Survived, but so tired!

Well, we survived the weekend at Youth Quake! Only had two minor incidents, but we made it through!
Saturday evening for "crazy dress night" we had to tell two of the girls to go back to the room and put more clothes on. One girl was wearing a skirt that was a little too short and the other girl was wearing some shorts that were definitely way too short. They were a little mad at us about it, but they seemed to get over it.
Then on the way home, one of the boys decided to open the door of the truck while they were driving down the highway (he was sitting in the front seat with Cory; we switched out trucks with Cory's dad for the weekend to have more room, so it was actually Cory's dad's truck and not ours). Cory said they were going about 70 or so down the highway when all of a sudden he heard this big "whoosh" from the wind. He said once he realized that the front passenger door had been opened he yelled something, but doesn't even know what he said... all he knows is that is was completely dead silent for the next 10 minutes or so until we stopped for lunch. He happened to do it right around the time Cory needed to get off on an exit to connect to another highway. So, he decided to stop at the next exit that had signs for food so that we could just eat an early lunch and so he could reroute our way home. All in all, we ended up making it home in a decent amount of time and that little incident didn't delay us too much.
It was great to get home and take a nap after the weekend was all over! We had a great weekend and a lot of fun with the youth group kids, but we were so tired! Haha; I'm still trying to catch up on my sleep a little!

Busy Weekend Ahead

Cory and I have a busy weekend ahead of us! This weekend we'll be the chaperones for a middle school youth event in Huron, Ohio. We're taking off tomorrow afternoon with two carloads full of kids and won't be back in Fort Wayne until early Sunday evening. We've got a total of 9 of us going... me, Cory, 3 guys, and 4 girls. Youth Quake is a regional weekend event that's designed to build a caring community among youth and adults, grow a faith in Jesus Christ and develop healthy relationships among peers. Cory and I used to attend Youth Quakes when we were in middle school. They're a lot of fun, but man are we gonna be tired once the weekend's all over! Please pray that there's decent weather that provides for safe driving conditions and that Cory and I don't go insane! We've got a few kids going that'll be quite a handful for us; please pray that they'll behave themselves!

Sick

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! I've got a cold AGAIN! Feeling tired all the time, stuffy nose, headache... yuck! This is the third cold I've had this winter! This sucks and I can't wait until it goes away!
Well, this is a pretty short post, but I'm gonna get going to bed. Can't wait to take some Nyquil... it works amazingly and really knocks you out so you can get a good sleep and fight off your cold! Wish me luck... hopefully it works really extra good and helps me to get rid of this darn cold super-fast and sooner rather than later!

Charlie's Christmas

Charlie had a VERY good Christmas this year! He got a LOT of new toys!!!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Christmas came early for Cory and I this year! We decided to try out the whole 'Black Friday' thing for the first time ever! We woke up super-early and stood in line outside Office Depot from 4:30am to 6:00am until they let us enter the store. We saw in their ad that they were having some major deals that we wanted to take advantage of! It was bitterly cold outside and the entire time we were standing there we kept thinking 'man, if we get in there and aren't able to get what we want we're going to be so ticked!' Well, luckily we were able to get what we wanted plus some! One of our goals was to get our hands on the new HP Photosmart Premium TouchSmart all-in-one printer. We were in need of an all-in-one printer so that we could easily make copies of our contracts to give clients copies of it as well as keep one for ourselves for the photo business. Well, we got in there and Cory was lucky enough to get his hands on one of the three that they had! Our other goal was to get our hands on an 8 gig compact flash card for our camera; CF cards are the 'film' for our camera and shooting weddings, we tend to fill them up pretty fast. We also knew we'd be getting a new camera soon which takes higher resolution photos and tends to fill up the cards faster as well. Typically an 8 gig card runs around $50 to $60, but Office Depot had them on sale for only $20! Well, we found out that there was no limit on the number of them you could buy and we seemed to be the only people wanting them (probably cause generally that type of card is only used in a pro camera), so we stocked up on them and ended up getting 6 of them!
That was just the one of of our Christmas gift extravaganzas! We're kinda nuts and made quite a few big purchases within the past couple months (but a few were for the photo business!), but we're super-excited about every single one of them! In addition to the things we bought at the Office Depot Black Friday sale, we also purchased a new 50" flat panel tv for our living room (it looks a whole lot better than the smaller box tv that was sitting there before; especially since the entertainment center is specifially made to hold a 50" flat panel tv!), a new 5D Mark II camera and lens for me to use while shooting weddings with Cory (Cory already has a 5D Mark II for himself and it does amazing in low-light situations like churches and reception halls so we decided to purchase another one for me to use too!), a Wii (cause our goal is to get a little bit more in shape this next year, so that'll be a fun way to do it!), and a 32" flat panel tv for Cory's office (to use as a copy of his computer screen while he's going over album designs with couples; that why they don't have to look over his shoulder at his computer screen and can instead look at the tv!).
Oh, and another thing just happened the end of last week. We're getting a new water heater installed today because our on-demand electric water heater decided to take a crap! So, it sucks it's gonna cost us some money to get all that fixed, but then again I'm really excited that we'll actually be able to take hot showers now. The old water heater we had was such a piece of crap and was so incosistent. And it didn't work enough to even get hot water in our other bathroom... whenever I wanted to take a bubble bath I always used to just have lukewarm water in the tub. Now I can take a hot bubble bath! Yeah!

