I (Loyce) did something completely hair-brained. Like kick yourself stupid. Even admitting it makes me feel even more moronic.
I am responsible. Always have been. Ask my mom. I have had things stolen, but never misplaced or lost something, especially of great value. Well, that is just what I did. You see, after I went for a morning run with the tot in tow, I placed my old iPhone 4 on the hood of my car. I kept the phone for this purpose, as an iPod. It worked great for that. However, this particular day instead of putting it right back in my car, I placed it on the hood of my car. I even thought to myself, "What if you don't see it?" I dismissed that thought and apparently left it there, because I would never be so distracted to not notice an expensive piece of technology laying on the hood of my car.
The tot and I went inside and got ready for the day. We had a lunch date with a sweet friend and I went about my day not even thinking of the phone/iPod again. It wasn't until I was leaving for a quick weekend get away the following day did it even dawn on me. I was horrified. Shocked. Ticked at myself for being so irresponsible. How could I do such a thing? Worse, where was it now? It had tons of pictures and videos of our tot on it. (Yes, I had backed it up, but still). Those pictures were precious to us. Not to mention all of the accounts/application I had on the old phone and were still logged into. I was beside myself. Who had all of this information now?
Whoa, whoa you are thinking. It is just stuff. It happens. Move on. Well, maybe you can do that, but it was literally the first thing I've lost. I have had other people lose my belongings and have had things stolen or destroyed, but not where it was actually my fault entirely.
Anyways, fast forward a week later. I get a mysterious package in the mail with my old address in the "return" and "to" lines. I promptly opened the package and inside was a handwritten note:
Loyce,
This thumb drive has all the pics and vids from your lost iphone. The phone was run over and pretty trashed but I was able to get these from your motherboard. (I figured the pics are worth more than the phone.)
No return information. No pass it forward. Nothing. Just an extremely good and time consuming deed.
So, being my trusting self, go to plug the jump drive (16GB) in the computer. My not so trusting partner promptly says that we are not plugging that into the computer or anything that is connected to our network. Then starts the questions: Why did someone go to all the trouble of picking up the demolished phone, retrieving the information, etc. and returning it to the owner without returning the entire phone? Also, how in the world did they find my old address from the phone? Now I'm completely spooked. I start changing all my passwords and log-ins for everything I can think of that was on the old phone. I hadn't done any of that yet because I was still hoping I wasn't foolish enough to leave my old phone on the hood of my car. Alas, I was.
All that being said, I did lose the phone. It was "trashed" and someone was kind enough to send me the pictures and videos of my pumpkin back to me. However, I am thankful for a skeptical husband and the fact that we have moved and the finder of my phone is not aware of our new address. That is public record, but let's hope they don't search for it.
...I'm going to go check all the windows and doors now.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Friday, May 25, 2012
I look young, apparently
Loyce and I have always been told by many people that we look young.
"You're too young to have a child!"
"Are you sure you're old enough to use the activity center?" (asked of us during college)
"Yeah, I'm going to need to see some ID." (entering any sort of 18+ or 21+ facility)
But never before have I seen someone slam an entire table full of people at once with a comment about my appearance.
I go to lunch with a handful of co-workers every Friday. The group is mostly the same each week and made up of primarily late-20-somethings and 30-somethings. Today the waitress came to us after the meal was over, looked at me, and said, "I have to ask you a question....how old are you?" I laughed, having received questions similar to that frequently, and informed her that I was 28 and had a child.
"Oh...you don't look it," she said, providing us an insight into her inner monologue. But it was what she followed up with that I didn't see coming. "Like...you don't look like the other guys at the table."
I wasn't sure how to react, so I just laughed. That was when everyone else caught on to what had just happened.
"You're too young to have a child!"
"Are you sure you're old enough to use the activity center?" (asked of us during college)
"Yeah, I'm going to need to see some ID." (entering any sort of 18+ or 21+ facility)
But never before have I seen someone slam an entire table full of people at once with a comment about my appearance.
I go to lunch with a handful of co-workers every Friday. The group is mostly the same each week and made up of primarily late-20-somethings and 30-somethings. Today the waitress came to us after the meal was over, looked at me, and said, "I have to ask you a question....how old are you?" I laughed, having received questions similar to that frequently, and informed her that I was 28 and had a child.
"Oh...you don't look it," she said, providing us an insight into her inner monologue. But it was what she followed up with that I didn't see coming. "Like...you don't look like the other guys at the table."
