Spring is here!

Well its finally starting to look like spring out here. Mandy came to visit this weekend and we had a great time. Too bad it was the one weekend this month that was cold and rainy! None-the-less we made the best of it and hiked around the city to see the cherry blossoms and monuments. The rest of this week temps are going to head up to the 80's. There is definitely some yard work begging to be done!

This spring also marks *hopefully* the end of my Master's program - I should graduate in May. My office should be happy to have me back full time and I will be happy to be done with doing homework on the weekends. Well done doing homework at anytime really.

Excited for this weekends sunshine. Happy Easter all!

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great Labor Day weekend and hope everyone else did too. Saturday and Sunday's weather couldn't be beat, even though it did rain Sunday night. Monday was a bit humid in the morning and cloudy most of the day but overall not too bad. Saturday was mostly a lounging day and I spent some time preparing for classes to start this week, and on some yard work. I also met Clara early in the morning for coffee before she departed the country yet again! Later in the afternoon we had coffee with some friends and ran a few errands, including refilling the propane tank so we could get back to grilling! (And yes, that's 2 coffee trips in one day. There is nothing wrong with that.) Sunday was a blast - We were invited to the B'more Aquarium with some friends and their 5 month old son. Nam and I had a great time watching the sharks, the 3 flippered sea turtle, all the rays, and the infant. After a delicious lunch/dinner at Cheesecake Factory we wandered around the Inner Harbor a bit longer then headed toward home. After a brief stop at Costco we had movie night and enjoyed watching Speed Racer. Monday Nam helped me work on the dresser I've been trying to refinish. It needs a lot of sanding so Nam got right to work.

I start classes again this week, and will be off on Thursdays and Fridays again. Someone called today and tomorrow my "work weekend." Lucky me! I'm looking forward to one of my classes and not dreading the other so I suppose that's a good thing. If only my books would arrive I'd be all set.

Hope you all had a great weekend too!

Feels like fall today -

Wow, where did the summer go? Stepping out the door today it was only 65 degrees. It felt cool and crisp, just like an autumn day. Now I love the fall weather, but I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to summer yet. The high school down the street got started this week with 9th graders starting today and the rest back tomorrow. I start classes again next week too! There's still so much I didn't get done this summer, even some weeds in the front yard I really should have pulled. I still haven't cleared the space for my garden for next summer. I need to finish painting the trim in our living room. I have a nice long list it seems!

But for now I'll just enjoy the reprieve from traditional August weather :)

Towing-

Today I received a call from the Montgomery County Consumer Protection Agency. As many of you heard, my car was illegally towed the last time Mom came to visit from the parking lot behind the local coffee shop. The whole incident was quite the ordeal. The agency called today to let me know that they had settled the matter and the towing company would be crediting the charge back to my account.

While there are still many other people in the county experiencing towing abuses I'm happy that the Consumer Protection Agency pursued my case and got my money back. Yay!

The Shed

Nam took advantage of this beautiful spring (nearly summer!) weekend to finish shingling the shed. He did a great job! Just in the knick of time too, since it has been pouring cats and dogs all day.

I'm just procrastinating, I have a final due tonight - just a question and a half to go - and one more Saturday. Almost finished with the semester!

Spring!

Happy April, I can't believe it's that time of year already! Since I'm in school this year, it'd nearing finals time. I have so much to get done but with the nice weather there's so many other things I'd rather be doing.

My mom was out to visit a few weeks back, we had a great time. It's great that her job allows her to travel out here so often.

Everything else around here is pretty status quo. Wishing my best to Clara when she begins here journey back to the states. Thinking of Emily in Kazakhstan and hoping she takes care of herself!

Keeping busy

I can't believe it's nearing the end of March already. Time has just flown by the past 5 months. I started a program at work in January that allows me to be a full time Masters student at the University of Maryland and only have to work part time. They pay for the classes and my pay stays at a full time rate. It's such a good deal I couldn't pass it up. Of course that means I'm now busy with homework all the time. Overall it isn't going too badly.

I'm now trying to condense 40 hours of work into a 20 hour week, so naturally work is quite busy. I've got my hand in all sorts of projects so I"m mostly content for now.

After having fallen off the exercise bandwagon this winter, Nam and I are both picking it up and hitting the treadmill a bit more often. Even Naruto tried to walk on the treadmill today :)

We're also really busy around the house. Nam is almost finished with our shed, just needs to shingle and side it. It looks great, he and his friends did an amazing job. We also had to rake, yet again, since there were leaves in hiding from this fall!

Spring keeps trying emerge, and we're looking forward to it.

The North Shore is Gorgeous!!

