That's What She Said...

Okay, so it's the last day of the year and, yes, I feel the need to look back on what '09 brought. It was quite a busy year but it went by SO FAST!!
We started our year in OK so I could finish my last semester of school. It was definitely the easiest semester of all....and that's probably because I slacked off. But that's okay because I had super grades.
I finally graduated and we moved to Rogers, AR! That was probably the most exciting thing about '09. We caught a lot of grief from our OK friends though. People are excited when you tell them your moving overseas but when you tell them you're moving 3 hours away they freak! We didn't want to stay there though. Whatev...
We went on a Disney Cruise!! I've changed my mind...THIS was the most exciting part of '09! I think about it everyday and we are already planning to go again when our loans are done. Then when we become millionaires we will just go every year. I would say billionaire...but lets be realistic. :)
We remodeled a house! That was cool. But we have more to go this coming year.
I started working at the piano studio and Scotty started his job with Arvest. That was a blessing for sure!
Finally, we started paying off our loans. That is not exciting at all, but we've done okay so far.

Who knows what 2010 will bring. I get a little nervous thinking about it...but when am I not nervous? I hope you have fun plans for tonight, but please be safe!!

Tourist Trap

Scotty and I took a trip to York, NE the day after Thanksgiving for our friends wedding. We usually don't drive that far just for a wedding but I was playing the piano for her...so we kinda had to. We were a little bummed out about having to drive that far just for a day or two. You know, gas prices aren't that great. But Scotty had the brilliant idea to see what kind of silly tourist traps we could find on the way up there. And just saying...Missouri has A TON of tourist traps. We didn't stop to see many on the way there because we were on a time crunch but we definitely took our time getting back home and this is what we found...

This is the worlds largest mushroom. It's a lot bigger than it appears in this picture. This is somewhere in MO.

This is what you see the majority of the way to NE. So exciting.

This is the worlds largest coffee pot!! Yes, it is a water tower. You can find this just as you enter NE from Iowa.

This is the worlds largest covered waggon! Again, it's small in the picture but it's HUGE in person. This was somewhere in NE.

We took this picture for Megan since she lived there for a while.

And this next picture is the best of all. It's close to downtown Kansas City. Before we left for our long journey we were just going to rely on our TomTom to get us there but within minutes of our trip the power cord pooped out. So we had to find this thing the old fashioned way. Needless to say, we drove around for about 45 minutes before we found it. And of course, the map that we had told us Exactly where it was...but I was looking at the other side of the map that was more detailed so we didn't know it was there till we already found it.

And you would think...."how hard is it to find the The Worlds Largest Shuttlecocks!?!" Well...it was hard for us...so there. There's 3 or 4 of them in the largest courtyard outside the art museum. They are super cool.

1 Loan Down.....19 to go...

Come Novemeber 9, 2009 we will have one loan completely paid for! What a relief. Now in December we will only have to make 4 separate payments and not 5. We shouldn't have to do that for long though.

We've been living with the Roller's for almost a month now. It's been interesting. I've had a lot to learn about family roles and how things really work around here. I'm starting to get used to it, I think.

Our room is still a mess. Usually I can have a room put together and organized in a timely manner but I have been sick for the past 3 weeks. Yes....3 weeks. Each week brought a different illness. I'm still not 100% but I can deal. Our immune systems aren't used to living with children. Every little illness our nephew's get we get it too. Not......fun...... This could be a long 4 years.

Other than that our lives haven't changed. It's been boring and uneventful.

If Jimmy cracked corn and we don't care, why do we sing about it?

These are the pictures of the room. I apologize if they are hard to see.
















This is the wall we knocked down. It's kind of funny because when Scotty's family first moved in they had to build this wall because there were 4 kids and they needed the extra room. So now, 17 year later, we are knocking it down. This room used be Scotty's room.

This is the other side of the wall. This room used to be Scotty's sisters room, Megan. The previous owners had 2 little girls and these 2 rooms were sort of one. There was a partial wall here at one time. One room was for sleeping the other for play. When the wall was built they left a doorway between the 2 rooms, which is what you see on the right.

This is Megan's room again with the closet, taken from the doorway between the 2 rooms.

Scotty's room again with the closet, taken from the doorway. Under the plastic is a bunch of stuff we put in a garage sale pile.

This is Scotty's room and the mess we made knocking down the wall.

Scotty was super tired after knocking it down. He might be exaggerating a little bit.

And the 2 rooms shall become 1. It's a 2 level room so we built a step.