I wasn't sure how to react, so I just laughed. That was when everyone else caught on to what had just happened.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
What's going on?
Well let's see...Loyce's last post was in February. Our lives have changed a bit since then.
We sold a house!
We bought a house!
We had a bunch of stuff fall apart on the new house!
Okay, that last one is a bit of an exaggeration. But regardless, it's been an exciting few months.
In February and March, we decided that we would like to look at our options for newer, larger houses since we both have rather...expensive tastes. We had a realtor come by the house and tell us what she thought we could get for it; we were basically told "you'd definitely lose money selling this house." We chatted with some friends that had recently moved and got a few recommendations on realtors, movers, that sort of thing, and had the new realtors come look at the house. They thought we could probably sell the home for ~$13k higher than the previous realtor had thought! So, we thought we'd give it a shot.
A "stager" came in to tell us what needed to change in order to make our home the most appealing it could be. She gave us a long list of stuff to move, remove, and change. We complied, doing as much as we thought was reasonable (including renting a storage facility for our furniture that we apparently had way too much of) and got the house all ready to sell. We put the house up for sale on a Tuesday and Loyce was basically unable to stay home for the remainder of the week because of all the showings. That was a stressful week. However, Saturday came, we had multiple showings on top of each other all day long, and we wound up with 3 offers! We accepted one and moved on to put an offer on our new dream house.
This house had been on the market for 6+ months. We figured we'd give a reasonable offer, haggle over it, and be able to buy the house no problem. The realtor selling the house then came back and informed us that she had received a second offer. How fortuitous for the seller! Being suspicious of the timing, we talked with our realtor to see if the seller was possibly bluffing to get us to raise our bid. Our realtor informed us that if she was, that was a very dangerous game since many buyers will simply refuse to enter any sort of bidding war and just back out. Loyce and I had our hearts set on the house, though, so we came back with an offer much closer to the asking price. It was accepted an hour later. Wow, they sure did resolve that "other offer" situation quickly!
Then came time for inspections, repairs, and packing. That all went as painfully as you'd expect. The inspection on our house was not too surprising given that it was a 30ish-year-old home, but the buyer was reasonable and only wanted a handful of items repaired. We complied fully and spent more than I wanted to to fix stuff up. But hey, they were buying for the price we asked, so that was great. Inspection on the house we were buying went very well (as expected; it was a 2-year-old home).
So we packed, we repaired, we inspected, and then it came time to sign. Closing was smooth and painless. Almost too painless. Even our realtor was a bit suspicious at how everything just sort of fell into place (financing, appraisals, inspections, et al). But alas, we signed all the papers and were only homeless for about a half-hour while we ate lunch in Frisco.
This is getting long. Sorry about that.
Moving went very smoothly. The movers did an amazing job and were very fast. My pool table is now in a room that fits it very well, so that's cool. Loyce worked tirelessly to get us unpacked until neither of us could stand sweating or moving boxes around any more.
Day one, our first smoke detector battery went out. This would have been no big deal except that the one that went out was up in the middle of a very tall wall. I got to do my best Spider-Man impression and sit on a ledge while changing the battery. (So it turns out that in new houses, the smoke detectors are networked somehow such that putting too much pressure on one and putting it in 'test' mode puts all of them in 'test' mode. This may be surprising to hear, but they're loud. Yeah, I know. Shocker.)
Then we had our alarm company come out to setup the new house's alarm (we were under a contract and had to keep using them). I was assured by several people that the new alarm did not need any additional parts to be hooked up under our existing service. The installer disagreed and we ended up paying $100 which I hated, but we totally got snazzy new key fobs for arming and disarming the alarm, so that was cool. I called to make sure our online "alarm.com" account had been updated for the new house and was told "oh wait, you had an alarm.com account? Yeah, that won't work with what we just installed in your house." Great. So someone came back out to fix that. Except that he gets there and says, "oh, the company told me you had one keypad..." and just looks at me. "Well...we have two, so..." was my reply to his blank stare. Problem number one. "Oh, you had key fobs for the old system? Yeah, those won't work any more." was problem number two. We JUST got the key fobs a few days prior. Lovely. So that's ongoing.
The upstairs A/C also stopped working at some point in the first week. Aisley sleeps up there, but at least summer hasn't showed up in full swing just yet. It took ~4 days for the A/C company to schedule everything and come out multiple times to fix it; fortunately we weren't charged thanks to the warranty.
Of course multiple light bulbs started dying once we moved in because that's just how things go.
