Wedding!

We had so much fun at Chris and Stefani's wedding on Saturday, and fun at all the other related wedding events too! The parents spent a lot of time getting ready here in Dallas earlier in the week (and Amanda and Michael the Baby picked up parents and Michael the Brother from the airport, and made various shopping trips, during the week also). We Lawlers ended up hosting a get-together early on Saturday for assorted Blackwell/Garza family and friends. Theresa brought her handy tailgating tent and folding table over to set up in the backyard, Mom and Amanda had all the food and snacks bought from Sam's Club earlier in the week set up in the dining room, and Michael picked up sandwiches from Jason's Deli in the morning. Several people went swimming and there were lots of visitors. Michael the Baby was pretty popular. He was happy to see everyone. (He liked the post-wedding brunch at my parents' hotel too.)

I got my hair done up for the wedding after that because I figured, accurately as it turned out, that Dallas would be freaking hot in formal clothes in August, and I hate having my hair get sweaty and matted when I'm trying to make it look somewhat nice. (Poor Stefani was even hotter in her dress -- which was beautiful! -- but Chris got her a personal fan to stand over during all the picture taking times so I think she did all right :) It was the first time I had my hair done up since Whitney's wedding two years ago, and mine before that. I think it looked pretty decent, although not quite as Spanish as I was aiming for. My new dress was a bit of a departure for me, since I usually stick to solid colors and everyone knows I don't like change, but Michael said he really liked how it looked so I went with that :) Theresa and Amanda looked great and Mom looked awesome too. We put Michael the Baby in a little sweatervest. He did pretty well with it. He liked the flower girls and they liked him too -- Jada kept giving him little kisses.


The wedding was wonderful, and it was so great to see how happy Chris and Stefani are. They are pretty exuberant types anyway, so this took it to a new level. Can't wait to see how the Switzerfilm video turns out with such a cool couple to work with. (This video will certainly be unique though ... Stefani's sisters said they had gone on location to Chipotle earlier (!!) which is typical Chris, but funny for a wedding video, heh.) It's hard to believe my brother is married now but I'm really happy for him and glad to have such a great new sister-in-law and know her wonderful family.

Home improvements

Last year's home improvements were all indoors when we moved in -- painting, ceilings, bathroom, and windows. This year's were all outdoor -- new pool pump, automatic timer for the pool equipment, patio furniture, fence posts and a pool fence. And that will be all the updates for the foreseeable future, since the budget for these sorts of things only goes so far!

I'm so, so happy with the pool fence that was just completed Thursday. Our deck and pool is so oddly shaped that a "conventional" removable mesh fence wouldn't really work (and wouldn't look nice either). But we needed something -- while I'm very happy to have a pool, I'm completely paranoid about having one with children around, and children are going to be around for awhile to come :). We thought about just fencing in around the patio (because that covers all three doors to the outside) but my mom had the best suggestion of doing a permanent fence around part of the pool deck and the yard. That way, some of the yard is still open for kids if we are having a group outside, but the pool itself is fenced off. And the view isn't completely impaired, either. I contracted for the fence without being a hundred percent sure of what it would look like, so I was nervous, but I think it looks great! (Please don't spoil it for me if you think otherwise :) So, thanks to my mom.

I don't have a good "before" picture, but here's what it looks like now:

Minor gripes

1. My hair keeps falling out. Every time I feel like complaining about this lovely postpartum hormone effect, my inner voice pipes up, "Would you rather have NO hair instead?" So of course I'm grateful to have my hair. But I really, really wish it would stop shedding like crazy, everywhere, all the time.

2. Even though I keep sorting through files in the office and I've filed and trashed a ton of papers this past week, it seems like there are still a lot of boxes left. This is somewhat disheartening, although one friend made me feel better by saying she still has a room like that in her house years after she moved in :) We're both working on it.

3. We need a roof repair on our garage. Our next door neighbor told me yesterday he could see some shingles blown off, so we looked, and yes there's a part of the garage open to the sky. Lovely. This is why we have a "repairs" category in our budget. Didn't need it for the last three months, but I knew (after the water heater busting, badly clogged sink, leaky outdoor faucet, etc.) that it needs to be factored in because *something* will always come up. I found someone to come repair it tomorrow, hopefully before the next storms come through. Not cheap, but again, at least it's in the budget.

