The woe's of home ownership!

Alright...yes we've been slackin yet again on the blogs...but you'll have to give us some credit as we've had A LOT going on lately. It involves one of us being at home every day this week. Yes that is really awesome when we're trying to keep as much time as we can for babydom - NOT.

But first, it's time to give my lovely wife a whole lot of praise! She has been very patient and keeping a great attitude as we travel through another journey in our life. This has not been very easy for us both as it's been A LOT to handle, but she has been incredible. Only having one day as a slightly rough day since Saturday is pretty good for anyone, let alone a pregnant one. She has been very good at taking it easy and knowing her new limits, although very tough for her, she has been amazing! So I'd like to give a little shout out to her because she is beautiful, caring, loveable and of course...clever! So a huge THANK YOU to my lovely wife!

Now...Moving day went very well, thanks to all who helped, it was much appreciated! Had everything loaded into the Uhaul in about an hour, which was pretty sweet. All while that was going on, Heather and her parents are at the house watching our Comcast guy fall half way through our ceiling! Yes I said it...he fell through our ceiling in our hallway, just as you walk through the door. But that did not stop us, after walking in and seeing the 7-8 foot hole in our ceiling, we went ahead and moved everything into our house and had the truck back to UHaul by 12:30.

Now let's skip onto...Tuesday I believe...or Wednesday, I don't know; all the days this week are running together now! Let's see what could go wrong, lets pick the....water heater! Yes yes, the water heater means no hot water and of course means a nice luke warm shower? Oh no, a nice freezing cold shower is more like it. The best part is about working with contractors is that we have NO CLUE when they're coming to fix anything, not a problem for people who are able to stay at home huh!

So let's get onto some good things that happened this week! The renter we have been talking with through Craigslist has been approved and is saving us LOTS of money! Thanks to everyone again for helping out with the move and everything this past weekend. A shout out to Lanny for fixing so many things this weekend that we can't even list them all, 1 that sticks out is the fantastic job on the patio door lock! A thanks to my brother for coming up on Friday and finishing painting the kitchen, as I took the 2nd coat, I can understand why he was hating me as I gave him all the tough spots (behind the stove, between cabinet, etc), so thanks! Thanks and more thanks to Marlene & Jim, Christy, Ryan and Betsy for being awesome friends & family. And a final thanks to Emily (our realtor) for getting us into this beautiful house! Through all the crap that we dealt with, you stuck with us and have been amazing to us.

Alright, I think that's about it for now, so hopefully...I'll get some pictures posted for everyone soon.

Later! Think happy thoughts about getting the water heater fixed!!!!!!!!!

More updates...and photos on the way!

Hi everyone, sorry it's been spotty on the blogging lately, but understandably it's been pretty busy around here. That, and no one likes an angry blogger, right? Thankfully, both Brad and I have lots to finally be happy about with the house and have been spending the past couple of nights over there putting up curtains, blinds, etc. We'll officially move on Saturday.

Our plan tonight is to take some pictures and give you all a real update. Till then- we're both doing well, Mazy seems to like the new house, Nala still thinks we've adopted boxes and are merely keeping them in the apartment for her enjoyment and Stuffy is evidently taking after his Daddy with his sleeping habits! (very funny stuff to tell later!)

Thanks for all the happy thoughts and wishes...we're beaming with the pride of homeownership!

We didn't close on Friday...see below.

No, there was no house closing on Friday. Yes, we both resembled the lovely Hulk above from about 11:30am -7pm on Friday. We're okay now, and a new closing date has been set to Monday at 2:00pm. Here's hoping nothing else happens to prevent us from getting into the house finally.

In a nutshell, the "mortgage master" mortgage broker seriously dropped the ball. We're talking all capital letters SERIOUSLY dropped it. This is after the FEMA debacle of Thursday he was knee-deep in and a growing list of "oops" that you may expect from a rookie, but not from someone who claims to be a "master" (per his own blog). Granted, I'm sure that in other deals, he's been great. This being our first time buying a house, we're sorely disappointed in the gap of service and responsibility since first meeting him.

What did I learn from all of this? Trust that prickly feeling at the back of my neck the next time someone tells me they're in clown school. You, know that feeling that screams "something is not right!" I think you all know how I feel about clowns. What are the chances the guy whipping our first home loan up is for real, currently learning to be an official c.l.o.w.n. ?

You know what, though? As long as we get in that house on Monday and he follows through on his promise to make it up to us (we've asked for him to pay for a moving company this weekend to make up for the arrangements with friends and family from this past weekend) I'll be willing to let it go. If not... more people may be subject to my green tinted, and Brad's red-tinted anger.

In the meantime, Stuffy thinks it's just another reason to kick it up! The little guy is very much on the move, especially in the wee hours of the morning-- a sign of fun times, we're sure!

We'll keep you all in the loop and wish super duper crazy (clown-free) happy thoughts for a true, honest to goodness closing tomorrow.

