Rainy Monday Boredom Post

Hey y'all.

I've got a bad case of the mondays and a 3 hour gap before I have to see my next client...so I am doing my best to fight the temptation to cuddle up with the pups and take a nap by writing another blog post. I think if I were to nap right now with the rain going as hard as it is outside I might end up accidentally sleeping through the afternoon!

Last night we went to a surprise birthday party for our friend Michael Gaines. He and his wife Rachel were the leaders/hosts of the financial bible study that we went to all summer and made a lot of church friends through. It was just a small little get together but it was a lot of fun catching up with everyone/having dinner and eating cheesecake. I am a SUCKER for cheesecakes. I could probably eat an entire one in one sitting if no one else were there to stop me :)

Anyways, here are a couple of pictures from last night:

Sterling hiding behind the kitchen wall waiting for Michael to unlock the door...isn't he so cute?

Michael, before he caught on to why everyone was in his apartment...

Our bible study group, minus Glenn, Ed, Carrie, Sean, and Marsha....Happy Birthday Michael!

In other news, we are officially putting in an offer on a house this week!!! CROSS YOUR FINGERS!! We are so excited and hope that we are able to get this house!

-Jenn

Update since the wedding...(Sterling)

Hey guys. Married life is going great, we are both enjoying it a lot. The honeymoon in Cancun was awesome and we've been working hard on getting into a routine with work and home life. I am extremely lucky to have Jennifer as a wife. She has very good values and is a lot of fun and we balance each other out very well :-)

I recently got a job with Texla Energy Management where I am a transport analyst / scheduler / fundamental analyst. I am responsible for the efficient pathing of our gas on our existing transportation contracts as well as finding new opportunities in the market and predicting more macro trends in price spreads in the gulf region. So far, I really like it a lot and I enjoy working downtown. I like my coworkers as well. Jenn and I have made some friends with some young couples from work so it has been fun going out with and getting to know them.

Right now, we are looking at buying a home in the northeast part of Houston where 59 meets beltway 8. We looked at a community called Fall Creek and both liked it a lot. It looks like it is very safe and it is a master-planned community so they keep all the riff-raff out (except for us I guess...). We also really like the Lake Shore community which is just a bit east of Fall Creek and borders the south west side of Lake Houston. It is newer than Fall Creek and smaller. The houses in Fall Creek and Lake Shore both have homes that are 4 sides brick which I think makes them look very nice. We are looking at possibly making an offer on one in Lakeshore over this weekend, we are pretty excited.

I have recently discovered Pandora which is a very cool website where you can enter an artist or song you like and they will automatically find similar songs / artists and play them for you in CD quality. My favorite stations are Soundgarden (which plays alot of 90's grunge alt hard rock like Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Temple of the Dog, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam) and Josh Abbott Band (which plays alot of Texas Country music).

Over this weekend, we went to Laff Stopwith Adalia, Erik, and Jake (I work with Adalia and Jake, and Erik is Adalia's fiance). Adalia had won free tickets and invited us all to go. Jenn, Jake and I were sitting on the front row... so we got harassed a little bit. Overall we had a lot of fun and plan on going back, especially since they often give out free tickets.

In other news/events, I'm glad that they are shutting down ACORN and that the US, Britain, and France walked out on Iran at the G20 summit. That's all until next time.

Update since the wedding...(Jennifer)

Since we got married a little over 3 months ago, I have taken a job working as an ABA therapist for a company called OATH. (ABA stands for Applied Behavioral Analysis; OATH stands for "Overcoming Autism Through Hope"). I work with children ages 2-9 years who have varying degrees of Autism Spectrum disorder. So far, it has been really fun working with the little kids, and really rewarding to see them improve. They are pretty entertaining and it's amazing some of the things they come up with. Of course, there are good days and bad days, and some days can be very trying on my patience level, but overall, the job itself I enjoy and I think it is great preparation for whenever Sterling and I decide to take on parenthood down the road.

However, since I have been employed with them, there have been some issues with getting the number of hours that I was promised during the interview process...so I've been picking up as many administrative duties as I can to try and bring in the amount of income we originally planned for in our budget...and we've certainly been praying about it...but we'll see where God takes us. I am trying to keep my mind open either way. If there is anything that I have learned in the past two years, it's that the things that I want to happen/try to plan/organize/sometimes even try to force to happen, is not necessarily how God is going to make it happen, if at all. And even though things might not work out exactly how I envisioned them--more often than not, things turn out to be better than I could have ever imagined. I certainly never saw myself married at 23 that's for sure! But I am very grateful that I am - married life suits us both really well. I am so thankful for Sterling. He's such a good man and a great husband and he makes me want to be a better person. God really blessed me by bringing him into my life--and with such perfect timing too!!

Other than that, I have been busy trying to find places in our apartment for all of our presents! It's amazing how quickly we have grown out of 900 square feet. Well, not necessarily "grown out of" but we have a lot of stuff! Sterling says it's because I have too many shoes....I say it's because he has too many books!! In all honesty, I've somewhat given up on trying to find places for some things. We have a rather large pile of boxes in our 2nd bedroom which we used to use as an office before the boxes and piles of paper took over the place! We also have some in our closet, as well as in our living room.

On the administrative side of the whole marriage process, we have officially closed all of our "single" banking accounts, combined all of our finances, made a budget, made chore charts, and I have changed my name to Jennifer Hill Cummings with the social security administration. I still have yet to change it on my license. Long story with that one, but basically I am waiting until we visit my parents over Thanksgiving to get it renewed in TN, rather than getting a TX license because we don't want to pay to get my car inspected, registered, new tags etc....there's a good possibility that we might end up having to get rid of it in the next year (long story there too. Sterling can tell y'all that one).

Needless to say, we've been keeping busy. Oh yeah, AND we are also looking for our first home! Yeah :) Exciting times ahead :) We'll keep you posted!
-Jenn

We've joined the world of blogging! :)

Hey everyone!

I know, I know...blogging is kind of goofy...but we decided it would be a great way to keep all of our family and friends informed and up to date on all of the exciting things happening in our lives right now--and also for in the future! Since we've both entered the working world, we've quickly discovered how little time we have to catch up with everyone, let alone with each other, so having a blog is great solution for us to stay connected with everyone we care about on a more regular basis than we are able to right now.

We hope you enjoy following our updates!

Jennifer and Sterling