New House Pictures

Here are a few new pictures of our house. We met with the official "house people" yesterday and we are shooting for a June 15th closing. Yeah!!! :)

Oh, by the way, my hair looks a little different (better I think) now that I have actually fixed it, instead of the hair lady. I will post better pictures soon.

Before and After...

After 3-4 weeks of internal debate on whether or not to cut my hair, I went to get my hair done today. I took a picture with me of a hair style that I thought I would like if I decided to go short, but, I was nervous about making such a big change. My hair has been long for a while now!! Here are the pictures that we took before I left (I didn't fix my hair this morning, so it doesn't look great)

Daniel was all for going short...he said he thought it would be fun for a change. Here is the final result!!

It will defnitely take some adjusting!!

Daniel's poor ambulance

Just thought I would post a link to a video with a picture of the Denton ambulance that was most likely totaled in last night's rain storm. This is the medic that Daniel normally drives (and was driving on Monday) but he was not in it when it went off the side of the road. He said that there were three guys in it who had to swim out to safety and they are afraid that they are going to have to replace all of the equipment in the back of the box as well as the actual ambulance. I am sure that will not be a cheap shopping trip!!

It is kindof a long video and you can only hear one side of the conversation...apparently the guy in the helicopter is talking to the news anchor but you can only hear the chopper guy....I just thought it was crazy that there was that much water!!

To view the video click here.

Glad everyone made it out okay...I wonder what Dan will drive when he is at work tomorrow....

Updated: We were looking around for some pictures and found some great water rescue pics from last night. My favorite is number 11 in this slide show...click here....The guy doing the rescue used to be at Dan's station before he was moved to B shift...I think it is kind of fun to know the people in the pictures!!

What a storm!!

Last night's storm packed quite a punch!! I hope that everyone is safe and sound and dry this morning!!

Dan was supposed to be off yesterday but he got called back in around 5 because the flooding in Denton was so bad. He didn't get back home until midnight. He said that they were super busy with lots of water rescues. I kept seeing the video on Fox and they were showing some of the rescues that were happening. It is kind of fun to try to figure out if you actually know the firefighter that is doing the rescuing!! There are some great pictures and videos at www.myfoxdfw.com - at least they were up last night.

All but two of the firestations in Denton were flooded and everybody hired was supposed to report last night. D and some other guys were even trying to rescue people using one of the suburbans the fire department owns, just because they ran out of other firetrucks/ambulances.

One of the ambulances even got into some trouble last night. I was surprised that something that large and heavy would still get swept down a bridge by some water....luckily they did not have a patient in the back, but the guys did all have to climb out a window and swim to safety. Dan said he thought the medic would probably be totaled out....it will not be the only vehicle needing some sort of repair!!

Hope that today is a much sunnier day!

I am so blessed....

I am not sure that this post is going to make much sense....I just wanted to write some things I have been thinking in the last hour....I wasn't going to actually post it, but....

I am an extremely blessed person. I grew up in a loving home; I was able to attend a 4 year (okay so maybe I took 5) college and then a graduate program to become a PA; my parents did everything they could to make sure I was able to attend school without having to work full time as well; I met and married the most wonderful man in the whole world - I am truly blessed to have him...he is an amazing person and so perfect for me. When I truly look at my life, I have probably had it fairly easy. Of course, there are things and times in my life that I would say were difficult...challenges that I had to overcome and things that I still struggle with on a daily basis...

And then, I start looking at random blogs on the internet. I love to click on the links to other blogs that people have on their sidebars. I think today, more than any other, I was blown away by how many blogs are devoted to keeping people updated on some family member's illness or struggle. Wow...

There was one in particular I read today that has really resonated with me. Maybe it is because the lady's name is Heather...there is nothing like hearing her talk about what is going on in her life, when she has the same name...I cried as I read her story....

I am not sure how I came upon her blog...I think it may have been a trail through several blogs, but, her words and situation have really made an impression on me. In summary, she is a 32 year old mother of three who just found out she has a brain tumor. She and her family have already had to go through all of the medical trials of her 5 year old daughter (heart transplant). I think it bothers me because I can see this situation from two different perspectives. I feel for her and her family and all that they are about to embark upon...what a journey that you pray you never have to go through...

