Yay! :) We are back online!

Well, the move was successful! It took all day Sunday, but with the help of our wonderful family we got it done! Thank you all for your help! We still have a LONG way to go before we are all settled in, but I can tell you we already feel much more comfortable here than at the other house. It's truly just a nicer home. It's laid out quite a bit differently as well. The 2nd street house was a shot gun style house, while this house is laid out in a more "walk around" style. In fact, Caleb was extremely amused by the fact that you could walk circles in the house through the rooms.

The Comcast guy came today and got us hooked up. It's a good thing our landlord is a retired guy, other wise we probably would have had to wait another week to get it hooked up. We had to have him call to give them permission to drill a hole in the room for the cable, which is something the customer service lady failed to mention to us when we scheduled them to get us reconnected.

We also went back to the old house today to some cleaning. We had left a few things over there and we had thought that our stuff would be safe, considering the fact that we still had the keys to place, our rent was paid up to the end of today, AND we told our landlord we wouldn't be turning in our keys until today; but yesterday Allen got a phone call from his assistant telling us that they had sent men over to start working on the place to get it ready for new renters, but that they noticed we still had stuff in there. Ummm...yeah, we still had quite a bit of stuff, cleaning supplies, a vaccumm cleaner, our trash can, and some very important things in the closet! So we went to pick that stuff up yesterday. We left the cleaning supplies and called Scott just to remind him that we were still going to clean. Get this, when we got there today, someone had been in there and had stolen our mop bucket, a towel, our Mean Green Cleaning Spray, AND our five remaining trash stickers that we were saving to put on the couple of remaining bags of trash! What kind of crap is that!?!? Seriously! Well, we figured that the only people who had access to get into the locked house were Scott's men, so we just left the bags of trash in the house. We were going to tag it, but since they have our trash stickers, THEY CAN TAG IT! UGH!!!!!

We are SOOOOOOO glad to be out of there. Our next door neighbors here are very nice people, they even came over to greet us while we were moving in. AND they have a miniature dachshund that is almost identical to Penny, named Wendy and a Dapple Chiwienie (cross between Chihuahua and a Dachshund). Very cute!

We both had today off to work on unpacking and take care of some other business, but it still wasn't enough time to get everything unpacked. Allen has to work this weekend, but I don't so I'm hoping I can get some of it done this weekend, at least most of it. It's hard not knowing where everything is yet.

I almost walked into the closet next to our bedroom TWICE trying to get to the bathroom.

Well, we will be posting some pics up here online as soon as we get things where we want them.

Oh, and YAY! Allen's brother Matt and his wife Nicole have started a blog too! :) We really like this blogging thing. http://twocool-ey.blogspot.com/

Countdown to move: 2 days remaining

THAT IS ALL! :) Busy packing , more later! Love ya!

Countdown to move: 3 days remaining

Whooooo!! Tomorrow is Friday! We still have a lot of stuff to do, but Allen and I are pretty proud of how far along we are. We took out the trash this morning before work, and we bagged it up last night. It was CRAZY how much trash was in here and we didn't even realize it. But now it's all out. We still have some bottles, cans, and cardboard that we are taking to the recycle center on Saturday. Tonight we are doing some laundry because we won't have time to it this weekend. Penny needs a bath too! SHE IS ONE STINKY PUPPY! P-U! And, she's been little miss sassy pants all night long! I think all of the excitement of moving is getting to her, it's out of her normal routine and she just doesn't know what to think. Poor Penny!

Countdown to THE move: 4 days

Tonight we had to go to the new house to eat dinner and watch American Idol. We already moved the TV and electronic type stuff (obviously minus the computer). Jessica came over with her and Alex's new dog! His name is Butch and he is absolutely adorable! Penny liked him, but then again he didn't try to get all up in Penny's business like Sammy did. LOL! We will probably go walking together in the park sometime. Tonight while we were watching AI, Allen got Penny wound for sound. He was trying to get her to howl, but we've decided Penny doesn't have a howl in her, all she has is YIP! Super high pitched yip, but it was still cute!

Everyone say a prayer for Grandma Hazel. She leaves tomorrow to head home!

