New Chapter

I have been horrible at keeping our blog updated lately. Life has just been crazy! We moved into our new house, both of us were going to school, and I'm into my last weeks of my first year of teaching!

The house is fabulous! We're both enjoying it and I am very excited to see how the yard looks all grown in and green. I know we have A LOT of strawberries and raspberries. I'm going to leave the yard alone until June so I can see if other flowers and plants grown in so I don't get too carried away and rip things out. However, that may be difficult because it has been so long since I've been able to play in the dirt! After mowing lawns/doing yard work for 8 years and then working at a greenhouse for 5, it's kind of hard to not love the dirt.

Scott finished his 1st semester back at school. I finished another semester working towards my Master's. Both of us are glad for the semester to be over. It's not a lot of fun going to work, going to class, and having homework on top of that!

Scott is also a volunteer firefighter for the Mat-Su Borough now. He was hired in March and since then has going through 2 different trainings. Almost every day for 3 weeks in March was Basic training and then in April for 3 weeks, he had Advanced training. Now it is time for a break from training. Although, Scott is looking forward to Rescue training in the fall. That will include extrication, basically, cutting up cars.

Only 9 more school days left in the school year!! Yahoo!! I'm am super excited!!! I've enjoyed my year but it has definitely been a tough year! I am ready for a break to hang out and spend time with my incredible, supportive hubby!

Last of all, Scott and I are excited to start a new chapter in our lives. Come December, we will be welcoming a little one into our small family! We've had our first appointment and first ultrasound which was a crazy experience. I don't know about anyone else, but I still think it's crazy that I'm old enough and mature enough to be married, have a career job, or to own a house, let alone be allowed to have a kid! We're definitely excited about it.  I had my ultra sound kind of early because of all the craziness with the end of school and not wanting to have a substitute for all that craziness, but here is the little one!

According to my nephew, Lucian, we are going to have puppy! Aren't we just excited! ha ha

(no posts on Facebook yet please.... Thanks!!)

Night Out

On our way to see Dierks Bentley and Eli Young Band! :)

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Home Tour

I finally got our house pretty close to clean enough to share. There are definitely still things to clean up and find home for, but I'm feeling pretty good for being in the house for only 2 1/2 weeks :)

Welcome to our home!

When you come in, you choose if you want to go upstairs or down.

If you go upstairs, here is what you'll see:

the bathroom on the right, the master bedroom and a 2nd bedroom on the left.

This is our living room. It's wide open and I love it!

Some of the furniture isn't ours. The previous owners, friends of ours, left some and we'll be taking care of it in the next little while.

The dining area wrapping into the kitchen. The column in the middle is actually our pantry.

This is downstairs. The door straight ahead leads to the garage. The first opening on the right lead up stairs, the 2nd is a storage area under the stairs. The laundry room and a 2nd bathroom are on the left.

These next two pictures are of one long room down stairs. It is also the least put together. One half is going to be an extra couch (hide-a-bed) and the other half is going to be my craft/sewing area.

I'm going to be painting those tall cabinets and then I'll be able to organize my craft area better.

This is our deck. :) The swing and grill aren't ours, but we have our own grill to put up there. One nice thing about the deck is that it's water tight so the area below it stays dry.

Hope you enjoyed your tour! 

We painted!

So we've been in our new house now for almost two weeks and I am sick of unpacking boxes. I think we've done a pretty good job at getting settled and finding things a home. There is still a lot to do but I was just kind of done with it for awhile. I needed something new...so we painted a wall! This is in our entry way and it makes me so happy to look at it! We found the perfect color to emphasize the quilt but also compliment the valance that Scott made me. The quilt is very special. My grandmother hand quilted it and even though it's hard to see the design in the picture it says "Scott & Stephanie  August 9, 2008 Logan Temple" with a detailed picture of the Logan Temple.  Then we put pictures, our engraved servers from our wedding, and my vase with dried roses that has at least one rose from every bouquet Scott has given me. It makes me super happy to look at it. A lot of work has gone into that wall, more than just the painting, and it gives just the touch to make this house become a little more like our home!

Coaching

I love sports and coaching is a way for me to stay involved with athletics. I've been doing what I can to help get experience. So far, I've coached elementary track, elementary basketball and 2 years of being an assistant coach to a 7/8 comp. league girls basketball. It keeps me super busy, but it seems that I generally get more done when I only have a small time frame to work on it. Anyways, the point of this post is about my 7/8 girls team!

Comp. season is from the end of December until the last week of February. Last year I was introduced to Scott Olsen, a teacher at Colony middle, who coaches middle school ball and the comp team. This year, I joined him again. We had a great group of girls! They came from all different schools but we they got on the court, they were one team. We went into the tournament in 3rd place in the bracket. We beat out our first team and then hung on to win our 2nd game by one point. It was intense! I think I was more anxious and tense than I ever was as a player. At least as a player, I knew I could go out on the court to make a difference. As a coach all I can do it call out what I see and give encouragement, I can't go play it for them. Also, as a player, I know how I played. As a coach, I don't want the girls to feel down. I want to them to do their best so they don't have to wonder if they could have won. I hope that makes sense...

Anyways, we ended up making it to the championship! We'd split the two games we had previously played against the other team. They came out and played hard. We started out behind and just never were able to pull it out, but they still played hard. We took 2nd place (which still got a trophy) and the knowledge that we had at least beat every team in the league once!

Way to go girls!! I'm excited for next year. We only had two 8th graders so if they all come back, we should have a fabulous team next year!

I'll post our team pic with me when I get it :)

House!

At the end of January, Scott and I decided to begin looking for a house. We began to read and learn a lot about looking at houses. We looked at 5 houses one weekend and then found out that our friends were selling their house. The house had been on the market with a realtor for few months and they let the listing run out in December to try to sell it on their own. We looked at it and love it, thought about it and then decided to put in an offer. They accepted! Our closing date is April 13 but hopefully things move quicker, even though that is pretty soon. We are very excited to become homeowners!

This is a picture of a picture so it's backwards. 

You may want to turn off the sound otherwise you'll hear me and one other lady talking.

This first video is headed into the basement from the garage.

This is headed up the stairs from the basement.

Sorry about the videos... I'll try to get them to work...otherwise I'll take pictures next time we go over and post them.

Chocolate!

Who needs a regular box of chocolates? I got a box of chocolates in a box MADE of white chocolate!! :)