I can also see the situation from a medical professional's point of view. I have had to tell two different people that they have a tumor that could possibly be cancerous. One lady has had surgery and chemotherapy to treat her Ovarian CA and one man has had surgery to remove the tumor growing in his brain. That is definitely not a good conversation to have with people...I hate having to be the one to shake their world. I am remembering how I thought about the conversation for days after they leave our office....

Now I have read all the thoughts that Heather and her husband have had in the days following her initial diagnosis...She has since decided to do all that she can to fight this...and I pray that she is successful. She sounds like someone who truly believes that God can do anything...

God is such an amazing God. He is so powerful and He does have the control and the ability to do anything that He desires. I think back to both of the people I have had to have the dreaded conversation with....her chance of survival at 5 years was less than 20%, but following her surgery and the first two rounds of chemo, she was considered almost cancer free. She has had to finish out a year and a half worth of chemo, but she is still doing great, and praising God for all that He has done. The man with the brain tumor had the tumor removed and was back at work within 2-3 months. He had some initial speech problems that quickly resolved, and he is now "normal"

What an awesome God that we serve!!

Sorry if this post was so random, I was just thinking about how blessed I truly am in my life to have never had to suffer through some of the hardships that other people have...but I am also thinking about how overwhelmed I am by God's love and power....

God, I pray that you continue to amaze us, and please help us keep our eyes open to see all that You do!!

Whirlwind Weekend

What a busy, but extremely fun weekend!! McKinney to Lufkin to McKinney to Stephenville to McKinney - all in 3 days!!

We had a lot of fun in Lufkin. I don't know the last time that I saw 1:30 am because I had not gone to sleep yet...we talked and talked and talked and talked. Saturday, we had breakfast with Clayton and Jerel (Brittney's one year old son and her husband) before heading to the mall to do some shopping.



The funny thing about our mall experience - we sat at a table in the middle of the mall and talked for another two hours. Who knew we had so much to say to each other? Mitzi introduced us all to cheese on a stick and actually convinced Julie to try one....let's just say that neither one of them actually finished their lunch and went to Chick-Fil-A instead. This was not your standard mozzarella cheese stick...yes, that is a block of cheddar cheese inside the batter they put on a corn dog...what do you think? Sound appetizing? Mitzi decided that was something you only liked when you were less than ten....


Mitzi and I left right after Brittney cooked us all dinner (with Clayton's help in the cookbook area) so that I could be back in town to meet my parents on Sunday morning.


I wish we could have stayed longer and I cannot wait until we can get back together again! Soon there will be two more little ones at our gatherings!!

On Sunday morning, I met my parents and my grandmother in Frisco, where they had spent the night, and drove to Stephenville for my cousin Leslye's wedding shower. The man she is marrying lives there and the church had a potluck/shower after services. It was a lot of fun, and I even got to see one of the girls who was in my cabin when I was a counselor at Camp Blue Haven...she is married and pregnant now...that made me feel a little old :)

Leslye and Joey are such a cute couple and I was glad I got to go to their shower. I somehow got roped into being the scribe, but it is going to be fun for them to write thank you notes when they cannot read what I wrote down. They should have known better than to ask someone who works in the medical field to write down who gave what gifts.

Here are some random pics of me and Gran and me and Les.

I will have to put some updated pictures of our house on here soon. Things are really starting to come together and we will probably be moving before you know it!!

Maybe later this week I will tell you the fun story of me driving my mother and grandmother to Stephenville while my dad followed us in my car....it was quite an adventure!! I'm not really sure why they think I am such a bad driver.....

Lufkin Bound!!

I am so excited about our weekend plans!! Brittney, Mitzi, and I got together in October of last year when B was in town with her husband, but I have not seen Julie in forever!!! We were all really good friends all through A&M and M and J and I all lived together when we moved to the big city! (B had already gotten married so we couldn't convince her to move up here!)

We really don't have any plans, which I think is fun. We can just hang out, talk, and enjoy being with each other. They are all such wonderful, Christian women and I miss them sooo much!

Keep all of us in your prayers as we drive all over TX...I'll post pics when I get back!

(I got countertops in the kitchen and garage doors put in this week at our new house...we are making progress!!)

Surgery update

My grandmother came out of surgery at 10:30-11:00 this AM and my dad said that things went well. The surgeon was pleased with the outcome. She did have to receive a unit of blood and a unit of platelets but I guess that should be expected when you have your heart cut open. She will be in ICU for a few days and will then be moved to a regular room for a few days before she is able to go home.

