On July 28th, Locke and I bought our first home together! Here are pictures of closing and of the moving truck in front of our new house!

Pictures of the inside of the house will be posted as we get things unpacked, organized, and decorated!

Our New House!!

This is our new house!!!

Well...it's not technically ours yet. We made an offer, they countered, and we accepted. Now we're in the process of having it inspected and negotiating repairs, then we'll get it appraised and make sure everything works out with that and then close at the end of July! I am so excited! I feel so grown-up :)

Updates

Here are a few updates that I can expand on later:

-Thursday is the last day of school for students and Friday is the last day for teachers!!! I will have a lot more time to blog after that :)

-I have a new job for next school year. I will be teaching at Hunter's Bend Elementary in Williamson County. More to come on this later...

-Locke and I are meeting with the realtor on Thursday afternoon to sign paperwork and our house should be listed and officially on the market on Friday!! Yay! We have worked really hard getting it ready to sell... now we just have to keep it looking good :)

-Locke and I are going to Albany GA this weekend to visit his parents and grandparents. I am really looking forward to it!

-I am in another play!!! I play the sister, Claire, in Proof. (more to come on this later...)

Well that's the news in a nutshell. Happy Memorial Day to everyone!

Flooding

It started raining Saturday morning and didn't stop until Sunday evening. There has been flooding all over Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Several highways and major roads are closed. Schools all across middle Tennessee are closed for tomorrow because of the flooding. It's insane here.

While Locke and I are safe, we have had an unfortunate mishap in the basement. We woke up to about 5 inches of standing water in the basement. We went to a couple of nearby hardware stores (in Locke's truck since there were several roads flooded) to find a pump. Unfortunately, all the home depots in a 50 mi radius were sold out of ALL their pumps. So we came back by the house and the water level had risen to about 9 inches in the basement in just a couple hours! Locke headed to Cookeville, TN (ab. 80 mi East of Nashville) for the nearest pump strong enough to pump water out of the basement, up the stairs, through the kitchen, round the corner, down the hall, and out the back door. I was so worried about him as he drove in the rain and flood waters but thank the Lord he made it back safely. We set up the pump and have been able to get most of the water pumped out. We're not sure how to get the last inch or so of water out since the pump doesn't reach that low of a water level.

Here are some pictures of the flooded basement and the pump system we set up.

All in all it has been a long, stressful day, but I there is some silver lining... Locke and I got through today TOGETHER. :) We worked as a team to set up the pump, to use buckets to scoop water out of the basement, to paint the closet (yep even amidst the flooding incident we found time to paint the closet we just had finished out in our bedroom...again thanks to my hardworking husband), and to keep each other's spirits up. I love him so much!

April Updates

So since I'm not that great at staying up to date on my blog... here's a list of McKinney happenings:


1. Locke and I spent Easter in San Antonio and had a wonderful time visiting with family.

2. We've been packing up our house and de-cluttering. We've moved a ton of boxes and furniture into a mobile attic. We FINALLY got a second quote on the work that needs to be done (i.e. new roof, new carpets, finish out a closet, redo bathroom etc) and I think they will begin the work on the roof this week and the inside stuff next week. So now we'll be looking for a landscaper. Hopefully we can list the house by the end of the month. I'll post pics when it's finished :)

3. I am getting my hair chopped off tomorrow. I plan to donate it...I think it should be about 10-12 inches. Here's a couple of pics of what I want it to look like. I'll post pics of what it looks like afterwards and you can be the judge as to whether the stylist did a good job :)

4. Locke and I went to a Catfish Dinner last Thursday. It's a fundraiser done once a year that raises money for Nashville Inner City Ministry. We sat at a table hosted by Locke's cousin, Jeff. His wife, Jenny, and twins were there. His other cousin, Julie, and her family were also there; as well as his aunt and uncle. It was good to visit with his family. And good food!



5. Sunday, Carlee and I hosted a baby shower for my best gal pal, Holland!!! :) We had such a fun time celebrating the mommy-to-be.
Well I think that's all for now. I am going to LAS VEGAS this weekend and going to the ACM awards and the Brooks and Dunn tribute concert with my Mom and her friend, Patti. I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO excited and will definitely post pics and stories afterwards :)

Updates

-Rehearsals for How I Learned to Drive are going well. I love it! It's exciting to look forward to going to rehearsal each day! :)

-Locke and I talked with the realtor and he suggested that we have a home staging/remodeling lady come give us her suggestions. So, Kelli with Prix de Solde came over last week and took pictures of our house. She is creating a proposal of ALL the things we could redo, remodel, and stage before selling the house. The biggest thing we have to do is de-clutter! We will be getting one of the mobile attics or PODS to pack up boxes into. So now we are just waiting on Kelli's proposal and then we will go over it with our realtor and decide which things are most important to do and what we can afford.

-School days are 30 minutes longer now to make up for the 2 snow days (over our limit of 5) we had this winter. It makes for a very long day, but my kids did pretty well despite it today.

-My mom and brother and Locke's parents are coming to visit next week!!! Yay! They're all coming to see the play :)

-My mom and I are going with Patti (mom's friend) to VEGAS in April and we are going to the ACM awards!!!! I am so excited!!!

-I am thinking about joining a gym.

-Last Friday night was the Faculty v. 4th grade basketball game. Faculty won...of course :) It was a fun time had by all! (Even one of my students played in the game :) )

Well that's all for now. I'll try to be better about posting more frequently.

Meeting with the realtor

So there's not a lot of new stuff in our lives to blog about, but we will be meeting with a realtor in the next week or so to learn more about the process of selling our house and buying a new one. We are looking at moving to the Vandy area, Greenhills, or Crieve Hall neighborhood, but we're open to other locations. There's a lot that needs to be done to our current house to get it in ready to sell condition and I am looking forward to hearing what the realtor suggests we do first (i.e. painting, new roof, landscaping, new carpet, etc).

I am so excited about this new adventure! I will post more after we meet with the realtor.