long time comin...

for all of you have been awaiting my re-entry into the blog world...the wait is over! now that i feel like we are finally getting settled into life in knoxville (after 6 months), i'm itchin' to update more often. to get us started, here are a couple pictures from our anniversary trip to the cabin i grew up going to with my family and the newest additions to the grigsby fam.

we welcomed Bean a couple weeks after moving to knoxville. here she is in her favorite place, the bathroom trash can ha!

this is fern, our newest addition. she loves to sit on our shoulder especially while we wash dishes or watch tv. this is her sleeping on adam on thanksgiving.

"let the wild rumpus start!"

F3 in da hood

for some strange reason, i always thought that tornadoes were a myth. of course i saw damage they had done in places far away from me, but there was something just too fantastic about them to be real. anytime i saw that we had a tornado watch in knoxville, that translated to me that we were just gonna get a a lot of rain. i guess it made it a little more real to be sitting in our bathroom with all of our cash, the wedding album, and my cell phone in my back pack getting ready for the storm of my life.



i had been in class when the tornado sirens went off. we didn't know if it was real because no one had heard that the weather was going to get real bad, but we went into the hall anyway. it was my last class of the day and i didn't want to be stuck inside peck hall which just so happens to NOT have to ground floor. so, i ran out to my truck (thank God i didn't ride my bike that morning like i was going to) and sped home. i talked to my mom for a while and then called becca to chat. i was keeping a good eye out on the weather the storm the whole time and by the time becca and i hung up i thought it was all over. then it started storming like i have never seen...it looked like midnight outside and it was raining so hard i couldn't imagine how the sky could hold it all. that's when i realized, "oh crap, these things are real!" i was so sad to be alone, wondering if adam was ok. he had been working at the hospital since early that morning. how could i be apart from the only thing that keeps me sane so often at a time like that!?



it didn't last long, but for some people it will. we had a packed hospital when i went in that night, and 3 had died (two of them being a 3 month old and her mom). i found out later that our area of north murfreesboro had been hit the worst, and the actual tornado had come within a mile of our home. i find it so interesting that all of this happened on good friday. how fitting that we would have experienced our own 3 hours of darkness on the day we remember the crucifixion of our Savior and King? it makes surviving a tornado seem like nothing compared to being rescued from death as Christ did for us.



the pictures are some i found online that some people WAY braver than me took of the storm.

moment of silence

i just finished an unexpectedly awful midterm. it was a take home exam, passed out on monday, expected back on wednesday. it included 4 questions and the expectation that each be answered by a complete essay, and that the entire exam should come out to a 10-13 page paper. which would be fine...except we were given one full day to work during midterm week. we'll see what happens!

while i am here, adam is in the studio until 4a.m. this is kind of how our life has been this semester. because we are in our last semester and we HAVE to take certain classes that are only offered at one time, our schedules are completely opposite. so when the mr is at school i'm at home or work and vice versa. we are rarely in the same place at the same time. because of this i look forward to and even crave our moments of silence. its that moment when after days of only saying hello in passing we get to sit down together and just be. those moments are so refreshing. its something that we talked about wanting so much before we were married. living 3 hours apart didn't provide many moments to be. instead they were filled with intense conversation and wanting to just make out the whole time. having two days two make up for not seeing each other for three weeks was really hard! i can't even count the times we dreamed of being able to just live our lives together. so, here in our crazy and beautiful lives...as frustrating and exhausting it must be sometimes...we are trying to be thankful for those moments where we don't have to say of do anything.

J.O.B

i have tried really hard to not let the recession get to me. its not helpful that every time i get in my car, turn on the tv, or get on the internet i hear news of more job layoffs. yesterday on NPR they reported that within the past two months there have been well over a million layoffs. that's a lot. i feel so much sympathy for those people who have worked their butts off to support their families and now are left with no income. but as selfish as this sounds, i am even more terrified for adam and i. think about it...we are graduating this may and stepping into an economy that hasn't been so bad in i don't know how long. are we going to be able to find a job?

today we are both going to the internship fair at mtsu to check out some possibilities. we stayed up late last night working on resumes, but i just keep thinking "what if its all hopeless?" what if we had to keep working at the hospital for the next 10 years. i really don't think i can do that (especially since i'm allergic to all the soap, gloves, and foam there that we have to use 100 times a day. my hands have been broken out and oozing since september). to make the matter even more grim, i got on our schools career website to check out job postings. I looked at about every field in every state and felt like there was nothing. for the first time since declaring my major i wondered if i shouldn't have just stuck to finance...no one wants a sociology major.

i did get to talk to steph bales a bit last night (on gchat no less...what a life saver!). i was telling her how i wish God would just say "this is what i want you to do and where i want you to do it." she was so good to point out his timing and that he has the best plans for adam and i...better than we could do ourselves. i know in my head that his timing is perfect, but i also know i am soooo impatient. i just keep praying for patience, trust, and a really really clear path.

