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I have classes in Conway, Arkansas which is about one hour from Searcy where Grant and I live. At the beginning of school, I was having to drive three times a week, and it was going to be really expensive with gas. But this last week, I found out that a class I had taken previously at Harding was considered the equivalent or substituted for this 3-D Art class that I was enrolled in. Now this class would have been fun to take,but all of the materials would have been very expensive, and it would have been my most time consuming class, and the teacher had a VERY hard grading scale. When I heard that I didn’t have to take this class anymore, I was so relieved. Now, I am only having to take 9 hours which means that I can come only twice a week which saves on gas, and that is one less class that I have to pay for. Also, I got this approved on the last day to get a full refund, and the head of the interior design department took the paper work to the registrar for me so I wouldn’t have any trouble! Then I found out that I only had to spend 5 dollars on my books for this semester, and I have an interview today for a part time job. If I were to get this job, then Grant could cut back at least one of his days and could focus more on his school work since I am taking less hours and have so much more free time than he does. So many great things have been happening that it is hard to remember them all!

After the whole apartment thing happened and was semi cleaned where it was livable, Grant and I had a lot of paper work to get done. For instance, new drivers licenses (which took us over 3 hours since the servers randomly went down), my new social security card, assessments of our vehicles, new car insurance, new tags, the titles in our names, my new student ID, my named changed at UCA and at Harding for records, our bank accounts put together, Finally being able to process our FAFSAs and hoping that we will still get some grants, me looking for a job, and other things that I have forgotten. Once we had the majority of our paper work done, school started for me, then for Grant, and then we still had to move the rest of his stuff from Simon’s room to our place. We literally had paths to move around in our tiny apartment, but after a few days of just straight organizing we now have a decent looking apartment. We would have it looking nicer, but we will only be in this apartment until December, and so we aren’t putting shelves up, or other things that would create holes in our walls, so organization has become very impressive here. But now that those things are done and Grant and I don’t have to travel anywhere for a while and schools is slowly becoming routine things are starting to settle down.
It is definitely crazy to think that soon we will start having to look for jobs and moving again, but I’m sure we will be fine since God will take care of us.

After our honeymoon in Florida, Grant and I drove to Nashville and stayed a night with Kira and Andrew which was definitely a lot of fun! Then we drove to Ohio to pick up Julia and help her pack and get her ready for Harding. We also picked up a U-haul trailer and put mattresses, plants for people, and other odds and ends. We also met with our photographer and saw his amazing pictures! Then we drove back to Nashville and spent the night with Kira and Andrew again, only this time Julia was with us. Then the next morning we went on to Arkansas. We made it around 3 or 4 pm depending on what time zone you live in, but not too late,but we were all tired. We got back to our apartment to find the following things!
Now I had warned Julia that our apartment wouldn’t be very clean because I had been living there and right before we left for Ohio we had moved some of his stuff in just so that Simon would have a little bit more room at his place since Grant’s stuff was still there. We got to our apartment to find that they had replaced the linoleum floors. Now, this was a nice thing considering I had a pretty level table and it wobbled so much on that floor since the concrete wasn’t level anymore. Also, before the linoleum was an ugly yellow ( which I was later told was a cream but was so saturated with different dirty that only scrubbing for a few hours would show the true color.) with lots of holes here and there. So them replacing it was nice since now it is a more neutral color, but we were never told that they were going to be doing it or we would have moved our things to make sure they had the room to do it. Also, whoever laid this floor seemed like it was their first time, because I am pretty sure I could have done a better job, but here are some of the pictures and problems that we found.

Here you can see that the glue that they used had gotten on their shoes and they tracked it mainly all around the bathroom, and no matter how hard I scrub, I cannot get it off.

In order to lay it right, they had to move our fridge out and they just put our food where ever they say fit, not caring to put it back or that everything in our freezer got thawed and then refrozen and some of it we cannot eat now, or that they put stuff all over where our computer things were.

Here you can see the dust everywhere from sanding down the concrete floor underneath so that it is smooth. I also had a carpet sample that I used as a doormat that was only inside to keep things from being tracked inside, well, they left it outside and was already moldy by the time we got back.

We do not own any cats, but I guess under the stove or the fridge they found these toys and we first found them on our stove not caring about how sanitary or not that is.

