Well, I’ve met the neighbors on both sides of us now. We met Barry and Mary last weekend. They came over to introduce themselves and gave us a plant with yellow flowers. They seemed very nice.

Yesterday I got to meet Gary on the other side of us. I don’t think I could have made the introduction more awkward…ok, maybe if I was in a towel or something, but yeah….AWKWARD/EMBARRASSING!!!

Here I am running out on the deck to flip the bookshelf over before I head out to meet someone I’ll be teaching for next weekend. Once I got done I turned back around to go back inside the side door. Yeah, well, that would have been a grand thing if I COULD have gotten in! I was locked out of the house!

I walked around checking all the doors even though I knew they were all locked. I even walked around looking for an easy way to break in w/o ruining screens or something. No such luck. I’m standing here panicking about what I’m going to do. I have no phone to call anyone…no keys to get in my car…no way into the house…and I’m wearing my p.j.’s, barefoot, lotion covered face with some make-up streaks under the eyes, haven’t showered, and I’m WITHOUT a BRA!!! Yeah, no bra or anything…

I then reluctantly knock on Mary and Barry’s door hoping that the wife would answer considering the condition that I’m in, and they’re the only people I’ve met so far. No such luck either… Then, even more reluctantly, I walk over to the older bachelor guy’s house who I have yet to meet. He answers the door and I hold out my hand and say, “Hi, I’m Tonya Barger, your new neighbor. I locked myself out of the house and was wondering if I could use your phone, please.” He acts a bit taken aback and unsure about things and hands me the cordless phone outside. Then I have to ask for a phone book as well cuz I don’t know the number to Hy-Vee so that I can call Matt. He then decides to let me in and starts talking my ear off as I stand there barefoot, in p.j.s, holding at least one arm across my chest at ALL times! He seemed nice and became very chatty, but yeah…how embarrassing!

A HUGE thanks to all who helped us during this process! We GREATLY appreciate all that you have done for us!

It’s official. All the x’s have been signed. Last friday was closing and since then we’ve been busy lil bees trying to get it all done as quickly as possible.

Friday -

A few of my friends, Rachel, Chelsea, and Pearl, were here helping us do some cleaning. Matt was busy running errands for most of the day, but the 4 of us got a lot done. Boy was I thankful for there help! We never would have been done in time w/o them! Matt and I kept working throughout the evening until we finally crashed at like 12:30 or something like that in the morning. We then had to be up early to do more cleaning!

Saturday -

Things didn’t go quite as planned, but we did finally get to the end. There was an early start by some and a late start by others which had us all on different sides of towns. Matt had went to the apartment to try to finish some packing, and I stayed at the house to keep cleaning and help the animals. I tried to leave with Matt and Cortez ran to the door and started pawing on it while crying. I went back in after that. (More on the animals at a later date.) This left me at the house with no way across town. Well not until someone came and picked me up. Matt’s parents, Dad, Sue, Clay, Kathy, Tammy, T.J., and Courtney helped us out that day. T.J. even mowed the lawn! What a blessing!

Everyone worked hard and late. We wanted the locks changed on the doors since we didn’t get to that on Friday so that’s where we ended the day. I don’t know how late it was when the last of them left, but I know it was way after dark already! Matt and I tried doing some more and finally went to bed after midnight again if I remember correctly.

Sunday – We ended up not going to church and just got up early to start cleaning and unpacking. We had a few visitors and got some of the work done. Matt went to the apartment on his own to clean there while I stayed at the house to clean and unpack.

Monday – We finished up the apartment with some help from Matt’s parents and turned in Matt’s keys. (We couldn’t find mine!!!! Thankfully they gave us until the end of the week to get them in, and I found them on Wednesday.) Also, when Matt did turn in the keys Kelly, the manager at the apartments, said that they had all (maintenance, janitorial, and management) already been up there and none of them have seen an apartment that was preserved like ours or as clean as ours! Kudos for us!

At this point we still have A LOT to do! We have more unpacking to do along with several lil jobs that need to be done around the house, and we still haven’t even touched the basement! We are both exhausted beyond belief and can’t wait to be done. I keep telling people that I feel like I’m living out of/in the largest most disorganized suitcase ever made! Hopefully we can get some stuff done around Matt’s 50 hour work weeks and my heavier than normal work week next week. My schedule finally slows down the 4th week of the month. Just in time to rest and start the classes that I want to take this summer more than likely!

