The End of an Era

Wednesday Morning...

Loaded up and ready for Travel.
We closed on the house and prepared for the movers.

Thursday Morning...

Last stop at Best Donuts.
Sugar is the breakfast of champions.

I packed all these boxes with just these two fingers!









Not a thing left unpacked.
(No thanks to us. All professionally done. Well except for the six truckloads of boxes that we brought over from storage. I totally packed those!)

Nowhere to sit, all the furniture is wrapped.

Friday morning...

The big guns arrive. Loaded from 9:30 in the morning until about 7:30 in the evening, while we sat out in the front yard, trying to stay out of the way.

*Sniff*

Good-bye trees.

Good-bye Rippling Hollow!

We Love You!

SHHH, They didn't notice....

Happy Easter! I have never planned less for any holiday that requires I buy treats for my kids. We went last night to Walmart at 9:00 and believe it or not, we were not alone. The older boys didn't even have baskets or buckets because everything is packed in Houston. I had bought the Little's baskets last weekend because they both had Easter Egg hunts at school. We did a little Egg Hunt and then we did one treasure hunt for the Big's and one for the Little's that ended in a double feature of The Bee Movie and Enchanted. That distracted everyone from the fact that we did not dye one egg. Nope, not one... it was nice. I'll admit, I love to decorate an egg, in fact last year I bought enough eggs so that each of us could decorate a dozen. Trust me, nobody needs to have that many boiled eggs around, unless your having a huge picnic afterward.

Here's to More Chocolate!!!

Momma's Got a Brand New Slab...

Charlie and John got up and were out at the "dirt" by 6:00 a.m. and they had started without them.



It took about 20 truckloads of concrete and five hours.

Charlie called me and I rolled out of bed at 6:30 so I could get it all on video tape. Yes folks, there is taped footage. Consider yourself lucky that it's not a digital video camera and that I am not tech-savy!

The ground is so saturated that the trucks completely demolished the road, despite their best efforts at keeping it protected.

Monday they are dropping off the framing lumber!!!! Wednesday Charlie and I go to Houston to close on the sale of our house there, and then the movers are meeting us there on Thursday to pack all our stuff and put it in storage. It's going to be a busy week!

Write the Caption...

Send me a caption, then I'll tell you the story behind the picture.

* Oh you guys are great!

Jeff you are exactly right, but you got the driver wrong! Charlie is King of the Loop de Loops, I am Queen of cleaning up the results.

Annie, I hope you get the chance to come to Texas sometime after I get this house built! I need to take you to First Monday where you can buy ANYTHING to eat - "On a Stick" and I will make sure Ace does not Judo chop your ass!

Since we've done all this traveling back and forth to Houston, we can't get in the car without somebody getting carsick. My guts are made of steel, and even I've been getting quesy when we start down the road. This was just a short little hop over to Tyler to look at some kitchen appliances, Ace has on his Sea-Bands accupressure wrist-bands, and we finally had to give him some dramamine. He fell asleep with his "air-sick" bag on his lap.

We Pause for Spring Break...

To catch you up...

this is what the plumbers were up too. That's the garden tub there on the left.





Woops! Turns out the plumbers ran over one of the shower stub- ins.

That might have to be addressed...





Looking good! Beams are dug and poly wrapped...








You're looking into the garage all the way through to the end of the house.







I took some really bad pictures today, because this is the sexiest shot, but you can hardly see the red cables.
It rained really hard last night, so although they tried to pump the water out of the beams it's still pretty soggy.





Will we have concrete tomorrow or won't we?

It Has That NEW HOUSE SMELL !!

Mom and I went out for my daily drive to the dirt, we crested the hill and this is what I saw...


THE PLUMBERS WERE THERE!

THE PLUMBERS WERE THERE!

THE PLUMBERS WERE THERE!

I almost wet my pants.

They almost had excitement all over them.*

I'm still pretty stoked, in case you can't tell.

So, as we're driving down to the corner, I rolled down my window to get into picture taking position and that's when the smell hit us. "What's that smell?", she asked me. "I'm sure it's cows in the pasture back there, the wind must be blowing in this direction." "No, I don't think so.", she answered. And guess what, she was right. They put poop dirt on my pad. You heard me.

That didn't dampen my spirits. Besides, if there was any possibility of moisture coming down, I have over 3000 sq feet of poly to keep me from getting wet.

Yes honey, this is the part where I tell everybody that you were right. How could I ever doubt you? When have you ever been wrong?

You're the man, honey.

You da man!

What's your strategy about poop dirt?

*Editors note: This is in reference to an Arthur story I read to my kids.

SERENITY NOW!

Like a lot of people on the planet, according to Oprah, I'm reading Ekhart Tolle's "A New Earth". When I started reading the book I thought "Me and Enlightenment, we're like this...."