4. I just started trying to meal plan because I want to make sure we have a variety of meals, cut down on the "what are we doing tonight?" episodes, and minimize waste of fresh stuff. I have a pretty good menu planned out, based on our last grocery trip, until next weekend when we are traveling. The last two nights this has worked out well. But tonight I was going to try Crockpot chicken, using up some of the vegetables we have and some chicken drumsticks. I checked the expiration date and it was today so we should have been fine on the chicken -- it looks fine, although it smells a tiny bit off. I got everything in the pot and then went to check and see whether this was all kosher, and consensus seems to be if chicken smells funny you should throw it out. So now I'm bummed that I have apparently wasted the veggies I put in the Crockpot, as well as the chicken which we'd bought a large package of and which was supposed to count for two meal nights on my meal plan. I also feel dumb because I probably should have checked around before I started cooking. Well, in the grand scheme of things it's all fine, and chicken is relatively cheap so I can go get some more. I just was trying to be more conscientious on the grocery trip bills :/

Weekend update

Nice Sunday morning nap

It has been a really nice weekend here. On Friday night, I really wanted to get out of the house so Mike and I found a new (to us) restaurant to try in Garland, called Esteban's. The food was pretty tasty and Michael behaved himself so it was a great evening out. Yesterday, unfortunately Mike had to be at work all day, but I had a nice day hanging out with Michael. We went back to Penney's to exchange some shirts, in a successful trip, and later when the baby took a great two-hour nap in the afternoon, I suddenly found myself motivated to clean out and organize my entire closet and dresser. That warrants a (!) for me. There were still two bags of clothes in the closet I hadn't touched since we moved here (this had to do with my irrational fear that some bugs would be camping out in there . . . yes, I know that's dumb); my work wardrobe needed to be pruned since I now had some new shirts; and my dresser was overstuffed so it needed to be cleared out too. As with my friend Sarah :) there are quite a few things I own that I probably first acquired, oh, at the beginning of college, and yes, that's 10 years ago, and some of it could definitely afford to be given or thrown away. (Or so insisted Mike, anyway :) So I worked all afternoon and some in the evening, and everything looks great now! I'm all set to go back to work, wardrobe-wise, and my sock drawer can successfully be closed.

Last night, after Mike got home, Michael was suddenly off to the races. He got his bottom up in the air, did a little rocking back and forth, and then launched himself forward quickly several times in a row, all the way across the floor from his playmat to me. Then he grinned and did it several more times. That was fun to see, and sooner than we thought! So far I'm not chasing him yet, but now that he's got this down it will only be a matter of days :) Today we went out to the ND Club picnic and enjoyed walking around the park, eating barbecue pork, and visiting with friends in the club. Back at home, Mike mowed the backyard so it looks nice and tidy now, and I handled the unpleasant discovery of a dead rabbit in the front yard. I am such a citified person -- you should have seen me prod the rabbit and jump back about five times before I managed to pick it up and get it in a trash bag. Yick. Much happier to be back inside now and playing with the baby. Have a great week!

Fun at the ND Club Picnic

Refi

Mike noticed mortgage rates were going down a few weeks ago, and so we decided to look at refinancing.  He had good timing since we managed to snag a rate under 5% from someone through Lendingtree.com, but I think the rates have gone back above that ever since then.  In any event, on the advice of the parental units we put closing costs into the new mortgage, which makes our total balance a bit bigger, but we get to save 1.5 percentage points -- translating to over a hundred dollars a month -- and our break even point is only 2.5 years.  I am definitely planning for us to stick around in this house longer than that, so the math seemed right.   Closing is tonight and they're actually sending the notary with the papers over here so we don't even have to go anywhere.  Not a bad deal!  I think my in-laws are looking into refinancing now too.  Hope it is going well!

Things I found on Craigslist this year

• A crib and dresser for the baby.


• An electrician to install ceiling fans.


• An awesome Dutailier glider rocker chair.


• Coffee table and two matching end tables for the living room.


• Tree and lawn care service people.


• A baby bouncy seat.


• Our realtor.

On eBay I found the baby's changing table, nursing bras and a couple of nursing tops, and my pump.  The Internet rocks.

Getting ready for Christmas

Right after Thanksgiving we broke out the Christmas decorations, which I always have fun putting up.  (Mom helped with the tree setup this year :)   The tree and lights I got from Target when I first moved out on my own after law school.  That year I also looked around online to find a nice Nativity set and Advent wreath.  I think Michael will like helping me set these up each year in the future.  Hopefully he won't break off baby Jesus's hand, like I think we kids did to our family's set at some point over the years.  I'm sure it was an accident!

