My Planner

I was extremely bored today, and I don't have a computer in my classroom. I still had lots of down time today, because a lot of the teachers didn't send their kids to me for tutoring since it's just the second day of school and they're still getting the schedule down. So what did I do to fill the time? I skimmed through my planner, which I've had since last July (the wedding). I write down EVERYTHING in my planner, so sometimes it's fun to go back and read what I was doing a year ago. (Is that weird?? I'm such a reminiscer...even though that's not a word!)

So what was I doing a year ago? It was such an exciting time! We were getting ready to buy our house. Not only that, but we were getting ready to completely GUT the upstairs of our house, which is the part that we live in now. It seemed like we were making trips to the bank multiple times a week to get everything in order and apply for our loan. The nights that weren't spent at the bank were spent at Home Depot. I used to absolutely hate stores like that, but last year I learned to love them. It's such a fun place to dream about the future! I joked that I could navigate my way through Home Depot blindfolded by the end of all the renovations. We even kind of got to know some of the people who worked there a little bit.
Weeknights and Saturdays during the fall were all spent on home renovations (we bought the house from my uncle, so he let us come in and start working before we had technically closed on the loan). Right before we were supposed to close, we found out that we had to paint the whole exterior of the house. We were devastated, and so frustrated when we found out the news! But ya know what? A few autumn Saturdays were spent painting the house with a bunch of our friends, and those are some of my fondest memories of the whole house-buying/renovating process. God was there for us and provided us with everything we needed. There were probably 10 or 15 of us who would spend all day painting, talking, laughing, and eating picnic lunches provided by loved ones out on the porch steps and in the lawn. It's crazy, but I miss that time!
In my planner, I wrote down every day's plan for renovations. But it was fun to also read about our plans to go to late movies or out with friends on the weekend during the process. Those fun, care-free nights kept us sane during the hectic month-and-a-half of serious renovations.

Then there was that week in October that we finally found someone to rent the apartment we had been living in. Our landlord gave us seven days to be completely moved out. SEVEN. I hadn't even started packing yet. How could I, when every spare minute was spent working on the house?? And the house was nowhere NEAR being done. We worked like crazy people that entire week with SO MUCH help from our families, and ended up staying at Luke's grandparents' house for two more weeks after we moved out, because the new house was nowhere NEAR liveable yet. Those weeks were fun, too. We would get home from working on the house, and just absolutely crash until the next morning. It was a good kind of exhausted, though.So we finally moved in on November 9. But I sure miss the process of getting there! Now we have to worry about things like repairing our heater before next winter, and solving a really annoying problem we're having with the sanitation department. Being landlords is not always fun. And I do miss our little apartment even though I only lived there for three months. But I am so grateful to have this wonderful opportunity to own a house, and rent out apartments in it.
It's so funny how some of the most stressful and crazy times can yield some of the most precious memories (I just wish I had been keeping a blog at that time so I could go back and read all of my thoughts, and all of our progress! Oh well :-P)