home owners!!

Chris and I now own a home!!! We are so excited, but honestly so glad to get the closing behind us. The loan process was anything but exciting. But all that is over now and we bought our first house last week! :)

The previous owners are renting it back from us for a few more weeks. So we'll get in it around the end of May. We are planning on replacing some or all of the carpet (thankfully it's only in the bedrooms) and repainting at least the master bedroom, maybe more! Our lease isn't up until July 31, so we aren't in a huge hurry. We've been packing up some things here and there. We did the entire guest room last night. Of course it was a competition, and I think Chris packed 6 or 7 boxes in the time I packed TWO! Here's one of our kitchen walls now...

On Saturday, we went to an Astros game in Houston for Chris' birthday last week. Chris' sisters were able to come and it was so great to see them! Our older nephew Kaden was able to come and it was his first baseball game to attend! He's such a cutie.

This weekend Chris is headed to Oklahoma City for the NCAA Softball Big 12 Tournament to support the Ags. There is a chance my parents and I might get to go also...not sure yet. But I know Chris is excited and would LOOVE if the girls came home as Big 12 Champions!

I turned in an application today to substitute for the school nurse at College Station ISD. I was told they would for sure need me for the fall, and they may have a field trip or two before the end of this school year that they could use me for. I just have to get fingerprinted, background check and I should be good to go. I'm very excited about this!!

My Turn

Well I sadly don't have any cool pictures to share with you. But I thought I would make my wife happy and take a minute to "Blog"

This semester has been one for the record books to say the least. Leisha has already chronicled my adventures so there is no need to recap. But needless to say it has been a BUSY semester. As things are finally winding down, final projects are coming up, classes are ending, I have had a few minutes over the last several days to consider how incredibly blessed I am.

I have a WONDERFUL wife that is the greatest gift God has ever blessed me with outside of salvation. We are so blessed to both have jobs. Well Leisha has a career and I am working on getting a piece of paper so someone will let me start a career too!! But anyway, we are buying a house! (We think we might actually get to close on the 3rd of May)

Though the semester has been oevrwhelming at times, and down right mean at others, in the end we are so lucky to be in the position God has placed us in.

Enough of the mushy stuff.

This summer is sure to look different. I am actually planning to stay stateside this summer. I say planning because God has a funny way of changing my geographical location, sometimes at the last moment. I will be working and teaching at Texas A&M. I am actually teaching a course for the first summer session. So I am pretty excited about that. I will also be devoting alot of time toward my thesis and data collection. Should be great fun.

As you know I am now the voice of Aggie Softball. It has been one of the best things I have ever done. Truly has been an honor. I look forward to doing that while we remain in College Station. Out of that I actually got a job offer for the summer to do some announcing for the local Texas College League summer baseball team. But after much thought, discussion and prayer I decided that wasn't where I needed to be investing my time.

Well that is enough for now. Only things on the horizon are the house closing, and maybe another long bike ride sometime in July. Still trying to convince Leisha she should hop on a bike and join me!

roll over

Scout is staying with my parents right now as we prepare to move into our new house next month, so while I was in this weekend we worked on a new trick. He picked it up in about 15 minutes!

ms150 pictures

I was able to drop Chris off at the start of the ride in Houston. We got there about 6am and he finally got started about 7am. It was drizzly and HUMID!! But thankfully the weather cleared up and it ended up being a beautiful day. I was also able to meet Chris for lunch and then in LaGrange at the end of Day 1.

Lunch pit stop in Bellville, Day 1

After lunch on day 1, ready to finish the route.

I was glad that I got to meet him and see some of what the MS150 is. Maaaybe I'll even do it someday!! (with extensive training, of course!)

world record and ol' army cycling

Well, Chris survived his 50 hour kickball game two weekends ago. He now holds the Guiness World Record for the longest kickball game. That accomplishment also earned us a trip to the ER when he got home last Sunday night! He got home and had mentioned his foot was bothering him and then showed me the massive knot of the top of it. He agreeded that we should go get an xray. It ended up just being a really bad bruise, and got some crutches for his strained hip flexor. (Chris did mention something about wanting to trade his broken body in for a new one!!)

The two teams were named after boys that were or are in the process of being released from slavery.

Here's the kickball all the players signed.

Chris rode the MS150 this past weekend along with 13,000 other people! In case you aren't familiar with MS150, it's a 2-day bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise money and awareness for Multiple Sclerosis. He rode with an A&M team called Ol' Army Cycling. Chris rode it like a champ!! I couldn't find the dock for Chris' camera, but when I do..I'll post those pictures. I'll leave you with this one.

Softball season is almost over! Only 3 more home games for Chris to announce. You can listen to him announce the line-up at the Aggies vs. Longhorns game here.

This weekend I'm in East Texas..my best friend, Alyssa's wedding shower is tomorrow and then me and my sisters have a photoshoot with the amazing Alex Maldonado. You can check out his gorgeous pictures at his website.

Mercy Project

This weekend Chris is in Dallas playing in a world record 50 hour kickball game. Why is he playing kickball for 50 hours? To raise awareness and money for kids around the world who are in slavery. You can get more information at http://mercyproject.net/. You can also follow the kickball game at http://twitter.com/cshepperd. The game started today at 12noon and goes until Sunday at 2pm. They have split up into 2 teams and are playing in 2hr shifts.

While Chris is playing kickball in Dallas, I'm here in College Station working all weekend. I worked last night, tonight, Saturday night, then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights. What was I thinking when I signed up for that!?

On a different note, we close on the house two weeks from today!!