home sweet home

So as many of you know we have been trying to buy a home for the most part of 2009. Several things have gotten in the way like Wes' graduation date getting pushed back and other things.


Well, the reason I have not written is because we are knee deep in house stuff again and I am pleased to say that we are under contract! For those of you who have never or who have not bought a home in a long time, that means that the sellers (not a bankthankyouverymuch - it's an elderly lady) and we have agreed on a price and are gathering financial documents and having the house inspected and whatnot. It was under contract before so it has been inspected and had some of the demands found repaired already. I meet the inspection guy there this afternoon. He did the inspection on the other house we had. He's a good guy. Anyway, I didn't meant to keep you waiting!

This home is large enough for our family to live for many years at 1800sqft! It has 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and a 2 car garage. I won't be excited until the keys are in my hand but things seem to be going smoothly. I actually get sad at the idea of leaving here so I'll probably be okay here if things don't work out. You always hear people talk fondly of the time when they were young and had a tiny house with a bunch of small kids...Yeah, I am nostalgic and don't want to let that time go..almost.

I am a crazy person and I am taking this boot camp exercise class at 5:45am on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays. I did not go today....oops. Slacker.


Wes is taking another mini-mester class at night. I can't wait until it is over. This is the home stretch! He'll only take two very easy (in his mind) classes in the spring! Hooray!

5 Days of Fun

This is what your brain looks like after taking a mini-mester over the book of Jeremiah. I learned so much in five days it made me ill. Strangely enough, it was fairly interesting and I still get to exhibit that knowledge on a fifteen page monograph... whatever that is. If you've never read Jeremiah, I would definitely recommend it. Pay attention, because the nation of Judah did not and we all know what happened to them.

My favorite part was the object lessons - potter and the clay, etc. If I were to pick a favorite passage, it would come from 9:23-24.

²³ This is what the LORD says:
"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,

²⁴ but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,"
declares the LORD.

Unfortunately, I have another one of these that lasts for two weeks starting next Monday. Poor Amy... The good news - the Cowboys might be the NFC East Champions by that time. Surely Will and I get a chance to celebrate a few touchdowns together tomorrow.

it's a chicken Christmas, y'all!

So if you've been in Texas lately, there is something strange in the air this week. We normally do our usual chinese food (okay, not usual) for Christmas Eve dinner after the candlelight service that I so labor over finding (and doing) sitting for. I was looking forward to eating it after driving in the treacherous snowy weather (again strange for Texas) and after begging countless amounts of people to join us ( I guess it is a strange idea). Apparently normal people have places to go on Christmas Eve and family to be with. Well... Anyway. We asked some new friends from church to join us and they were so nice to oblige but the Chinese place lied to me and closed early so we found out once we got there (after driving in the treacherous snow - strange for Texas). We had nowhere to eat on Christmas Eve in the snow at like 7:45pm. I was embarrassed that we had asked these people then we left them without dinner. So, we did what any normal people without food on Christmas Eve would do. We rescheduled our Chinese dinner with friends. Then, we got Church's Chicken.









So, we are driving around DeSoto (many fried chicken places there, by the way) and Wes said, "Hey, lets go look at Christmas lights!". Okay, so we drive around. I figure out pretty quick that it may seem portable but it is not. Drumsticks are messy. I don't currently understand, nor will I ever understand why they give you 3 napkins when you order the family box (it's fried chicken!).








So we retreated (in the snow- strange for Texas mind you). We went home and had a wonderful dinner of Church's Chicken, mac and cheese, fried okra, carrots in a bag and a plate of cookies and candies our friends brought over.









I know, it's pretty fancy. You can't handle it, can you? You just want to reach through that screen and grab it, right? It was very good, really. I hadn't had fried chicken in a very long time. It's nothing like Chinese though...




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Nothing says "Merry Christmas!" like Chinese food, except maybe fried chicken.








Are you wondering what our friends did? They had Jack-in-the-Box...

