I'm Still Here!

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately, but I think posts with pictures are more fun and for some reason I can’t get my laptop to recognize my camera which means I haven’t been able to load pictures. I am going to try to do it on another computer so we’ll see if I can get some loaded.
Things are moving along good with the house. There is officially a “SOLD” sign in the yard, yay! Of course we had to take a picture with it! Once again, hope this isn’t jinxing anything!

Last night we went to my Great-Grandmother’s (Momi) 90th birthday! She is just amazing and her and my PawPaw are in their 90s and still driving everywhere and living on their own. I sure hope to be like them one dayJ The party was at a relatives house that we don’t see except for these type of occasions. This house was super fancy-dancy so it was fun to walk around and see all the expensive things. My brother and I felt like bulls in china shops because of the knick-knacks and expensive things everywhere we were scared to move! Momi wore a tiara through the night since she was the birthday girl. And dinner was catered by Bella Bella, can we say YUM?! We had spaghetti, chicken parmesan, salad & bread. It was soooo good. And then we topped it off with some kind of DELICIOUS cake which I don’t know who made it but it was sooo good too. Oh and they had cokes- in bottles! I love coke in bottles!

This is Me, Mom, GMa, and Momi- 4 generations!

Also this weekend, Kim + Josh were in town. Lindsay and I threw her a bridal shower. We had a quaint crowd but it was still fun! It’s almost exactly a month til their wedding in St. Augustine and I’m so excited! Here's the Bride to be and the hostesses:

Hope this week goes by fast, counting down the days to closing! In case you are wondering, it’s 26, whoop whoop!

Procrastinator

SIDENOTE: This is a post from last week that I'm just now able to post since I now have my pictures loaded some some info. may be outdated:)

Well things are moving along on the house front. Getting the MANY things checked off the list has been pretty daunting but they are getting done so we’re making progress! Our Closing Date is set for April 9th, but hopefully it will be even sooner than that because I am so ready to move in! We had our inspection last week and good news, looks like the house isn’t gonna fall apartJ Other than just a few minor things it checked out okay overall so we definitely breathed a sigh of relief. Something I did during the inspection was walk around and take pictures of every possible wall to be painted so I can figure out what colors to do. It’s so hard! Sherwin Williams has this awesome thing though called a color visualize which lets you upload a picture of a room, outline the space you want to paint, and try all different colors on it! It’s soooo cool but I am having a really hard time deciding still on what I want to do. We just want that warm cozy feel so hopefully that’s what we achieve when we’re done!
This past weekend we were given some more FSU Baseball tickets so we braved the cold and headed to the ball game. I use my snuggie all the time but it was perfect for the game & not to mention it’s FSU! (Thanks Erin:)

David and his Dad also finished the bunny house project on Sunday, and here’s the finished result! It turned out great, and it’s more like a “Bunny Condo”. Spoiled rabbits, have you ever heard of such a thing?

And of course this post wouldn’t be complete without a picture of the pooch. He gets more handsome everyday! (At least we think soJ) He’s 66 lbs. now and still has a lot of growing left to do, a big boy! Oh and he loves to drink out of the water spigot!

WE'RE UNDER CONTRACT!!

Susan our realtor just called us and our counter offer was accepted, WE'RE OFFICIALLY UNDER CONTRACT!! Now that we're pending, I'm gonna go ahead and post a picture. I'm scared to jinx it though! Now let's hope for a smooth inspection & easy lending process:)

WE'RE UNDER CONTRACT!!

Susan our realtor just called us and our counter offer was accepted, WE'RE OFFICIALLY UNDER CONTRACT!! Now that we're pending, I'm gonna go ahead and post a picture. Hope it doesn't jinx anything! Now let's hope for a smooth inspection & easy lending process:)

Weekend Wrap-Up and House Update

I know it’s now Tuesday but I figured I’d still talk about our weekend. It wasn’t too eventful but Saturday David and his Dad started building a new rabbit cage for our bunnies to take with us when we move. The one they have now is awesome but it’s pretty big and he wanted to downsize a little. It’s coming along well and should be done by this weekend!

Sunday my brother and I went to the FSU baseball game. The weather was gorgeous but chilly! A co-worker of David’s had given him his tickets which were located in the grand stands. They were great seats but we were in the shade and the breeze was blowing and it wasn’t too fun. We ended up leaving in the bottom of the fifth because the game wasn’t too exciting and it was just too dang cold.

