Moved!

Okay folks, I love blogger, but I have moved on to a new forum. It is a little more my style. Join me at my new blog site. The Dryer-side of Life

Enjoy!

First Frost

All week they were predicting our first frost coming. It finally happened this morning. I woke up roughly around sunrise as I have been waking up around six every morning for two weeks straight, I felt like sleeping til 8 this morning felt like heaven. I glanced out our bedroom window and saw a beautiful sight that I had to capture.

I slipped on a pair of slippers and headed downstairs to grab my camera and step out our back door. There was a light fog and the ground was slightly frosted. The trees lost many of their leaves this past week due to rain and wind. I got lucky that the sun was at just the right height to capture how pretty it was outside.

I am not usually excited about the impending winter, but this morning I felt a little excited for when the first snowfall will come.

Celebration of Service

As many of you know, I work at Home Depot. A job that I truly enjoy everyday. The people I work with are amazing and I love the company as well. One of the biggest things I love is the Team Depot events. Team Depot are comprised of associates volunteering their time to help build or fix property around our area.

Also, you may know that I am the daughter of a veteran. My mother was deployed during Desert Storm. My father was active duty throughout this time as well. I am a proud Air Force brat! I have a family full of veterans whom I am so proud of and love dearly. The military is extremely important to me and whatever I can do to support them I try to do.

What do these two things have in common?

Everything.

On October 5, I had the wonderful opportunity to take part in a Team Depot event celebrating our veterans.

Teamdepotmichigan.org

These were the 215 volunteers that showed up in downtown Detroit.

We were helping to restore a building and a lot across the street for homeless veterans trying to get back on their feet. We teamed up with the Volunteers of America to get this project on its feet.

There were 6 teams and projects. There were teams for across the street to clean up an old parking lot that Mother Nature was taking back for her own with trees and brush growing up through the pavement and a park that was cleared out.

Our group was responsible for cleaning debris from the building where 60 homeless veterans will have beds before the first snow. We cleaned up drywall dust, scraps, and other such things. It was time consuming work that we finished well ahead of schedule due to so many volunteers. We were walking around the building for over an hour after we'd finished trying to find things to do!

These were my lovely coworkers that were so thrilled to have made it to Detroit alive! Kim (the gal in the sweatshirt) drove and lets just say that 80 was slow to her!

We are ready to go!

This was everyone from our district.

Cleaned the metal in the stairway to be spray painted later that day.

This is David, one of our head cashiers helping me out.

I got just a little dirty.

My store crew. Top row: Scott, Jackie, Brooke, David

Bottom row: Kim, Barbara, me

The dedication.

I was not there for the dedication because we had to leave, but the whole thing was an experience I enjoyed wholeheartedly.

Veteran's Park

Thank you to all of our Veterans for you dedication and service.

Sunday Routine

Do you have a Sunday Routine that you love to follow each week?

I certainly do lately. Its actually an old routine re-visited. I work Sunday most weekends, but I am thankfully off early-ish. I get off work, if Brad hasn't left yet I come home to kiss him goodbye, then I go to Meijer's gas station to pick up the Sunday Toledo Blade, hit Starbucks on my way home for my new fave Salted Caramel Mocha, and then return home to read the paper and clip coupons.

Nothing terribly exciting, but I enjoy Sunday afternoon NFL while I'm at it. If it isn't a team I fancy, I watch a movie or listen to music. I also plan out dinner after I'm done while doing the laundry. Very housewife. I love it. It's my thing.

Today, no Toledo Blade. The sucker was sold out all over town by noon. I didn't leave the house til 3. What is going on? Through off my entire day. Oh well. I still got my mocha. Then my beautiful cousin, Erin, and her fiancee, Laura, called to invite me to an early dinner. Heck yeah! Girly time!!! We talked house decor, family, projects, life. It was so awesome to spend time talking about their wedding and their future plans. I love that me and Erin are so close and that Laura is such an amazing addition to the family. I love spending time with the pair of them every chance I get.

Brad and I also watch 'our' shows on Sunday. He gets home from work and the Sunday night television is on a.s.a.p. We watch our seasonal shows on HBO and Showtime. We love them. It's our thing.

This Sunday, I actually had the day off to recover from Brad's cousin's wedding. It was an awesome event and I loved attending with my husband. I got to dance and relax. I enjoyed being at a wedding and having my man by my side. Made me re-live our wedding in my head the whole time.

I am thrilled to break up my routine once and while, keeps life interesting. Next week my routine is getting broken again. Hay ride at my sister-in-law Debbie's house, and cashier olympics at work on Sunday. I'm getting up very early to get the paper next week too!

So what is your Sunday Routine?

Lost and Find

Do you ever feel so lost and you aren't sure why you do? That is me today. I woke and went to work as usual. I think it started yesterday though. We went to view a house we are buying. I have so many ideas. I want to change things, cosmetic things, but I am brimming. My father and father-in-law are amazing to offer their woodworking skills to help me and Brad. I am not posting pictures to introduce you to the Dryer home until the title is signed and we have keys because I do not want to jinx it.

I am also a little lost because I want to become friends with people in the city we will be living in. I'm not a church person. It's just not my thing. I want to find community things to do though. I want to be involved, but I'm not sure with what. On October 5th, I am going with several co-workers to help with a building project in Detroit. I'm looking forward to doing the volunteer work. I have always wanted to do volunteer work and I can't wait to start.

