February....

February doesn't seem to be all that exciting of a month....don't get me wrong, we have done quite a bit, but February is the time when I start longing for spring. Last week gave us a small glimpse into the not to distant future with a 68 degree day. It was so wonderful! We took Belle on her first long walk on Kelly Drive (she did so well, we are such proud parents, haha) and I even put the windows down in my car! HOW AMAZING! Unfortunately it was short lived as ridiculous winds led to cold days as well as another round of snow last night that brought 6 inches of snow. Anymore 6 inches seems like nothing around here....crazy.

Like I said, not much seems to happen in February. Dan and I don't even really celebrate Valentine's Day, so that isn't a huge event for us in February. We did however have the wonderful opportunity to rekindle our love during Valentine's weekend at a marriage seminar called The Art of Marriage. It is from an organization called FamilyLife and it was a 6 session video event on different aspects of marriage. Dan was completely skeptical of this event and didn't see why it was necessary. He pictured an old guy up on stage talking about marriage for hours and he thought we would have meet in small groups and talk about our feelings, haha. Well luckily it was nothing like that! It was so wonderful! We learned so much about each other and our marriage. It was very refreshing to be able to take some time out of life and really strengthen our marriage. We have a new perspective of not only our marriage but how we both fit into it. I could go on forever about how great it was.....but I will spare you. Don't think you have to have issues in your marriage to go to something like this. My parents have been married for 30 years this year and got a lot out of it too. We HIGHLY recommend this event for newlyweds or even engaged couples. It is a great way to start your marriage off on the right foot!

Other than that we have been hanging out and living life. I am in the thick of rehearsals for shows in March and April. Dan has been working a lot of overtime, including Saturday's. We had the chance to have my old roomies over to our house for brunch (we missed Jenna though as she was sick...booo). We are still attending Grace Church and are learning a lot. Dan got a new motorcycle, so he is heaven, haha. What can I say, life is good here in South Philly!

Wishful Thinking

As you can see I have changed the background image of our blog because we are WISHING for summer right now. We are SO OVER the snow! Here are some images of our latest round of snow:

We finally saw black top on Tasker on Saturday afternoon when they did a complete plow....and plowed my car in again. However, most streets are full of icy bumps and Woodstock still has quite a few inches down the entire street. And of course there is word that there might be yet another round of snow/ice coming our way. If it snows again, I don't know where we are going to put it!!! Unfortunately it's only the end of January and we still have a good bit of winter to go...ugh!!!


Other than dealing with snow nothing else is really new. We have a very full week ahead with a few activites, so we will have more to blog about next week!

New People in a New Year

As we relaxed most of the weekend we realized that this was the first weekend that we had actually spent entirely at our house since Thanksgiving. It is amazing how insane the holiday's can be and how every weekend was some sort of family gathering pulling us from Philly. Don't get us wrong, we love our families and made some really great memories, but what a relief to just hang out at home as the 2 of us (uh...4 of us). We also realized how much we have neglected a thorough cleaning of our house as well. But that is not exciting, so we will talk about the "new" people in our life this weekend.

One thing Dan and I really want to do is make new friends, haha. We love the friends that we have, but in a city as big as this one, we need to get out and meet more people as well as get to know our current friends even better. Well, no time like the present! Friday night after hanging out with 2 philly cops after our car had been sideswiped (a whole other story unto itself) we drove only 7 blocks to hang out with our friends Amaryah and Dave. After checking out their amazingly renovated new place, we took off to Northern Liberties and North Bowl.

If you like to bowl, this is one of the neatest places to go in the area. Of course you need to get there early because there is ALWAYS a ridiculous wait time. Luckily they have delicious food (tater tots!) to keep you waiting. The four of us enjoyed some dinner (tater tots!) and drinks and actually didn't end up bowling at all. But the atmosphere is really great and we had a wonderful time chatting it up. We highly recommend North Bowl (and their tater tots!) to any bowlers or even non-bowlers!

Saturday after Chris' first rehearsal with 180 Dance Company, we took off to our friend Jed's place to celebrate Genevieve's birthday. We got to meet 2 other couples and play lots of Apples to Apples until late in the night. Lots of great conversation was had and we were all entertained by the one couples beautiful baby girl. Although as Dan mentioned, "hanging out with married people, there is A LOT of talk about babies, I am not sure if I can take it!". So sorry, but no babies here for a while. :)

After our mega cleaning on Sunday we drove over to West Philadelphia to attend a service at Grace Church. It was so encouraging to meet people right away who were genuinly excited to meet us. It was a great service and we are definitely going to go back again next weekend. It is so exciting to see people of ALL ages and ALL races worshiping together. There were lots of young couples (yay for new friends!) that we hope to get to know. Plus as Dan said "they have a motorcyle men's group and dinner after church each Sunday, this gets better and better." But really it was a great message and they are really into service in the community (which is a big plus in Chris' opinion). We are definitely excited to go back.

So lots of new people (and getting to know other friends) this weekend. We feel the need more and more to meet other people in this great city and make it our "home". And remember, if you ever want to come bowling, we're ready for ya!

2010 Recap

As evidenced by this past year, I am bad at this. But that is why blogging is my New Years Resolution! Here are the highlights of 2010 to catch you up.

All is well here in Philly. We do really enjoy our neighborhood and getting to know our neighbors and the city. We are finally feeling settled in our home (it's been 2 years this coming January!). Dan finished painting my office and recently renovated our very tiny powder room downstairs. I will try to take some pictures soon.

We did have an addition to our family, but (don't get too excited) it was of the four legged kind.



