Summer Series Challenge

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Oh, sweet summertime! The time when I get the most reading done! Y'all know I like to post book reviews here occasionally, and even though I'm (SUPER) late to the party, I've decided to join the Summer Series Challenge hosted by Asheley at Into the Hall of Books, Heather at The Flyleaf Review, and Lauren at Love Is Not A Triangle. I'm so excited! This is exactly the sort of kick in the pants I need to get reading this summer. 

The point of this challenge is to finally finish a series you've already started, or start reading a fully published series in its entirety. Sounds like pretty much everything on my TBR! If you are interested in joining and have a place to post book reviews (there's still time to sign up!), go here to read Lauren's introductory post and join in the fun.

So herein lies my problem. I want to read ALL THE SERIES. Why are there so stinkin' many?! And why are there so many GOOD ones?! You will probably laugh at me as I list out all the series I want to read, but don't get too impressed. I will probably only read one or two of these during this challenge. I am just a fan of making long lists that I never stick to. :)

Series I Want to Finish:  

Series I Want To Start and Finish: 

Ah! Where to begin?! Again, NOT gonna read all of these series by the end of August. A girl's just gotta have her choices. :) So what about you? What series would you like to start or finally finish?

  

Kyle's Graduation From Physical Therapy School

Even though I'm writing this about a month after the fact, I don't think I could call this blog a journal of our life if I didn't include a post about Kyle's graduation from Physical Therapy School back in May. This was a pretty exciting couple of days for us and our families, so you can bet lots of pictures were taken. Consider this your fair warning, there are a lot of pictures ahead!

Kyle made his way over to Augusta the Monday night before graduation, and I joined him two days later on Wednesday afternoon. When I walked out of the office after a half-day of work on Wednesday, I couldn't help but smile because I was about to have ELEVEN days off straight (we left for California two days after graduation). Nothing like that much time off work to make you feel like a kid on the first day of summer break! Wednesday evening we went to visit some friends, including Jason and his daughter Lucy (we missed you, Laura!), and Karen, Ryan, and their daughter Madi. I also got to catch up with my former boss, Holly, over lunch on Thursday, and before I knew it it was time to get ready for the hooding ceremony Thursday night.  

The hooding ceremony included undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Allied Health Sciences, so majors were along the lines of Dental Hygiene, Respiratory Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Physician Assistant, and of course Physical Therapy. I am going to have to agree with Amanda and say that this particular event almost bored me to tears. They could have just invited the PAs to the first hour and half of it (they won pretty much all the awards under the sun), and then invited everyone else to the last 15 minutes for the hooding. The hooding was pretty entertaining since they had each department chair stand on a box so they could better reach over the students to hood them. Unfortunately my camera crapped out on me while Kyle was on stage, but we did get plenty of pictures afterwards, as you can see. :)

After our photoshoot in the gardens at First Pres, we headed downtown for a late-night dinner at our favorite restaurant in Augusta, Frog Hollow Tavern. While we were waiting for our table (which should have been ready since we had RESERVATIONS, ahem), Kyle's sister gave him his graduation present. It was pretty hilarious:

Even though we had a pretty long wait (we didn't get our food until 9:30 PM...yikes!) I think everyone was really impressed with their meal. Frog Hollow has yet to disappoint in that area. And from there it was off to bed to get some beauty rest for another day full of festivities.

Friday morning before the big school-wide graduation was the PT class brunch. This event was my favorite because food was involved, of course. Just kidding. Kind of. It was also my favorite because it was a way for Kyle's class to celebrate their accomplishments just as PTs, and also reflect back on the past three years together. We loved catching up with everyone and wished we could have had more time together!

It's tradition at the end of the brunch to have a candlelight ceremony, but apparently you can't count on Justin and Kyle to take things seriously. ;) 

After brunch we grabbed a few photos with friends on the terrace, and then walked down to the greenway to get some family pictures with Kyle wearing his full regalia (yes, I'm pretty sure in the Augusta heat and humidity Kyle hated me for this).

