wil walked into our cabin-home for the next two months right about the same time i stepped into our nashville-for sale home.

yesterday i went with my boss to atlanta…she goes once a month and this was my last time accompanying her (it’s usually every other month between me and cassie who joins). it was lame to add two days to the tally of being apart from wil, but before realizing that, i knew i wanted to take advantage of my last chance of visiting atlanta and our usual design stops.

wednesday we leave at 7 am, and it’s a 4 hour drive…we head straight to the design center…walking through showrooms looking at furniture pieces and different lines, requesting fabric samples to take back, and any other odds and ends that we are looking for at the time. it’s always really enjoyable to see things in person and also match faces with names of the people we talk a lot with on the phone.

it also made me curious if whoever i might work for visits the seattle design center and what that might be like.

we wrap up right at 5 when it closes, and usually have a great dinner…last night was no let down. we more often than not will shop for an hour or two- this time we visited the mall (usually it’s philene’s basement). but thursday has in store a very early start with lots of walking, so we honestly go back to the hotel and go to bed very early!

now, i know wil and all those starbucks folks are used to getting up at 4 and 5 in the morning, but it’s not so easy for those of us who are used to getting up 2-3 hours later. it’s rough! but we do it not so much for the deals, but by getting to the antique market while everyone is literally pulling stuff off the trucks, you are ensuring you get the best stuff before someone else! we wake up at 4:45 nashville time, and get to the buildings at about 6…

here is not long after we arrived in the south building…this row of vendors was just starting to unload. carolyn was checking out the size of a chest to be used for in a powder with a sink. it didn’t work.

this is maybe 3 or 4 hours later, and mind you, this view shows about 1/15th of what this building holds, plus a 2nd building of the same size…the ‘booths’ in this building are less defined, except for those hanging blue signs of letters, and tend to look a little more sparse than the north building because the south tends to have large furniture pieces and the north all the lighting, and other piddly things like silver, jewelry, books, etc. and it’s kind of madness the whole time. the economy has hit it, with usual vendors not showing up, or repetitive inventory, or just less inventory like this picture shows…more often than not you are maneuvering between pieces close together.

there’s definitely a lot of interesting nice pieces, but there’s still junk and stuff you wonder why someone bought that thinking someone else would want to buy it from them… our favorite usual dealers are either european, or go to europe themselves.

one very specific thing about scotts is the food. there are ‘food courts’ all over, and it’s all junk! this one is particular makes the whole center smell sooo gross..greasy southern food. just think about smelling fried catfish at 9 in the morning. pleasant.

oddly enough, after a lucky morning after buying a bunch, the power went out in the whole building while we were trying to look at oriental rugs. instead of picking a rug in the dark that we thought was brown and unroll at home and find out it’s like hot purple or something, we left about an hour early. i was quietly thankful, because usually the last hour is the hardest on my feet and mental endurance.

we got to nashville earlier than usual, and i made my way to our quiet home…i don’t want to get myself all down, but it’s really weird sitting at the computer just waiting to hear for the dogs to come up the stairs and see me.

wil, on the other hand, made it to brevard! yesterday was full of goodbyes and last social endeavors…golf, lunch, driving around, dinner, games. and i got a picture from his phone last night…

we decided in the last week to actually let the dogs be on the couch since it was the end of their time with that couch, and who cares! gracie had definitely tried to establish this for the last….well, forever, so you can tell she was all over it, and i don’t think ava quite gets it. : )

it looks like wil might have been stuck in some traffic, but he’s there! i asked him to take a picture of our cabin, so i will share. or maybe he can! maybe we can separately update the blog while we have our own adventures. that’d be fun.

open house today. had three different groups of people come through. we still worked the same amount and were out of the house for the same amount of time for a regular single showing, so i would have only been disappointed if no one showed up.

hey, that’s 3 more potential buyers. our realtor was still there when we returned, and got the lowdown, and said it was all positive…one of the couples loved loved loved the house, and had already placed an offer on a short sale house with the bank, which means they could still have 3 months to wait, and maybe liked the option of this house as a plan b if they decided to withdraw.

but no offer is still no offer. we are patient.

prior to us putting the house on the market, i knew in my head that i’d be stoked if we were even able to sell it by the end of the summer. but since we’ve had so much interest right off the bat, the positivity has actually caused anxiety over not getting an offer yet.  ugh!

and this time is all going way too fast.

wil leaves in like a week and a half and i just can’t handle that realization. him being gone, and how much stuff we potentially have to do and pack before he leaves.

it hurts my head thinking about it.

but we’ll probably have another open house next weekend, or the next. there are just too many variables to why people do and don’t come to open houses, so it makes sense to all of us to just keep getting it out there and available to show. maybe people are on vacation that weekend, maybe the weather is too cold, maybe the weather is too hot, maybe people ran out of time seeing other open houses. you just never know.

but it gives us time to just keep packing, keep tinkering with the age and look of the screened porch (what we feel like is the only thing that could distract people from all the positives), and keep keeping the house clean.

