The construction continues...with smiles on our faces!

Wow, I didn't realize that it had been 3 weeks. Whoops. Sorry!

This past weekend was great! Mom and dad Kirkpatrick came in town to spend some time

with mom and dad Puffer and us. We went out to O'Charley's friday night and then came by the apartment to show off Shane's hard work. Then we finished off the night with cake, ice cream and coffee at the Puffer house. Saturday, ALL DAY, the dads and Shane put up the ceiling in the kitchen and garage area (downstairs). They worked from 10am-6pm, and the dad's help was huge. We are so thankful for that. I'm really bummed because I forget that I'm documenting everything and I didn't get any pictures of the 3 guys working together...so all I have is the final result. Just picture them all working and completing sweating through their clothes. With that said, they deserved the steak dinner that the moms prepared. After dinner Shane and I wanted mom and dad K to experience Good Berry's, a local frozen custard place that is so delicious. I think they loved it. I got pictures there, but I took them on the disposable camera we took on the honeymoon, and they aren't developed yet.

Sunday we all went to church together at Vintage 21, minus dad Puffer because he was teaching sunday school at Summit. After church everyone but me went to our favorite Mexican restaurant, La Rancherita. I felt horrible and today is the first day I am feeling better. It worked out well that I had Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. I hated missing lunch at La Rancherita, but I know that we can make it happen again. We look forward to getting out to Monroe to spend some time fishing, shooting clay things, and eating at Jason's with the parents! One thing I wish my dad could experience is riding the dirt bike, but it's gone. :( Hopefully we'll get another one in the future.

Alright, and here are some picture of the apartment. Last post I think we were just finishing up the insulation upstairs. So here is what has happened since then...

Shane is boxing in the wires downstairs because they couldn't show in order to pass inspection (I'm learning a lot through all of this, I'm sure some of y'all already knew this)

A close-up of the wires...boring.

Shane putting up insulation on the ceiling in the garage.

The drywall upstairs! Matt Wall helped Shane with the drywal from the wall to the ceiling, and then Shane did all of the storage space drywall himself. He sweats through 2 pairs of jeans each time he works usually.

We work well together. :)

Shane picking up some drywall to take upstairs

Shane next to his WALL! He put up the drywall on one side of the wall downstairs.

There it is again.

The other side of the wall doesn't have drywall becuase we had to get the insulation on the ceiling and the walls downstairs checked before we could cover it up with drywall.

And here is the ceiling that the dads helped Shane with! Ah, I am so bummed I don't have pictures of them working. From what I hear, they had a good time.

The ceiling on the other side of the wall.

And onto the next thing...

Mudding begins! Mudding upstairs that Shane did last night.

And Shane is mudding the left side as I sit here, lazily, on the computer and write about it.

And here we are! Thanks for keeping up with us everyone! We thank God every night for what He has given us and the opportunities that He gives us to serve and love Him. Good night!

Now for the good stuff...

Wow, so Shane has been hard at work and I have been his little clean up crew. I'll give you a few pictures to show you what we have been working on.

Long story short, the insulation upstairs was not to code, so we moved everything downstairs into the garage, took the dry wall down, took the insulation out, put new insulation in, and are now in the process of getting a few more outlets put in upstairs, finishing up putting insulation in, and then putting the drywall back up. We have been living with Jeanie in one of her spare bedrooms, which has been neat. We have had a couple breakfasts together, and a dinner. We are still working on getting her to come out with us sometime. I think I may take a yoga class with her in downtown Apex if she goes while I am not at work. We are enjoying getting to know her. She's a school teacher, so she has the summer off.

So here is a glimpse of the past 2 weeks.

Moving stuff downstairs...

Putting plastic down...

Taking the molding off...

Taking drywall down...

After a long night of work...

The next day Shane finished tearing down the drywall while I was moving the stuff in the storage sections downstairs.

I decided to help take the drywall off since Shane was putting insulation up on the other side of the apartment.

This is the insulation that Shane took out. He is saving it to use in the ceiling downstairs.

This was Shane's genius way of getting to the ceiling above the staircase. He propped a 2x8 and 2 2x4's on the stairs and on the latter...I'm glad I was at work when he thought this up.

This is me demonstrating how it worked...as if you really needed to see that. Shane just got camera happy.

Some of Shane's NICE insulation installation work. As I am writing this, he is filling in the 6 or so inches at the top with insulation so that can be complete! I am trying to hurry through this so he has his assistant back...not that I'm much help, but we'll see what he can use me for tonight.