I can’t wait for this term to be done. My mood about school is rather negative. I can’t stand it. The only part I really really like is some of the people.  The program is small enough that we have all of our major’s classes together,  and I’ve made some new friends. Making new friends was one of my goals at the beginning of the year, and I am thankful that God provided me with the opportunity to meet some great people.

Because of how school is making me feel I have decided not to take the FIVE classes that I was suppose to take this summer. I’m taking the summer off. Unfortunately this means that I will no longer be with my class. I won’t have the classes done that are prerequisites for the fall term. This also means that it’ll take another whole year for me to complete the program if I end up choosing to do that in the end. I believe in 2012 Iowa will require that interpreters have a 4 year degree in “something” prior to taking either of the two tests to become licensed. That means I either need to get the program done before then, earn a four year degree as well, or just not become an interpreter.

My intentions from the beginning weren’t to necessarily become an interpreter. I just wanted to learn sign so that Matt and I could adopt a deaf child and be able to start off running with language rather than us trying to learn it all at the same time. Part of me does want to finish the program. Some times I feel like I get myself close to finishing things and then never actually do. Right now school is not a good thing though. Plus, I feel like the deaf teacher of mine has completely wasted my time this term. I’ve never taken a class were I’ve learned so little! I could have learned this entire term’s stuff in about 1 or 2 classes. I’m being completely serious. Isn’t that just disgusting!? I’m disgusted with the money and time that’s been lost due to his incompetence.

I do plan on taking ASL III this fall. I’m a lil excited about it because it’s the ASL classes that I’ve wanted to actually take. I’ll finally be able to! Plus, I’ll be in the same class as Matt. That’ll be a new experience that I think will be a lot of fun.  (This also means no more bad deaf teacher!)

ASL gloss for that sentence might look something like this…if I’m correct…   —->  And that mean teach (adgent) bad deaf no more.

So yeah, school = BAD     

Picture catch up time.    While I had my dry spell in blogging Matt and I celebrated our two-year-wedding-anniversary on March 3rd. If you’d like, you can see the pictures here.

If I had been keeping up with the blog you all would have known that we had to go back to the negotiating table to have the roof done. We ended up being really lucky and fortunate. The lady, Fran, who currently owns the home,  agreed to pay for the whole thing! Things were on hold while we were figureing that all out, but we’re now moving ahead with the plans with the closing date to still be May 29th. Can’t wait! I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where I want this or that. I’m trying to figure it all out in my head since I can’t just move it all over there right now and try this or that set up. If you didn’t get a chance to view realtor before they took our house down you can see pictures and read my commentary in an album I created on Facebook. Click here to view our future home. Btw, we drove by the home today and they do finally have the “SOLD” sign up! Yay!!!!

We spent Easter weekend up in MN with my brother and his family. We really enjoyed our time. The car ride was a much needed “quality” time for Matt and I and playing with Luc and Eli was absolutely wonderful! I loved EVERY minute of it. Lucy’s getting so big, and now that she remembers us we don’t go through that awkward scared stage the first day we’re there. We can just jump right in. Elias is sooooo cute! He giggles ALL the time! I couldn’t believe how giggly and smiley he was. Especially considering that he was sick while we were there. We got several pictures and some video including one of Eli pretty much eating my face! If you’d like to see the pictures there are two albums on my facebook page.

Link # 1

Link # 2

They accepted our counter offer! As long as the rest of the process goes as planned, which it should, then we’ll be moving in on May 29th! The last Friday of the month.

Here’s a link to the home on realtor. I doubt it will be there for too much longer. It may even disappear at some point on Monday, so be sure to check it out right away!

Happy Easter to everyone as well! We had an absolutely wonderful Easter. I got all kinds of lovin from Lucy and Elias. It was simply amazing! I’ll load some pics up soon.

Matt and I looked at a few houses last night. There were actually two in the bunch that we liked. The parents will be viewing them this evening with me. Matt will be at work. Hopefully this time goes better.

One of our safety nets that we created to make sure we didn’t rush into buying any particular house was having the parents look at it first. Besides, both of the fathers know a WHOLE LOT about stuff. Their opinions and knowledge are very much valued by Matt and myself.

Side tracked…. I smell a bunch of smoke!!!! I didn’t think our new neighbor smoked, but now I’m thinking I was wrong! The smell is pouring in right now. I shoved a towel down there. I’m hoping that will work. The window’s been thrown wide open as well. I really don’t think it’s right that I should have to breath that in! It literally physically harms me and the pets. I don’t understand how that can be legal…I don’t understand it at all…

Russ, our realtor, just called. One of the two houses accepted an offer this morning. I guess we’ll just be visiting the one. I have a feeling the parents will not like this one though… I really like it though! It’s got old windows with a roof that needs to be fixed whithen the next couple of years and a good sized horizontal crack in the foundation that makes even me nervous….sigh….There’s so much character and room though.

