Brown Out

So I experienced my first West Texas "brown out" on Sunday while driving back to Lubbock from Dallas. I must say it was one of the most bizarre while at the same disgusting things I have ever been a part of! These pictures are the best I could do while driving down the highway at 70mph because I wasn't going to dare get out in 50-60mph winds with dirt flying everywhere to take a picture!!

If you look closely, well you still won't see it, but there is an 18 wheeler less then 10 feet in front of the white truck in the right lane. That's how much nasty dirt was flying through the air! A-W-F-U-L

If you've never experienced one of these consider yourself lucky! It is not something I want to experience again but I feel certain that I will see many more of these in the next 3 years!!!

Stay clean!!

CMG

Birthdays

It was a BIG birthday weekend in the Garrett house this weekend. Rhett's 3rd birthday was Saturday (26th), Blake's 30th birthday was Sunday (27th) and my 27th birthday is today (28th).

Unfortunately, we had to leave the birthday boy on his 3rd birthday.....but hopefully he won't remember!!! Our neighbors/landlords were gracious enough to watch Rhett and George and did not let Rhett's birthday go uncelebrated. They brought their puppy, Waffles, over for a little birthday party!

We spent the day before Blake's birthday with a bunch of his closest friends in Dallas for a wedding of a good friend. It was so great to see so many of the guys that were in our wedding. It's hard to believe it's been almost 9 months!!! I think being able to hangout with his friends for the weekend made the 6 hour drive back to Lubbock on his actual birthday a little less painful!

I have the absolute BEST husband around but you all already knew that. He went above and beyond (and surprisingly completely surprised me) with this year's birthday present. He has a memory like an elephant and remembers EVERYTHING I say, even in passing (told you he was the best!!) When we were in Jackson Hole I found some skis I liked and he remembered the brand, size, etc and called and ordered them for me! I was so puzzled when he gave me a long, narrow box to open but was SO excited when I got the paper off and saw the return address label on the box!!!

Thanks to everyone for the sweet comments and well wishes for our birthdays! We (all 3 of us) had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed every minute we spent with each other and our friends!

CMG

Kitchen Valance

A car from Shreveport arrived today with a box from Milly which included my kitchen valance!!

It ties the chairs/room together and I am SO excited to have it!!

Yay for the little things in life!

CMG

I remembered!!

Here is the picture I promised....

our cute little house!

Happy Tuesday!

CMG

FPU

Blake and I decided when we moved to Lubbock that we wanted to take Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University course so that we DO NOT find ourselves in debt while Blake is in school. We have really enjoyed the class thus far and are anxious to see what the next 10 weeks have in store for us.

We had our first, of many, budget meetings last night and didn't kill each other, woo hoo!!! It is VERY, and I repeat VERY, difficult to make a budget and it terrifies me that it is probably even harder to live by it, ha! Well, only time will tell. We will begin on the "cash only/envelopes" way of life March 1.

Say a prayer for us!!!

CMG

3107

Many people have been asking for pictures of our new place but I just couldn't get it together enough to get all the "crap" put away!! But I finally did!! (or at least enough to where it is not completely embarrassing) so here they are.....

Oh and p.s. I keep forgetting to take a picture of the front of the house but I promise (if I remember) I will post it tomorrow =)

OUR BEDROOM BEFORE:

OUR BEDROOM AFTER:

HALLWAY:

*I need to paint RHETT's dog bowls holder*

KITCHEN BEFORE:

AFTER KITCHEN:

*need to paint microwave shelf BEG made for me

(house didn't come with a microwave)*

*kitchen valance coming from Shreveport to replace the red thing*

PLEASE excuse the stacked up boxes; they go to the storage shed!

OFFICE/STORAGE/WORKOUT/CRAFT ROOM:

OFFICE/STORAGE/WORKOUT/CRAFT ROOM:

*a lot happening in such a little space, I know*

*this is my favorite little invention that I found on a fellow bloggers post.

It is so creative and such a space saver*

LAUNDRY ROOM BEFORE:

LAUNDRY ROOM AFTER:

Woo Hoo, we got our washer and dryer to fit sans the pedestals

(they're in the storage shed!)

BATHROOM BEFORE:

BATHROOM AFTER:

*Since we are short on space in the TINY bathroom,

BEG made me this neat shelf this weekend for our towels

(I need to paint this as well)*

GUEST BEDROOM/BEG'S CLOSET BEFORE:

GUEST BEDROOM AFTER:

*please excuse the mess*

LIVING ROOM BEFORE:

LIVING ROOM AFTER:

*no, the tie dyed door cover is not staying,

just haven't gotten that far*

Well folks, if you did't pick up on the fact that our storage shed in the backyard is busting at the seams, I'll go ahead and tell you that it is (with empty boxes!) But thankfully everything we brought fit, YAY!

So, this is home for the next 3.5 years so come and see us if you ever find yourself out this way; we would LOVE to have you!!

Hope everyone enjoyed their day off (if you had the day off!)

CMG

Weekend Project

So here is the before picture of our kitchen:

I am not a big fan of "dark wood" so I asked our landlord if I could paint the wall. I was given the go ahead so I spent all day Sunday painting.

