Empty apartment

A couple of weeks ago I finally was able to get some good and bright pictures of the final rooms in the new place. I've been kinda busy so it took a while for this post to get published. These pictures are the master and 2nd bedroom which will be used as Ryan's office.

We have 4 more days to move the rest of our things, steam the carpets and freshen up the paint which in reality with work is like 2 full days. Our new place is coming along, everything but the clothes have a place. I think it's time to buy a dresser though :/

Hallway into the living room/kitchen

Office closet

Got a huge desk from his parents

Our room (standing in far corner)

Panorama of master

If heaven wasn't so far away

My Grandma is one of the strongest women I know, so I thought I would dedicate this post to her. She was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer 3 years ago. After many rounds of chemo and the cancer spreading she had surgery. The cancer went away and we all thought this was a great new beginning for her. Fast forward a couple of years and her cancer had came back, not just in one place but all over again. The doctors had her doing chemo again but after several weeks of treatment and nothing going away the doctors decided to try the last type of chemo there was for this type of cancer, which in the end did not work either. A couple weeks ago her liver was 75% covered in cancer and spreading quickly.

Once the cancer had spread the pain stared (for the first time), her breathing got worse, her appetite was at 0. She was given high doses of pain meds and then last week started morphine with hospice coming to check on her. It was Friday night that she was admitted to hospice and from there she was pretty much drugged out on morphine just to keep her comfortable. Once she was admitted we knew she didn't have much time left. She was holding out until my family came back from vacation.

I had many Sunday's off so Ryan and I drove the 4 hour round trip often to see her and do things around the house. For 3 years you would never have known she was sick. She took chemo like a champ, didn't complain, didn't need help and still kept very independent.

Through all of this she has had great support from our family but what I am most surprised by is how many people really do care about my Grandma. People from her church, sorority (yes, after all of these years she still goes to meetings with her fellow sisters), also, people whom she used to teach with have all been very supportive of her journey. I've been at her house and listed to the messages of kind words that people leave for her. She really does have remarkable friends.

One thing that amazes me everyday about her is her outlook on life. Throughout all of this she has been very strong, positive, uplifting and grateful of everything. I grew up with my grandma watching me every weekend until I was old enough to stay home by myself and my sister and cousin have done the same thing. She has been a great support for us after we lost our grandfather 5 years ago, she is our last grandparent on our mothers side which is very special.

*Funny story about this most, I had written most of it in 2012 and just didn't feel right posting about her sickness online. Every now and again I'd go in and edit it but I just couldn't figure out when to post it. I doubt she even knew I had a blog, so to ask her if I could write about her journey she probably wouldn't have known what I was talking about. lol. So today, the day after she passed peacefully in her sleep and 2.5 years later after drafting this post I finally feel good about this.

My Grandma will be missed very much and I do believe that she knows how much her 3 grandchildren really do love her. I think we are all just relieved that she is no longer in pain. Her last words to me on Sunday were "I love you."

My 19th birthday.

Christmas 2009.

Allison's high school graduation, summer 2010.

My college graduation, December 2010.

Our wedding, September 2011, by that huge smile on her face you would never guess she had cancer

Grandma Hager's 103rd birthday, May 2012.

My grandparents wedding day

The title of my post came from this song

Irish cream

Since it's St. Patrick's Day and Dunkin Donuts has Irish cream coffee and donuts I thought I'd share mine with you. The doughnut has green icing is covered with crushed up oreo and is filled with icing. No taste of St. Patrick's Day here, just the looks of it.

The coffee does taste like Irish Cream. If you're familiar with Baileys Irish cream, it's that without the alcohol! It's the perfect morning pick me up.

St. Patty's doughnut 

Filled with cream

Irish cream coffee

Mardi Gras party

Over the weekend we went to Daytona to celebrate Ryan's dads birthday. The theme: black light Mardi Gras, I helped with that one :) It was great, there were black lights everywhere. Everything was glowing and we all had masks, beads and glow sticks!

Once the regular lights turned off it was hard to get good pictures you can just see our glow sticks. We all defiantly had fun. Happy birthday FIL!!!!

I went with the Mardi Gras theme

Ryan went with the glow theme

Masks and glasses

Black lightsssss

We glow

Happy birthday 

Even Gizmo joined in on the glow

21 days

Things are slowly getting packed and moved over to the new address. Between the both of us working full time and not having a lot of the same days off only about 50% of our apartment has been moved. The current place is a mess; there are boxes everywhere, empty book shelves and piles of stuff everywhere waiting to be moved.

Tomorrow in the short time we have we're going to rent a Uhaul and move most of the big furniture over. Once that is done everything else will take no time. I've been unpacking and decorating as much as I can at the new place instead of doing it all at once so it already looks homey.

Hallway is a mess

Boxes are everywhere

This is the dining room

Empty bookshelves 

New address

We got the keys to our new place this week!!!! It's only 6.2 miles away from our current apartment but in the long run it's going to save us a lot of time and money because it's a mile and a half away from I4 instead of 6 miles away.

Tuesday Ryan got the keys and took a car full of stuff over while I was at work. That night I got a flat tire so I never made it over. So last night I finally saw it. Even though it's a 2/1 it feels so tiny compared to where we are now. 865 vs 979 square feet. I've been throwing junk away for the past month, but I defiantly need to rethink some more things and get rid of stuff. The new place does have a lot more storage with 2 closets that are fully shelved and a walk in closet in the master.

These pictures are from my phone where the lighting is terrible....our electric bill will be lower :) I didn't get any pictures of the 2 bedrooms because there are no lights and this was at about 8pm. So that will be another post. We don't have to be out of our current place until March 31st which is nice because we can take our time moving.

Living room with screened in porch

Long hallway. Closet and bathroom on left. Master straight ahead and 2nd bedroom (office) on right

Dining room off of kitchen

Tiny kitchen

Panorama of living/kitchen/dining

Huge closet in hallway. This is where the junk will go, I'm glad there's a door to hide it

Bathroom

Master walk in closet