Heavy Heart

I haven't had a blog post in a while. There are plenty of great things going on right now, but I just haven't been able to muster the energy to make a happy go lucky post.
On March 7, 2010 my dad passed away at the very young age of 48. This has been devastating to me and my family. He was the rock, heart, and soul of our family. He was such an amazing, kind, and caring person. I have always said that he had the kindest heart of anyone I've ever met. And luckily my brother has that same heart too. I was very proud to have him as my father. He made so many sacrifices for our family that included him being gone a lot for his job. When he was sick, he never complained. When you saw him, if you didn't know he was sick, you couldn't tell. He had a thirst for life, and for his family. He stayed strong for so long because of 3 people: my mom, my brother, and myself.
He very much was a believer. He always read the Bible and was constantly expanding in his walk with Christ. Because of this, I am happy to say that I know he is in Heaven watching down on us. I know that he is in a better place, one without pain and hurt.
For us still here on Earth, it is the hardest thing in the world. I miss my dad, as does my brother. And my mom, she misses her husband and her best friend. We miss his direction, his outlook on life, just everything that he was.
I know people say with time it will get easier. I will never stop missing him, and I will always have a heavy place in my heart.
I love and miss you so much. May you rest in peace with God, and be my angel forever.

We have tulips!

Today the weather was prettier than it has been in a while. So we went to the grocery store, and then came home and pulled some weeds out of the front yard. It was nice to open up the windows, and do some work outside! I am ready for Spring! I'm not ready for the 100+ heat of the summer, but spring is nice. Back in December we planted some tulip bulbs so they would bloom in the early spring. Well today when I was pulling weeds, this is what I found.....

We have tulips! Well...we are closer to having tulips! I was SO excited to see these little buds showing! Now that makes me want to go spend lots of money at the Garden Center on more spring flowers. I need to wait a little longer though to make sure it won't freeze anymore. With the weather lately, you never know.

I'm through with the painting of the bedroom conversation

Wow it's been a while since I blogged...oops. :) A few weeks after we repainted our master bathroom, we painted our master bedroom. I think after painting this room we are on a painting freeze. The bathroom seemed so easy, but then we started the bedroom, and it took forever. Of course, the bedroom is bigger, but geez, lol.

Here are a few before pictures:

 

And the during pics:

 Our finished bedroom:

 

Our next project will be the living room. When we moved in, everything in the house was beige. Which is better than white, but our couches are beige, too. There is no definition between the walls, carpet and the furniture. The problem is, I cannot for the life of me decide what I want to do. When we did the bathroom and bedroom, we knew exactly what we wanted. But the living room is a different story. We have spent hours in the paint department at Home Depot, but nothing is sticking out. So we will keep waiting until we know for sure. I have been told by my wonderful hubby that we need to know what we want to do before we do it because there is nothing worse than spending a ton of time on something, just to not like it. :)

Bathroom Redo!!

Happy New Year! I can't believe that it is 2010! More than anything, I can't believe it is a new decade. Let's see, a lot happened in the last decade for me: I graduated from high school, graduated from college, got married, moved 4 hours from my hometown, and bought a house. I am SO excited to see what the next decade holds for me and my family! :-)
Jeremy and I have been off together for the last 11 days. I can't remember the last time we were both off for that long without having something planned. We had Christmas and time with family, but other than that, we were just going to enjoy the time off. And it was great! We saw a few movies, cleaned house, re-stained a table, and the most exciting thing...painted our bathroom!
First here is the stained table. I forgot to take a picture of it before, but it was black. Jeremy sanded it down, and restained it. I think it looks beautiful.

I had been searching for the perfect knobs to go on it. We went to Anthropologie and found the cutest knobs for the table.

Next we tackled our master bathroom. That was a lot of fun! We went to Home Depot and loaded up on supplies, and we got all of it done in 1 day!

Here are the before pics:

And the during pics:

And the FINISHED bathroom! Which I just absolutely LOVE!! It turned out SO good!

Now its back to work until the next vacation. I am looking forward to going to San Antonio in February for Jeremy's music convention, and then going to DisneyWorld in May for band trip! Happy 2010 everyone!

Christmas Concert and Christmas 2009 at the Gray House!

Jeremy had his Christmas concert right before the Christmas break! It was great! I know I am biased, but it was really neat to see the work that he has done with his band.

