Welcome to Lumpkin Street!

So my promise of having pictures of the new house up by the middle of last week did not come to fruition...as it turns out, last week got a little crazy! More details on that as you scroll down. Here are about 3/4 of the pictures of the interior of our house. Today our washer and dryer got delivered, so our bedroom is covered in dirty clothes piles-didn't think you really wanted to see (or smell...) that. As it turns out, PT uniforms really stink after waiting on a washer and dryer to be delivered! Needless to say, I've been cranking out laundry since about 8:45, and I've got two more loads to go!

But laundry is boring-pictures are not! So if you were to walk up the front stairs in our house you would be greeted by...our living room! Welcome.


From the TV's perspective:
Again from the entryway. Yes, I took these while watching the World Cup. Viva Espana!

Like the rug? The day Brian and I moved in there was a tent rug sale at Ft. Benning, so we purchased one! Quite serendipitous. Think I spelled that right...

From the living room you walk into our dining room. One thing I love about this house is all of the windows! There are on average two on each wall in each room! In the mornings, I don't even have to turn the light to take a shower because it's so bright!

From the dining room you head into the kitchen. The door you can barely see is our back door. It takes you up or downstairs to the attic/basement/patio.

The kitchen!

Kitchen again--if you look through the doorway, you'll see the living room/entry area.

If you take a left out of the kitchen, you come to this hallway! Brian hung the candle scones on the wall the other day-he was quite proud of his handiwork. And I agree-they look good and they're level! The room you're looking into is the guest bedroom (aka, your room).

If you were to stand right in front of the guestroom door and look to your right, you'd see the office. If you looked to your left, you'd see the guest bathroom.

The office. One of those rooms that got set up last...better pictures to come of this.

Here's the guest bathroom! The tile is a grayish-blue, so thankfully all of my college gear looks good in here!

Bathroom again.

Ok that's all for the house tour right now. To come: guest bedroom, and our "master suite" as I like to call it! Ok it's not that fancy, but it's got a set-up I've never seen before!

And here's Brian! I made him take this picture. It was his first day of IBOLC! This one is to show the grandkids what a strapping young lad their grandfather was back in his early years. Yes, I am undyingly nostalgic. Some of my favorite pictures are old ones...my favorite picture of my grandfather is one of him next to a very sweet car-he seems very proud in the picture!

So now onto the reason I've kept you in the dark until now...it's been crazy around here! Last week I spent most of my time unpacking, cleaning, and running errands around town. Bought my first washer and dryer, explored (got lost in...) Columbus, and had three social events to attend! The first was a wives meeting for IBOLC, the school Brian is in right now. Out of about 170-180 guys, there are 10 wives! Some of them are married/engaged but their wife/fiancee is still in school/working, so they're not able to be here. In fact, we're losing about 3 of our wives in the fall because they're going back to finish up school! Thankfully, the group is amazing. I've made some friends already and it seems like a very easy-going group. We're going to get to be quite the friends this year mostly due to the fact that our husbands aren't going to be around much! At the IBOLC wives meeting, we were briefed (yes, briefed...) on the going-ons of our dear husbands. The commanding officer told us that out of the 16 week course, they'll be in the field (AKA, not coming home) for 10 of those weeks! This week is a classroom week, so they're around, but next week starts a 2 week field time. They do get to come home on the weekends-hooray! After IBOLC, the boys go to Ranger School, which is 2 months long. During Ranger School, we won't see them at all...Except, our boys have the slot that goes over Christmas, so they get 2 weeks leave! Praise God. So as you can see, this little group of girls and I are going to be spending a lot of time together so that we don't go crazy!

After our wives brief, they had a social for all of the wives and the IBOLC guys. I got to meet some of Brian's friends and cadre (the officers/NCOs (non-commissioned officers) that are in charge of IBOLC) at this, which was really fun! Brian and I ended up being some of the last to leave...meaning, I only saw 3 other lieutenants there as we exited. We started talking about SEC football--let's be honest, that's never a short conversation.

The next day, one of the wives hosted an informal lunch/craft party at her house. We painted faux stained glass (mine is awful...I wish I was good at art!) and ate sloppy joes, which was hilarious to me. I have a long history with sloppy joes! After the lunch party, I rushed around to get the oil changed and get packed up because Brian and I had to go to Starkville this weekend for a wedding that Brian was in. The wedding was another one of Brian's ROTC friends-Patrick Franks. The wedding was beautiful and we had a really good but short trip! All told, I think we were only in Starkville for about 18 hours! We decided to drive back Saturday after the wedding so that we would have all day Sunday to get chores/errands done. And of course, watch the World Cup. Yes, I am a bandwagon fan, but I do not care. Probably because I cheer for about 10 teams...the USA always being first, but if they're not in the game, I always go for the country that speaks Spanish, if applicable. I see teaching moments through those games...Yes, I am a certified dork. So naturally I was cheering for Espana! I jumped throughout the game because they came so close to scoring about 10 times...and so did the Netherlands! If you didn't watch, they did a snippet on the Netherlands fans-some of them had been gone from their home country since April 3 and had DRIVEN all the way from Holland to South Africa--one of them said it was about 17,000 miles! Now that's a roadtrip. And through Africa, no less.

Well I'm on to the 4th (or 5th? I've lost count) load of laundry. Just in case you ever order anything through Home Depot, know that they are very concerned about your opinion of their service! I've gotten quite a few "follow-up" phone calls to see how it all went...pretty impressive!