[caption id="attachment_464" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Lots of lights "][/caption]

The baby really seems to like looking at all the lights on the tree, which is fun.  Also, I wanted to post -- when Mr. Lawler was in town, we took our first family Christmas pictures in front of the tree.  Aside from the more formal ones, I liked this one :)

[caption id="attachment_465" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Santa's helper"][/caption]

Around the house

I used to be able to get all those little things that keep popping up around the house taken care of well enough while I was working -- for the water heater repairs, window installation, pest control, alarm system installation, bill transfers, etc., I could usually either work from home for a few hours, make calls during down times in the office, and so forth.  But then again, it has been helpful to be at home the last couple of weeks with ongoing house maintenance stuff.  Now I'm just limited by whether I can answer the door or type with a baby physically attached to me.  I kind of have a setup here in the media room with water to drink on the end table next to me, nursing pillow and ottoman, my laptop and Blackberry for communication, and TV remote on the couch.  Hey, I am stuck in this spot for at least an hour, every two-and-a-half hours, all day long.  I need a command center.  (Last night Michael stayed up after the 11:00 feeding all the way through the 1 a.m. feeding.  I ended up watching three episodes of "Biography," on various 60s rockers, in a row before I could fall asleep sometime after 2.)

So this week, I found some people on Craigslist to do a fall/winter cleanup and treatment of our lawn.  They came on Wednesday and everything looks really nice overall -- they mowed, trimmed hedges and trees, got rid of some ugly weeds, cleaned the gutters, raked, and put down something (you can tell I'm good at this gardening stuff) to protect the lawn over the winter.  The only thing is I told them the brush goes in the back alley for pickup, but we got a notice from the city last night that it has to go in the front and I have to schedule a pickup.  I hadn't actually seen the amount of brush along our back fence until this morning when I went out -- yikes!  Mike and I will have to move it by Monday and I'll call the city today.

This week we also had a pool guy (recommended via a reference from the previous owners of our house) come to do a thorough cleaning of the pool and teach us a bit more about the existing system, which is "antiquated" (read: about our ages) and probably needs to be upgraded next year.  He was really nice and we ended up hiring him to do weekly maintenance on the pool at least through the winter.  The pool pump was actually broken when he came out though, so he couldn't evaluate that.  So the pool pump was another maintenance appointment this week.  Fortunately, it was covered by the home warranty company.  Their people came out yesterday and fixed the pool pump.  Guess what the problem was?  You'll never guess.  Apparently the switch was shorted out by geckos, of which the repairman said he found lots of dead ones nearby.  I kid you not.  Who knew?

The Internet was also a helpful resource this week in finding a person to call about natural family planning while breastfeeding.  Mike and I originally were taught NFP by a sister/obstetrician associated with the Washington archdiocese, but I know there are special rules associated with practicing NFP while breastfeeding (since you have to be on the lookout for the return of ovulation) so I thought I'd try to find someone to talk to about it while I'm still early postpartum.  I was going to call the diocesan family life office here, but it turns out that the Billings Method, which is what we use, has its own website with contact people in different cities.  I called the woman listed for Dallas and she was very helpful.  I should be able to start charting again in the next week or so and have a good basic infertile pattern established by the time that information becomes useful again.  The teacher said she'd be happy to continue to be a resource though if we need it.  Glad to have the support!

Okay, naptime for me since the baby is surprising me by sleeping longer than normal this morning.  (Watch, as soon as I lay down he'll wake up...)

Where did the kids go?!

I am totally bummed!  The last several years that I've been living on my own I have bought a little candy for Halloween and decorated my door to say trick-or-treaters were welcome, but only a few kids (read: one or two) have come by because I was in an apartment complex in a fourth-floor walkup.  But this year, Mike and I bought several big bags of really good candy because now we are in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and we know there are lots of kids around.  (Our parish has to have a thousand of them!)  I was really looking forward to handing out the candy.  Mike pulled out the little Halloween decorations from around the house and put them near the front door, and made sure all the lights were on.

So here it is, 7:15, and while we saw a few families walking across the street (including a little Darth Vader) we only had three groups of kids come in the last hour and a half (and not the little Darth Vader).  Where did all the kids go?  I am so disappointed!  Maybe we'll bring some candy to the game watch tomorrow.  Otherwise, we've got enough to keep Mike and all visiting family members stocked for a month or two at least.  (Oh okay, and me too, since once the baby's born I assume chocolate will stop giving me instant heartburn :)

UPDATE: Okay, we just got several more trick-or-treaters.  Yay!  I made sure to give them all handfuls of candy since there is apparently no need to ration.

Nursery mural!