We had our first Christmas in our house this year! My grandparents came down and we had such a good time! Jeremy and I cooked the normal Christmas fixins, we made a pumpkin cheesecake that was delicious! Overall I think it was a success!

Our beautiful Christmas tree!

 

Christmas stockings

My grandparents left on Saturday, and Saturday night we headed out to Katy to visit with Jeremy's aunts and uncles. Sunday morning his Aunt Kama and Uncle Steve stopped by to see the house before they headed back to Rockwall. It was fun to have so many people come over! Next is 11 days off...woo hoo!

Thanksgiving and Christmas Decorating!

I can't believe Thanksgiving has already come and gone! We headed up to Rockwall for a few days. We got there on Wednesday night. Thursday we cooked up the turkey and all the fixin's! After we ate, we went over to Jeremy's aunt's house for dessert and the Cowboys game. While we were there we mapped out our plan of action for Black Friday. Jeremy and I went to Target early on Friday morning (well...8:00am early) and got a new coffee maker, and some towels for when we paint the bathroom! Then we headed to Northpark. We saw the trains, which was a lot of fun. It really wasn't as crowded as I thought it would be. We left to come back home on Saturday.

We got out Christmas decorations and decorated the inside of the house on Sunday. I have always said that when we got a house, I wanted to have the Christmas tree in the front window, so people can see it when they drive by. Well Jeremy wanted a real Christmas tree, and wanted it in the living room because we never go in our dining room (the room that faces the front). So we put our fake tree up in the dining room.

This past Saturday we went and picked out our real tree! It was a lot of fun! Here is our real tree all decorated in the Living room.

My grandparents sent us a beautiful wreath from Maine! It smells sooo good.

And in the middle of all of that, my wonderful husband celebrated his 27th birthday! He was originally going to have to judge All-Region Band auditions on his birthday, BUT it decided to SNOW in Houston on that day, so they cancelled the auditions! We went to Melting Pot, which happens to be the Grays' favorite restaurant for birthdays!
Here is a picture of the birthday boy about to open his presents!

We are excited about my family coming down for Christmas! Only 2 more weeks of school for Jeremy. He has his Christmas concert coming up so that will be fun. I am taking off the last week of December. That will be a MUCH needed break!

No More Football!!!

Yay! No more football! Jeremy's school made it to the playoffs. Then they won the first game. So Friday night was the second round. They lost in the very last minute 38-35. No more football which means no more marching band! The football fan in me was sad, but the band director's wife was happy! LOL.
Here is a picture of his band, marching the drill that he wrote. :-) I think he's pretty talented!

We are excited that Thanksgiving is around the corner! Jeremy is off this whole week, but I have to work through Wednesday. We will be heading to Rockwall on Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with Jeremy's family. I'm excited to see everyone!
We hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!

Concert!

We went to the David Cook concert at a place called Warehouse Live in Downtown Houston last night! We had a BLAST! We went to Flying Saucer before for dinner and beer. It was a really fun place. A band called The Script opened for David and they were really good! Then David played! We had a great time and we are so happy we finally got to see him!

Let's see...what else has been going on? Not a whole lot. Its football season so I spend Friday nights at the football stadium while the hubby does his job. And its marching season, so I spend Saturdays at the football stadium cheering on the band! Having a band director for a husband is a lot like having a football coach husband, lol. During the fall, you barely see them! But the Aldine Mustang band got a 1 at UIL!! Jeremy has started a jazz band at the school, and he is pretty pumped about that!

We are looking forward to heading to Dallas for Thanksgiving and then having my family here at our new house for Christmas! I must admit though, all of the Christmas advertising so early is a little ridiculous!

Here are a couple of pics from the concert!

This the band "The Script" who opened for David.

The Grays!

DAVID!!

Busy Busy!

Well we have been so busy lately getting our house all put together! We had our first visitors 2 weekends ago. My grandparents came down to visit us. We had such a good time. We went to Jeremy's game on Friday night, and then just hung out and showed them around Spring the rest of the time.
This past weekend we drove up to Sulphur Springs for my friend Brittney's wedding. We had a great time seeing everyone and celebrating with Mr. and Mrs. Spruiell! On our way home we drove through Royse City to meet our friends Joey, Luanne, and their brand new baby Wyatt! He is SO cute and such a good little baby! Congratulations you guys! Spending time with a newborn did not help with my itch to have a baby, haha. But all in due time ;-)
I am going to take some pictures of the house now that it is decorated and I will post those soon!