Thanks for your prayers!

Surgery Prayers

My grandmother is having her aortic valve replaced by a pig valve today. She has had valve problems for a few years, but they have just been trying to watch it and see how quickly things were digressing. Between Jan and yesterday (when she had angiograms), the function of her valve has decreased pretty drastically. The doctor decided that they have put this surgery off for long enough and it is time to fix the valve.

My dad and my grandfather are both in Lubbock and said that the surgery should take most of the morning...if you can, please say a prayer for everyone involved, We appreciated it!!

I will update when I know something.....

Catch-up Thoughts

Sorry I haven't been posting much recently...time for some random catch-up thoughts!!

I am beginning to be slightly confused about the weather...it will be gorgeous, spring days, with temps in the 70s all week (while I am at work) and then cold and wintery on the weekends. I guess that means I will stay inside and get caught up on the cleaning and the laundry!! I am ready for it to be a little warmer on the weekends. I love to sit outside by the pool and read, or something similar, and these 40 degree temps are not helping any!! Doesn't the sun know that I have FOUR weddings (cousin, cousin, cousin, best friend) to go to in an 8 week period and I need to have some sort of a tan? I am really trying hard not to give in and go to a tanning bed....

My Thursday nights have definitely changed...For ten weeks, I was involved in a Bible study with 9 other women. We were doing a video study by Beth Moore entitled Believing God. Dan kept giving me a hard time, because, I LOVE Grey's Anatomy...it was quite a decision on whether I would even participate in the study because of the show (just kidding...but I did always tape it). Now that the study has ended, I am missing both the study and the ladies involved!! And to top it all off, now Grey's is just reruns and music videos...what is up with that? I definitely think I have lost a little bit of my previous excitement about that show. FYI, a fellow blogger and A&M friend, mentioned that Beth Moore and her daughter have a blog. It is fun to read, especially if you have seen her videos, because you can hear her voice throughout the whole post....

I am really excited about next weekend!! I will be driving all over Texas, though. I was blessed to get to live with three wonderful, Christian women during my school years, both A&M and PA school. We have all married and are now living in various cities (Okay, Mitzi lives 15 minutes from me but we have not been great about seeing each other). We are going to have an all-girls reunion Fri and Sat at Britney's house in Lufkin. Mitzi and I are driving down together and Julie is going to meet us there. It is going to be so much fun!! I can't wait for catch-up time. Britney has a 1-year-old son and a daughter on the way and Mitzi is also expecting (she finds out the gender on Thurs) so we are going to have some fun play time with Clayton. I am sure it will be quite the slumber party!! I will have to post some pictures when I get back.

Mitzi and I are actually going to come home on Sat night so that I can go to the wedding shower for one of my cousins in Stephenville on Sunday. Leslye lives in Lubbock right now, but is moving to Stephenville with Joey after their wedding. The church at Stephenville is going to have a potluck/shower on Sunday after church and several of my family members are going. Should be fun!!

Daniel is going to stay home and work/chill during all of this 'girl time.' I think he was secretly glad that he was not invited...

The house is coming along...they are actually doing some of the paint/trim work now. They stained our cabinets the other day and they look beautiful!! Everybody kept saying that we would someday feel like they had slowed down...I guess we are there. Everytime we go, we notice that they have done something different, but it definitely seems like it is a much slower pace now. I am glad that they are taking their time, though...I want it to look good!! When they are bricking and such, it doesn't take much to make it look like they have made a lot of progress. Maybe that is why it seems slower now, more detail work. They have said that they are going to start doing the tile and such next week sometime...We will be moving before you know it!!

Promised Pics

We had a lot of fun at Easter - we ended up with 20 people at "one" table.

I like to think JD knows he is looking at his favorite Aunt. :)

He loves his Uncle Dan!!

He definitely thought the flash was a little bright...What a sweetie!!

Easter weekend...

Happy Easter!! (a day late)

Hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend...we sure did. Our office was closed on Friday and Dan was off so we got to spend the day together. We tried to not plan that day with "stuff" so that we could just go with the flow. We really had a lot of fun just looking at furniture, walking around the mall, and just chatting. We watched Stranger than Fiction on Friday night which was a surprisingly good movie. We enjoyed it.

