Welcome to our new home...

When you come in our front door you see...

This is the view after you turn the corner out of our entry way!

Our living room!

Our fireplace

Looking from the living room into the kitchen (notice my cute cubbies above the counter)

The kitchen layout

Our shiny washer and dryer (we had to take the doors off the laundry area because they were so big) 

The kitchen! William's favorite part.

Our pantry! It's soooo huge... pictures don't do it justice.

The hallway to the guest room and guest bathroom!

The guest room/study (bed minus mattress) 

Guest closet!

Guest bathroom! 

Our bedroom... it still looks bare, but I'm working on it!

View into the bathroom from the bedroom

The chest of drawers I redid (doesn't it look good) and the bathroom (huge bathtub!)

We have a big bathroom but I couldn't get a good shot... you'll just have to come see it in person

We also got brand new 2inch wooden blinds today! They are awesome!

William's Birthday

Friday night William and I went with several friends to Top Golf Dallas. It's a pretty cool place... think bowling meets golf. It's almost a team sport. You pay for a certain number of games, get your clubs and collect your balls from the ball dispensing machine. Then you go to your "lane" on the tee line. Your balls are implanted with microchips and they are programmed with your name so they can track where it goes each time you hit it.  There are different "games" you can play... like try and hit it the farthest, or hit it to certain targets.  Hayden was one of the party attendees... he was HILARIOUS. For every ball he took about 5 swings... but in terms of points in the game he probably kicked all of our butts combined. 

We had a lot of fun.  William still has some games left on his card which is good! He can go play some when he is home. 

Last night we went to Buffalo Wild Wings with Dana, Pat and William's Dad.  He wanted to watch the UFC fight as part of his birthday present. It was an interesting experience. Dana and I kind of grimaced through most of it because of all the arm bending and blood.  We also got to witness a lovely bar fight.  one of the waiters even got punched. Ouch! 

We are leaving soon for the big party! Can't wait!

Does it surprise you

that I changed my blog layout/background again? It doesn't? Okay good... because it shouldn't. Blogger has been doing some serious updating. Apparently now they also have their own cool background and templates. I liked using third party ones for the most part, but they made it SOOO hard to change things. And I like to change things often. So we will try Blogger templates for a while and see how they do!

Coming up pictures from our apartment!

All moved in

This past weekend was really long. William was lucky to miss it. Friday Jonna and I moved as much of our stuff over as possible.  We moved over most of the kitchen stuff along with all of our clothes from the closet.  My dad got in to Dallas around 10:30pm on Friday night. We woke up on Saturday to heavy heavy rain. It went away by noon, but it started getting colder and colder much to our sadness. Snow and ice started falling around 2pm.  The movers rescheduled in the morning.  So we moved stuff all day and waited for the movers to come. But they never came (although I'm sure they are wishing they did).  They promised to come on Sunday morning... again they regretted that. By Sunday at 8am there was close to 3 inches of snow on the ground. We finally got everything moved by Sunday at 2pm.  I got most things put away that night and just  need to work on organization.

Monday I woke up really sick AGAIN. So I'm on massive antibiotics AGAIN. I stayed home from practicum on Monday and Tuesday because I was feeling so badly. Wednesday I got back into the swing of things with practicum and class.  Wednesday was also my last day of nannying. We'll be taking a bit of a cut in income for a couple of weeks, but I really need some time to just chill out before I start my "real" job in May.  It will be well worth it... the first time since I turned 16 that i won't have a job for more than a month... impressive.

Check back later this week/end for posts on our new apartment (complete with photos), William's birthday celebration, my TSHA experience/ job updates, and my grandparents big party!


Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband. I've missed you so much for the past 10 days and I wish there had been more ways for me to make today special today! You are in for some surprises this weekend! Love you!

We have pages!

