Well, we’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning and I have a few little bloggy awards I wanted to acknowledge before leaving!

Kari over at Living Large gave me the “You lift me up” award. Kari is a hoot, seriously! She’s a Texan with an Okie heart… gotta love that. Thank you Kari for this award, I always enjoy visiting you!!!

I pass this award to Sheryl, Karen-NZ, Karen, Irene, Marcia, Ann, Coach J, Oh Amanda, and Susan!

Zenaida over at Verb gave me the “egel nest blog award”… thank you Zenaida. One fun thing about blogging is meeting people from so far away I would never have known. Zenaida is one of those people and such a sweetie, thanks Zenaida!

I pass this one to Jodi, Sonya, Carrie, Tricia, Momma, Natalie, K.C., Michelle and Tina!

Karen (another far off friend) gave me the “I’m Fabulous Award.” Karen is certainly fabulous and I love visiting her very spiritual God loving blog. Thank you Karen for the award!

This one I give to Nancy, Lauren, Tori, Julie, Dena, Haley, Kat, and Kari!

I’m packing and doing last minute things because we leave at 5 a.m. tomorrow ya’ll so if I get a chance this afternoon I’ll put all the links to the names, but for now I am just getting it typed to be finished. Sorry. If you see your name, take the award and pass it on!

I’m going to miss you all, please pray for a safe trip and I’ll miss and pray for all you guys too!

This week we will travel back to our first home… was it your very own apartment, or a home with your new spouse? What memories do you have from that first home? How did you make that first house (or apartment) a home?

I moved from my parent’s house to my first home, following my marriage… to Matt. We bought a little three bedroom house about 15 minutes from my childhood home. Matt moved in a few weeks before our wedding. We both worked, me during the day for the state of Oklahoma and Matt worked evenings. Our furniture was hand-me-downs from family members or stuff from our childhood rooms. I remember mauve and country blue were the colors of choice at the time and I bought pillows to help out the plain brown sofa.

Our first Christmas tree was huge! Matt cut it down and came home with it and couldn’t get it through the door, it was so huge! He cut the top and bottom several times to make it work. It was beautiful to me and I would sit and just look at it at night. There was a park a few blocks away and I would walk there in the evenings. On the weekends we would spend the morning cleaning and then go out and do yardwork together. We had the cutest elderly neighbors. We still talk about them.

Matt would come home and basically undress from the back door to the bed. I would wake up and find this trail of clothes. I played the game of putting the hamper different places, but that didn’t work. (still doesn’t)…