Now to some more exciting news, last night we were able to get both of our parents in to look at a house we’d been wanting to put an offer on. We had been trying to get in for some time and the renters finally let us in, and then we had to wait yet again to get our parents in to see it. But long story short, we put an offer on it!! Yay! We are supposed to hear a yes or no by 5:00 today so we’ll see what happens. I’m writing this on my lunch break so by the time I post this tonight I’ll be adding an update to this post…hopefully we can call it ours soon!!

***UPDATE***As of two hours ago we counter offered the counter offer...hopefully it's accepted:/

To make a happy evening (last night) turn in to a bit of a bummer, my brother who goes to TCC came out of his class to leave and found that someone had tried to steal his Jeep. The key hole on the door had been tampered with/broken & then the whole bottom half of the steering wheel was missing with the ignition key hole damaged and wires and electronic stuff sticking out…I hate this for him. For those of you that know my brother, he’s just a quiet kid who doesn’t bother anyone and just does his own thing. He didn’t deserve this and I hope that whoever did it, Karma catches up with them. I hate the way the world is these days…here’s his steering wheel

One More Thing

I forgot to mention, if you would like to create your own signature, go HERE and follow the instructions:)

I Just Wanted to Post to See my New Signature...

And it worked! (I think, at least it shows in my preview). I always saw cute signatures on other people's blogs and it took me about two hours but I finally figured out how to make one! I'm sure I did it the hardest way possible but in the end it turned out really cute I think:)

Oh and just a little update, tomorrow at 5:30 we have an appointment for us and our parents to see the house we are hoping to put an offer on! Fingers crossed for a good outcome and hopefully this time tomorrow we have an offer on it! Trying not to get too excited because I hate being let down...

I'll keep you posted!

So There's This Job...That I Love!

I figured I’d take a break from house hunting blogs and write about something that consumes 40 hours a week of my time, my job as a Biologist!

One of the many reasons I chose to major in Biology was that more than likely I would be in a career that didn’t involve sitting behind a desk for 8 hours a day. And let me clarify there is nothing wrong with that, it’s just not for me. I like to be in different settings and get be up and around on my feet, which I get to do for parts of my day.

Landing this job right out of college was so exciting for me and I can say that I really love what I do. I actually applied for a Seed Lab Technician (entry level) and got a call to see if I wanted to interview instead for a Biological Scientist I in the Feed Lab, um yes please! There’s no telling what my future holds but for now, I am happy, thankful and love my job!

So here’s a little background on why I even have a job: I’m sure you all have heard of the term “Mad Cow Disease”. Well my job in a nutshell is to try and prevent Mad Cow, also known as BSE or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. That’s a mouthful for anyone so we’ll just stick with Mad Cow! Basically a cow becomes infected with this disease when they are fed proteins from an infected cow already with the disease. The way this happens is when a cow dies from mad cow, it may be “ground up” for lack of a better word and re-processed into animal feed which is then fed back to cows that we eat. The whole reason this is an issue is because there’s a human form of mad cow called vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) which is fatal in humans. Bottom line, human eats infected cow, human dies. Not good!

This is where I come into play…I receive feed samples collected by inspectors from all over Florida and I perform analysis on them to see if they contain these specific animal proteins. This is done by grinding the raw samples, extracting the DNA, multiplying that DNA, and then running it on a gel where a present band at a certain molecular weight will indicate a positive sample. A sample that comes back positive is then passed on to another department and could lead to an entire recall or stop sale on that particular brand of feed. Pretty cool huh?!

I got permission from my supervisor to take these photos before plastering them on my blog, so let’s start the tour!

PS- Sorry if this is boring to anyone, I quite enjoy it:)

Did We Find It?!

Yesterday we FINALLY got into a house we've been waiting to get into for 3 weeks. Let's just say we're thinking it was worth the wait! We were so excited and wanted to put an offer on it last night but after talking with our parents they thought it might be good if they checked it out first. (Ya know, the Dads have the common sense when it comes to the condition of houses) SO we are anxiously waiting to get back into the house when the folks can come. We're hoping it will be no later than this weekend because we think it's "the one"! It has it's pros and cons but the pros definitely outweigh the cons so that's good! To be continued on the house news. Fingers crossed that no one becomes interested in it while we're trying to get back in...the renters are not very willing to let the house be shown. Long story short, it makes seeing it a pain in the butt!

