new horizons

I don't even know what that means, but I felt like using it as the title for this post :)

Things are good here in the Castrodale household - busy, but good. That's how we roll, you know. Andrew starts school on Monday (eeks!) so we've been doing our best to make the most of this week. I see some downtown adventures in our future for this weekend and I'm molto eccitato - that's "very excited" for those of you that no parlano Italiano.

So, typical me, I'm already making a list of things to keep me busy while the boy commits to being at school FOR THIRTEEN HOURS A DAY. Good grief, Navy, how about you just take my husband for the next five years and be done with it? I do have a little project in the works that I'm excited to tell you all about once it's been finished. Perhaps I'll do a big reveal this weekend? Maybe.

Oh AND I'm taking a jewelry-making class next week at this adorable little shop in town called Craft Happy. I'm super excited about that. As we take on this new challenge of saving as much as possible and being as thrifty as possible (more on that later) I've decided that one good way to save money is to MAKE gifts instead of buying them. So I need a few more skills in my arsenal so I can just crank out something when a birthday rolls around. People love that stuff.

That's all for now, folks. Until next time...

memory lane

Oh man. This week feels forever long and super quick, all at once. We got home from Concord last weekend (which included an IKEA trip...more on that later) and I didn't unpack because I knew we'd be hitting the road again on Wednesday. I had to be in Durham for work, so I talked my roadtrip buddies into coming along for the ride. 10pm on Friday and we were back in SC, confused about what day of the week it was.

We stayed with my parents, which is always a treat, so I made the trek out to the office twice - traveling past our old haunt. When I passed the exit for our very first apartment, I was struck with how nostalgic it felt. We moved out not even a year ago (wow) but it feels like a lifetime ago. In a lot of ways, it was a completely different world. Side note: I just realized that we've lived three different places in the last year. Holy smokes, I need a little consistency in my life.

The time we spent in that apartment was just.so.simple. We were completely in love and COMPLETELY happy. Really, we were so content with our life. And we didn't have much. We were on one income for a majority of the time, for crying out loud, and we never felt troubled. God was/is so good. We had the perfect space for two newlyweds, a ton of hand-me-downs that made our house a home and a place that was all us. A little bit of Andrew, a little bit of Page. Perfect.

Then came Rudy - the little disruptive homewrecker that he was - and whisperings of other big changes, and we set our life on a course that would change everything. We moved out so we could get a yard for the dog in a neighborhood where Andrew felt comfortable leaving me behind. And you know all about the leaving me behind part.

So there I was, driving down I-40, past the exit that headed back in our former direction and I was amazed at how much has changed. When we were in Concord, Andrew was looking at one of our engagement pictures framed in his room and his mom commented that the people in that picture had no idea of the life ahead of them. Understatement of the century.

But we're here and the funny thing is that we're still completely in love and COMPLETELY happy. It's not simple by any stretch of imagination, but it's perfect. Perfect for us.

you can take the boy out of OCS...

You know those slightly obnoxious (sorry if that's offensive) stick people families that moms put on their minivans?

We got behind a girl in an SUV yesterday, with the ubiquitous palmetto and moon decal, a stick girl with shopping bags, and a stick girl doing this pose:

This girl looks happy, doesn't she? The stick girl looked happy, too, with her adorable little side ponytail. Here's the conversation that took place:

Page: What do you think she's trying to tell people about herself?

Andrew: Maybe that she's a fun SC girl who likes to go shopping?

Page: Maybe. What's that other one? Is she stretching? Oh, I think that's a yoga pose. I bet she likes yoga.

Andrew: No, I think her drill instructor just said, "Put your hands over your head right now! Stand on one foot right now!"

Does anyone else think this is hilarious? I did. I laughed. A LOT.

Poor guy. That's part of his very being now, I guess. You really can't take OCS out of the boy...