The Hall's Walls

Two posts in one week. We're on a roll. A year in our new home and we are finally finished with our last paint project! We ripped the wallpaper off the walls in the hallway the day we moved in. Then we realized it was not drywall under the wallpaper, but plaster, and much of the plaster was ripped off with the wallpaper. We spackled and sanded about 9 months later, and that brings us to yesterday when we painted.

Our hallway when we moved in:

Our hallway today:

Then we celebrated by dressing up like cows and heading to Chick-fil-a for free value meals!

The Month of June - Gone So Soon

It has been an exciting month! I realized this morning that in the past two weeks, we have only spent six nights at home in our own bed. I cannot believe that July is already here and I will be heading back to school in a month. At the beginning of summer I always have high hopes and big dreams of everything I am going to accomplish. I just opened up my "Goals for Summer 2011" document to realize that I have only accomplished one of the twenty goals I set. I deleted some to help me feel like less of a failure. But looking back, it was a full, adventurous month! Here is a brief overview of our June.

June 4: Ben (Josh's brother) & Kenzie's Wedding - We added another Miller to the family! Josh was the best man and I read scripture for the ceremony. In a way, it seems like Kenzie has always been part of the family, but we are excited to have her as a sister and are glad to be back in the area to spend more time with them.

June 9: Camping at Salt Fork - Katie and Courtney are two of my childhood friends from church. During college, we took a road trip to Florida every summer. Now that we are married and have jobs, we have kept up the summer trip tradition by going camping in Ohio with our hubbies. We decided to upgrade a little this year and rented a very small cabin. Kurt (Katie's husband) got carried away with the idea of camping in luxury and brought a window air conditioner.
Believe it or not, this is the most normal picture we took while camping.

June 19: Project Shine Week - Project Shine is a local mission trip to Akron based out of our church. Several churches bring youth to work on houses around Kenmore and to have a week focused on spiritual growth. It was a really exciting week, full of scraping, painting, laughing, and worshiping. The highlight of the week was that one of our youth asked Jesus into her life. Josh and I spent a lot of time talking with her throughout the week and helping her understand what it means to follow Christ.

June 29: Ava Grace Thompson is Born - Cory (my brother) and Michelle had their second child! Josh and I love being an aunt and uncle!

June 30: Camping in Canada - To wrap up the month, we headed up north to camp with some Huntington friends. Nothing like celebrating the Fourth of July in another country, eh?