Easter and we closed!

Usually Brian's office closes at noon the day before a holiday. Not this year. New CEO = new way. It worked out fine since we CLOSED on our refi Friday night at 5pm. Someone came to our house and shoved papers in front of us and we signed until our hands cramped. It only took almost 5 months. Once the loan is funded (Tuesday at midnight) Brian is going to file complaints. I know it won't do any good, but maybe if there are enough complaints eventually they won't be able to ignore it anymore.

After we closed we headed to Houston. We got in around 9:30pm. I dropped Brian and Logan off at urgent care. Logan pulled a wooden car down on his face Friday afternoon. He had a little cut and some swelling. I tried to put some ice on it, but that lasted about 2 seconds. I didn't think too much about it but on the ride to Houston Logan started covering her eye and complaining that it hurt. Brian and I both thought that it looked like he was having trouble focusing. I started worrying about a detached retina so wanted to get it checked out ASAP. The doctor said he was fine. I think he was probably just tired, rubbed his eye and was having trouble focusing because he was so exhausted. No naps these days and he was 2 hours past bedtime.

Saturday we headed over to Kingwood and had a nice Easter lunch with Grammy, Papaw, Uncle Greg, Aunt Jennifer and Lila.  The kids did an egg hunt and played outside a bit.  The weather was perfect.  We went back over to The Woodlands and hit up Rico's for dinner.  Yum.

Sunday I had big plans to make it to church, but that didn't happen.  I'm sure it would be an hour of me sweating and having hypertension trying to make sure Logan didn't disturb anyone or hit/bite/push/pinch kids in the cry room.  Church just isn't in our immediate future.  Maybe one day.  We got in the spa and dyed Easter eggs instead.  The Easter Bunny stopped by and left some eggs to hunt in the front yard too.

We headed back to Austin in the nick of time to avoid severe storms all around us.  We actually had great weather.  There were a LOT of people on the roads and traffic was pretty heavy.

Monday after working out I witnessed a car accident.  I was the first person to stop and it was so scary not knowing what I was going to find behind all of the air bags.  Luckily everyone was fine.  This woman just completely ran a red light.  Not even paying attention.  She was in the morning zone out or something.  I was talking to her and trying to calm her down and she was telling me that she just bought the car the day before.  I guess she hit a deer last week and totaled her other car.  She kept asking me if her car was 'bad.'  I was like 'uh, it's not great.'  Yep, she totaled her brand spanking new Volvo SUV.  I was pretty impressed with the encasement of air bags around the entire passenger area.  The other guy had an older Impala and he was a little shaken up, but nothing major.

This week had been non stop cleaning.  I borrowed a steam carpet cleaner from a friend and have been slowly cleaning all of the carpets.  Logan decided to flush a flashlight down the downstairs toilet so we had the fun task of cleaning that up last night.  It was especially fun because a couple of people forgot that it was broken and did some #2's in there.  Gross.  So that room was completely sanitized.  I do love freshly washed bath mats.

Tomorrow is Isabel's birthday celebration at school.  We made some cupcakes and I'll take them tomorrow afternoon.

Isabel's Rearragned Bedroom and New Hutch

This weekend we stayed close to home.  I went to a birthday party with Logan while Brian took Isabel to see "Oz."  After asking to leave 6 times Brian finally agreed and they left the movie.  She was not impressed.  Not scared, just didn't like it.  I did a lot of yard work Saturday afternoon.  Today was very low key.  I took the kids to run a couple of errands and the park and that was about it.  Logan and I went on a walk while Isabel took a nap.  Looks like the little boy might be done with naps.  :-(  Although I do love that he's in bed by 7:30 or 8:00pm and has been sleeping for about 12 hours.

Here is Isabel's updated room.  We still want to rearrange a few things and get the hutch decorated a little nicer, but I just wanted to get things put up and away.

She's excited about the lamp being in arm's reach.

Around Here

Lots has been going on lately. We made an unexpected trip to Houston last week and were there on Grandma's actual birthday! While we loved helping her celebrate and see Grandma and Grandpa, we didn't like the reason for the trip. Everything will be ok though.

We got back to Austin Saturday evening and took baths and went to bed. Sunday we went out for lunch at Trudy's. Logan had an accident on the way there in the car so I took Isabel and Brian took Logan to get some new clothes. Isabel got a Shirley Temple and was pretty excited about that. She requested them for her birthday party.

