Home is where...

Home ownership.  It seems like an easy thing.  In you head it's an easy thing: you get together some money for a down payment, you pick out the home of your dreams, and you buy it using money a bank loans you.  In reality the process is much more of an emotional roller coaster than we like to believe.  

We originally went looking at houses without much direction.  We knew the areas of town we would ideally like to be in, but not much else.  The houses we saw at first were wonderful houses, we could easily see ourselves living in any of them.  As we continued our search, we saw what was available in our price range and what we wanted our home to be for years to come.  We sat down and evaluated the pros and cons of each house and decided what were our top few houses.  Did we find the house of our dreams?  Not at this time.  We were stuck with two different houses at the top of our lists...so we went back to the drawing board.

At this point, I was convinced that we were making a huge mistake not jumping on one of the two properties, but I was willing to look one more time.  We went out again looking at different houses in the same area and we found it.  The house was everything I wanted and everything Haley wanted.  We weren't sure if we'd get it or not, but we knew it was the one we wanted.  It's still not officially "ours" yet, we still have a few weeks before closing and "anything can happen", but it feels like ours.

Looking back on the process, there were a number of times we were both convinced we needed to settle on a house and a number of times we both were convinced that we weren't going to get the house, but it all worked out for us (so far).  I just wasn't prepared from the outset for the ups and downs of home buying.

FCA Weekend of Champions

This last weekend, Tyler and I had the opportunity to travel with 2 other couples and 75 7th & 8th graders to Sky Ranch in Van, Texas for Fellowship of Christian Athlete's Weekend of Champions. It was an AWESOME weekend!

Here are the highlights:

• Getting to pray with and for our students and have spiritual conversations out of a school setting
• Clear gospel presentations and students giving their lives to the Lord
  
• A great speaker (who held their attention and really spoke TRUTH to middle school students WELL -- this can be a challenge at times!)
• a FABULOUS job of organization and ministry by FCA Dallas staff
• sweet, intentional ministry & encouragement to coaches by FCA staff
  
• fun with friends, old and new, and lots of fun with our kids!

We'll have a bit of a "Say-So" on Sunday and give our students a chance to share with each other and their families about the weekend! Praying for the gospel to be evident at this event!

When a haircut is more than a haircut...

I'm in a love/hate relationship with my hair currently.  Let me clarify that I'm extremely happy that I have been blessed with almost a full head of hair, I really couldn't ask for too much else.  That being said, I really wish I wasn't going grey as quickly as it is.

I didn't really notice this disturbing trend until I began teaching and coaching.  I would look down at all the hair that was chopped off and notice a few strands of silver hairs at first.  The longer I go on , the more hair is grey is there and the more I really feel like I'm getting old.  I'm the third youngest coach at my school, so it will be really hard to look a lot older than I feel.  

As far as what this means for me in the long term, not much...just a trend I don't like.  You will never see me rocking a hair piece or dying my hair (except for some comic relief).  Once the hair turns grey, I'll be grey forever.  Once the hair waves bye-bye, I'll be chopping it off.  I'm ok with both of these future outcomes, I just wish they'd stay in the future.

getting a little ahead...

I spent a good part of this afternoon attempting to 'get ahead,' at least in the cooking arena.

1. DIY Breakfast Sandwiches (we were spending a small fortune on Jimmy Dean D-lights)

recipe & photo: once a month mom

2. 4 supertoast dinners... this is a delish (not-so-healthful) recipe from my bestie Megan. It's sort of like a french bread pizza, and has become my go-to when I need to take a meal to a friend! (I'll post a pic later)

3. Haley & Tyler's lunches for the week! Tyler's having turkey wraps this week, and I'm reliving the kindergarten days with a good-ole pb&j! I've also bagged up enough almond/craisin afternoon snacks for the week too!

Before getting married, I was more of a cereal-for-dinner kind of girl. But, I'm really enjoying learning to cook and becoming more organized for the sake of serving my hubs!

HER first blog post

allrighty. It's Haley of the Horner's here. I love blogs. Let me rephrase, I love reading other's blogs. There is something scary and intimidating to me about writing my own. But, because my love has started this wonderful blog... I decided it was my turn to add to the conversation.

I've loved our first three months of being Mrs. Haley Horner. The kids are making adjustment from Miss Pep to Mrs. Horner. They've quit giggling when they see Tyler and I together in the hallways, and I'm consistently remembering to sign my name correctly.

For my inaugural blog, in honor of our three months of wedded bliss, I've decided to list three things I love about having a husband.

1. I love having a partner to do life with. I love coming home and knowing T is there, or will be soon. I love the way he has helped me overcome my financial ignorance and has set our family to be good stewards with our finances.

2. I love not having to say good-bye, just good night.

3 . I love dreaming and laughing about the days to come together!

T's a stud. I'm blessed. And oh-so-thankful.

Cold as a winter's morning...

If there's one word that can sum up the last week and a half in north Texas, it's 'ice.'  In the past two weeks, school has been cancelled five days.  I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just the way things go in Texas.  It's just crazy to me that yesterday the high was in the single digits and tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the fifties!  

All that being said, I'm ready for the weather to start warming up.  I'm a big fan of spring time when it's cool enough that I'm not sweating at all times, but it's warm enough that I can feel comfortable wearing short sleeve shirts and shorts.  This also means that track season is about to start in the coaching world.  Endless days of offseason and after school track practice followed by a month of nothing before spring football.  I love football as much as an other of the coaches in the district, but I'm looking forward to the down time that is track season.

Too much time?

I've lived in the Dallas area for the vast majority of my life and never have I seen so much snow and ice in my life.  This is the third day in a row that most of the school districts in the area are completely closed for the day.  Because Coppell ISD is one of these, I've had a lot of time to sit on the couch and think about the world for way too long, and here are some thoughts, ideas, and things I've gotten done these past few days:

1. Time off shows how much you love something.  When you read any number of social networking sites, you can see which teachers and students really do love school.  I can't count how many people keep talking about how much they miss school and really wish the weather would clear up quicker.  There are also a fair number of people spouting how much they are happy there isn't any school and how they wish the snow and ice would stay for a long time.  It's just funny to me how an abundance of time will show you people's true feelings about life.
2. The irony of this blog.  This blog, in case you haven't noticed already, is called "The Horner House".  If you don't know Haley and me, we don't currently own a "home"...we rent an apartment. We took steps during the break to move from apartment to home living.  We've been waiting for approval from the seller's bank to move forward and that came during the past couple of days.  Hopefully the rest of the home buying process will move along as quickly.
3. Bills, bills, bills.  I hate paying the bills.  I really hate the fact that after a long day at work I have to come home and calculate out how much I owe some company for the amenities of living.  We've done a good job of limiting our spending, but it's a pain that will never really go away.  I've taken a little bit of time to get current on some of our bigger bills and make sure we're budgeting for them.  The best part is that there's no headache!
4. I'm not a tech-savvy as I like to think I am.  One of the major uses of my time this week has been discovering new websites and new blogs to read about.  There are some people on this earth that are way more knowledgeable about technology and the internet.  I've sat at their feet the past few days and have come up with a few minor changes that I'm making to make my life a little bit easier on the whole.  

That's how I've spent my last few days at home, trapped by the snow.  It may sound boring, but this list combined with good programming on cable TV has made this enjoyable as can be.