2012 New Year letter

My goodness, another year has passed. I can’t really even remember what was happening at the beginning of 2011. We had just started to settle in to our house in Fort Worth. Andy’s boss had told him to settle in to his position because there wouldn’t be any shuffling around or transfers to other departments in 2011. We planted a vegetable garden in the back-yard; the squashes, cucumbers, and tomatoes were growing like gang-busters, and then… Major changes started in May when Andy was unexpectedly offered a new job at one of his company’s plants in California. So, in one month, we packed and closed up things in Texas. We drove away at the beginning of June with our Honda Civic packed to the brim with clothes, valuable, the two pets, and us. We were all so thankful to not get into the car after three days on the road.

We lived at a hotel for four LONG months. After a month’s delay in the purchase of our new house, we finally moved in with a borrowed air mattress and two newly purchased Adirondack chairs. Our household goods were delivered, and I got busy trying to dig us out of boxes. Things were quickly put away so that we can have everything off of the floor quickly and easily. We planned this so that the nasty carpet can be ripped out and new floors put down in January of 2012. Then we can put everything where we truly want it, making the house into a home. We have all kinds of renovations planned for the next few years, including a new façade, kitchen, bathrooms, patio, and an outdoor dining area. Now doesn’t that sound like a whole new house?

The new house is in a small town with one four way stop. The town considers itself a community of equine enthusiasts although we also have a local vineyard. Despite its rural location, Andy only has a 20-minute commute, and the stores we frequent are only about 10 minutes. Our property has over three acres, a small barn, and arena. The house is a two-story farmhouse with 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a 3-car garage. Andy is thrilled that we have a wood-burning fireplace that we are using regularly since the temperatures are below freezing at night.

After about a month in our new house, our cat, Cappuccino, went out one evening to go potty one last time and never came home. We assume that he became coyote or mountain lion food. We still miss him quite a bit.

We’ve had a few other notable occurrences this year. Our laptop’s hard drive crashed while we were living in the hotel. We thought this wasn’t an enormous issue since we have a back-up hard drive that Andy is quite religious about using. Unfortunately, we discovered that it backed-up our applications but not any of our documents, pictures, or music. So, basically, we lost everything that we were trying to save. The folks at our local Apple Store managed to replace the burned-out hard-drive and restore the operating system. Apparently this was happening to everyone with our type of laptop (something to do with hard-drive vendor quality control). Recovering the data from the old drive will most likely require a clean-room (you know, the kind with the full-body suits and gas masks, where no dust exists) and a lot of time & money. The fried hard drive is the main reason that we can’t really remember what was going on at the beginning of the year.

Andy’s sister, Cici, had her second baby at the end of August. He’s very mellow and smiles a lot. The birth of Hudson Fritts brings the count to half a dozen nieces and nephews for us.

We both read/listened to the entire Harry Potter series this year. We also saw the final film in the series this summer. I enjoyed being able to go through the books one right after the other instead of reading each when it was published.

Andy is really enjoying the challenges that his new job is providing. He now does quite a bit of creative thinking and problem solving while working on lots of “cool stuff”. He’s fitting in quite well, and they saw fit to give him a promotion, despite having only been in CA for a five months. Sometimes his brain is quite tired by the time that he gets home, only to have to begin his schoolwork at night. Three courses and a written thesis are the remaining obstacles for his Master’s degree.

We hope that you have all had a lovely holiday season and are looking forward to many adventures in 2012.

Fireside Chat

You're welcome history lovers ;)

We took this picture before our goods were delivered from storage. We had our stuff from the hotel, borrowed air mattress & linens, and two newly purchased plastic patio chairs.

We have quite a bit of cut wood on the property so we decided to have a nice relaxing fire one evening as we had very little else we could do (no tv or internet).

Snow!

You can just make out the snow on the mountains in the far distance. We haven't had any snow at our house, but we did have some sleet a few days ago. It probably won't be long before our evening temperatures are below freezing, but the temperatures rise 20-30 points during the day. It will take a while before any sort of snow could stick around the house for long.

Our house

Andy's birthday picture

Renovation Projects

At this point I figure I need to occupy myself and make a plan for what we will be doing to our house once we close. Previously, I've looked for images of rooms and furniture for inspiration. Now, I'm looking for diy projects to educate myself about what we can do ourselves...expertise and time required to complete each... I have found a blog that is AWESOME (is an exclamation point really needed after all caps...probably not but I am really tempted to put one).

