The House Hunt

We are so excited about our future new house, but it took a lot of searching to find our perfect home.

The house hunt started long before Brian and I ever got to Virginia. As soon as we had decided to accept the offer from Celanese to have Brian be a Reliability Engineer in their Virginia location, we started looking at the housing market. We did research on housing websites, looked at our financial info and did a lot of in depth budgeting to see what we could afford and when. We then came up with a list of about 25 houses that we ranked in an excel spreadsheet that we definitely wanted to see in person.

So with our list we headed out to Virginia two weeks before Brian had to start work. We were able to see our top 15 on the list in the first three days of being out there and we agreed our number one choice seemed perfect for us. The only problem was another family also thought it was perfect for them and they were preparing to make an offer. We made our offer Wednesday afternoon, confident that ours was better that the other family who put their offer in the night before. We got a call from our Realtor that night that the seller countered the other family's offer and the other family accepted. Our Realtor was able to find out that our offer was better, but the seller wanted to counter the people who put their offer in first.

It was hard news to hear, and even though we knew there was another family wanting the house, and we tried not to get our hopes up; we were still pretty sad and could hardly think about going out and looking at houses again.

After a good nights sleep we got right back on the horse and started looking at houses that we hadn't had on our excel list, but that our Realtor knew that we would like. We found three houses that we liked, though none were as good as the house we lost. We did a lot of research on the three houses, weighed out pros and cons and were having a hard time making any decision. One was so charming and had a ton of square footage, but it was older and had problems that come with an old home. One was new and had everything we wanted except for an extremely tiny backyard, and we'd have to negotiate the price down to get it into our price range. And the last one was newer and had a great view, but it needed a lot of work to get the number of beds and baths we wanted and a usable backyard. We weren't in love with any of them.

Tuesday the next week our Realtor called us up and said there was a new house that another Realtor in his company is selling. It wasn't technically on the market yet, but he and the other Realtors of his company got a tour and he thought it'd be perfect for us. We were the first ones to see it that Wednesday morning and after we walked though it we felt great about it. We split for lunch and then that Wednesday afternoon made an offer. Again we tried not to get too excited, and when our Realtor called that evening I tried to brace myself for whatever he had to say.

When he said they accepted our offer, I started jumping around the apartment. We are so happy to have found a house that we like better than the house we lost, in a fantastic neighborhood, with all the beds and baths we wanted, and a great size backyard. So far we've had the home inspection and have given financial documents to the bank and are on track to close and officially own the house on September 13th.

Blueberry Picking & Archery Games

Instead of flying straight into Virginia, Brian and I decided to fly into Maryland to visit his family and then buy the "green" truck and drive south to Christiansburg.

Blueberry Picking 

Not far from where Brian's family lives, is a wonderful place called Butler's Orchard, where you can go out on their property and harvest your produce at a greatly reduced cost. Since Brian's favorite fruit is blueberries we decided to go out and pick those.

Everyone's got their own style of picking blueberries.

We picked a ton of blueberries

 And good times were had by all

After you pick the blueberries you bring them into the store where they are weighed and paid for. In the store they also had a slushy machine that had two flavors of slushy lemonade. Both flavors were delicious

Archery Games

Besides picking blueberries until our fingers turned purple, we also played a few rounds of milk jug archery.

For those of you unfamiliar with milk jug archery here's how you play.

•  Fill two empty milk jugs with equal amounts of water.
• Tie these full milk jugs on either side of a rope on a pulley
• Shot arrows into your milk jug and hope that you jug drains faster than your opponent's jug
• Whomever's jug hits the ground looses

Everyone taking a few warm up shots before the game.

Brian and Michael setting up for the first round

This is a video of Brian vs Michael and Gina

Here's a video of Brian vs Dad

Dad examining his milk jug after the game

It's always fun to visit the Maryland house!

PS sorry for the poor quality of the videos that was the best I could upload under our current internet conditions.

Goodbye Provo

July 19th-21st was our last weekend in Provo, and since it was our last weekend in the college student phase of our lives we partied it up pretty good:

We went to in-n-out

We went to the American Fork Carnival and rode the Spider ride

We played Spades with tiny cards

and Star Wars Monopoly

and Canasta

and BANG!

The following Monday July 22nd was my last official day of work, and the day the movers came and packed our whole lives up in boxes.

Work was great because lets be honest, I didn't really spend that day working. I spent my morning making up a quiz about myself and the people who scored the highest got the remainder of my meal tickets. Shout out to Cisco, Danny, Gabe, and Megan for getting 1st-4th place respectively and winning meal tickets. That afternoon at work, Megan and I put together a BBQ appreciation party/Gabe's Birthday Party for our department which was awesome!

Brian spent that morning with the movers.

The came at 10am and were able to box everything up and put in on a truck and drive away at 3pm.

They even took the Taurus with them.

All that was left were the bags we packed for the airplane and the furniture that came with the apartment.

Tuesday July 23rd we clean, clean, cleaned our apartment which was a lot easier to do with out all our stuff in the way, and my manager Carmen, invited me to come in to work for an hour. When I got there, she thanked me in front of all the managers of our department and our VP for all my hard work and presented me with a gift card to home depot and magazines to help get me started on turning a house into a home.

