House and Life Update

So the month of July has been BEYOND crazy!!!! The last week of June, my company announced it is selling our crude oil division. We have three divisions currently but crude oil is the largest by far. To add a little stress, they announced that they wanted to close the deal by August 1st. The PSA was signed on Tuesday and the crude division will be officially gone on August 1st as planned. We went through this slightly last year when we sold our butane division, but it was nearly as stressful because it didn't impact as many people within the company, plus crude oil is what really started Texon back in the day.

Needless to say, it has been a very tense 4 weeks, not to mention that the first week of July I was in MN and not able to work at all. In addition to state tax work, I do all our regulatory items, so I am responsible for ensuring that we are registered in all the necessary states. I have been scrambling to get all the state agencies to work with me to get registered and set up in time for the transition. God provided in so many ways and reminded me the importance of my lovely support system through my wonderful husband who has seen me slim to none since June and who encourages me and affirms me in my hard work, plus my family and my W.O.W. ladies have been so great praying for me and dealing with Tonya the Space Cadet. (seriously, my mind has been in so many places, I am just happy if I am in the right place, at the right time, with the appropriate clothing on.

Just to give you an idea of the craziness, under all this paper is a desk somewhere....

I have worked the last couple weekends and one of the weekends, Alex was out of town at Philip's bachelor party and I felt bad leaving Spence at the condo alone all day, so he came up and helped me work. :)

Or distracted me...he actually did really well, just freaked out everytime he would hear the printer down the hall.

If working crazy hours and trying to keep up with house renovations isn't enough, last week we made the executive decision that it was time to say goodbye to the Passat. I took it in to get an oil change and they found a few issues, plus some potential issues that would add up to north of $3500.00 not to mention I need new breaks. We just decided it was time to stop pouring money into the Passat (we had spent over $5000 in the last 18 months on it already) and we got a new car. We debated over this decision a LOT because we did not currently have a car payment at all. It was to the extreme that when we woke up on Saturday, we both had decided to just put the money into the car but by Saturday evening were driving home in a new, reliable, safe car. Not to mention, my oil changes and service needs are covered for at least two years!!! What a RELIEF!!!

Here is the new ride....I finally got my SUV.

And NO, I am not pregnant. I have already had like 3 people ask me if that is why I got an SUV. I do hope to be pregnant sometime in the next 8 years, so yes, eventually this will be a family car, but right now it is just a family car for the three of us - Alex, me and Spence (he hasn't ridden in it yet, but will get to tonight when we go see his cousins).

In House news we are making some great progress, we have new windows going in, new doors, crown molding, baseboards, the cabinets arrived this week and next week we begin tile. :) October 1st can't get here SOON ENOUGH!!!

Pics of the progress:

Love love love my picture window to the backyard -- can't you just picture all the fun that will be had in that backyard? LOVE!

I really like that in this picture you can see the new door and the old door.

This is from our kitchen dining area into the courtyard.

New window in the Master...this used to be four little windows.

I love that this allows in more light.

Window from the living room into the backyard...it is crazy how much the new windows improve EVERYTHING!

Can we say "Hello Cabinets!"

The kitchen and utility room will have white cabinets with a brown glaze and the bathrooms will have espresso cabinets. Can't wait to see them installed.....

Remember the old brick wall with the wet bar?

Now look at the lovely opening to the kitchen. Eventually there will be granite and barstools here.

Last Saturday, my parents drove over to our neck of the woods and we grabbed some breakfast and then they helped us clean up the yard (or start to). There were all these overgrown beds in the back yard that I was just itching to tear out, so while Dad and Alex mowed and weed wacked the yard, Mom and I started going to town clearing out 30 years worth of leaves and chomping out the dead plants. I will have to pull out some "originals" pictures so you can truly appreciate the difference, but here is our handy work.

The debris :)

Had like 4 dead bushes and 3 nasty little palms with snake like roots....this was definately a labor of love for sure!

All clean and ready for sod -- whenever that will be.

Again -- eventually I hope for this to just be grass. It was STACKED with miscellaneous dead plants.

In front of the column and leaning awning (which will be fixed) was a line of bushes like those agains the garage. No mas.

I can't wait to get back out there to work on the remaining 80% of the yard. In 4 hours we raked up 12 bags of leaves and we only got through one fourth of the back yard.