the big move

I only wish I was talking about our big move, but I'm not. Today is the day that the Dendy family finally moved into their beautiful new house. I am so excited for them but today was a LONG day. I actually didn't do any kind of heavy lifting at all, except for maybe carrying Grace around for a bit, but I'm still tired for some reason. The house is still amazing, even though things are completely out of sorts and probably will be for a little while. I know Jennie is glad to finally be done with the apartment life, I know I am!

Forest and I decided to go see Prince Caspian tonight and took McKay and Alexa with us. It was very excellent. I haven't read the book in many many years (and I want to, but my copies of the Chronicles of Narnia are packed away!) but I am pretty sure the movie was almost spot on. There are a few changes, but minor ones. After the slaughtering of my 2nd favorite fiction novels (Harry Potter) it is a refreshing change to see them keep these fantastic books in tact. I think C.S. Lewis would be proud. After we got home, I found out Grace had been dead asleep for a while. She had a very big day too. I think all of this confuses her, she was very crabby part of the day but giddy in other parts.

I am going to get some sleep, we've got another big day ahead of us tomorrow as well!

binding my time...

It feels like the last two weeks have CRAWLED by. We closed on our house on April 30th so we are officially home owners. The only problem is that we still have 4 1/2 weeks until we can move in. I have been going crazy with spending, buying all sorts of things. As pointed out in my previous post, my couches are nested in my living room, but now they are covered with all sorts of new things. I bought a new mattress, which is also sitting in my living room in a box. It's a memory foam mattress so it's pretty tightly wrapped up and "small" but is still taking up room. Our spare bedroom looks like a storage unit and it's actually very organized, for once. We have our washer and dryer ordered and they are being delivered and installed on June 16th. I'm ready to go, so I'll sit here and wait until June 15th...

I have my schedule figured out for this entire year (through May 2009!). It's going to be a busy one too. Grace is going to school full time next year so I had to figure out how to pack in these extra 6 hours a week. I am going to be working insane hours in the summer (in one 15-day span I am working 118 hours!) and then 31 hours a week during the school year. Forest's schedule is changing for 6 weeks in June and July so he'll be back to working Mondays. He's not all that happy about it because he'll be forced to sit in traffic everyday and with these wicked insane gas prices we don't want him wasting any of that precious gas! Thankfully it's only for 6 weeks (or so they say, we'll see). Once school starts in August, I'll come over to the Dendy's at 6:45 am, help Grace get ready and then take the girls to school. I'll pick them up afterwards and work until 8. It's almost the schedule I have now, but slightly earlier. Not a problem though, I need an excuse to get out of bed in the morning or I never will.

For some reason I'm losing weight. I'm not complaining, it's good news for me, but I'd love to know what I'm doing that is causing this. I bought a book about PCOS and a meal plan that I should be eating. I have been reading through the book and am going to jump into this when we move. I'm going to stop eating certain things now and hopefully by the middle of June I'll be prepared to take this step. I am overall pretty healthy for being the size I am, but it's time to deal with this before problems start appearing. It's going to be a really tough road, but I think with the support of Forest and my friends I'll make it through the other end. I had noticed my pants were starting to look huge on me so I weighed myself the other night. I've lost 25 pounds since I looked at the scale which was probably 2 months ago. I was carrying Grace around yesterday and I had my pants nearly fall off! I have jeans that usually feel very tight when you first put them on but then stretch out in a few minutes to the right fit. I put them on today and they were too big. Then they stretched out a bit as well. I had to wear a belt to even keep them on. I am sad because I love these jeans (I have three pairs that are identical) but feel great that I'm actually losing weight! Hopefully I'll be buying new jeans soon!

a little of this a little of that

The past few days have been good. We can pretty much start breathing normally until we sign our lives away next week. Our appraisal came in at just what we needed it to and everything is good to go, so far. We are going to close on Tuesday. I am excited to get this over with but even more excited to move in! Too bad that won't be for a little while.

Speaking of houses, Jennie and Dal's house is done and they are going to close on Monday! It's such a fantastic house, I hope Gracie enjoys it and it can be a safe place for her. Both Jennie and I are so done with this apartment nonsense, we want to move in as soon as possible!

Grace's MDCP (Medically Dependent Children's Program, the program that pays for me to care for her) contract was renewed and was approved to receive 1993 hours of respite care this year over last year's 1560. That works out to about 36 hours a week. When Grace goes to school next year full time, I can only work about 30 hours a week so during the summer and vacations I am going to be glued to the Dendy family. At least I'll have a nice second home to go to! I got a raise a few weeks ago so I am overall going to be making more money this summer. Also, at the end of May I get my yearly bonus which we found out is going to be at least $400 more than they had thought. That is a very happy surprise for us!

Last night we bought a couch and a love seat from Christi Taylor, who is a newer sister in our ward. They are very nice couches, I think we will enjoy them very much. I was planning on buying brand-new couches but these are so much nicer than anything we were looking at and at the fraction of the price. She kept them in immaculate condition considering she has 4 young girls! Right now they are in our front room, looking kind of out of place! The love seat is nestled into the sofa. It's only for a few more weeks and then we can actually enjoy them!

What else is going on? I guess that covers it. We are really thankful for everything that we have been given so far this last year. It has been such an eye-opening fantastic year. About 11 months ago Jennie asked me to be Grace's caregiver and I had no idea that by doing this for her Forest and I would be able to buy our own house in less than a year! We're so blessed.

it ours!