i love having an always clean house! love it.

and the dogs love getting to go in the car so much. i think ava officially thinks that she gets to go everywhere with us now, but we have happy worn out dogs whenever we return. and they keep somehow getting treats from us because wil and i feel bad for disrupting their routine so much.

being in the car is treat enough though right? i’d say yes based on their faces.

if only they know they have 4-5 days straight of this in the next few months…

unfortunately this morning is the morning that the city has decided to trim the trees in our neighborhood that are near power lines.

with that said, ava has gotten into a barking tizzy every ten minutes or so with all the action…probably since about 8:30ish…the big orange road work sign seems to be getting her worked up the most.

i’ll be very suprised if wil has actually been asleep for the last hour.

sorry hun…

not only had i not even deleted the images from christmas off my card yet, the only pictures i have taken since christmas are the few of the oscars statue…i literally had 8 photos for the last two months prior to today.

that’s it. i don’t know what my deal is…i certainly hope i haven’t been unbitten by the photo bug, but i’ve just been completely uninspired to even pick my camera up. i had the novel idea of putting my little point and shoot in my purse with the hopes of capturing more life and friends and social ventures…but it’s been in my purse for over a month and i’ve only taken like two pictures of me and wil at the preds game.

pathetic. maybe spring will get me out of this slump. the trees have started to blossom which is magnificent, so we’ll see.

but, at the request of dena, i tried to get some shots of the girls for at least a start. they were completely dreadful at participating, so this is all you get.

‘you see a kitty cat?!’ i think i am faking her out here.

neither of us knew i was taking a picture…i accidentally had it on 10 second delay…i thought her expression was a funny catch.

ava is significantly taller than gracie now (although gracie’s still got more weight), and i kept trying to get a shot comparing the two…both dogs were oblivious to me or what i was trying to do. the table behind gracie is a 42″ counter height, and ava can sniff stuff above it…

you could totally title every blog in the month of december with a christmas song, there are so many different ones. i wish i thought of that december first!

anyways, the entire point of this entry is just to tell you it snowed last night. and how excited i am.

as we grabbed a couple 4 o’clock starbucks drinks to hold us over after the long days we’ve been having, it was starting to sleet. it’s been very rainy and muddy the last few days, so sleet just made it yuckier.

and then, an hour later, (in the darkness) cassie and i thought the grass at the office actually had a slight tint of white amidst the wet…as i continued east and got home, there was at least an inch of so of snow all around!

i honestly think i smiled the whole drive home (*smiling’s my favorite!*), even being stuck behind terrible drivers who don’t know how to drive in snow (or anything wet for that matter!)…and was excited to see the snow increase with every mile instead of the latter.

i was the first to drive on our little cul-de-sac, so i did a kristen version of a donut to feel cool and turn into the garage.

it’s not going to stay, because it’s just too wet and not cold enough in the forecast…the ground underneath isn’t even frozen in our yard, so it’s a big mud pit already, but feels so christmasy and home like!

the dogs are nutso about it, which in turn drives me nutso. instead of doing their usual bathroom that is on the minute every morning, they just want to eat and run around like goofballs. the second we came inside this morning, gracie usually trots back up to bed, but she just stood at the door, looked at me and play barked. what a brat!

i need it to snow again this year, not on a workday, so i can have time to take pretty pictures…because i only have this one i just took out the upstairs window…just as proof.

and here’s a cutie sleeping ava just to make you feel all snuggly and comfy this weekend.

so here i am. and while sitting here drumming up thoughts, i realized today was a dog day. every once in a while, not by any planning, we’ll have a day that seems to give a lot of attention to the girls. today started with an accidental late wake up, so we missed church (and deciding to go to the 6 o clock service) and lazily got ready. we’ve been having an unseasonably warm october, and today was really pretty to say the least. we had to go to wil’s store for him to do a quick deposit thingy, so the girls got to come with us.

they had their fair share of strangers wave to them as we idled at stoplights, and they watched the happenings of the starbucks/kroger parking lot from the car while we sipped coffee and i ate some oatmeal in the back section of wil’s store (ooo! secretive!)…sidenote: the oatmeal, btw, is really yummy for all your starbucks customers…since the dog park is down the street from wil’s store, we told them we’d go there for a social run around.

as nice as the weather was, there weren’t too many people there, and the dogs weren’t too active. we haven’t been to the dog park in quite some time (definitely not as convenient as the franklin one we could walk to), and it was slightly disappointing that we caught it at an off time. the girls still had fun, and it’s interesting to see their age really affect their activity level…within 25 minutes or so, ava was already laying down in the grass next to us.

eager to get back to his football, wil decided to take all his girls home, so we loaded back into the car once again and made the drive. a quick stop through the walgreens drive thru was great for gracie and ava though, since they got treats from the nice lady behind the glass.