LOL! Have to watch it...

Allen and I both laughed out loud at this video. We actually watched it remixed w/ a couple different songs. It's a real bear, just doing what bears do, but REALLY FUNNY when music is added. Two different links, two different songs, same bear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr8PX7P6gsQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPLnWIXUts

Countdown to moving day: 5 days

Well, it poured rain all day. I took PTO from work today to work on packing and cleaning, and made quite a bit of headway. Man, am I glad we are getting the heck outta this place. I had to pause my packing to deal with the HUGE leak our roof apparently has. We experienced minor trouble with the leak last spring, but today there was water everywhere! I ended up putting a styrofoam cooler we have under the leak, what a pain. We went over to the new house today to check out how the basement handles the rain, and it was as dry as any basement should be. Allen was a little worried about it, but as it turns out there was nothing to worry about. Another great thing about the new house-real ceilings! :) The ceilings in the house we are in now are just flimsy tiles that are old and sinking in. They are kind of like the tiles you would see in an office maybe, with a ceiling light just like you would see in an office. The new house isn't huge, but it's going to feel like a lot more room because of having the basement, plus it has a real ceiling w/ real lights. It may not be ginormous, but is is DEFINATELY alot nicer. Allen and I need to get a bird feeder. The last time we were in Sturgeon, I mentioned something about how relaxing it was to stand in his parents kitchen and look out their windows to see all of the birds. Yay! Now we have a back yard, with kitchen windows facing the yard. We're gonna open up a little birdie cafe! LOL! :) It would be nice to get some outdoor furniture too, maybe we can find a cheap patio set somewhere. We haven't really looked yet. Number one on the outdoor needs, though, is a charcoal BBQ grill! OH YEAH!

In other news, Grandma Hazel sent me a text today saying she was probably planning on starting her journey home on Thursday. She is wanting to follow the route of the old Hwy 66. I think that would be really neat. I hope she takes lots of great pictures, but is very careful!

Spring showers...and sneezes!

So the allergens continue to attack. Our allergies are relentless, and we are sick and tired of them. Seriously its exhausting, and there is no end in sight. Once the trees stop, it will be time for weeds, grasses, and flowers! Today it has been VERY windy and we are supposed to be getting quite a bit of rain tonight and tomorrow. I hope it doesn't rain this weekend! Keep your fingers crossed because rain or shine, we have to move it all out on Sunday. We're hoping that when everyone gets here they will be suprised at how much we've already moved. Allen had today off so he did a lot of work. I have tomorrow off to continue working on it. We took Penny over there with us tonight, and she seemed to be a little less whiny than she was the last time. She's still not sure of it yet, but she will be soon enough. Allen bought a six month supply of heart guard for Penny from the vet today, and gave it to her; so we don't have to worry about our little puppy getting heart worm. Thank goodness!

Today's random holiday: National Puppy Day (http://www.brownielocks.com/) YAY! :)

Pizza and Ugli

Tonight we went to Mom and Dad's to eat pizza, and we watched a couple movies. Josh was home , so it was good to get to see him. Marion County girls got 2nd place at state. Pretty awesome. We also ate an Ugli Fruit tonight. It was the first time either one of us had ever tried one. Pretty good! :) Too expensive to eat on a regular basis, but nice to say we've tried one. We dropped off another load of things at the new house. We will have another one ready to go tomorrow when Allen gets off work.

Getting started...

Well, Allen and I got started on moving tonight. We took two loads over to the new house. For the first load we took Miss Penny with us, who didn't like the new place at all! She didn't want to go inside and she whined and whined. It's probably going to take her a little bit to adjust, but it's probably going to take us a while too. She's definately back to full capacity today. Allen called the vet and they said it's too early for us to worry about making an appointment to have her baby teeth removed, but we'll have to get the heart guard pretty soon. She also has a new piece of jewelry, a little yellow tag showing that she's been micro-chipped.

She's Home!