In other news, I am SO ready for warmer weather! This past weekend was just beautiful, more please! I am also very ready to go to the beach and take Remington too! Although not so ready for bikini season lol...i think a nice new suit would help make it a little better! *wink wink David*:)

Oh yeah, and we're getting one of these this weekend...

And no, I don't mean the great dane! It's called the Sporn No-Pull Halter. Since Remi has gotten so much stronger, so has his pulling. I can't seem to break him of it and yesterday it was so bad he bent the connector clip on his leash! aye ya yay...I'm not into the choker spike collar so i've heard good things about this. Apparently when they pull it lifts their body up and is uncomfortable under their armpits. So we're gonna give it a try, even if it's for a short period of time just to break him of his pulling habit, it would makes walks much more pleasurable!

Annnnd my bridesmaid dress came in for Kim's wedding, can't wait to pick it up this weekend:) Hope it fits!

I'll leave you with a few pics from this past BEAUTIFUL weekend! Sidenote- the bald spot on his forehead is from me trying to get a tick out with tweezers...kind of overplucked, bless his heart!

*Hope to be blogging about us putting an offer on a house soon!

An Uneventful Update

The house process is moving slow. We fell in love with a short sale that we ultimately decided would not work for so many reasons:/ It was the first house that we both looked at each other and said "this is the house". The problem with the short sale is a VERY long waiting time to hear back from the back, and also unfortunately there is little to no room for negotiations and since this is a buyers market, we feel we should be getting a better deal. Boo for short sales, their making our search much harder than we thought it'd be since so many places out there are short sales.

We are STILL waiting to get into a house that we were supposed to have seen quite a few weeks ago. Apparently now the owner has served the tenant an eviction notice because they are not cooperating. It's disappointing because we love the exterior of the house which we've seen several times now, but we can't for the life of us see the interior...VER FRUSTRATING!

In other news, Remington is becoming a small giant:) He's a 60lb. 6 mo. old puppy and we just love him to pieces.

Not much else to report in the James fam, but we're glad the weather is beginning to become a little more enjoyable, it's about time!

Oh and today Lindsay and I got together to do some planning for Kimbojangle's bridal shower, I can't wait for her wedding in St. Augustine!

Okay out of things to say:)

Blah Blah Blah

Well today was finally our meeting that was rescheduled from Monday for unknown reasons not on our part, and let's just say, it was not worth the wait. The house we were told we would be able to see, the tenant apparently "came down with the flu". Okay, so maybe they have the flu, and we'll never know whether they did or not, but c'mon! If you'd have let us in Monday when we were supposed to come then we could have already been out of your hair!

I don't know why I keep getting excited about having a house appointment because this is not the first time we have been looking forward to something like allll week only to show up and be told we couldn't see the house. So we're not really happy campers. So many places we are dying to see we are still facing the problem of renters not being cooperative, and it's killing us...Oh well, He has his plan and I guess he's got to throw us some curve balls before we can hit a homerun:)

Fingers crossed we'll be able to get into the house this weekend...

AVATAR=AMAZING

The other day David calls me and says hey you wanna go see Avatar? HECK YES! I admit when I saw the previews I wasn’t really into seeing this movie because it didn’t seem like my cup of tea, but ever since it’s become the highest grossing movie of all time I had to see what I’d been missing out on. I’d been bugging David for the past couple of days that I really wanted to see it and he still wasn’t convinced that we needed to spend the money on a movie. (being the Mr. Finance that he is) Well after talking with his friend at work who had just seen it and told David it was really good, of course then it’s something we must do lol. Fine with me!
So anyways the movie was about 2.5 hours and it didn’t even seem like it. Not once did I think “is it almost over yet?” In fact I could have watched another hour of it!
The effects in this movie are so good and the super cool 3D glasses we got to wear made it that much better! It’s so realistic it’s scary and really makes you think if there’s life o n another planet…

Anywho, just thought I’d take a minute to make a recommendation if you’re looking for a great movie!

