February 21, 2010

We are now settled into this rent house for the time being. We met with our builder this last week for our preconstruction meeting to make sure that the plans that the builder received are the same plans that we signed off on. Everything was A-OK. The ground on our lot has been “cut” but concrete hasn’t been poured, yet, because of all of the wet weather. We get a few days of good weather in between wet storms but its not enough to dry the ground up. So, we are hoping it will be this coming week.

A few years ago, when both boys started going to school all day, I decided to work part-time instead of full-time. I just couldn’t see myself working those extra hours and paying the extra money for just a few hours of before/after school child care. When crunching the numbers, I ended up with more money at the end of the month by working part-time without childcare costs than I would have full-time with that expense. Well, starting this month, I am now working full-time again. BUT, I still get to take the boys to/from school. The majority of my working hours are at my home office and a few days a week I spend a couple of hours at the Global Software office for meetings & such. I LOVE it!!! I get up & take the boys to school, work for a couple of hours at home, workout, shower, work for a couple more hours (at home or go to the office), pickup the boys from school, evening activities, then I work for a little bit longer after they go to bed. I get MORE work done from home than I do at the office! I still get the flexibility to do what I need to do as a mom and also keep up with my professional skills. It’s the best of both worlds!

The company I work for is based out of Canada and I handle the accounting for one of their divisions, Global Software, here in Oklahoma City. But, I have added on the accounting for another one of their divisions that is based in Texas. I really do enjoy it.

Now time for some pictures:

January 30, 2010

Kaleb was a little camera happy this day and went around the house taking various pictures. He snagged this one of myself & Kameron, my little lovey-dovey boy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 6, 2010

After having one bathroom in the house for the last 9 years, we FINALLY have a 2nd bathroom in this rent house and the boys still insist on using our bathroom! They are combing their hair for their basketball game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 6, 2010

Kameron getting his “guard on” at his basketball game… HANDS UP, KAMERON!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 13, 2010

Kaleb getting his “shot on”. TWO!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 19, 2010

It’s Friday night & I let the boys stay up late. The house got really quiet and I came into the living room to check on them and this is what I found… they wore themselves out!

 

 

 

 

 

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February 20, 2010

My neice, Anna, plays on a competitive fastpitch softball team. They had a fundraiser Spaghetti Dinner where over 100 people came to show their support. Some of the men of the team (dads, uncles, cousins, friends, etc) dressed up as women and had a “talent show”. It was HILLARIOUS! The “woman” with the most money in “her” bag at the end of the evening won the Softball Crown. (faces have been blurred for humility reasons, ha!) On the way home, Kameron says “Mom, those were really men, right? Then, how did they have boobies?” I was laughing too hard to explain it to him!

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*

Are you superstitious?

I'm not. But it REALLY sucks when something happens on a day like Friday the 13th!

We decided to have our Valentine's dinner out last night instead of tonight hoping that we could beat some of the crowd. We got to the restaurant at 7:30 and walked out at 8:40pm. When we came out, Bryan saw that the passenger windshield of his car had been smashed in and my PURSE was STOLEN! My mind immediately switched into "damage control" gear and I grabbed Bryan's wallet and started getting out credit cards & debit card to call. Bryan wanted to call the police first but I was more concerned with stopping the thieves in their tracks and not letting them have our money! Within 15 minutes I had all 4 cards cancelled and my bank account noted for extra security with all transactions. Luckily, I didn't have any checks in my purse so I don't think they would have access directly to my bank account. But, better safe than sorry.

During this time, I realize that my car & house keys were in my purse (along with my driver's license so they know where we live) so we quickly cleared the glass out of the car & raced home hoping to find our home still in peace. Home was fine. During our drive home, Bryan was on the phone with the police to file a report. Something minor like vehicle vandalism and a stolen purse is just done over the phone, they don't take the time to come out. *roll eyes*

Once we got home, I got online with the 3 credit bureaus (experian, transunion, and equifax) and filed a fraud alert so that credit can not be opened in our name without us being notified first. We decided to park my car at my sister's house for the night (since the thieves have my car keys) and we locked our storm door until we can get the locks changed on our main door today.

WHAT A PAIN IN THE REAR!!!

So, today is a new day. I think I have done all I can to safe guard our identity & money. They did use one of my credit cards last night at a Buy for Less, Save-A-Lot, and rented $15 worth of Redbox DVDs. So, I figured they had a party last night on our behalf and bought beer, cigarettes, and movies. But, that's as far as they got before we had the cards cancelled,

The bad thing is that now we don't have access to money since our debit card has been cancelled and the bank is closed until Tuesday. Luckily, Bryan had some of his Christmas cash stashed away that should hopefully tide us over until then.

I just got off the phone with our car insurance and they will cover replacing our car keys (they are very expense now with the computer chip inside of the key plus the remote) and to also have the doors & ignition locks changed and to replace the broken windshield... after our $500 deductible, of course! Ugh!!! (we'll have to dip into our "new house" fund for that one, man that urks me!)

