Homeowners!!!

Tim and I have had a very exciting weekend! Yesterday morning, we closed on our first home (check that off the list of my goals!)!!! We're super excited to not be renting anymore and we're looking forward to calling something 'our own.' I'm looking forward to not having to move after another year again & that this is more permanent than a year-long lease. After we closed on the home yesterday (which only took about 45

minutes), we loaded up Tim's Mustang onto a trailer that he borrowed from his boss and brought it over to the house. Then we came back and filled the truck & trailer with another large load. Unfortunately, we had to stop there because it was raining...plus we were exhausted. After a short nap and shower, we treated ourselves to dinner at Red Lobster, yum!

This morning Tim's dad arrived bright and early to help us move a bunch more of our stuff. I'm so glad that he came because he was able to help Tim with all of the appliances and large, heavy things - he was a huge help!!! After two trailers and three truck-loads full, we called it quits for the evening. I'd say we have about 80% of our stuff moved over to the new house now. All that's left here in our rental is all of my treatment equipment, our bed, TV, whatever's left in the pantry and a few odds & ends. We'll be bringing the rest of the stuff over in the morning and spending the rest of the day organizing & unpacking - making it look like a home, not a random collection of furniture! :-) We plan on doing some renovations (hopefully just one room at a time) and adding a carport to the right side of the house this fall. It'll be a work in progress for a while, but it's just cosmetic and to our liking, the house really looks great on the inside right now. It's starting to set in a little more that that's our house now that most of our furniture is in there, but I think it'll set in even more after we spend our first night there, which should be tomorrow night. Yay!!! :-)

2012: A Year In Review

January: Tim was tested to see if he was a CF carrier and the test came back negative, yay! Also, Kalydeco was approved by the FDA for CFers with the G551D mutation(which I have)!!!
February: Lots of snow, a doctors appointment, and my first blog award.
March: I started running outside and planning for the 2nd annual DeKalb Great Strides. I unfortunately had to reset my compliance count after forgetting some albuterol over a weekend out of town. I was at 215 days!
April: DeKalb Great Strides event went very well and raised over $20,000! There was also lots more running/training for my first 5K.
May: I applied for teaching jobs like crazy, ran some more and registered for Brett's Run (5K).
June: I completed my first 5K! FINALLY got my first teaching job!! (This was a great month!)
July: We started planning for our move due to my new job, and I started bringing items into my new classroom.
August: The big move (about three hours south), the first day(s) of school, and motivated myself to keep running by signing up for another 5K.
September: I completed my second 5K (The Shoreline Classic) about a minute faster than my first, signed up for the Glo Run and Turkey Trot.
October: Tim and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary, and I developed my first chest cold of the season.
November: I completed the St. Louis Glo Run, our local Turkey Trot --and if you're counting, those were my 3rd and 4th 5K's of the year -- and I won a turkey at the Turkey Trot! :)
December: I won Bears vs Packers tickets and attended my first Bears game! I developed another chest infection due to my lovely, germy class/job. Oh, and we all survived "the end of the world". :-)

Overall, I'd say this was a pretty excellent year for me! I was able to accomplish/achieve many of my goals this year. I'm still working on getting my lung function up into the 90s and gaining back the weight I've lost from my added stress this fall. But these are things that I'll continue to work on in the coming year. I'm currently at 301 days of 100% compliance with my treatments - I'd say that another great accomplishment. This year was spent on trying to make myself the healthiest I could be by exercising and staying on track with my treatments. I plan on continuing my exercise this spring, while I focus on weight gain this winter. Here's to a happy, healthy, productive 2013!

Ahhhh!!!

That's how I'm feeling right now!!! Nervous. Excited. Anxious. Overwhelmed. Excited. Little bit more nervous. 

I cannot believe how fast this past week and a half has gone by! A huge thank you to everyone that helped us in our moving process. It was quite stressful for me the morning of the move because we literally had to pack everyone's vehicles full to fit everything (and we still didn't get everything), but we made it and that's all that matters. We've been in our house for almost a week now and we're slowly settling in. Up until this afternoon, our refrigerator and stove were in our living room....Tim was laying tile floors in the kitchen, so now we have our appliances where they belong so we were able to unpack the rest of the kitchen boxes this evening. :-) Clutter, mess, and disorganization make me very uneasy/crabby, so I'm feeling much more relaxed now that more things are organized. Garbage day is also tomorrow, so we were able to put lots of stuff on the curb = less clutter in the house!