Knocked down wall from Megan's room.

Final product of Scotty's room.

Scotty's room again. There used to be a closet there...but it's gone.

Megan's room. The wall on the left is new. The door leads to the closet and inside the closet is the previous closet. I think they call that a double walk-in.

Megan's room. Closet on the right, the other door leads to the hallway.

I can't seem to find the pictures we did of the living room. I'll find them someday. So that is Scotty's parents new master bedroom! It's quite a down grade from their upstairs room. I feel guilty taking their super large room but they keep reassuring me that it had to happen for Darrell's sake. So there you have it.

We've Finally Arrived

I must say, me and Scotty are pretty much professionals now. We have successfully finished the first part of the remodeling of his parents house. Overall it took 4 long months. We started in the living room taking off popcorn on the ceilings and patching holes or other imperfections in the wall. We textured the ceiling and painted everything. It looks really good. Then we moved to the back bedrooms. That's what took the longest. We made two bedrooms into one which consisted of knocking down a wall, building a closet, painting everything and putting carpet in. It's sounds easy enough but there are lots of small details no one bothers thinking about. I have yet to put the pictures on my computer so you'll have to wait to see the before and after.

This past weekend we were able to move his parents downstairs and started organizing the upstairs. When springtime gets here we are having a HUGE garage sale. I'd like to say the upstairs is completely empty and ready for us to move in but it's not. It's full of things to put in the attic and garage sale stuff. We put the first coat of paint on last night and we'll put another one on in a few days. Our plan is to start the moving process Friday (weather permitting). Because of the storage incident that happened in June his parents rented a POD and have put it in their yard so we don't have to worry about someone making a home of it. So all of our stuff is occupying a lot of the space and we can't get the garage sale stuff in it till our stuff is out....but we can't put our stuff in the room till the garage sale stuff is out. So it's going to get a little tricky but we'll manage. It's going to be so nice to see all of our stuff again.

On top of all the work we've been doing we've gotten some bad news lately. Last month sometime we received an email from AES (American Education Services). They told us our first payment is due soon. We thought that was strange because as far as we knew all of our loans were through Sallie Mae. So Scotty emailed them back and told them they have a mistake. A few days later we received a phone call explaining that if we don't pay they will file fraud charges. We were utterly confused. So Scotty called the number back and asked for all sorts of information. I emailed our financial counselor from OC to see if she knew anything. I figured she had taken out a loan without his permission. I thought that because she did the same thing to me while I was in school. I kept a close watch on the activity with loans and noticed an extra $2,000 that wasn't suppose to be there. When I confronted her she said I had asked for it....she was wrong. She fixed the problem but she didn't own up to it. So needless to say, me and her aren't the best of friends. So I just assumed she did the same thing with Scotty. But after Scotty talked to someone on the phone we found out that it wasn't a mistake. At the time we thought our financial counselor took out ALL loans from Sallie Mae except one....which is really annoying and stupid. So here we are with an extra loan we didn't see coming. But don't worry it doesn't end there.... Just this week we received ANOTHER letter from a DIFFERENT service saying that we start payments soon. I can't believe this has happened again. I'm so glad that Scotty is so calm and collected. I was in the middle of a break down when Scotty got the smart idea to find the credit report Arvest pulled on him a few months ago before he got hired. It had listed every single loan, including the surprise 2. Needless to say there shouldn't be anymore surprise loans. Now if you're thinking if we had it on the credit report this whole time why didn't we know about it? Well, me and Scotty were absolutely positive that we knew where all of our loans were from. Our credit is good so why bother looking? Wrong. Our financial counselor from OC finally emailed back and said that she did indeed take out ALL loans from Sallie Mae except one, and that is the most recent one. But the one from AES was a mystery until we found out that Sallie Mae sold it right as we started paying them off. I'm sure they sent us a letter about it but they send us a letter about everything so we probably just skimmed it and threw it away. Bad idea. It's still really frustrating though. Why would our financial counselor do that? I know it's not her fault, but because of the history with her I'm still going to be mad. So when my loans are out of grace period in December we will be making 4 separate payments to get them paid off.

Our goal is still to pay them off in 4 years. We have set out a plan and we are going to be successful. But some words of advice....read every letter your loan service gives you and make sure you understand it. Ask your financial counselor where all your loans are from and how much they're for. Hopefully your financial counselor was better than ours.

