Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Lemonade Award!!!


I am so excited to announce that I received my first award ever while I was on my little hiatus!! I am so stinkin' excited!!

The rules for the award:
  1. Put the Lemonade Award on your blog or post.
  2. Nominate up to 10 blogs that show great attitude or gratitude.
  3. Link to your nominees within your post. Let them know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
  4. Link to the person who gave you your award.

I have every intention of spreading the love of this award! I have so many different book blogs that I read and love, but here is who I would like to pass the award on to (in no particular order):

  1. A Patchwork of Books
  2. Becky's Book Reviews
  3. J. Kaye's Book Blog
  4. Jen Robinson's Book Page
  5. My Friend Amy
  6. Reading Adventures
  7. Stephanie's Confessions of a Book-a-holic
  8. The Book Chook
  9. We Be Reading
  10. Young Readers

I think that each of these blogs is not only inspiring, but also very supportive of their fellow book bloggers. I love their spunk, dedication, and support, even for those that may not even know me! I do believe that some of you have already received the award, so I guess this is just another confirmation that your blog is appreciated!

Thanks to Jessica over at The Curious Reader for the award!!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

I'm Baaaaaaack!!!!!

Wow!!!! It has been too long!! I have been talking about a big move coming up, but so much more has happened since my last post, I thought that I would give a quick overview to sum up the last couple of months.

MOVE #1
Yep, we have move #1 that took place at the end of April. We moved across
4
states to begin our next life adventure. The reason I say #1 is because we did not have a house to move into quite yet. We moved everything into a couple of storage units and moved onto our many adventures. In the meantime, we stayed in hotels and with our gracious friends, the B's!
BIG WEEKEND
We headed back to a small town in the Midwest for my amazing hubby's graduation from medical school!!! As we were pulling into the south end of town, however, the north end of town was being ravaged by a tornado! Many locals, medical students, and others associated with the medical school were directly affected by the tornado, leaving many homeless. On the positive side, the school moved on with all graduation activities and it ended up being a great weekend . . . to watch my hubby's big milestone AND to see the community come together to help all those in need!


HITTING THE ROAD
After the "Big Weekend", we then hit the road to visit family and friends, some of our favorite spots, and to do a little celebrating!! We traveled through
8
states to hit our many destinations, but it was completely worth it!!

Here are just a few of our highlights:

I got to visit one of my all-time favorite bookstores!! Auntie's Bookstore is located in Spokane, Washington and is a must-see if you are in the area! Nothing beats an independent bookstore when you have such great and welcoming employees and when you have the selection of both new and used books that they have! (Okay, I may be a bit biased on this one!!!)

Once we were with family, we also could not pass up a good time to celebrate my husband's amazing accomplishment . . . graduating from medical school!!! One step down, another to go . . . and, the rumor is that it is much harder this time around! Yikes!!

Also, since we were with family, we decided to throw my daughter a little early 1st birthday bash!! It was so much fun to watch her dig into her cake and watch her suck every last bit off of her fingers!!

And, the last big bash . . . my grandparent's 50th Anniversary party that I helped to plan long distance. Though we had a few last minute cancellations, we had a great turnout and my grandparent's had such a great time!! It's not very often anymore that a couple make it this long in marriage, so I'm so proud of them and thankful that they are my grandparents!!

We could not leave the West without seeing a few of my personal childhood favorite hot spots!!

Yellowstone National Park: Canyon

Yellowstone National Park: Firehole Swimming Hole

Yellowstone National Park: Mammoth Hot Springs

Memorial Falls
Whew!!! What an adventure!!! After all this, we then hit the road again to travel back through
8
states . . . this time driving straight through to get home. With two kids, that ended up being a total of approximately
27
hours on the road before arriving back at our new city we now call home.

BOUGHT A HOUSE
We crashed for a good night's sleep before doing our final walk-through and closing on our home over the next couple of days!! We are now officially home-owner's for the first time . . . and it's about time!!! :) And, we can't be more excited about that first-time home-buyer's credit!! :)

MOVE #2
We then had to move all of stuff out of storage and into our new home. Unfortunately, our new house was left quite a mess and we wanted to do a little painting before we started to move things in. So, this is what our little garage looked like for the first week!!



Things are getting better though!! We have completed our painting. Cleaning is just about done. We finally got our bed up and we slept in it for the first time in
45
days!! That was the best feeling of everything!!! We can now see a large portion of the floor in the garage. We can almost see the full garage door from the inside. We are making progress!!! I have yet to unpack any of my books, which is making it difficult to call our new place "home" quite yet. BUT, we are getting there!! In the end, that is what matters!
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In the meantime, I am going to be making some changes that will debut very soon on this here blog! The first thing is a list on my sidebar of my upcoming reviews. It is my hope that it will be simply temporary as I get caught up on all my books to review! Other changes I will announce as I launch them and clean up the site a bit. BUT, bare with me as I continue to get settled!!
See you all back very soon! And, HAPPY READING!!