a cue from melissa...

bc i love blogger more than xanga i'm promising to try to keep this one up. you should only have to come here to read about my life (tho' occasionally i might slip). that's why i'm copying this post from my xanga. here ya go:
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(i'm stealing this format from melissa):

Wonderful...walter and i have a house

Not wonderful... we have to wait (a full) eleven days to move into it (oh my!) and my stress level is rising. (in other words, please pray. i am serious. quite.)

Wonderful... my cousin, deborah, was kept safe even in a minor car accident and came to visit me anyway!

Wonderful... we repeat visited a church this morning and every time I attend I enjoy it more and more. the service was followed by a fun lunch with fun friends (yay, the webbs!).

Not wonderful... I was stressed to tears much of the rest of the day.

Most wonderful... I'm married to a wonderful man who (in his own words) puts up with me better than anyone else could (and he's right). He holds me and loves me and comforts me and buys me new plums after a hard day culminated by the cats eating my prize plums bought just that afternoon. What a wonderful guy.

Thanks, Melissa for letting me borrow your brilliance. I'm too drained to come up with any of my own.

It's time to jump in bed. Tomorrow morning Deborah and I are driving Walter and Josh 5 hours away for their canoe trip down the Buffalo River. After dropping them off the two of us are heading to Rocky Ridge Farm to visit the longtime home of Laura Ingalls Wilder in Missouri. We're leaving at 7 am and hope to be home by 10 pm. I'm going to be tired but I think a trip is exactly what I need.

poised and ready

we put money down on a house!!

as walter put it, we are no longer homeless. hip hip hooray!

we did not choose either of the houses i'd last talked about. an offer on the house i'd asked for prayer concerning never materialized. However, i think that God used the time we spent waiting in limbo to prepare us and give us clarity to make our decision our own. i couldn't be more thankful for how he worked that out. He is good.

We chose to live in and renovate the small house on 3 acres that we'd looked at and considered buying sight unseen from PA! How funny is that? We could have bought it 3 months ago and ended up with the same exact location... but not the same exact experience. I'm sure I wouldn't have known it was the exact right thing for us to do. And for that assurance, I'm glad God stalled our plans for a bit.

I'm happy to go into why this is such a perfect fit for us... as long as it's not tonight. It's been a long day and i am dang tired. I got up and went swimming, did laundry, made lunch, went out to explore the outsides of our new home, ate sunflower seeds fresh from the sunflower (soon to be OUR sunflowers!! :) ), ran around in the hot sun, drove around in the hot sun exploring our farm land, came home, talked to mom before heading out to east memphis to buy a cardigan (i also got a dress. now i have two outfits for sundays. yay i'm going to church!) and then on to dorothy's for a cookout. Nothing was too stressful but being outside can take it out of you and we didn't get home until 10:40 at least. So I am done. Plus, I need to be in a good mood so church can be a positive experience.

I am really excited about living in that house and growing a lush garden and hanging up clothes to dry and and building and fixing up our house. I just can't at all portray it in the tired state that i'm in. you'll just have to take my word for it. :)

WE GOT A HOUSE! HOORAY!!!

(oh, and the current home owners left for vacation this morning so we have to wait until august 8th to close and move in. it'll be soon!)

waiting (copied from my xanga)

We put an offer on a house (a beautiful house) that will soon go up for auction due to foreclosure. The "owner" approved the offer but we are waiting on the bank (since "owner" is probably not the best term for someone sitting on foreclosure). We gave them until Friday at 5 to give us some sort of answer (yes, no, counter offer, something...). They called us and said they needed one extra business day and we gave it. Monday came and went and our realtor called them to find out what was up. They told her they'd call her with news the next day at 1:00. Yesterday at 4:00 we told them they need to get back to us finally. They have until today.

Please pray that we have some sort of answer here today and that we do not need to remove our offer from the table.

We know that God has a house for us and that it may not be this one. I'm ok with that. I would like to hear the word, however. Even if they come back with a no that at least is an answer.

Thanks

(ps. the movers came!! everything we owned was in there!! Praise God! we've got our filing cabinet full of important documents again.)

In Search of Church

I hate (HATE) church shopping. Hate it.
I hate sticking out bc I dont know how to fit in.
I hate clothes shopping for a look I can't define.
I hate my period (hate, hate).

Who wants to take my clothes shopping for cheap deals on quality clothes to wear to church in my new home? I need clothes I can wear to "casual" churches and to formal ones... they're probably not all that different. They're definitely more dressy than any of the churches I grew up attending. I need some all purpose "visiting churches" outfits. I probably just need a few days to get my mind and emotions back in order as well.

Here's to waiting...

A Full Endorsement

Last night Walter and I finally baked the peaches we'd bought Friday. My goodness were they good! I wish I'd thought to take a picture so that you would all be motivated to make them yourselves but alas... we ate them too fast. The thought never even occurred to me.

Hopefully my endorsement will be enough. Try the Gingered Peach Gratin. It's delicious! We served them with a scoop of vanilla frozen yogurt. (yum, yum!) :)

a place for hammocks

We put an offer on a house. It isn't absolutely everything we wanted but I don't feel as though I'm settling. The floor plan is open, spacious, and airy. There are millions of windows to let in the sunlight! There's a fireplace, little ledges on which to place things, a bay window in the front, and a room above the large attic. The lot is small but situated beside the community's lake/common area giving it a larger feel and space enough for a larger dog. Out the backdoor is a small gravely type porch that we want to build a pergola on top of.



We would grow morning glories and grape vines up the posts and over top for shade. It would be serene, especially with the lake immediately to our left.

Only time will tell. Our offer is good until Friday. How very exciting and very scary. :) I am quite pleased.

M F M

i bought peaches at the memphis farmers market and hope to make something similar to emily's apricot creation. i'm not sure of her exact recipe but i intend to fill the peach with crumbled ginger snaps and glaze the tops with a ginger syrup. it's going to be heavenly. i have to act quickly tho'. the peaches are disappearing. they're amazingly sweet as is and need very little improvement.

the MFM was beautiful. it's set at a large outdoor trolley station. stands line each side and live music played in the middle. i bought a fresh bouquet with the most beautiful sunflowers i've ever seen, discovered the art of tarts (i can finally work on my pie skills again without the fear of wasted pie or gluttony), shared a pear tart with my mother, weighed down my bag with peaches, and sipped mango tea.

i can't wait to return after i have my own yard! i'm going to buy flowers and herbs to plant. i'm already planning it out. they have rosemary. you can't even imagine how much i love rosemary! :) after my attempt to grow rosemary (and basil, and oregano, and forget-me-nots, and avocado) from seed i've decided to increase my chances of success by visiting a nursery instead of the grocery store. we'll see how it works.