We brought Penny home this morning. She is fine, a little sore, but in a good playful mood. It was hard for her to go to the bathroom (number 1 and number 2). I felt pretty sorry for her. She's a marked woman now. They put a tiny green tattoo on her as proof of the spaying. It looks like it was probably done with a thread. She was pretty lethargic first thing this morning, but she was glad to see us; and we were VERY glad to see her. We also had her micro-chipped. It won't stop someone from stealing her, but the lady at the humane society said that the micro-chip collar tag might deter some people. Plus, if there was ever a disaster where we were separated from her, our chances of getting her back are much, much better now. They said that Penny has a few retained Puppy teeth that need to come out, so we are probably going to have to pay to have them removed. It can become pretty dangerous for dogs if they have tooth issues.

Hope everyone is feeling good! I can finally breathe through my nose today, but Allen and I are both still snotty! :)

Doin' our happy dance! :)

This is the house!

This is our backyard!

And this is the kitchen! YEAH:)

Well, it's legal! We signed the lease tonight. We can start moving in immediately. Our new landlords are FANTASTIC! We filled out the application with just the husband, but tonight we met his wife. They are a very friendly couple who seemed like genuinely good people, they even seemed excited for us to move in. Allen says he likes the fact that Mr. P (we won't put their last names out here on the blog out of respect for their privacy) is an experienced electrician and he has retired from a well known Quincy heating and AC company. I don't imagine there's very much that will go wrong with this house, but it is fairly old, and if for some reason something were to happen, at least we know we're in good hands. Also, they made it pretty easy for us on the pocket book, by not making us pay everything all up front. We only had to put 1/3 of the deposit down. Then the 1st of April we have to pay just the regular month's rent. May and June we will finish paying the other 2/3 of the deposit. It's a year long lease, month to month after that. Allen and I are both VERY excited. This time we don't feel like we are "settling" for a new place. We truly feel that this is the best house we are going to find in Quincy for the amount of rent we will be paying. We will certainly miss our front yard park, but we have a really great back yard now; and you can bet as soon as we can afford to buy a charcoal grill there will be some BBQ'n goin on! :) What we are not excited about is the whirlwind factor of moving. It always is, I guess as long as you are renting. Oh well, that's just part of it, but Allen and I are sooooo lucky to have a family that is willing to help us with our moving. (We are also very lucky that Allen's parents have a trailer!) The good news is that we both strongly agree that this is a place we can stay in until we are ready to buy.

On a MUCH more sad note...we don't have our little Penny dog with us tonight. :( She is at the Humane Society. She had her baby makin factory removed today. We pick her up tomorrow morning bright and early. It was REALLY hard to let her go. I had tears in my eyes when I handed her to the guy for him to take her away. It's very strange not having her in the house. It just doesn't seem right without her. It's like there's this HUGE hole in our evening routine. I miss her lots. Awwww....:(

And in other news, THE TREES IN THE PARK IN FRONT OUR HOUSE WERE TP'd LAST NIGHT. IT'S MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH VANDALISM. BLEH!

We have to get up early to get Penny tomorrow, but I don't think I'm going to sleep very well. My head is just completely full of all the decorating possibilities. I'm thinking...daisies and lemons for the kitchen. Possibly lavender and pastels for the living room b/c the baseboards are already painted a light lavender-ish color. I don't know though. We'll just have to wait and see.

Love you all! :)

WE GOT IT!

It's official, we're moving out! We received the phone call today letting us know that we were their first pick to be their new renters. Here comes the whirl wind of craziness. Moving is always such a big deal! More details to follow.

Today was Allen's birthday. Mom and Dad bought him a nice fishing pole and a camp chair. He loves them. Thanks to everyone for all the happy birthday wishes! We ate dinner over there this evening and it was nice to see everyone.

Sorry that this post is so short, but it's getting late and we have to get up early in the morning to get Penny to the V-e-t, that spells WALK. She's getting fixed. Shhhh don't tell her what it means!

Love you all very much!

Something we're hoping for...