they were exhausted once we got home…even though they didn’t run around at the park all that long, they are just as silly in the car (ava bites the wind), so i think the excitement of the car ride and errands pooped them out. trying to find something to do, i decided to make some dog biscuits. it seemed easy enough to have all of those kind of ingredients on hand…some flour, oats, beef broth and bacon proved to achieve a biscuity kind of thing in a little dog boney shape, so we’ll see what the girls think when they cool down (i’m hoping they like them…these dogs usually eat anything, but ava all the sudden got bored with her food).

hopefully they’ll just sleep the rest of the afternoon…ava is currently spread eagle on the futon…not very ladylike. but right before i came upstairs, they did want to say hello to the internet world:

ava is honored to share her birthday with karly and sherry. happy birthday everyone! (a day late…)

we attempted last weekend to lay the patio we’ve talked about for a couple months, and it was just not a good day for me and wil…hard, labor intensive shoveling with no light at the end of the tunnel is not good for a marriage. but, with a more positive outlook this weekend (also motivated by the fact that the left side was even more of a mudpit with so much recent rain), we picked up the project again …and knocked it out yesterday.

i think we were both surprised at how well everything worked, without any hitches at all. and to top the evening off, we went back to home depot to get wil the grill he’s always been dreaming about.

the dogs, while they couldn’t hang outside with us while we worked, loved every moment we’d let them out for the bathroom…they were dying at the prospect of getting to experience the new lawn, even when we only had a little sliver of it open to them. the grass was truly greener on the other side for them the last two months. they are overjoyed, to say the least. wil almost shed a tear when he saw them go to the bathroom on it the first time…i’d don’t think we’ll ever have a pristine lawn. : (
anyways- here’s lots of pictures (descriptions when you hover the mouse over the pic, fyi)! (notice the change of seasons in the first three pictures!)

the whole set with more pictures is here.

wil picked her up yesterday and i think she was relieved to be back home. she’s was only there for one night, and didn’t eat well while there, so just that made her look like skin and bones when she got back! it’s just so hard to keep weight on her because she’s so gangly and growing. i wondered if gracie missed her or not because she was bizarrely giddy and silly with me the entire night ava was gone, but wil affirmed that gracie truly was super excited to see ava come back through the door. ahhh…they actually do love each other. sleepy ava is a nice change from her normal state, but i doubt it will last very long. she’s supposed to stay mellow for 10 days. pssh….but she’s recovering well with shaved belly and all.

while the laundry’s tumbling in the other room, and with nothing good on tv (we attempted to watch a silly earthquake movie from a few years ago on tv, but it was too cheesy for us to last more than 10 minutes), wil has put the halo on and he told me to write a post. about what? nothing has happened…but i did realize we’ve got a few things on our plate in the next few months that all kind of arose in the last couple weeks.

in about a week we get to host bill and leila for a few days. yay! we love visitors! and we love family visitors even more! since bill’s work stuff is pretty minor, we have quite a bit of time to just hang out and enjoy nashville. we’ve started a list of places to eat, but a few nights i think leila will give us lessons on some awesome italian meals also. can’t wait for that. we’ll go to the hermitage for some civil war history, wil plans to give us all an authentic coffee tasting at his store, and i will hopefully be able to show them through the house that i’ve been heavily involved in at work, since it’s pretty amazing. otherwise our plans will probably fairly low key, maybe hang out with some friends here and there.

a somewhat impromptu trip has been planned for the first of may for me…cassie and i will get to fly out to california for a long weekend…seeing a few historical and architectural sites that we’ve always wanted to visit, going to brett’s azusa graduation and festivities, and then visiting michael at disneyland! we can’t wait for a fun girly/family vacation. flights were a bit tricky…it’s not quite as easy to take a bunch of time off of work when the two of us both work at the same company, of only 3 people! so to make our time off as minimal as possible we’ll fly out right after work on thursday (easy), and then on monday night we leave cal at 9 pm, hop all over the country, and get to nashville at 9 the next morning…and then go straight to work that day. yes we are crazy, and our boss agrees with that statement (she does realize she will be working with two zombies that day), but hey, we’re young and we’ll bounce back!

although not finalized yet, we have one more trip the next month…out to napa for van’s high school graduation in june. wil and i will be able to be out there for almost a week! i’ve been to napa only once before for his sister’s graduation, but have never truly experienced napa the glamorous way people think you would…it was just to visit family. i keep hinting to wil that i want him to take me to do something very wine countryish…or just something a tourist would do.

to look at the calendar and think that after these three big things, it will already be july! and hot! i hope our back yard is really usable and enjoyable by that time. and i really hope we can go camping more than the one time last year. we thought earlier, “great, we have a bigger car this time to take the dogs and camping gear!” but realized our dogs are so big, that we still don’t have enough room for both of them and all the camping stuff…so if anyone would like to come with us, please do so we can use your car as well! : )

well, the laundry just beeped…and if i don’t get up to change it right now, it will sit in there for hours. i hope everyone else enjoys their weekend! happy saturday.