I mean, people who cut me off in traffic never inspire me to road rage, I'm really quiet in the morning, and I often find beauty and majesty when I ponder trees, although I guess if I'm being truthful, I do tend to think of them as "trees". So I signed up for the online class, filled out my first workbook pages and watched the class. Then two things happened that tripped me on my spiritual journey.

First, Charlie decided that we should go out to the dirt and cover the "pad" with poly so that when the rain started again this week, the pad would be protected and they could get on with the work at hand. That doesn't surprise me about Charlie, because he's impatient. He obviously has so much farther to go on his spiritual journey than I do. But because in my own personal Handbook to Happiness, one of my many mantras is "Charlie's always right.", I loaded the boys in the suburban with him, a hammer and my rainboots and off we went to roll out three gigantic rolls of plastic wrap over the dirt so it wouldn't get wet. The problem for me came after we started taping the first two rolls of plastic wrap together and a thought occured to me that the builder is gonna drive out here tomorrow, see this gigantic 3000 sq. ft. pad covered in poly and say "What the %$#@!" Who in the hell is building this house anyway, you or me?" And I started to panic. Despite my own personal mantra, I started to question the plan outloud.

"You don't think this is gonna make Calvin really mad?"

"No. Why would it?"

"Well, he's gotta have somebody come and take all this off and then what's he gonna do with it?"

"He can call me, I'll take it off. Hell, I'll throw it away for him."

"Do you think it would have been better to call first?"

"Do you want me to call?"

"Well, I wish you had called first."

"Do you want me to call now?"

"No. Don't you think he's gonna be kind of mad at us?"

"No, why would he?"

He just can't go there. He's not a put yourself in somebody else's shoes kinda guy. I'm a bend over backwards so your not mad at me kind of girl. My ego cares what you think of me. So much so that I didn't sleep a wink last night. Even though it rained during the night, which technically makes Charlie right, I only felt marginal relief.

Then the second thing, was that I got into the car with my "always right" husband and am currently riding 85 miles an hour in the pouring rain on the way to Houston to have a follow-up foot exray and to interview moving companies for the big day. I'm having a big problem being "present" and letting my current situation be what it is. All I can think about is the moment, about a half hour from now, when I get to hike my hiney out of this red Altima bobsled. So much for living in the present. Which explains why I'm sitting in the passenger seat telling you about my past and wishing for the future. I suppose I could dig my book out of the floorboard and reread the first chapter. The first step to enlightment is awareness afterall.

Since there is no news about the house, whatsoever. I'll tell you a story about a dress.

We are going to a wedding for my neice in June. It's a beach wedding in Florida. Sounds like fun right? Acutally we can't wait, except for the fact that I've gained about 15 pounds since we've moved in with Mom. So that has taken some of the shine off shopping for the wedding. But even though I've gained the weight, I was still holding out hope that it wouldn't show.

I lost all hope in the Coldwater Creek store in Tyler last week.

I had my eye on this little number..

But evidently they don't have all the dresses in the stores that they offer in the catalog, so when I went to try it on they didn't have it. So I looked for something that had a simialr fit, so I would no what size I wear. So what I found and tried on..

was this...

And after I tried it on, I realized that I look like Nathan Lane in the Birdcage. It's not good. Can a person wear black to a beach wedding?

No?

Are you sure?

Houston...WE HAVE A CONTRACT!

We are


Jump...

Jump....

Jumping for JOY!!!

After much fretting, worrying and wringing of hands, we have a contract! We should be closing sometime around the 26th. Well, as long as everything goes well with the inspector. Doh! something else to worry about..but for today we feel like...

THE KING OF THE WORLD!

or at least king of the dirt pile...

I smell change in the air ...

What's that I see on the horizon?

Is it?

Could it be?

YES!

Ladies and Gentlemen, work may NOW COMMENCE! The facilites have arrived!

This is a view from the very back corner of our lot. Great view huh?

Last week we were waiting on the soils report to come in. Charlie is having his company engineer the slab. We finally got the report and then the engineer at Charlie's company called him and said that he couldn't tell if the Geo tech was using the 1996 protocol or the 2000 protocol and depending on whether .........

What I heard was "Bill doesn't like the soils report and doesn't want to do it."

That was about the time steam started shooting out my ears. I don't know if you can make this long story short, but luckily Charlie knows a "guy". And by Friday evening we had a drawing of an engineered slab.

Then "Voila!" Saturday morning, Port-A-Potty!

Just in case you thought I was joking...

Real live Tiger cubs! Can you beleive that? I really didn't believe it myself when they brought home the flyers. Then I wasn't sure whether to let them do it or not. What if nobody else let their kids take a picture with the tiger? Or worse, what if every kid in class had their picture taken with the tigers and mine didn't? (You loose a lot of good information by sitting in your car in the carpool lane instead of chatting at the doorway.)