A New Found Respect

Well, I was hoping by now that me and Scotty would be in our new place but that hasn't happened yet. We're still working on getting the house ready. We've knocked down the wall to make the 2 rooms 1, built a closet, and covered a pre-existing door. It sounds easy enough but I had no idea how much work it took to build a wall. And of course, once you start building these things you start to remember other small details that need to get done. For example, we built a new closet...well, there aren't any racks or shelves in the closet so you have to build them. For some reason I thought when you built a closet the racks and shelves just magically appear. Tearing down and building up walls is a hard job and I have a lot more respect for people who do that as a living! I'll try to get pictures up soon!!

Our first goal was to get moved in by the time school started which was a month ago. Now our goal is to get it all done by October 1st. We'll see. Scotty seems optimistic about it--but when is he not? I don't think it's going to happen. With both of us working now it's not as easy to get over to his parents to work. And it doesn't help that they are raising a grandchild AND his siblings feel the need to drop their kids off without warning so our work has to stop. It's all very frustrating so when this project gets done we'll be happy.

Thank you to those who have been praying for us and our loan situation. In the past 3 months we've managed to pay down quite a bit. If we can manage to go at this pace they will be paid off in 2 1/2 years. If we decided that we didn't want to be losers and live with our parents it would take us till 2025 to get them all paid. I'd rather be a loser than stay in debt that long.

And there's some more good news. Scotty got word the other day that at the beginning of next year he will be permanent and we'll get benefits! I know this is weird but my teeth are craving the dentist. I don't know if we've explained this before but Scotty is classified as "seasonal" as of right now. Arvest Mortgage has grown a lot in the past year and they needed more employees but they didn't budget for it. So all the "seasonal" people are getting paid like a full time employee but they don't get benefits. Not a huge deal, but as soon as we get dental insurance I'm going to the dentist!

Oh, and I almost forgot. Southside Church of Christ is going to need some serious prayers because we have decided to plant a new church in town! Don't worry, nothing is wrong with the church. We aren't splitting we are PLANTING! The elders are still working out details but what we know right now is that it will be west of I540 and our family minister (Marshall Brown) with his wife and kids will be the minister. It is very exciting and very scary once you start thinking about what all has to be put into this. So keep the church in your prayers.

We're almost there!

For the past 3 months we've been working hard on trying to get Scotty's parents house ready for us to move in...or invade. The living room is done and the smaller room (piano/library) next to it is almost done. Tonight we are going to do the biggest thing of all--knock down a wall to make 2 rooms one. We are pretty darn excited!!! Once we get the wall knocked down we can paint and move his parents in their new room. THEN we're going upstairs to paint and move our stuff in. So we may be looking at about a month before we move in....maybe less. Either way, we're excited about getting more room to breath. The hard part about moving is trying to keep my mother happy. She's pretty bummed we're moving out. "Oh, I'm going to miss you so much!"...."I'm never going to see you any more!" I just keep telling her we're only 10 minutes away and we can come over any time we want. My precious mother...

On top of all that excitement I did a little something new yesterday. I posted all of my college books on Amazon.com. I refused to sell them back at the school bookstore because they rip you off. So I had about 27 books to post--some books were my brothers as well. I went into it thinking I might sell one book BUT I got better results. I hadn't even had the books posted for 2 hours and I already sold one. How cool is that?! But it gets better....once I got home from church in the evening I sold a second one!!!!! And to top it off, they were books from the absolute worst class alive--Psychological Statistics. HAHAHAHA Dr. Newell!! That class was a waste of time and money. But any way. I sold the books!!!

Thanks for everyone's prayers about Scotty's dad getting a job. He got one at Hobbytown USA. It's a nice temporary job, I'll say. He has another interview today to be a dispatcher. He seemed really excited about it so pray that he can get that job! Also, Megan Collier is now in Gambell, AK. She was very nervous but of the few times we've talked she seemed to be enjoying herself. But keep her in your prayers as she starts the new school year.

And So It Begins...

WORK! It has begun!! Today is Scotty's first day at his new job. We had prayed so hard that he finds something and those prayers were answered. So hopefully he really enjoys it and can make a good career out of it! I'm so proud of him. For those who don't know, Scotty got a job at Arvest Mortgage. It is pretty close to what he was doing in OKC. He takes care of people who are having trouble paying off their mortgage. Let's hope he likes it and excels quickly. And if he doesn't like it, then lets hope that he finds something else! As for me, I've started teaching piano at Ms. Betty's studio. It has been a lot of fun and being in the studio brings back so many memories of when I was a student there. When school starts back up again in August I'm planning on doing some substituting in music classes to get a little extra income. We have to start paying on loans in July so we'll need all the little extra cash we can get.

