1 + 1 = 3 in the Government

Labor Day weekend is thankfully upon us as I could really use an extra day. (It's amazing what 1 more day on the weekend can do.) Mom is coming down tomorrow and keeping me company through the holiday. We're off to PA to visit the house and see all that's been done which I'm very excited about. The onsite realtor has been really nice about sending me photos each week so I can see what's gotten accomplished, but I still can't wait to see it all in person.

Thankfully, all seems to be going smoothly now and life seems to have evened out. Spencer is doing better. He's still not great with his back legs, but he's at least back to where he was. Now if we can get him to walk some more and really build up those muscles that would make me feel soooo much better about the upcoming cooler weather. The girls are almost ready to start college and we picked up most of their books yesterday. Will be nice, at least for Andee, to get back to a routine after the summer months. She did manage to find a job this last week so that has helped give her something to do as all of her friends have now headed off to college.

On the downer side, Andy's trip has been extended 10 days. Originally 5 weeks, now 7. Major ughness. I've thanked my lucky stars that he's not still active military and it's not a year long deployment. Plus at least I get to talk to him pretty much every day. Still after working together side-by-side for the last 7+ years it's a little lonely, especially now that Andee's not around the house as much. I've gotten to enjoying my romantic dinners with Spencer. Very cute and cuddly, but still not the same. So in the meantime I continue to count down the days and be grateful that it seems to pass relatively quickly.

The girls bought silly bandz that say BRB (Be Right Back) and XOXO along with a few other text acronyms. So all of us including Andy are wearing them till he returns. Spence even has his BFF band on since it was the smallest and actually stayed on.

Time

Time seems to be flying right along in some aspects of our life and crawling on others. Specifically, the house is progressing very fast. The foreman even suggested it *might* be done the end of October!!! Andy and I were last out there on Friday Aug 6th. The whole place was framed out, the roof was up and the windows were in. Our wonderful front door was on backorder till the end of the month, but it will be worth it. Perhaps it will be in by Labor Day when I take Mom out. It was definitely nice to be able to walk through the whole house before Andy left for Afghanistan; made it seem all the more real, although it does still seem like a bit of a dream sometimes. I think it will even after we move in.

Since then Andy has left for Afghanistan. 37 days total this year, which seems like forever. Being the first week he's gone, these days are crawling even though I've been super busy. Suddenly seemed like everything hit with the house. Needed a decision on the dualzone for the HVAC guys, appliances had to be ordered, excavator needed to know about the propane tank. One thing after another. Add to that Mr. Boogie fell off the bed and really hurt his hind legs, so he's been down for the count. Thankfully the vet said he didn't break or dislocate anything and gave him some pain meds. He's got to get up standing and walking which he's gradually doing. I've bought all sorts of cookies as motivation to stay standing, so at least that's a bit of excercise. Still would like to seem him walking a bit more, but guess I should be patient. As the vet said, baby steps.

This weekend all 3 of the girls and I are off to the spa for massages and pedicures. I'm looking forward to that. The rest of the weekend will be far less exciting as I paint and clean so that the current house is in respectable shape for showing. Dear God I hope someone out there wants to buy our house and doesn' t mind closing on Nov 30th!!!

The Hole

It's official, ground has been broken. It was supposed to be on July 14th and we were eagerly watching the weather forecast. Here it has been a complete scorcher all summer with water restrictions rampant due to the lack of rain and what does the forecast call for on the 14th?! Rain.

However, we spoke to Steve (the foreman) on Wed. and learned that they had already broken ground. Guess perhaps Tuesday....Anyway, we said that we'd be out that weekend to check it all out. I was actually quite surprised to see the hole, as I had expected this massive thing. It really wasn't all that large. The perspective is very odd. Looking at it all, it seems the house is tiny when in reality we know it isn't. We finally figured out the placement of where the garage, front porch, etc. are and again it's just really strange. Seems like there's no driveway and the garage will be right up close to the road, yet when I stood on the road and Andy on where the porch would be we felt far apart.

We'll be back out the next few weekends to get our fill before Andy leaves again for Afghanistan. Until he comes back I'll probably only go out once or twice as the girls and I will be busy keeping ourselves occupied. This weekend they should have the basement walls in and possibly the concrete footing. According to Ed, one of the land developers, there's a chance (probably slim) that it will be under roof before Andy leaves. That would be neat for him to see, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. Hopefully the weather cooperates - come on no rain!!

Heat Wave

Since when has it been triple digits for multiple days in a row at the beginning of July???!!!

