A Grown-Up Bed

Yay!!! Sam and I received our new california king Pottery Barn bed today, courtesy of my momma! We've been sleeping with the mattress on the floor since we moved, which kind of felt like camping. We are so excited to have this new addition! I love it! The whole thing: the bed, the mattress, the sheets, the duvet cover! It's perfect! We're slowly adding on the extra's like throw pillows, quilts, etc. But it's pretty amazing as is!

Special thanks to momma for the amazing wedding gift, my uncle and aunt, who gave us the mattress, and everyone else who gave us sheets, pillows, duvet, etc. We love how it all come together!

Long Weekend in the Jungle

Most people think of Memorial Day weekend as the unofficial start of summer and the first opportunity to head to the beach or spend the day on the lake. This year, for Sam and I, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity that presented itself and use my dear, sweet Momma, and all of her landscaping talents and overhaul our new yard.

As newlywed's and first home renters, a yard is a new and exciting thing for us... but this one was a little daunting. Momma came down Friday night to spend the weekend with us, and when I woke up Saturday morning, she was already tackling what I thought was an overgrown tree. Boy was I wrong!...

As you can see this monstrosity was taking over a fence that was hiding under the depths of its shady foliage, but what appeared to be a tree in bad need of some grooming was actually a VINE!!! Who in their right mind would plant such a thing, I'll never know. After hours of cutting, ripping, and ultimately wrestling with these thorny vines, we conquered (sort of)! Mom wanted to simply chop it down, but I convinced her that as we are renting, we probably shouldn't destroy the property. Here is an after shot of the much needed hair cut!

And with that we were off to a long weekend of learning all about our jungle of a yard and slowly taming this new responsibility of adulthood. The first thing I learned: landscaping is a fortune, literally. Grass alone can make you cringe at the checkout! And who knew there were so many types of fertilizer! Thankfully, we have a very small back yard, but it was really overgrown. This property is over 50 years old, and I believe that pretty much everything is original. All of the bushes and trees are HUGE and they haven't been maintained in quite sometime. Which leads me to the second lesson I learned: it's much easier to maintain a yard in good shape than one that has run amuck! But in the end with a lot of help from Mom, we have a neat little yard. Now we just have to wait for the grass to grow!

Here is a shot of one of the Camellia in the back yard that Mom trimmed back in to shape (they looked like giant balls before). And as you can see they are huge!!!

We also planted three Hydrangea (my favorite). Two are the traditional ones that are blue or pink depending on your soil's pH, but one I just couldn't pass up is called Peppermint. It's petals are variegated pink and white to look like, well a peppermint!

We also spruced up the front of the yard with some new hanging baskets and planters filled with Impatiens since pretty much our whole yard is shady! Here's a before and after of the front of the house.

By the end of the weekend we were all pretty tired, but I have to admit that I'm pretty pleased with the results. It wasn't a lot, but it certainly made the view from the kitchen window much more pleasant and it made our house feel a little bit more like home.

So, a blog huh?

I guess I am officially joining the crowd and becoming a member of the blogging community. It’s another one of those things, that I swore I’d never do, because I mean, “who reads those things?”. To answer it, I do, so I might as well join my voice with everyone else. Now is as good of time as any.

In fact, now may be one of the more popular times to start a blog, as I’m in the “newlywed phase”. Based on so many of my friends who have married before me, it seems like a blog is the thing to do for the newly married. Why? I don’t know, probably for several reasons. Firstly, it probably has something to do with the feeling of severed ties. You are a unit now, not an individual, and in some ways it feels kind of isolating, contrary to what it might seem. Secondly, so that family (read this as moms) can keep track of you and your family without feeling nosy. Thirdly, it probably has something to do with social networking. So many of my friends (and myself) got married before careers and everything were completely set in stone, so there is also the aspect of starting real life, and some contacts sure won’t hurt.

I guess I fall into all three of these categories. I could certainly use any networking available, I’m sure our moms will be the major followers of this blog, but the main force driving me is the feeling of isolation. I have no idea exactly how writing to no one in particular solves that, but putting pen to paper (figuratively) has always helped me order my thoughts, and maybe the idea that someone could read it removes some of the isolation.

Not only am I a very recent newlywed (just over 6 weeks), but I’m also a resident of a new city where I know one person… my husband. Talk about feelings of isolation! And to top it off, I’ve knowingly chosen a life that I swore I would never have--I am the wife of a medical student. I am surprisingly pleased with this status and so very proud of my husband, but it is not the path I thought I'd be on 5 years ago. Why is that so taboo to me? Well, I grew up to my mom’s horror stories of doing exactly what I’ve just done… marrying my dad and leaving everything she knew to go with him when he got into dental school in Louisville, KY. She didn’t know a soul, she had no job, a son to take care of, and a husband who spent 20 hours a day at school slicing open cadavers or at home in silence studying. Thankfully there are some differences between my mom’s story and mine: The Lord was good to me and only sent me 2.5 hours away from my family instead of 9, I don’t have a young son to care for, just a 1 year old cat (Everest), and I seriously doubt that my husband will spend 20 hours a day studying. As he explains it to me, he would either go crazy or his head will explode!

Despite these distinct differences, I am coming to realize that the next three years are full of unknowns, and I HATE unknowns. I like lists, I like order, I like to know exactly what steps get me where I want to go, and I like to be in control. However, I think God has a different plan. I have decided to trust, which is something that I am very bad at, but I am going to trust Him, that His reasons and His plans are infinitely better than the ones I would have come up with. I’ve decided to trust that God fully comprehends our financial situation, and that He will provide; that He hears and understands my loneliness, but that He is using this time to draw me closer to my husband, and ultimately to Him; and that He has the timeline of my years planned for me, so I can stop with all the worry.

So here’s to believing that I have not been abandoned no matter how alone I may feel, and trusting that the next chapter of my life is being written by the ultimate Author.