Pandaberry Trail

I woke up this morning to rain pouring outside. I come downstairs and see THIS waiting for me. Best husband award goes to Casey <3.

Well I guess it wasn’t too hard to guess how I was going to paint my dresser-Tanda guessed right! Blue with flowers. Boom!

See what I did there?! Roanoke…roa-gnocchi?? Ha. Ha. ok well it was delish, and if you want the recipe, click HERE!

Welp, Pandaberry ran out of space so I had to upgrade our data allowance. We have over 500 posts on here! Yikes!

Casey’s first week of orientation went well. He was gone from before 8am to 5pm everyday. Next week he is at school for fewer hours but will have to study much more while he is at home.

Fun Fact: “The new class is already setting benchmarks. Women make up exactly half the class, a first for the school. The students made the most selective admissions cut in the school’s history. Only 1 percent of the more than 3,500 applicants could matriculate.”

I got my first Roanoke pet sitting client! I am currently watching Tigger, Brutus, and Chloe.

This is kudzu, a climbing vine that kills other plants and trees due to heavy shading. It is very prevalent here.

Casey and I went to our first baseball game! Salem Red Sox vs. Carolina Mud Cats. Medical students and their families were all invited by the school to attend the game for free. I got to meet a lot of his classmates-it was fun!

My custom wedding ring came! It is a cushion cut natural aquamarine with a halo 🙂

Our couches were finally delivered! woohoo!

I will leave you with this cute picture of Penny because she’s the best.

So we were trying to fill our apartment up with furniture since we came with nothing. And Casey is picky about his furniture and likes real wood, none of that MDF particle board stuff. Which means the price is higher of course!

So thrifty me searches Craigslist in hopes of saving some money. I find this small dresser for only $25 which would be perfect for holding my art supplies in my studio. So I ask Casey if we can go pick it up since it is only 1.7 miles away. He tells me to measure the trunk of Goldie and if it will fit, we can go pick it up.

So I grab the tape measurer and run out to Goldie. Our trunk is 18 inches tall! It will fit perfectly I say! So off we go. We easily fid the house and I check out the dresser-solid wood nice. I tell the lady I plan to paint it so the scratches don’t matter to me. So I hand her the money and Casey and I carry the dresser to the car. We unload the drawers into the back seat and proceed to lift the dresser up to the trunk.

Well I forgot to measure the opening of the trunk. The dresser was a 1/4 of an inch too wide. Oops. Well maybe it will fit in the back seat and the drawers can go in the trunk. NOPE. At this point I am getting “the look” from Casey.

I know we have rope in the trunk that my Dad gave us, so I ask if we can tie it to the roof rack. “NO WAY-what if we break the sunroof blah blah blah…” But I’m a goob. And I proceed to get Penny’s towel out of the back and lay it on the roof of the car and unwind our rope.

[Did I mention this was all during a thunderstorm day and there was a 200 pound LOOSE mastiff trying to help us . . . while Penny was in Goldie?]

Long story short, we made it back the 1.7 miles and neither Goldie or my awesome new dresser were hurt in the process 🙂 But just for the record, “We are NEVER doing this again.”

😉

Stay tuned for a DIY makeover on my dresser to see what color I paint it!

Today marks the beginning of a very long journey for Casey. First day of medical school!

Our moving truck delivered all of our crap lovely possessions.

We have now explored another frisbee golf course, this time, the 9 holes at Fishburn.

We completed our homemade “porch potty” for Penny, which she refuses to use. We are trying every trick in the book. Send good potty vibes her way!

For our first hike, we decided to go to Catawba Mountain on the Appalachian Trail. It rained. A lot. We got wet. And we loved it.

If we follow this, we will end up in Maine!

The difference between Casey and I:Ooohhh! I huge caterpillar! Can I pick it up?!

No! It might be poisonous or have sharp barbs or…

[picks it up anyways] 🙂

We have been to Walmart/Target/Lowe’s/Home Depot about 50 million times. Centipedes LOVE coming in our house. Casey is enjoying setting up his man cave in the basement. I bought some power tools and can’t wait to try something new with my art. Mom, I promise we are eating something besides pasta! The skeeters here are viscous. We still have no furniture except a bed and a window seat…why is it so hard to pick a coffee table?! And what was I thinking getting a white bed spread with a black dog?! We are expecting a big thunderstorm today, and Casey has his class welcome BBQ this evening. He starts school tomorrow at 7am! Woo!

The lady at Walgreens tells everyone to have a blessed day and to be real-so do it people! ♥

A fun diversion: a map with every U.S. county I have been to outside of an airport.

After battling with Cox for 5 days, we have internet at our place! Hooray! 
Here is our place!

At the house across the street, these two cuties bark at Penny every time we walk by.We walked around Casey’s school! 6 more days until he starts!

From the school, we walked to the greenway, 9+ miles (and growing) of continuous greenway along the Roanoke River. It has bike paths, bathrooms, a skate park, and playgrounds.

I LOVE the bright colorful trees along the greenway right now.

The river gets stocked with trout and you can go fishing!

Yesterday, we took Penny to the dog park. She was pretty much the only one there, and they have separate sections for big and little dogs.
The dog park is in the same place as the frisbee golf park, so it was a win-win! This is a 9 hole course and we loved it! In other news, our moving truck is supposed to come today! And 16 items we ordered from Amazon are also arriving today. Our bed comes tomorrow! Yay!

Well, we have been doing some damage at our local Target. And this is just one of our carts!

We are enjoying the area and really like our apartment. We are in a big brick duplex that has 3 levels. Casey is getting a bunch of stuff for his “man cave” in the basement and I am excited to set up my art studio upstairs. Penny is still unsure about everything and is very clingy. We are all camping out in sleeping bags until our bed is delivered next week.

We have a little creek that runs below the trees in our backyard area. AND WE GET FIREFLIES! We got some sprinkles and thunder today.

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