Ok, with that out of the way, we managed to successfully close on our construction loan on June 30th. Little did we even realize that it was the last day for the tax incentives as they didn't apply to us. However, the mortgage industry was apparently crazy busy and just generally out of control. We took the 2 1/2 hr drive to the settlement company without even knowing if we would close as they still did not have any of our paperwork from the bank. Thankfully, 3 hrs after we were supposed to, the paperwork arrived and we were able to seal the deal. Nothing like handing over an insanely large check and getting nothing but papers. So we took the pens. That'll have to last us till we get the keys.

Spent the holiday weekend relaxing (finally!!!) and taking in some fireworks. I even had a moment of weakness and asked Andy about hitting up the beach. To which he promptly gave me a stunned look wondering who the impostor was that had replaced his wife. Instead he satisfied my desire to get out of the house and "do something" by heading to Pottery Barn and Ethan Allen to look at furniture. Several hours and several thousand dollars later we were the proud future owners of a leather couch, a leather recliner (a.k.a. "the man chair"), and 2 fancy chairs with a cool green print fabric.

I sense a trend in that many of our recent purchases make us the "future owners". I look forward to the future...

Coming next week......the official ground breaking!!!

Graduation!!!

She did it - Andee graduated!!!! I think in this case the picture says it all. (She was just a little excited....) Thank goodness Andy had gotten me my 70-300 telephoto lens for Christmas. It definitely came in handy for capturing the moment.

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Senior Prom

I remember my Junior Year; I went to prom with my boyfriend, Jon. I couldn't find a dress to save my life, so my mom found a seamstress who pieced together the top & bottom from two separate patterns. White with poofy sleeves on top, two layers of black, diagonal ruffles on the bottom. The shoulders kept falling off and if I pulled them up, the chest stuck out. As the seamstress told me during one fitting - "I just don't know what to do with these" - as she motioned to my barely-A sized chest.

My senior year I went with one of my best friends, Anita. I'd actually found several dresses this year but settled on a peach "pumpkin" dress. Strapless, ruched on top, turned under poof on the bottom. I loved this one.

Both years, we all went out to dinner ahead of time. No food served at our prom. We showed up at the high school, the gymnasium decorated with those crazy balloon arches and sculptures, the DJ hooked up in some corner. Oh, and (the horror) we did our own hair and makeup.

This year was Andee's senior prom. Being my 3rd official prom in NJ, I have learned that its a different world and my proms were very uncool, dare I say "prehistoric"? No tanning, no fake nails, hair extensions, fake eyelashes, professional hair, makeup, $400 dresses, and shoes that I still couldn't walk in. No fancy dinner served at the prom which is held at any number of beach clubs, country clubs, or ritzy hotels. No limos whisking us off to a wild weekend of partying on the Jersey Shore. How oh how did we ever survive without all the accoutrements? Guess we were forced to live off of crazy 80s music, good times, and friendship. I'll take it.

The PA House

Mental note - must come up with a better name. Andy was voting for "Overdale" because he says it's from some song. I think I'm leaning towards "The Rosie Knoll" in honor of our favorite goose. Let the voting begin.

Moving on though with my initial thought process. This last Spring has been consumed with the PA House. I finally received my Orders from the government and we were able to officially move forward. We spent pretty much all of May, finalizing all the specs and trimmings. Who knew there was so much that went into a house! So much for picking lights, faucets, flooring and calling it a day. The minute I thought I'd picked the last doorknob, molding, and door there was another soffet, gable bracket, and louver thing. Overall that was the fun part, designing our dream home - even if the price kept inching upward. Hey, at least we ended up under budget. That's got to count for something right?!

Closing on the construction loan is currently set for June 30th, so we'll see. Granted these things never go as scheduled, so we may be looking at early July, but at least we should be breaking ground within the month and done by early December. Perfect timing.

And once we've gotten the new place under control, we can move right along to selling the current place. Always something to help make life interesting.

Another Year Older...

So it's been awhile. I've been a bad blogger. It was a slow downward spiral to nothing. However, I am resolving to try and be better. Not that there's anyone out there that really cares and is following this, but having our day-to-day events logged up on this site sure was nice when I went to scrapbook the activities. Journaling for my page - Check!

Besides, we've got a lot going on in our lives and I'm thinking it might be nice to have an official record of it. Course that also means I've got to force myself to find a couple of minutes within that crazy schedule, but I'm motivated to give it a shot. We shall see....