This is all of our stuff stacked up in the garage.

This is kind of funny. The entertainment center became our closet, everything didn't fit though, so it's just laying around wherever there was room. I think I may have to make a trip to the laudrymat when this is all finished to make sure all of our clothes are clean. Eakes.

While Shane was at work on Monday, I made my way upstairs. Shane had asked me to throw all the insulation out the window (the stuff Shane tore out and is re-using downstairs) onto the driveway to get it out of the way for when he had to put the drywall back up. I also picked up all the plastic and swept and vacuumed so that we wouldn't have AS big of a mess to clean up after the drywall was put back up. Shane works so so hard so I wanted to treat him somehow. It actually looked like what we used to live in when I finished, it was exciting.

That's all I have for now. Jeanie and I have had a couple breakdowns, but life could be a lot worse than this. While all of this is going on in the garage, Jeanie's A/C breaks in her house. She doesn't seem to catch a break. The A/C parts that we need were ordered and will be installed on Friday.

Hope everyone is doing well! Congrats to MEGHAN for finishing up her MBA this coming Friday! Woo! And little Will will be 8 months at the end of this week! Lots of exciting things going on.

Back-tracking

These are some pictures from before we were all moved in. My mom took them, and emailed them to me a couple week ago.

This is a picture of the downstairs before the wall was put up.

This is where the cabinets were before Shane moved them, and before the window was taken out and replaced by the door.

And this is just the upstairs when we were in the process of moving in.

Ok that's it.

Family Reunion and House Destruction

This past weekend Shane and I headed up to Chattanooga, TN for the Puffer Family Reunion. My dad is one of 6 boys, and all but one made it to the reunion. My whole immediate family was there, which was great. Grayson and Will are growing so fast!
We arrived Friday at 2am thanks to Sarah's heaving right foot. Shane and I watched the USA game Friday morning with Matt and Will and then headed over to the Aquarium in downtown on the river. It was pretty neat. That night we had a cookout at the pool. Saturday we relaxed all day and went downtown that night to eat and listen to the Charlie Daniel's band. It was a great weekend.

The house project had a minor turn last week. The inspector came last week. We were all excited because we couldn't wait to hear him say that all of Shane's work was pefect, which he DID! But he also said that there is no record of the pre-existing stuff having it's final inspection. Boo. With that said, we will have to take out the insulation upstairs and replace it with a thicker insulation, and do other small, tedious things. Thankfully Jeanie is allowing us to move into her house for the next couple weeks while she is in Washington. She offered to pay for someone to come out and do all of this because she hates that Shane has to do it, but Shane told her not to worry and that we would get it done. So that is what we will be working on the next few off-days and hopefully get the messy work finished before Jeanie returns. I'll have some pretty good pictures to post of our bedroom/living area covered in drywall and insulation in a couple days! Woo!

Enough of that...Here are some pictures from the Reunion this past weekend.





















Our sweet nephew, Will!















Sarah, Grayson, and Shane playing around at Blue Plate Restaurant waiting for the Charlie Daniel's band to play.
















He loves Uncle Shane, who is taking his pictures right now.
















Shane and me at Blue Plate




















Grandpa and Will at Uncle John's house.

Picture time!

I finally got around to putting the pictures on the computer. I'll explain what is happening. Some of y'all have seen the apartment, so bear with me.

Here is the wall that Shane is in the process of doing. He finished the framing and now we are waiting on the inspector to come so that Shane can put the drywall up. The wall is separating the garage area from our kitchen area. Shane is putting in a door on the far left of the wall. You can see the exterior door and the new interior door resting on the wall.

This is the kitchen area. The cabinets on the right used to be on the same wall at the window (to the left of the window). One of the first things Shane did was move the cabinets and sink to that wall.

Here is a better picture of the cabinet/sink area. The little white thing to the right is our pantry. Right now it has all the dishes and food in it because we emptied out the cabinets so that Shane could take them back off the wall and replace the insulation board that is now up with drywall.

Here is a picture of the door that Shane put in. The window was there, and he took the window out in the kitchen, cut into the brick on the bottom, and put the door in. I went to work that morning, and then when I got home, it was in. Pretty impressive!

He also took the insulation board off this wall so that he could replace it with drywall.

Another picture of the door. You can see the brick at the bottom that Shane cut through with a concrete saw that he rented. The brick dust is still settling and all of the dishes we clean don't really stay clean that long....ha.

Well, I think that just about covers all of it, EXCEPT where we live! Here are a couple pictures of the upstairs.