The house thing has me feeling slightly overwhelmed and nervous. These projects are not huge, they aren't massively expensive like remodeling a kitchen. It is shelves, painting and furniture. The woodworking projects are something I'm the most nervous about. I hate starting a project and then not finishing it. I'm so concerned that that will happen. I have lived in the land of half-decorated, hand me down land for a while because the places we lived never felt like home. This place feels like a home. I am so glad that we are not moving in right away because it means I can tackle the things I need to slowly. So I can complete them with finesse.

Did I mention that this place is down the road from Northwest Ohio's largest Antique store? Fun times making something old feel new again!

Ten Years Later

September 11, 2001.... Everyone knows that date and has their stories from that day. Even now, 10 years later, I still cry seeing the images of those burning buildings, the images of the people running from the locations that were directly involved.

I was sitting in AP Government writing notes the Madgwick was reviewing on the projector. Mr. Kessler came in with the news. We were in shock and first reports said it was just a small plane. Soon after, he came back with worse news, another plane had hit. Bush was calling it an act of terrorism. We were in our brand new high school with no working televisions. All we could get was from the internet that was heavily bogged down. Kessler was with his class trying to gather as much news as he could. By the end of that class, the towers were gone.

I had first lunch that day. I had to get home because my dad needed to take the truck to work. He was working at Detroit Metro Airport at the time. He had traded shifts with another guy so that he could be at Senior's night at the football game the following Friday. We sat watching all of this unfold on television, unable to look away or focus. I remember on the drive home listening to the radio coverage of DC and everything going on there. The confusion of the reporters and the people they were trying to interview. I watched this and listened to the reports of the flights being grounded. I did not want my father to go to work that night. I remember the daze and haze that followed when I returned to school.

School was like a zombie land. People were trying to make sense of what happen and we were teenagers, we didn't know what to think other than we were at war. It wasn't official yet, but as a country we have a history of not taking stuff like this lightly.

Our princepal came on the overhead after the lunch hours were completed. She explained what had happen for those that had not been able to go home and see the destruction. I still have the newspapers from that day. I remember seeing them in the office after school.

They tried to keep life normal. Sporting events were canceled for the night, but as school had just started, it wasn't too bad.

The days that followed are still a blur to me. I remember the Friday as Senior night, but it was such a somber event. I don't recall much of it at all.

Fastfoward ten years. I'm married. I'm an adult. And it still hurts. I have wondered, every year since, is this what the people at Pearl Harbor felt like? Is this what my grandfather's generation felt when they saw images year after year? It was different in so many ways because cameras were not capturing it live. They were not feeding these live images into homes across the country. They did not witness these people jumping from buildings. The images were scary, but they didn't watch it unfold. What are my kids going to experience that they will never forget? I'm afraid to think of that, but I worry about what my kids will have to see some day. I was old enough to understand what was going on to a point, but what about those that are just entering their senior year today? Did they understand then? Or has it taken them years?

When I have kids, how will I explain to them what this day means to me and Brad? Will they even care?

I can't forget. The images are burned in my brain. Carefree senior year quickly evaporated.

As I did that night, I'm doing now. I'm watching the news coverage from that day. I still can't believe it.

Never forget.

Married Life

I have been married just over a month now. Life hasn't changed much and I didn't expect it to after all this time living together. Although, I have noticed that Brad is much more calm and relaxed. At least in some aspects of life. Other aspects, like house hunting, has not been what we expected.

As a kid, I loved going with my parents to house hunt before we bought the house in Michigan. Even as a kid in Texas when we went house hunting, I loved it most days. Especially because it always seemed to be in the fall. On cloudy, rain, chilly days, we'd gather in the van and start driving around. I love that now that we are house hunting, Brad and I do the same thing. It is so much fun planning the future together this way and spending quality time isolated with my husband.

Can I also just say that I really love calling Brad my husband?

Speaking of Brad, he started his new work schedule and is home at night now. I didn't realise just how nice it was to have him come home and get to sleep in the same bed at the same time as him. Down side is he doesn't get home until 11:30 at night, but still, the important thing to me is I can kiss him goodnight and snuggle with him on the nights I don't have to be up at 5am for work. Yeah, that was my day this morning. 5am wake ups are not fun, but I'm thinking of it as training for when our child wakes me at 5am.

Brad has been working so hard to give us the life we want. We want a house. We found one we love. We just have to wait a little longer to get it is all. I'm hoping that in 6 months when our lease on this apartment is up, we'll be able to buy it. I want it more than anything at the moment. Brad and I are focused on working to get the house we want. However, I know better than to hope that this house will be available in six months. So much happens in that time. So we are going to continue our search and just keep an eye out on the other one.

In the meantime, as we save and focus on the house buying, I'm hanging pictures that I held off on for the longest time. I've pulled out some of the fall decor. I'm probably going to expand said decor in the next week. I want to make it feel as fall and homey as I can. I missed fall so much when we lived in Florida and these gray cloudy days have put me in such a good mood. Ask me if they still do in January.

I'm so ready for the colors of fall too. I hope to have some pictures of the local apple orchards and leaves soon!

Until next time!