Silly Dogs

I have a link to silly cat pics & captions here on the blog... but I also ran across one for dogs today.

Some people dont like the captions, but I think they are cute. If you are interested, check out:

http://ihasahotdog.com/

Summer is here!

Hope you are all having a great Memorial Day weekend. I know that I have had a good one already. Right now, I'm sitting on the front porch enjoying a rain storm. I love it.

I went to East TN this weekend to visit my family. I havent seen most of them since Christmas. It was great getting to have lunch with my Gram, my cousin & her adorable 12 month old twins. I also got to see my great grandmother. She's 92 and is still very mentally sharp but we've just found out she is going to have to remain in the nursing home for good. She had some weird non-responsive to strong smelling salt "spells" a while back & the doctors dont want her to live alone any longer. She's not really upset about it and it really is a good thing b/c there are always people around and she likes the attention of the nurses & the activities they get to do. There are always interesting characters in the nursing home and I could fill up a blog post probably just on some of the things I see while I am there.

I also got to see my brother, niece, one nephew & the newest niece, Katlyn!! She's really cute, but she's not even two weeks old so she pretty much just sleeps. I did get to have some good times with the older niece & nephew playing Uno & Trivial Pursuit. I cant believe how grown up they are becoming. The niece is wrapping up kindergarten & the one nephew is 9 y/o. Crazy!!!

The real reason I always go home for Memorial Day weekend is b/c it is Decoration Day/Homecoming at the church where my family goes & a lot of my relatives are buried. Decoration Day is an old southern tradition where you put new flowers on the graves of your loved ones. It's also nice b/c a lot of people I've known since I was born are at the church, so I get to see a lot of people at once. Even though I'm 30, I still get people asking me where I go to school (I said, I'm out of school... I'm 30!), talking about how much I've grown (even though I've been finished growing for quite some time) and people telling me I still look 12. Umm... thanks?

After two days of visiting though, I was ready to come home & hang out in my own place. Hal & I just enjoyed sitting on the porch last night gabbing. Good times.

We are going to a friends house today to hang out by his pool, I'm just waiting on this darn rain to go away.

Dont forget to think about our veterans today. There were a lot of veterans graves at the cemetary I was at. It's amazing how many people I knew as adults when I was a child served our country. Salute!

Mr. Casey

What a fun Wednesday! I was thrilled to have one of my favorite friends, Dusty, and her two, very adorable, little girls come see the "new" house. I dont have a lot of visits from youngsters, so I forget how cute/funny it is for them to explore a new place. They instantly wanted to go into the loft. Apparently, stairs are fascinating. They are so observant of small details that I dont even think about.

I think it is so precious. The just-turned two y/o even plainly called me "Mr. Casey." I love it. I cant wait to see my nieces & nephews this weekend. I havent seen my immediate family since Christmas.

I'm off to East TN on Friday evening. I'll blog about that next week I suppose. I have so many people to visit!!!

I hope you all have a safe Memorial Day weekend.

Can I have another?

Vacation that is... unfortunately, Monday was back to work for both of us. We were fortunate to have last week off for the move.

It could have been worse though, I wasnt leading a training session this week , so I didnt have to be on my A-game first thing Monday morning. I did have to fill in for someone today, but it was all good.

Tuesday night was a lot of fun... I went to a minor league baseball game tonight. I'm not a big baseball fan, neither was the rest of the party, so we got seats behind the net so we didnt get surprised with a pop by a foul ball.

Anyway, on to the possible exciting travel city I mentioned the other day... I was under the impression that it was a suburb of London and was crazy anxious... well, it's Manchester instead & I know nothing about it for the most part... if you are reading this & have any pointers for me before I leave in a little over two weeks, holla (hint: eleven)!!!!!!

And we have another!!!

There's a new addition to the Correll family to report today. My newest niece was born at 7:06PM EDT. I cant wait to get to East TN over Memorial Day weekend to see Kaitlynn Ann (I have no idea if that is the correct spelling btw).

She was a healthy girl at just a bit over 8 lbs. Wow... Mother & Father (my brother) are doing fine.

This is even more phenomenal though... My brother told me this news over Thanksgiving & we were talking about how cool it would be if the baby was born on our late mom's bday.

