Closing Postponed :(

Unfortunately, Jamie and I found out yesterday that due to some unpaid home owner's dues and fees from the last resident, we cannot close on our house today. Big bummer. The good thing is the outstanding payments were taken care of yesterday and we are now just waiting to reschedule our closing. The mortgage company needs five business days between all the paperwork getting finalized and the closing date, so we are hoping for Friday. It may be next Monday before we can close. Either way, we will be happy! A Friday closing means we can get started on house projects this weekend and Jamie's dad and brother Shane might be able to come up and help. But closing Monday would give us a weekend off - something we have not had for several weeks due to all our traveling. We could both use it! I will keep you updated as soon as we find out!

4th of July Fun

Jamie and I spent the weekend with his family travelling up to Illinois for the Mueller family reunion (Jamie's maternal grandmother's family). Friday we drove up to Waterloo with Jamie's parents, brother Shane, grandparents, Aunt Judy and Uncle John and cousins Alex and Cameron and Alex's girlfriend Katie. It took about 10 hours to get there, but it wasn't a bad trip at all. It's a pretty area of the country to drive through.



Friday night after checking into our hotel and getting some dinner, we got a tour of Grandma Kerr's hometown. She took us past the house her parents had lived in, her old high school and the first home they had lived in after moving to Waterloo. It's such a neat town. The houses are so pretty and historic and people seemed to take a lot of pride in their lawns. There was a lot of very green, thick grass and gorgeous gardens. Back at the hotel, we played around with a frisbee and a giant rubber ball before heading over to St. Louis for the fireworks. Watching the 4th of July fireworks over the Mississippi River sitting under the Arch was a really neat experience. The light from the fireworks reflected off the Arch and looked so pretty. The sound bounced off of the high rises behind us in the city and made it probably the loudest fireworks show I'd ever been to. The traffic in St. Louis afterwards was insane and by the time we got back to the hotel, it was after midnight and we all went straight to bed.



Saturday was the reunion held at Camp Wartburg. We were there pretty much all day. In the morning, we met up with the family at the camp for family pictures and a LOT of introductions. There were 7 siblings in the Mueller family, so with all the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it's quite a big group! The rest of the morning (and much of the rest of the day) was spent playing four square. After lunch, Jamie and I, Shane, Cameron and Glenn Tatum (a young relative...I could explain how exactly he's related, but is that really worth it?) went exploring through the camp. There was a high ropes course that we weren't able to use, but we went to have a look at it and found some low ropes elements in the woods nearby. So we played on those and then hiked through the woods. It's a really pretty piece of land. Later in the afternoon we went swimming at the pool (Grandma's brother had worked as a lifeguard at the same pool when he was in high school!). We had a family worship time (the Mueller family is very Lutheran) and then dinner followed by a talent revue. After the talent show and a little more four square, we went back to the hotel and headed to bed. We needed to get to sleep pretty early, because on Sunday we left at 6 a.m. Jamie's parents and Shane had to get all the way back to Orlando so that Shane could be in school Monday morning (he's taking a summer course to get ahead). I was really grateful we only had to get back to Georgia! It was probably right around 2 a.m. or so by the time they made it to Orlando. The travelling was a little bit exhausting, but the reunion and the time we spent with Jamie's family was definitely worth it!



Tomorrow is our closing! Look for pictures of the house soon!

Closing Date!

We have a closing date, folks! This feels like it has taken FOREVER, but we finally have a date set. July 8th we will be settling on the house. So get your back braces and come on over!

Anniversary Trip

For our anniversary, Jamie and I spent last weekend in Atlanta. We rode the Marta down after work on Friday and came back Sunday afternoon. The hotel we stayed at, The Georgian Terrace, is an historical building with a really neat background. It's across the street from the Fox Theater where "Gone With the Wind" premiered. The premier party was held at the Georgian Terrace ballroom and all of the actors stayed in the hotel. Our room was very nice and there was a rooftop pool with a great view of the skyline.

On Friday, we hung out around the hotel and ate dinner at a brick oven pizza place (I had lobster ravioli that was SOO good!). After dinner we walked to Publix to get some ice cream for that evening and donuts for breakfast. We had a full kitchen with a fridge, stove and microwave so that was nice. We had to buy utensils though because there weren't any in the kitchen. We swam (well Jamie swam, I thought the water was too cold) and hung out around the hotel for the rest of the evening.