Forty

Yeah! I get to work 40 hours for the next two weeks!
For almost the past year my hours at work were cut down to 32 hours a week due to the bad economy and the construction industry not being so hot. That was a huge cut in pay since ever since I first start working there we were so busy that they told everyone in our department to work manditory 45 or 50 hours (depending on the particular week)... and everything past 40 we got paid time and a half. So, being down to only 32 hours has really put a damper on my income and Cory and I haven't been able to save up for things nearly as easy as we used to be able to.
I'm so excited though because we've begun to get a little busier and a few of us were asked to work 40 hours for the next couple weeks! I'm hoping that the construction industry will continue to turn back around (sooner rather than later!) and that we continue to become busier and busier so that we can build back up to the manditory overtime I used to work! For now I'm just hoping that I'll be asked to work 40 hours again after these next couple weeks are up.

Toenails and Tubs

So, last weekend Charlie got himself into a bit of a mess. On Saturday, we noticed that he had cracked his toenail all the way up the side (we think he must've done it running around outside and tripped over something in the yard, but we're not exactly sure when or how it happened). We didn't think it was very bad, so we were just keeping an eye on it and kept putting peroxide on it to keep it clean. Well, then on Monday night when we went to feed him dinner he was so excited and bouncing up and down that he banged his foot into something. There it went... the toenail broke even more and he was bleeding everywhere! He was freaking out and wouldn't sit still and was walking all over the place and wouldn't let us hold onto him... luckily we were able to keep him contained to the tile area and he didn't get on the carpet (made it a whole lot easier to clean that way)! His toenail had split all the way back to the quick of his nail and it was hurting him really bad; he was wimpering and crying and looked really sad. So, we cleaned it up, but a bandage on it and then Cory took him into the vet the next morning. The vet said the best thing to do would be to take part of the nail off so it could heal properly. They tried taking it off, but the nail was still too attached to take it off without Charlie being in a whole lot of pain. So, they had to sedate him and surgically remove part of his nail. This past week we've had to give him pain meds and antibiotics as well as continually change the gauze and bandage around his foot. We've also been putting a boot on his foot every time he goes outside so that the bandage wouldn't get wet. Cory took him into the vet again yesterday and the vet said that it's looking good and that he'd like us to leave the bandage off so that his foot gets some air now, but he wants us to continue putting his boot on his foot when he goes outside so that the area around the nail can stay clean. He's feeling himself again and the nail's slowly growing back. I just hope he doesn't end up bumping it on something again, or else we could have to go through this all again. All in all, I feel sorry for my puppy though... I'm sure that hurt pretty bad!

Update on our bathroom remodel!...
We're getting SOOOO close to being finished with it! Our goal is to have it completely finished by the Sunday before Thanksgiving because we'll be having some of our friends that Cory went to school at St. Francis with over for dinner that evening. We've got it all painted, although we need to do a few touchups. We've also got all the trim hung, but just need to caulk around it and paint it. And, our tub just got refinished today! I'm SOOO excited! YEAH!!! It's not blue anymore, but instead it's a very light tan!