Happy 5 Years!

Today is Mike and I's 5 year anniversary.  I realize that once you get married your years should "start over" but I'm not willing to give up those 5 years just yet. :)  I honestly feel like we have been together a lot longer than just 5 years (and married for 4 months).  Not in a bad way by any means, I feel like he has always been in my life and me in his.  As cheesy as it sounds, he really does complete me. 

This morning though, I had the realization that Mike and I really like to push each others buttons.  I knew we did it, quite frequently, but this morning as I was thinking about us and our 5 years I realized just how much I think we enjoy doing it.  Haha!  So happy anniversary babe to the biggest pain in my butt that I couldn't imagine my life without!  You truly are amazing and I love you! :)

A New Little Home?!

A couple weeks ago I found these brand spankin' new houses that I fell in LOVE with.  Even though I only saw them on the rmls website, I still knew that I loved them.  The only downfall...LOCATION.  They are in Estacada, which is about 30 min from where we are currently and adds a bit more to both of our drives for work.  I finally convinced the hubs to just go look at them because I was willing to forfeit the location for these houses.  We went and looked at them today and I would still have been willing to forfeit a better a location because these houses were so beautiful and new and we would get to build our own too which I think is fun!  Of course, the hubs disagrees.  He doesn't want to live in Estacada (it is a bit ghetto) but these houses...I just love them!

Our best friends, along with a couple other of our friends, live in a housing development of townhouses.  Mike has been really anti the townhouse and for the most part I have been too.  There were definitely things I liked about them but in the big picture I was saying no.  There has been one particular one right across the street from our best friends and it's been a joke that it was meant for us because it's the only one that hasn't sold, out of the ones that have been built.  The prices have dropped so drastically on these townhouses that Mike actually wanted to look at them so we went and looked today and he actually liked it!  So now we had some decisions to make...  The hubs has ALWAYS wanted to have rental properties and with the price being so low and below our budget on these townhouses it would be a perfect investment to live in a for a few years and then turn it in to a rental...OR we look at houses and spend probably a good 30,000 more...  Decisions, decisions.

We decided to at least do the pre-qualification and see what our interest rate would be and potentially next weekend go put money down on an empty lot and have our new little home built!  I know everything will happen how it's supposed to and if it's meant to be, we may be moving into our newly built house in August!  The whole process makes me a little nervous because I want to make the right decision for us and this could potentially turn into us owning our first home!

Motivation & Procrastination...

This is the story of my life today.  As I sit here at work I look at the time, it's 11:30am.  I think to myself this is already the LONGEST day ever.  Today I lack the motivation to do anything...and blogging at work is my procrastination.  I went to make a call this morning to another doctors office and I get this recording "thank you for calling frontier, this phone has been temporarily disconnected"  hahaha.  I find this pretty funny really, that's what happens when the company you work for decides to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy and stops paying bills to look like they are in more financial distress.  Awesomeness.  It's now only 11:45a..I've successfully managed to waste about 15 minutes, including phone interruptions.  WILL THIS DAY EVER END?!?! 

Valentines Day Recap

Mike and I never do much for Valentines Day.  I've never been a huge Valentines Day person, I'm more one the people that think nice things should happen throughout the year not on Valentines Day.  But this Valentines day was a first for us, we were able to have Mike's daughter Allie.  We had heart shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's and Allie and I decorated brownies.  We also hung out with the sister in-law, husband, and cutest little niece ever.  It was a nice low-key night spent with ones that we love.  I suppose that's what Valentines is about anyways, right?  I also was lucky enough to get a nice massage before bed time!  I think the husband needs to give more those out throughout the year! :)

I'm ready NOW!

This weekend husband and I went and looked at a house, the first one(s) we've looked at since the last time we were going to buy. They are brand new houses that have been built and we actually looked at a few in the same subdivision.  They were nice and I was secretly hoping husband would really like them and then want to do a 100% financing loan so that we didn't have to wait to buy but that was not the case.  If I'm being honest with myself, I didn't actually fall in love with the houses either.  What I like is that they are new so we don't have to worry about things going wrong and end up being house poor, but I am also feeling really impatient with this whole process and want to buy right NOW.  I feel like we are bursting out of our tiny, 750sq ft apartment and it's time to move on.  Our lease is also up April 1st so it would be nice to be out by then but that's not going to happen I'm afraid.  We are still in the process of saving up our 3.5% down payment, then we still need to get pre-approved, then we need to start really looking.  We're hoping end of April we will have the downpayment...

I'm just ready to move into a house and I want to be able to paint and have friends and family over and I'm SO ready for Mike to have his own space. :)  Every day that passes I get more and more impatient so I hope this whole process ends up going by quickly for my sake and Mikes!

Work Drama

We have been in the process of getting bought out at my company.  Originally, we were supposed to get split from our corporate office, where they did EVERYTHING for us and they are located in Arizona, so we started taking on some more tasks as an office in preparation for the change.  At the same time we took on these tasks, on of the girls at our office left leaving us even more short handed.  I was answering all inbound phone calls(along with 2 other girls who are in Roseburg and  Astoria), which I hated, lets be honest.  After the rearranging of job duties I was taken off of inbound phones(thank goodness!) and moved to doing more outbound phone calls(scheduling).  With that rearranging, it seemed to piss some people off.  Nobody in the office likes to answer the phones.  I have also been there the shortest length of time so the fact that I am able to get off the phones and other people either have to stay on inbound phones or are now on inbound phones created a little animosity towards me.  Although, I wasn't aware until yesterday.  I had my suspicions that certain people were a bit upset about the change but yesterday it was made clear.

1) Yesterday one of the girls was asked to backup phones when needed(due to her hour allotments being a little screwy), she put up a fight with the boss lady and in the midst of the arguing about it flat out said, "why can't Sam get on phones?"  Which may not seem a big deal, but I know from this comment there has been some "venting" about me being able to get off phones.

2) A couple days ago one of the ladies went to another one of us and tried to start some shit talking by saying, "Don't you think Jamie treats Sam differently than everyone else?"  The girl this was being said to became the bigger person and said she wasn't going to discuss that with her and walked away.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

I've done absolutely nothing to these women and I know it's just a bitterness coming out but grow up.  I'm here to do my job and do a good job at that.  I do not want to be involved in the drama and I do NOT want to be the source of the drama so act your age ladies.

Photography

I took my first real "family" pictures this weekend.  Of course, they were just of my sister-in-law's family but still. I'm quite impressed with my amateur photography skills.  I see a difference in my photography just since I started this summer.  I just love taking pictures!  I can get so lost in it.  My dream would be to travel around just taking pictures!  I still don't know a lot about all the technical stuff with the digital cameras but learning a little bit here and there.  And knowing enough that I can get out and take some pictures that I'm proud of!

Here are a couple of my family ones...