My reaction to this should have been posted yesterday, but we were so busy that it completely slipped my mind. On April 29th we will officially be home owners! Our loan was finally totally approved yesterday. After I got off the phone with Karmen, I was basically squeaking to Grace and I said "Gracie, we got it, we got it!" and she got so super excited it just made me laugh. She makes the sad times better and the happy times EVEN better. I can't believe that we are so lucky. It's amazing. I just wanted to let you all know that. I've got to get up early tomorrow, so I'm off to bed! Night!

hamster heaven

I need to update more than once a week! When I don't, my posts are a million miles long. I'll try to keep this one short, I promise.

I'm pretty sure Grace said Mama the other day. We have been working with her to say it and she will, but not meaningfully. I had just fed her and turned around to clean up her bowl and she peeps up and says "Mama?" like it was a question. I turned around and said "Did you just say Mama, Grace?". She got so happy and scooted over to me and was patting my knee! I said, "Can you say Mama again?" and she kept patting my leg. I went "Ohhh, I'm not Mama!" and she just laughed. It was so darn cute. I wish she would do it again. If she could say Mama when she wanted Jennie instead of screaming at her it would make our lives so much easier!

I came home from Jennie's on Saturday and Forest said "I have some sad news for you" and I said "Oh, please don't tell me that Baby died." Well, she had. How strange is it for both of our hamsters to die exactly a week apart? I held Baby Saturday morning and she was acting totally fine. Neither of them looked sick before they died. We weren't planning on getting another one, but decided to anyway. The Dendy girls were over here yesterday and I figured they would be sad hearing about Baby's death, but I think the new hamster made up for that. I let them help us name it and the name we all agreed upon was Madison, or Matty for short. She is a big ball of fluff and so cute!

Our house is clean, for once. Pretty much everything is packed that can be packed, so I'm not sure what to do on my day off. I finally bought a pair of Crocs on Saturday and I LOVE them. I walked around in them all day yesterday and my feet felt like they were on air. I had no idea my feet could feel so comfortable. I get driven nuts by tennis shoes because I feel like my feet are suffocating and flip-flops don't give me any support. Crocs are definitely a happen medium. I'm going to buy a bunch of different colors eventually, hopefully I can get them on sale like I did on Saturday. I just love them! Now that I have great comfy shoes, maybe I'll just walk around outside all day before the dreaded heat and humidity comes...

our first piece of new furniture

Ok, so it's not the first piece of furniture we've ever gotten new, but it certainly is the nicest. And it's for our new house. So it's the first piece of new furniture for the new house. Exciting!

We started off our day going to see Karmen down in Keller and officially signed our loan application and got that all taken care of. We headed over to Sharel's so Forest could restore her files for her. It's nice that he can help someone out with their computer needs, hopefully she spreads the word (hint hint) because we've heard too many times where someone had been taken advantage of by the guys down at Geek Squad. Those guys aren't geeks, Forest is, trust me!

So, after that we went to our bank down in Grapevine and decided to check out The Dump, just to see what types of deals we could potentially get once we move in. Too bad we didn't know that they are CLOSED on Mondays! They are only open on the weekends. Good to know for the future! We headed over to Fry's where we got a pair of Polk Audio (i.e. rather good) speakers for 75% off their price. We weren't planning on this, but we did need to get some new ones when we moved in and who can resist 75% off for fantastic speakers? I love Fry's so very much. So, while we were down in that area I figured we could check out some of the selection at the furniture stores by Grapevine Mills. We went to Ashley first, just to see what they had. We were given a coupon for 50% off the list price and figured if we found something we REALLY wanted, we could just defer payments and have them deliver it once we moved in. We ended up finding a very awesome entertainment center. It's exactly the right size, the price was fantastic and it's just beautiful. I am so glad we checked it out because we really lucked out going in there. Our order is on layaway and we can just pay it off once we close and go pick it up once we move in. I didn't want to buy anything like couches or chairs yet and I knew that the entertainment center was something that we could get pretty much whenever and I knew it was going to fit. I can't wait to get it into our new house...just counting down the days until we close!

I only wish my TV were that big...

untitled too

I had a very silly emotional moment yesterday. I was cleaning up in our spare bedroom (which is full of Dell boxes right now!) and I went to feed my two hamsters. I looked at Baby, the oldest, and she just looked really weird. She was laying funny and I thought "oh, please don't be dead!". She wasn't, she got right up when I tapped on her cage and looked at me with great annoyance. I fed her and moved down to Claire, who was also asleep. She was laying even more oddly and her eyes were partially open. I tapped on the cage and she didn't move. Our poor little Claire was gone. I kind of broke down a little bit and started crying! I know it's just a hamster, but they are like our little babies! When we got Claire, she was a blaze of gray fur. She was the fastest hamster I've ever seen, when she ran on her wheel we probably could have powered something off of it. Baby is also almost a year older than Claire is. They are two different types of hamsters, so perhaps Claire wasn't meant to live any longer than she did.

In other news, we had the inspection on the house and things are still going good. There were some cracked bricks on the west end of the house, but the inspector doesn't think they are from any foundation problems. No one will ever see the west end of the house, but just to be sure we are having a foundation expert come to look at it tomorrow. Also tomorrow, we are going to see Karmen to get the loan offically underway. I'm still a little nervous about this, but we're just giving them the information to verify what we've already told them. I'm didn't lie, so I can't imagine why we would have any issues!

I finally got my raise! It was supposed to take effect in September so on this next paycheck I am getting there will be all of the back-pay from then. It worked out for me because now that I know we're buying a house, it was like a little unintentional savings plan. I just love my job and getting paid more to do it is great. Every once in a while when things are "bad" (things most of you do for nothing, like very dirty diapers) I laugh and say that I'm really earning my money. There has not been a single day where Grace hasn't made me laugh from my very core. Next year when Grace goes to school full time, I'm going to have someway to occupy my day because I won't be working until 3! I'm thinking about going back to school and getting some sort of degree. I may never use it, but having one is something I've always wanted. We'll see! We've got a big few months ahead of us!