We bought a house (and other big news)

Our blog has remained silent for nearly a month. That's because Becky and I have been in one of the busiest months of our married life, and many more busy months on the way.

Here are a couple of things that have been keeping us joyfully busy:

1. We bought a house

I've always heard people talk about the stress of buying and moving into a house. I never believed them. Surely buying a house couldn't be that stressful! ... Now I know.

Becky first raised the idea of buying a home back when we were engaged. She pointed out that if we were going to be in Lynchburg for several more years, it would be good to start building equity in something. It made sense for other reasons, too: The apartment I had at the time would be good for us to start out in, but it would only last us so long. Finding another apartment wasn't a viable option considering that many decently sized apartments now rent for more than a house payment.

So we started looking at houses soon after our wedding.

In September, we looked at a foreclosure that seemed rather nice but needed a lot of work, and we felt they were asking way too much.

Apparently, we weren't the only ones who thought that. In late November, we learned that the price on that house had dropped tremendously. For the first time in our housing search, we became really excited about the prospect of committing to a purchase.

The weeks after that were characterized by a roller coaster of emotions, decisions, offers, negotiations, worrying, waiting, and, finally, home buying.

The house is a fixer-upper. It needs a lot of work. But it's beautiful and has a lot of potential. Since we got the contract on the house, we have met numerous people who had looked at it, loved it, considered making an offer, and consider us lucky for getting it.

Thanks to some great friends with muscles and trucks, we were able to move in just a few days after closing on the house. Two weeks later, Becky's mom drove up with Becky's piano, dining room table, and other furniture that had been stowed away in her basement. Here is a picture of the dining room:



We are grateful to be in our home, and we look forward to documenting the repairs and renovations as we complete them.

We're having a baby boy.

That's the other big news / announcement for the month.

The baby is due in June. I am nervous, but I'm also very excited. Back when I was single, it was no secret that I longed to find love and happiness in a relationship. But almost as heartbreaking as being single was the fact that I wanted to be a dad. I wanted to come home from work and read stories to or play games with my children. It makes me very happy to know that that dream will come true someday soon.

When Becky and I fell in love, one of the things we liked about each other was our desire to raise a family. We had some people who advised us to wait until we had been married for several years before having children. But it didn't feel right. Some people need to travel the world or something like that before having children. But to us, making a family felt like the great adventure. I'm happy to have such a beautiful and devoted wife who shares that dream with me.

We kept the pregnancy a pretty closely-guarded secret for the first few months. We told our immediate family members and a few others, on the condition that the news would not see the light of Facebook. Then we got to the point where we were ready to tell other people in person. Becky wore maternity clothes in public a few times, but no one asked about them. (She is the only woman I've ever met who was frustrated that no one assumed that she looked pregnant.)

Finally, after we got the first ultrasound and learned that the baby was a boy, we announced the news on Facebook:



So for the foreseeable future, we will be repairing a house and changing diapers. Combine that with my web design business and Becky's sewing projects and substitute teaching, and we might not blog much for the next little while, but I'll try to update at least once a month.

Christmas Caroling for Cans

Several weeks ago, Becky and I started talking about how we could help others this holiday season. We considered several options---ringing a bell for the Salvation Army's Red Kettle campaign, making gingerbread houses with the children in the homeless shelter near our neighborhood.

But we also wanted to go Christmas Caroling.

Our time was extremely limited, though. We had agreed to plan the annual Christmas dinner at our church, which is no small feat since it generally attracts more than 100 people and it has a lot to live up to, because we've had some pretty amazing Christmas parties. Also, we put an offer in on a house and it was accepted. So we had a lot to do.

Suddenly, we devised a plan that would allow us to go Christmas Caroling and help people in need. We decided to go Caroling for Cans.



Armed with the accordion we borrowed a couple of months ago, we went to several homes to sing songs such as "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Silent Night." We advertised our activity on Facebook and by word of mouth, and won several invitations to come sing in exchange for nonperishable food, which we took to the Salvation Army homeless shelter.

Unfortunately, we barely missed most people who invited us to come sing---apparently, the Christmas season keeps lots of families busy! But we did enjoy visiting a few people to bring the Christmas spirit into their homes while collecting food for people who are more needy than we ever have been.

I think the highlight of our event was singing to an elderly woman in a nursing home / rehabilitation facility. She was having a rough go of it and was truly happy to see us. She and her roommate sang along with most of our songs; her roommate requested "White Christmas," which we gladly sang.

This turned out to be a very fun event, and likely will become a Bryan & Becky tradition for many years to come. (Next year, the event will feature much better planning.) We're even willing to franchise out the idea at no cost---if you want to go Caroling for Cans, we won't charge you a license fee. :)

What ways have you found to help others or spread Christmas cheer? Do you go Christmas Caroling? Do you volunteer? Please share in the comments below.

A super busy October

October was one of the busiest months in my memory. I've been too busy doing things to blog about them! (That's the way it should be.)

But it's been a really good month. So here's a quick description, not in chronological order---

1. Halloween Weekend and Day

We are lucky to live just about an hour away from Becky's sister, brother-in-law, and their kids. The last weekend of the month, they invited a lot of family over for a day of festivities.

The day was pretty cool. It started when Becky hit a growth spurt and became much taller than I:



I've always looked up to her, but this helped.

Actually, she wasn't taller than me, but she was on drywall stilts:



 

Her dad brought them up from South Carolina so Travis (Becky's brother-in-law) could use them for his Uncle Sam



Halloween costume. Everyone trying them on. I don't have any pictures of me when I tried them (although I know pictures were taken, I don't have a copy) but you wouldn't want to see those pictures, anyway. Whereas Becky was walking confidently in a jiffy, I was wobbling around the whole time.