Wednesday morning July 24th, Becca and Nate drove us to the airport and we set off to visit Brian's parents in Maryland before heading down to Virginia. The funny thing about flying out of the Salt Lake City International Airport on a Wednesday morning is you see a ton of missionaries. All of the payphones were crowded with guys in suits and girls in dresses. There were at least 20 Elders and 10 Sisters boarding one flight to Oregon in the gate next to us. I guess that was a pretty fitting last hour in Utah.

Things I Will Miss About Provo

• All of the wonderful friends we've made through out the years
• Having a temple super close and another one on the way
• A dessert place on every corner instead of a bar
• Two awesome Libraries
• Our Married Student Ward
• Google Fiber (seriously they have to wait until we leave to put it in?)
• Awesome cheap date activities 
• The ability to have everything you need in walking distance
• Free access to a 3D printer and power tools (this ones is Brian's)

Petersen Family Reunion

Before we head out to the other side of the country, Brian and I decided to take a long weekend in California and go camping with my Mom's side of the family.

It was a long car ride up but luckily we know how to keep ourselves entertained, by taking goofy pictures and eating bacon jerky.

Before we got to the campsite my family and I made a pit stop at Burney Falls to take in the sights.

 

Once we got to the campsite we had a ton of fun playing water balloon battle ship, making smores, playing jalapeno poker, hiking to Fowler Falls, listening to ghost stories, and just being with family. There were some new additions to the family that I had not met before, and a lot of familiar faces that I'd missed seeing. 

Even though not everyone was up while we were, it was so good to see the family that was there; especially since it will be longer between visits once we get out to Virginia. 

Love You All Petersen Family!

Graduation For Reals

Today is a monumental day...

Brian is done with college!!!!

Although he walked in April, he still had to take three more classes this Spring term before he was officially graduated, and today, Thursday, June 20th 2013 he had his last class of his college career!

This is a big step, and a closing to a wonderful chapter of our lives. We've both loved being students at BYU and have made such wonderful life-long friends along the way. Our little studio apartment has also become a home, and although it's only 25ft by 25ft it's been perfect for the married student chapter of our lives.

While we'll always look at these first two years of our lives together fondly, we're both so excited to be starting a new chapter in Virginia. 

Introducing The Bumble Bee

For those of you who don't know, Brian loves to build and fly model size airplanes. All of these planes he cuts and glues and builds from scratch. He decided he'd specifically make one for me that I could paint and design however I wanted, and thus The Bumble Bee was born.

When Brian first flew The Bumble Bee it wasn't as stable as he wanted so he knew before it would be ready for me to fly he'd have to add wing tips for stability. AKA I'm not super good at flying so he wanted to plane to be as stable as possible so I would only crash it the normal amount and not extra hard.

Brian let me come into the lab where he works as a TA, and cut  the wing tips out myself. To make cuts in the plane material, the lab has something that they call the guillotine, which sends an electric current down a wire to heat it up hot enough to cut though the material. Once the wing tips were cut they have to be covered in tape to make them both waterproof and aerodynamic, and of course so it could match the rest of my plane.

While we were there Brian showed me his desk where he works. I'm starting to think his job isn't really work.

After She was all taped up and ready to go we headed off to the park for my first flight of The Bumble Bee.

As you can tell I'm super good at flying.

And I'd never almost hit Brian as he was trying to take a picture of me.

All in all it was an awesome first time flying my plane, and I look forward to flying The Bumble Bee again in the near future.

How to Create String Word Art

Idea Credit

I feel like almost all of my ideas nowadays come from pinterest, and this one is no exception. When I was trying to think of a cute craft I could make for both my mother and mother-in-law for Christmas, pinterest once again inspired me with string word art. 

There are lots of different variations of string word art on pinterest, but my favorite tutorial is found on the Honey & Fitz blog which you can see by clicking on the link below. In it she uses cork board instead of wood.

Honey and Fitz Original String Word Art Post

Materials Needed

Home Improvement Store

• Piece of wood the size you desire (for mine I got a long thin piece of wood and had them cut it in half so I got two signs out of one piece of wood)
• Roughly 200 round headed nails (make sure they look nice since you'll see the tops in the finished product)
• Sample size can of wood stain (if you're going to stain your sign)

Craft Store

• Embroidery thread (for a three foot sign I used 8 packs)
• Acrylic Paint (if you're going to paint your sign)

Let's Get Started

You're going to want to print out your word in a cute font that you like. I downloaded a font called "Angel's Tears" which you can download here. To print your word large enough you'll have to print it one letter at a time in word and then tape the word together. 

Next, you'll want to prepare your wood with either paint or stain. If you're using acrylic paint, put in on in thin layers allowing time to dry between the layers. If you're staining follow the instructions on the can.

Once your wood is dry and ready to go tape on your word centered on your sign. Then hammer in the nails around your word. Try to place them close together so the curves in your letters look nice in the end.

This is the fun part! Grab your embroidery thread and make a plan of how you want them to blend together. Tie a double not onto one of the nails and start weaving back and forth. It's important to string from one side of the letter to the other, and not along the edges of the letter otherwise it'll make your word look blocky.

Final Product

This is Momma Marler's (Brian's Mom's) word art. I used the darkest wood stain I could find and just white thread. If you're worried about blending colors nicely this is a good way to go, because it's a little easier and it still looks great!

This is Momma Martin's (my Mom's) word art. This one took longer because I had to think about blending the colors. To blend colors smoothly do layers of the two different colored threads over top one another.