And then it was time to head over to the James Brown Arena for the big Georgia Regents University graduation. As you might remember, when Kyle started Physical Therapy School his school was still known as the Medical College of Georgia. Then the name changed in February 2011 to Georgia Health Sciences University. And as of January 1 of this year, Georgia Health Sciences University and Augusta State University consolidated to form Georgia Regents University. It's really confusing, I know, but the important thing is that Kyle still got a Medical College of Georgia diploma (since he matriculated as an MCG student) and that will be the diploma hanging on the wall in our house. Speaking of diplomas, here he is crossing the stage to get his placeholder diploma (they had to wait until the end of the ceremony to pick up the real deal backstage). It was a special moment to hear him introduced as Dr. Kyle Fenton for the first time.

After they were done calling the names for the College of Allied Health Sciences, my family and Kyle's family bailed like Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride. No shame in our game! We were graduation festivitied-out. But the fun wasn't over yet! We wrapped things up at my parents' lake house on Lake Oconee with a bbq dinner from Georgia Butts and key lime cake for dessert.

Overall it was a really fun weekend celebrating three years of hard work for Kyle. I am just so unbelievably proud of him. His work ethic and his faith throughout it all has been a huge example for me. Also, thank you does not say enough for our family and friends who supported us during that time. We truly would not have made it without you. What a journey it has been, and what a journey it will continue to be! 

The Story of our House

How do you even start a post like this?! Two weeks ago today, Kyle and I became homeowners! We put on our best business attire and drove to the attorney's office, signed all the closing papers, and moved in to our beautiful home three days later. Of course there was a LOT that happened before that, but I'll get to that in a sec. We love love LOVE our house and can't wait to show you all the prettiness inside (I filmed an empty house tour a la Young House Love that will hopefully be ready soon!). To say that life has been hectic since we got back from our trip to California would be an understatement. I really want to get back in the groove of blogging and share everything that's been going on lately, so today I'll start with the story of our house. First of all, here she is. :)

As I mentioned in this post, Kyle and I have been looking for houses for a little more than a year now. We watched online listings closely and drove by a few houses that we really liked, even when we weren't in the financial position to buy yet. In February of this year, Kyle found a new construction home in the area we knew would be a future possibility, and we both really liked the house just from looking at the online listing. Add in the fact that it was listed UNDER our budget, and we had to drive by and check it out. We both loved it even more "in person" (aka peeking in the windows) and absolutely loved the neighborhood it was in. It was seriously the cutest neighborhood I have ever seen--very small with all craftsman style homes. We both crossed our fingers and prayed it would still be on the market by the time we were able to buy several months down the road.

Well, that was not the case. We did our fair share of wishful thinking, but with the market the way it is right now, we shouldn't have been surprised it went under contract pretty soon after we checked it out. We were really disappointed, but I think Kyle was even more disappointed than me. We weren't just bummed we missed out on the house, but also that we missed out on the neighborhood. It was a fairly new neighborhood and that was the next to last lot to be sold, so the likelihood that another house would go on the market was slim to none. Or so we thought.

Fast forward to the night before we were scheduled to go house hunting with our realtor, and Kyle was looking over the new listing email he got every Friday from Keller Williams. He excitedly told me that another house in that same neighborhood had just been listed! Within reach of our price range! What are the odds?! So we immediately called/emailed our realtor so we could get an appointment the next day. We did, and we also went to see quite a few other houses that day. I went in with an open mind and tried to think as unemotionally as I could (yeah, right!) about each house that we saw. So here's a quick rundown of the houses we looked at (saving ours for last):

The first house we went to see was about ten years old in a well established neighborhood. I fell in love with the exterior of this house - I loved the paint color and the prominent stacked stone chimney. The interior didn't give me butterflies or anything, but it did confirm my love for wainscoting detail. Apparently wainscoting (or beadboard?) is my jam, y'all! This house already had a fenced-in backyard which was a major plus, but it also had a full basement which did not give us much wiggle room on the price. In the end, this house was really charming, it just wasn't the one for us.