The way I am...it's genetic.

See those happy, smiling people? That's me and my parents. I thought it'd be a nice reference of our smiling faces and provide context to what lies just beneath the surface when triggered. Oh, I know it appears that we're all extraordinarily happy folks-- and we genuinely are. But, those genes come with an asterisk * that should read something like this: " Danger! Happy, smiling face will be replaced with someone you don't want to mess with if triggered." Think Incredible Hulk but without the transformation into a green, muscle monster.

Not that I reached my absolute meltdown point this morning, but I got close. I'm sure it wasn't helped by the fact that I had just consumed a gigantic amount of sweet tea. Happy, smiling Heather was replaced by "Don't you dare mess with me right now-Hulk Heather" in the matter of one phone call. In a nutshell, it had to do with the house closing that's scheduled for tomorrow at noon and finding out that some "loose ends" hadn't been as quite tied up as we thought. They were also attached to us possibly paying about $2000 more than expected.

Hello, blood pressure, meet caffeine. Caffeine and blood pressure, meet angry pregnant lady!

I think I went on about 3 separate tirades to the involved parties. The good news is that by lunch time we got news that dropped my attitude from Hulk back to Heather and that $2000 is no longer an issue. Oy!

It just made me laugh a little to myself when I think about how I react to those "don't mess with me" moments, especially in relation to where on Earth I could possibly have picked up such habits. Someday, if you have the chance, ask my dad about the guy he made nervous at the hardware store and ask mom about the mall parking lot incident. Then, you should get a good idea of where my blend of crazy-eyed, yet scary-rational anger comes from!

Now...take all that and add it to Brad's genes, we're bound to have a crazy-eyed, rational, stubborn, red-faced hulk baby instead of the kind that turns green! :)

Slackin on the updates...

Hey everyone! Sorry we've been slacking on the updates lately, just been really hectic around and we're just overall...tired. First things first, Heather is doing great! The belly is growing and growing, but she still looks very good as always. She seems to be waking up in the middle of the night between 2 and 4, or waking up at 2 and staying up till 4. As she likes to describe it, as soon as she gets anything inside her bladder, it feels like stuffy takes his feet and pounces on it for her so she has to wake up and go to the bathroom. Other than that, she's doing very well, just tired. Her shoulder is doing a lot better than it was a few weeks ago, it's amazing how much better it feels when she actually stops and thinks before she uses it! Yes...she tries and sneaks in a few things while we've been packing up for the house, I'll give her credit, she does a great job in thinking of excuses and passing it off on our pets to give me a good laugh.

House update: We're about 95% positive that we're closing on our house on Friday (probably afternoon) and we'll be moving in on Saturday! There's not supposed to be any rain/snow this weekend either, so knock on wood for that. Our survey came back over the mark that we needed, so we don't have to pay the CRAZY $1900 in flood insurance, luckily our insurance guy gave us a great deal on some flood insurance with the elevation certificate that is only $200 a year...nothing like saving us $1700 a year. We have our living room and dining room full of boxes now and we're about 90% packed. My awesome brother is coming to help me out with some maintenance on the house this coming weekend to work on the very few things we need to. Notice I'm referring to him as awesome because we need his help this weekend! Heather is going to be pointing and telling everyone where things go and that's it! I think everyone is going to have to help me out with keeping her only doing that, but I think she'll do ok. We're just excited to get into our first house and get settled and have a great space for the baby to come home to. Mazy is going to the vet to get washed the day we move and then won't know what to do with her new backyard, everytime we let her out, she'll probably just stand there by the door until she really...really has to go to the bathroom, then she'll go and rush back to the door. Nala will hide out for a week because she doesn't like these kinds of things, this will be my first experience in moving with the cat (I have a feeling it will be like taking her to the vet).

I think that's about it, we forgot to take Heather's picture last night, so we'll do it tonight and get it posted!

I Don't Care what you get...As long as it has Pepperoni on it!!!

The title of this one is what I heard as we decided on what to have for dinner tonight...yes, yes...another night of us not cooking (shame on us). But Heather got her pizza with pepperoni tonight and she was a happy camper. So with the pizza we had, along came a new toy for our cat - the lid pulled off the box and bent in the shape of a tunnel. That has literally lasted her about an hour and a half of "trying to find the pizza" we said.

Today we went and met with our saving grace - our new babysitter for our baby boy. Kim, we're so happy to have met you and are looking forward to staying in touch in the next few months until stuffy arrives.

Yesterday we got some pretty good news about the house, the elevation is 797.2 compared to what we needed of 791.8...we're a very high 6 feet over where we need to be! So now our lender is waiting on the under writer but we all feel pretty good that it's going to come back and tell us 1. we don't have to pay the monster flood insurance bill and 2. we probably don't even need ANY flood insurance (yes we'll probably get some anyways just to be safe). They're also NOT looking at moving our closing date back any either, so we're still looking at March 13!