On Saturday, Dan and I drove to Snyder to my grandmother's house. There were 20 people there for Easter...what fun!! My mom has two sisters and all of their families got to come as well. Three of my cousins are engaged (they are all getting married this summer...you will hear more about that I am sure) and their fiances (sp?) were all able to be there. We had a very fun, full table!!

We drove back home yesterday, just in time to get stuff ready for work today.

Tonight, we took dinner to Jon, Mandy, and JD...well, JD didn't eat our food, but anyway...we had an enjoyable evening. I know he is only 6 days old, but I think that he has already grown. He loves to look around and "squirm"...I guess he has to burn some calories some way!!

I have some pictures from our Snyder trip and from our visit to JD...I will try to post them tomorrow!!

Have an excellent week!!

Brick, Stone, and Mud

Dan and I got quite excited when we went out to look at our house last night. When we drove up, the outside was looking great with lots of the brick and stone in place. They had added lots of little touches with the brick (above the garage and on the corners) that we were not expecting, so that was a good surprise.







When we finally were satisfied with looking at the outside of the house, we went in to look at the progress being made on the walls. Daniel says they have been busy mudding everything (I didn't really know what that meant...but I am not a construction expert by any means...I sure am learning a lot!) He was very impressed with the bullnosed corners and the high ceilings.






We can't wait for it to be finished!! (I know that in some of the pictures we have previously posted, our house looks like it is out in the middle of nowhere, but, even though we are a little outside of town, we are still in a new subdivision. Right now, we are the only house on the street...makes it look like we have lots of yard!!)

I'm an aunt!!

Today, at 5:08 pm, I officially became an aunt!

Jon and Mandy are now the proud parents of Jonathan Douglas (JD). He weighed 7 lbs 13.5 oz and was 20.25 inches long. He is so cute!! JD looks just like a Boyd boy...that is what he looks like right now anyway. I got to love on him for an hour or so tonight...I don't think I have ever held a baby that was only 2 hours old before...they are so sweet!!



I have very small hands...I was surprised at how 'large' they looked compared to JD.



Daniel looked like an old pro...I think he has held his share of newborns before!!



I can't to see him grow up and watch Jon and Mandy as parents. I know that they will do an excellent job!! (I'm sure you will see more pictures here before long)

My cheap husband....

What a weekend we have had!!

The man I am married to (whom I love very dearly) is always on the lookout for a great deal. How he comes up with some of the things he does, I don't think I want to know!!

We have said, from the beginning of our house building process, that we would like to have hardwood floors someday. The builder charges a LOT of money to put them in so we decided to wait for a while and stick with the standard carpeting.

About two weeks ago, Daniel called me from work and told me to look up an item on eBay he was considering buying. To my surprise, the item was hardwood floors in a home off Preston & Royal. The pictures that they showed looked great, and at the time, the bid on the 1200 sq ft of floor was $20. We called the guy last week and he let us go look at them.



They are super nice floors that were originally laid in the 1940s. The previous owners moved in 1-2 years ago and pulled up the carpet to expose the hardwoods underneath. They have sold the house to a developer who is going to tear the house down (tomorrow) and then start from scratch on the lot. Because everything is going to the junkyard, the owner wanted to sell what he could. The only catch....we have to pull up the floors ourselves.

Ever on the lookout for a great deal, my frugal husband bid, and won (for more than 20 dollars), the floors. He watched a Bob Villa video on pulling up hardwood floors, called his brothers to help, asked his parents if we could store the wood at their house, and planned with the owner to start on Sat morning at 845. I think that he thought we would be done by mid-afternoon at the latest.

Daniel, David, Michael, Josh, and Gerry all pulled up boards, while Solomon, Ouida, and I removed nails, loaded all the wood, etc.

I think I will let the pictures tell the story!!








We left there at 700 last night, with a trailer of wood, full of nails. His parents drove the trailer to their house, and D and I went out this afternoon to pull more nails. My wrist is quite sore...I guess I need to do more work with a hammer!! :)





We are still not finished pulling nails. Dan said he thinks we are about 1/2 way through...guess what he will be doing while I am at work this week!!

The floors will stay at Gerry and Ouida's until our house is actually finished and we have a floor to lay them on...

Despite the fact that we had a hard, work-filled weekend, I am really excited about the floors. I think that they will look great once we get them laid and then refinished!! And, of course, what a great story they will be!!

(Side note - I really do love how Dan is always saving money...I just like to give him a hard time about it...he named the post, not me!!)