Besides unpacking and settling into our house, I've also spent a ton of time in my classroom this week! I've met a few of the other teachers and actually got to be on the interview committee to find me an assistant. It was interesting being on the other side of that process, especially since I was just on the opposite side a couple months ago! I've done a lot of work in my room this week and it's finally starting to look like a classroom! I still have several things to do (organize my class library, finish bulletin boards, laminating...) so I'll be trying to manage my time wisely over the next week. Monday-Wednesday I have all day New Teacher Orientation meetings, Thursday is a teacher work day and our Open House (get to meet the kinders and their parents, and the students drop off their supplies) and Friday is a district-wide Rally and then a teacher work day....then the following Monday is the first day of school! Yikes! It's coming up quick. Here a few of the latest pictures of my classroom - I've completely rearranged and added some color to the room by getting some of my bulletin boards done:

Tim playing in the books/puzzles/games area :-)

The view from my desk/group table. I put the rug in the front of
the classroom instead of along side where I originally thought I
wanted it. I really like it this way!

Word Wall - this is where we'll be posting all of the words
we're learning to read this year

The side board where the calendar/schedule will be posted.
Here's a view of a couple of the bulletin boards I've done so far.

As I mentioned, I still have a lot to do but it's a huge difference from when I first saw the room. And with all of this going on, I haven't missed a treatment. :-) They've been getting done much later in the evening than typical for me, but that's just because I don't have a routine yet. On the other hand, I haven't gone running at all. I'm just constantly on the move between my classroom set-up and unpacking at home, I honestly don't even feel like going. I might try to get out there tomorrow and take advantage of the break in the heat....but don't hold me to it. My parents are also coming to visit this weekend, so I doubt I'll go then. I really hope that once school starts and I'm in more of a routine that I can get back out there. That's about all for now. Gotta get my rest for House Calls tomorrow -- showing up at new families' houses welcoming them to our school...should be interesting. :-)

Little Bit of This, Little Bit of That

Not much to report here. It's one week til move in day and I cannot believe it! I feel like these past few weeks have flown by, but I'm getting excited. We have several of our friends willing to make the three hour hike with us to help us move into our new place, which is awesome. And, of course we're moving on the one day of the year that the town is having it's 'celebration' so the main street through town will be closed - but we'll manage!

I was able to visit my classroom this past week and my friend and I made some great progress organizing and moving some furniture around despite it being at least 95 degrees in my room! (No air conditioning...) I decided to get rid of my teacher desk because it was taking up useless space and we organized my curriculum books that I have so far. It's not too much of a noticeable change to an outsider (probably just looks messier compared to the last pictures I posted), but I feel like we got a lot done. There is still a TON to do and I'll have the whole week after we move to get my classroom set up. The week after that will be filled with New Teacher Orientations, PBIS workshops, Institute Days, and an Open House for the Kindergarten families to meet the teachers and see their classroom! :-) The first day of school will be here before I know, I'm sure, and I've got lots of nerves and excitement running through me already!

View from the door - straight ahead where the fan is will be my 'desk'/group table.
The cubbies behind it will be for my teacher supplies. There's also the huge pile
of boxes from everything that we organized/stored. 

I've been keeping up pretty well with my running. I went three times this week - running/walking about three miles each time. This week I should go Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Honestly, I'll probably miss Saturday's run since that's the morning we're moving. I'm sure I'll get quite the workout Friday and Saturday loading/unloading the moving truck and everything. But I'll keep pushing myself to do the best I can to be the healthiest I can.

I don't know if I'll post anymore until the big move. If not, then I'll be more than excited to (and I'll have much more to write about, I'm sure) post after we are all settled into our new home. :-)

14 Days and Counting

Two more weeks til the big move! I can't believe it. I apologize to my readers about not posting for a while, it's been a little hectic around here lately and there hasn't been much to write about. We've been starting to clean and pack up our current place while Tim's still working close to 50 hours a week and I was doing summer school and getting things together for my classroom.
Today was the last day of summer school, so I have the next two weeks completely free to finish getting everything washed, cleaned, organized, and packed while Tim's working.