Remodelaholic features projects, crafts, and recipes of big and small sizes. The author and contributing writers are so good about provided detailed information and pictures for all of the steps of a project. The blog also has buttons that link to other's projects. What a plethora of ideas! As I know very little about diy beyond what we've done (crown molding, installing laminate floors, baseboards), I appreciate all of the steps and tips. Before Andy & I got married, I'd never even painted a wall. I've learned a lot with our first house but am going to have to learn a whole lot more with this house. Here are some of my favorite projects:

Make your own curtain rods out of conduit pipe

5 year kitchen remodel - that's a really long time, but they did amazing work

Doilies as wall art

Make a garden out of a pallet - I'm thinking herb garden

Make children's bookshelves out of a pallet

Hanging pots and pans inside of a cabinet - can't wait to do since our kitchen doesn't have the big drawers that are so popular today

Remodelaholic also has had multiple posts on re-doing stairs and adding molding/millwork ( board and batten, crown molding, baseboards, archways, pillars/columns, built in bookcases) that I found very informative.

The author also gave a tip that I think will really help us figure out what we want to do in each room. She recommends taking a picture of all of the walls and printing those out on paper. Then use colored pencils to draw in what you are considering adding or moving. This is beautifully demonstrated here.

If any of you have any diy blogs that you really like, please pass them on to me.

EARTHQUAKE

I feel like I have been initiated into California life now because I experience my first earthquake last week. Andy didn't feel anything at work though. It wasn't very strong; I just noticed the bed shaking a little bit. I thought that the dog was leaned up against the bed as he scratched.

Trying to buy a house

So after waiting a month for all of the utilities to be hooked up, we've had all our inspections and appraisal done. There are a few repairs that we have to make (because the bank selling the foreclosed property won't do ANYTHING) before our loan can be funded. So that is happening in the next week. We'll do the other repairs once we close on the house. Our bank has told us that the closing date is September 26, but we are working with them to try to make it happen a little sooner. I think that we wrote our offer on the house on July 15...how crazy!

We would love to be able to move in a beautifully refinished house but have decided that will not be the case. Paying for just under two months of our time and the hotel and the unknown cost of the repairs to our house after the cost of purchasing the home means that our bank account won't be thrilled. So, we've decided to be patient for most of the renovations we would like to do to the house. We'll replace the carpet in the bedrooms before we have our good delivered, but the other flooring will have to wait a little while.

We will be very excited to be able to move in to our house whenever that comes to pass! The house will stay a diamond in the rough for a while but will eventually start to shine.

Gifts for new moms

I've always enjoyed posts on this blog, but this post, Ways to Bless a New Mom, spoke to me since we will soon have a new nephew. We haven't lived close by many family or friends when they have had a baby so we haven't been able to these things for the mothers in our lives. But I have talked to several women who have had a baby. I've heard of wonderful ways they have been helped by other women...food deliveries, childcare, grocery shopping, pick-ups and drop-offs, laundry...

One of the best ideas I've heard was experience by my sister. The family moved to a new city and joined a new church shortly before the baby's birth. When they returned home from the hospital, the ladies of the church had a schedule so that someone dropped off food every other day for several weeks. There was always enough food with each delivery for dinner and leftovers for lunch or another dinner. I thought this was an amazing ministry for the ladies of the church to provide. My sister was able to get to know ladies in the church as well as have meals and fewer groceries to buy.

The author of the blog post, says her wonderful friends would also clean a bathroom before leaving her house. I never thought about how hard it might be get that done...finding the time or energy...and who cares about the dirty bathroom when the baby is crying... I also imagine that it is hard physically to reach all of the different places in a bathroom when recovering from labor. I'm definitely adding this one to my list of things to do for new moms. Sorry Cici that we can't do any of these things for you when Hudson comes home.

our house

The house that we are trying to purchase is on 3 acres in the mountains. It is a farmhouse style house that needs cosmetic updates everywhere. There are some architectural changes that we think we would like to make at some point in the future mostly so that we could have a balcony off the second story (all four bedrooms are located upstairs). This is a picture from one of the bedroom windows, but all of the bedroom windows have a similar view.The views from downstairs are not quite this good, but you can see the arena and horse stalls. Just behind the house (still on the property) is a large hill that has an even more spectacular view. Ideally, we'd like to put some sort of patio up there so that we could enjoy the view.

