1-29-07: Hello again, happy Monday. Well, not much has changed in the last week. We have been constantly unpacking boxes and trying to get the house livable. It is coming along slowly, but there is definite progress being made. Saturday was pretty much dedicated to unpacking. The alarm guy came that morning to hook up our alarm, then some of the neighbors came over that afternoon to bring us some brownies, which was cool. Yesterday, we went to church, then to the mall to have Hobs' 9 months pics taken. They turned out really well. I am not sure I will be able to get them online or not, but I will try later. Today Hobs had his 9 month appointment. His ears are finally clear (knock on wood). He has gained no weight and has only grown 1/4 of an inch in the past 3 months, which places him exactly in the 50 percentile size wise of children his age . The doctor said there was nothing to worry about, that he is just fine. So, for everyone out there that likes to make comments about how gargantuan our kid is, you can finally shut up. Yes, he may have started out a little larger than the rest, but he evened out. We are just a little tired of the tons of people who like to point out how freakishly large Hobs is. They have been doing it since he was born. I guess people just ignorantly expect that just because a kid is born big, he will always be big. Not that we would care if he was big, but people tend to talk about him like he is a friggin' circus attraction. A lady the other day told Hollie "he is a moose." Needless to say, she was not too terribly pleased. Oh well, enough of my rant. That is it for now, have a good week.

 

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1-22-07: Well, we are all moved in. Everything we have is either in a box or a pile in the new house. It was a very hectic, stressful weekend. Not only did it pour rain the entire time, the timing of everything didn't go exactly as we had planned. Closings on both houses went perfect. Due to the timing of the closings, we weren't able to hire movers that would really work around our time constraints, so, we did the one thing Hollie and I swore we would never do; we moved ourselves. Actually, we did hire movers to load a truck for us, and then conned all of our friends to help us unload said truck, so I guess we technically didn't move ourselves. Anyway, Friday morning, I rented the giant UHaul truck. The movers packed it full. Of course, it wasn't big enough, so we had to rent another truck. I packed that truck with a friend Friday night in the pouring rain, only to realize that we still couldn't fit everything in. So, if you are counting, that is 2 UHauls that are now full, and we still have stuff. So, Friday night we drove over to our new house (that we didn't have keys to yet) and parked both trucks in front just in case the roads froze over that night. I went over to the house Saturday morning and unloaded the smaller truck with 2 friends, then 2 of  us went back to the house while my other friend agreed to wait there for others to show up, and wait for our bed to be delivered. It took us longer at the old house on the 3rd truck load than we thought. By the time we had emptied it, all of our friends had already unloaded the big truck back at the new house. Needless to say, the house was a disaster area. There was/is stuff everywhere. We worked all day yesterday, and made a dent in the chaos. We moved furniture where it goes, and more or less set up Hobs' room. The Dish guy came yesterday, so at least we have TV to watch. Our mattress won't be delivered until Friday, so until then we are sleeping in a guest bedroom. Oh well. It is times like this when you realize how truly blessed you are. I can't imagine having to move all of this without the help of our church friends. They unloaded our entire truck by themselves, without us even being there. So, needless to say, we are VERY thankful to/for them. Anyway, that is about it for now. I put a few pics of the disaster area that is our new house up, they are HERE. Enjoy.

 

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1-16-07: Good morning to the masses of people who read this. I don't have long, so this will have to be brief. To say the least, I hate moving. All the packing, the mess, the boxes, everything about it is terrible (everything but the fact that we get to move back to Allen). Anyway, almost all of our possessions are boxed up and sitting downstairs. We are eating pizza on paper plates on a fairly regular basis these days. We are really excited about the move this weekend, but we know it may get a little stressful. Everyone say a little prayer that closing goes as planned on both homes, and that the weather is good.

Anyway, we went and bought a mattress yesterday to go with our new bed. As dorky as it is, we are really excited about that. We got a sleep number bed, so we are hoping the mattress is as great at home as it was in the store.

So, that is about it for now. Hobs has a double ear infection again, so we made one of our bi-weekly trips to the Dr. yesterday. We have to see an ENT in 2 weeks to make sure the fluid is not building up in there. We are praying hard that we won't need tubes put in.

I start class again tonight, so that is something else that is a little stressful. Oh well, things will be ok. That's it. Thanks for reading, have a good day. This time next week we hope to be all moved.

 

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1-9-07: Well, good morning, and happy New Year. I admit I have really fallen down on the updates the past month. So much has been going on, and I just haven’t really been able to get around to it. I don’t even know really where to start. We went to Vegas, of course, then came home for a couple days. On the Thursday before Christmas, we went to Waco to spend some time with Hollie’s dad and to see Hollie Grandma. While we were there, we got a call from our realtor that someone had looked at our house, and was very interested in making an offer, but they wanted to think about it over Christmas.

