A Not So Welcome Guest...Or 4

Caleb and I woke up this morning determined to clean the garage out. Over the course of the last month and a half, our garage turned into a clutter zone. It was filled with emptied boxes, paint supplies, and of course all of the stuff we will be storing there. It was very hard to walk around and we wanted to at least get it cleared so we could have room to put shelving in. I am a huge organization freak and everytime I would open the door to the garage I could feel the panic creeping up my chest. It was time to do something.
Caleb got started while I finished up some paperwork for work. I was on the phone with my dad trying to figure out the best benefit package to choose and I hear a loud crash from downstairs followed by Caleb dashing up the stairs. It was so loud my dad heard it on the other end of the phone. I thought Caleb had hurt himself but as soon as he got to the top of the stairs he stopped and just stared at me. I asked him what was wrong and he got one word out of his mouth....."SPIDER". I laughed because I was thinking it was just a small spider that I would have to go and kill. Caleb HATES spiders and wont ever go near them. I am not a big fan of spiders myself but I will kill the occasional spider that makes its way into the house.
I told him I would be there in a minute and the next thing I know, Caleb is at the door again with his paintball gun gased up and ready to go. I laughed again telling him that I would kill the stupid spider and he did not need to worry about shooting the poor thing. Then it hit me, what type of spider was this?
I took one look at this spider in the corner of the garage and said..."shoot it". It was a black widow and I drew the line there. One black widow to kill is not a huge deal but the next thing I know, Caleb turns around to find two more black widows right outside the garage. Now, I am not opposed to sharing my living space with furry members of our animal kingdom (aka, dogs) but cohabitating with arachnids, especially those deadly ones...no thanks.
After our lovely encounter, we cautiously removed boxes from the garage to load into Caleb's car. We had made a pile right outside the trunk and as Caleb put the last box down, we noticed a nice little black blotch with a red spot on its back about a foot from his hand....yep you guessed it, ANOTHER BLACK WIDOW.
4 black widows in one day was more than enough for me and we took a trip to Lowes where we purchased Home Defense Spray and Insect Killer for your yard. We probably overdid it but the only time I intend on seeing a black widow ever again is....NEVER! I guess I should count my blessings though...at least it wasn't a snake...or 4.

Our Mini Vacation

At the end of May, Caleb and I took a long weekend to go to Massachusetts to visit some very close family friends, the Birenbaums. Their oldest son, Justin, was graduating from highschool (this makes me feel very old, he was only 4 when I first met him) and I absolutely could not miss seeing him walk across the stage. Of course I loved seeing Marisa and Corey too. They have grown up so much.Justin Getting ready to graduate

The Birenbaums have a beautiful home and were nice enough to welcome us to stay with them. Our first day there, Adam took us on a nice hike up Blue Mountain where we had a great view of Boston. Unfortunately, he failed to tell us about this view and we left the camera in the caaaaa (car for us southerners). Of course then Adam had to take us by Gillette Stadium and try to convince us to become Pats fans (HA...never...GO FINS).

Laughing at the thought of being a patriot fan

Gillette Stadium


Caleb had never been to MA before so I was so excited to take him to my most favorite city ever, Boston. The Saturday before we left, we took the T into Boston with Corey and the three of us walked the entire city from, Fenway to the North end. Adam, Janet and Marisa met us for some more walking (including Adam's famous tour of all the historical spots) and a GREAT dinner at a small Italian restaurant and then of course desert at the pastry shop. Caleb absolutely loved Boston and although the Sox weren't in town, we did take the tour of Fenway. Caleb was in seventh heaven! I had been to Fenway before for a game and while that was a great time, the tour was a lot of fun as well. There was even a couple getting married in the stands behind home plate while we were there. Now that's a way to get married!

Corey and Caleb in the park

Caleb taking it all in

Fenway

Caleb and I at Fenway

Marisa, Corey, Caleb and I at Faniel Hall

Marisa and Corey

They love eachother and I love them!

We had a wonderful time in Boston and I cannot wait to go back!

As promised...

Here is a picture of the outside of our house and one of part of the family room. I thought that I had taken more of the inside but I guess not. The living room is still a very big work in progress but we LOVE our new furniture and the color we chose to paint the room. It gives it a very Florida feel and you know that I love that! :)

We are planning on doing some different things with the outside landscape but for now it works. Little by little, things will really start to come together!

