Big News!!!!

I have BIG news!  It's late, but I'm posting it anyway.  On the last day in December, Dan and I closed on a house!  We'd been looking at this house for more than a month.  We loved it, and the price was good.  There were a few complications with the many different people involved in the sale of it however.  This house has some history too...

But everything finally worked out and we were able to get it for a little cheaper after finding out that there were quite a few problems with it. 

 

 

 

Both the front door and the back door had been kicked in multiple times, so the very first thing we did was go to Home Depot and get a security door and a set of locks.  

Here are a few pictures (blurry because they are taken with my phone) of the bathroom, hallway and some radiators. 

 

We love this old clawfoot tub, and Dan is in the process of remodeling the entire bathroom right now.  But we have decided to keep the tub because it is so vintage!

 

We had to replace five of the nine radiators in the house.  We finally got them working, the house is warm and there aren't any MAJOR leaks.  We found the major ones the hard way, by trial and error.  We filled the system with water and thennnnn found a HUGE leak in the upstairs bathroom.  The kitchen ceiling was raining!  We (and when I say we, I mean Dan ) fixed that though.   

 

There was a refrigerator left in the kitchen when we bought the house and I told the realtor that I was going to clean it out and see if it worked.  She thought that was disgusting and could hardly believe that I was going to do it.  I spent a whole day cleaning it out (there was old food left in there from the previous year, so you can imagine how gross it was).  When I finished cleaning it, we turned it on, and now we have a refrigerator that was free.  I'm sure eventually we might get a new one, but we can save that money now and use it on fixing the house. 

 

 

We also have a washing machine and a dryer downstairs in the basement that work!  We accidently spilled water pipe glue on the washing machine, so now it is a lovely permanent purple color...

 

This was a picture I took of me "helping" Dan to fix the water pipes in the basement.  All of the copper pipes had been stolen from the house, so he replaced all of them himself.  I'm so proud of my sweet, hardworking fiancé. 

 

Here is another picture of Dan, working on the radiators.

 

So that is my news about the house!  :)

 

Other news is that it snowed a few weeks ago.  I was not really expecting it, so it came as a nice surprise. 

 

It began on Friday at about 3pm and by that evening at 7, I was snowed in.  I made my favorite meal to eat while I was snowed in.  Mashed potatoes, gravy and ground beef....mmmmmm

 

This was on Saturday morning when I woke up.  We had a bit of a break since there was no church on Sunday and no school Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday!  It was like an unexpected spring break. 

 

 

 

SO that is my new news!  :)  There are only 65 days left until my wedding day!

Catching up

It's so exciting to be engaged!  Sometimes, it seems like a dream.  I remember when I was quite young, having the dream that someday I would get married.  When I was young, all I ever wanted was to get married.  When I got older, I began pursuing different dreams as my dream of getting married seemed so far away. 
Now, reality has hit me and both of my dreams are being fulfilled.  I am a piano teacher and have been for five years now.  That was my career dream.  I am a Christian school teacher, and have been teaching now for six months, and that was a goal of mine.  Another one of my dreams was to get married and I will be doing that in just 79 days! 
Dan and I had our engagement pictures taken in November.  Here are just a few of my favorites! 

 

79 days until I say "I do!"

The best day of my life...thus far

I know, I haven't posted on my blog in forever.  I say that every time I re-visit my blog after a long absence.  However, this time, I feel like my long absence is warranted.  My life has been too exciting to even think of sitting down at a computer to chronicle my life experiences. 

 

It is time to chronicle now though.  On October 30th 2015, the school where I work celebrated a special day.  We had a grandparents day celebration with a program and carnival booths and everything.  I spent my morning playing the piano for the program and then tying those long, skinny balloons so that my boyfriend and a school student could form them into shapes for the children.  After two hours of tying off balloons, school was dismissed early at 12:30pm.  With raw fingers, me and my boyfriend Dan joyfully drove off to Cunningham Falls State Park in Emmitsburg MD.  We had been planning to go and see the remaining leaves while they were on the trees still. 

 

When we arrived at the park, I insisted on hiking to see an abandoned whiskey still back in the woods.  It was a nice little hike. Since we wanted to see the falls, I was expecting that next we would hike to a spot by the waterfalls, but Dan didn't express any particular interest in the falls.  He wanted to go on this certain hike called the Vista Point.  I wanted to argue and tell him that the falls were what we came to see, but I decided to go along with what he wanted, since he had done what I wanted when we went to see the historic still. 

 

We hiked up a hill, and I took this picture of the beautiful leaves. 

 

 

 

We kept finding beautiful leaves, and would take pictures of them.  We even kept five or six of them.

