Closing on our new house

Well, we closed on our new home this morning. We met with the realtor, Adam, and the banker, Tony, along with the title person. It was the first time we met with the banker which was a bit strange to us. We just called him on the phone a couple of months ago and told him that we'd like to get a loan for a house and he said, "OK." We talked a couple of times over the phone since then but that was it. His big job today was to bring a certified check from Wells Fargo to the Burnett Title to cover some stuff and other than that he basically just sat there while we signed and initialed a bunch of stuff. He seemed amiable enough. Our realtor was there to give us the keys. That's about all he did. He's a nice guy too.

So now we own two houses until the end of November. I'm excited about this getting done. We're finally going to get moving in.

Final walk through

We went to visit our new house for the final walk through with Adam, the realtor. We found that the garbage disposal didn't work but that can be changed out and we'd get a little credit for that. We're still excited about moving in. Elena's piano will cause some troubles for us though. It is an antique and there isn't any good rout to getting it into the house.

Watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow the other day. Neat idea in that they filmed it all on one set using computers to generate most every prop and effect. It was kind of a 50's style of adventure like what I imagine Buck Rogers was like. It reminded me of the Bat-man TV show with Adam West. It was OK.

Pumpkin Patch

We went to this pumpkin patch today with the kids. There is a farm house that every year sets up a huge play park for kids. They have a hay ride to the pumpkins, animals, different stations of fun things to do, a stage where they put on puppet shows. It was kinda windy and cold but we still stayed about an hour and a half. We could have stayed all afternoon and not gotten through everything I think. It was a massive, well organized event. They had food for sale and little booths where people took tickets and gave hand-stamps.

We had an open house today and that went really well. Looked like a lot of people came by and we'll see what happens.

Elena dropped the kids off at Nadine's this afternoon. So I've had a good part of the day to myself which has been really nice. Mowed the lawn, watched my tape of the hawkeyes lose in OT to Michigan, and played the computer.

Spent the night catching up on taped shows in this nice quiet house and tooled around on the computer.

Friday night I got together with some guys for a poker night. There were about 10 guys there and I knew a couple of them. We played three tournaments of the no limit Texas hold-em like what is on TV all the time. I went there to have some fun but was lucky enough to win the second tournie and break even on the third so I came home with $20 extra dollars. Some of these guy really get into poker. I mean really into it. They have all the books and play online for hours every day.

Watching the Cardinals

The St. Louis Cards are in the playoffs again. They had the best regular season record but are behind in the series to the Houston Astros. The Astros have a crew of starters
Pettite, Clemens and Oswolt that have just been awesome.

We've had lookers at our house but no offers.

Jim and Rose came up from Illinois the other day with my parents. I had to work and they stopped by to say, "hi." The group brought Olive Garden back to Elena and the kids. They had fun I'm told.

Goat's Milk

The past week or so Zach has been just miserable sick and ornery. Elena figured out it was his formula that was bothering his stomach so she bought some goat milk from the store and he has been gobbling that up. He is back to his normal happy self and is sleeping much better letting us sleep much better. Thank goodness for goats. And at only $12 a gallon. Doh.

Watched a few movies recently. One I liked was Crash. It was shot like the movie traffic where there are lots of main characters doing small chopped up scenes. There were lots of big names in it like Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon and Brendan Frasier. It is based in LA and is about how these people can be seen as abusers and victims within either seconds or a day. Race relations, police powers, grey areas in life. An "innocent" guy hit while trying to get into his van by a stolen car and left by the drivers turns out to have his own little secret. Lots of little heroes and villains.

I also say some of the movie Ray with Jamie Foxx. I guess he won an Oscar for it. What I saw I can see why people would have liked the movie. It was about Ray Charles and how he grew up and became famous despite crooked managers and drugs. I'm just wasn't interested in seeing the whole thing. Elena liked it.

We moved our big couch out to the garage so there is a love seat and a chair in our living room. Elena was laying on the couch and the chair is hard to lay in and doesn't face the TV anyway. So there I was laying on the floor watching the insipid comedy Monster-in-Law starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda. Wanda Sykes provided some comic relief. J-Lo has a lot of different jobs from a temp agency and she meets up with the very rich doctor and they fall in love and Jane Fonda doesn't want her son going with a temp.

