Garlic

Interesting title you say? Well, Kirk and I are not great about cleaning out the fridge. Recently, we noticed that we did not have a lot of room in our fridge, so we cleaned it out yesterday. Sadly, a lot of groceries that we bought we only 1/2 used before the expiration date came. While cleaning out produce, and the like, I came across this garlic! I had no idea that left by itself in a cold fridge - apparently, this is what garlic looks like.
Interesting.
Just had to share!

It's Been Three Months....

Well, I am said to say, it's been to long since we have blogged. I guess in starting this I thought we would do updates frequently, but life has gotten a hold of us and sadly, our blog has been neglected. I have now already finished my first semester (Summer I), and I start more classes (Summer II) on Monday! I am loving being a student again. I have missed learning, and have loved studying, being at lectures, and learning how to be an awesome school counselor! Perhaps my favorite part of being back in school, are the people I have met, I been really blessed, I truly love being around the people I take class with. I know the future holds a lot of work, but I am excited and embrace all of the challenges!
In other news, Kirk has been with Nationwide for a year now! How crazy is that?!? He loves the people he works with, but is excited to move up! We continue to receive new that that is coming soon!

Inside the beautiful Grand Ole Opry Hotel!

We also celebrated our first anniversary in March. We took a long weekend to Nashville (about a month before the huge flood). We had a blast and enjoyed going to all the bars with live music, and getting a taste for the southern culture.

This was our anniversary dinner at Morton's Steakhouse - so delicious!

I also began working as a Mary Kay Beauty Consultant in March. It's been scary, but very exciting and fun to be around cosmetics and pamper women to help them feel as beautiful as they are!
Other than that, we continue to live life to the fullest! We are incredibly grateful summer is here! We enjoy our apartment that over looks the pool, and hanging out poolside whenever we have the chance.
We are grateful for our marriage, and feel incredibly blessed by each other daily (well, ok, almost daily - we have our not so good moments too!).
Promise - it won't be three months before our next post!

Graduate School on the Horizon

The title pretty much says it all. I (Holly) will be starting Grad School in just two months! I will be starting a two- year process to obtain a Master's in School Counseling. This has been a dream of mine for about six or seven years now. I can't believe it's here, it's both exciting and scary all at the same time! I will be continuing to work part time at Heritage Christian Church, while taking classes at Capital University - however, my degree will be from University of Dayton.
I cannot image what all this is going to mean for our lives, it's been wonderful being out of school for two years, so I am sure that the adjustment back to school will be a difficult one. Although, for a month now Kirk and I have learned to adjust to his new hours of working from 11:30am - 8 pm. It hasn't been completely easy, but we seem to be in a routine and enjoy the time we do have together so much more!
Kirk has been so supportive of my decision to go back to school, I really cannot thank him enough, as this has now become his dream as well, that one day very soon, I will work in a school, and together we will begin to love on the community God puts us in!

3+ Feet of snow

So I guess I always assumed that living in Ohio, we got some snow once in awhile, but nothing like 3 feet! Well, I have been proved wrong. In just about 10 days, Columbus has been blanketed with huge amounts of snow. I have been trying to enjoy the beauty that it brings, because it is beautiful, however, it does create a problem of parking, etc.
After me complaining about not seeing the ground till April, we decided we needed to embrace it. We got all dressed up and took a walk to the gas station right by our apartment. It was fun, and an adventure, because as soon as I started walking over the huge piles of snow I took a face plant down and had a hard time standing up. It was hilarious and we were both laughing hysterically. It was good medicine for us to get out and get some much needed - Coke Zero! :)

We have been in our new apartment now for 1 month! So crazy, because we are still working on hanging pictures and putting it all together. However, are really enjoying the extra space and mostly, the luxury of having TWO BATHROOMS. Seriously, it's a saver for our marriage.
Kirk will start to work his new hours this coming Monday, he will now work 11:30 - 8 pm. This will be a big adjustment for us, but we recognize that it's just for a season in our marriage, and that it's not forever.
We are planning a trip to Nashville for our 1st anniversary - in just six weeks! So crazy, this year has gone so fast! We are excited for a much needed vacation!

Learning to be domestic

Hello!
Kirk and I have been busy learning to be domestic! I guess this season has made us feel like making more things from scratch. A few weekends ago, we started off the weekend by going on a Starbucks date, and a dollar theater movie. (Oh yeah, we know how to be big spenders.. hehe) We then woke up on Saturday with an incredibly beautiful dusting of snow. It was our first real snow we've had and it was wonderful!
Then we headed to the store and bought all kinds of supplies. We made homemade chicken noodle soup, and then later about 6-8 dozen sugar cookies. Whew, what a fun but tiring time!