Mom and Theresa swept in and painted the nursery for Michael the Baby in about 36 hours.  I think Mom liked being back in paint clothes and staying up late to put on the finishing touches.  It looks awesome.  So cute!  Here are a few pictures:

[caption id="attachment_251" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Dori poking Marlin"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_252" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Duuude"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_253" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Cute little fish (with bubbles)"][/caption]

How much fun is that?  I love it.

Fancy new bathroom!

[caption id="attachment_158" align="aligncenter" width="468" caption="Old bathroom - not bad, but yellowish with teeny shower."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_160" align="aligncenter" width="468" caption="Point of no return!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_195" align="aligncenter" width="468" caption="Fancy new shower!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_196" align="aligncenter" width="468" caption="Fancy new bathtub!"][/caption]

Last steps should be shower door, mirrors and lights by the bathroom sinks, and clean up.

The New Parish

We are blessed to have a Catholic parish 1/4 mile from our house. It is a very vibrant and diverse community. Catholics from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Vietnam, the Philippines are part of the normal life of the parish. As our family grows, it will most likely be a wonderful place to raise our children.

That being said, we have been completely underwhelmed during mass so far. We were extremely blessed at Holy Cross in Maryland to have a music director and a priest who collaborated to provide parishioners with the very best the Church has to offer in terms of music and ritual. Christ the King in Dallas also had a talented music director and a church that properly oriented parishioners interiorly and exteriorly in the celebration of the mass.

The mass at St. Joseph's is filled with every cliche invented since the advent of the vernacular mass: friendly, ad-libbing celebrants, inclusive language, folk guitar accompaniments, chirpy mass setttings, children's liturgy (with accompanying Sesame Street hymn), bad jokes, a preponderance of extraordinary ministers, an underwhelming altar presentation, and clapping.

The blame starts at the top and works its way down. The church actually has a beautifully constructed organ that is sparingly used. The choir is fully staffed, but is stuck singing hymns written and published by Oregon Catholic press. There is a beautiful, eastern-style crucifix hanging behind the altar, but it is surrounded by empty space. There are plenty of altar servers, but they are barely used during the mass.

Unless the pastor (who has been there since 1995) or the music director leave, I don't see much hope for the future. We will continue to pray that they utilize more of the rich tradition of the Church and stop trying to serve us McDonald's every week.

Weekend work?

I think I've escaped having to do any major work this weekend.  One partner does like to call after hours, but hopefully he won't need anything before Monday's conference call.  And a title letter I was working on today for a Monday deadline won't have anything happen until Monday since the business/title people definitely don't do weekends.

This weekend I am planning to hang up more of my pictures and assemble our desk and daybed, since I don't really have to lift anything for that and I have assembled them lots of times in the past.  I would start tonight, but Mike bought "The Office" Season 4 and we have to watch at least some of it first.  Football will also take some priority tomorrow.  But the house is definitely on the list.  Yep :)

Also, here's our "before" and "during" pictures of the bathroom ... another week or two to wait for the "after"!

[caption id="attachment_158" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Old bathroom - not bad, but yellowish with teeny shower."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_160" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Point of no return!"][/caption]

Settling in

Very nice weekend overall - we pretty much slept all Sunday afternoon, got to try out the new swimming pool, watched some football on Saturday, and hit up Lowe's yesterday for a lawn mower and some carpet padding.  Also, I turned in the keys to the townhouse - yay!  Today was a good day at work because I had enough work to keep me busy all day, but then I didn't get hit with an all-night redraft of my current purchase agreement because the Seller will handle the next redraft.  Whew!

We decided to go ahead with Antonio for the bathroom remodeling and he was actually able to start today, so the whole project could be done within the next couple of weeks, which is great.  Came home tonight to see that the demolition/stripping of our bathroom was completed - and they just started this morning!  Crazy.  Guess we have to see it all through now, since there's just wood framing and no toilet, tub or shower for the moment.  Eek.  I may try to post a picture later.

Almost there

We spent another 4 hours at the townhouse last night after work trying to empty the place out.  I think we're about 99% done now and Mike will just go back to get the vacuum cleaner and a few random things out of the back room tonight or tomorrow.  The only impediment might be, we were so tired when we got home last night we didn't unload our stuffed cars yet!  So all that stuff might come to work with us today first.  We did make it out grocery shopping on Monday night, though, and moved over all the condiments/butter/etc. last night, so I made macaroni and cheese when we got home at 11 last night for our dinners - finally moving away from a week of restaurants and fast food (except for sandwiches a couple of lunches last week), given the craziness of our schedules the last week.