Next, we looked at a five-bedroom cul-de-sac home that was much more reasonable for our price range. The exterior of this house looked promising, but I have to be honest and say the overall experience at this house was just awkward. The owners were still there when we arrived and had to scramble to get out so we could look at the house in private, but apparently the lady's uncle lived with them and was sick so he was still lying in bed while we were in the house. I felt like I really couldn't say what I was thinking to Kyle while we were looking around. On top of it being too much house for what we would currently need, the final straw was when we asked to take a quick look at the bedroom the sick uncle was staying in and there was a DISGUSTINGLY HUGE cat hanging out in the closet. Nope. I just can't. Scratched that one off the list pronto.

After that, we drove over to a new construction neighborhood and found the house we wanted to look at didn't look like the online listing photo at all. Not that it was a huge problem, we were able to get an explanation from the lady at the sales office fairly quickly. The photo on the listing was just a generic exterior photo for that type of floor plan, so the exterior in real life would look a little bit different. Since that house was still in the framing stages, we were able to look at the finished model with the same floor plan, and it really was a lovely layout. The only thing that was weird to me was that it had two master bedrooms, one downstairs and one up, with the master bedroom upstairs being the BIGGEST room I have EVER seen. Like for real. Our entire South Carolina split level home could fit in there. It was really odd and felt more like wasted space than a luxury. We looked at two model homes in this neighborhood, and Kyle and I had to talk about whether we were open to buying a lot and building on it as opposed to buying a move-in ready house. I think it was this point in the day where my head started to spin. Only four houses in. House hunting wimp I definitely am. Sadly I didn't take any photos of the two houses we looked at here. I think this whole situation just caught me off guard.

Next, we drove over to this beauty in a neighborhood we liked just as much as the neighborhood we ended up in. This one was listed a bit above our price range and still had a few finishing touches that needed to be made, but we wanted to look at it anyway and see what kind of offer we could put on it. When we walked up to the front door though, we noticed the lockbox was missing. We checked to see if there was one on the back door, and no dice. Bummed, our realtor looked at her printout for the house to try and find a number to call, and noticed the house was listed as a contingent with a kick out. Basically meaning there was already an offer on the house, pending the sale of the buyer's home. We were a little miffed the lockbox was removed because technically we could still put an offer on the house and "kick out" the other buyers, but obviously it would have to be a better offer for the sellers to even consider it, and we didn't think we were in a financial position to make a reasonably competitive offer. So, sadly, we had to drive away from this one.

After that we went to look at a house that was actually in my sister's neighborhood. It was fun to think about the possibility of living so close together! This house was by far the most expensive one we looked at, but it was bank-owned and had been sitting empty for a while, so we thought a low-ball offer wouldn't hurt if we liked it. We could tell this one was well-built and had a lot going for it, but again it was just too much house for what we would need right now, and possibly too much for what we would need in the future. Not only did it have an upstairs and a main level, but it also had a fully finished basement. It would take us F-O-R-E-V-E-R to furnish that house, and we weren't necessarily looking for our forever home (though I would totally be OK if we never moved again). So we didn't pursue anything with this house.

And then. :)

THE ONE came along. We walked in, and I just knew. This was it. I loved everything about the house, and it was in the neighborhood we initially fell in love with. The craftmanship, the details--it had me at hello. I tried not to let my feelings gush all over the place as we were walking around, but the minute Kyle and I walked out, we looked at each other and simultaneously agreed we were putting an offer on this one. We talked and prayed that night about what our offer would look like, and the next day our realtor officially submitted the offer to the sellers. After about a week of counteroffers, we finally went under contract on April 7. We were so excited that we were that couple, driving by the house to see if Under Contract was on the sign yet. Sure enough, it was! And we took a picture!

It was a long, stressful process between our contract binding date and closing date, and I am honestly so glad that part is behind us now. This house is far more than Kyle and I could ever ask or imagine, and I can't believe we are here, navigating our way through a sea of cardboard boxes as we start a new chapter in our life making our first house our home. I am so in awe of how God went before us and worked out every detail. We're pretty excited about all that's to come, and can't wait to have you guys over!

P.S. To give you a sneak peek inside the house, here's a video of Doc checking out his new digs for the first time. It's pretty cute.
 
Doc Checking Out the New House from Lesley Anne Fenton on Vimeo.