Jess & Beau got hitched!

We had a blast this past weekend watching one of my best friends, Jessica Simmons, marry her beau Beau Mack!

Aren't they adorable! Jess looked so beautiful and both Friday and Saturday were perfect, gorgeous days :).

These lovely ladies were there... 2 of my faves, I must say!

Oh and I danced with this guy. He is my VERY fave!


Aaaaand the wheelbarrow made an appearance! Hilarity ensued. Gotta love that Clint Beaver's antics never get old.

Congratulations Jess & Beau! Hope y'all are enjoying Hawaii :).

Spring discoveries

One of the fun things about living in our new house is discovering what the yard looks like in the spring. Since we bought it in December, we didn't know what trees would bloom and plants would pop up when the weather warmed up.

The two dogwoods in the left of the picture are right outside the kitchen/sunroom windows - so fun to open the blinds and see those every morning!

I don't know what these bushes are, but I was very excited when all of a sudden they had beautiful white flowers all over them!

Paisley loves all the green grass! Here she is just rolling away in it :).

Precious puppy.

What would I do without sweet Paisley?

Meanwhile, back at the condo...

These azaleas had been quite dead for about a year before we moved out. I have not grown my mom's green thumb yet, so they were all sickly, diseased-looking, scraggly and not a single flower on them all last year, including last spring. Imagine my surprise when I went over to check on the condo the other day and they looked like THIS - despite the fact that no one lives there or takes care of them! Apparently they are independent little guys.

But that wasn't all... These guys I had planted in October when we put the condo on the market thinking I would just get a few weeks of life out of them since they're annuals. Nope, they are standing tall and proud, again with no one watering them or anything else!

And, last but not least, my knockout roses - no buds on them yet, but these were so sick-looking last fall that I just cut them down to the ground and figured they would kindof go away. Now with zero care they are full and green and 3 feet tall again! Crazy.

Update on life:

As you can tell, we still own the condo and it is still for sale! It's been on the market almost 7 months now. We've had about 10 showings in that time and 1 offer for an absurdly low price (25% less than our asking price). Unfortunately those buyers were totally unreasonable and their best offer would still have resulted in us losing $25,000 of our actual money we've put into the condo, so we would not go that low. Unless someone shows up real quick (like tomorrow), I guess the tax credit is probably going to pass on by as a selling point. But we're still just praying and trusting that God has a plan.

Wade is still busy with basketball camps, teaching & grad school. I am still busy with who knows what - I don't know where the time goes :). We're loving each other and being married more and more each day it seems like. So sappy, but it's true! Even when some circumstances in life aren't ideal right now, it's so fun to have someone else with a sense of humor like yours, someone else to bounce ideas off of, someone else to just rest your head on at the end of the day. I can't thank God nearly enough for perfectly matching Wade and me, and loving us more than we can even love each other!

Chop chop

It's the first day of spring, and the Tapps thought it would be a good day to shorten things up a bit.

My hair...

Wowza! This is probably the shortest Wade has ever seen it.

Not the most amazing haircut in the world, but when you're on a budget, sometimes ya gotta use your $4.99 coupon to Great Clips and just rock it no matter what.

And the yard... first mow! The weeds were out of control before this, so this looks a hundred times better.

Check out those lines. Wade did a great job :).

And, just a silly picture of Paisley wearing Wade's shirt to round things out.

Maybe with the onset of spring I'll be more consistent with the blog. I've been feeling like there's nothing to post about (and there really hasn't been). But in the next couple weeks I have some bachelorette parties & showers & such, so they should be some fun weeks! :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Our sweet little Valentine niece turned ONE yesterday! Can't believe that a year ago I was putting together wedding invitations when Hillary called to tell me she was in labor.

Here are a few shots of Madelyn's first birthday cake experience :).

Oh boy!

A taste of icing...

She has the best mischievous smirk :).

Some damage done... after 30 minutes or so of meticulously picking at it.

Sweet through and through.

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.