Finally finished about 6 hours later!

Complete kitchen picture to come.....

CMG

Valentines Supper

My sweet husband made reservations for us to eat supper at this delicious Italian restaurant in town called Stella's. It was so yummy and so nice to have a quite night out with Blake after so much commotion and craziness over the last few months.

He even had flowers delivered to the restaurant and they were waiting on the table for me when we sat down. George, however, thinks the flowers are for him and he continually jumps up on the table and eats the babies breath so I took a picture while they were still in 1 piece!

BEG has his Calculus 2 class on Monday and Wednesday nights so we do not have any plans tomorrow. Maybe I will make supper at home since we finally have our things and a full kitchen again!!!

Happy Valentines Day!!

CMG

Catch Up

Fasten your seatbelt and hold on tight.....

Here is what we have been up to lately.

We moved to Lubbock 2 weeks ago this Tuesday. RHETT literally slept on top of our suitcases so that we would not forget him in Midland, poor guy. He had never been so excited to leave somewhere in his life. Unfortunately for RHETT he saw this room all to soon again.

The day we moved from Midland to Lubbock was the worst winter storm of the year so far. Temps dipped down into the single digits with wind chills in the negatives! It was COLD. We weren't 10 miles outside of Midland headed north to Lubbock and we saw 4+ (1 complete) accident on the icy roads. The part that had me the most terrified was the fact that the highway from Midland to Lubbock is a 2 lane highway so the FedEx truck that we saw roll over, swerved into Blake's lane (who was in front of me) before swerving back into his lane and rolling over multiple times before coming to a rest of it's side in the ditch!!! It was at this point I called Blake and told him we had to turn around. We attempted our journey about 4 hours later and although it was still extremely stressful, the roads had melted some and we made it!! Whew!

Our first night in Lubbock, we thought "what normal people would stay inside in -15 degree weather"....not us! We went to watch the Tech men's basketball team (which by the way is horrible) play the Kansas Jayhawks. We enjoyed our evening but couldn't believe that it costs $30 per person to attend a college basketball game in this town!!! $30 a piece!! If it hadn't been freezing we would have turned around and walked back to the car but it was worth $60 to just get warm in the negative temps!!

A picture of our new backyard with the snow. We learned while freezing our tushes off in Jackson Hole that if it is too cold it doesn't snow so this will explain why we didn't see much snow with last weeks freezing temps. Here is a picture of our backyard with the little snow we did get, RHETT loved it; george not so much!

We flew to Shreveport a week ago this past Thursday to pack up our furniture and move into our cute new rental we found in Lubbock (we moved WAY sooner than we had anticipated but we didn't want to be in a hotel any longer!) We flew into Love Field Thursday night where Milly (my mom) picked us up and drove us to Shreveport. We were going to pack all night and Friday morning before the mover's came Friday afternoon. Well, we woke up Friday morning to a winter wonderland and as we all know Shreveport shuts down in snow so....our movers cancelled and we had the biggest fiasco EVER trying to rent a Budget truck. 3 hours later we cancelled our reservation with Budget and switched to U Haul; note to self you get what you pay for, sometimes $100 extra is TOTALLY worth it!! So the mover's rescheduled to Saturday afternoon (thank goodness!) Since we lost the entire morning Friday at the rental truck place we were relieved to have some extra time. Well Saturday came and the mover's morning move was cancelled so they came Saturday morning in the melting snow. It was a production as is everything around our household it seems but we got everything packed up (in a 26' truck)!! We left Saturday early afternoon and drove to Abilene for the night before continuing on to Lubbock Sunday morning.

Here is the move:

We left a few things in Shreveport until the house sells (stuff that we will put in storage when the house sells) but we got everything we needed for the next 3.5 years. It was bittersweet leaving but I am looking forward to the next 3.5 years out West.

Just to make the weekend/week even more of a "production" I started not feeling good at the airport in Lubbock on Thursday. After starting and finishing a Z pack and still not feeling good, I headed to the doctor Monday afternoon after the Lubbock movers and AT&T guy left our house. Well, the doctor gave me the most dreadful diagnosis ever, THE FLU!!! It was awful. So I spent this last week feeling like crap, sleeping, working and trying to unpack as much as possible (which wasn't much.) Thankfully, I am feeling like my old self again but still a bit tired.

First day in the new house and the shower broke!! The one plus to all of this is just calling someone else b/c it's not coming out of our wallet! Our landlords are fabulous and got it taken care of the next day but BEG had to improvise for a little while!

I decided to get my breakfast table and chairs redone and to recover my breakfast table chairs in the new move so my sweet, precious husband took all the old fabric off and it was a task! His poor knuckles are all scarred and cut but I really appreciate his help b/c I sure couldn't have done it!!

The new chairs......I love them!!

George has found his new home in my basket that is meant for my new closet. If I can trick him into getting out of it, I might be able to get it up without him realizing it!!

I'll post pics later this week of the house (once I get a few more things put away!)

Hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing weekend.

CMG