Did you notice the little links across the top of my blog (right under my header)? They are called pages. Blogger just added this option and I'm so glad! I can't wait to see what I can come up with to put up there! You can have 10 total so the sky is almost the limit! Anyways check them out... and if you are someone who receives my emails rather than visiting my real page... then you'll have to visit! wandpstephens.blogspot.com

New beginnings

William officially started his job this week. It's the real deal and he's not in training anymore. Right now he's on a rig near Decatur, Texas. Lucky for him me it's not too far from home. Today he was off duty during the day, so he came home for lunch which was nice.  We also got to go walk through our new apartment. There were some issues but hopefully they are resolved by tomorrow. We are supposed to be able to pick up our keys by 4pm. This apartment has been vacant since the end of February, so I don't know why they didn't get it ready sooner. All that said, I'm super excited about it! It is sooooo much better than where we are now! My dad is coming to help us move on Saturday.  Of course it's supposed to rain all day Saturday. Hopefully it works out! (Dad bring plastic tarps if you have any!)  It's going to be weird doing it without William, but my goal is for him to come home for his birthday to an AMAZING new apartment! Yes people! His birthday is in 8 days! He's going to be the big 2-3! Ahhh!

So, I took COMPS and Praxis last weekend. I'll find out the results in a few weeks. I guess that's all I have to say about it. I'm sure I did fine but there isn't much to recount.

This week I redid a dresser that we have. Remember this one? The brown one...

Well now it has a fresh coat of paint! It's black! I'm working on putting new drawer pulls on it so I'll post pictures when that all done! I'm pretty proud of myself for doing it. It looks so much better. 

Look forward to pictures of the new apartment in the next few days! Yay!

Praise the Lord for INCOME and BENEFITS

Updated: See note at the bottom!


William started work on Monday and while he was bored to tears, I was excited about the prospects of income and benefits! I have paid over $1600 in medical insurance payments for my Cobra since November... And William has been completely uncovered (my BIGGEST pet peeve). I have come to know that medical insurance is something that I not only value... but I use! And I use it well! With several chronic and every changing medical conditions, I see specialists as my "regular" doctors and frequently require strange and out of the ordinary procedures and medicines just to get by on a day to day basis.  Let's take a look back at the past year of medicine in Peyton's life. I feel it's needed to understand why I would put myself through the misery of paying nearly $1700 for 4 months of medical insurance.

• Rheumatoid Arthritis: doctor's visit once every 3 months plus RX medication costing me a $150 copay every month! Not to mention all the xrays, steriods, and bloodwork needed just to keep me moving!
• Last March-ish... I got a double ear infection that was so bad that I required multiple office visits and anitbiotics. Oh and my eardrum burst. 
• Fast forward to June... I was diagnosed with a pilonidal cysts that became incredibly infected which required:  1 failed trip to the ER, 1 visit with my general practitioner, 1 speedy referral and visit to a colorectal surgeon (seriously most of you didn't know one of those existed), 1 in-office surgery that same day, lots of narcotics, and several follow up visits.  (Let's not even talk about how I really need to take 6 weeks out of my life for major surgery to get this thing removed or it will come back.)
• Several bouts with typical sickness that comes with working with kids.
• Swine flu in October... fun stuff
• Diagnosis with beta 2 glycoprotein 1 antibodies - also known as Hughes Syndrome - which could require some serious medicinal therapies in the future. 
• A darn good ob-gyn with lots of "consultative visits" to discuss all of the previously mentioned problems and how they affect my reproductive system. 

Yea so there you go folks! That's worth $1700 dollars to me... but honestly no one person should have to pay that much (If only we could get the freaking federal government to agree). So here's the good news!

Today William and I enrolled in our first big kid insurance plan! It's ours. And the best part is... it feels like it's free. It's a mere $890/year! Good grief... that's a drop in the bucket from before. I am SO thankful for my amazing husband and his perseverance in his job search. He could have been discouraged so many times, but he (and his friends and family --thanks Stephen and Dad) didn't give up and he landed the MOST WONDERFUL job ever! People were extra supportive gave him crap about graduating a semester later than expected... but all I can say is that sometimes good things are worth waiting for. He never reads this... but I couldn't be more proud of him. And I know he's very upset about basking in the glory of being able to provide for me for a few months before I graduate... and I am so excited to let him do that. 


Another round of patience is well learned... maybe I'll post a picture of our shiny insurance cards when we get them in our hands!


Update: Just wanted to say that my dad reminded me that good insurance practices were bred into me. Thanks to my amazing parents, I have a nearly bionic eye. And I actually do not consider it a medical issue anymore. And if you know me, you know that it is one of the most weird striking things about me physically (well if you pay any attention to my face).

Interesting article on caffeine....

William is in a constant state of trying to cut back on caffeine... he is INCREDIBLY addicted. So when I saw this post I had to read up for him. He loves Diet Coke and apparently it contains significantly more caffeine than regular coke! Kind of crazy....
Here are the stats that came from this article!