We're being hounded by an exterminator guy because evidently it's very "Stepford" in our new neighborhood and that's who everyone uses. We have to figure out whether to switch to him or stick with our existing, already-paid-for service. We need somebody to give these hornets in our backyard the what-for!
A sprinkler head in the front yard decided it didn't want to live in the ground any more and I found it this morning detached, sitting in the yard. Home warranties apparently don't cover sprinkler systems, just FYI.
And then the internet service. Holy cow, the internet service. AT&T is absolutely my least favorite giant company. They somehow have our neighborhood on lockdown and no other provider can come in and offer service. I thought that was against FCC rules, but apparently the HOA found some loophole involving not allowing certain people on their land. I could write a whole entry on the AT&T situation, but suffice to say that I went from a 30-/5-mbit, un-metered connection to an 18-/3-mbit, 250gb-a-month connection. I was promised a free install, I didn't get that (even after multiple very long phone calls to fix the situation). I was promised a faster connection than I got. And their modem/router is garbage and not very friendly to bypass. Yes this is a very first-world problem, but it's 2012 and we shouldn't be getting slower, capped internet connections. Last I checked, Loyce's phone can download faster over the air, through space than our new home connection can through a cable that carries light.
The kicker? It's an AT&T-serviced phone. Awesome.
Anyway, with all that negativity out of the way: our new house is awesome! It's beautiful, it's huge, and we absolutely love it. Call us sometime and let us have you over for dinner or something. Maybe we can all watch a movie in the media room.
Or play Smash Brothers. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.
We sold a house!
We bought a house!
We had a bunch of stuff fall apart on the new house!
Okay, that last one is a bit of an exaggeration. But regardless, it's been an exciting few months.
In February and March, we decided that we would like to look at our options for newer, larger houses since we both have rather...expensive tastes. We had a realtor come by the house and tell us what she thought we could get for it; we were basically told "you'd definitely lose money selling this house." We chatted with some friends that had recently moved and got a few recommendations on realtors, movers, that sort of thing, and had the new realtors come look at the house. They thought we could probably sell the home for ~$13k higher than the previous realtor had thought! So, we thought we'd give it a shot.
A "stager" came in to tell us what needed to change in order to make our home the most appealing it could be. She gave us a long list of stuff to move, remove, and change. We complied, doing as much as we thought was reasonable (including renting a storage facility for our furniture that we apparently had way too much of) and got the house all ready to sell. We put the house up for sale on a Tuesday and Loyce was basically unable to stay home for the remainder of the week because of all the showings. That was a stressful week. However, Saturday came, we had multiple showings on top of each other all day long, and we wound up with 3 offers! We accepted one and moved on to put an offer on our new dream house.
This house had been on the market for 6+ months. We figured we'd give a reasonable offer, haggle over it, and be able to buy the house no problem. The realtor selling the house then came back and informed us that she had received a second offer. How fortuitous for the seller! Being suspicious of the timing, we talked with our realtor to see if the seller was possibly bluffing to get us to raise our bid. Our realtor informed us that if she was, that was a very dangerous game since many buyers will simply refuse to enter any sort of bidding war and just back out. Loyce and I had our hearts set on the house, though, so we came back with an offer much closer to the asking price. It was accepted an hour later. Wow, they sure did resolve that "other offer" situation quickly!
Then came time for inspections, repairs, and packing. That all went as painfully as you'd expect. The inspection on our house was not too surprising given that it was a 30ish-year-old home, but the buyer was reasonable and only wanted a handful of items repaired. We complied fully and spent more than I wanted to to fix stuff up. But hey, they were buying for the price we asked, so that was great. Inspection on the house we were buying went very well (as expected; it was a 2-year-old home).
So we packed, we repaired, we inspected, and then it came time to sign. Closing was smooth and painless. Almost too painless. Even our realtor was a bit suspicious at how everything just sort of fell into place (financing, appraisals, inspections, et al). But alas, we signed all the papers and were only homeless for about a half-hour while we ate lunch in Frisco.
This is getting long. Sorry about that.
Moving went very smoothly. The movers did an amazing job and were very fast. My pool table is now in a room that fits it very well, so that's cool. Loyce worked tirelessly to get us unpacked until neither of us could stand sweating or moving boxes around any more.