Wow, looks like I haven’t written on here since the beginning of last October! I bet most of you don’t even take the time to see if I’ve posted any more. I’m sorry.

Since there has been a lot going on since then I’m going to talk about one subject a day to get you all caught up.

The biggest thing going on in our lives right now would be that we are currently house shopping! I can’t wait to finally have a house and be moving in. We started doing some serious looking a month ago. Pretty much right after our 2-year anniversary <—-link to pictures from that day. The first couple of times was fun and exciting. Since then the direction of the wind has changed and I just want it to be over with. At this point I’m afraid I’ll just settle so that we can be done! I hope I don’t let myself do that though. Hopefully the right house will pop out at us very, very, very soon!

The entire house processes has become stressful and overwhelming for me. There’s so many houses, and a lack of a good system to keep it all organized. I’ve been brain storming ideas that would help me feel less overwhelmed about it all. I think we may have finally found one that will work. We just need to do all the grunt work again to get it organized and take her for a test drive. I hope it works though….

We have actually done the whole put an offer in process. Unfortunately once we got it all done we found out that they had literally just accepted another offer! That was a very scary step! Hopefully the next time it won’t be so scary.

Here’s some pictures of us carving our pumpkins and Matt’s 27th birthday.

Don’t forget the pictures down below.

Here’s some pictures of our Halloween party the day after Halloween.

Hope you enjoy them!

Our newest nephew was born on October 8th. Elias Owen is his name, and we got to meet him for the first time this past weekend. I, of course, took a bunch of pictures. You can go here to check them out if you’d like. There’s some stuff under some of the pictures, so you can read those to learn about some of the things we did if you’d like.

Welcome to the world Elias Owen Shramek! Uncle Matt and I love you so very much!

It’s been awhile since I last blogged. There’s so much to catch up on, but I’m just gonna start with this past weekend for now. (Besides, this is probably the most exciting anyway.)

Matt and I drove up to MN this weekend!!! We got to see Dust, Kel, Lucy, and a squirming Eli. Everyone’s pretty excited for the arrival of the lil E man. Lucy’s got a paper chain in her room that she gets to take one piece from each day. This is to help her with how much longer we’ve got until he’ll be here to hug and kiss.

Kellie looks GREAT! Despite what she might say. Her complexion is just glowing, she DOESN’T look fat, and she’s got a terribly cute new hair cut. Eli’s lil baby bump is pretty cute too. I LOVED watching and feeling him move.

Dustin walks around beaming. I’m sure that in a month he’ll be walking around like a zombie though.

Lucy was very exciting to watch. Typically she’s soooo shy the first day and then when she finally comes out of her shell the second day it’s pretty much time to leave. This time she wasn’t really shy at all. Perhaps for the first 3 min. with Uncle Matt, but that was it! This allowed for tons of play time, energy, lots of hugs, hand holding, and kisses too! I won’t lie, this aunt loved it! The best times was when I heard her say Aunt Tonya or Uncle Matt. My lil heart just melted.

Go here if you’d like to see some of the pics we took.

That’s right, I’m a college student again. Matt and I have both decided to take some classes this term. Matt defiantly wants to complete ASL (American Sign Language)’s 1, 2, 3, and 4. Other than that he’s not sure. He’s thinking about maybe some business classes and or education classes. I’m thinking about completing Kirkwood’s two year degree in ASL interpreting. I signed up for two classes tonight, and I might sign up for a third next week. I’m waiting for my transcript to arrive at Kirkwood. This way I’ll know what I need for gen eds. I’m thinking it’ll be somewhere between 1-3 gen eds to go. I’ve already got 2 1/2 years of school done, so most if not all of the gen eds should be done by then. I guess I’ll find out soon enough though.

Classes actually start on Tuesday of next week. Matt’s got class on Tue. and Thurs. and I’ve got Mon and Wed. I’ll continuing teaching for Mercy, and hopefully I can get a job at Kirkwood teaching for them as well.

I took a bunch of pictures the other day while Matt was at work, so feel free to check them out. A few at the end were taken after he got home. Here’s the album.

My cyst is making a come back. It practically disapeared, and is now growing larger again. At least it’s smaller….for the moment… It was causing some movement problems before, but since it’s much smaller I don’t really notice that at all. Plus it’s not nearly as visible. Before you could always see it. Right now you can only see it when my wrist is bent forward. I felt like some kind of a freak with it popping up like it did, so this smaller one is definetly nicer.