Buying a house

We put in an offer on a house a little over a month ago. Since then, we have waited for all of the utilities to be hooked up and turned on. Normally that process doesn't take very long, but the bank that owns this foreclosed property is dragging their feet. In an effort to speed things along, Andy has had the water turned on in our name. Although we haven't actually turned the valve to allow the water to flow into the house because when Andy, our agent, and the water technician showed up to the house, they couldn't get into the house. The bank had the locks changed, but the locksmith didn't leave a new key in the real estate lock box. Our agent let the listing agent know that this issue needed to be fixed ASAP. So, the technician left us the tool to switch the water on to the house whenever we want. Unfortunately, we can't do much about the propane. Andy spoke with the propane company a while back. The company was waiting for the bank to return a work order for the property. Finally, the listing agent met the propane worker at the house and couldn't get into the house. Apparently, the lock issue had not been resolved yet. So, another appointment was made with the gas company. Unfortunately, at the appointment, no one showed from the gas company. Who knows when they will get together. It is so frustrating that we can't do a home inspection or assessment until then. Once we are able to get the inspections and assessment done, we can proceed with the purchase; hopefully, that can move more quickly. Since our relocation benefits have ended, we are now on the hook for staying at the hotel and storage of our goods. There goes Andy's paycheck each week :(

I continue to look for new properties in case something goes wrong with the inspections. Unfortunately, I haven't seen much that has been interesting in our price range.

Andy's 30th Brithday

He took off an extra day for his birthday weekend; he had Thursday - Sunday to do whatever he wanted. We went out for lunch on Thursday to one of our favorite restaurants in the area. As we were finishing off our appetizer, he looked up and saw his mother, father, and maternal grandfather walk up to our table. Mary Beth and I had been planning this surprise since before we left Texas. Andy had NO clue that they were coming. After lunch, we showed them the house we are trying to purchase. We met up with more family for dinner. We had a lovely time with them Thursday and Friday. They were able to spend time with other family and friends Saturday and Sunday morning before their flight home.

For his birthday he got some Bose earbuds (LOVES them), running shoes, and some clothes. He claims that 30 feels no different than 29. Hopefully, it not be a big deal for me when I turn 30.

Carmageddon

This weekend is Carmageddon. I don't know if it has been talked about elsewhere in the country, but we hear about it every day. Sometime on Friday the 405 will be completely shut down. Everyone is talking about how bad it will be in LA. We are so thankful that we don't live in LA.

Poor Puppy

Andy and Bandit go for a run most evenings. There is a large field behind our hotel that is perfect for them to use. Andy even lets Bandit off of the leash to chase rabbits. Bandit loves the freedom and the chase! They came home one evening last week and we discovered that Bandit was licking and chewing on his paw. We couldn't really see what happened though because the issue was between one of his toes. We watched it for a couple of days hoping that it would heal up on its own. It didn't. So, we went to a vet yesterday to get it checked out. It turns out that he got a good size cut. They packed the area with some stuff and wrapped it. The dog is not happy with a cone around his head and a back leg encased in bandaging. Since we are in a hotel, he has more small spaces to maneuver. Poor puppy whacks into and scrapes by things. Now his bandage has come about half off. It looks like he has a clown shoe on that foot. So, back to the vet we go tomorrow to get it re-bandaged.

Return of the Civic

We got our car back after several weeks without it. It cost almost $6000 to fix all of the hail damage. We are so thankful that we have an insurance company that is easy to work with. The company that did the repairs even fixed a couple of dings and scratches we've lived with for a couple of years for free. The car practically looks new. Even better than that is having a vehicle at my disposal. Best of all, we now have a vehicle with working AC.

We found a house

It seems like there have been so many times when I've been house hunting online that I see something I think we will love only to find out that it is not available still. Some of my least favorite things to hear are "pending" and "back-up offer". Sometimes the listing will still be "active", but it isn't. Not everyone updates their listings quickly. It's been disappointing to ask about 12 places to find out that only 4 of them are actually still available.