Saturday we got up and decided to walk to Atlantic Station, which is about 2 1/2 miles from the hotel. The Marta bus runs between the hotel and Atlantic Station, so we figured we'd just hop on if we got tired (or too hot - it was over 90 degrees all weekend), but we made it all the way there. We ate lunch and shopped at Ikea and then stopped at Starbucks before heading back. Again, we figured we'd jump on a bus, but didn't end up doing it. That part of Atlanta is very new and visitor-friendly. There are a lot of neat stores and buildings to look at and no shady neighborhoods to go through, so it was a nice walk.

We were exhausted after our walk, so we took some time to rest and then got showered and dressed for dinner. Jamie had found a really nice little restaurant down the street from the hotel about 2 or 3 blocks. It was called "Silk" and was an Asian sushi/steakhouse. The food was delicious and we got a free dessert :)

Sunday we walked to the aquarium - a much shorter walk than Atlantic Station! We spent a couple hours checking out the fishes and sticking our hands in the "Pet a Sting-Ray" tanks. They have a few whale sharks there which are really neat and the sea lions and otters were fun to watch. We had a good time there.

It was a really fun weekend! I hope you enjoy all the pictures!

Hotel Shots:

Georgian Terrace

The Lobby at Night

On the Rooftop Terrace:

More rooftop, less view:

The Pool and Skyline

Beautiful View of the City

Another Skyline Shot

These two shots are from the tower above the lobby in the hotel. If you look at the first picture again, there's actually two sections to the hotel. The front part is the original building. The glass tower that sticks up from the middle (where the American flag is) attaches the original building to the newer section. These pictures are from the top floor taken out of the tower. Sorry for the blurriness in all the nighttime pictures. Great idea for Jamie and Tara's Christmas present this year: New Camera!!

Tower Shot 1

Tower Shot 2

The Rooftop Skyline again

The living room

The bedroom

View from the top floor looking down

Pictures from dinner at Silk:

All Prettied Up

Jamie trying my Singapore Lahksa Noodles. They were good, but spicy and the bowl was HUGE!

Our dessert - so yummy! Courtesy of the Silk staff. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate sauce and fresh raspberries and strawberries. I think Jamie looks like free desserts really tick him off.

Pictures from the Georgia Aquarium:

In front of the big tank

Jamie looking for a sting ray to pet

We Love the Aquarium!

In other News: We should have a closing date set for the house before we come up to New Jersey. We have the utilities turned on and the inspection done. Jamie is finishing up some final things with the mortgage dudes and his aunt is hoping to schedule our closing for early July. We'll be moving on or before July 31st, when TreePark Apartments will be kicking us out. Hopefully we'll have a few weeks to steam clean the carpets and put some fresh paint on the walls before we move in. You can all start planning your trips to GA for August! (Or July if you feel like painting, cleaning and moving furniture!)

Our New House!!

Jamie and I put an offer in on a house earlier this week and we just found out yesterday it was accepted! We signed some papers yesterday and we'll find out more in the coming week about closing, etc. Stay tuned for pictures and such once everything is finalized!!

The Coke Museum

A couple weeks ago, Jamie and I invited Arri and Joel to spend the day with us down in Atlanta. After church, we met up at our house to head downtown. We rode Marta in, which was a fun new experience for everyone but Jamie, who'd done it before. Actually, there's nothing too exciting about riding Marta, but it was nice that no one had to drive and we got to observe some of the really interesting characters who use public transportation. Here's a couple pictures of the amazingly long escalator we took up to street level at the end of our ride.

We went to the Coke Museum which was smaller than I thought it would be, but still fun. They had some really cool old Coke paraphernalia. The picture below is Jamie, Joel and Arri checking out some of the cool stuff. And a shot of the old vending machines, which I thought were pretty cool.

Here we are in our awesome classes before the 4D show. I'm still not really sure what it was supposed to be about. But we looked pretty good in the glasses.

This one is Jamie and Arri playing a game in the museum. I don't think either of them understood the rules. They just wanted to push the buttons.

The best part of the museum was definitely getting to taste all the crazy Coke products from around the world. There is one drink called the Beverly - a soda from Italy - that apparently no one likes. Jamie got a picture of Joel's and my Beverly faces.

After the museum we walked through Centennial Park. The wind was so strong that day we were getting blown over.

These are hard to see, but I tried to get a couple pictures of the damage that has yet to be repaired from the tornado. Several of the hotels still have broken windows patched up with tape and plywood.

Before heading home, we had dinner at Ted's Montanta Grill. It was a fun day! I hope Arri and Joel enjoyed it as much as we did!

Habitat Pictures