January 2010

WOW! I think it's time I clean the cob webs off of this blog. I have some friends that post pictures of the week on their blogs and I always enjoy scanning through those. So, just to get started, I am going to give a review of all of January.

Boy, was it a month! Just to catch you up to speed, we are building a house in Mustang but we couldn't start the building process until our house sold first. We sold our house 3 days before Christmas. I spent the rest of 2009 (the last week of it, anyway) searching for a rental house. I wanted to stay close to their school because I didn't want them to change schools mid-year. We found one on the south side of OKC. The first 2 weeks of January were spent with various inspections and packing as much as I could (without packing up the things I'll need before we move). The inspection went really well. I was told that was the best inspection he has had in a long time. But, the only problem we had was our electrical box was a "Federal Pacific" which was discontinued about 30 years ago because of fire problems. Insurance companies are no longer insuring houses that contain these electrical panels so our buyer was not able to obtain homeowners insurance unless it was replace. Well, we had a $750 repair cap written into our contract with her so we said we would replace it. It ended up costing more than the cap so we split the difference with the buyer. But, it was just very stressful in the meantime with inspections, appraiser, funds, repairs, coordinating the move, utilities, replacing carpet in one bedroom, replacing kitchen floor, painting, moving... all within a 2 week time frame. OK, I'm getting myself all worked up again just typing about it. :) Moving on...

So, we are now in our rental house until June 30th. Our home is expected to be completed around end of May. However, things never go as planned so I'm expecting it to be prolonged to mid-June. That works out perfect for us... as long as we can close by June 30th to get the $6500 tax credit then I'm happy. :)

Now, for some pictures.

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January 1st, 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

My niece, Anna, & nephew, Jakob, spent New Years Eve with us. We played games until midnight then went outside to bang on pots/pans and lit up the night with sparklers.

All 4 kids decided to turn Kaleb & Kameron's bunk beds into a club house. Blankets were draped, pillows stacked, tables brought in from other rooms in order to make it all happen.

 

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January 5, 2010

  So, as we are preparing the house for closing and preparing to move, our heater decides to give us problems. Ugh! After stressing out about it and then Bryan troubleshooting the problem over the phone with my friend Dave in Michigan (he's a heat/air guy), it was decided that a tech will need to be called out because parts were probably needed. The tech arrived about noon the next day (the house was quite chilly by then)... $350 later our heater was fixed!

 

 

 

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January 14, 2010

Also, while all of this selling/moving was going on, we had to get our selections made for the house we are building. We had a deadline to get the brick and interior colors & fixtures picked out so that we could get on the schedule for ground breaking in order to meet our June 30th deadline.  The decision was a bit overwhelming (so many choices!). This picture shows a sample of items that we chose. We are getting SO excited!

 

 

 

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January 23, 2010

I had a great video of Kameron playing Star Wars on the Wii... but I am having uploading issues. Hopefully I can get it on here soon. It's funny to watch.

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January 29, 2010

We had another winter storm come through. This is very unusual for Oklahoma... record-breaking 14" on Christmas Eve and this time around it is 1/2" of ice followed by about 4" of snow. The weathermen are talking about another smaller storm again later this week. We'll see how it pans out. But, still very unusual for us to have this much winter activity. Of course, the boys love it! They got out of school Thursday & Friday and went through many pairs of socks while playing in the snow. Bella loves the snow.

 

 

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January 30, 2010

  Jake & Anna came over again today and all 4 enjoyed a game of Twister. Kameron spun the wheel and Kaleb sat on the couch and laughed at them. I'm not sure who won but they had alot of fun!

 

 

 

 

 

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Congrats if you made it this far! I've got it on my todo list to update my blog more so keep checking back. I won't make any promises, though. *wink*