Day one, our first smoke detector battery went out. This would have been no big deal except that the one that went out was up in the middle of a very tall wall. I got to do my best Spider-Man impression and sit on a ledge while changing the battery. (So it turns out that in new houses, the smoke detectors are networked somehow such that putting too much pressure on one and putting it in 'test' mode puts all of them in 'test' mode. This may be surprising to hear, but they're loud. Yeah, I know. Shocker.)
Then we had our alarm company come out to setup the new house's alarm (we were under a contract and had to keep using them). I was assured by several people that the new alarm did not need any additional parts to be hooked up under our existing service. The installer disagreed and we ended up paying $100 which I hated, but we totally got snazzy new key fobs for arming and disarming the alarm, so that was cool. I called to make sure our online "alarm.com" account had been updated for the new house and was told "oh wait, you had an alarm.com account? Yeah, that won't work with what we just installed in your house." Great. So someone came back out to fix that. Except that he gets there and says, "oh, the company told me you had one keypad..." and just looks at me. "Well...we have two, so..." was my reply to his blank stare. Problem number one. "Oh, you had key fobs for the old system? Yeah, those won't work any more." was problem number two. We JUST got the key fobs a few days prior. Lovely. So that's ongoing.
The upstairs A/C also stopped working at some point in the first week. Aisley sleeps up there, but at least summer hasn't showed up in full swing just yet. It took ~4 days for the A/C company to schedule everything and come out multiple times to fix it; fortunately we weren't charged thanks to the warranty.
Of course multiple light bulbs started dying once we moved in because that's just how things go.
We're being hounded by an exterminator guy because evidently it's very "Stepford" in our new neighborhood and that's who everyone uses. We have to figure out whether to switch to him or stick with our existing, already-paid-for service. We need somebody to give these hornets in our backyard the what-for!
A sprinkler head in the front yard decided it didn't want to live in the ground any more and I found it this morning detached, sitting in the yard. Home warranties apparently don't cover sprinkler systems, just FYI.
And then the internet service. Holy cow, the internet service. AT&T is absolutely my least favorite giant company. They somehow have our neighborhood on lockdown and no other provider can come in and offer service. I thought that was against FCC rules, but apparently the HOA found some loophole involving not allowing certain people on their land. I could write a whole entry on the AT&T situation, but suffice to say that I went from a 30-/5-mbit, un-metered connection to an 18-/3-mbit, 250gb-a-month connection. I was promised a free install, I didn't get that (even after multiple very long phone calls to fix the situation). I was promised a faster connection than I got. And their modem/router is garbage and not very friendly to bypass. Yes this is a very first-world problem, but it's 2012 and we shouldn't be getting slower, capped internet connections. Last I checked, Loyce's phone can download faster over the air, through space than our new home connection can through a cable that carries light.
The kicker? It's an AT&T-serviced phone. Awesome.
Anyway, with all that negativity out of the way: our new house is awesome! It's beautiful, it's huge, and we absolutely love it. Call us sometime and let us have you over for dinner or something. Maybe we can all watch a movie in the media room.
Or play Smash Brothers. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.
Hello, world!
I hijacked Loyce's blog and added myself because I figured somebody might want to hear something I had to say.
No wait, that's probably not true.
Well, I'm going to type things in here anyway and if you don't want to hear from me, you can clickety-click elsewhere. It's not like Loyce has time to update this any more anyway, so somebody has to keep up our good name.
Today that somebody is me.
No wait, that's probably not true.
Well, I'm going to type things in here anyway and if you don't want to hear from me, you can clickety-click elsewhere. It's not like Loyce has time to update this any more anyway, so somebody has to keep up our good name.
Today that somebody is me.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
A Case of the Gimmies
Yes. I have fallen victim to it. I am sure everyone has at one time or the other.
It amazes me that the more stuff you have surrounding you the more you want. I completely understand what Jesus was referencing in Matthew 19: 16-30 now. Click here to read
I have more than I could ever need. More than I could ever want and still I want more. Its heart breaking. It is disturbing.
I walk into my closet, full of clothes, and think, "I have nothing to wear." Sometimes I have just have to shake my head at myself and think, "Really?" It is insulting to 5 year old me. A child who grew up disenfranchised. The life I live now far surpasses all that I could have dreamed of then. The Lord has been good to us. He has provided my husband with a well paying job that allows us to live comfortably. Shame on me for thinking at times that its not good enough.
I was called to worship God. Does it matter what I look like when I do that. Of course not. He has chosen for me to be a wife and a mom. Does it matter what outfit I have on when fulfilling those roles? No.
So, I had decided to focus on that I have.
My blessings are too numerous to put into one blog post. Believe me. I'm counting them.