We'd like to introduce you to a little Blue Nosed Pit Bull named Belle. She joined our family in September and we have been having lots of fun being "parents" to a puppy. She is 5 months old now and weighs about 13 lbs. She thinks she is a lap dog, which will be interesting when she is a full grown 45-50lb. dog. We are really looking forward to spring and summer when we can go for walks and take her to the dog park. GC gets along with her pretty well. They play a lot which is quite entertaining for us!

Dan and I didn't take any major vacations this year, but we did do a lot of traveling for weddings. We made it to 7 weddings for family members and friends. I forsee more in the future because quite a few of our friends are now engaged (including Dan's brother! YAY!). It makes us remember our special day almost 2 1/2 years ago, where does the time go!

In work news, Dan had an interesting year. He unfortunately was laid off from NW the day after my birthday (what a great present) and was without work for only about 2 months. He received a job with another sign company near Atlantic City but luckily was rehired by his old company in July. The long drive and working from home was not Dan's forte. His position at NW has changed slightly, but he really loves his job and is kept quite busy.

As for me I finally got out of the retail business (yay!!) and I am basically full time at the dance studio in Ardmore. I manage the office and teach about 8 classes a week. I also continue working the winter session at the Agnes Irwin School for girls with my friend Gen and teach creative movement at a preschool once a week. I was able to do a little traveling this summer with Indigenous Pitch (I am still the Program Director). We had our first international trip to Limbe, Haiti (about 3 hours north of Port au Prince). We worked with over 100 children that had been displaced due to the earthquake. It was a very humbling experience and it makes you realize just how blessed we all are. I also traveled to New Orleans for 2 weeks. It was a very full trip with 3 camps and a workshop.

Other than that, not much else is new. We just got hit with the first snow storm of the winter (12 inches....) and it reminded us how much we loathed the snow last winter. Hopefully we won't get as much as we do run out of places to put it when digging out. Christmas was wonderful and we hope yours was too. Dan unfortunately had the stomach flu on Christmas day, but he was a good sport. We are really looking forward to 2011 and what it will bring!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Yes we know......

......we stink at this!!! We are trying to committ to doing this, really we are!!! We just need a daily alarm reminder!!! Info soon.....we promise!!!

2010 is here!

Happy New Year!

We can't believe that is 2010 already. Time flies when you are having fun. This month marks the one year date of owning our home. We truly are blessed to be living in such an amazing city with family and friends close by.

Dan has had the week off since Christmas. We took a mini vacation to the Herrman beach house in Lewes, DE. It was a great time to relax and take in a couple movies. We HIGHLY recommend Avatar in 3D. Sherlock Holmes was good as well. Reading was a big priority as we received many books for Christmas. Dan has also been "working" while on vacation. He managed to complete a new tumbled stone backsplash in our kitchen and it looks beautiful! Another one of his homeowner "adventures" that was successful.

We spent New Years Eve with our friends Zach and Nicki. My parents, Aaron and his friend Steve also joined us for the evening. We had a HYSTERICAL time playing Dutch Blitz and Apples to Apples. I don't think we have laughed that hard in a long time. After sleeping in and enjoying a nice breakfast we went to the Cole's later New Years Day for our annual Pork and Saurkraut dinner. It was really great catching up with everyone.

As our weekend comes to an end, it is back to work for the both of us. Our resolution is to cook more in 2010.....we'll see how long that lasts.

Almost a year.....

Yes for all of you loyal checkers out there....we are SO SORRY we have not posted anything in almost a year. Where can we begin......Our experience in our new home has been quite interesting.....even with all of the issues we still love our home. Here's a quick run down:

* We had to rip out the sidewalk and replace our sewer line.

* We had to rip out our finished basement, waterproof it, and re-finish it.

* We had to pull up the toilet and secure the wax wring that someone never put on currectly (causing water to leak from the upstairs bathroom down to the kitchen)

* Our closet rack wripped out of the wall because they didn't screw it into the studs

* None of the building permits were ever closed on our house....and we are not even zoned to have a garage (thank GOD the inspector likes us and knows it's not our fault)

*Our smoke detectors were not hard-wired per code.

* Our roof had a 10 year warranty until we found out that the company we thought did our roof told us that their paperwork was stolen and they were not the ones that did our roof....so no warranty

* Our kitchen sink leaked to the basement

*We are in the proccess of re-capping our windows because they were never done correctly

* I am sure that there were other problems....

* The roof in our bedroom has slow leak....but nothing crucial at the time.... so we thought until recently..........

The latest is that our roof decided to crack open at 7am Wednesday morning in one of our closets after a huge rainstorm. There is a chimney that runs between the two houses and we think this is the cause of a lot of the water issues. Dan and our neighbor Gabe worked on the roof Saturday to try and remedy the situation, but unfortunately the rain today showed that they were not successful. As of right now we have been told that our 2 yr old roof needs to be replaced. Yes that rights right.....we need a new roof.

As we said it has been quite an interesting year..........HOWEVER we LOVE living in the city and are really enjoying all that it has to offer. As we look forward to Christmas and 2010 we can honestly say that we are still happy with our decision to move to South Philadelphia (and we are learning as many of you have, that home ownership is always an experience).

Of course we have not just been fixing problems, we have managed to have a little fun too. :) As we said, we refinished the basement and really enjoy watching Blue Ray's on our big TV. Dan also had fun organizing the garage to his standards. His job is going well, even though he has had to work a lot of extra hours. We managed to celebrate our first anniversary in NYC and spent a couple weekends at the beach. Chris continues to work multiple jobs and returned to New Orleans yet again for 2 weeks. Our cat GC is still crazy as ever and keeps us entertained.

Short recap, but we hope to be more dedicated to this in the coming year. Leave some comments to inspire us to write more often!

Here's a picture of our very first real Christmas tree!

We will post some photos of our house soon as well!