We are making progress!

It seems like our progress goes in little spurts. We'll do a lot one day and wear ourselves out so we don't want to anything the next day. Well, since the house didn't see much progress yesterday as we were out running errands {getting fingerprinted at the VA Medical Center, stopping by Ryan's soon-to-be office, picking up some things are Target, etc} today I figured I better get moving so things are somewhat organized come Monday morning when I start orientation. Today I tackled our closet. Normally I'd say this doesn't take a long time, but our closet was a disaster. I've just been kind of ignoring it. We were throwing stuff in there when we didn't know what to do with it. Things were starting to pile up. Our clothes were all mixed together. Ugh, it was a mess! I should have taken a before picture but I forgot.

I started by taking everything out of the closet that was on the floor so I could actually enter the room. Then I started with Ryan's side of the closet. Sorted all of his clothes by item type {dress shirts, polo shirts, t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, etc}. Then I organized them by color. Just doing these two things really made the closet look so much better and it is SO much easier to find things. Once I was done with Ryan's side, I moved over to my side and did the same thing. Once that was done, I tackled all of our sweatshirts, and we have a LOT of sweatshirts. I was able to go through our stuff as I was organizing and pulled things out to donate to Goodwill. We are going to have a pretty big load to donate but for right now all of our donation items are stacking up in the corner of the bedroom. Anyways, here is what our closet looks like right now. Ryan promised me that he'll keep it organized ;) Yes, he did. And now I put it here in the internet as proof. I'm holding him to it :-)

Ryan's side

Our sweatshirt collection. {I told you we had a lot! We are true Minnesotans at heart :)}

Part of my side of the closet.

Looking good huh?! I think so. We'll see how long this organization lasts. But I love the feeling when you finish a big project like this!

In other news, the cats are loving the new house. They are actually getting along really well. Back in Minnesota, one would approach the other and start to clean them and it was only a matter of time before fur was sent flying. It always resulted in a wrestling match between the two of them. That's not really happening here in Omaha yet. We'll see how long the sibling love lasts between them.

Coop takes such good care of Zoey :-)

I'm not sure if I wrote about this previously, but Cooper really took a liking to air-conditioned air on the trip down here. His spot in the cat cage was right in front of the vent and when the air was going, he would put his face right in the flow of air, put his chin up a little bit, smile and sniff the air. He literally smiles, really big, it's like he is in heaven. {Just because I was bored in the car on the way down, I'd shut the air off and see his chin lower and his smile go away. Then I'd turn it back on and his chin would go up and the smile would reappear. It was really cute.} Now that we are in our new house, we often find him sitting over the air vents, when the air-conditioner is running, smiling and sniffing away. I might venture as far as to say he is an air-conditioned air addict.

Here's Coop, in all his air-condition-loving glory!

Besides this, Ryan and I have many projects in progress at our house right now. We are working on getting the "theater" room up and running. We watched a movie down there the other night, it was nice if I do say so myself. Since we love going to movies and seeing them on the big screen, we'll be able to watch them at home now and save some money :) We are also in the process {a very long and tedious process}of refinishing two dressers, head board and night stand. Ryan got one of the dressers and the headboard I think when he went to college in Mankato and then the night stand and other dresser were given to him when he moved to Baton Rouge. Anyways, I just found out tonight that this bedroom set is older than I am! Ryan's parents purchased it sometime around 1975. This furniture has seen many many miles and it was starting to show with lots of dings and scratches. Ryan and I have looked at furniture pretty casually now and again and it is so darn expensive - especially if you want high quality solid wood furniture like this set is. Since new furniture will not be in our budget for quite some time, we are just going to refinish them. We've started and I'm not sure were we are in the process. I'll keep you updated when we finish. But that's about all for now. Happy Weekend!!

~Ashley