Back on Track

Ok...so I know that I said that I was going to keep this thing updated but I did not realize just how little free time I was going to have the past few months. My summer has been completely taken up by moving, working and trying to find a job within one of the county school systems. I am happy to say that moving and finding a job have been completed....WOOHOOO!
I will preface my update on the new house by saying....Caleb and I will NOT be moving again for a VERY long time....HAHA! Moving is so exhausting and it seems as though it never ends. We are still swimming in boxes trying to find each thing we own its new place ; however, I can finally say that our house is starting to feel more and more like a home. We started by painting the kitchen and family room and are SO happy with the colors that we chose. The kitchen is my favorite room in the house and for those of you who know me, that is a BOLD statment! HAHA! Caleb is loving the fact that I love my kitchen because it means that he is not cooking as much as he used to at the old place. Well, I take that back, he is still cooking a lot but now he has a cooking partner which both of us are enjoying.
The first weekend we were here, Caleb, his dad, Evan, Stephen, and Jerry all built our fence. It was a huge project and I know for a fact that it is the last fence that at least 4 out of the 5 guys will ever build themselves. They did an amazing job though. Our builder came by and said it looked like it was professionally done. Our backyard is huge and I cannot wait until fall when we can finally get some good grass seed down. Right now, there are huge patches of red mud in between weeds. We can use the backyard only when it has not rained for 2 or 3 days otherwise our dogs are being walked around the neighborhood. Cleaning the red mud off of our new carpets is not my idea of fun!
The house is really starting to come together. Of course we have a list of projects we want to do but owning a house is an ongoing process and they will get done little by little.
On another note, I finally got a job! YAY! I am teaching in the Orange County School system. I am one of three new Pre-K teachers in the system. The program is funded by Title 1. This means that the children who qualify for this program are at risk of failing school before they even start. This can be because of the child's family's socio-economic status, if the child does not speak english or many other reasons. I am really excited about this job and cannot wait to start next week. I actually have workshops and training starting tomorrow but the 18th is my official start date. I don't think the kids will be coming to the classroom until the 1st of Septemeber but I will be meeting them at their homes before we start.
Caleb is doing really well. He stays busy at work but is not the happiest there. Once I get established in my job in a few months, he will start to look for another job. He has his degree that Timco does not recognize and he is just frustrated with the situation. Hopefully something will come his way. He definitely deserves it.
I have pictures on our camera of the new house and all of the progress we are making that I promise to post as soon as I find the transfer cord. I am going to go through the office boxes now and hopefully within the next hour, I will have pictures! I am really going to try to keep on top of posting. It is definitely a great outlet.

House Progress!

Last Friday 3/28, we went out to the house to see what type of progress they had made. The workers were still there at around 7:00 pm and they were finishing up smoothing the cement they had just poured. The builder told us that after the cement was poured they needed to wait four days to let it completely dry before they began anything else. The four day mark would have meant that any more work would not start until this past Tuesday. Caleb and I thought about going down to see if anything had been done on Wednesday but opted not to as we were sure that because of the continuous rain nothing would be done. Yesterday (Friday), we decided to go ahead and make a quick trip down to the house just to see if maybe they had started since we did have one day with a break in the rain this week. We were sure that any progress would be minimal but were excited none the less to see anything new.

As we were driving the last 1/2 mile up the road to the house, I joked with Caleb that we would be able to see the top of the house over the neighbors house. He laughed and said, "Yeah, I wish". The next thing out of my mouth was, "Hello house!" To our shock and surprise, as we rounded the corner, the entire structure of the house was up. The roof, outer walls with windows cut out, porch, etc... were all there. Neither of us could say a word, we just stared in amazement that just 7 days prior, there was newly laid concrete.

We watched the workers lay the tar paper on the roof and then decided to go and grab a bite to eat and come back when they finished working so we could go inside and look around. When we left, they were still laying tar paper and there was one half of the garage roof missing. We returned about an hour or so later and to our surprise, all of the tar paper was laid and the other half of the garage roof was there with tar paper over it. WOW!

It began to rain at that point but we were too excited to care and got out and tredged through the famous NC red MUD right into the house. It was so exciting. We could see all of the rooms and just imagined how it would look when it was all finished. We did notice a few things that need to be addressed with the builder but they were not major and will not get in the way of any more progress! Here are some pictures of the progress that has been made. We signed the papers at the pre-building meeting on March 21st. The house was boxed out and they put in the plumbing that following week followed by the cement for the foundation. Now we have a house....WOW!

The house boxed off on the "building pad"

Boxed off from the front

Boxed from the backyard property line

We have PLUMBING! Woohoo!!! :)

And the cement is poured

Michelle, Evan, Liam, Caleb and I walked up from their place to see the progress last Friday

Liam was excited, haha, too cute, he met the little boy his age down the street too!

This is what was waiting for us after only a week of not coming to check!!!

A Little Hard to see through the rain and dark but there she is!!! YAY!

I will post pictures of the inside soon! I haven't uploaded them all yet!!!

It's Been A While!

WOW! I started this blog with the intention of writing at least once a week. I did not know how busy I would get this semester student teaching. Now that I have finally gotten into a routine with student teaching, I should be able to keep up with it a little more.