We really didn’t do much this weekend. Matt had a touch of the flu on Saturday night, so that wasn’t too fun. He felt better by around noonish on Sunday though. We actually ended up going out to look through some open houses around 1:30 that day. We are hoping to purchase something next spring/summer. This renting business is such a waste of money, and it drives me crazy. We won’t be able to afford what we’d really like, but that’s to be expected. This will be our first place. Give us 20 years, and maybe we can do better. Either way though it’s still very exciting to think about the prospect of no longer renting in less than a year. Hopefully all of the commas and dots will work out in our favor.

I think there were only 2 or 3 people that checked out “some” of my albums in the last post. If you haven’t yet I think you should try to find some time and check them out. It always makes me happy when peeps look at them and when I get comments on here.

I retract my previous statement that my cyst is gone. I just found a lil, teeny, weeny bump still there. Well, lil in comparison. The diameter is probably similar to a dime’s, and it’s fairly flat compared to what it was. It’s still tender in that area actually. I’d say more tender than it has been in the past month or so, but similar to what it was in the beginning.

I know I’ve been slacking off on my blogging, however, I haven’t been slacking off on my picture taking. I’ve got three albums for ya. One of which has maybe 10 pictures in it.

First there’s the album full of pictures from Joey’s 3rd birthday party from a week ago. There’s some really good ones in there, so if you have the time skim through there real quick. There’s some pictures of Lorelai too. She’s getting big! You may remember me mentioning her birth from a previous blog. Lorelai is Joey’s lil sister.

The second album is from this past weekend. We went to Rory and Tia’s wedding. They were actually suppose to get married the weekend of our big flood here in Cedar Rapids. There venue was the Scottish Rite Temple which was included in the evacuation, but was NOT flooded. The pictures didn’t really turn out the greatest due to bad lighting and me not trying to get closer. I was a bit bummed when we got home. There was a lot of blurry/red eye photos in the mix. There were some that came out fine though, and Matt and I took some outside the temple with all that stone. They turned out really nice. In fact, there’s one of Matt that I LOVE! Check them out!

The third album is from last Wednesday. I had gotten some tickets from Mercy for a baseball game here in C.R. Aunt Carol had something going on, so she gave me her’s too. We took Matt’s dad and sis with us. This album is pretty lil and most of them were actually taken when we were leaving. We climbed up onto the military tanks for a few pictures.

Besides all that my cyst disappeared! At least that’s what I’m assuming. On Thursday it started changing shape, and by Sunday morning I couldn’t feel or see it any more. It was kinda weird, and took a lil while….3 days pretty much. It’s always been pretty circular, and then it started getting elongated. Kinda like it was going down my wrist/arm. The last pictures you can see it in are the ones from Joey’s birthday when I’m holding Lorelai. It got fairly large, and was always bulging out. I’m glad it’s gone now though. I have full movement back, and don’t look as weird! Yay!

So yeah, be sure to check out my pictures! Oh, and I finally finished the application for Kirkwood. We’re hoping to maybe meet with some advisers this week. Photography and ASL classes here I come! Can’t wait!

On Wednesday of this week Matt’s dog Sheena was put to sleep. We both got a call from Matt’s mom around 12:20 or so saying that Sheena was gonna be put to sleep at 4:40. Matt immediately came home as this was really bad news. They’ve had Sheena for 14 years, and Matt was very attached to her. As was the rest of the family, obviously.

She was getting very old and had developed an incredibly large tumor near her stomach. They took her in that morning because of the way she was acting. That’s when the doctor found the tumor and said she probably only had a day or two left. Julie then decided to make an appointment.

While I’m glad that everyone got to have one last snuggle/pet/kiss with her it almost made it more difficult at the time. Here we all were sitting there thinking about how each and everything that was said to her or that she did was going to be her “last”. Leading up to 4:40 was very difficult. Everyone went to the vet including Matt’s grandma, Margaret. It was still very upsetting when we got home, but I sensed a lot of bad stuff/anxiety had been lifted. What we had feared and dreaded had finally been done. We were no longer waiting…

I created an album of pictures for you to all look at. Matt added stuff on some of their captions to further understand the pictures. I even learned stuff when reading them. They range from the first day they brought Sheena home to the finale minutes before leaving home for the last time. You see Matt and Brittany grow up with her. You can find the pictures here.

I love you Matthew!