We'd still love to hear if anyone has any leads on someone needing a short term apartment lease...so let us know if you know anyone.

That's it for now...enjoy the new weekly picture of Heather!

Chicken McNuggets, here I come!

Monday morning, follow-up from the ER visit with my OB office:

Doctor: "this is SO not your gallbladder."
Heather: " really? "
(discussion ensues about the techniques of ultrasoundists and the cruelty of those hard plastic wands on the sensitive rib area)

Doctor: " Yep. Not your gallbladder, not even close. It's most likely your shoulder surgery, possibly some scar tissue causing issues because of all the changes in your body with the baby."
Heather: "That sounds like what my Physical Therapist friend in Italy said."
Doctor: "Italy? Cool. She's right, I think. I can't see how it's anything but."
Heather: " So.... no more bland diet restriction?"
Doctor: " Eat it up, whatever you want!"
Heather: "I'm so happy right now!"

He then did a "stuffy check" and laughed out loud when Stuffy tried to avoid having his heart listened to and told me "this one's gonna be a hand full!". Nice loud heartbeat -- so much that the woman in the next room commented on it in the lobby afterwards!

The doctor then told me this funny story. He said the last time he had heard a heart rate like that was at the end of last year with a woman who was in her last week or so and she had brought her 7 year old with her to the check up.

Dr. Wright made a comment like "Wow! Sounds like you're having a train!" He said they both kinda chuckled and the 7 year old looked a little confused. Dr. Wright then clarified by telling the kid, because it sounds like a choo-choo. Another minute passes and he sees that the kid is obviously still thinking this over and then the kid says... "So does that mean that steam will start coming out of my mom's vagina?"

First turtles, now trains! My doctor's office is always good for a story!

The shoulder bone's connected to the... gallbladder?

What the heck? That's what most of us have said when we've told this story, but it's true. Pain in your right shoulder is symptomatic of gallbladder issues. I've been having increasing pain in my right shoulder all week and Friday afternoon, I couldn't take it anymore. I thought I had re-hashed something from my shoulder surgery. I called the St. V.'s ask-a-nurse line since my OB's office was closed to ask about taking Tylenol. After 10 minutes on the phone she urged me to go to the ER because to her it could have been either my gallbladder or an anchor from my shoulder was coming loose (they put 2 in during the last surgery). EEEEk!

I felt a little dumb heading to the ER for this, but as Brad pointed out: 1. I was in pain, more than Tylenol was capable of handling and 2. I'm pregnant. We can't be too careful.

Away we went and the staff at the hospital was super great. Blood work, etc. then we got sent down to ultrasound. No biggie...until she finally found my gall bladder on top of my ribs -- After about 10-15 minutes of scanning (which entails her trying to push the ultrasound wand into my ribcage) I was crying. Not a lot of tears, but they were there. After all that, she said she didn't see any gall stones. Then, she was kind enough to move over the Stuffy-- guess who was sleeping while I was writhing in pain? Still sitting in the breech position and groovin' right along with his 160 bpm heartrate. It was comforting to see him and know at least he was doing alright.

They wheeled me back upstairs (Brad was with me the whole time, thankfully!) the last thing they could do was call my OB office on-call. The OB asked for them to do the heart rate, which they found quick and was the 160...very good. His suggestion for the ER doc was that even though there were no stones, I could be experiencing a "colicky gallbladder". We then were told that I need to switch to a bland diet, avoiding fats and spicy food. And to follow up with my OB on Monday morning, they'll be expecting me.

Ummm...by fatty and spicy foods, you mean the stuff I've been eating all week? -- let's review my menu of late:

1. Ham noodle casserole (take a stick of butter and throw some egg noodles and ham in there)
2. Tortellini soup (italian sausage, cheese tortellini and every spice I could find) - ate it every day for lunch last week, by the way.
3. Cheeseburgers and fries from Five Guys
4. LOTS of chicken mcnuggets with hot mustard sauce and fries
5. Steak basted in butter and loaded (and I mean loaded) baked potato
6. Vanilla ice cream with (insert cookies, fudge sauce, etc. here)
7. Tagalongs and Thin Mints
8. Sausage biscuit and hashbrowns

No, I can't imagine why my already hormone stressed gallbladder could be having trouble!?

I'm trying to be better this weekend, but it's hard. Hopefully I'll get some more definitive answers from Dr. Garrett tomorrow with a more detailed plan about what to do from here...maybe I'll be really lucky and it NOT be my gallbladder and we can have some of #4 and #6 for dinner tomorrow! :)

No new news on the house yet, still waiting for the elevation cert. to come back. Lots of happy thoughts, please!!!!!

Oh! And we may have found a great babysitter- more on that on Tuesday!

Have a cheeseburger day...I mean GOOD day everyone!