Homeowners for one year!

So tomorrow will be one year since we closed on, & moved into, our lovely house. It seems like it was yesterday, it all went by so fast. We made some customizations & in the meantime became experts in several areas: painting, tile work, furniture, yard work, cooking, & other domestic items/issues. I think we've done fairly well. We might have started off on a rocky foot, locking ourselves out of the house the day we closed, & then with mis-adventures in painting the kitchen wainscoting, but we learned a lot with each day & our house really feels like our own. So congrats to us on one year in the house! I hope we see many more!

--Josh

Wrapping up the holiday season

Hello 2010. We have wrapped up the first decade of the 2000's & are starting a new one. It's weird to think that 10 years ago I was a Freshman in college, because it seems like yesterday. A lot has gone on in the past 10 years. Heck, a lot has gone on in the past one, two, and three years. We have just concluded the Christmas & New Year season & Kate & I are on our last weekday of time off. We had a great Christmas, spending most of the time in Austin at Kate's parents' house. We also saw my folks & Emily & Aaron. It snowed a lot up here on Christmas Eve & it was verrrrrrry windy on the drive down to Austin. It was the first white Christmas in Dallas in the past.......75 years or so. I was kinda wishing we were staying home for Christmas because of the weather, & it's also nice to be home on Christmas. But it was good to be with the Monroes. I keep telling everyone, we're staying here next Christmas & I know it will be 85 degrees and sunny. In summary, we had a great Christmas, we got way too much from our generous fam, & we are blessed many, many times over.

Once we got home from Austin we visited my dad in Fort Worth the next day, & settled into our week off. Each year we work our butts off at work (err, mostly Kate works like crazy) & we look forward to the week we have off to stay at home, sleep in, & do whatever we want. It's sad to be at the end of our week, but it has been awesome. We built some fires on cold weather days, cooked great meals, got our shopping fix taken care of (hello Eddie Bauer!!!), & generally hung out together & enjoyed our time together. We also decided this week that it's about time we retired & did this all the time. Now if we can just figure a way to do that & still have money coming in.

We did our New Year's dinner at Capital Grill in Dallas. Reservations were at 6:30 & we learned that earlier is the way to go........we walked right in & sat down. Dinner was superb, from the atmosphere, to the staff, to the food, everything was fantastic. Kate ranked it the #1 steak in Dallas. I say it was great, but I would still rank Ruth's Chris #1 & Bob's Steak & Chop House #2. However we had lobster macaroni & cheese at Capital Grill that was my #1 side dish anywhere. Try it. We took our time & got out of there in about 2 1/2 hours, in time to get home before all the drunks got out on the roads, & enjoyed champagne at home with the pups.

So now on to 2010. As Kate said, 2009 was excellent. It's gonna be hard to top it. Thankfully we have our vacation in about 2 months to the DR, which will help us keep our sanity. Look for more on that at a later date. Hope everyone is well.

--Josh