What else is going on?

So all my posts in the last two months (and by "all" I mean "both") have been about house-buying & selling (attempting to sell), but you might wonder what else is going on with us these days. That has been a big chunk of life recently, but I suppose we've got a little more to us than that...

Wade is nearing the end of basketball season with his JV team. They've had a decent season, record-wise, and Wade really enjoys coaching. It makes for many long days, the longest being home-game days when Wade is at school from 7 a.m. til about 10:30 p.m. On practice days and away-games, he might get home at 7:30 on average. Then on Wednesday nights (the only day he doesn't have practice or games) he plays basketball with some guys from church and others who come. It's fun for him to have a little chance to keep playing and all the guys are super impressed with his skills :).

On another front, he is taking the GRE next Saturday, and then will be applying to grad school at Covenant to get a Masters in Educational Administration. Assuming he gets in (which we are, because how are they going to say he's not qualified when he graduated from their own undergraduate education program?), he will start that this spring. It's 3 years, with online stuff most of the year and then a 3-week period each summer where he'll have to go to Covenant and sit in classes 8 hours a day. It hasn't hit me yet how much work it is going to be for him, and how long... 3 years sounds short on one hand, but then again, a lot can go on in 3 years and I'm sure our lives will change so much in that time! He'll still be teaching & coaching during grad school, and at this point he still plans to continue his 2nd job of site manager for Yes I Can Basketball in the spring, summer & fall, but we'll have to see how much is too much eventually!

We're both really enjoying our new(ish) Community Group at church, and I've gotten myself into a Bunco group somehow :). My dad called the other night and I told him I was at Bunco and had the weirdest feeling of being mom at that moment (she used to go to Bunco)! We've only had it once so far, but I won $20 (after putting in $5, so I'm +$15) - yay!

I'm also trying to get back in gear with various other friendships I haven't had as much time to invest in. One of my best friends is getting married in May, so I'm trying to coordinate a shower for her, and attend various other wedding & baby showers too. I'm also trying to get back to working out, cooking regularly, spending time with the Lord, etc. Working out hasn't yet made it into the schedule, but I have actually cooked some this week, and we're reading through the New Testament along with the church where I work.

Paisley is loving the new house I think, and will love it even more if we can get a fence and she can be out in the backyard more. Although with the rain we've been getting, the backyard stays pretty soggy.

That's our life right now. It's a continual battle to remain thankful and dependent on the Lord when our hearts are prone to look at the hard circumstances and the things we're discontented with (condo not sold, constant busyness, missing mom). But He is good, and worthy of our thanks and trust no matter what!

Pictures of the house

At long last, we are finally moved in to the new house... only a month after closing! We had the popcorn ceilings removed the week after Christmas, and the guy did an amazing job - it looks like a whole new house. But that process was delayed just enough that we couldn't move in January 2 like we first planned, and then the next weekend didn't work either, so we had to push it to this past Saturday. It worked out really well weather-wise though - WAY warmer this weekend than the past two!

A crew of family & friends from church helped us load all the furniture & boxes that were still at the condo into the Uhaul & unload & set up at the house. We are SO blessed by the Lord to have so much support and love from so many people!

Here are some pictures of the inside...


The "sunroom" - it's really the breakfast area, but since we don't have 2 tables but we do have this futon, it is now a sunroom. It works well though because there is a lot of light from all the windows & skylights. A door on the left wall leads out to the deck.


The kitchen - a tad smaller in terms of cabinet space than our other kitchen, but I've added some cabinets (see them on the left in the sunroom pic) and we added some depth to the shelves in the pantry to hold a ton of stuff.


The half bath downstairs - it's so hard to take good pictures of bathrooms!


The dining room - the doorway on the right leads into the kitchen, and these windows overlook the deck. (The half bath is off to the bottom right of this picture.)