Hanging in There

Well still no luck on the house front. I’ll admit we have been being pretty picky about what we are looking for and I think we may have to really start compromising on some things. The main difficulty we’re having is location. In the area we are looking, there is not a lot for sale or there are things for sale that are not worth the money. Decisions decisions…

In other news, we are officially moved out of our Quad. We miss it a lot more than we thought we would, plus there’s attachment because it was “Our First Place”. I am very thankful though that it was a smooth transaction with our wonderful renters. They will be moving in this weekend so I’m very excited for them and to see the place once it’s decorated how they want it! Here are some pictures of the moving process. The one of Remi on the boxes cracks me up! The story is his toy basket was stacked up amongst the boxes that were piled in the living room and I turn around to find him like this!

Here's some other moving pics: David finding a small corner to eat at!

And here's David trying to convince Remi to go into his new crate!

I guess he figured they had been mis-placed and he was going up to get them! Too funny…
Things are going good in other areas of my life. My job is still going great although I am beginning to look for a new position just based on the fact that my current position does not offer benefits. I am really hoping to find something in Biology though because I really do love what I do and would love to be doing something very similar in the future. If times get tough or I have trouble finding something else though, I’ll be resorting to another field which I hope will be the last resort. Being a Bio major was the best thing I ever did and I would love to continue to use it!
Umm…what else what else…oh yeah, ordering my Bridesmaid dress this weekend for my SIL’s wedding. It’s super duper cute and I’ll be happy to add it to my wardrobe after the wedding is over:)

Other than that all is well and just steady House-Hunting & looking forward to Renee’s baby shower this weekend!

Agenda for tonight is head over to the in-laws tonight for Chinese & spending time with the Hubs & the Pup :)

Feelin' Discouraged...

I loooove this show! I'm sure you've seen it, "ding dong" is how it starts and I know I have approximately 22 minutes of bliss while I watch. I don't know what it is about being at the different phases of your life and the shows that relate to it, but I tell ya they're addicting! When I was engaged I couldn't get enough of wedding shows but now that I'm married I have hardly seen any! Now that we're official House Hunters ourselves, this is my favorite show:) Our TV might as well only have one channel, HGTV.

Now on another note, I would like to know how many houses people on this show look at before they purchase their home. You know, before they narrow it down to the three? David and I both thought that this house hunting process would be a lot easier but we're finding that that's not the case:/ So many houses that we have had high hopes for, we have been let down by in a matter of minutes after walking through the doors. Wanna know why? RENTERS. By gosh 90% of the houses we have looked at are all or have been occupied by renters and let me tell you, the owners are doing themselves a huge disgrace by putting these places up for sale in the conditions they're in. One owner we have talked to said anything we wanted fixed he would make it happen, but if he's planning to do that anyway, why not do that now and try to sell it so a buyer can see it's full potential? I just don't get it...it stinks!

We have one we LOVE and one we like but of course the one we love is the most expensive. go figure!

And this is kind of what we've been feeling like:

Okay so the places we have been looking at aren't that bad but sometimes you feel that way! And it's actually quite fun when you actually find something you like! But it's like you want me to pay THIS for THAT?! Oh well...patience is a virtue. So patient we will be until we find the one!

Brrr!

Well I had quite a few pictures to add to a new post, but i am having computer space problems and a dead camera battery so go figure!

This weather has been pretty crazy for sure, this morning my parents pond was frozen! It was pretty cool, but unfortunately not frozen enough to slide/skate on it like I wanted to:/

Well here's the news on the House front: In order to get out of our lease we either had to pay it off or find a renter. Fingers crossed everything goes through with our new renter (you know who you are and we can't thank you enough!!). It was an answer to our prayers for sure because goodness knows we didn't want to have to pay out the end of the lease.

Yesterday was our first official day of house hunting. We were super excited and had fun but unfortunately didn't find anything yesterday that we want to really consider. We were bummed big time because 3 of our top 5 picks to go and view did not happen because the renters that are currently occupying those houses were not cooperating and letting us view the houses. Pretty bad for the seller that's for sure. But luckily we have a great Realtor and she is going to notify the Owner on Monday and try and get us in there ASAP!

Kim (sis-in-law) was in town this weekend and it was good spending some time with her and doing some wedding stuff! Remember her wedding is in April in St. Augustine and I can't wait! Plus it's been several years since I've been to St. Augustine so I'm definitely looking forward to it.

We've got chili on the stove, a fire going & my snuggie: love sunday evenings at home!