Introducing Brenner Murray...

Our 4 month old Australian Sheppard/Beagle puppy!

This was a photo online. We took a few pics, but these were easier to post. Isnt he a cutie!?!?!

Home Sweet Home

Okay. Now that we have internet at the house I hope to be MUCH better at updating this. We are all moved into our beautiful new home and we love it. We are enjoying decorating and painting. We don't enjoy removing wallpaper but we only have 2 more bathrooms to go.

Mom and Dad P. were our first visitors. They spent Halloween weekend with us and we had fun passing out candy (a.k.a. sucking up) to all the kids in the neighborhood. Mom hooked us up with full sized candy bars. "This house rocks" was said many times! :) Now we have a reputation to live up to.

We are almost certain that we are going to get a dog this weekend. Dan should be home all next week, so it is the perfect time. We filled out our application and are planning to go Saturday to pick out our new family member!

A lot more has happened but for now I will just post a lot of pictures.
Our kitchen before. (It looks like tacky wallpaper threw up everywhere) Yes, we removed ALL of that!

Our kitchen now. We will eventually update it, but its amazing how much of a difference paint can make!

Our living room. Its only partially finished at this point. (Notice the tacky gold fan... ah the 90's)

Our back patio. Its huge and backs up to all kinds of trees

Here is Dan standing up in Troy and Meg's wedding

Here we are at Walter and Allison's wedding

And just for fun, Jenkins and Bella because they are cute!

Introducing....

Our new home!!!

This picture is from a website and I don't think it does the house justice. But I would feel weird standing outside the house taking pictures while the family is still living in the house! Lots more pictures to come in a couple of months when we move in!

We Have a House ... Pending Inspection :)

I have not updated for a couple of weeks because it has been a roller coaster. Dan and I found a nice home and put down an offer about a week or so ago. The selling agents for the house were total crooks and would not be straight with us on anything. (They call themselves the 'Tetro Team' and if you live in Atlanta, STAY AWAY from them!). Dan and I, along with our wonderful agent, Deanna, decided to back out of that deal on Friday because it was just too much hassle. We were pretty upset, but a house is a house, we knew we would find something else eventually. Well Friday night Dan and I decided to take a drive through the neighborhood that we have focused our house hunt on, and there was a house up for sale that we had not seen yet. It was a beautiful, 3 story, red brick house. We decided to write down the address and see how much it cost.

Well fast forward a day... the house was right in our price range and our agent arranged for us to see the house. Of course it was just as beautiful on the inside and it was outside.. and because God is so right all the time, the house had JUST gone on the market on Friday when Dan and I drove by. This house is so much prettier, bigger, homier (I don't even think that's a word) everything better that the other one. We put in our offer yesterday and it was accepted first thing this morning!!! God really is awesome and will put you right where he wants you!

Dan and I are soooo excited. We just have to have an inspection done to make sure there are no crazy cracks in the foundation or other really bad problems. We are sure there wont be because the family that lives in the house now has really taken care of it. Please pray that if this is meant to be our house, that all will go well. We get the keys at closing on September 30th!

I will post pictures as soon as we have an inspection done and we can officially call it our home!

London Calling

I had the privilege of going to London over the 4th of July weekend. Dan's boss was taking his family to London for their yearly vacation because he had to speak at Oxford University (yeah, I know). Dan and I decided that it was a prefect opportunity for me to go over there. I have wanted to visit London since I was about 8 years old and became obsessed with British Royalty. Now a days, I am not all that interested in Royalty, but I still wanted to see all the beautiful places I had seen on TV and in books.

We were a little worried because I have not been to Europe since I was in high school and we didn't know if I would be able to adjust quickly to the time change. After a short (haha) 8 hour British Airways flight, I fueled up on coffee and we hit the ground running. After two days we had seen everything I wanted to see. The weather behaved beautifully and the lines for the tours weren't terribly long. We were really blessed and it turned out to be the perfect trip!

In front of Westminster Abby

We quickly learned that all of the buildings are so huge that it is hard to get far enough away to get the entire building into the picture (without another huge building getting in your way!)

Our Hotel was really beautiful and celebrating 100 years!

Buckingham Palace... A cozy little place to call home.

Dan loves this picture! I love watching these guys but getting close to them in another story! They are huge and scary!

Dan with Big Ben in the Background
If you are interested, below is a video of the old guard marching to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard.

The Blogging World

Dan and I have now entered into the blogging world. Poor Dan doesn't know this yet. He's not big into Internet stuff, so he will probably just think that I am a dork! For the last three weeks or so I have felt like a little bit of a stalker. I know about the lives of people I went to high school, elementary school or church with and they don't even know it. I had no idea the blogging world had become such a big deal again. So I figure if I am going to "stalk" people, its only fair to allow them the same ability. We will see how well I keep up with it. I had a blog in college but it was all stupid stuff. I've seen a lot of people use them now to keep family and friends up on what/how everyone is doing. I think this is a great idea and since our family is spread everywhere, I will try to use this to do the same. So keep checking "stalking" in on us! :)