The "office/study/workout room" which is still very messy at this point :). This room is off to the left of the dining room picture above. There are built-in bookshelves/cabinets that you can see the corner of in the bottom right of this picture. Wade's desk is the one with the black chair, and mine is the little one with the iMac on it.

The den, from the office looking over the railing. The den & entryway are on one level, and then there are a couple steps up to the level where the office, dining room & kitchen are. You can see the side of the front door at the top left of this picture.

The view of the den from upstairs, which obviously overlooks it :).

The guest room, just waiting for a visitor :). And no, that mirror is not staying in that location on the wall, awkwardly between the bed & nightstand. The sellers left a picture hanger there, so I just stuck something up there for now.

I didn't take a picture of the 3rd bedroom (the "nursery") because there's nothing in there except boxes of decorations I'm figuring out what to do with. So that room will just be storage until there's a little Tapp to put in there :).

The guest/hall bathroom upstairs.

Master bedroom... it is huge. The mess on the left is the Ikea dresser that is waiting to be taken back because the holes were drilled wrong or something and it is not going to be able to be put together.

So there's the mini-tour! We're still getting boxes unpacked & pictures on the walls, but I think we've gotten pretty far for 1.5 days in the place :). We should be getting internet on Wednesday. Wade is stoked that apparently in our DISH Network package we get ESPN-U and several other ESPN channels we didn't have with Time Warner Cable, as well as a bunch of HD channels. And for $15/month cheaper :).

Two of the best things I don't have pictures of are the garage (oh how I am going to love having a garage) and the 2-minute commute to work (for both of us). 1.5 minutes of the commute is just trying to turn left out of the neighborhood!

We bought a house!

I have been very MIA lately, in large part due to this little purchase we made this week...



This is just the picture from the MLS listing. I will take some pictures of the inside once we get moved in :).

So, we closed on Tuesday, had a few appliances delivered this week, and a guy is going to start work on Monday to remove the popcorn ceilings (and make them smooth). Then we plan to move in over New Year's weekend!

The house is about half a mile from where we work, so we're very excited to have a 2-minute commute AND hopefully use the house to bless others as much as we can. Wade plans to have the guys from his basketball team over for video games or team parties, and I'm planning to volunteer us for the teachers' back-to-school party in the fall. I'm hoping to host a friend's bridal shower this spring and our community group from church sometimes. And then of course other friends and family are more than welcome anytime!

FYI TO ANYONE WHO POSSIBLY KNOWS ANYONE WHO MIGHT WANT TO BUY A CONDO: our condo is still for sale, so we are just praying for a miracle that it would sell quickly! It would be very, very nice to not have 2 mortgage payments to pay for very long.

A Madelyn update

I got to hang out a little bit with Hillary and Madelyn the other night. It had been so long that I don't think she really knew who I was for the first few minutes - sad! But she warms up quick :).

Clapping, of course

Standing, holding onto mommy...

Reading some books before bed

Silly girl high-fiving herself in the mirror :)

Climbing the stairs

An after-dinner sippy cup

Walking

Can't believe she's 9 months already!

Weekend in Montreat

A few weeks ago I spent the weekend in Montreat, NC with the lovely ladies of Hope Community Church. It was a great time - just nice and relaxing and fun to build some better friendships with girls I've just started to really get to know.

I don't have any pictures of actual people, but just trust me that they were there :).

Look who learned to clap...

Halloween

We had a low-key Halloween, but we did go to my good friend Marcy's party for a while Saturday night. We're such costume cop-outs... I borrowed Marcy's scrubs and went as a doctor/nurse/medical professional and Wade took Jim's costume from The Office and went as Facebook (he has BOOK written across his face). We thought about taking it a step farther and printing out a bunch of status updates and putting them all down the front of his shirt, but that's as far as we got :).

Just as an update, still no showings or anything on the house, 3.5 weeks on the market. It doesn't sound that long, but it would be nice to just have some tiny little nibble or interest. Oh well.