Guess what? It happened. Today is my mom's bday & Kaitlynn knew when to come despite the inducement stuff yesterday that didnt work out.

The middle name is actually a tribute to my mothers middle name (Diane).

Yay! I am so excited. I love little princesses & I now have a perfect balance: Two Nephews & Two Nieces.

Guess who I'm going to see???

Wow, what an exciting/crazy/evolving few weeks it has been.

I found out something fantastic today & have been so excited. I'm going to New Jersey to deliver a one day training 2 weeks from today. You may ask, why am I excited about NJ? Well... it's 20 miles from Philly... where one of the most creative bloggers & one of my best friends,Josh, lives!!!!

I'm super excited & it kinda came suddenly. I cant wait to see him. We havent seen each other since the Loretta concert in KC last February. Way too long!!!

On another travel note, I also suddenly found out I'm going to Saskatoon, Canada for a week in June. I have to admit I'm a stupid American & dont know Canadian geography, so I had to look up the location. I'm not super excited about this one to be honest, but we'll see how it is when I get there. I did get to select a beautiful, historic hotel.

I hope to be blogging about another trip that I'm freaking crazy crazy crazy excited about, but it hasnt been confirmed & I dont want to ruin it. Stay tuned. It will be very soon if it happens.

Cant wait to see you, Whit!

Colorado Avenue Update (the long/catch-up version)

I've finally nagged my assistant/editor enough.

I have photos of the new casa!!!

Click here to check out pics of the house while the former owners furniture was still here & a couple of last Saturday (our first full day here).

We closed on Friday at 11:30am & after lunch with Hal, I came home & started moving. I moved a lot of smaller stuff all day until he came home around 7 with a truck to move our larger furniture. We were at it until around 4am--both exhausted.

Saturday morning was a circus. The cable company was scheduled to arrive between 12-3, but they started calling at 8am. I totally let it go to voicemail, only to have him knocking on our front & back door 5 minutes later. I didnt move out of my comfy bed.

10am... still sleeping... another knock on the door. I jump up, throw some clothes on & run to the door ready to cuss the cable guy only to see Hal's parents. After a brief, oh crap, it's your parents yell, they came in for a look.

It wasnt over... we had plenty of work to do. Our friends/neighbors, Casey & Shane, were rockstars and gardening aficionados & helped us get the landscape in great shape. Another fab-friend Richard came by later & it was such a great day to hang out. It is amazing to be in a house we love to have people see!

Sunday night was magical. We have a tin roof on this 1920 home & we experienced our first rain. It sounded so story-book. Love, love, love it.

We're still very sparse on living room furniture since we got rid of some things prior to moving, so Wednesday is a furniture shopping day.

My fingers are broke & I know you're tired of my post at this point.

Ciao!!

What screen?

This is too funny not to blog about. I would have fell out laughing if it didnt happen to me.

I was out on the front steps of the duplex today watching Hal do something. He finished & I turned around & walked/fell face first through the full screen door. It wasnt quite so funny to me the 3 seconds I was falling or when I scratched up my ankle, but I know it had to be silly-funny.

Thankfully I didnt tear the screen, just knocked it out & bent it a little. Nothing my handyman/assistant/editor cant fix :)

I'm safe!

Over it!

The past two weeks have been a craigslist carnival. I'm happy to report the carnival has seemingly left 37th Ave at this point.

We posted the rental units at the duplex & we have a lease on one side and a background check approved prospect for the other.

As if that wasnt enough dealing with random people, we listed our old sofa & stove/oven both for free. The sofa was a sleeper-sofa & was 800 years old & the oven didnt work--only the stove.

I listed those two items last night at 8pm & had people contacting me within 15 minutes. They were both gone 24 hours later.

Here's where the title of my post comes in....

The couple who picked up the sofa was interracial. They were young, adorable & engaged. They recently moved into an apartment & have nothing except an inflatable mattress. Our sofa will fit them well-- it was still up to diva standards.

The rub was... I was discussing their wedding timeline & she said they had been turned down by one minister already (who was related to her)... b/c they were interracial... I'm amazed that that mindset still pervades some who profess to be Christian.

Let love live :)

Hang in there, folks!