I love shopping at Christmastime. I don't really like to think of myself as that girl who always has the newest and greatest thing from the trendiest shop in town. I don't value my life on racking up large amounts of things. I do like the feel of the mall at Christmas. It seems the way of the mall is dying what with all the strip mall shopping areas and whatnot. I miss the actual mall. It is completely impractical for a mom with 3 kids in a hurry but it is such a wonderful idea. I miss back when Abby was 2 or 3 and I worked at the mall in Plano. Most times on my lunch break I'd just walk around and sniff the Godiva chocolates (someone actually gave me some once- she was my employee and she went to school at Hockaday - she could afford it). I'd look at the large tree and listen to the swanky music playing. I'd go to Aveda and try their holiday scented lotions and scrubs. I'd go to the coffee place and get some fancy $5 coffee and sip it. I kinda miss that. But I am a mom of 3 kids. I live in the suburbs of Dallas. It is a long way to the mall and I have to get a sitter so I can actually shop. I think that this year was my absolute favorite, though. Wes and I argued about how many gifts to get each kid. We argued about how he doesn't need to spend that much money on me (seriously, don't). But ultimately, we did it together. We held hands walking through Target (off the mall, of course) and listened to the peppy new Christmas music there. We talked about how we "know" what our kids want. Maybe some day, a long way away, we'll be walking hand-in-hand at the mall, shopping for grandkid #3 and the young whippersnapper behind the counter will be getting ready for her lunchbreak to go sip coffee. In that case I'll probably give her a $5 bill and tell her to have one for me.

With only six days to go...

I did my Christmas shopping, with less than a week to spare. Luckily, I didn't have to deal with crowds like this. Trying to get out of Walmart was dern close though.

This was probably the most sophisticated approach I've ever taken. First of all, I went with Amy which ensured a logical search path from Target to Justice, etc. Mathematically speaking, it was a depth-first algorithm - making it the "shortest". We only backtracked a few times. It's maddening, but I never seem to find EXACTLY what I want, although I come close in most instances.

My budget was approximately $50 and Amy seemingly spent three times as much (just kidding Pretty). She got me something, but I have no idea what. Of course I was reassured by her assertion that, "It's really nothing special". In which case, I say - anything that writes or can be written on is exciting to me. I've got a very strange attachment to writing utensils.

I can't tell what everybody got, but I will tell you that I did not get Amy 6 forks. It didn't take long for me to see the absurdity of having a set of unmatched silverware. Besides, how exciting could that really be? The lady in the checkout lane tried to hint to me after scanning all the toys...

"Sir, are these your forks?"

I didn't say I was perfect, only getting better. Christmas shopping without kids and with the wife was the best experience of the season. I can't wait to see the happy (or horrified/just kidding) looks.

Conflagration...

I finished all but one class yesterday, it has been a very rewarding finals week for me. School became a surreal experience in light of my *Lord willing* graduation in May. All but one class morphed into an A. You might ask, "Why that one B+?" - because I couldn't tell you exactly how many different subcommittees can be formed from 3 freshmen, 4 sophomores, 6 juniors, and 2 seniors constraint to the following restrictions... and the problem goes on. If you've ever encountered counting problems in math, you know that they are either not as easy as they look and the answer is either 6 or 3,152,449 based on one critical clause or phrase. Yikes. Fortunately, I garnered a great deal of practical knowledge from that class.


Last night I got the "all small persons clear the house so I can make dinner" call from Amy so I took Will and Annabelle outside. Annabelle lasted 3.6 minutes, but Will and I spent about twenty minutes, Will playing outside linebacker with me beating him off the edge every time. My backyard fantasy team is doing well, my Yahoo! fantasy team is 1-11... Will and I saw a pile of dead wood over by the abandoned house and thought one thing in our boy minds - fire. We dragged it up front, both impressively breaking limb/twigs over our knees.


What to kindle the fire with? The contents of my binder. Out of the hundred plus pages of handouts over postmodernism's effect on the modern church and C.S. Lewis' famous trilemma - we soon had a roaring fire going. All the kids had fun crumpling up notes over group theory and algorithms as they tossed them into the inferno. A true academic should have all these items of interest filed away up top anyway.

P.S. We only burned material from this semester - if all my work from the past eight years was burned - the whole trailer would have gone like tinder...

Kitchen, it's been rough..

Dear Kitchen,

It's been really hard this week. First the coffee maker dies, now the cheese grater. I am afraid it is too far along in the Christmas shopping season to go and splurge on you to fill your cabinets and drawers with nice, new *preferrably* Kitchenaid appliances and gadgets. Though, I do not believe I will make it without these things for another 16 days until I open new *surprise* things. They say things happen in threes, I can only hope it is not the fridge next because I cannot afford one of those for sure. Kitchen, all will be well soon. I promise.

Love,
The one who slaves in your room

On a lighter note, I found some matches of these while cleaning behind Will's crib.