Abby Is Baptized Easter Sunday

 

We are very happy to share the news that Abby has decided to be baptized into Christ. She chose Easter Sunday as the date to do this. It was so sweet to watch her as she waited for our minister to finish his sermon. She was so excited, she could hardly contain herself. She looked so sweet and innocent as she confessed her belief and later went up to be baptized. The picture above was taken as our minister asked Abby if she believed Jesus was the Son of God.

We're so proud of her. Our little girl seems to be growing up so fast now.

Rob

Goodbye, Dooley.

 

Well, it appears we are minus one cat. Dooley, our 14 year old orange and white cat has run away from home and we fear may have met his end in the freezing and stormy weather we had the night he vanished.

Friday, March 19, we had a beautiful day and all of us were running in and out of the house, occasionally leaving the back door open for extended periods of time. The spring weather is awful tempting to Dooley and he got curious and slipped out on us. Nobody had noticed he was outside until I went to take some trash out and discovered him staring at us through a window. When I opened the door to let him in, he ran away instead. I grabbed a flashlight and followed him around the house until he disappeared in some bushes. I figured he would get tired of hiding from me and eventually come back to the door. He didn't. I went out once more and saw him sitting in the driveway with his back to me. I walked towards him and he ran away again. This was the last time I saw him.

Dooley has been looking sickly lately. His appearance has been looking more frail and he has been throwing up in the house a lot. We figured he may have sensed that his days were numbered and decided to spend the remaining time he had away from us. The other possibility was he was having such a good time outside that he couldn't make it back to the house before the bad weather hit us that night. He also may have found refuge with a neighbor, but all we can do is speculate since he has not come back.

We made some posters and placed them around the neighborhood in hopes that if a neighbor knows where he is, they will know how to contact us. But, we have received no calls. With each passing day, our hope diminishes.

Dooley began his life with Pam's folks as a kitten. He followed them home one day while they were out walking. He remained with them until Pam's mother took ill with cancer. While she was undergoing treatment they decided that having a cat was not going to be good for helping keep the house clean and sanitary. So, Dooley moved in with us and he has stayed with us ever since. He has always been a sweet cat with a mischievous streak. He loved people and sitting in laps. He also loved to take items and "wash" them in his drinking water bowl. He also would drop certain types of toys in the toilet for us. He kept life interesting.

We're sad to see him go. We still hold onto the hope he might still return, but there are many hazards out there for a house cat. We have many wild animals in the wooded area behind us. Dooley does not have adequate defenses at this age. We fear the worst, but hope for the best. That's all we can say for now. If this story enters a new chapter, I'll be sure to post another update.

Snow Storm - Feb 23, 2010

From Snow 2-23-10

After a beautiful weekend with temperatures in the 70's, we were hit with a pretty significant snow storm (by Texas standards). Abby's school was closed by mid-day and she got to spend the afternoon at home enjoying the snow with David and Pam. I had to remain at work today. Since I work for an electric company, my job is essential enough that I am not going to be sent home for bad weather. I'm glad things cleared up enough by quitting time that the travel back to the house was not a problem. We are expecting some re-freeze of the snow that melted in the over-night hours.

Abby's school is delayed a couple of hours in the morning. I will be expected to show up at the normal time. I hope the road crews take care ofthe slick spots before I must leave the house in the morning.

Happy Birthday Abby!

 

 

Our sweet daughter turned nine years old today. We took her and the rest of the family out for a nice supper, and then returned to the house for cake and presents. Abby got to light her own cake this time and she got lots of fun gifts. I think she would have stayed up half the night playing with her presents if we had let her, but she has school tomorrow, so play time will have to wait.

So far, 2010 has been a busy year for us. There have been lots of things going on for everyone. In January, David turned 3 and Abby is just days away from turning 9. My birthday was a little over a week ago and Pam’s won’t be here until May.

From David's Birthday 2010

We have been trying to potty-train David again. He has been very cooperative with his liquid business, but his solids are another story. It seems he prefers to do that business, and then tell us about it. We have many discussions with him about it, but he just needs more time to get this figured out.

Abby continues to bring home very high marks on her report cards from school. Pam works with her on her studies and helps her keep up with her homework and preparation. I appreciate the time Pam spends with her on this. Pam’s background as a teacher is a huge plus for our kids.

Pam also volunteers for many things at Abby’s school. She is always planning for events at the school, or doing nice things for the teachers. I’m glad she is able to do things like this.

At home, we have dealt with many stressful events already this year. We began this year as we ended last year, owning two homes; our old house, which remained on the market many months after we moved out last year and our current home. The old house did go under contract around Thanksgiving last year, but the sale was pending the sale of the buyers’ home. They found a buyer and established January 15 as a closing date with us.