Coffee

Coffee varies in caffeine content drastically, even in the same coffeehouse, on the same day. Everything from roast styles to brewing methods affect the amount of caffeine you get. The lighter the roast, the more caffeine it has.

• Starbucks (Grande) iced coffee, 16 oz: 190 mg. This is double-brewed. Without the ice it contains 380mg.
• Starbucks brewed coffee, 16 oz: 330 mg. Brewed coffee has 50% more caffeine on average than instant coffee.
• Instant coffee, 16 oz: 60-345mg
• Starbucks latte, 16 oz: 150mg
• Starbucks espresso, 1 oz (1 shot): 58-75mg

Tea

The longer a tea is steeped, the higher the caffeine content. If after the first steep, you add more hot water to the tea or tea bag, the tea becomes almost entirely decaffeinated.

• Starbucks Tazo chai tea latte, 16 oz: 100 mg
• Regular black tea, 8 oz: 40-120 mg
• Stash green tea, 18 oz: 78 mg
• Snapple iced tea, 16 oz: 18 mg
• 12 oz Nestea: 17 mg
• Decaffeinated black tea, 8 oz: 2 mg

Soft Drinks

All drinks are 12 oz servings

• Mountain Dew: 54 mg
• Mello Yello: 53 mg
• Diet Coke: 47 mg
• Tab: 47 mg
• Dr Pepper: 42-44 mg
• Sunkist Orange: 42 mg
• Pepsi: 36-38 mg
• Coke: 35 mg
• A&W Cream Soda: 29 mg
• Barq's Root Beer: 23 mg
• A&W Root Beer: 0 mg
• 7-Up: 0 mg
• Sprite: 0 mg
• Mug Root Beer: 0 mg
• Fanta: 0 mg

Energy Drinks

• No Name (formerly known as Cocaine), 8.4 oz: 280 mg
• Monster Energy, 16 oz: 160 mg
• Full Throttle, 16 oz: 144 mg
• Enviga, 12 oz: 100 mg
• No Fear, 8 oz: 83 mg
• Rockstar, 8 oz: 80 mg
• Red Bull, 8.3 oz: 76 mg
• AMP, 8.4 oz: 74 mg

Food

• Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate, 1.45 oz: 31 mg
• Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar, 1.55 oz: 9mg
• Ben and Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, 8 oz: 84 mg
• Haagen-Daz Coffee Ice Cream, 8 oz: 58 mg
• Starbucks Coffee Ice Cream, 8 oz: 50-60 mg

Medications

• No Doz, 1 Tablet: 200 mg
• Excedrin Extra Strength, 2 tablets: 130 mg
• Anacin Maximum Strength, 2 tablets: 64 mg
• Midol Maximum Strength: 60 mg

So for all you caffeine lovers trying to cut back... maybe simply switching which product you eat/drink for a while will help! Also lay off the migraine medicine.  It makes sense why they contain caffeine since most people get caffeine headaches... but it's just seriously perpetuating your problem, because in 4 hours you'll just either have to drink some caffeine or get a "fix" from their medicine. 

The day has come...

William and I are in Galveston this weekend for his brother's wedding! We are excited about a mini vacation and the chance to be here with them on their special day! Before we headed down here this afternoon, I picked up a used camera from one of my friends who bought a new one recently. It's a Canon EOS Rebel 20D! I'm super excited to learn how to use an SLR and hopefully I've found a new hobby!

In relation to the post title, the day has indeed come. And a little too quickly I might add. William got a call about an hour ago that he starts work on MONDAY! Like seriously a little more notice would have been nice. But we can't complain because we have been waiting on this day for a LONG time. Everything in our life always seems to be a bit more chaotic than we think it should be, so we should have guessed this would happen. God always answers prayers in his own time and I guess He felt He had taught me enough patience and now thought it right to make us think on the run for a change. Thank goodness we have internet at the hotel so William could do some paperwork this afternoon.

So looks like next week Lucy and I will be studying for COMPS/praxis by ourselves. Oh well... thus is life. Always changing....

I will post some pictures from the new camera on Sunday night! Yay!

Giveaways are Great!

In case you were unaware... a perk to the blogging world is the large amount of giveaways!
Check this one out... blog makeovers are my favorite!