Our Thanksgiving (with pictures!)

We have been teasing all of our devoted readers with promises of pictures of our new home. So without further ado, we present...


Our new house!


This is the view right as you walk in the front door.


This is the living room from the kitchen entryway. We liked this house because of this big, open room with high ceilings. The picture doesnt really do it justice but this is our favorite room in the house!


Our living room is hard to take pictures of but this is one of the front door and temporary entertainment center! We have spent alot of time this week in furniture stores in Dallas trying to find its replacement.


And this is a shot of the back door that Mom, Brandon and I (Kaitlyn) put a stained glass window treatment on. I (Josh) wasn't so sure about it, but I (J) think it turned out pretty well.


Here is our kitchen - the room that has been the most unpacked and set up right now! We loved the cabinets and the builder gave us a full appliance package with the house. New refrigerator, microwave, stove, dishwaser and washer and dryer! Pretty awesome.



(J): This isn't even the full tour. You'll have to come and see it yourself for that (or just stay tuned here for more pics). We are so excited to be here and it is so close to our school. It only takes us 10 mins at the most to get there in the mornings. Getting into this house was quite a process (see "Homeowners" post below). We are so thankful to have it. Mostly, we are so thankful to everyone who helped us out so much! Both of our families, Carlton, Nikki, Brandon, Ted, Kim, Katy and Billy were all a big part of the moving process. From packing millions of boxes to loading and unloading furniture off the truck. We could not have done it without them. Its alot of fun to have such great families.

(K): We didn't even plan it this way but I like how we're doing a very Thanksgiving theme post right now! (Editor's Note: When Josh read that sentence he was inspired to change the title of our post. It really wasn't planned!) In that same spirit, we are so thankful for all of our friends! We have been so blessed since we moved to Nashville to meet so many people that have become parts of our lives! From our high school and college friends that we have known for years to our "teacher friends" we see everyday at school to our friends at Ethos and house church - you guys have been with us through the whole process, encouraging us, being bummed with us and getting so excited for us when everything finally worked out. We appreciate each and every one of you so much and are so thankful for your friendship! You have been an incredible blessing in our lives and I don't know what we would do without you!
**Thanks especially to Daniel and Jessica, Dustin and Laura(you were there in spirit!), Dana, James, and Jon and Heather for being our manual labor on Saturday!

(J&K): Hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving!

Longest Week of my Life

You're about to get the full and complete story of Cool Schools, the "camp out" lock in, and everything else that happened during the week of October 26-30th!

Let me start with a couple of back stories so that we're all on the same page! The first one goes all the way back to last year. Steven Hayes, the art teacher and FCA sponsor at school, asked Josh and I to be in a video promoting See You at the Pole. Unfortuantely for Josh, he asked me first and I don't know how to say no! What you need to know about this video is that Josh and I were in homemade Wonder Twin costumes and acting ridiculous! Other teachers were Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman and Aquaman. I have no idea why we were some of the most obscure superheroes from the 70's but that's who they asked us to be and once again, I can't say no! I have heard from others that this is one of the first videos that pops up on youtube when you put Goodpasture in the search.
Next, I need to tell those of you who don't watch Nashville Local News what Cool Schools is. Every Friday morning, Channel 4 in Nashville broadcasts live from a high school in the area. They send Aaron Soloman, one of their broadcasters, to the school from 4:30-7:30 and every 20 mins or so they cut to him live to see what's going on at the school. It's the schools responsibility to have a pep rally, activities and performances going during that time so that you don't look like the most boring school ever! That's right, this means that teachers and students have to get to school at 4;30 in the morning in order to be a part of Cool Schools! We have known that this was coming for most of the school year, what I didn't realize was how crazy that week was going to actually be!
The last thing you need to know is that I had been talking to our principal, Mr. Judd, about getting something from Fools (my upcoming production) on the agenda for Friday so that we could get some free publicity for our show that would be the next weekend. He was trying to work something out but left it at a no promises type answer. When we got the schedule for that Friday pep rally the week before, Fools wasn't on it. I was bummed but I had tried and I wasn't going to push it!

Monday, October 26: I don't really remember much about Monday except that it was Retro Twin day. (All week was our Spirit Week which means every day is a different dress-up day). Retro Twin day means an outfit from any decade as long as someone matches you. So Josh and I decided to wear our Death Cab for Cutie t-shirts and I wore my skinny jeans for the first time. (The t-shirts were our twins part and the fat that Death Cab for Cutie is so last year's band was the retro part!) I think the skinny jeans were a success so it was a big day!

