It's Gonna Be A Long One!

It's gonna be a long one!

8 hour work day then 7 hour (or more) drive to Virginia to pack up our stuff!!

And I'm already almost passing out because I'm so tired!! Eek!

It's Official!

Shane and I will see our 1st house that we had together for the last time next week.

We are still in the process of "selling" it, but we are moving all of our stuff out of it next week!

This is very bitter sweet for me . . . .

I mean. It was our first house together, and I loved the house. It was perfect for us. Just enough room, a huge fenced in back yard, a nice big kitchen, a roomy master bedroom with a master bathroom, a huge walk in closet, close to town and tons of stores . . . the only thing wrong with it was that the majority of our family & friends were too many miles away.

We put so much into the house. Added a brand new roof (done by ourselves and family members), added a deck (done by Shane and me . . but mostly Shane), added a closet (also done mostly by Shane), painted the garage floor with epoxy paint, re-painted mostly all of the rooms in the house (including the tearing down of tons of wallpaper), painted the entire outside of the house, updated light fixtures, did tons of landscaping, painted our shed, re-roofed the shed, took a head level soap dish out of our shower and put in decorative tiles. We thought we were doing such a great job. Bought a house as an investment, put tons of sweat and work into the house to update it and make it better, . . . then the housing market/banks stuck a knife in our backs (a couple of them actually . . and maybe even twisted them around a couple times . . I think they are still in there).

We lost way too much money on our house in just one year (too much to even say . . . including not only the value of the house, but all the money we spent on the improvements)! It's totally depressing. And we are still trying to get help to sell it, because we cannot even afford to sell it. We owe so much more on our loans than what the house is worth now. And it's so unfair, because it's nothing we did. It seriously makes me cry.

We put our hearts into that house to make it the best, and it totally backfired in our face.

So . . . 1st house we ever had . . . I love you. I really do. So many memories, so much work.

Banks/economy . . whoever the craps fault it is for this mess . . . I despise you. You have ruined all the work we did, all the time we put in, all the money we spent. The next several years of our lives will be difficult for us (financially/homey) because of you, and there is nothing we can do about that. . . .

I mean don't get me wrong, we didn't HAVE to sell our house, but to us the most important thing is our family and friends, so we needed to move back to Erie. We knew we were going to have some issues with our house, we just never realized it would be to this magnitude! To us, our families and friends are more important than material objects, . . .obviously houses and money are still important . . b/c it sucks that we are losing so much, but we have gained so much more by moving back home.

Past Weekend

Well . . . . still really bummed about our house. I start to cry everytime I think about it, so I am not going to say much except another realtor is coming over tonight to look at our house and tell us the speal . . . after tonight we will discuss what we are going to do . . . .

Anyways life goes on (thank goodness). . . . . Shane's mom (Rita) and step-diddy (Don) and their pup (Majr) came to visit us this past weekend! It was a nice, fun weekend!

We went to the ChiliRib Fest in Fredericksburg! They had lots of vendors and a flea market. . some live music. They had a chili taste contest, but we got there too late. It was all gone! We did get to try some chili. . and we should've known why there was still some left . . . it wasn't bad. . . but it was sooooooooooooooooooo hot!! I took one little taste and my mouth was burnin up!

We went to this place called Ten Thousand Villages . . a fair trade place .. . we didn't really find anything. I had fun playing with everything though. And they had some free dessert & iced coffee that was yummy!!

We saw a beautiful rainbow on our way home!!

I usually try to make cupcakes or some kind of dessert when anyone comes to visit, and unfortunately, I didn't have enough time, so I bought this yummy cake for us to eat. I did feel terrrible though. . even Sommer (my sister-in-law) called and asked Rita what kind of cupcakes I made . . . Next time!! I promise!

Don is a big history buff, and loves Fredericksburg because of that reason, so we had to go on some history walks for him! It was such a beautiful day! Here are some pictures from our adventures:

Shane wandering around the field . . .

Don, Rita, Majr, and Shane watching the trains go by

Pretty fields!

Me shooting a canon! Watch out!

Rita, Majr, & Shane at one of our stops (sorry I don't remember any of the history stuff . . ooh except we saw the trenches that the confederate army laid in . . . so crazy).

Nice little path with canopy trees!

Ewe! A snake we found! Thank goodness it wasn't alive.

Shane on the tracks

Also, I have been wanting to paint the outside of our house for some time, but kinda put it on the back burner . . . well Don also thought it would be a good idea, especially if we are going to sell our house, so we made a little pitstop to Lowe's and picked up some outdoor satin paint! Poor Shaney was NOT happy. (He hates painting). You can't really tell in these pictures, but it looks A LOT better! It only took us 3 1/2 hours too!! I do have a couple spots I need to touch up, and we need to figure out how we are going to get the sides where it's very high, but other than that it looks great and we couldn't thank Don & Rita enough for all the help!!

This is my last week of work here! Yikes! I am sad, but also excited to be able to relax for two weeks.

Looking forward to this weekend! Dan & Marissa (brother and sissy-in-law) are coming to visit I think!! Gonna watch the Penn State game, hang out, maybe go for a walk or two, maybe I'll make them some brownies! .

But until then . . . trying to get everything wrapped up at work and figure out our housing situation!

Black Widow: Found in Our Back Yard . . . Ugh!

So I really was hesitant to blog about this . . . because now I feel like our friends and fam will never come visit us again!! . . . but it's just so gosh darn scary and completely unexpected, I just have to!

When Shane was rolling up the hose in the back yard, our hose holder thingy broke . . . bummer. . . . so Shane opened the lid to try to fix it, and found this little bugger. Shane came and got me and said "do you want to see something scary?" . . .

Well there it is! It was almost too crazy to believe! So we went back in and checked on wikipedia to see if it really was a Black Widow . . . . and ugh . . unfortunately, it matched completely.

Soo scary! I was afraid to go to sleep that night!!

Warning:: Spider lovers and environmental protection peepz, do not read any further . . . .

We did dowse the spider in bug spray, and Shane made sure it was in spider heaven by smushing it with a stick.

I am still nervous there are more though! Although, I heard that black widows kill other black widows . . . . so my hope is that the one we killed had already killed all the other ones!