Becky's stepbrother, Cameron, put the stilts on at their highest length, three feet. He's tall enough before the stilts. But he did a pretty good job walking around in them.

After playing with the stilts for a while, we went to a corn maze. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a corn maze. :-( It was basically a corn field with a path through it, but there weren't any side paths where you could get lost.

However, the pumpkin patch games at the end made the experience worth every dollar we spent and all the time we spent.

The pumpkin patch had a steep hill on the far end of it. The hill had these two slides---basically, long sheets of plastic heading down the hill---that were TONS of fun. Lots of us guys were diving onto them, spinning around as we slid down, etc. There was basically a mud pile at the bottom, so my clothes got pretty dirty. It was lots of fun and was great exercise.

Then, Halloween came. Becky, a science teacher, dressed up as Miss Frizzle (from Magic Schoolbus) and I dressed as Bill Nye the Science Guy. (I bet you didn't know that these two science peeps eventually fell in love and got married, did you?



In addition to going to work in our costumes (yes, we're lucky enough to work at the same place, just different offices) we went out to eat at Arby's and then walked around the mall as people enjoyed our costumes. It was a lot of fun!

2. Homecoming and Homecoming

The month opened with homecoming at the college where I work. It was the college's first homecoming. Since I work in the office that planned and organized the event, I worked 15 hours that day. I was dead tired when I got home. (Fortunately for me, my boss bought pizza.)

Two weekends later, Becky and I drove to Buena Vista for homecoming at my alma mater, Southern Virginia University. I LOVE that school, and I always love homecoming.

SVU's choirs and orchestra gave a remarkable concert. I'm always impressed by what those choirs can do. The highlight, for me, was hearing the beautiful song "How Can I Keep From Singing." (You can hear Enya sing it on YouTube.)

Saturday was filled with cornhole, a wonderful faculty lecture, volunteering at the alumni house,  food, and fun. All in all, it was a very wonderful day.

3. Conference and Conference.

October holds a special significance for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because that is one month when we have General Conference, a worldwide event where we gather around TVs, computers, radios, and other devices to hear a broadcast where prophets and apostles testify of Jesus Christ and teach us how we can live better Christian lives. This was the other big activity the first weekend of the month.

I think my favorite talk in the whole conference was "Providing in the Lord's Way" by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. It was a powerful reminder that the Savior's gospel implores us to alleviate the suffering of other people. Elder Uchtdorf gave a good guide to help us know how we can go about using our own limited resources to help others.

The second weekend of the month, we had Stake Conference, which is like General Conference but on a local level, involving all the church members in a geographical region. This conference was held in Lexington, Virginia. The message that stuck out the most to me was the importance of honesty, which our Stake President touched on with great emphasis. He quoted Billy Joel ("Honesty is a lonely word") which I did not expect.

4. Work and Work

My day job kept me busy throughout the month and had me working a good number of extra hours. But I also had my side job (where I do some freelance writing and web design) take off a little. I went from zero projects to three very quickly. So my evenings have generally consisted of sitting down at my laptop and tap, tap, tapping on my keyboard.

That's just the beginning...

A lot of other things happened in October.

Becky helped prepare a "Family Values Award" dinner in Buena Vista. She seemed to do a really good job and was in charge of the decorations.

Becky started looking into the possibility of making curtains at home (and we'll probably buy a nice sewing machine soon.)

We spent three weeks suffering from a miserable cold.

All in all, October was a really fun month!

Service and a dough boy

Today, thousands of people ran 10 miles in Lynchburg. My wife and I did not. Our excuse? We had a service project to attend. (Notice I said that's the excuse. The reason is that I wouldn't run 10 miles even if you promised there were 100 free doughnuts at the end.)

But in all actuality, we did have some service to do. Our church organized numerous service projects throughout the state of Virginia as part of a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of our welfare program. Becky and I were asked to organize one project.

We organized a project to improve the appearance of Miller Park in Lynchburg and the Salvation Army homeless shelter and other facilities next to the park. This morning, we and about 25 other members of our church met to get the job done.

Some of the group stayed in Miller Park to pick up litter, and also gather large sticks and small tree branches that had fallen on the ground.

The rest of the group went to the Salvation Army facilities and tamed some severely overgrown gardens and flower beds. Two teenage girls went to the homeless shelter and made sandwiches that would then be served to the residents and other people in need.

The final result: The park and the homeless shelter and the Salvation Army's daycare facility look a lot nicer now. We all felt great to be working together for this good cause.

After Becky and I got home from the service project, we walked back to the Miller Park area to look at a house that is for sale. On the way there, we stopped at a yard sale and Becky found some great blouses and pants that she wanted. We asked the yardsalers to hold on to them for us so we could buy them on the way back.

When we returned to the yard sale, the owners were putting everything away. We paid $4 for the two blouses and three pairs of pants... And then the woman who was having the yard sale said, "Do you want this whole box of clothes? We'll give it to you for free, because we're just throwing them away."

They not only gave us the entire box of women's clothes, but they gave us an awesome book bag:

I knew I wanted the book bag the moment I saw the Pillsbury Dough Boy on it. But then we discovered the slippers, the hat, the pencil box (with a watch inside it) and a necktie. This was quite the find! I can't wait to start using the book bag for something --- I'm not sure how I'll use it, but I'll love it.

House hunting in the rain

This morning we were surprised by weather in the 50's! We're getting some beautiful rain, and look forward to house hunting this evening.