Dad's Progress on Childhood Home

So I'm blogging from my new phone which I am ABSOLUTELY LOVING. It is amazing and I can do everything on it.
Well the post title says that this will be about my childhood home, so I guess I'll share the pictures that I took today.

About two years ago, my family randomly bought a new house. Now most people when they buy a house, they sell their a old one. Well, not my family. My dad is fixing up the old house so that he and my mom can retire in it. There's nothing wrong with the new house. But the stairs are kinda steep, so he figures it would be better to have a one level house.

The thing that I can't get past is that my dad has been doing this whole project by himself. When I look at it, it just seems crazy. But seeing my dad do this all on his own, makes me feel like I can do anything that I put my mind to like my dad did.

Oh and one last cool thing about my phone. I didn't type a single word for this post. My phone is listening and it's typing for me.

I'm Interesting.. Really!

So I was looking on my camera and I remembered that I've actually done some things as of lately and actually brought my camera.

The first pictures are of a recent camping trip Doug and I took to New Germany State Park in western Maryland. Doug used to go to this campsite as a kid and always talks about it. Now that I've gone, I know why! The park is absolutely breathtaking. We went on several hikes and there were just green ferns everywhere covering the forest ground. We had NO cell phone reception at all, so it was pretty weird being completely cut off from the world... but nice, I guess. I'm still trying to decide if I like sleeping on the ground, but I know FOR SURE that I enjoy campfire food. Whenever we go camping Doug cooks all the meals. The summer he worked at scout camp, he taught the cooking merit badge!

The next pictures are of Brooke and Maggie, the two newest little ladies in my life. Their mom's, Caitlin and Melissa came over and hung out at my place for our weekly Tuesday Girls' Night Out.

The last pictures are of the family room and dinette/kitchen area. I FINALLY, after like 4 years of indecision picked out paint colors that I thought would go well enough together since the rooms border one another. I do have to say that I LOVE the colors, seriously the pictures don't do them justice because it doesn't quite show up as good as it is in person.

Family room

The dinette off of the kitchen painted blue!

These are the two colors next to each other.

Still not done, but it will have to wait until after my trip to Utah.

Summer Update of Randomness

Summer is going well.  I'm staying pretty busy, so that's good.  It's amazing how much better my days go when I have a tutoring appointment to get to.  It keeps me from the all-day pajama days which make me feel loser-ish. I'm making good progress on my textbook as well.

I also started a teacher blog which I'll probably never blog on again, but here's the address if you're interested in checking it out.  My favorite part was actually just putting together the header and designing the page. If anyone wants to redo theirs and they have an idea of what they want, let me know and I would love to create a header graphic for you.  Just putting that out there.

What else... well, Friday night we had this crazy storm.  Doug and I stood in the garage and watched it wreak havoc outside.  At first it was just this crazy lightning storm in the distance and then it came over us and the lightning was turning green.  It was freaky, but really cool to watch.  We heard some transformers blow and a bunch of trees just snapping like toothpicks and blowing by us.  We don't have any big trees near our house, but our two closest neighbors had trees down in their yards. One of my local friends posted this picture on Facebook.  No wonder we lost our power!

Luckily my parents got their power back pretty quickly, so we brought all of our refrigerator and freezer contents over there.  All in all, we only lost our power for 14 hours.  I'm feeling pretty lucky considering that there are many that STILL do not have power and it's like 100 degrees outside.

We then headed over to Doug's Aunt Paula's house for a family reunion/picnic get together.  They didn't have power either, but they had two generators for the refrigerators and they usually grill all of the food anyway.  With all of the storm craziness, I forgot my camera.  I was kicking myself the whole time!  Aunt Paula has 25 acres directly on the Shenandoah river with breathtaking views of the Blue Ridge.  We shot guns, went canoeing, set off fireworks, and just had a great time talking and catching up with one another.  Here are some pictures from last year, so you can get an idea of the awesomeness.

This is Paula's house.  It is absolutely gorgeous inside and out.  I think it was modeled after one of HGTV's dream homes.

Doug and his cousin, Mike, driving around on the property.

  

There is not another single structure in site.  Just the green, rolling mountains of the Blue Ridge.

 Doug is a crack shot.  Here is a picture of him shooting his Glock 9mm.

I've started to prepare for my trip out to Utah, well not really unless THINKING about packing counts.  I leave this Wednesday and I won't be back until the 24th!

As far as trying to get pregnant I feel like time is moving either in slow motion or backward.  I skipped the ovulation predictor kit (OPK) this cycle because I was getting frustrated.  I had done it previous cycles and the doctor had not used the information at all. Well this last Monday, I went in to get some blood work to check my progesterone levels on the Clomid. 

My doctor emailed me with the test results and said that my progesterone levels looked a little low and wanted to know what the results were of the OPK's I did this month.  What??  I had been using them the last few months and no one was using the results.  So this month I skip out and apparently not doing them made my test results inconclusive.  Another wasted month.

Doc says that she wants me to take a break this month while I'm in Utah.  She said that I "sounded a little stressed." Really??

I guess its just that I feel like I'm running out of time.

See this amazing woman below.  It's Doug's grandmother.  His last living grandparent.  I've become pretty close to "JoMa" the seven years that Doug and I have been married.  She's my number one cheerer for getting pregnant.  Doug is the only son of an only son.  This means that he is the ONE to pass down the family name of Doug that has been passed down for generations.

Grandma was diagnosed with colon cancer the year before last.  She's had a rough time going through chemo the last year and they just found out at her last appointment that the cancer has gotten to her lungs. I always hoped that our children would get to know her.  Now, I'm just hoping that I can take a picture of her holding them.

I hate ending on a negative, dramatic note so I'll share something random and positive...

Our cell phone plan is re-upping which means that I get to buy a new phone!  I'm been struggling with my Palm Pre for basically the full two years that I've owned it.  On my tentative schedule tomorrow is me going to pick up a new phone... and I'm thinking about getting the new iPhone 4S.  Most attractive feature at this point is the dual antennas because it will work internationally if we end up moving to Thailand in the next year or two.  Oh yeah and the 8 MP camera doesn't hurt either.

Now I only need to decide if I want in it white or black. :)