Barak & Alison: August 2008

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Our New KY Home

Barak & I are officially homeowners!

We signed the offer on our first home in an office at Barak's med school 15 minutes before the start of a school ceremony and the day after I had gotten back from CA.

12 days later, we closed on our house and moved in... what a miracle!

We did a walk through the day before closing - the sign never did say "SOLD"... bummer!

Our new little home!

We closed on Friday, Aug 22 at 9 am. Within a few hours we had everything moved in, with the help of about a dozen med school friends and this crazy semi-truck.

A bunch of our friends who helped move us in - in exchange for some pizza.

Our little house on a hill.

The living room & bathroom, pre-move.

Our backyard, complete with rabbits, birds, squirrels, and even an albino squirrel that lives in our trees!

Barak caulking our tub.

I finally got to unpack all the dishes we got as wedding presents - this was my favorite part of moving in!

Our kitchen - the house came with brand new stainless steel appliances. Barak surprised me by asking for a gas stove (because I love them) and he installed the line for it himself.

Our living room with our first set of matching furniture... it's starting to feel like a home now!

We've spent the first week in our new home doing a LOT of projects before school gets too busy for Barak. This was the one he got the most excited about when he finished - he moved the dryer, hooked it up to gas, and created a vent for it to the outside!

That's our new little home - come visit anytime!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Back in the swing of things in KY!

Here's a little update on us...

I haven't even been back in Louisville (pronounced Lou-ah-vuhl for all you Californians) for a full week yet and life has been a whirlwind!

Barak & I had an amazing summer back home in CA... we got to spend a lot of time with family & friends, enjoy the beauty of the west coast, work hard, play hard, and most importantly... spend a LOT of quality time together for a season without the burden of studying on Barak's shoulders. That quality time was huge for us, as our brief 7 months of marriage so far have been packed with constant busy-ness and change. I think we both forget sometimes that we're still newlyweds... it feels like 2 years passed in the span of 6 months. Especially since those 6 months were filled with re-locating across the country, adapting to the non-stop world of medical school, new weather patterns, new friends, new jobs, and so on! Not to mention just plain old getting used to being married and living together. Throw a major accident in there with Barak having two weeks of anterograde amnesia and I think it's understandable why we needed a little break this summer!

But now we are back in Kentucky and are really excited to move forward! So excited, in fact, that in the past week we bought our very first house! And I mean that when I say "in the past week" because it was literally the span of one week from the time we secured financing till we had secured our new little home. Give it another week and we should be in closing and will start moving in! Whew!

We started looking around for a house a little bit last spring, just based on the shocking concept (well, shocking to us coming from So Cal) that we could actually BUY a house as newlyweds, while in medical school, and still pay about the same each month as we've been paying on rent! The fact that we don't have to drop a half-million on a tiny fixer-uper in the bad part of town was so novel to us that we couldn't resist checking out the prospects. But God has blessed us beyond belief and provided a beautiful little home just perfect for us in virtually no time at all. (I'll post pics soon!) We feel so blessed and amazed by how the pieces have all come together in truly miraculous ways! So, now we own our first home and actually have a place for visitors when they come to town (hint, hint...)

Other than that, we've been busy getting Barak ready to go back to school and I've been working full-time from home. I LOVE my job and am so excited that I get to keep it and work from home in KY. It's a HUGE blessing, again orchestrated by God in a way that answered all our prayers beyond belief. I'm working for a company called Clover, started by two friends of mine in CA... check it out: www.cloversites.com. It's awesome!

Med school starts again for Barak on Monday, Aug. 18. This will be his second year, which some say is the hardest and most intense. I'm constantly amazed by how he manages school, serving as class president, and being married to me! He is amazing! Keep him in your prayers as he goes back to school.... and me too. We plan to get a dog next so I have someone to keep me company! :)

Okay, I feel like I just wrote our "Christmas letter" in August! Who knows what this next year will bring... At the start of each year of medical school there is a ceremony for the incoming class called the "White Coat Ceremony." At last year's, Barak and I had just gotten engaged. This year, we signed the contract for our house 15 minutes before the ceremony started. I joked with Barak that who knows what life will be like at next year's ceremony! ;)

I promise to post pics soon...

Love, Alison & Barak

Friday, August 1, 2008

Our Amazing Families!

Barak & I are very blessed with very large families! At latest count we have (combined)...

4 Parents
14 Siblings
8 Sibling-in-laws
20 (almost 21) Nieces & Nephews

...and counting!

We were fortunate enough to be a part of two large family photo sessions, including almost our entire families. Of course, no photo can stay up-to-date for very long as there have been 2 (almost 3) new babies since these pictures were taken. But, you get the idea...