As far as my commitment to exercise since my last post, I've failed. I think I've gone running two or three times since then, including tonight. It has been so disgustingly hot out that I just cannot haven't forced myself to get out there. I did check with the gym across the street, but they do not have open gym hours during the summer due to the kids camp they have going on everyday. I've got two weeks to turn myself around before we move. Since I literally have nothing planned, I have NO excuses now. So here's my new plan: Run two days, rest one day, run two days, rest one day, etc. That way I can have a 'schedule' so I'm not just randomly running whenever I feel like it. So tonight was my first run, so tomorrow morning I'll be out again. Then I'll rest on Sunday and be back at it Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday -- I'll most likely go in the morning so that I hopefully miss the heat. I'm not going to go crazy with making sure I run all three miles of my route, but doing lots of alternating to get my legs and lungs back in shape like they were a month ago! 


Finally, I've filled out at least 40 pages of paperwork for my new job and I'll be 'officially' approved by the Board next week. I've been in my classroom to drop some of my materials off, and I'll be going down one more time before we move to meet with the Teacher Mentor Coordinator. While filling out the pages of paperwork, among it was my insurance information. I will still be able to attend my CF clinic in Chicago! I'm very excited about that even though it'll be a several hour drive, it's completely worth it to me. :-)


Again, I apologize for the boring post and the time it's been between posts, but there really hasn't been too much exciting stuff going on. At the end of next week I'll post some pictures of my classroom when I hopefully have it more decorated/organized! Til then, here's a sneak peek: 

View from the door
Yep, those are chalkboards - but I do have a whiteboard
to the right along the other wall and one behind my desk
you can see to the left.

2011: A Year of Reflection & Motivation

I cannot believe that I've had this blog for an entire year now! 2011 has definitely flown by this year - 72 (now 73) posts later, I've learned so much about myself in this year of writing, it has been amazing.

There have been some ups: Helping organize the first annual Great Strides in our town (and huge support from my family, friends, co-workers in raising money), our new apartment, the amazing development of Kalydeco!, we adopted our cat (Archie), celebrating our first wedding anniversary, becoming an aunt for the second time, I became an organ donor, and of course the beginning of a new me: 100% compliance since July 31st (153 days) and the addition of my exercise routine = increased PFTs!

And some downs: Several interviews but no teaching job, lots of doubts/worry about if having a child is the right thing for us - baby w/ CF or not?, and crappy/smoking/nasty neighbors.

But the 'ups' have definitely out-weighed the downs this year, and I cannot complain about that one bit. This has been a wonderful year of reflection and motivation for me and I appreciate all of you reading and commenting on my posts. I can't promise another 70-something posts next year, but I'll try my best. :-)

Goals for 2012:

• Get my FEV1 into the 90s and keep it there!
• Complete a 5K
• Keep forging ahead with our pregnancy discussions                                                                       and maybe become a mommy
• Find a full-time teaching position
• Stay as happy and healthy as I am now! :-)

Our New Home (lots of pictures)

We are finally moved into our new house/apartment (LOTS of unpacking still to go!). I like to call it our house, but we only live in the upper floor and have access to the basement. It has been a long, exhausting weekend, but with some great help we were able to move just about everything into our new place.
We ended up getting the keys a couple days early, so last week before we moved in, Tim and I came to clean up a bit and make a couple repairs.

Me sitting in our "dining room/office" eating our first lovely meal of Burger King.

We did lots of cleaning before everything was moved in. This is our living room.

Here's more of the dining room/office, just behind where I was sitting.
To the left is the kitchen and bathroom.

Tim standing in the doorway of the bathroom. There's our little kitchen, too.

Friday evening, our friend Chris came over to help load the U-Haul with most of our things. 

Our bedroom at the old place, in the process of moving things out.

I'm definitely going to miss my giant closet (yes, that's my wedding dress behind the door).

Caught them off-guard when they were coming back inside

Our big kitchen in the old place during the move.
Wish I took a picture of the ugly brown 1970s stove.