Mike has been awesome about all the work of packing and loading and unloading around here.  He definitely deserves a swimming break sometime soon.

Birds chirping

You can laugh, but you would not believe how nice it is to just hear quiet and birds chirping in the morning here.  No trucks crashing and bumping along the pot-holed 6-lane road outside the townhouse window anymore!  People actually taking morning walks on the sidewalk in front of our house instead of slouching by with random rusty grocery carts!  It is pretty amazing.

I actually cried at work yesterday when I got the bill for all the drying/dehumidifying services for the flooding last week - much higher than I thought, and they won't even throw in a few square yards of new padding for the price, so whatever - back to Lowe's again.  I'm going to blame the emotion on the hormones, though.  My favorite personal finance columnist, Michelle Singletary at the Washington Post, is forever preaching the value of paying off debt, budgeting, creating an emergency fund of 4-6 months in the event of illness or unemployement, and creating a "life happens" fund of a couple of thousand dollars (if possible) for the random car breakdowns, dental procedures, and so forth that always pop up that you shouldn't have to dip into emergency savings for.  I know the water heater was a "life happens" thing and that's what our savings was there for.  It still made me cry.  But, you know, the house is so nice and I'm so grateful to be here that I think I just need to let it go.

Back to drafting - I'm working on a lease at the house this morning while waiting for the City of Richardson inspector to come check the water heater for code compliance.  Yay!

Home at Last

• We are about 95% moved in after the weekend. Many thanks to Theresa and Chris for packing and delivering many of our things on Saturday.


• The new water heater was delivered and installed on Saturday afternoon. It looks a lot better than the old one.


• The area initially flooded by the water leak is completely dry now. The only thing left to be done is a carpet cleaning, which will take place sometime this week.


• Our new sofas and buffet/hutch china cabinet was delivered on Saturday. They look even better in our new house. The china cabinet even matches the new dining room chandelier, which we picked up at Lowe's.


• To do for this week: unpacking, grill, lawnmower, patio furniture, painting closets, basketball hoop installation, security system installation.


• To do near future: window installation, master bathroom remodel, painting baby's room.

We will post some before/after pictures once we finish unpacking and cleaning.

ARGH!

So it turns out home warranties are completely meaningless documents. After notifying the home warranty company on Wednesday night that our water heater had started leaking, flooding the closet and part of the media room, they waited until midday Thursday to call a plumber to come take a look at it.

The plumber was scheduled to come between 9-1 this morning and came at the tail end of that time block. After he inspected the water heater he proceeded to reveal to Kim that the water heater had a hole in it. REALLY?1? A HOLE?!? HOW SHOCKING!!!

But, of course, he couldn't fix the hole, and he couldn't schedule an appointment to replace the water heater because they don't do same-day installation. The earliest he could schedule it would be Monday. His only solution was to go outside and turn off the water for the ENTIRE house, which according to his plan, would leave us without water all weekend.

I received a follow-up call from the warranty company almost immediately. The representative was not very helpful. It turns out that if you do the installation yourself (or have another company do it) they only pay out $300. She seemed that we would be without water all weekend and continue to have water leak all weekend. (How long does it take for a 50-gallon tank to drain?)

After I talked to her, I immediately got on the horn with Lowe's, which is just around the corner. They were extremely helpful. They will be able to come out tomorrow morning between 8-11 to install a brand new 12-year water heater. The total cost will be just under $900. So, thanks to the generosity of the home warranty company, we will only be responsible for 2/3 of that. All because their plumber wouldn't do same day install.

Of course, we also have the movers coming to the townhouse between 8-11 to get our furniture, and we have Rooms to Go coming between 9-1 to deliver our sofas and cabinet, so Kim and I will each be manning our respective properties. Our hope is to have the water back on by midday, and we can end this ridiculous week on a note of calm.

On a personal note, thanks to Jones Day for finally finding an assignment that would keep Kim occupied 18 hours each day this week. It only took you 8 months to do that, and you guys have impeccable timing. I bet they'll try to call her while she's giving birth to see if she can draft a quick lease in between pushes.

/end sarcasm

Welcome to home ownership

Please keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times.  Your water heater will now be breaking, leaking all over the carpet, and possibly damaging the wall boards.  We hope you enjoy the ride.

Don't try this at home

What I found when I went looking for dinner:

[caption id="attachment_100" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Tragically, the Coke Zero did not survive the explosion."][/caption]

That's gonna be fun to clean up!  Fortunately, we'll be emptying it and would have needed to clean it out anyway next week :)