AND...I have a very exciting new update to share. It will have to be tomorrow though, because when we went to visit the dirt today, I forgot to take my camera!

Stay tuned ....

House Building 101

Our lot.

Me and my Mini-contractor after the dirt was delivered.



Me and my Mini-contractor after the dirt was smooshed.
(Your intuition is right, if you keep tuning in you might learn something really technical about house building.)





My Mini-contractor makes a lighting suggestion.

We Lobby for our cause over pasta.

Mr. Moneybags and his overly hammy co-hort.

Blog? Do I have a Blog?

Hadn't written a thing in so long, I couldn't remember my password...

We've been at Mom's all this time. Her computer connection is SOOOO SLOOOOWW.
How slow is it?
I'm glad you asked.
It's so slow that by the time I get logged on to the internet, I can't remember what I signed on to do. I get temporary amnesia anytime I'm sitting in front of the dang thing. Charlie brings his laptop home at night, but by then I'm too tired to think.

I'm too tired to think because it takes a lot of damn energy to sit around the house and not have a damn thing to do and not your own house to do it in. There I said it.

No. We still don't have a house.
Nope. Not even a frame.
Uh-un, not even a foundation.
Ace and I still go out every couple of days to look at the dirt.
The dirt's still there.

We actually closed on the construction loan last Wednesday. We finalized the lighting plan and I changed my mind about brick three times. I've bought all my plumbing fixtures on ebay. (Don't tell my builder, I'm gonna spring that one on him at just the right moment. That moment being when he tells me something else I want is gonna cost me more money. "Oh no it won't! Because here's your plumbing fixtures. So move that money over to the appliance package! Bitch!)
I'll be blogging in the "stream of consiousness" style until my brain returns sometime this summer, after I move into my house.
I've been to Lowe's and am marking out my plan to undercut him on the lighting package as well. Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, he gave me two thousand bucks for my appliances. What am I supposed to do with that? He's definitely leaving me with too much time on my hands.

I find myself living in the twilight zone when it comes to the kids schools. The twilight zone where John is on the A-B honor roll and Peaches and Melee' are having their portraits made with live Tiger cubs. And where I spend an hour and a half of every day dropping off or sitting in the carpool lanes. There is a 5 minute window in the morning that if you are out the door before...smooth sailing, 5 minutes later and you're screwed. I have to go an entirely different way or risk having to sit through the stop light 5 times before I can proceed to the bottle neck at the elementary which I have to pass by in order to get John to Junior High first, then turn back around and return to the cluster ** that is the elementary school construction zone. And that is with my mother taking Melee' to the Intermediate. Me and my hoity toity suburban are a significant contributing factor to the problem of global warming. And my hoity toity suburban is staying filthy all the time because I live in the country where there's dirt everywhere, and even if you took the car to the car wash, it wouldn't matter anyway because the first county road you turn down (and they're ALL county roads) is going to get red dirt all over the car anyway. Plus we're making special trips out weekly to VISIT the dirt, and get the dirt on our shoes, and track it back into my white and tan truck, and hopefully it all falls off there instead of waiting to come off when we get home to mothers.

We're in Houston this weekend for Zoe's birthday party. We thought we'd have a nice relaxing weekend in our very own space. Till I checked the email and saw we have a showing tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. and an open house Sunday afternoon. Everybody keep your fingers crossed for a full price offer. Momma needs a new pair of matching stainless ovens.

All I Want for Christmas is a Bathroom Door that Locks

Got to Canton on Wednesday. Enrolled the kids on Thursday. On Friday had to get Melee' a haircut at the barber shop, because evidently, the Principal at the Intermediate school doesn't recognize a rockstar/flag football quarterback/baseball player/motocross legend in the making when she sees one. On the plus side, haircuts at the local barber shop are only nine bucks and take over forty-five minutes, so we got our money's worth.

We met Peach's new teacher and if you can even believe it, she's our new neighbor. (Or will be once our house is built.) I am SO relieved and excited! Melee's teacher looks fresh out of college, so I look for him to have a great year! John's school handed me his paperwork and then gave me the big brush off. Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Our builder staked out the house on the lot we thought we were going to choose. But the shape of the lot is narrow at the front and the house is so wide that when he scooted the house back to fit it on the lot, the neighborhood playground was a little bit in front of the left side of the house. So we are going back down to the other corner lot that we were looking at in the beginning and it looks like a much better fit. Hopefully our paperwork will be complete and dirt work will get started after January 1st. And maybe I will have the right kind of cord to connect my phone and download a picture or two.

Seven of us and a dog living in my Mom's house for the next four (to six) months ought to be interesting. The dog has already gotten out of the backyard more in the last three days than she has in her whole career with our family. We've put two runners in her carpet, I spilled chili on the new kitchen rug, and we've stopped up the kitchen sink once. We may need someplace to hangout right around Spring Break, or maybe by MLK.