FINALLY, there was an ad in the paper for something reasonable. (Well kind of reasonable...at least a heck of a lot more reasonable than 850 a month.) Today Allen and I looked at a house on the south end of town. It is beautiful two bedroom house with a full unfinished basement, central heating and air, a giant backyard, nice front yard, new carpet, fresh paint, closets, and plenty of cabinets in the kitchen. Penny would be allowed too. This is THE PLACE we've been looking for. If we get this house it is the house that we would stay in probaby until we are ready to buy. Mr. Pessimism even said he couldn't find the bad things , we both knew if the first five minutes that this was it. The owner even said we could have a garden. Now, the only thing is we have to wait to hear back from the owner. We filled out the application but a place as nice as this one is going to have a lot of interest in it. In fact as we were leaving he was showing it to another woman with a baby, who was also filling out an application. Right now we are just hoping and praying that they will choose us! We will keep you updated!

This weekend in Sturgeon was wonderful, it always is. Seeing Allen's family again made us wish we lived closer. Penny met her cousin Sammie, who instantly fell in love with her, in a very inappropriate way! We will post pictures tomorrow or Wednesday.

Another Job Opportunity

Today Allen applied for a position as a technician for Terminix. He submitted his resume, filled out an application, but also had to take a written math test, personality test, and fill out W2 forms- a pretty strange application process. Well, really the only strange part was filling out the w2, that is usually an "after you get the job" thing. I'm pretty excited because Allen is excellent at math and has a great personality, plus he has a college degree. The people at Jiffi-Stop better quit messing around and hire Allen as a store manager or someone else is going to snatch him up! We will keep you updated!

Knew I forgot something.....

Well, I went to work today without my magic wand. What was I thinking? Did you know that insurance customer service reps are also magicians? We may appear normal on the weekends and evenings, but come Monday morning 8:00 a.m., we don our capes and top hats, to work magic all day without an appreciative audience. All week we pull rabbits out of hats and saw people in half, but sometimes, on that rare occasion, we get to work without our magic wands and then all hell breaks lose.

I am only halfway kidding.

Today, I dealt with the second most rediculous person I have ever spoke to in my entire life. Picture in your mind a three year old boy, throwing the worst temper tantrum you have ever seen. Now put a dress shirt and tie on him, and hand him a phone. This is the man I spoke to today. This man was screaming at me that he hoped our conversation was being recorded so he could give it to the media ( <--- sure sign of a rational person here), and I wanted to tell the jerk, "I freakin hope so too. That would be great! Then the rest of the world might have a chance to get a glimpse of the kind of crap I have to deal with in my position sometimes. Then the rest of the world could hear how completely rediculous and irrational you are being. Possibly you would hear yourself and realize what a forty year old BRAT you are! (The recently released Christian Bale rant, if you've heard it, this is comparable...times two.) I won't go any further into the graphic details of this, needless to say I had to transfer the guy to a supervisor, since he was demanding to speak "Mr or Mrs Blue Cross" RIGHT NOW. This jerk's lucky I really don't have a magic wand because if I had one I'd turn him into a toad. A big fat toad.

I'm writing a book about this, I really am, so thank you, Mr. You better believe I know your first and last name you dumb jerk, you've given me more material for my writing. Just a thought to throw out there for anyone who happens to stumble upon this post. The reason we teach our children the golden rules, is so that when they grow up they can be functioning contributing members to our society. If you grow up and you forget these rules, I'm telling you, you will end up being one of the forgotten ones. I like to think I'm very good at my job. I care deeply about customer satisfaction. I feel for people when they are experiencing problems with something as important in their lives as their health insurance coverage. I do always try with everything in my nonmagician power to help people get their problems fixed. I help people who are rude, and couldn't care less that the person trying to help them on the other end of the phone is believe it or not another human being, every day; but I am going to do more and go farther for that person who is going to LET me help them. Interrupting my every other word with shouting or expletives is NOT letting me help you, and you will not get the answer to your questions or the solution to your problem until you let me help you. People who say "the squeaky wheel get's the grease... " I say, "Forget you! The squeaky wheel gets thrown in the trash!"

Big deep sigh....tomorrow's a new day.

