Aaaaggghhhhh

I'm SOOOO excited. Why? Because we will be visiting this beautiful wonderful fabulous state:

It's a whirlwind of a visit but so worth it to see everyone we possibly can in such a short amount of time. We'll be celebrating a wedding too: of good friends Adam and Anderson. I'm so looking forward to good times with friends and family - the things I miss the most about living in this strange place!

Yesterday a coworker asked me why I would want to move back to NC. To be honest, I was offended at first. Why wouldn't I? (I did remind myself that not everyone has had the great pleasure of living outside of TX.)

Why do I like NC and why will I move back? NC has hills, not hill country (a place here in TX where you go to see hills b/c they don't exist anywhere else); NC has beautiful clean beaches where you don't have to look at oil refineries when gazing across the ocean; NC has NC State and Wake Forest; in NC you can go outside in the summer and not feel like you're dying; the people in NC are actually real southerners - you know, the ones that are nice to other people; NC has sweet tea and Bojangles and Cook Out; but most importantly NC has 95% of the most important people in the world to us - regardless of all the other reasons, this is reason #1 for going back. 

(Disclaimer: TX isn't that bad. To be fair, the city we live in is ginormous making it not really like a southern city. I like lots of things about TX but NC would beat it any day in my eyes).

And just for funsies - some pictures of the people we'll be hanging with in NC - love them!!

Hard freeze warning

Oh yeah, we had a hard freeze. Big news around here - the story was one of the leads on the news. To prep for the freeze, we went out to the backyard to cover our fruit trees (one orange and one grapefruit). Unfortunately we did not cover them last year and our grapefruit tree went from a normal size fruit tree to a little itty bitty bush of a tree. Whoops. Before we covered our trees though, we picked our 1 orange of the year (again - important to cover those trees or they don't do what they're supposed to do). Our one orange is very pretty so I thought I would share a picture. Hopefully next year I'll share a picture of two fruit trees with lots of fruit on them - and we'll get to enjoy all this cold weather work.

Cleaning out the old (rotted stuff)

We didn't get to visit my parents for Christmas this year but my dad was able to come up for almost a week after Christmas. My dad is great at all kinds of things and we were especially looking forward to his expertise on some house issues.

We were having some rot issues - it seems that the builders who put in the outside screen porch forgot to use pressure-treated wood. See?

Well the rot in the wood on our screened-in porch necessitated a complete re-do. Here is where my dad's expertise was much appreciated. While he visited, he and the husband took all the rotting wood out and replaced it with pressure-treated wood. They did a great job!

All of the bare wood is new.

Now we just need to add a few face boards, paint, and put up the screen!

While my dad was here, we also did lots of cooking. Remember our menu here?

Our first foray into tamales didn't turn out quite as well as we hoped - it probably would have helped to read the recipe completely!  But they actually were still pretty good and we learned a lot. We also made a corn soup that was quite yummy.

Tamales being steamed.

Tamales and corn soup.

Our next project is a smaller one to try out our furniture making skills. We'll be using a plan from ana-white.com - I'm so excited! And I'll be sure to keep you posted! (If you haven't checked out Ana's site you should - she makes building furniture, etc look easy!)

No resolutions here

I'm not really one for resolutions - I think it has something to do with feeling like you're setting yourself up for failure. You know, as a counselor, I'm big about setting goals - but hey, you don't have to wait until January 1 to do that!! Set them when it works for you. And I don't know about you but January is crazy enough without feeling like I have to make all these changes real quick like! :)

So I don't have resolutions but in December (b/c it worked for me) I did a lot of thinking and made some conscious decisions to make some changes. I try to make the best of situations and when situations aren't the best, I try to change 'em! So here goes to making the best of and changing the rest! :)

1. I need to do the work that I love, that I've worked my tush off for the last 6 years to do - so I'm diligently working on licensure paperwork and (gasp - for all those introverts out there - including me) networking, to get some counseling work going. 
2. I am tired of having this monkey (or really it feels like an elephant) on my back called my DISSERTATION! And so I developed a plan to work so many hours a week to get it done. 
3. We work so hard on the weekends that I often feel like I'm having to rejuvenate during the week. This isn't working for us and so we're cutting back on our to-do lists. One major piece of this is prioritizing time together. So we'll cut back a bit on our weekend goals and try to enjoy the weekend more.
4. I love all the house magazines and house blogs with beautiful house pictures but I don't want that for myself. I want a comfortable home, with meaningful items and I want it to be organized and simple. So we will continue to build and make things for our home but I'm not going to worry about it otherwise. My project list for the year includes only DIY improvements to existing spaces in order to make it more functional, better organized, and more simple with the least amount of work and expense. But I am excited about doing these things!
5. Prioritizing so we can meet some of our dreams, one of which is to travel. So we'll be sticking to a budget and making some compromises in the next few years so we will not only talk about our dreams but we will experience them!

Not too shabby I think!  I'll be updating in a few days about various craziness around our house - hope things in the new year are pleasant for you so far!!