my poor blog

my blog has been neglected for the past 6 months. but not without good reason. oddly enough, chris has been nagging me about it. "have you updated the blog yet?" never thought he would be that concerned about it. he never ceases to amaze me!

so where to start. i guess the natural thing to do would be to pick up from august...where i left off. so here goes. in september, we started to get serious about house hunting. the previous house we had an offer on (since november of 2008!) did not go through. we looked and looked and looked, got discouraged, and then looked some more. we did find one that we liked but were not over the top about. still, we put an offer in. the good man upstairs obviously had better plans for us as we did not get that house either. we rethought our hopes of wanting land and decided to look in a subdivision. found a nice one but again, did not have that 'this is home' kinda feeling. the next day after looking at that house, i went with our realator to look at a house about 20 miles east of sarasota on 5 acres. chris had to work so without typing your ears off about the house, i was IMPRESSED! i called chris, talking his ear off so much that he hung up on me. literally! he called me back about 10 minutes later. he asked, "is this the one?" well DUH! so the next day, without chris even stepping inside (he had flown over it) we put in an offer. 2 hours later, it was a signed contract!!! chris finally saw our home 5 days later and understood why i was so excited! from that time on until we closed, not a single hiccup. other than me getting very ill and was on bed rest. the inspection, appraisal, everything was smooth. chris was unable to make the closing but the lawyers were creative and had him sign power of attorney over to me. talk about a cramped hand after all that signing! we closed early october. my parents came down to help me since chris was out of town. not that the house needed cleaning but mom helped me with that while dad brought over a few loads of boxes.

so, our home! as chris said, nothing short of Gods hand in it did we get this home!" for those family that have already seen it, you can appreciate the excitement chris & i share. it was like it was built for us back in 1995 and was just waiting until we came along. it is perfect! everything about it makes it our home. it has character, elegance... we are absolutely loving it out here (except for the armadillos and pigs...but we are working on that).



it has been fun getting new furniture, although we are STILL waiting on some of it to get delivered. for Thanksgiving, since chris & i can not get away, we had our first one here and invited everyone down. lots of famlily & friends. it was a great weekend. jess helped me with getting our pictures & knick knacks up since i don't really have an eye for that. i purposely had not put anything up until she came down. such talent she has! which by the way, i need to borrow that talent again. i have some more things that need that perfect place to put them!

so on to december. work for both of us has been non-stop. but we expect it like that this time of year. our church had a big 2 night Christmas experience that we helped with. roy has joined us as well for the Christmas-new year time. we will be going to orlando to celebrate for a few days.

looking back on 2009, chris & i have been blessed with more than we can take in. our marriage grows stronger every day & i can't tell him often enough how thankful i am for him & how much i love him. he has been such an awesome husband & example of Christ for me. AND, he is a HUGE help with our new home and property! still not sure how i got so lucky!

Merry Christmas to all our loved ones. Have a healthy & safe new year!