Our house has rats...

At least once a year we have to get the cats shaved. They have SO much fur and they get fur balls. Fur ball is really not a good word for it. Seriously, these things get almost as long as they are. Its gross. Their new groomer is a wonderful lady and I don't know what secret power she has but now when we get them shaved they get home and prance all over the place. They think they are just the coolest/cutest things ever... we don't tell them that they really look like giant rats, no, that would just be mean.

I thought I would share a few pictures of our little rats. Just as a little reminder... this is what they looked like before....

Cute, right?!?!?!

And now.....

You can see the rat resemblance right?! Haha. I still think they are adorable, but it might be one of those "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" moments!

1 Wonderful Year later....

Well, I think we have all found out that I am horrible at updating this. I could say I will try harder to update, but we all know by now that is not true. Oh well. I tried to upload pictures of New York onto Facebook but my work computer will not let me, our home PC is busted and don't even get me started on Dan's MAC. I am useless on that thing!

Anyway, as many of you know already, Dan surprised me with a trip to NYC for our 1st anniversary (he has A LOT to live up to now! ha!) He told me Friday night (via a word search that I stunk at!) what we were doing. I was sooooo excited! We went and did site seeing stuff and then went to our favorite restaurant The Capital Grille and went and saw Avenue Q on Broadway. Avenue Q is like an adult version of Sesame Street. Very Funny!! We had such a great time and it was the perfect way to celebrate our 1st year as husband and wife!

A lot has happened since I last posted. We had a great Thanksgiving and Christmas! My dad and my Aunt Gina came to town for Thanksgiving and we had such a good time. Yummy food, fun games, it was really a good time!

We had a good Christmas but since I didn't have anymore vacation time, we stayed in Atlanta. Dan and I decided to put a $25 limit on gifts for Christmas and we both ended up getting each other the adult footy pajamas from Target... yeah, I guess we have a very similar sense of humor!

Mom, Harry and Charlie came to visit at the end of February and we had such a great time! One night ended up with us putting on a "show" for our peeping tom neighbors! It was a blast! Mom called a few weeks after they left and said they had talked and decided that when the boys are done with school in March 2010, they are all going to move to Atlanta! Dan and I are SOOOO ridiculously excited! Mom and Dad Murray have a house here and will be moving down shortly and then my mom and brothers will come down! Dan and I have such great families it will be great to have them close by! Now we just have to get Mom and Dad Pepper and my Dad here (don't worry, we are already working on it!)!

Other than that we have been busy with home stuff. Dan has been vigorously working on our yard and it is looking great! It was very overgrown when we moved in, stuff grows like crazy here. Our "kids" are doing great. Brenner is 50lbs now! He still jumps, but he understands the command to stop doing it, so hopefully it will come together in his head soon and he just wont jump period. He "graduated" from beginner obedience training and even had the fastest "down" in class! haha. Jenkins and Bella are as cute as ever, not big fans of Brenner though. We are hoping that will change when Brenner is a little older and less puppy!

Well here are pics of NYC. I don't know why my work computer will let me upload stuff onto Blogger but not onto Facebook. Weird.

We stayed at the Waldorf=Astoria in Manhattan. It was amazing! Such a beautiful, ornate hotel. We definitely looked like we didn't belong, but had a blast with it! haha

HUGE chandelier in the Waldorf

Dan jumping on the bed!

Rockefeller Center

Set of the Today Show

NBC Rainbow Room

Tiffany & Co.

Dunananananana Batman! This guy was just dancing and being funny.

Being all Sex and the City and wearing my heels in Manhattan on the way to dinner

NY Library where Carrie and Big were supposed to get married. I am hoping when Ryan and I go for our girls trip in September they will be done working on it. This picture isn't very good b/c of the construction.

Ground Zero. They have started building again.

Ladder 10 Co. Right across from Ground Zero. They lost 5 men.

Eternal Flame for those that lost their life 9/11/01

Dan with the Hudson in the background

2009 Ball in Times Square

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.