Wapsi Trip

Went to the Wapsi last Friday evening. The weather was perfect the whole weekend. The fishing was great, best in years. The channel was finally deeper on our side of the river so the trot lines came up with a good amount of catfish. We didn't make it to the lily pond but we did have a good fire, a fireworks show, some good disco stir fry, good meals at the Sunrise, a good win for the Hawkeyes over Illinois, and we all enjoyed the indoor bathroom.

We had the suite room at the Super 8. That room was huge but we managed to fill it up with the pull out bed for Olivia and Zach's Pack-n-Play.

Robert went down there for the first time and I think he enjoyed it. A bit out of the old routine from school for him.

We also had a baby shower for Julia and Jake who unfortunately couldn't make it but the ladies had fun with it anyway.

Wisdom teeth

Yesterday, I went in for my top two wisdom teeth to be removed. We arrived on time and sat and waited. They called us back to a room and the nurse took my vitals and said that I was alive. That was nice because if Elena and I had to wait as long as we did after that I would have begun to decompose and stink up the place.

Anyway, they finally found the doctor and he came in and was an older gentleman which was reassuring. A lot of times as these teaching hospitals you get a resident one week out of med school. We went back to another room and an assistant and I began to talk college football. I had an Iowa Hawkeye shirt on and he let me know that he was a Nebraska fan. We talked about Iowa State and I told him that the Huskers were lucky to win last week over them in double overtime. Nebraska hasn't been that good in recent years but we agree that they will be a lot better coming up. They changed their offensive scheme a few years ago when the fired their head coach for losing 3 games in one year. That coach was a run the ball and have good defense. The new coach follows a west-coast air attack offense. All his players were recruited for the ground game so it has been pretty ugly. Now, though, his recruits are to his mold and that is why they'll get better. We agreed that they shouldn't have fired their first coach.

So it goes. They put some oxygen on my nose and mix in some laughing gas. The doc and the assistant start talking about what they did for lunch. I tell them that I haven't eaten since the night before and I appreciate them talking about food. They chuckle and say something about just testing my consciousness. They stick an IV in and wait a few minutes.

I don't ever completely go to sleep so I can hear the drilling and feel the pulling. Then I realize that they aren't just hacking away at my top teeth. They are slicing away at my bottom molars too. Great. I've been trying to sleep so I won't remember any of this so I had my eyes closed. I open them and they tell me that they're doing the bottoms too because upon close inspection they see that they could pose problems in the future. I'm doped up so I'm just going along with everything.

They finish up and sit me up and put gauze in my mouth. I'm taken back to the other room with Elena in it and we sit and wait a few minutes for the nausea to subside. I puke a few times and we're good as gold. They tell me that it's from the blood in my stomach. Super.

They put more gauze in my mouth and try not to dribble too much blood and they put this ice wrap around my head. I think, "Watch out ladies, here I come."

Elena wheels us down to get my meds and we go home. She was very nice in letting me rest after this. She took the kids out shopping and to the park. I just laid in bed and tried to get some rest for the remainder of the day.

Olivia and the four legged thief

Olivia will get some snack such as a bananana, JUICE!!!, cheese, crackers etc and walk it into our living room. The dog, Speckles, is a little opportunist. He knows that the attention span of a 2 1/2 year old girl is very short. He waits and watches her play a DVD or listen to music or play with another toy. Eventually he knows that she will stand up and move away. That is the time to pounce and scavenge anything left on her plate. He does this all the time and has gotten fairly good at it.

Once Olivia sees that her food has been pilfered she will look around for the dog and scream, "NO, BUBBLES, NO!!!" (We're still working on the "sp" sound.) She'll walk up to him and grab his fur or smack his butt all the time ranting about the bad doggie.

Zach usually just sits and laughs at them. But, that is what he usually does with about anything.

House photos

Looking at the back of our house. The front isn't much to look at.