House Hunting!

So, we met with our mortgage woman on Friday (most of which I can't remember due to exhaustion from a busy night at work). I really like her, she's really straight-forward and honest about her work, and we appreciate that. Another perk to this, her son-in-law is our realtor. So, if we like a home, he gives her a ring, and the ball gets rolling. Let's be honest, it definitely helps when the two important people in this whole deal know each other. It makes life simple.

On to the next step...searching houses with Richard, the realtor. We had found one house that I was absolutely IN LOVE with; however, it was a great deal and it went fast. So, this morning at 6:00 am I found one that was beautiful, and I sent it to Brad. Within our price range, a cute home, brand new actually, with a ton of the upgrades we want. Downside: it is very much a LONG way out from where we intended to end up. However, because Brad is a fantastic husband, he called Richard this morning, and we're going on our first house search on Monday morning, and this house will be one of our stops! YAY! I have promised to keep an open mind to the fact that it might be too far, as Brad has promised to keep an open mind that it might be perfect! More importantly...we will hopefully have a house of our very own in the next few months! We're excited!

Also new news, we started our small group with the new couples in the nearly/newlywed class. Our new 4 couples are just awesome! The now 7 couple small group is just so awesome! Tonight we did our first real discussion, and it was just so good. God is so so good!

Next in the news...I've decided I'm kidnapping our niece. We miss her. Or...I might hijack my own personal jet so Brad and I can fly wherever we need whenever we want. Good plan?

Valentine's was fun...even for a girl who isn't a huge supporter of Valentine's. After our fun date, on Thursday I wanted to do something to surprise Brad so I went and got him some chocolate covered strawberries..because he LOVES those. He brought me yellow roses...so pretty! We had a good day!

In prayer requests, Nana and Papa's friend sweet Bonnie, passed away this week. Please pray for them all as they are traveling to the funeral, and for her family. Bonnie was such a sweet woman.

Big weekend ahead..we're going to a partnership class at the Stone this weekend, we're on our way to getting involved and getting some roots! Saturday night we have a BBQ, and Sunday is the first time in almost 2-3 months where neither one of us had to work the Saturday night before! YAY!

Hope all is well! Promise pictures of something interesting soon..maybe a house?

Movies Galore

So recently, Brad and I have been on a movies kick. Theaters are so much less expensive in the afternoon than in the evenings, and empty. It's pretty sweet, and on our days off...it's pretty relaxing. I think this stage is only temporary, but it's been pretty fun the past week. We've seen three in the past week. Let me explain, in December, the hospital sent me free movie passes for my birthday. Yay! So Brad said we could go on a date to a movie of my choice and use them. Well I've been scoping out my options lately, there have actually been many I wanted to see, and we decided on 27 Dresses. So...last week off we headed to the Tinseltown theater..much nicer than expected I might add. Well, we went in the afternoon, and the prices were pretty low, so we decided to pay for the tickets and in we went.

Sidenote: I loved the movie. It has some unnecessary swearing though, and I was really disappointed with that. But it is the ultimate girl's movie, with some cute humor. Pretty cute! And a thank you to my husband..the sweet sweet man, for going with me.

We continue our movie parade this past Sunday night, for our Valentine's date. Let me just say...I'm not big on Valentine's Day, I never have been...so I told Brad he had to plan the date. I was so impressed...he took me to the restaurant where we had our very first Valentine's date. Pappadeaux's. It was DELICIOUS! Brad had scallops...whoa they were good, and I had tilapia which was amazing and light and fluffy. All around great! Then we decided to go to National Treasurer...I think I actually liked that one better than the original. Loved it!
Sidenote: We didn't use the passes here either, wrong branch of theaters? So we still had passes...all the more reason to go to another movie!
Additional Sidenote: Our waitress was in training, she did great, but all I could think of was that I probably have the same scared look on my face each day that I work. It made me laugh, and feel for her all at the same time.

So, that leads us to today.
NEWS: I am now officially a licensed Texas driver. I only have the paper license now, but I have a license with the name Rachael ALLISON! It was pretty exciting for us...we're official.
Well, the license place moved fast today..we were in and out within a half hour, impressive right? We had some time to kill before Brad needed to get to sleep for work tonight, so we decided to go use our passes and see Fool's Gold.

Sidenote: We didn't use the passes, we thought we'd save them for an evening movie! Hahahaha. This one...also super cute. It was different, but I liked it. Brad did too.

So overall, we've been having some fun!

In other news,
We should meet with the mortgage woman this week. YAY!
Then we can meet with the realtor. An additional YAY!
The apartment is clean, vacuumed and all!

We're just some crazy cats here.
One final exciting note! Tomorrow night is small group, and we will have new members this week! The nearly/newlywed class started at the Stone for the semester, and Aaron and Shauna are leading a group again so we are combining together! I'm pretty excited! The 6 of us (3 couples) have become pretty chatty as is, I can't imagine how great it will be when there are 4 more couples! Wooo!

All for now!
Have a wonderful week!

I'm a slacker

Been too long, I've been a bit lazy I would say!

So, life has been fun lately. We've been staying busy as always, but all good times! Let's see how we could update all of you on life in Austin....

1. We BOTH work nights now. It's pretty exciting. I'm not going to lie, going to nights has been one of the best transitions! I can't even explain how nice it is to be able to go home from work and be done with work. I can sleep without worrying what I forgot to do during the day. Thank goodness!

Sidenote: When I first switched, I woke up nearly every day after I had worked the previous night and would be in a panic that no one had assessed my patient's or given them meds since I wasn't there at 9 am. It is just sad. This happened the first two weeks, pretty much every night I worked. I would come home, be in bed by 7:30am, wake up around 2 and think OH NO! Who is with my patients? No one took report! Ridiculous! This has passed.

2. We have been married 5 months! Whoa. Brad is introduced daily into the world of crazy, poor thing.

3. We went to Dallas, first time in my life, first time for Brad to really explore. We were able to go to the JFK museum, very interesting.

From Dallas in our hotel.

4. The Giants won the Superbowl! Yay! The Manning family took 2 in a row. That makes me so happy. If it can't be Peyton, it might as well be Eli. Plus, I did hope for the Patriots to lose, because their undefeated season seemed cheap since they were almost beat HOW MANY times as the end of regular season.

5. We've started the process of looking into buying a house. Settling. Wow. It's exciting. We're hoping to stay in the Round Rock area, north Austin. We really love it here.

6. I made Brad a meal for his birthday, stuffed pork loin. I have pictures, because I'm kinda excited about the progress in cooking.


7. We both are going to try to get involved in working with the children or the teens at the Stone, wherever the most help is needed. We're so excited about that!

8. I'm going to play on the hospital's softball team, I think, I'm pretty excited to start some softball up again!

9. We had a girl night/guy night with our friends last Friday. (I got called off at work, and Brad didn't have to go in until 11pm) It was a great time to just relax and catch up since we haven't gotten to see everyone much since the holidays.

10. God is moving in some pretty awesome ways down here in our hearts. We're studying 1 Corinthians at church right now, and each week we leave so challenged and that's so cool! Woohoo!

Alright...promise a better post next time. Hopefully with some pictures of hopeful homes! Yay! Hope all is well with everyone! Take care!