This is a kind of gross picture, but these are our paper towels that they used for their clean up job, which wasn’t very cool either.

They used our trash can with our trash bag, threw that away and still left trash for us to have to throw away.

They had moved everything around and just weren’t very careful! My table has a very thin veneer on it, and now it has a lot more scratches and dings than when we left.

Here you can see how haphazardly they placed everything and all the dust everywhere that they didn’t bother cleaning up.

Here you can see all the bubbles in their actual laying job, but at least it looks better and doesn’t have any holes, but when laying flooring especially carpet, one really wants to be careful of where seams are put. Now some flooring you can heat weld and then it doesn’t matter where seams are other than aesthetic reasons,but they put the seam right down the middle of the space and directly under the sink where you would stand to do dishes, and the seam is already coming up.

Some more dustiness.

How lovingly they stacked our things.

Before we left, we had purposely turned off the air conditioning,but when we returned it was set on 68 which was colder than we keep it even now cause it is expensive. So, we got back from the long drive, and I had to go help Julia with her last minute schedule changes and other errands which Grant tried to get somethings accomplished after this mishap. Well, no one wanted to take blame everyone just pointed fingers at everyone else. We wanted them to come and clean up, but they wouldn’t be able to do that for a week or so, and we had to live there so we ended up having to do it. They said they wouldn’t be able to do anything until the energy bill was here before we could get some taken off for the air being off, and they even tried to blame this whole issue on us saying that on the paper work it said we weren’t moving in until August 15th. Well, the lady telling us this was the lady who had walked us through our apartment and had signed all the paper work with us, so we didn’t understand how it was our fault that her paperwork wasn’t updated in time. Needless to say, it was the first exciting thing that happened since Grant and I have been married. We lived through it, and we will see which items we get reimbursed for.

Here is a different sand scultpure that I really enjoyed!

We went walking on the beach, and we saw some pretty cool things made out of sand. This is such an example, a crab!

This is us on the beach on the way back to our resort; a different lady offered to take our picture which was really nice of her.

Grant wanted me to smile as I was walking, and right then a huge wave hit me, and I guess that was my reaction, and Grant wouldn’t let me delete the picture.

This is one of the smaller motel/resort thingy that had a fun sand castle too.

We saw a man with a metal detector walking around on the beach for a few hours at a time on multiple days, but we never saw him find anything,but he really could have. Well, while walking on the beach I found this quarter without a metal detector so HA metal detector man- I am a rich woman now ;p!

A jelly fish that we saw on the beach.

A sea turtle out of sand.

Probably my favorite sand sculptures; they looked really good from far away, and they are still better than I could do, but the pyramid and the sphyix is always cool.

Grant and my room was on the 12th floor, and the resort had 25 floors all together which were the penthouse suites, but they were all still under construction. But we still went up and took some pictures of the view.

This is another picture from the 25th floor, and you can see how Grant got a little bit pink *cough cough* from the sun.

This was the second pool that they had on the other side of the resort that wasn’t attached to the beach.

They definitley had a go cart track which was 9/10th of a mile which is pretty impressive, and Grant and I were considering doing that, but we just never thought of it and never ended up doing it.

This pictures is a little out of order, but this was a wedding that was happening on the beach which we noticed from our room which is a kinda cool idea.

This is the view down from the 25th floor.

Me out on the porch, being happy.

Grant smiling, but truley wanting to eat,but I wanted to make sure that there were enough pictures of him as well.

This was before the wedding began, the photographer was sweeping this huge heart in the sand, and we couldn’t figure out what the purpose was until the wedding started, and then it all made sense.

One of our dinners outside.

One of the most pretty and sunny days that we had!

This is us taking pictures again!

The sky bridge that took us to the office and the other pool.

The view…

I think that this was the more kiddie pool, but this is Grant going for a swim.

The pool at night.

Me being crazy social!

Nasty sea weed from the ocean.

Grant swimming in the ocean.

Tanya and Wilson got us this cool candle, and we burned it a whole lot, but one time I was clumsy and spilled it,but it looked kinda cool on the granite. When it was cold we just got it off easily so no worries.

Me loving the water and the beach lol! Breaking dawn is a very addicting book!

Grant being really social!

The one day where it was overcast and we had a power outage for half an hour or so. It took a while for us to get our door card swiper working,but eventually all was well.