings and all the natural stone that was used. I had many favorites including the Washington Monument, National Archives, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. Chad love Mount Vernon and the U.S. Capitol. We are looking forward to going back one day to see more, but we are planning on going in the spring instead of summer. :)

Time Flies

Every time I see someone that reads our blog they ask why I have not updated it in a while or when I'm going to update it again. I guess I'm just not as good at this as I would like to be.

We are out of school for the summer and LOVE spending our days together. Everyone always asks us if it is nice having our summer off together and we always respond the same way...Absolutely! It is so nice not to have any worries or stress at least for a short span of time.

We went to Hilton Head with Chad's side of the family in the beginning of June and it was so nice as always. For a few days, the weather was beautiful and not as hot and humid as usual. It is always fun spending time with them! Gramps...you are one reason for this post.

The last few weeks we have been home and it has been REALLY nice! We celebrated our 3 year anniversary at home this year. We traveled on our first 2 anniversaries so we have never celebrated in Birmingham. It was such a nice day just spending every minute together. We woke up early and ran that morning. Actually, Chad ran with Aaron Bishop who lives back in town and I ran by myself, but we ran at the same time at least. Then, we had brunch at a quaint new brunch restaurant in town. I was going to buy Chad some Keen's for our anniversary so we went shopping, but he could not decide on any. We did some furniture shopping for several hours that afternoon...more to come on that later. Then, we had dinner at my favorite restaurant, Cocina Superior. Yum, yum, yum! We never ate the top layer of our wedding cake, so we had some that night and it was actually very good, especially since it was 3 years old.

On to the furniture story. I have been wanting a new sofa for about 5 years now, but we just didn't want to spend the money on it. So, we decided that would be our next large purchase. On our anniversary we went to a cute little home furnishings store in Homewood called At Home. I had been in there before, but it had been a LONG time. Let's just say that 6 days later we walked out of there after ordering a sofa, chair, and new bedroom furniture!! We chose a sofa we liked right away, but went back and forth on the fabric and trying really hard to compromise. Before we even looked at sofas, Chad found some bedroom furniture that he LOVED and once I saw it I did too. We had looked at some bedroom furniture at Pier 1, but Chad didn't love it so we decided to look some more. Well, we found something we both loved for sure! The chair was a complete splurge, but it will be nice to have more seating in our living room that is comfortable. We are so excited because we have not bought much furniture together as a couple and this is something that we picked out and purchased together. The bedroomm furniture will be in by the beginning of August and the sofa and chair will be in around the end of August so look for pictures later.

I also have to give a shout out to Aaron Bishop and Shana Ely Pardue. We had lunch with them last Monday and had such a good time. Aaron lives here in Birmingham and he and Chad have been running together and really enjoying hanging out. Shana has been in town some lately for cancer treatments at UAB. She has Hodgkin's Lymphoma for the 3rd time and is such a trooper. I admire her for her faith, courage, determination, and so many other things. She is such a positive person and always concerned about others that you would never know she has cancer. I'm so thankful for such a wonderful, selfless, and caring friend.

Maybe next time I will have pictures of our furniture!

Spring is Here!

Once again, I'm sorry I have not posted in so long!!

We really haven't had much going on, just the usual. Chad's track meets started in the beginning of March so that is keeping him very busy on Saturdays. I have to say that it is very nice that his meets are all here in Birmingham because I get to see him on Friday night and Saturday night after the meet. Plus, he gets to sleep at home instead of in a hotel!! It's now 7:00pm on Saturday and he just got home from his meet. It's so much better than when he had to travel!

We recently had Spring Break and did quite a few things to our house. It has been fun, but ALOT of hard work. I know Home Depot and Lowe's are loving us right now. I think we went every day over Spring Break and some days we went twice. Our big project was refinishing our deck. Well, that turned out to take much longer than expected and we are still not done. There was a red stain on it before so we are still trying to get it all off in order to restain it. We also cleaned the wood really well and it looks GREAT so far. As soon as we can get all the stain off we will restain it. Don't worry, we will post pictures when we are finished. We were also hoping to do a little painting to the front of our house over Spring Break, but we ran out of time because of how time consuming the deck was. So, that is what I worked on yesterday and today. I painted the wood around our garage door and our front door. They all need another coat, but they look so much better already. It's amazing what a difference it can make!

I'm just dying to plant some flowers and get all my hanging baskets out of the garage. I love all the pretty colors of the flowers in spring. I also can't wait for our grass to turn green. I fertilized it today so it should start looking better soon.

We have 9 more weeks of school and we are definitely ready for summer!