the good news is that my outfit for the internship fair is pretty bangin haha! chels, you would be proud

how is it that we have not even been in school for three weeks and i already feel like i'm drowning in it? i guess i assumed that the last semester of college would have the same feel as high school...but then again, when has college ever felt like high school. it has usually been a welcomed difference, but dang...so much work already? i think that it may seem so much worse because of the hours i have to work. because of my class schedule, i can't work morning shifts at the hospital which are 8 hour shifts. so now, in order to get even close to the same amount of hours, i gotta work about six nights a week for 4 hours each. i know i'm complaining, but i guess if you only got to "see" your husband when you were sleeping, you'd be complaining too haha!

for now i'll just dream of spring break...

these are the days of our lives

it seems like the people that adam and i work with just can't wrap their minds around the fact that we are married. it is hilarious that every time either of us goes into work someone has something to say about our relationship status. one of the most common questions we get asked is: "So what do married people do for fun?" they just assume that we are a whole different species just because we are married, so to keep them wondering i just laugh and don't really answer the question. but here...on this very blog...i will reveal the secret lives of the married.

AIR MATTRESS SLUMBER PARTIES!!!!

since neither of the guests we've had stay with us have opted for the awesome double-layer queen size air mattress, we decided to use it ourselves! so in honor of an extended weekend and mlk jr., we set up in our living room floor (where you may notice the pile of crap is NOT anymore whooo hoo!!). we watched movies, slept late, watched it snow, and got to see Obama give his inaugural speech today. it was pretty awesome.

here's some pictures to prove it:

adam testing out his handy work

a little more up close... a little sexy pose

natalie, logan, and beth...tell me you don't want to sleep here now!

simplicity

we are cleaning house. our apartment, as much as i love it just because its our home, has started to drive me nuts on multiple occasions. it is something i have a had a really hard time explaining to adam, but it has something to do with disorganization and how little i feel it represents us. i know that having a pretty space might not be important to everyone. for me it is! i guess it all started because i have a mom that let me redecorate my room every couple years growing up. i just hate that everything is kinda mish-mashed in no particular sequence. not only this...but we have crap EVERYWHERE! in one corner sits a mandolin, a bike rack, and an umbrella in a trash can. in another corner is our sky high collection of recyclables that we can't get rid of because murfreesboro is the most anti-green city ever. and finally sits the chair that only serves the purpose of forcing me to get in weird positions to squeeze by our dining room table to get in the kitchen. it holds everything we plan on returning, throwing away, or just can't find a place for. the latter category is the most popular. there is actually a box of stuff brought back from knoxville in september that i still don't know what to do with. it just doesn't make sense...we live in a one bedroom apartment and some how every time we come back from knoxville, we unload twice as much as we left with. all of this clutter resulted in a frustrated conversation where adam gave us a way out. he took it upon himself to go through the whole house while i was at work and make a pile of stuff to get rid of right in the living room floor. then, he let me do the same. as simple as it sounds, i just hadn't thought about it. "what?! git rid of perfectly good stuff just because we aren't using it?" i couldn't wrap my mind around it (possibly due to a gene passed down from my mom). but how freeing to do it! i set up my first ebay seller's site and everything else is going to goodwill...unless any of you want it of course.

so that's my goal...we are going to simplify our space/life. we will only surround ourselves with things we need or that make us happy and don't take up too much room. as for decorating...that will come, but for now i'm satisfied being able to walk into the kitchen without a stubbed toe.

devasation

the grigsby's are back in action in murfreesboro after a week of family/friends/christmas/new years/birthday time in south knox. it felt strangely good to come back. i guess its that this place is where we have started building our lives together. either way, the peace of returning to murfreesboro was completely thrown within the hour that we were home. since we were starving and hadn't gone grocery shopping yet, the obvious answer to our problem was lenny's sub shop. i had gotten a gift card to lenny's for my birthday. so, even though they are a bit over priced ($6.50 for a sub, not including drink and chips) we were excited to eat our favorite meal for free. we arrived, and soaked in the sights and smells without knowing what was to come. our sandwiches were made to perfection, but as we were paying the girl said, "just so you know, we're gonna be closed tomorrow." now this was a big enough let down because we always eat lenny's after church on sundays unless we are completely broke. we asked when they would be open again, and she replied, "never." WHAT THE WORLD!! i'm pretty sure my heart literally broke. we ate our sandwiches in utter disbelief and decided that we would have to eat dinner there also in order to salute lenny's properly.

what a loss. lenny's was where adam and i had our first quasi-date, where my brother convinced me to do work crew at frontier (where i came heart to heart with christ), where adam and i had some of the best conversations, where my best friends and i knew we would see each other (if just that once) every sunday, where i went to feel some joy in the first few months i had moved here, and we can't forget that they are who catered our wedding. rest in peace my sweet murfreesboro lenny's.