Anyway, we came home that Saturday, and met Brett and Amy (who had come in from Florida) for dinner. We stayed up late that night talking with them, then I had to leave early the next morning to take Mike and Katie to the airport. I got back, then we took Hobs to the mall before church to get in line early to get his picture with Santa. We got it done, then went to church. After church, we returned to the mall with all of the nieces and nephews from Hollie’s side and got all of their pics done with Santa. We then went to Penny’s for lunch, and hung out there for the rest of the day, and opened presents that night. We went home that evening so Santa could come for Hobs. Christmas morning was great. Hobs loved all of his stuff, and had a great time opening everything. All in all, Christmas was awesome. We had a really good time.

Anyway, we took down all of our Christmas stuff the day after to get the house ready for those people to return and look at it. That Thursday they came back, and told our realtor that they were going to prepare an offer, and let us know the next day. We spent the day with our realtor looking for houses just in case. We didn’t find anything too exciting. My parents came into town that next day to have Christmas with us, and to see Hobs. When they got there, we received the call from our realtor with their offer. They wanted us out on the 12^th of January, but we ended up talking them into giving us another week. So, we came to an agreement, and sold the house.

We went to dinner that night (since it was Hollie’s b-day) with my parents, Hollie’s mom, brother, and Linda. We had a really great time with everyone.

Anyway, back to the house. Since we had come to an agreement to be out the 19^th, we really needed to decide what we were going to do about living arrangements. We decided that unless we found the house that we absolutely loved, we were probably going to throw all of our stuff into storage and live with Penny for a couple weeks while we finished looking. Anyway, our realtor emailed us on New Year’s even and told us that she had lined up some more houses for us to look at after church. Since we were planning on having company over that night (a progressive dinner with friends) Hollie elected to stay home, and I went alone with the video camera. The first house we looked at was in Allen, and immediately, I knew Hollie would love it. We did look at a few more, but none were as great as the one in Allen. It had everything that we were looking for. Anyway, we went and had dinner with friends that night for New Year’s, then began packing the house Monday. Our realtor had made us another appointment Tuesday (the 2^nd) to look at that house again with Hollie. Well, Hollie walked in and immediately loved it. We looked at it 2 times that day, and once the next day. I timed my drive from work to that house on Wednesday, and it looked like it would really cut back on my drive time. The next morning (last Thursday) I got up early, and decided to drive to Allen about 6:15 that morning to time my drive TO work from that house. Well, it was raining and cold, so I figured I would get a “worse case scenario” of what the drive time would be. Little did I know. Anyway, I was sitting at a light on my way to the house when I was rear-ended. We pulled into a parking lot, and I got her insurance card, only to notice it was expired. I told her (still being very polite at this point) that I was going to call the police. She began to sob and begged me not to. She then called her insurance company and went ahead and filed the claim. I talked with the person from her company, and got all the info. At this point, I decided to call Hollie and tell her what had happened. Hollie was the voice of reason, and told me that I had to call the cops. So I did. When I told the lady that I called the police, she immediately began screaming at me “why did you do that, do you think I am a liar?” I assured her that I was just trying to protect myself. At this point, this increasingly irrational maniac decided she had enough of this, and opted to leave. She hopped in her car, threw it in park, and pulled out. I, however, was going to have none of this. I had not stood in the rain for an hour freezing my tail off only to have smokey the rear-ending bandit take off before the police showed up. I stepped in front of her car, and in a slightly raised tone of voice shouted “where do you think you’re going?” She told me to get out of the way, that she was late to work, and had to be there since she was a nurse. I kindly pointed out to her, in a very firm voice, that the police were on the way, and if she left I would report it as a hit and run and she would go to jail. I then took down her license plate number right there in front of her to make sure she saw me do it. I realize that she probably was in no danger of incarceration, and it probably was not a hit and run, but she believed me, and angrily returned to her parking space, where I stood near by making sure she did not leave. The cop got there and sorted things out for us. She didn’t even get a ticket.

Anyway, back to the house. We looked at the house one more time, and decided to make an offer. Over the next couple of days we haggled with the guy about the house, and finally came to an agreement. So, we are officially moving back to Allen. It is a really great neighborhood, and we are really excited to be back in the middle of things, close to church, friends, and Wal-Mart. We thought we would like living so far out, but we were wrong. Oh well, you live and you learn.

Anyway, we are now in the messy stage of moving, were most of your possessions are boxed up, but there is still a ton of junk lying around. There always seems to be an inordinate amount of pennies just lying in the floor when you move. I don’t know why, but loose change has a way of showing up everywhere when you are boxing things up.

So, we close on BOTH houses (a little stressful) next Friday. Hopefully funding will go through and everything will run smoothly. I would put a pic of the new house up, but I don’t want to jinx things. So, sorry for the lengthy update, but a lot has happened. I put the Christmas pics HERE. Enjoy.