Winter is STILL Here!

I've been trying to find the time to update our blog, however, I wanted to make sure I covered each month we've missed. So, of course, each month I've put it off, the bigger the job has become! And now I'm to the point where now I don't think I'll ever be able to catch up! So I've basically given up and decided to just start where we are right now....which is a year and a half, okay, almost 2 years from when we left off in the summer of 2009.

Things are mostly the same....the inside of our house remodel is mostly done.........minus needing a new sink and vanity in our bathroom, work on our future basement man room/music room, constructing laundry room shelving, hanging dining room decor, finishing my dressing room mirror, and constructing a headboard for our bed............okay so it's nowhere near done. But we will get there and we have at least gotten to the point where we can at least sit and relax in our house without feeling like there is always something to do!! Our main focus this past fall was our backyard! Mike and I are in the process of making a parking pad so he can park his truck and Mike built a shed to store a lot of his tools and supplies in. We (ok mostly him) have come along way in our backyard...although we still need to replace the gutter on the back of our house ;)

I drove home last night from work at 1130pm and had to drive through LOTS of snow coming down. Just when we thought winter was over (we had a 70 degree day last week!) we woke up to about 5 inches of snow.

This was a snow we had earlier this year in January. This one caused me to have an hour trip home from work! Although, an hour is much better than having to walk all the way home from work.

Of course, neither of these snows were as bad as last year. Here's a flash back from last year's blizzards.....

Summer is here!

Summer is here...and so are many friends and members of our family we have been missing over the past year! Our good friends Chris and Cara have finally moved back to Baltimore from Philly and we celebrated with a sleepover at the Cox house and the first golf game of the summer. This was Cara and I's first game ever....so it was a quite an experience...and lots of fun!

My first swing of the day

How's my form??

Cara's first swing of the day.

And Chris giving her a few extra lessons....so cute!

The next friend to come visit this summer is my good friend Lindsay...pictured here with my other good friend Lindsey and I. It was great to see her and spend some time hanging out and eating tacos : )

That same night, Mike and his cousin Josh were hanging out and I came back to find a very large gun in our house! This is one of Josh's recent purchases that he was showing Mike. I thought I would take a turn holding it and trying my mean face. I think it turned out to look more like a crazy lady face. I left the red beady eyes to contribute to the look.

Another project Mike began a week ago.....replacing our bathroom floor. It ended up being beautiful in the end, but was quite a frustrating project for Mike....and Josh....and Mike's dad as they had to come rescue us and our house from flooding one evening after the main water shut off valve busted!

Our toilet...in our bathtub. No, we didn't use it in there. Thankfully we have another bathroom in the basement.

And our vanity...in our bedroom.

The next exciting visitors are Mike's brother Chris' family! We have missed Chris and Victoria and their three girls so much as they have been in Cambodia for the past year. We were so excited to meet our new niece, Tova, as she was born while they were overseas in Thailand.

She is SO cute!! I'm sure you would agree.

We had them over this past weekend for dinner....although we made them make their own. I think everyone had a good time....we rolled dough, stuffed it, and ended up with unexpectedly enormous calzones!! Very tasty!

This is Mike attempting to be the pizza guy in the visa commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2fHeGfNUUk
( not sure how to paste a link for the video. Just copy and paste this link into your browser and it should work)
I think he's almost got it! : )

I've also got to visit with many other friends and family over the past couple weeks. My other friend Lindsay came down from Philly for a quick afternoon visit. We got to celebrate her getting her first job as an RN with a trip to the reservoir and some Rita's Italian Ice. I also got to take a day trip down to see my sister Stacy and her family in VA....Zach, Wendy, and Teddy (their dog). They treated me to a great dinner at O'Charley's after my long trip down (lots of traffic) and we got to hang out a little longer than planned since I decided to wait until 4am to travel home hoping to miss any more 4th of july traffic!
Thankfully it worked!

I'm looking forward to a lot more fun times this summer with family and friends. We have more golf outings, pajama and tea parties with our nieces, a trip to SC to visit my family, a trip to Williamsburg to see my parents' new house, and an anniversary vacation to Myrtle beach to look forward to!

Where we left off...

Just found this in my pictures from February...oh how far we have come in such a short time!!!

Just thought you might want to check out our transformation from plywood countertops to granite over the last week!


As simple as "getting granite" might seem...as you can see, there is a lot of prep work. For the new to come, the old must go...

...right out the back door

Mike giving me a thumbs up

eh....doesn't look any nicer yet...

but wait,
Drumroll please........













Ta-da!!!!!

And just when we thought we were done.....now it's time to pick out backsplash.....

Well, that decision is for another day.

And for those of you who are wondering...why is Mike doing all the work and Megan just snaps pictures??....I just want to let you know, I was the behind the scenes doing the much less rewarding and never ending cleaning between all these stages of projects!! : )

Mike has been getting TONS done on our remodel. I'm so proud of him and so excited to see progress. He, I think, at first, was also enjoying it...but after 2 straight weeks of painting...I think he was less than excited (see frown below). This is him in our basement with various cabinet doors scattered on the floor waiting to be painted. I guess Mike must have tried to get Cocoa the monkey (see to the left on the couch) to help, since I was not volunteering...but it looks like he gave up quickly.



The next step was to clear all our dishes...silverware....cooking supplies, etc. out of our existing cabinets and pile them on our dining room table. Then the painting of the existing cabinets came next. I helped for about 1 1/2 cabinets and quickly realized why Mike was hating his life.

This, although may not look very exciting, was a very exciting addition to our kitchen. The white panels you see to the right of our dishwasher was (for approx. 8 months) not there, and instead the ugly side of our dishwasher was exposed. So we are very excited about our white panneling. And yes, that is Mike on the left of the picture...inside our cabinet trying to re-install our dishwasher.

These are our finished, professionally homemade new cabinets!! Mike is so talented!!

Today we also got to start deciding which new sink we want....

And what kind of granite we want!!...Who knew there could be so many choices for "black" granite.

Mike also painted our ugly railing black. We like this better. And yes, the railing on the far wall will one day match.

These are our pretty Azaleas!

At the end of April we got to go to NJ for a wedding. My girlfriend Jacqui got married and I was honored to be one of her bridesmaids. This was my hair-do...who knew I had all that hair?? At one point we didn't think any of us would be getting our hair done...the hairdresser got lost and was an hour and a half late. At one point, with our frizzy hair and red faces, we made a toast to "natural beauty." What in the world did we do before hair straighteners???

This was the wedding party's ride.....not too bad....

The bride and I...with lots of makeup close up apparently...

Mike and I...doesn't he look handsome??!!

Girlfriends from college

The happy groom and Mike

Salisbury field hockey + the groom reunited

A couple of weeks ago, we got our professional wedding album and pictures!! For some reason...our absolute favorite pictures were missing from our cds....but these are some of our favorites that we do have at this point.

These last couple of months have been tough on Mike and I with Mike in and out of work....but we are so thankful he has been able to get a lot of work done on the house...we are hoping to refinance soon which would be a huge help!! Mike also has 5 straight weeks of work ahead of him working with my bible study leader's husband. Which is just another reminder that God is taking care of us and has a plan. We just need to trust Him....and hopefully...this job might turn into a full time position for Mike if they continue to get work in! We had a fun time with the Cox side of the family spending Easter and Mother's Day with them and are excited to see my side of the family this coming weekend in VA. Hopefully I'll have lots of pictures of my niece and nephews when I return...which I hope to post before the end of the year : )