we signed our contract last night and we close on february 28. if anyone is interested in renting our place starting in march, let me know. :-)
Thursday, January 31, 2008
we bought a house...
...and now we are broke. but we are happy. here's a little preview-
we signed our contract last night and we close on february 28. if anyone is interested in renting our place starting in march, let me know. :-)
we signed our contract last night and we close on february 28. if anyone is interested in renting our place starting in march, let me know. :-)
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Husband.
(loosely inspired by Jason Cowan's "Wife.")
Husband. He’s very weird.
He’s growing a redwood tree from a tiny, pinecone looking seed that he found in the redwood forest and then protected for a WEEK until he could get it home, put it in a red coffee mug, and sit it on the windowsill. This morning, he walked over to the window, pulled up the shade, leaned down, and said, “come on little redwood.”
Sometimes I want to melt with how genuinely childlike he is. My car is consistently an absolute mess. One day he tells me, “Hey I made up a song that I think will really help you.” It went, “Bring in one thing from the car, next time it won’t be so hard.” He sang me the song in complete seriousness.
When he gets up in the morning his hair is completely insane. It is matted down and up in like five directions. If he happens to not take a shower that day, he will actually leave it that way well into the day.
If he gets antsy or feels like he’s been around all women too long, he’ll drop to the floor and start doing push-ups. If someone asks why, he’ll say something like, “The estrogen was just getting to me.”
His mom has told me when he was young, it was like he was the president of his own little country. Once, he got his brother and sisters to “play church” in the living room. He proceeded to deliver a “sermon” (at age 7) and then he asked them to put their heads down and thumbs up if they wanted Jesus to come into their hearts. If they did, they could have communion. If only there were a home video of this.
He’s very gentle.
In the morning he wakes me up because I basically refuse until the last possible second. He’ll pick up my arms one by one and rub them “to slowly get the blood flowing.” Then he’ll leave and if I still don’t get up, he’ll call me from downstairs and tell me it is crunch time.
He always makes the coffee. He always cleans up after dinner. He always says “You’re beautiful” and “I love you.” Whenever we argue or hurt each other’s feelings, he refuses to let it go without talking about it. He forgives easily when I am the one who wronged him, and he apologizes quickly when he is the one who wronged me.
He is very patient.
There are about a million things I do regularly that get on his nerves. These include not washing the spatula that I used to make my eggs with in the morning, overreacting, and repeating a point over and over when he got it the first time. But he doesn’t freak out or remain perpetually angry with me. He just says, one more time, “Oh look, here I am cleaning the spatula again. If only someone had washed it this morning, it would be a lot easier to get this crap off.”
Husband. He’s very weird.
He’s growing a redwood tree from a tiny, pinecone looking seed that he found in the redwood forest and then protected for a WEEK until he could get it home, put it in a red coffee mug, and sit it on the windowsill. This morning, he walked over to the window, pulled up the shade, leaned down, and said, “come on little redwood.”
Sometimes I want to melt with how genuinely childlike he is. My car is consistently an absolute mess. One day he tells me, “Hey I made up a song that I think will really help you.” It went, “Bring in one thing from the car, next time it won’t be so hard.” He sang me the song in complete seriousness.
When he gets up in the morning his hair is completely insane. It is matted down and up in like five directions. If he happens to not take a shower that day, he will actually leave it that way well into the day.
If he gets antsy or feels like he’s been around all women too long, he’ll drop to the floor and start doing push-ups. If someone asks why, he’ll say something like, “The estrogen was just getting to me.”
His mom has told me when he was young, it was like he was the president of his own little country. Once, he got his brother and sisters to “play church” in the living room. He proceeded to deliver a “sermon” (at age 7) and then he asked them to put their heads down and thumbs up if they wanted Jesus to come into their hearts. If they did, they could have communion. If only there were a home video of this.
He’s very gentle.
In the morning he wakes me up because I basically refuse until the last possible second. He’ll pick up my arms one by one and rub them “to slowly get the blood flowing.” Then he’ll leave and if I still don’t get up, he’ll call me from downstairs and tell me it is crunch time.
He always makes the coffee. He always cleans up after dinner. He always says “You’re beautiful” and “I love you.” Whenever we argue or hurt each other’s feelings, he refuses to let it go without talking about it. He forgives easily when I am the one who wronged him, and he apologizes quickly when he is the one who wronged me.
He is very patient.