Since it was St Patrick's Day I made corned beef and cabbage. I also put some food coloring in the toilets and told the kids that some leprechauns visited us. Isabel was seriously amazed. It was so funny. She then got a little frightened and we had to do a leprechaun search to make sure there weren't anymore in the house.

I found my unused gift card stash and called on to see the balance on my Bed Bath and Beyond gift card. It was just enough to cover a bread maker! I've been looking at them for a while and am so excited to have bread with just 5 ingredients and no preservatives! I've already made 3 loaves!

First loaf!

Enjoying some bread with honey.  It was so good.

Yesterday I spent all day ( while the kids were at school and then napping) painting Isabel's hutch that was delivered on Sunday. It took about 6 hours and 3 coats of paint. It was an off white, creamy yellow color. It's being discontinued and it was that or navy blue. The color was not my style at all and didn't match anything else in the room. I painted it white, but the silly off white was bleeding through as a bit blue(?). It was frustrating, but it looks great now! I just need to put the protective coat on and then we can get it in Isabel's room.

We're also still trying to close on our refi.  It's getting ridiculous.  Brian is about ready to walk away from Bank of America.  It took them 3 months to begin processing the loan.  Since it took so long we had to send updated statements, etc.  They mailed us a GFE last week and it was completely different from the one we got 3 months ago.  After Brian getting angry (he rarely gets angry) at our contact (who really just wants the loan to close so that he can get his commission) they added back some credits they had removed, but they didn't allow us to waive escrow.  WTF?  After the contact said he would 'see what he could do' Brian said we need a definitive answer today and a closing date or we're walking away.   We went with BoA because our current mortgage is with them and we thought it would be more streamlined.  WRONG.  In hindsight we should have gone with the other quote we got, but what can you do.  I just can't believe that after having a mortgage with a bank for over 5 years and never once having a late mortgage or property tax payment that we're being treated this way.  It has now been FOUR MONTHS since we first started the process.  It's like they absolutely don't care.  So if anyone reading is considering a new mortgage or refi, I would strongly encourage you to NOT go with Bank of America.

The perfect roast chicken.  SO good!

He was so happy about something.

Watching the car wash.

I was watching dishes and she was out by herself.  You can't see it from the picture, but she just had the biggest grin.  So excited to be swinging and enjoying life!

Celebrating Grandma's Birthday and the Livestock Show

We loaded up the crew and headed to Houston on Friday night.  Traffic was a little heavy with Spring Break and SXSW starting.  The kids did really well on the ride over.

We headed to the Livestock Show mid morning and had some fun riding a few rides and listening to a little Disney show.  Grandma put Isabel's name in a drawing and she won a Blu Ray of 'Wreck it Ralph.'  Nice!  We saw some cows, horses, pigs, sheep, goats and bees.  We planted sunflower seeds in soil.  The line for the petting zoo was super long, so we skipped it.  Probably for the best since Isabel was getting a tiny bit wheezy around all of the livestock.

Saturday night we watched the new movie and ate popcorn.  Lots of popcorn.  Sunday we relaxed and went out to lunch, hit up Kid to Kid and loaded up some garage sale items in the truck.  We're going to participate in the neighborhood garage sale in mid April and wanted to help load things for Grandma and Grandpa in the truck since Grandpa isn't supposed to lift anything for a few more weeks.  We raced cars and watched Grandma open a few presents.

We headed back to Austin after nap time.  It was a little tougher ride than on the way to Houston.  Logan wanted to go back to see "Grandpa/Grandpa" and kept saying that he missed Grandpa.  It was cute the first 800 times.  This morning he woke up and said "where is Grandma?"  I guess they had a good time. Isabel keeps showing me her staples and scar. Haha.. I think grandpa impressed her with the new battle wounds.

Today Logan had therapy from 12-2pm.  Not the best times, but it ended up working out pretty well.  I took Isabel and we went grocery shopping while he was in therapy.  I've been going to Whole Foods and think I've finally figured out how not to spend Brian's entire paycheck on a weeks worth of groceries from there.  I've also found a good alternative to Nutrigrain Bars (Logan's favorite 'food').  It's an all natural, preservative free, organic pop tart type of thing.  I made homemade bars last week and, while they were delicious, I ate over half of them.  Not good.

This week I hope to clear out more clutter for the garage sale/Ebay, do some deep cleaning, and get Isabel's birthday party invitations made.  If I get really crazy maybe I'll even get some Easter decorations up.