Taking a break...they worked very hard!

Friday night Tim moved the mattress into the living room
because he needs a TV to fall asleep and our bedroom TV was
already in the U-Haul. It was like a slumber party!

Saturday morning, Tim and I were up pretty early to finish packing up the U-Haul with last minute little things. Then we took it over to our new place and started unloading. Our friends Chris and Karissa were kind enough to come over and help us unload everything. This is what it looked like after we got everything in....there's still quite a bit to do!

The living room in the new place. This is just inside the front door.

The right side of the living room; view from the front door.

Our bedroom. Not a very good view, but there's not much to see in there.

The dining room/office room which is currently just FULL of boxes.

The right side of the dining room/office. 

Kitchen and bathroom. Not much going on in here either.

Crap all over the counter in the kitchen until we find a home for it.
Also, the lovely border that will be coming down!

A view of the dining room/office from the kitchen.

Chris brining in the couch cushion for the couch Tim is building. 

Tim and our friend Ryan taking an entertainment center apart in the yard. Ryan came as soon as
the U-Haul was empty. He moved a few boxes into the basement. He also brought
a case of beer, which made the guys happy.

Tim, Chris and Ryan

Chris, Ryan and Tim. We went to Fatty's Saturday afternoon for lunch.

Today, Tim's been working all day, so I ran some errands this morning and started doing laundry. I am determined to wash everything before it goes into storage or in the basement because it all has a very strong cigarette smell from our old place (sheets, towels, blankets, winter clothes, etc). We also had Comcast come and install our TV and internet, so I feel connected to the world again. It's going to be a long week of unpacking and moving boxes around after work each night, but I'm looking forward to getting settled in here.
We have another busy weekend ahead of us with the DeKalb Great Strides walk this Saturday!! I'm sure lots of our family is going to want to see our new place while they're up here, so we'll have to work our butt's off getting this place to look nice!
A huge thank you to Chris, Karissa and Ryan for their help this weekend! It would have been very hard to do all of this without you! :-)

Finally, Some Good News

Well, the past two days have been quite eventful and a little challenging. Thursday afternoon, we got a call from the owner of the house that we want to move into saying that someone else has filled out an application for the upper unit and had been approved. The good news was that they hadn't been returning her phone calls about signing a lease, so we had to make some decisions about what we wanted to do. We decided it was worth it to fill out an application, to see if we got approved (which we figured we would), and go from there. Tim and I both submitted our applications late afternoon yesterday, and just had to wait. This morning we both got calls from the realtor saying that we'd been approved and that we can come sign the lease anytime because there were several people interested.
We both shot out of bed and got ready pretty quick so that we could sign the lease before anyone else got it. At first we wanted to start the lease on May 1st so that we'd be saving one month's rent, but the owner of the house really wanted us to have the lease start on April 1st. It really wasn't going to make that much of a difference, and I want to be out of this place as soon as possible, so we agreed and signed our lease and we'll be getting our keys a week from today, April 1st!
We haven't been able to sublease our place yet, but we'll keep trying. We are more focused on getting out of this place soon, and if someone subleases, then that's just an added bonus for us.
I'm so excited that we're going to be able to move to a healthy apartment (house), with a full basement for storage, our own washer and dryer -not coin operated!- and a backyard! So if you're interested in helping us move, we'll be moving in probably Saturday and Sunday, maybe even a little Friday night if we're feeling motivated. We'd love the help! :-)

Suggestions Welcome!

I'm sure you've heard the saying "No news is good news"...well in regards to our apartment situation, no news is not good news. We've been getting calls and emails in response to our ads and we've had three people come and look at the apartment (one other scheduled and didn't show up), but nothing is sounding too promising right now. The first person who came to look at the place never filled out an application, the second people got denied because they had bad credit, and the third person just came today. She took an application with her, but didn't fill it out and turn it into the office, at least not yet. 