We went up the coast for our honeymoon to stay in the Cove Point lodge. It's a fantastic setting right on the lake. The sunrises on the cliffs were spectacular and sunsets by the jacuzzi didn't hurt either. We enjoyed ourselves through hiking and exploring the region. It was fun learning Minnesota history, shipping, mining and 3M. Very cool.

It was fun relaxing and listening to the locals. It was funny hearing them talking about going to "the city" for the weekend and later learn they were talking about Duluth. Robyn can't say she's a "country" girl anymore by their account.

We also stayed at a lighthouse for a few nights. It's a pretty interesting environment with other residents sharing the same lodging and bathroom. Kind of reminds me of Scotland really. The keeper kept us entertained with a fiddle and cooked us "moose porridge" ((Don't ask)).

So we're home again. Back to reality as they say but it's pretty cool still. We will post again soon!!

:)

Wahooo!!

Getting Married Today!!

Wahoo. That's all :)

We're still around-

Nam and I have been quite busy in the last few months with our new house and planning our wedding. I'm sure we'll be posting more frequently soon enough!

Check this out. This is our mini's
Pretty funny

Nam's

Robyn's

Got my hundred!!

Wahoo ran my hundredth mile today!!
Man that was tiring.

Check it out everyone

Ewww Gross!!!

OMG!! So our first real mishap of the house just happened. Our bathtub did not drain and so we decided to plunge it. Well eventually we heard a "pop" and it started draining. Sweet! Canceled the plumber and we were good to go. Of course 10 minutes later, we went to the basement and the bathroom as well as the laundry room was flooded with sewage. Yuck!! It was disgusting "brown stuff" everywhere.

Had to find a plumber to fix our problems immediately of course and when they arrived, they thought it was the huge oak tree in our front yard. It may have been the root structure that broke our main pipes causing the disaster. That would have cost beaucoup $$$ to fix he said. Fortunately, after hours of snaking, it turned out to be huge gobs of hair left by the previous owner. We were almost happy to hear that if not for the "leftovers" and nice bill.

Oh well. Guess we're learning

HAGO

Nam

It's Been Awhile

Since moving into our new home about 6 weeks ago, we've been pretty recluse. We're very quickly learning about the costs and responsibilities associated with being new homeowners. There's been a number of things we've had to take care of since we moved in... learning about electricity and the plumbing are among them. We even installed a new garbage disposal! (With my dad's technical support over the phone of course.) I guess that's the breaks, especially when the house you're buying hasn't been maintained or even lived in for many months. There's still a number of things on the "to-do" list, but we've decided to try and take it slow and enjoy the house while we're making improvements.

One really exciting thing we did was to buy a headboard and dressers. No more plastic drawers for us! And our bed is finally off the floor. We also purchased a big couch for our big basement, and in 4-6 weeks we'll no longer be sharing the small loveseat when watching TV. Couch shopping was really hard. We have a pretty narrow stairwell and the one outside isn't much bigger. We had to look all over to find a sectional sofa that broke up into small enough sections to get it in the basement. I can't wait to get it and have seating for more then the 2 of us in the basement. Now if I could only decide on a paint color...

Nam's dad was over this weekend and did a ton of work on our yard. The planting bed in the front was cleaned out, weeded, and mulched. Dead plants were removed, and others were moved to make room for the shed he's going to build for us. It's amazing how much difference getting that planting bed cleaned up makes.

We're still in the midst of wedding planning too :) It's a busy time, but I think we're adjusting well.

Hope to post more soon,
~Robyn

Honorable Discharge

Nam has been officially discharged from the Air Force! Hooray!

Only in Soap Opera

So the saga continues. We got word from our bank that the house isn't worth what the negotiated price is. Fun fun. Everyone seems to think the pendulum is swinging the other day and the appraisers are undervaluating the houses to make up for lost times. Oh well, here's to hopefully getting this done this year!!

Nam

House Situation, Continued

We had our housing inspection on Thursday. Everything went very well and the inspector was quite positive about the overall condition of the house. Just a few minor things we'll need to take care of once we move in. Because it's a short sale it is an "as is" property, so we can't ask for anything to be repaired. Hopefully we'll be moving soon!

House?

The drama continues... By now most of you know that we heard from the sellers bank (remember, this is a short sale so it requires 3d party approval from the bank that holds the sellers mortgages). Last Wednesday they verbally approved our offer and said they'd send over the written approval later that day. Typical of this sale, yesterday morning our agent had to call over to the sellers agents to see if they'd received the written 3d party approval yet. No, they hadn't, but they assured her they'd be getting it later in the day. We decided that was good enough and our agent has scheduled a home inspection for this week and contacted our mortgage lender. Of course, we still have no closing date, but at least things are moving along...

Join our run!!