Rainy Days

So spring is getting started early with the rain. It has pretty much has rained nonstop for three days now. Flood warnings already, and the allergies are already in full force. Allen is HIGHLY allergic to tree pollen. It irritates my allergies but definately doesn't set me off as badly as other allergens. We're both a couple of snot buckets year round. Allen gets hit VERY hard in the spring, and my worst allergies are late summer/early fall. Anyone ever wonder why we go through toilet paper so quickly, and why we spend the little bit of extra money to get the good stuff, that's why! It's cheaper than buying Kleenexes all the time. I don't know what we would do with all the kleenex boxes either! LOL.

No lateral moves either!

Well, we went to look at a two bedroom apartment last night. It's located on State street 2nd floor of a brick building. Very cute layout, clean, and roomy feeling without anything in it of course, but not any bigger really than what we have now, just layed out differently. Oh, and it had these wonderful huge windows, no horrible fake wood panelling in the living room, either. But it was an upper, which means moving upstairs. We have had a lot of great help with our two moves, and we are hoping that we can get help again, which our family and friends might not be so willing to help if it's going to be rediculously hard to move us. We are not ruling out an upper apartment, because with the size of some of these gigantic houses here in Quincy, we could find a really big place. Our friends Jessica and Alex have a gigantic apartment that we just love. If we are lucky we will find a house, but we're not sure how that is going to go, because here lately everything in the paper, prices have been between 700-900 a month, which is absolutely outrageous. Our heating bill for last month was almost $300 and we were freezing. We don't want to waste the time with a lateral move where we are just moving into a new place for the simple fact that it's new. We definately are wanting to make sure that when we move it's going to be a place that is going to be a better place. The landlord for this place was really wonderful though. He is the guy that showed us the duplex a week ago that was too small. He told us that he really liked us alot and that we are the kind of people he want's living in his places, that he liked us from the start. So, even though we decided against this place, we are saving his number. We also left him a message asking him to keep us in mind if he has anything larger open up. Very nice guy, Allen and I both got had a good feeling about him. Both places we looked at of his were very clean and nice on the inside. We will see.

Hope that everyone has a good week. Love you all!

The Biggest Deciding Factor..

Well, we found the cutest house today on the South end of town with a for lease sign in the yard. We called and it's an agent owned house, sounds very nice, with a finished basement and a big garage, but she was asking $700 a month, which right off the top is WAY TOO much for us to pay in rent. She also said it's a firm, "NO PETS", but she continued to say , "I understand , I really do because I have two golden retrievers at home. " Allen and I's thoughts on this were that she obviously doesn't understand at all. People's children can wreak more havoc on a house than a tiny house dog can. Allen said the golden retrievers must be the lady's husband's and not her own. It's going to probably be rough going for us to find a place that accepts pets, which is a shame. It's all because some people just let their dogs pee and poop all over the place and don't seem to care because they are renters. A handful of people ruin it for responsible dog owners like ourselves. Not to say Penny has never had an accident, but any time she has ever peed or pooped we immediately clean it up, and thoroughly. She is our family. We won't be moving at all if we cannot find a place that will accept her. It's a shame about the house in Palmyra being so far away because we showed Penny to the landlord and he didn't have a problem with her at all! I think we should just take her with us each time, lol, because who can say no to such a cute little dog! We still have a while to find something else though, our lease is up May 1st. So, pretty much we have a month and a half. If we are moving, we need to be in the new place before May 1st. If, and it's a loose if, because we definately need a little bit more room, but IF we stay we are going to buy one of those giant closet things from walmart and we are going to see if Scott will let us paint over these HORRIBLE wood panels in the living room. Yes, yes, we know, at one point in time the wood paneling was all the rage; but right now it makes me nauseous. I have tons of decorating ideas in my head. I wish that money wasn't an issue. Decorative things are rediculously expensive. Wal-mart has a commercial advertising throw pillows for $17 a piece!!!! UGH! I think we will be going with a modern "less is more" look. LOL! I don't know. I'm going to be painting the bookcase, coffee table, end table, and dresser so that they all look brand new, and we are going to just buy couch and loveseat covers. That means 6 less pieces of furniture we need to buy! When I'm done with them all, it will be like having a brand new living room set! :) I also would like to buy colored or decorated roller blinds for the windows. If anyone knows of any place locally that sells these, let me know. So far all I can find around here are white ones. They make them online where you can have any picture you want put on a roller blind, which is kind of neat! :)

Waiting...

