House Update...Plus some :)

Since my last post about the house, a lot has been going on. Kevin and I have continued to go and check it out every night. It's been good because we have discovered a lot of things which we've had fixed along the way. For the most part, the whole process has been going very smoothly and we have been very happy. The problems have been very minor.

I ended my last post at the point where our home had a roof and insulation. Here's what's happened since then:

They dropped off our brick and stone. We were so excited to see it! We had a minor crisis when we thought we hated the brick, but it turns out that we love it!


There were huge piles of brick everywhere all around our house!


Then they started bricking:


Later that week, they started our stone:


Here is another view of the stone:


The stone on the inside of the front porch:

It remains unfinished at this point because they ran out and had to order more. However, I saw it in the driveway today so hopefully they will finish tomorrow!

At the same time that they were doing the above work on the outside of the house, they did sheetrock and drywall on the inside. This is a view from the back of the living room looking toward the front door.


Earlier this week they textured our walls:


...and our ceilings:


And today, they started the painting! It only has one coat so far, so it looks very thin and messy. But I am going to love the color. This is our formal dining, office, and entry.


Here is our living room. The good news is that I think the fireplace is past the point of being able to be stolen now, LOL.


This is a view from our breakfast area.


They also poured Kevin's back porch!




And they poured our sidewalk and front walk. The gaps in it are for the bricks. They'll also lay bricks around the side and build this weird little brick stoop that everyone has to have. This is a view from the front door:


And from the street:


It is really coming along! Tomorrow they will finish painting and then next week we will get our wall tile, cabinets, and countertops. Let the fun begin!

Aside from the house stuff, we pretty much have not had a life. We're trying to save as much money as we can since we are now planning to close on the house a month earlier than we orginally intended (May 27th)! We have been enjoying our time together though, which is why I moved here so quickly in the first place. We have also been hanging out with our friends a lot, mostly just for dinner and hanging out at their houses. We are so excited to be building 2 doors down from some of our best friends here!

Kevin's work is going well. He is still enjoying his new job. He was a little dissappointed when he sold his truck in March, but it was pointless to keep it since he has a nice company truck now. It sold very quickly - another thing that has fallen into place for us recently! God continues to bless us and we are so grateful.

My work has gotten better as well. March was very difficult as I tried to set a routine with a class who has not had a solid one all year. They were literally OUT OF CONTROL. They're behavior has come a long way though, and I am now actually fond of my morning class. My afternoon class has some real characters in it that raise my blood pressure daily. It's a challenge for sure. Academically, they are on the right track finally. The week before I came they had taken a released TAKS practice test and their scores were scary. Most kids scored in the 60's or 70's and several failed poorly (including a 19). After teaching them for 5 weeks I knew it was time to try it again. All 34 of them passed, with the exception of the two afternoon class boys who fail everything on purpose because they think it's funny. However, on their retests they passed as well. Most of the scores were in the high 80's or 90's! There are only 12 school days left until TAKS, so this was good news. We're not out of the dark yet, though, and I'm still nervous!

I will begin my 11th grad school class on Monday. It will last for 5 weeks and then go straight into my 12th and final class. The 12th class is just writing a paper and completing my online portfolio, which I have already almost finished anyway. It's almost over! I'm scheduled to take my principal competency state exam in June. I'll start studying very soon!

This weekend we'll be visiting my family in Bryan, and I am so excited! We're going to ride 4-wheelers, have good family time, and grill burgers at the camp. We're looking forward to the down time.

That's about it for us. I'll try to update sooner rather than later.