With the closing date looming and bitterly cold winter weather approaching, I felt it was necessary to run by the house and check on the winterization. I got there and was disappointed to find a leaking faucet out front, then I went inside to discover that one of our water heaters had malfunctioned and dumped water onto the floor and had flooded three rooms. The story is long, but has a happy ending. We got the leaks fixed and we cleaned, repaired and/or replaced all that was damaged by the flood. Our buyers were very pleasant and understanding about the troubles and we did our best to make sure they were satisfied with the solutions. We were able to close the sale on time without any problems. So, now it feels really good to not be paying for the upkeep and taxes on two homes. That cold snap that prompted my visit to the old house ended up costing us a lot of money, not to mention the outrageous electric bill we had for heating both homes.

The other trouble we had this year was the heater for the upstairs in our current home quit working. We had to get that repaired as quickly as possible, but like most troubles, we had to schedule an appointment with a repairman. In the meantime, I had to run out and buy a couple of portable electric heaters to keep the kids’ rooms from getting too cold at night. I think the combination of the additional portable electric heaters, plus the malfunctioning upstairs heater and the downstairs heater working extra hard to keep the house warm, we really got hammered by the electric company on our bill. We’re hoping the next electric bill will be kinder and gentler to us!

From Music

I have set a personal goal this year to get out and play more music with people. So far, I have been doing pretty well. In January, I attended a meeting of the Southwest Bluegrass Club – an organization I joined last year during the Argyle Bluegrass Festival. Their meetings are mostly about jamming. The actual meeting lasts only 10 to 15 minutes. The rest of the time, we are playing music together. It is a tremendous amount of fun.

From Music

On the first Saturday of February, I went to Pearl, TX for their monthly Bluegrass gathering. At Pearl, it is a big social event. Many people come to Pearl just to watch, listen and visit with others. I came there to play music and make friends with other musicians. Pearl was so much fun, I plan to return as often as possible throughout the year. More information about Pearl can be found here: http://www.pearlbluegrass.smugmug.com/

Thanks for checking in. More news soon!

Rob

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I don’t know about you, but 2009 was not a year that our family would like to repeat much of. Oh, there were parts that were nice for us, but there was a lot of stress and tiring times for us from moving, to David’s seizure and not selling our old house as quickly as we would have liked and that put an extra financial burden on us. We are grateful to be closing on the old house January 15. It has been a long time since we first put it on the market last July.

The good parts of 2009 would include the musical experiences I had from camp in Argyle and local jams, plus moving to our new older, but larger home which is closer to my folks, Abby’s school and our church. We all enjoy the back yard at our new house and the neighborhood seems very nice.

The kids have kept us very busy this year. David spent most of this past year showing us what his version of “the terrible twos” looks like. He had a lot of sweet and charming moments, too. Abby grew a lot in the past year. She looks so much older when I scan through photos I took of her earlier in the year and compare them to how she looks now.

We had a nice Christmas. I had requested we make a change to our typical order of events on Christmas day. In past years, we took all our gifts over to Pam’s sister’s house and opened them along with all the inter-family gifts in one big “shred-a-thon” of flying paper and random shouts of “thank you” and “look what I got” back and forth across the room. Everything seems to go by so fast that I don’t get to enjoy the excitement of each gift and the reaction of the recipient. If I pause to watch everyone, I end up delaying the process. I wanted a more intimate experience for my immediate family and asked that we keep our gifts at our house to open Christmas morning, then only bring over the inter-family gifts to exchange later on. I know my request was not popular with everyone, but I felt it was nicer for the four of us to “do our own thing” first, then not have to worry with hauling all of our gifts around and potentially losing or damaging things in transit.

New Year’s Eve was pretty uneventful over here. I lost interest in watching those New Year’s Eve programs on TV years ago and we couldn’t go to any parties because of “our situation.” So, I spent a lot of the evening downloading Christian-oriented pop songs to put on Abby’s new iPod and playing a little guitar along with the songs I was listening to on “Bluegrass Junction” on Sirius satellite radio channel 65. I joined Pam near midnight and we watched TV together until we couldn’t stay awake any longer.

The coming week has us returning to David’s kidney doctor for a follow-up. He had an ultrasound on his kidneys recently and a blood test this week. We don’t know what we’re in for, but we hope it won’t be any more bad news. Pam has been trying to potty-train David this week and on into the weekend. He’s still having a fair amount of accidents as I write this, but we’re going to keep working on it. After all, if we can train the dog and cats to do their business where we want them to, it should be easier for a boy. (Emphasis on should be.)