Tuesday, October 27: Tuesday was Hero day! You could dress up like your favorite hero - I didn't have time to put anything creative together because of rehearsals every night so I pulled out my Little Mermaid sweatshirt (lavender Disney sweatshirt in a little girls size with Ariel and Flounder swimming on front) and decided that she would be my hero for the day. We had planned an all-school singing devotional because we would knew Channel 4 would be there to do a little pre-filming so they could start advertising for Friday. So everyone took their hats and masks off before coming into the auditorium and they filmed all the heroes and superheroes singing their hearts out! Precious! So then at the end of Devo Mr. Judd makes an announcement for the cast of Fools to stay behind after devo. At this point I'm a little confused and hoping we're not in trouble because I don't know anything about why he would need to see us. So I come down front after devo and ask what he needed us for. "They want to film a scene from your show and interview you." Seriously? Remember, I am wearing a Little Mermaid sweatshirt, and as far as I know we got bumped off the schedule so my kids are not expecting this at all! But I'm not complaining about the free publicity so I circle my kids up and tell them to get set for Act 2 Scene 1, mostly because that was the scene we had just practiced! While we're working Mr. Judd calls me down to meet Aaron Soloman, local TV personality. He introduces me and Aaron shakes my hand and says "Hey, you're one of the wonder twins!" SERIOUSLY?? Apparently, we had given them some of our past videos to go through and edit and add to the footage and so Aaron had seen our See You At the Pole video. Awesome. He made some crack about how I was nominated for an Oscar for it and I made a witty response about how I'd been waiting for this day my whole life and everyone was laughing so my first conversation with someone semi-famous in Nashville went ok I guess! So then I have to go make sure my cast is doing ok. They are freaking out but they're troopers to they handle it and do really well! After a few minutes of the scene he groups us up on the set and asks some questions and the whole time I'm standing there in my Little Mermaid sweatshirt. Again, awesome. Fortunately, the video they ended up editing and putting together is now online and it turned out pretty cute (look for me, lavender sweatshirt on the end!) I'll include the link to that video at the end of this post!

Wednesday, October 28th: Full Disclosure: I started this post back in October but never finished it! It is now November 23rd and I don't really remember anything specific that happened on Wednesday but I'm sure it was awesome!

Thursday, October 29th: So our awesome principal (seriously, he really is awesome!) has been scheming this whole week trying to come up with a plan for the night before this big Cool Schools event. Since we are trying to encourage all the kids to be there at 4:30 in the morning it seems like we should be able to work out a fun plan to keep all the kids at school all night. Kinda like a lock-in! To most people (Josh included) the word lock-in is terrifying. I LOVE it! I love everything about lock-ins! I pulled so many all-nighters in college I can't even remember them all and that was for lame school stuff! When I get to have lock-ins for fun stuff it's even better! But then they start adding the words camp out. That's when I freak out. I do not camp. At all. Seriously. Not even a little bit. No tents. No sleeping outside. None of that sounds awesome to me. So that's where I start to get a little worried. To make a really long post a little bit shorter, I'll just say that they decided to let the kids bring tents starting at 8:00pm on Thursday night but also left both gyms open (for a boys gym and a girls gym) for people who were not so keen about sleeping outside so I was all for it! I even moved up my rehearsal that night (because yes, in the midst of all of this we've still been having rehearsals every night!) so my cast could be a part of all of it. And it was AWESOME!! I didn't sleep even one bit but it was so fun! We had tents and campfires and smores and games and we showed a movie in the auditorium and it was just so fun to be able to hang out with the kids (and our fellow teachers) in a setting that was so different from the classroom! I played Nertz (a card game) with a group for ahwile and we had playground relays and then towards 2 and 3am we just sat around and laughed at nothing till we cried (or at least I cried - I don't think anybody else did!) The kids did awesome and there were like 8 of us teachers who stayed up the whole night!

Friday, October 30th: At around 3:30 or 4 we started walking around giving wake-up calls for all those who didn't make it through the night and then at 4:30am Channel 4 showed up and we were ready to go! We had a pep rally and a rock paper scissors tournament and the little kids did a dance to the Monster Mash. There was an awesome Science experiment and a middle school dodgeball tournament and just all kinds of us acting crazy for live TV! If you are just really interested (cough*Grandma*cough) you can go to www.wsmv.com and search on the Cool Schools page for Goodpasture and they have some pretty good footage still up of all the Friday morning stuff. I don't think I'm in any of it but it's still pretty awesome. We make it through till 7:30 when Channel 4 wraps it up and starts to leave and then they send all the kids to the cafeteria for breakfast and then after breakfast we are supposed to have class until 11:00. Which means we go through a normal school day and just spend about 30 min in each class instead of an hour and 30 minutes. That part started getting a little rough but we made it through! By the time that last bell rings though I am kind of dying but the day is not over yet because Josh and I have to be at the Title company at noon to close on our house! I still think it's really funny that these two things (cool schools and signing on our first house) will be forever tied together in my mind. We got there a little early and they had these huge couches for us to wait on and I had to go sit at the play table for the kids and start coloring because I was afraid I would be out in 2 seconds if I just sat there on the couch! But we got the papers signed and officially became homeowners and thankfully we have an awesome realtor who loves us helped us out alot and was not frustrated with us for operating on no sleep at all for the past 24+ hours! So overall an awesome, memorable, fabulous week - but definitely the longest week of my life! (in a good way!)