I'll leave you with this. I've heard it many times, but the other day as I was reading through the Bible this verse stuck with me.
"The LORD is my shepherd; I have all that I need."
It amazes me that the more stuff you have surrounding you the more you want. I completely understand what Jesus was referencing in Matthew 19: 16-30 now. Click here to read
I have more than I could ever need. More than I could ever want and still I want more. Its heart breaking. It is disturbing.
I walk into my closet, full of clothes, and think, "I have nothing to wear." Sometimes I have just have to shake my head at myself and think, "Really?" It is insulting to 5 year old me. A child who grew up disenfranchised. The life I live now far surpasses all that I could have dreamed of then. The Lord has been good to us. He has provided my husband with a well paying job that allows us to live comfortably. Shame on me for thinking at times that its not good enough.
I was called to worship God. Does it matter what I look like when I do that. Of course not. He has chosen for me to be a wife and a mom. Does it matter what outfit I have on when fulfilling those roles? No.
So, I had decided to focus on that I have.
My blessings are too numerous to put into one blog post. Believe me. I'm counting them.
I'll leave you with this. I've heard it many times, but the other day as I was reading through the Bible this verse stuck with me.
"The LORD is my shepherd; I have all that I need."
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Status Update: Advanced
Welp. Baby girl is nine months old now. Where is this year going? It felt so surreal putting up Christmas decorations. I can't believe its December tomorrow.
Anyways, miss A had her nine month appointment and she is growing & developing wonderfully.
Here's her nine month stats compared to her six month:
Six month appointment (8/29):
Weight: 16 lbs 12 oz (62%)
Height: 25 1/2 inches (37%)
Head circumference: 17.13 inches (76%)
Nine month appointment (11/30):
Weight: 19 lbs 10.3 oz (61%)
Height: 28 inches (61%)
Head circumference: 17.75 inches (78%)
As you see she has had a steady increase in weight & head circumference. Her height has thankfully caught up. She went through a big growth spurt after six months.
While we were at the appointment our doctor observed her and said she was advanced. Not sure what that means at this age, but its nice to.hear. He seemed impressed by her social & fine motor skills.
She can do the following:
Feed herself (Pincher grasp)
Pick up small items
Turn pages
Remember where we are in a book
Use a straw/cup
Wave bye
Blow a kiss (sometimes)
Understand "no"
Signs: all done, (sometimes: milk, more, up, eat.)
Says/parrots words:
Mama, Dadda, bye-bye, bath, ball, up, cat and some others that I haven't figured out. (Most of these are not completely articulated, but we are getting there.)
Gross motor skills:
Roll to get places
Sit like a boss
Go from sitting to hands and knees & back again
Army crawled (three times and hasn't since)
Pulling up on EVERYTHING!
Reaching and getting into anything close
I'm probably missing something, but I think I've gotten most of them.
We did have to sleep train and she did so well. It was rough at first, but once we figured out what worked.for her/us it was great.
She is such a fun kid and I count everyday as a blessing. I am so grateful that God chose me to be her momma. She is a beautiful soul. I am thoroughly enjoying watching her grow up. :)
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Life with a baby
I can't believe we only have 4 more months left in her first year of life.
She is such a blessing. However this last month & 1/2 have been hard.
She has always been a fantastic sleeper. Something changed around six months. I can't remember the last time I was able to get 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Not complaining. It's just tough. I knew we had it easy in the beginning. Poor thing has had cold after cold that have morphed into sinus, ear, eye infections and croup.
My heart hurts seeing her so uncomfortable. Ready for her to be well again.
Then we will probably have to do some kind of sleep training. I know cry it out is not for us. Sure, a few tears and protest is expected. However, the quick & dirty method will not go well with our personalities.
Well, time to go sit in a steamy bathroom again. It's doing a number on my hair. :)
She is such a blessing. However this last month & 1/2 have been hard.
She has always been a fantastic sleeper. Something changed around six months. I can't remember the last time I was able to get 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Not complaining. It's just tough. I knew we had it easy in the beginning. Poor thing has had cold after cold that have morphed into sinus, ear, eye infections and croup.
My heart hurts seeing her so uncomfortable. Ready for her to be well again.
Then we will probably have to do some kind of sleep training. I know cry it out is not for us. Sure, a few tears and protest is expected. However, the quick & dirty method will not go well with our personalities.
Well, time to go sit in a steamy bathroom again. It's doing a number on my hair. :)
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