Linus

Most of you probably know I'm a cat person. I've wanted a kitten since Leslie and I got married, and especially wished I had some company when he had to travel and work a lot last year. At the time, we lived in a guest house and we weren't allowed to have a cat, but Leslie promised me that as soon as we moved to somewhere we could have a kitten we'd get one. 

I planned to wait until we were all settled in and unpacked, but Leslie was out of town one weekend and we had a few days off because of the hurricane, so I decided I would start looking. Leslie said it was fine if I went without him since we probably wouldn't find a time soon to go together anyway, and I promised to send him pictures of potential kitties! 

I Facebooked and called around a few places and they were either closed or had no cats at the time. Someone suggested that I visit the local animal shelter, and I decided to go take a look even though no one was answering the phone there. 

It took me forever to find the shelter, and when I got to it it was not at all what I was expecting! The animals were kept in cages like you would expect to see in a shelter, but they weren't in a normal building. They were all practically outside, with little protection from the weather. It was so sad!

There was a lady sitting outside and I asked if they had any kittens available. She said that there was one that had been put out on the side of the road near the shelter just that afternoon. It was lucky that they had been there to find him, because they were supposed to be closed all day. 

She took me back to see this little guy and I couldn't believe how tiny he was! I got him out of the cage and he meowed and meowed. I sent a picture to Leslie and my mom and they both approved. I wasn't sure if it was a great choice with him being so loud and since he hadn't been to a vet, but I knew he needed to come home with me!

He climbed me on the way to the vet and insisted on sitting on my shoulder. I'm sure I looked incredibly intelligent trying to pry him off of my back when I parked at the vet's office, but he was not letting go of my shirt with his sharp little claws! 

He meowed loudly throughout the ride and in the vet's office. Thankfully he settled down and took a nap once we were seated. 

The vet said he was only about 5 weeks old, and he only weighed 1.2 pounds! He was a very healthy kitten, aside from ringworm in his ears. Since then it has spread and I've had to give him lots of medicine and two baths a week, but now it is almost gone!

He was so tiny!

He has grown so much and he LOVES to play! Sometimes he gets a little too playful and hurts, but overall he's a very fun kitty!

Home Sweet Home

As I mentioned before, Leslie and I are super excited that we are now homeowners! We weren't even sure that it was the right time for us to buy a house, but we decided we'd look around some anyway. Leslie spotted our house the first day we both decided to drive around and look on the way home for work.

 We looked in a TON of other houses over several days, but none of them compared in our opinion! We're so thankful for all the help we had from friends in finding a house and getting everything moved in and unpacked! And a big thank you to my parents for most of the furniture!

 Our living room! The bookshelves we had just weren't enough, so we decided to get three to put in our living room! I really like how it turned out, and we have room for all of our nerdiness now :)

 We have two guest bedrooms, but they're both still pretty filled with stuff that has only partially been unpacked, so here's the better of the two for now! The other one has the furniture that I've had in my bedroom since I was a little girl, and I don't think I EVER cleaned out the drawers! I had to stop in the middle of cleaning out the other night to go to bed, so it looks like an explosion of pre-teen girl happened in there right now!

 Our dining room. It's smaller than it looks, and we're going to have to find the right table for the area!

 I love having a kitchen and dining area now! We had a super nice kitchen before, but we only had two bar stools, so having people over to eat didn't work out too well. Now we have a bar area and a kitchen table that sits six! I love that the kitchen opens up to the dining area and the living room. It's also awesome that the sink is facing the TV- it makes washing dishes so much better!

 Our bedroom! Still have quite a bit of stuff to unpack in here, but we're getting a dresser and chest soon so we'll have a place to put it all!

 We still have our fish, Dot and Carl! They made the move very nicely.

 Our bathroom, which is currently being taken over by this little guy...

Poor Linus' ringworm spread ALL over him, so he still has to sleep in the bathroom and stay there while we're at work. 

Thanks to Leslie's parents for the washer and dryer! We were so lucky to be able to get them delivered and installed as soon as we bought them on Labor Day!

We're so thankful for our new home! It will be so nice to have a place for family and friends to stay when they visit us, and we love having our own space. We've had several comments about filling the house with kids, but that's not the plan right now! This little guy is filling it up quite enough :)

August

 I planned to just write a post on all of the excitement we've had lately, but thinking back I decided that August deserved its very own post. This post is ridiculously long, but it's mostly just for me to be able to remember, so no hard feelings if you don't make it through!

 August was an overwhelming, difficult, exciting, miserable, wonderful, BUSY month. Life definitely happened, and I felt super blessed to have my sweet husband, family, and our wonderful friends by my side.

I finished up my summer classes in the beginning of August and made a trip the first week of the month to Southlake to get my doctor & dentist visits in (yes, I still need to find both in Natchitoches)! I ended up staying a little longer than planned and was able to visit with most of my very best friends from high school.

 On the drive home I noticed that my arms and legs were getting very itchy. A week and a half before that some of our Sunday School class went to clean out a sweet lady's yard, and unfortunately Leslie and Emily got poison ivy (after I told them they wouldn't get it in a flower bed- oops!) but I was lucky enough to get away with just a tiny bit on my arm. As it turned out, because it was my first time being exposed to poison ivy, it took 10 days to break out! It was ALL OVER me! I'll spare you and not post any pictures :) I ended up going to the doctor for steroids twice, had quite the scare from a lab error in a blood test, and found out that I need lots more Vitamin D! So, at least from all the itching I now know to take Vitamin supplements AND I get to be a patient of the doctor I went to! No more Urgent Care for me!

Our friends Jake and Kayla got married the next weekend in Alabama so we made a quick trip to Tuscaloosa! We got to see lots of friends and visit with Leslie's family. It was a beautiful wedding!

The next week we lost my precious grandmother who I named Mama Too when I was little. I got to visit her in July, and I was so thankful for the time I had with her. It was very difficult even though we knew it was coming, but it's comforting to know that she's not in pain anymore and that we'll see her again one day. We traveled back to Alabama for the second weekend in a row, and although it was under sad circumstances it was great to have most of the family together.

This picture was taken on our trip to visit Mama Too over Christmas break.

 The week after that it was back to work and school for me! On that Thursday we found out we would be closing on our house on MONDAY! We did tons of packing over the weekend, and thankfully we were able to get most of it done by Monday! We closed that morning, had everything switched over to our name, and went back to work (even though it was really hard to focus knowing we had a house)! That afternoon some wonderful (strong) friends from church helped us to move everything! I pictured it a bit differently in my mind, and forgot that we didn't have a single chair for the house! My parents are on their way now to bring us some furniture, but last week we were sitting in the floor! I'll definitely be doing a house post once we have some furniture!

We didn't have anyone to take a picture of us, so this was as good as it got!

With hurricane Issac moving into Louisiana, Natchitoches prepared for bad weather. I got three days off of school and work (score!) but it meant that Leslie had to leave on Wednesday to head to Lubbock with the football team to beat the bad weather (which we never got, by the way). I had plenty of unpacking to do, and I was glad I could stay busy! I had mostly everything done by Friday, and I decided I couldn't wait any longer to look for a kitten! I knew it'd be difficult for Leslie and I to find time to go together, and I thought it'd be good to have a few days at home with a kitty before I had to go back to work and school. I didn't really expect to find one, but I did! This is Linus, and he will most definitely be getting his own post later :)

Don't you just love him!?