We're debating on what to do now. Really, all we can do is wait, but that's so hard. I hate just waiting, in our awful smelling apartment, for someone to come and decide to sublease. I just want to get out of here! Over the past week, we've packed about half of the apartment up, leaving only kitchen necessities and closet items. Tim also closed all of the vents and covered them with packing tape and cardboard to keep the smoke out, so it doesn't smell as bad, but it's still soaked into the carpet, couches and all of our clothes (pretty much everything). We're trying to figure out how long we should stay before just signing our other lease and moving into the other place, but we don't want to have to make two rent payments for a few months. If we waited until July to move, then we wouldn't be losing any money because we pre-paid our last month's rent when we first signed the lease last year. But I really don't want to be in this apartment until July, especially because we're packed and about ready to go (not to mention the health issue). If we sublease later in April or May, we would still lose 1/2 of our security deposit and have to pay the fees of removing our names off the lease and adding the new person, which is about the amount of a month's rent.  

Part of me just wants to sign the new lease, move into the new place, and pay our last few months rent (April, May, and June) even if we're not living in it just to get out of here. We would be losing the amount of three month's rent, but I kind of think it's worth it to move into a healthier place. 

We're open to suggestions, ideas, comments, or advice on our lovely situation. I adjusted the settings of my blog so that you should be able to make comments without entering all of your information, so please feel free.  We just don't know what to do at this point. I guess I can just keep asking you to keep your fingers crossed that someone will sublease soon or that our neighbors aren't chimneys over the next few weeks until we figure out what to do. Thanks, in advance, for your help.

Progress?

Happy St. Patrick's Day! :) Just wanted to fill all of you in with a quick update on our apartment shenanigans. We're still in our stinky place, but slowly but surely I think we're making progress. We found a place to move into as soon as we sublease our current place. It's an upper apartment of a house on the other side of town. We've had a few people call and show interest in our current apartment, and actually just had our first person view it about a half an hour ago. It wasn't too promising, but it wasn't bad either. The person turned in their application and still needs to go through a few more steps, but in the meantime, we have two more viewing scheduled within the next week. 
We're trying to get out of here ASAP because it's such a terrible heath issue for me. The landlord won't let us get out of our lease early (unless we sublease), but they did offer another apartment in a different building for us to move into. We're hoping that someone will sublease within the next week or two so that we don't have to move to a different building for two or three months, then when our lease is officially up August 1st, we'd have to move again. I have also contacted my doctor and nurse practitioner who were kind enough to write a letter to the landlord expressing how much of a health concern it is for me to be living in this situation. I'm sure they're not too happy about the news I've been telling them recently, but hopefully by my next doctor's visit we'll be out of here. 


Other than all of this apartment drama, there's not too much that's been going on. I'm officially on Spring Break now, and have the next week off work! Yay for having a job in the education field! This weekend I'll be spending a lot of time with Tim's family, finally getting to see our nephew Cole (haven't seen him since Christmas), who's now 9 months old! We'll probably be doing more packing and cleaning all of next week, but that's alright with me as long as we can get out of here soon. That's about all I've got planned, but it'll be nice to just hang out for a week. 
Don't forget, Great Strides in DeKalb is coming up very quickly -- Saturday, April 9th! We're definitely making progress and recruiting a lot more people than I thought we'd get, so I can't wait to see the turn out. 
Keep your fingers crossed for good weather for Great Strides and that we'll sublease our apartment very soon so we can be in a healthy living environment! 

Sublease

Tim and I have decided it's time to move...now! Originally, I told you that our lease is up August 1st, and it still is, but we're trying to find someone to sublease the apartment from us. That's where you come in....if you know anyone who wants to move to the DeKalb area now, please contact me. We think we found our new place yesterday, but we're going to check out a couple more places today, just to be sure. We'd  be ready to move probably within the next week or two, so we really hope we can find someone to move in here as soon as possible.
Here's some information we've placed on a couple websites and used to created a few ads:

Large, quiet one bedroom for sublease through August first. Will not be returning, so continued renting may be an option. Renter pays last months rent and half of the security deposit up front. $585 + $291. Tenant pays electric only. Located on Buena Vista golf course, large kitchen, abundant closet space, balcony, garbage disposal, updated bathroom. Short drive to NIU.
To see a layout: http://www.masonproperties.com/james.html

If you could please pass this information along to anyone you may know who is going to NIU or wants to move in the DeKalb area. Thanks so much! Keep your fingers crossed that we can move out soon! :-)