So, there you have it! HAPPY FREAKIN' VALENTINES! LOL!

You have GOT to watch this!!!

I laughed so hard I made my side hurt! Too funny! Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83JDXXKzOXg

After you watch it, post a comment on my blog & tell me how hard you laughed! (plus, I would like to see who reads my blog. *grin*)

A week in the life of... 2/5/09

Last week we had an ice storm that closed the school for 3 days. The boys LOVED school being closed but that meant that I had to stay home from work. I love having the occassional day home, but let me tell you some truth... I am NOT cut out to be a stay-at-home mom! I was going bonkers! They were wild because they couldn't go outside & play (well, they did but would only last about 5-10 minutes at a time because of how cold it was) and we couldn't get in the car & drive anywhere. Even though I couldn't go to work, I still was able to work online from home (gotta love today's technology!) but it is hard to get much done when I am constantly having to play referree.. "mom, Kameron hit me!" "I did not!" "Yes you did...just like this!" "Mom, Kaleb hit me!". Gggrrrr!!! Please tell me that I am not the only one that has this problem!?!

Bryan ended up staying home from work on Friday because he now has the *crud* that I had a month ago. It starts off with a fever for about 4 days and then the cough begins as it moves into your voice box area. Now, today is Thursday and he has not voice at all. He's been back to work all week but his voice was getting more & more horse. So, this morning he walks into work and whispers "good morning" with no voice and they say "good bye". So, he came back home today. He scared the pee out of me when he walked into the house as I was getting ready for work. I heard the front door open & then I saw his shadow around the corner... he better be lucky I didn't stick a hot curling iron on his face! LOL! Anyway, he went to the doctor today & they gave him two shots in the booty and said to stay home from work again tomorrow. I know how he feels... it took an entire month for me to start feeling better & I am STILL battling the cough & runny nose! I hope his doesn't last as long (I didn't go get shots in my booty).

Monday night, my nephew, Ricky, had his coronation for Mr & Miss Del City High School. He represented baseball. He looked so handsome in his tuxedo. I got a few pictures but they are on my iPhone and I haven't gotten them off, yet. I will post them when I do.

Right now, I am sitting at Kameron's basketball practice. It is almost over. I have a hard time sitting for a solid hour without having something to do. Hooray for the trusty laptop and wireless internet! :)

Looks like practice is over, gotta go!

School Play & Baseball

For the fall season of baseball, Kameron's team, the Red Sox, played in 1 weekend tournament. Kameron has played for 3 years already but most of the kids on this team have not played before. So, we didn't play in too many tournaments because we didn't want them to get frustrated when they didn't win a trophy (t-ball is a very competitive sport!). This tournament didn't start off very well... they lost their first game to a pretty good team (boys who could hit the ball over the fence). But, they fought hard and won their next game later that day. The next day, they ended up playing 3 games in a row (no break!) because they kept winning and ended up with 3rd place! They were SO proud of themselves! We were so proud of them! They played so hard & the excitement on their faces made the long weekend well worth it. I am assistant coach so I got the honors of handing each of them their trophies. Sorry for the blurry pictures... we didn't have our regular camera so Bryan was trying to get the best pics he could on the camera phone.

Kaleb's school had a small part in his school play this year. I don't remember the title to the play but his role involved the "Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" song... he was one of the monkeys. He was so funny. He was monkey #5 and he jumped & jumped and when it was his turn to fall he dramatically fell down and a play doctor came and tossed him an ice pack to put on his head (picture #2). He loves to be in the spotlight! (again, bad pictures... I forgot the regular camera!!! Shame on me!!!)

Kaleb's 8th Birthday

Kaleb had a great time at his birthday party this year at Celebration Station. Every time we go to Celebration Station, he will not ride the go-carts. He'll drive the kiddie ones but he won't ride as a passenger on the adult ones. We have been talking to him lately about "facing your fears" and he finally agreed to ride with me on the adult carts. Why me and not Bryan? I guess he thought that I wouldn't drive as fast... little does he know! HA HA! We got in the fastest car on the track & I drove full-speed the whole time, even squealing around corners. He had a BLAST!

What summarizes Kaleb at 8 years old:

Positives:	Negatives:
Loves to Read	Controlling
Enjoys Soccer	Already has a teenager attitude!
Competitive	Gets frustrated when he isn't the "best"
He is SO smart!	Sometimes too smart for his own good.
Cherishes true friendships

He is growing too much, physically & emotionally... make it stop!

Here are pictures of his birthday party...

Check out his face when he got some money in a card from Grandma & Grandpa! This boy loves money! You can catch a glimpse of me in the pictures in the white shirt w/ red flowers.

Gotta love BOY birthday parties!

Here, Kaleb is trying to act COOL and not show his excitement about his cake coming out of the pretend oven. But, he really enjoyed it. :)

This is his favorite present... his electric scooter from us. After getting home that day, he took his scooter out for a test drive. It goes about 5 mph and he has so much fun zippin up & down the street.