There are about a million things I do regularly that get on his nerves. These include not washing the spatula that I used to make my eggs with in the morning, overreacting, and repeating a point over and over when he got it the first time. But he doesn’t freak out or remain perpetually angry with me. He just says, one more time, “Oh look, here I am cleaning the spatula again. If only someone had washed it this morning, it would be a lot easier to get this crap off.”
Friday, January 18, 2008
a dime a dozen
what is up with the expression "a dime a dozen?" you CANNOT buy a dozen of anything for a dime. you can't even buy a dozen pennies for a dime.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
long rides...Sunday thru Tuesday
My inspiration...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duj_g0WuQF8
and once more...trying to impress the ladies...
Sunday morning we awoke and checked out and found that they charged us the normal amount, so either my reasoning worked, or they just gave us the discount to as not to receive a bad review. We left in good spirits as we climbed the last leg of the road to the GC when we realized that because of the snowfall, and the heavy fog surrounding us, that we probably weren’t going to see jack. We reached the top and could see absolutely nothing. Bummed a little we went inside and looked around for some silver lining. We found a cute breakfast place and sat down. We prayed and thanked the Lord for all he’d provided so far and then asked him for a slight clearing of the weather so we could see what he made there. We finished breakfast and walked outside to find that we could see about a half mile where before nothing. We thanked the Lord and hiked around. Absolutely gorgeous.
After that we drove on into California, after passing through the Mojave Desert which was an experience, see http://www.shawnandkalle.blogspot.com/ for details. But we arrived in the evening at Joshua Tree National Park. Unreal rock climbers paradise. We got to our campsite just in time to catch the sunset. We ate hotdogs and s’mores and played 20 questions where the boys stumped the girls on these two items: “crossword puzzles” (Shawn) and
“heat pad” (Mark). We went to bed at 8:30 just because it felt so late. We got frosted on and woke up at 6:30 to catch the sunrise. Jumping around on these rocks was so much fun. My back was feeling pretty good thanks to prayers from friends.
Leaving from there we went on to LA where just outside we stopped for an In and Out burger, introducing 3 of 5 members of our party, namely the girls, to the goodness that lies inside. They loved the fries especially but loved everything, so I’m proud to know them. (even more) We stopped at Autozone and got some help replacing the flasher relay in Shawn’s jeep. With everything running an hour later we got back on the road and pushed hard through 5 o’clock LA rush hour traffic, not recommended. We now have been driving for about 4 hours and are trying to figure out if the mess we’re driving through (rain) is what we’re going to camp in tonight. Hopefully we’ll find some cheaper accommodations? Will update in 24 hours.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Our Seattle Trip...Friday n Saturday
On Friday after work we piled into Shawn and Kalle Stinson’s cars and headed west. Our first stop was in Memphis, pulling in around 12:45am. Thankfully one of Shawn’s friends hooked us up with a nice place to sleep. We woke up and went to breakfast at Brother Junipers’ where we were assured our stuff would get stolen out of our cars. Thankfully, the Lord protected our stuff as we watched our cars while eating in the infamous Memphis.
Our next stop was yes, Amarillo, Texas. We beat George Strait to the punch and made it to “Amarillo by (morning)” by nightfall. After a big Texas meal, that proved to us that NC bbq is world’s better than Texan bbq, we slept and woke up to Arizona. Arizona is a lot bigger and just went on and on. We were on I40 all the way until here where we broke north for about 60 miles to see the Grand Canyon! It started to snow while in Arizona and ended up with 18 inches. W
e put on the 4 wheel drive and got to our hotel. The guy tried to charge us 20 bucks more than previously revealed on the phone. I reasoned with him for about 5 minutes during which I learned how I can lose an argument to someone who doesn’t argue back but just says the same thing over and over. I need to adjust my skills.more to come...
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
rejected!
Hey ya'll. Well we heard back a lot quicker than expected. I'm a little sad but we tried! Our offer was too low and the bank was already negociating a closing date with some chump who offered more than we did. Oh well. We're starting over. It was fun though! I still reccommend low-balling. We'll keep you posted.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
We made an offer!
Hi everyone. Quick update...and I'm realistic that no one has probably been checking to see when the next post was going to be but I (Mark) wanted to use my day off to blog a little. We met our realtor this morning and made an offer on the REO (bank owned house) in N. Charlotte! We asked for 25% off the price they have it listed at. I know, it sounds crazy but we don't mind getting shut down or no response, cause' hey, if we don't find anything else, we'll bump up our offer slightly and try to get them to take the bait. It was a pretty cool way to start 2008. On your comments, if you so choose, put your link in to your blog. I'd love to learn.
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