PS Here's the link to the video with my cast in it. It starts out with a commercial for Tennessee Tech but it doesn't last very long and then it gets into the Goodpasture stuff. They showed it during the week as a preview to what would be coming up on Friday. My cast shows up at around 2 min 30 seconds in.

http://www.wsmv.com/video/21476621


-Kaitlyn

Homeowners

Kaitlyn: So this is pretty monumental I think . . . On Friday, October 30th, Josh and I closed on our first house!

Josh: I dont think it has fully sunk in... and it probably wont until we move in a couple of weeks. But signing all of those papers and getting those keys was unreal.

K: I was prepared to sign until my hand hurt because everybody had been warning me it would be that bad. But it wasn't really that bad! I mean, we signed a lot of papers but my hand was fine and I didn't feel like I signed away my first born child in there or anything like that. And you're right, I don't think it's fully sunk in yet.

J: Many of you have been following our progress on this purchase for awhile and know the difficulty we have had. But for those who haven't been getting frustrated phone calls every few evenings, it has been a struggle. We had offers on three houses before this one and the house was taken from under us on all three occasions. We found this house and it seemed perfect and exactly what we wanted but we refused to get our hopes up until we actually signed those papers. Friday we actually got the keys and they told us it was ours. We are so relieved/excited/exhausted.

K: I'm not gonna lie, I think the process has been more stressful for Josh than it has for me! That's not saying that I didn't make some frustrated phone calls somewhere in there too but Josh had to pretty much drag me into this whole process with the help of 2 major "interventions". The first one was at my parent's house and the 2nd one was at our teacher's workroom at school. I had been saying for awhile that I did not want to think about buying a house. In my head buying a house equaled "the end of all fun". I don't know why or how that idea got into my head, but it did! Sometimes, believe it or not, I can be a little dramatic and irrational, this was one of those times. It just seemed so permanent and so life-changing, not to mention budget-changing (and I love shopping!) It was like getting cold-feet before a wedding I guess except it was all about the house.

J: But then we started looking at houses and seeing all the different possibilities and realizing how much more space we could have you started getting pretty excited about it. Especially after we would come back to our soul-crushingly small apartment. I'm just so glad we got this done and that we're going to get $8,000 for it. Unreal.

K: That's the short version! It took a little bit more than that but I guess that's what we'll go with. If you want to know more, just let me know - I'll do a whole post about my journey to being ok with buying a house. Ooh, that sounds good! I bet it could be a TLC show! I bet our whole life could be a TLC show! They need a replacement show right?

J: Nope. So we're really happy about our purchase and so excited to get into it. We are going to wait two weeks before we move because of Kaitlyn's performance that is coming up this week. (Fools, Nov. 5 and 7 @7pm. Be there!) So it looks like Saturday, Nov. 14 is move-in day. We'll keep you updated with pictures and stories as I am sure you are all waiting with bated breath.

Finally, we actually closed on Friday with literally no sleep the night before. Our school had a lock-in and naturally we chaperoned. This made the whole thing even more surreal. K will have an entire post about the reasons surrounding the lock-in coming soon. Stay tuned.

K: It sounded like you just signed off but we haven't told them about the house yet! Our new address is 1025 New Providence Pass Madison, TN 37115! It's a 3 bedroom 2 bath house with hardwood floors in the living room and carpet in the bedrooms and tile in the kitchen! It came with all the appliances (stove, oven, microwave, dishwasher, fridge, washer and dryer!) and they are all brand new and black and nice! The master bedroom has trey ceilings and TWO walk in closets! We have a good backyard with no fence yet but that will definitely be the first thing on our agenda this summer! I promise we will have pictures up soon! It's pretty much the best house ever and we can't wait to move in! But first come see Fools, seriously! It's going to be funny! And I will write another post (maybe tonight!) about why we hadn't slept in like 27 hours when we signed the papers! Hint: it involves me being on TV!!!! :) Get pumped!