We thought our carrots, celery, and onions looked pretty....



Sugar cookies apparently grow more than you would expect!


Our Christmas tree.. a small but worked for us!
We had a fantastic but exhausting Christmas visiting all of our families we made something like five appearances within two days! We are moving into our two bed room apartment in just 3 weeks! We have started to pack up things slowly, thankfully we do have over two weeks to get moved out of our apartment and into our new one. We welcome any help, especially since with my back, I will not be able to do much of the moving.
Have a happy and wonderful New Year!

Updates

Wow. I must be a pretty bad blogger. It's been well over a month. I had every intention on blogging this past weekend, and over things kept coming up instead!
Christmas is just around the corner now (two weeks from today exactly! Woo-hoo!!) Kirk and I have been decorating our apartment and wrapping presents. We are really looking forward to our first Christmas together - it's been fun to decorate our first tree, have a wreath hanging on our door, and Christmas light wrapped around our deck, and busting out my holly Christmas plates! However, due to our lack of space in our small one bed room apartment, the clutter that comes with this holiday has started to get on my nerves, seeing that with all this new holiday decor, we truly do not have the storage space to put the boxes away. Anyways... we are almost done with our shopping, I will recommend to everyone, start shopping as soon as possible, this year, Kirk and I started on Labor Day - shopping has been much more enjoyable spreading it out over four months!

We've been blessed that Kirk's job continues to be 8-4:30, we don't know when his new schedule will start, but it's looking like he may never work the late hours (11:30a-8p) that he originally agreed to. This is a HUGE blessing for us, because we are able to eat dinner together most every night, and spend lots of time together. Also, this week, he was able to work overtime, due to the blizzard in Des Monies and the Nationwide employees there not being able to come into work. Another huge blessing for us, especially during this season!

Other things we've been up to:
-2 more Ohio State football games, we were able to get tickets to the Iowa game, as well as go to our first Michigan, Ohio State away game - what an experience indeed
-Our weekly Wednesday guys wings night, and girls night continues, we love the chance to have fellowship with our friends weekly
-Went to a UD basketball last weekend to watch our friend Anna's boyfriend who plays for Lehigh University
-We continue to get excited about the NorthChurch plant coming in January 210. We are very excited to see how God is going to work in the community of Olentangy area
-We are moving in the middle of January to a 2 bed and 2 bath apartment! Can't wait - if you are available, let us know, we can use as many hands as we can get!

Posting updated pictures will come soon!

Surprises!

I have always wanted to be in on a great surprise for someone! What better then to do a surprise for my husband?!? Back in late August I started scheming with my dad to help me get some OSU tickets through a great connection that he has. (This was before we had won tickets to the USC game.) My dad pulled through and was able to get us tickets for the New Mexico State game, in A deck, eight rows up! I was so excited, dad sent the tickets to work and I had them sitting in my desk drawer for weeks. Then, I was able to get Kirk's parents in on this as well... they were able to get tickets. His parents and I had Kirk totally fooled that they were coming to celebrate his birthday the week after.
By Friday, October 30, I had just about lost it and was barely able to hold it in anymore! After Kirk left for work, I pulled out lots of pictures from games we had been to in college, and a sign that said "Happy Birthday". Work went incredibly slow as I was anxious to get to see his reaction to something I had been planning for so long!
Everything went so smoothly. Kirk was suspicious with the decorations by the time I got home from work, so I gave him those right away. Then, I just had to stall his desire to make plans for the evening until there was a knock on the door. He was totally blown away and excited to know they had tickets to the game as well.
It turned out to be an awesome weekend, we had a blast at the game, especially with the blow out, and at half time when TBDBITL came out and did a Halloween show, complete with dancing Thriller!!! We feel really blessed to have gotten to spend a great weekend with his parents. I know how loved Kirk felt, and that was my main goal through planning all of this. It was worth every little bit of waiting to tell him!
His real birthday was this past Monday, November 2. After such a great weekend, we continued celebrating by dining at none other than Cap City Diner! One of our most favorite places to eat! Kirk even surprised me with a pretty rose when I got home from work!
I thoroughly enjoy birthdays, and the fact that you get to tell people how much you love them and care about them.
Below is a picture of the four of us at the game! Go Bucks 45-0!!!
Also, a few weeks ago we carved our pumpkins! I forgot how messy that can be and how nasty the orange stuff in the middle is! Ew! We enjoyed them for about a day before they became infested with bugs... even more gorse! Either way, Happy be-lated Halloween!

Kirk's pumpkin is on the left, mine is on the right.

Happy Halloween!