Shane watching the world cup early in the morning.

And the rest of the place.

Hope you have all enjoyed this!

Kitchen tear down!

We continue to have fun working on the crazy apartment. Sometimes we think, "What did we get ourselves into?" but then remember how blessed we are to have an opportunity to serve Jeanie, the lady we rent from.

Jeanie's daughter got married a couple weeks ago. I hadn't seen her since the wedding until earlier this week. I don't talk to her much because usually she needs to talk to Shane about the apartment. She was weeding in the yard on memorial day, so I asked her how the wedding was. It opened a heart breaking conversation. I am thankful for her openness and hope it leads to even more in the future. We just want to love her. Shane and I are going to have dinner with her tonight. His friend Tim came in town not too long ago and brought us fish that he caught, so we are going to cook that up. Shane and I catch ourselves complaining about how we don't have enough time together because of our crazy schedules and late nights at work, but at least we have each other to come home to, whatever time that may be.

We packed up our kitchen stuff yesterday morning so that Shane can tear down the cabinets again and replace whatever wall stuff is up right now and put drywall up. We are picking up a fridge from a friend of the Kirkpatrick's, but until then we have been using a mini fridge which only holds so much. With that said, we eat out more than we'd like. One of our favorites is a Chinese place down the street. We are trying to build a relationship with a girl that works there. Last week I shared with her that I went to China a couple years ago and she has clung to us since then. She comes up and talks to us every time we are in there now. She works 7 days a week 11am til 11pm. She has a 5 month old and a 2 year old. I don't know who keeps her kids considering her husband works all day at another chinese restaurant in town. She cannot drive so her boss picks her up for work every day. She mentioned that she liked my purse and would like one in white instead of brown. I told her I would love to take her shopping and that we would figure out a time that works for both of us next time we are in there. So funny story...I decided to go ahead and start looking for a purse for her since we hadn't figured out a time when I could take her out. I found one and it's so cute! I almost bought one for myself. I got off work yesterday at 8 and Shane didn't until 9. So I went to Home Depot at 9, picked Shane up, and we headed over to #1 China. I went in and showed her the purse and she said, "No no, I do not like that style." It was pretty funny. Oh well! I'll try again. She said she had Sunday mornings available but I told her we go to church...she has no interest in going. "I'm Buddha," she said.

Shane and I decided to put my car on craigslist to see what would happen. I walk to work most days as long as it isn't raining, so we really have no reason to have 2 cars. Well, we had a few bites on it, which surprised both of us. One guy has seen it a couple times and decided to buy it. We are meeting him at the bank this afternoon to sell him the car. Woo!

Alright, that's it for now...pictures next time! Promise.

1 month passed...many to live!

Well, we have been married for a little over a month now and thought we could start a blog. That way we can direct people here instead of feeling obligated to call everyone in the family once a week...just kidding. :) Since the honeymoon we have had 3 full days off together, so we've made the most of those. One of them was spent running and eating, one was spent in Charlotte with Mr. K, Mrs. K, Meghan, and Eli. We went serious go-kart riding, ate at Jason's Deli, and hung out at the house together. Eli watched the wedding and reception DVDs. We missed him at the wedding. The most recent day off we took my mom to lunch and then caught up over coffee. We feel so blessed and are so thankful to have what we have. God provides for all of our wants and needs. It is truely overwhemling.

Shane has been working hard on the apartment, mowing lawns, running, or doing side jobs on his days off. He doesn't know how to relax. Next weekend we get to pick up a refridgerator and stove from a family in Charlotte that the Kirkpatrick's know, so we are excited about that. I will post pictures of his hard work soon. He is so talented. He is building a wall to separate the actual garage from our soon-to-be kitchen. The woman we rent from is so sweet and we have fun, most of the time, brainstorming together about how things will look and where appliances will go.

I recently started a new job at Tobacco Road Outdoors. It's a retail store in Downtown Apex that sells clothes, camping gear, tents, fishing stuff, etc. Shane helps me avoid temptation of buying all of their cute women's clothes. It's tough! Shane is at The Home Depot. We aren't exactly using our degrees, but God is using us where we are at, and that's what is important to us.

We started attending a church in downtown Raleigh a few weeks before the wedding and love it. A few of our friends go there, so it is fun to see them Sunday mornings. We are in the proess of picking a small group to commit to and are trying to get connected through serving on Sunday mornings. Everything will take time to fall into place.

That's it for now. Pictures will come soon.