I promise I'll get around to posting some pics of the new place here soon, but we've been running at full pace since Friday. We've almost got the old space totally cleared out & have made considerable progress unpacking here on Colorado Ave.

It totally feels like home already. Today was awesome, we walked down to Star Bagel for lunch, then over to the nursery... then I also picked up some clothes we had at the dry cleaners. I'm loving being able to walk to all these places in 2 minutes or less. Yay!!!

One Night Only!!!

Ok... the title for this post came easy since I just watched "Dreamgirls" for the second time this week.

One night only to wait to get our keys to 4501 Colorado Avenue!!! We just did our final walk-thru over there prior to closing tomorrow morning. I've still got plenty of stuff to box up, but it's feeling so real after seeing the new place empty & ready for our belongings.

I do have an update on the duplex. We signed a lease for the vacant unit yesterday & already have a very strong prospect for our side. I REALLY HOPE it works out for the girl. She's really nice & it would prevent us from having to go through the rental unit showing circus again.

I'm going to blame the lack of pics I've shared of the house on my assistant. They are on the camera, but have not been transferred to the computer yet.

It's getting a little weird on 37th Avenue!

I havent moved in almost 10 years... That's all changing on Friday as you all know. Our current place is starting to look so different already. We've already taken some stuff to Goodwill, are trashing some worthless stuff and boxing up other things.

It's so crazy to think about and yet... it's still hard to fully grasp what is going to happen on Friday when we get the keys to 4501 Colorado Ave. I'm so serious that I would give the house a proper name, but once you actually walk up to the front door, you'll know why it cant be called anything else but by the address. There is a beautiful stained glass transom with the street address over the front door. It's one of my favorite things about the house.

Anyway, I tried to find a video clip to share, but alas, I could not; but I've been totally reminded with all these boxes & emptiness on 37th of the episode of Laverne & Shirley when they moved from Milwaukee to Burbank. Anyone else remember that episode???

On an unrelated note to our move, we've had tons of interest in our other side of the duplex from the craigslist post. I'm so sick of it to be honest. I cant recall how many times I've had to show it, take phone calls, drive by's who stop when they find the address. SO OVER IT!!! We received a completed application last night from a super cute graduate student couple. Pending a few checks for past rental history, credit/criminal background searches, we're pretty confident we have a tenant!

The flipside is that we are going to have to repeat this rental experience all over again with our side once we are out. Wish us luck!!!

My first...

Were you really scared to continue reading this post after that headline? :)

I'm so excited, y'all. I mentioned in a previous post that I had a classroom training last week... I've also mentioned before that I get "graded" or "surveyed" by the attendees. I saw the results this morning and for the first time, I had a 5 on the Overall Satisfaction... thats a 5 out of 5.

You cant get much better than that! I love it! It's such a refreshing feeling and is a great way to start out what's going to be a crazy week (with renting our duplex & our own personal move).

Weekend wrap up

It's been a few days since my last post, but that doesnt mean I have been doing nothing... so let's catch up!

I had a live classroom training this past week, so while it was a good group of attendees, I was definitely glad to wrap it up on Friday.

On Thursday night, I showed one of the out of town trainees around . I've never done that with a trainee before, but she doesnt get to travel much, so I wanted to make her last night in town a fun one. We started at the Parthenon and proceeded downtown. It was a lot of fun. We walked around a bit, grabbed some dinner & went honky-tonkin! We went to Roberts Western World and then Tootsies. We both had a great time. The bonus was they no longer allow smoking, so I still smelled great when I got home :)

Friday night we went out to Franklin to celebrate Nathan's return from Chile & birthday. Fun times.

Playtime was pretty much over on Saturday though. The other side of our duplex became vacant mid-April, so Hal's been doing some floor tile work during the week. The work was complete so a final clean up was in order. We posted the place on craigslist & have already had a few responses. Hopefully it will go fast considering... we'll have our side to rent out in two weeks.

We've pretty much got all of our stuff (mortgage, inspection) out of the way for the new house. I cant wait to move, y'all!!! You will hear more about that soon.

P.S... too funny... I was writing that last paragraph & someone came by to look at the duplex. They were very interested & that is a good sign!