Abby has had a nice break from school since before Christmas. That makes for lots of “family togetherness” and generally means more messes to clean up. Right now it is a toss-up as to which is more difficult: getting David to do his business in a toilet or getting Abby to clean up after herself. Something tells me David will be potty trained soon and Abby will still leave a debris field in her wake for years to come.

Pam and I have both enjoyed connecting with so many friends online through facebook. I have reestablished contact with many of my former high school classmates this way. My 30 year class reunion is coming up later this year and I’m hoping to make it back to Indiana for that once they announce the date. Facebook has also allowed me to connect with many music friends and famous musicians. It is pretty cool when you post something and a famous person notices and comments on it. I was very much against getting involved with social networking sites for a long time. I assumed it was a haven for stalkers and people with emotional connection problems, but I have seen far more benefit than problems with using facebook. Besides, if someone is annoying to you, they can be removed from your friends very easily and you can block content that you don’t want to see. That’s helpful. So, I recommend facebook if you want a fun way to keep in touch with us and others. The only caution I would give is it is very addictive! Pam has many friends who love to see her posts about what is the latest funny thing David did or said. I enjoy those, too. There are some classic gems from time to time.

I hope 2010 will be full of good experiences for everyone and good news to report on our family. Stay tuned to see how things unfold for us this year. Thanks for checking in.

First Snow of 2009

From Snow 12-4-2009

This weekend was supposed to be a nice escape for Pam and me. We had arranged to let the kids spend time with Pam’s sister and my folks while we slipped out of town for some very overdue alone time. (It has been a terribly long time since we last went out of town overnight without the responsibility of dealing with the kids.) We had reservations at a hotel in Fredericksburg, TX and planned to really have a fun time. Then, the weather changed and we had to make a tough decision. The forecast for the Texas Hill Country predicted up to 2” of snowfall and sub-freezing temperatures. That is not exactly ideal conditions for enjoying Fredericksburg. Considering we would be traveling while the snow was falling, the roadway may not be the safest place for us at this time. So, we called off the trip. Unfortunately, we made this decision too late not to be charged for the cancellation, so we’re paying for a hotel room we won’t be using. That stinks.

On the upside, we got a nice snow storm right here at home and the kids got to spend a little time out in it while it was falling. I took a few photos of them and sent them to our photo albums on the web. You can link to those from this site.

The family is all doing well. We had a very nice Thanksgiving here at our house. This was the first Thanksgiving for us in the new house and the weather was absolutely perfect. Pam was amazingly organized and calm. Planning a big meal like that and making it all come out the way you planned can be very stressful. This year didn’t seem stressful and everybody had a nice time.

The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the day we decorate for Christmas and this year was no exception. We got the tree up and strung lights around outside and inside. It looks really nice. We would like to put out some more stuff, but with all these cold nights we're having lately, we might need to save the electric bill for the heater!

We finally have an offer on our old house! It has been a long time since we first listed it and Pam and I have both been wondering why we haven’t received any offers – even ridiculously low offers. Many people have viewed it and it has been on TV and in the papers. We finally got an offer and after a few counter-offers back and forth, we have settled on a price. It is less than I was hoping to get, but considering the circumstances, we’re happy with the agreed upon amount. Having two houses has been a bit of a hardship on us as we have been dipping into our rainy day funds to keep the bills paid. We hope nothing happens to cause us any further delays in getting the old house sold. We want very much to get back to normal! At least this experience is helping us see places in our lives where we can be more frugal and still enjoy ourselves.

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to have some music fun. Earlier this year, I joined The Southwest Bluegrass Club - which is an organization of Bluegrass enthusiasts in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Many people I met at Pete Wernick’s jam camp are members of this club and I figured joining the club would be a good way to stay connected with them outside of camp. I had never attended any of their meetings before, but decided I was going to make the trek up to Irving, TX and attend their November meeting. I was glad I did. I saw a few of my jam camp friends and met a lot of new people there. Most of the time at the meeting is spent jamming with the other members. People form small impromptu groups and head off to various rooms to play Bluegrass songs together. The group of musicians I played with was mostly all strangers to me, but that doesn’t matter. The fun is playing the music together and improvising. It was a really fun time for me and I hope to get to do that again soon.

That’s about it for this time. Please add us as a friend on facebook if you haven’t already. Pam and I both have pages on there and we post current news and photos almost daily. This blog is more of a highlights and summary post compared to what you see on facebook. Plus, Pam frequently posts some hilarious stuff that David says and does. Those are a scream!

Until next time, have a Merry Christmas!

Rob