family, food and fun!

We're entering our third month up in Charlotte and...

Things are great here! I'm still job-searching, but there have been a few leads. If I'm not teaching, I will hopefully be subbing and possibly doing ABA therapy part time or full time. No matter what, I will have a job very very soon. Because I'm about to go crazy sitting around here without much of a purpose. Nate, on the other hand, has been very busy at work and has all sorts of great things going on! (Makes me look just a little lazy. =P)

We've worked some more on the apartment - getting things organized and arranged. I have to keep rearranging because I keep finding better ways to do things around here so it's a slow process. But it's coming along very nicely! We found a shelving unit for the porch on Craigslist today and now everything out there is in its place as opposed to the giant pile of random crap we had out there before. We have also been working very hard on our tomatoes, herbs and flowers! Well, Nate has more than me. He's been taking such good care of them and they are HUGE! We already have edible herbs (which we are super excited about using to make homemade pizza and spaghetti sauce!) and the tomatoes will hopefully be ready in the next week or so. I'm not sure how long it takes them to get red? And hopefully soon I will have some beautiful blooms to post pictures of as well!

I've been trying to cook dinner every night since I'm home all day and I've had a lot of fun honing my skills! And finding some pretty yummy recipes!

Yummy Chicken Piccata...our new favorite chicken recipe!

Spaghetti Night!

My FAVORITE.

Nate's favorite!

Wings with our special sauce!

We've also had a good bit of visitors recently. Christiana and Heidi (the sisters) came up for the weekend a couple weeks ago. My wonderful friend Meg came up for dinner and to hang out for the evening. And then my other wonderful friend Mary came up to spend the day and we went shopping and laid out by the pool. It was very nice to see some people from home!

Nate and Heidi

Nate and Christiana

I also cut Nate's hair!!!!! I was SO nervous. But I feel like it turned out pretty well.

And of course, we've made a couple trips back home too. One for Nate's mom's birthday and then one this weekend to see the family and because I had class. It was nice to see everyone and to be back in Columbia! It wasn't nice to spend all of my Saturday morning in class during Memorial Day weekend. But at least it's a distance education course and I can do the rest from the comfort of home.

The "cake" I made...chocolate eclaire...YUM!

Our beautiful niece Alexa.

Nate with his beautiful mom...and the flowers we gave her! Don't you want that pitcher?!?! I wish the store had more than one! :(

The hubby and me. :)  And my new haircut!

We've also spent a lot of time exploring Charlotte. We've found some more good restaurants and things to do. And we've found the most AMAZING park. And we're looking for a new church family, which we will hopefully find soon. It's definitely starting to feel more like home here, which is very nice. God has blessed us so much and we really are so grateful for everything that has happened in the past few months.

Our first year anniversary is next weekend! :) And we didn't think we were going to be able to go anywhere, but Nate has to go up to Nashville to work the Monday through Wednesday after our anniversary so we're going to get to head up there a few days early and spend the weekend in Tennessee together before he has to go into the office. So we will get to celebrate with a trip and then I'll get three days of laying out by the hotel pool and shopping! :) Can't wait! Hopefully we will have lots of pictures!

See y'all soon!

Steph and Nate :)