So, the 7:30 a.m. meeting at work had NOTHING to do with the upcoming four ten hour day work week. I was pretty disappointed. The meeting was just about some upper management reorganization, that doesn't really change anything for me on a personal level. What I'm really excited is the fact that fairly soon they are planning on offering the option of a four day work week. Which I am VERY excited about. As long as I qualify for this, I'm definately opting for it. I'm going to be starting online classes and having the extra day to devote to class work will be nice. I am waiting to see how this is all going to pan out before I decide to go for summer classes or go w/ the fall semester. I'm also going to be taking the opportunity to do some writing. It's a very exciting opportunity to have three days off a week, but still get paid the same amount.

Update on Allen's application for store manager, we picked up the Wednesday paper, and the ad for the job wasn't in there any more. Which means they ran the ad for less than a week! Which means not too many people are getting the opportunity to apply, AND today while Allen was at work, his manager Jesse was speaking to the head office and asked them if they had looked Allen's resume yet, and put in a good word for him. It's looking very positive. Allen and I are both trying really hard not to get our hopes up too high, Allen says don't get too excited yet; but I'm so excited because this is such a great opportunity. If it's not in God's will for Allen to have this job, that means that God has something even better planned, and considering this is pretty good... well you get my point! :)

The amazing Penny Dog!!

Penny has now went 3 nights in a row without peeing in her crate. She had an accident the other day when Amber and I was at work but thats because I feed her in the mornings and I soak her food (more water = more pee). She never ever poops though, which I'm glad. Being six months old she is doing very well with her bladder control. She has been a breeze to potty train. It won't be long before we can leave her out all the time and replace the crate with a bed. We would still have to confine her to one room in the house and make sure everything is picked up. Being a puppy, she still thinks everything needs to go into her mouth. Amber and I love her so much, and the past 4 months with her have been a joy. I'm glad Amber talked me into getting a dog eventhough winter was coming up (got her in October, not even a week after being married). She knew I needed one and is now a total dog nut herself lol.

So....some HUGE not so big news.

We just barely escaped catastrophe as a planet, and NO ONE in the general public knew about it! Yeah, seriously. RACHEL RAY'S RACY PICS FROM 2003 WERE BIGGER NEWS THAN THIS! Is there something wrong with that?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03022009/news/worldnews/small_asteroid_narrowly_misses_earth_157694.htm

To be or not to be....

Well they finally posted the ad for the manager position at Jiffi Stop. I had sent in my cover letter and resume for the position about 3 weeks ago. My boss has been running our store and another for quiet some time now. He has been complaining about it more and more, so I applied. I didn't hear from anyone about it, but now in the Sunday paper they have the job listed. I called yesterday and asked if they got my resume and if I needed to send it again. They said that they would take a look at my file and my scores. In order to be a manager you got to take these tests. It is the same ones I took to be a trainer and I aced them. I have been working with Jiffi Stop for over a year now and plus I have a college degree. I feel I deserve this job.

I really want this job because it would mean a lot more money coming in. We are doing just fine financially but with this job we could start saving for a house. It would also mean that we could start thinking about starting a family in a couple of years. I want nothing more than to have a family with Amber. She wants it just as bad.

God will put me where he wants me to be. He always has. I mean a couple of years ago I never thought I would ever get married and look at me now. I have found my soulmate because of him. If I don't get this job then it just isn't ment to be. Sometimes I wish God would just tell me what I'm suppost to do, but I know it doesn't work that way. I could just do without all the trial and error lol. But I guess thats life.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. I love you all. - Mr. Cooley

Monday again!

Why do the weekends have to be so short? Mondays just are no good for the phones or the gas stations.

So, if anyone is interested in advice on the best toy ever to get a puppy, DEFINATELY, the coleman stuffed raccoon! Penny has got more play time out of this little stuffed animal than I think I've ever seen a girl get out of their favorite doll! :) Five dollar investment, completely worth it!

Love you all!