Welcome to My Life

Yesterday, I thought it would be a fun idea to take pictures throughout my day to show what a "typical" day is like for us!  Now, I don't want to deceive you that we are as productive as we were that day, every day.  Every day really is different... some days we work around the house, some days we are able to rest, some days we run errands, some days we are at the church... this just so happened to be a workin day!!

Woke up to find our new patio furniture being knocked around by the deck by the crazy wind...  When I went to check on it, I noticed that our dang dog did a work on it himself last night!!

He better hope I can fix it...

Steven has his weekly meetings with our pastor on Tuesday mornings, so I took a shower and got to work cleaning up the house for when my family comes this weekend (Yayyy!!).  Cleaned the downstairs bathroom,

And took all of the clothes up from the guest bedroom (which doubles as our laundry-folding area because it's right next to the laundry room.)

After all the cleaning, Steven got home and we got right to work taking off our shutters so we could paint them.  Our shutters were a very faded wine-red color, and when we first bought the house we thought it needed new shutters but we are just getting to it now, lol.  We had a difficult time taking them out.. but Steven got it done!!

Look how faded our old shutters were...

This is my painting station!  I painted the shutters while Steven painted the front door.

Step one- paint the outsides!

Steven working hard on the front door.  He was listening to Pandora on his earbuds, while I listened on the speakers in the garage.  I would randomly hear him singing along with the song on his station, which wasn't the song I was listening to.  I can't complain, though... I love listening to him sing Praise/Worship songs!

The ever faithful Barkley... with us in the front yard... chewing on a stick.  For a long time, he was eyeing our neighbors two doors down... They have a wooden goose statue that he must have thought was real because he kept barking at it and whining.

We finished the first coat of paint, and hard workers need good fuel for their late lunch / early dinner!  So we stopped at Chipotle which just so happens to be 2 minutes from our house.  :)

Next, we stopped at the store to pick up more paint and some other things we needed to finish the job.  Didn't get a picture of that.  We got home and got to sit down for a while before leaving for Discipleship at the church.

We talked about Spiritual Gifts which for some reason really interests me.  We had already taken Spiritual Gift tests, I got Administration, Help, and Encouragement.  Steven got Encouragement, Faith, and Evangelism.  It is so cool to see how I can use my Spiritual Gifts to help Steven's ministry!!

Got home and Steven went to work out with his buddies and I did the second coat on the shutters... Lookin Good!

I also got the bright idea that while we were on a working streak, I would paint our mail box white (another thing we have wanted to do since we got the house.)  Well, you know Norton's law... whatever can go wrong will go wrong... what was supposed to be the simple task of unscrewing the mail box from the post, turned much harder when I found out that the screw was rusted and the head got stripped from the body... oops... Here is Steven back from his work-out, trying to get the screw out.

It's safe to say that the mailbox is still there, and it's still black...

See how tired Barkley looks in this picture, like he is out of breath?

I said before that we don't really have a "typical" day.  Well one thing that we CAN count on every single day is Barkley being a goober/dork.  Steven was outside working on the mailbox, and I took Barkley inside.  He ate some dinner, and I was on the computer when I heard Steven yell, "Kels, is Barkley in there?"  I said yes, but I didn't know exactly where because I was on the computer.  Turns out, our downstairs door and garage door were open.  I looked all over the house for Barkley but of course he was no where to be found.

Soooooo Steven and I had a nice 11:00 adventure running around the neighborhood looking for Barkley (another thing that is getting to be a more typical endeavor for us.)  I thought FOR SURE this time he was gone for good.  I didn't think he'd been out too long, but he wasn't wearing his collar and we had no idea which way he had gone.  Even if someone did find him (alive) they wouldn't know where to take him.  He usually runs towards the neighborhood, so we looked there and found him smelling a mailbox.  Steven yelled his name, trying to get him to come to us by squeaking his tennis ball, but he saw us and ran away.

The hardest part of this ordeal, is usually when he goes out he is just wanting to sniff around.  He gets distracted very easily and we can catch him when he's smelling stuff.  BUT this time he kept finding rabbits and squirrels!  These are his FAVORITE things and it is his dream to freely chase after them.  Last night he got to live his dream.  He would find a bunny, and chase it across the neighborhood (Steven and I following him.)  We would finally catch up when he would find something else and chase it BACK across the neighborhood. Steven and I were amazed at how fast he was as he chased them!

We spent a very long time running around the neighborhood, and as we were running I was wondering how I would tell my family we lost him, and how long we would wait until we got a new dog (haha).  I was praying, Well God, it's in your hands... I guess we will know tonight whether or not you want us to have this dang dog.  I know we must have looked so hilarious (though they may have gotten used to it by now), running around the neighbor's yards in our bare feet (through the mud and puddles, even), Steven had his "headband flash light" on from working on the mail box, and we are squeaking his tennis ball and shaking his treat bag to try to bribe him!  Our strategy is always to split up so that 1. we can find him easier, and 2. so when he is running away from us the other can try to catch him. 

I met back up with Steven and saw that he was quietly walking up to Barkley where he was sniffing at one of our neighbor's patios.  He springs onto Barkley and I took my jacket off to wrap around his neck as a make-shift leash as we headed back to our house.  Barkley was walking like it ain't no thing... He was just running around the neighborhood sniffing and chasing rabbits... he had the night of his life... no big deal, mom and dad!

I guess we're stuck with him now.. :)

We got home and we were ready for a snack (I had my left over Chipotle) and watched some TV together.

(Don't worry... ESPN was only on while I was warming up my Chipotle!)

So there's a day in my life!  haha