We saw several places on Saturday. It was a good day because there were several that had high quality interiors, lovely views, and space. One was fabulous though because it would only be 10 minutes to Andy's work (opposed to 30 minutes for the others), it is directly across from the largest, nicest park in town, it has one of the best elementary schools in the area, it is finished, and the price was good (our higher end but well worth it). Unfortunately, two offers below the list price had already been put in. Our agent let the seller's agent know that we would offer the list price. I just found out that one of the other offers then jumped at the opportunity to buy the house at the list price. We are disappointed, but know that we still have plenty of time to find something else. I think that it will be hard to find something we like as much so close to Andy's work again.

Back to the drawing board...

First Week

Andy's first week at his new job went well. It was nice that he had an off Friday during this first week.

I tried to handle all of the details with moving, renting our house, and work on our car's hail damage claim.

We've got the ball rolling with our Texas house. Repairs, cleaning, and updating to code are being done. Hopefully, once all of that is finished, it will be rented quickly.

We were thrilled that our truck was delivered this week. That allowed us to drop our car off to be assessed. I don't know how long it will take but look forward to hearing what they think.

We were shocked to learn that it costs $4-5 to wash and dry one load of laundry. Four loads later, I'm really hoping that our temporary living stuff will be delivered this week. Beyond just more clothes, we will also have coats and cooler weather items. Andy was able to comfortably wear shorts and a t-shirt one day this week. Apparently, we are supposed to see 90 sometime this week. I never imagined that this would be the case when it is 100 degrees in Texas.

THE MOVE (parts 4 & 5)

Saturday, we drove to Phoenix from Las Cruces. This drive felt like it took much longer than the previous two days.

Sunday, Andy got to take the dog for a good hike with the dog before we left for day 4 on the road. We drove the rest of the way to California today. Now, we are getting settled in at the Residence Inn by Marriott here in town. We have a 2 bedroom suite and are thankful for the extra room.

Andy will have a short drive to work tomorrow morning. He has to be there at 6:30 am. We will have to see if he needs to continue to start so early. I'll try to talk with all of our relocation people to coordinate drop off of our stuff and be armed with information for the next while.

THE MOVE (part 3)

Andy worked magic this morning getting the stuff back into the car. However, there were are few hiccups along the way. He was supposed to stop in Pecos for us to have lunch. I was buried in a book, looked up to ask about how close we were to lunch, and he told me that we passed through Peocs 30 minutes ago. Oops! Thankfully, we still had Van Horn before the long way to El Paso. I was very happy for us to have some lunch and thought things were proceeding smoothly until he slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road. At first, I thought something was wrong with the car, but we were being pulled over by a police man. He was very nice and only gave us a warning for going 88 in an 80 mph stretch. After a some construction and traffic in El Paso, we made it to Las Cruces. We were able to meet up with my great-aunt on my father's side and some of her family. It was a lovely dinner and visit! We feel quite a bit more tired this evening than yesterday so we off to bed early (we've crossed into Mountain Standard Time).

THE MOVE (part 2)

Today, I worked magic! I packed the car with an amazing amount of stuff with room for both pets and both of us. Pictures will come later.

We drove for about 5 hours from Fort Worth to Odessa. The drive was actually pretty easy. We gave the cat medicine so that he was sedated and didn't meow the entire drive. We are comfortable in our room at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott. There is plenty of room for us and our stuff.

Tomorrow, we are headed to Las Cruces.

THE MOVE (part 1)

So, we are once again moving; this time to California. We had packers come on Tuesday, and movers came Wednesday to load the truck.

Tuesday took much longer than they anticipated. The packers arrived at 10:30 am and left at 11:30 pm when the job was estimated to be 4-6 hours. We would have been finished earlier, but one of the packers didn't label the boxes with the contents that he packed. This wasn't discovered until they were doing the final paperwork. So, the boxes had to be opened and inspected so that they could be properly labeled.

We also had the car's windshield replaced on Tuesday. For those who didn't know, our car got hit pretty hard while at the DFW airport when the storms came through last Tuesday evening. We will deal with the body's damage once we get to California.

Wednesday also took longer than expected, but thankfully not as long as Tuesday. The movers disassembled the furniture and loaded everything on the truck. We were a little concerned though because we didn't know when they would arrive. They finally got to the house at about 1 pm and left at 8 pm. Andy and I tag teamed throughout the day. We both ran errands prior to the movers arrival. I got to visit Mother. Andy got to go to work one last time. The truck was picked up to be shipped to California. After the movers left, we met up with Andy's parents and grandparents for dinner. Then, we crashed!