So much has happened in the last three months! Caleb and I are enjoying married life. I have changed my name on almost everything and what a hassle that was for a little while. For some reason, after I changed my name, a few of the utility bills stopped coming to the house. I had not taken the time to call the companies because I figured I would just fill out the information on the back of the statement when I sent in my payment. I did not ever imagine there would be a problem sending the bills to my house because the name had changed. After all, my last name changed to Saul but my middle name became Moeller. It does not quite make sense that some bills would stop coming. Apparently, the story I got from the post office was that around the same time my name changed, a new postal worker began taking our mail route. He was delivering a lot of mail with the name Holly Saul on it so he just assumed that the Moeller was the incorrect address and the mail ended up in a bin AT THE POST OFFICE. Of course, with everything going on, I failed to notice that the bills did not come and just assumed Caleb was taking care of them. It was not until I told Caleb that I needed to call the companies and change my name because he had been sending them off before I could fill out the form, that we realized the bills had never been paid. Oops. I called the companies and they were all pretty nice about it and we were able to get the situation taken care of. I then went to the post office and had it out with them but everything is up and running now and the mailman knows that "Moeller" is still part of a name here in this house...GEEZ! It's not like the first name ever changed...HA!

Anyway...besides the mail "crisis", Caleb and I are doing really well. Caleb is very busy at work. They are getting planes in one after the other and his crew is usually responsible for the area of the plane in the most need of repairs. He is the smallest guy on the crew so he usually ends up doing any repairs in the fuel tank as it is a small cramped area that only so many people can fit into. Those are my favorite days as he comes home reaking of gasoline and the smell does not easily wash out of his clothes. I started to use apple cider vinegar mixed with our laundry detergent and that seems to do the trick (it also gets the smell of must out of laundry if you accidently leave clothes in the washer for too long...haha...I wouldn't know though ;) ;)).

I am extremely busy with school and student teaching. I am in a kindergarten class at Pilot Elementary School. There are 25 children in the classroom so it can be a little bit overwhelming and stressful at times. I have a wonderful cooperating teacher, Mrs. Peacock, and have learned so much from her. Her assistant, Mrs. Barrett, is amazing as well and I really enjoy working with the two of them. Teaching kindergarten is a lot harder than I thought it would be. There is so much pressure on the teacher to teach these little ones the skills they will need to make it in the first grade. I remember kindergarten being a fun class where the focus was on the social aspect of schooling with some focus on the very basics like learning your ABCs and to count to 20. I am doing lessons with these 5 and 6 year olds on Cause and Effect, addition and subtraction, setting, characters and author's purpose in a story, spelling quizzes etc.... It is absolutely amazing to me that these children really understand some of these concepts or even have to at this point. I do know that they will be ready for first grade but I feel bad that allowing them to be kids is almost completely taken out of the kindergarten experience these days.

I have about a month left with these kids and then it is on to graduation...WOOOOHOOOO! I absolutely CANNOT wait! I have begun the job search and am applying in several different areas of the Early Childhood field. My number one choice is in the Chapel Hill Carrboro School System with a program called First School. It is a new program being implemented for children ages 3-8. We know that children's early experiences in life really shape their attitude toward the future and schooling. This program is seeking to work closely with families and children to see if the approach toward teaching and learning needs to be changed. Instead of a more curriculum based approach with the children, this program will take a more developmental approach. The classrooms will be child-centered and lessons will be planned around observations of the child's interests. It is a really interesting outlook on early education for children and I am hoping to land a job in this program.

Some of the most exciting news for Caleb and I is that we have bought a house. We are so excited. The house is being built in Whitsett, NC which is right outside of Burlington. Burlington is about 30 minutes east of Greensboro. This will put us in the middle of Chapel Hill and Greensboro. If I get a job in Chapel Hill, Caleb and I will have equal distances to travel to work. The house is scheduled to be finished (if we have nice weather) the end of May or the beginning of June. This is a lot sooner than we had anticipated so we are really going to have to start getting organized. We will be taking weekly visits down to the building site to see the progress and make sure it is being built to our standards...HA! I will post pictures as the building progresses! Right now, they have boxed off the area where the house will be and today they will be putting in plumbing. They will then poor the concrete for the foundation this week. They have to wait four days for the concrete to dry and then they will immdiately beging framing. It is fun being able to watch the house at each stage. We are finally getting out of a renting situation and could not be any happier!

I am on spring break this week, and besides jury duty tomorrow, am devoting this entire week to a little spring cleaning (in preparation for the move in a few months). I hope that this beginning of spring finds everyone happy and healthy! Look for more frequent posts! I have finally gotten myself into a routine of sorts! Lots of Love!!!!

I will leave you with a few pictures from our honeymoon!

Canopy Tour through the Jamaican Jungle (absolutely AMAZING)

Caleb loved this!

Lounging at the swim up bar!

Candle Lit Dinner on the Beach!

(Below): Showing a little Jamaican Spirit! HA! (they made us wear these hats)