Who’s McGruff?

Apologies for the unannounced blogging sabbatical. If I am not working, I’m packing; if I’m not packing, I’m taking care of Braden; and if he is taken care of, I’m packing… and you know the never ending cycle. So those of you that haven’t written me off totally, here is what’s been going on: Braden had his First Birthday! After a lot of time planning and a slight dent in the budget, we had family over for hamburgers, cake and ice cream. It was a success and we had a ton of fun.

Recently we also had One Year pictures and family pictures taken. Not only did I get to put in my work hours, rush to get ready, drive 30-45 minutes to Plano to the photographer, but I also had the delight of dealing with a 12 month old that didn't sleep hardly at all the night before. Man... great day!

This one is my favorite. He is wearing John's hat. We are going to have his picture taken in it every year until he grows into it.

This one we had printed in Black and white and it is PRECIOUS!!! Apologies fo rthe lack of cropping on some of these... I am of course pressed for time.

Our beautiful family (if I do say so myself!). God has blessed us richly!

In other news- we have sold our house and close on Tuesday, July 29. We have to be out by Wednesday where we are moving in with my mother (prayer requests please) for two weeks until we can close on the house that we are buying. Yes, contract #3 was the charm, but we are still hoping for a smooth ending to this process.

The house that we are look at to buy is in Richardson (my old stomping grounds). We were told about the house before it even went on the market so we didn’t have a lot of pressure with putting down a contract trying to beat others to the punch, etc. This was nice because we got to meet with our lender to iron out the financial details before we got in over our heads (trying to be smart about everything). I refrained from bringing along my laptop to show the lender my financial spreadsheet that our family goes by monthly (I figured he was out of gold stars anyway). I do have to say that it feels good to actually have a grasp on what we are doing and where every penny is going. There really is power in that (and no, I don’t go kissing my Dave Ramsey poster every night).

So about this house in Richardson- Luckily it is in a great neighborhood and is selling for $30-$40K less that the others due to repair/update work that needs to be done to it. John and I are up for the task of remodeling as long as Braden is in a good neighborhood with a good school. We are actually looking forward to making some of the changes that we have discussed (putting up drywall, building a new fence, painting, flooring…the list is forever long). We seem to think that we can do it ourselves (again- prayer requests please). What we really like about it is that it is a lot more space than what we have now (of course after packing things up, that kinda seems like a bad thing: more space = more junk). It is a four bedroom house, two living areas, two dining areas, a separate office, laundry room, two covered patio areas, and a fireplace (which we don’t have now). Yes, my child will actually get to hang his stocking this year on a mantel without me having to come up with some lame excuse about Santa coming in through the back door that takes the strength of Hercules to open.

Now about my title up above- This past weekend I had the honor of being McGruff the Crime Dog’s assistant. Now had this been 25 years ago, I would have been in Heaven getting to help the ever so famous crime fighting detective dog “take a bite out of crime.” However, I am 30 years old and standing outside one of Garland’s ghetto Walmarts in the 103 degree heat from 2:00 to 4:00 on a Saturday was not my idea of a dream come true. Regardless, one of my lieutenant friends asked me to help out and of course, the word “no” never enters my mind. So there I was this past Saturday passing out police badge stickers and helping kids get their picture taken with McGruff. Very quickly I came to the realization that McGruff has been out of the lime light a little too long because not only did MOST of the kids not have a clue as to who McGruff was, but even some of the parents were saying, “Look! It’s Smokey the Bear!”
WHAT!!!! Are you people idiots?!?! Smokey the Bear doesn’t have big floppy ears. Smokey the Bear doesn’t wear a big trench coat. SMOKEY THE BEAR DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A DOG! Good grief!

Now I do have to keep in mind that we were at a GHETTO Walmart, where I am sure most of the clientele tends to avoided all police dogs (real and animated).

Rookies

I’ve been lacking in posts the past few weeks due to life dumping a truck load of lemons in my way. Since my cupboards lack the simple food staples to make a delicious lemon meringue pie, I have been forced to start squeezing them like crazy- only to make lemon juice (no sugar for the “aid” either, but have no fear, payday was just the other day)! Here’s what’s been going on:

I realized I have now come full circle in life. The other day I had the one childhood prank that I did, pulled on me. Yes, I am one of those adults that was targeted for the never boring “ring-and-run” prank (and yes, I was one of those kids that did that). Was it well deserved? I have no doubt, as Karma has a funny way of waiting until you reach “the other side.” So I am standing at my kitchen sink when I heard the door bell ring. I look up to see out my kitchen window a little tubby white kid waddling by with a Camel-Bak of water strapped to his back (talk about preparing for a hard days work!). Of course to amuse whoever was watching, I opened the front door, put on my Academy Award winning shocked face and then shut the door again. I was also looking out to make sure there wasn’t a flaming bag of you know what on the door step (and no, I was not one of those kids!). Not but five minutes later I see a group of three kids (tubby included) standing in the street just hanging out. While the thought crossed my mind to go out to them and point out their rookie mistakes:
1. don’t send your slowest guy to do it,
2. don’t stand out in front of the house that you just pranked five minutes ago,
3. don’t prank a house that has all their windows open

I refrained, smiled to myself, and secretly wished them "happy pranking."

I also took a moment to think back on the poor elderly neighbors that I used to prank. Ahhh, who am I kidding, I deserved a flaming bag of poop!

On another sour note, I locked myself out of the house the other day. Did I mention that Braden was inside? I came home from Walmart and put Braden in his highchair so I could go back out to the car and get the remainder of the groceries. I loaded up my arms with bags, got to the back door and... nothing, that was as far as I got. Luckily, after running around the house in my Sunday clothes (heels included), I called my mom to come over with my house key and let me in. What was ironic was the fact that I had a set of house keys hanging on the front door, I just couldn't break into the lock box to get to them. In only a slight panic (he was in his highchair after all), I found my Swiss army knife in my car, prayed to God to give me any James Bond lock picking abilities he could give me and pulled out the flimsy metal tweezers and went to town. Who was I kidding? After 20 minutes, I kissed my career as a locksmith goodbye. I was dripping with sweat in my 101 degree garage with the bottom of my feet throbbing from being rubbed raw because I was running around the outside of the house in my heels (it’s like they weren’t made for running). Never fear, Crazy Gran to the rescue. My mom got there and let me in. Braden was crying hysterically, but physically okay (the jury is still out on psychology). Is this a right of passage for the Rookie mother?

Our house now has a third contract on it. The first contract was a no go because the lady low-balled us so badly, we were going to have to pay her to buy it (we said no thank you). The second contract we can only chalk up to buyer’s remorse. The couple put a contract down, got the inspection and then proceeded to tell us that they didn’t want the house until we fixed/repaired/updated EVERYTHING the inspector listed (we said have a nice life). This third contract we are hoping is the “third times a charm” sort of deal. While it has truly been amazing that we have had three contracts with only about 15 walk-throughs, we are praying that this is it and we will close at the end of July. The search for our new house is still on.