 

We hiked up a sort of mountain and came upon this vista point with a beautiful view of the valley.  Dan wanted to go out to the edge to take a picture, but there was another couple sitting on a rock, eating a snack. 

 

Normally, I am the one who never wants to take pictures when other people are around. 

But today I said,

 "Who cares?  They won't mind if we take a few pictures.  They might even take a picture of us!"

Dan reluctantly followed and took a few pictures.

 

We sat on this wooden bench and looked over the valley.  The other couple sat close by as well, still eating.  After a few minutes, they got up and left. 

 

Dan suggested that he take a picture of me with the background.  I posed for his picture.  Then after this picture was taken, I turned around and looked at the valley, trying to see if I could find route 15.  I was thinking about the times I would drive to markets on route 15 when all of a sudden, Dan came up behind me.  I turned and smiled just as he got down on one knee. 

 

 

Of course, the rest is history.  Dan asked me to marry him, and I said yes after being so excited I could hardly talk.  Here I am with the gorgeous little box he put the ring in. 

 

We posed for a few after-pictures with his self-timer camera. 

So now you know about the best day of my life!

 

The love of my life asked me to marry him and I happily said yes. 

 

Prepare yourselves for coming posts about wedding plans and lots of pictures of me and Dan. 

I'm going to be a Mrs!!!!!!!!

Fort McHenry

It has been altogether too long since I have posted on my blog. Thank you to those faithful readers who have continued to check for updates in spite of my inconsistency. 

My job as a teacher began on August 31st and I have been going non stop ever since then.  I have so many things on my mind that I want to post about, but they will need to wait for another time.  

This post will be about my recent visit to Fort McHenry and to the Dudley Chapel.  

I was driving down the road a few weeks ago and saw a sign reading "historic chapel" with an arrow. Of course, my curiosity took over and I followed the arrow.  It lead me to this adorable, old chapel out in the middle of a field.  

I enjoyed walking around and reading the little old gravestones. 

Then the other weekend, we decided that we needed to visit Fort McHenry, since we haven't been able to go there since being here.  

The day we decided to go just "happened" to be earth day, and they were letting everyone into all Natinonal Parks for free that day only.  So four adults got in for $0 when it would have normally been $44! :) that made me pretty happy.  

There were a lot of neat things about the fort.  It was neat to be able to get the perspective of the battle from inside the fort.  It was also great to see the very place where the Star Spangled Banner was penned.  

This was one of the many arms and powder storehouses.  

This man was walking around inside the fort, but I don't think he was an employee. :) there was also a group of fifes and drums playing common marches from the day.  

It was crazy to think of how this was the very place where the flag still stood after a night of bombardment from the British fleets. 

A view of the bay. 

It was a wonderful day! After visiting Rita's for some gelati, we went to one more park where we were able to watch the sun set over the bay.  

This was a fun day for me on a Saturday.  Like I said before, I have so so much to say about my teaching, my philosophy on learning, my newfound future parenting resolve, as well as a few life lessons I am currently learning.  But I will save that for another post! I'll try to not stay away for so long this time!! Until later!

Road trip across the USA part 3

 I realized yesterday night that I never posted up Day three of my long journey!  So here it is, the third and fourth and final day of my journey. 

 

I drove through McLean and saw that it was a historical town.  I stopped at this old museum and wanted to explore a little bit, but then saw that it was closed...:( 

 

 

 

 

I jumped back on the road and came driving up to an old fort called Reno.  This was in  Oklahoma.  I quickly pulled over and drove back a very very long lane in the middle of nowhere to this fort.  Upon entering it and exploring it a bit, I learned that this fort was in operation from early 1800's the whole way until WWII when it became a POW camp.  When it was a POW camp, it held many German and Italian prisoners.  In the very back of the fort, this large cemetery is set up under some shady trees. 

I really enjoyed being able to take an hour or so and just relax and enjoy some good history. 

 

The fort had its own chapel and everything!

I continued driving for hours until I passed St. Louis.  By that time, it was dark, so of course, I was unable to take any good pictures of the arch or anything. I slept the night just past St. Louis and then woke up early to continue my final day of travel. 

 

I found the next few states much easier to drive through.  Driving through Illinois and Indiana were nothing like Oklahoma or New Mexico!  I stopped once more in Vandalia, IL.  This was the city in which Abraham Lincoln had his first job in politics. 

 

 

This is the building where Lincoln worked.

 

I drove passed the worlds largest windchime 

 

And the worlds largest rocking chair 

 

I drove and drove for hours until it was nearly 4am on Sunday morning.  It was such a beautiful sight to see this Welcome to Pennsylvania sign.   

 

So that concludes my road trip across country!   Until next time when there is news of my move to Maryland!