Besides work we've been working hard on VBS stuff at church. We're teaching the story of Adam and Eve to 1st-5th graders. Last night was the first night and it was a lot of fun. VBS is always so exciting even for us big kids.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that both our parents have been keeping us busy with projects around the house and I am very glad to say that we finished Iris and Darrell's living room! It looks so good! All we need to do is decorate it and then start on the next project! It's been a lot of fun.

Well...Scotty said I'd post a week or so ago about the cruise but we've been so busy lately I haven't had time! I'm not going to say a whole lot about the cruise just because it'd take me all day to tell you about the magic we experienced! But I will say that we loved it SO much that we want to go again before we start having babies. And when we start having babies...and they're old enough...we want to go again...........and again and again. It was AMAZING! We highly recommend Disney Cruises.

That's it for now, but I do have a prayer request. Be praying for Darrell (my father-in-law) because he has been job searching too. Pray that he finds something that will be enjoyable for him. Also be praying for me and Scotty to get these crazy loans paid off in our goal time. It's going to be really hard but we have faith that it'll come through somehow. Thanks!!!

Updated Cruise Slideshow

At the bottom of this page I have put a larger slideshow, along with captions and music.

It is at the VERY bottom of this page.

Enjoy,

Scotty

Cruisin'

Post from Scotty.

For our 1 year anniversary we were able to go on a cruise with all of our friends from Disney!

We went to Nassau, Bahamas and went to Disney's own private island Castaway Cay (pronounced "Castaway key"). The weather started out a little wet, though the weather ended being BEAUTIFUL for most of the cruise. There were Broadway style shows on board, food, Disney characters, food, swimming, food, sun, food, and a lot of fun!

I have put a slide show to the left of this post, I know that it is small, but that is as good as it gets until I figure something else out to make it bigger (I could use some help from more technologically savvy bloggers).

We had a great time, and I will have Summer post more later.

Scotty

WHAT A DAY!

On Sunday Summer and I (Scotty is writing this) leave for our cruise to the Bahamas! Saturday was a VERY full day, little did we know it was going to be even longer than what we first thought.

First, we finished the last day of our garage sale, we had to wake up at 7:00 to help take the tables out and watch the junk. That lasted until about 12:00. The Razorbacks were playing on ESPN2 and so I watched some of that.

Next on our agenda was 4 things before we headed to my parents house for a cookout, (1) go to my grandma's house; (2) go to Wal-Mart to pick up some last minute things for our trip; (3) go to the church and drop off some board games; (4)stop by the storage buildings that we have some stuff in to see if Summer's backpack/bag/purse box is in there.

That is where our day got a little bit longer than originally expected.

I will break it down for you:

My parents rent 3 storage units in this one storage unit place in Rogers. Summer and I have some stuff (couch, coffee table, side tables, TV stand etc.) in one unit, there is another unit that only has a little bit of stuff in it (a sectional couch and a couple of boxes) and my sister has the final storage unit (stuffed FULL of stuff). Megan's (my sister) unit is so full in fact that directly in front of the door is a couch, standing on end, blocking the door-it would be nearly impossible to squeeze past the couch and get in the unit, let alone be INSIDE the unit.

In the past couple of months there have been many vandels go to storage places and cut the locks off of storage units and take things. Two of our units have been cut twice though nothing has been stolen (to our knowledge).

Summer and I arrived at the units and checked the first unit that had our couch/TV stands/coffee tables in it...and we were unable to find the box we were looking for. Before we left, it was decided that we should check the other units to make sure the box didn't some how get put in one of those. I was not quite sure of which unit was ours, though I knew what our locks looked like. We got to where our units were and ONCE AGAIN our locks were cut, but were nowhere to be seen.

I walked up to the one that I thought was my sister's unit and opened the door and saw exactly what I expected to see, a HUGE couch blocking the door. I closed the door and latched it. Then I walked to the next door unit (mine) and opened it, the lock was cut on it as well. Opened the door and looked around and the box was nowhere to be found...BUMMER.

Now I realize that was a very boring, seemingly pointless story but there is one key point that I will bring back up now. After I closed my sister's unit I CLOSED THE DOOR AND LATCHED IT. While we were standing in the next door unit, Summer and I heard some rustling, my first thought was that there was a possum or a raccoon somehow that had gotten in to the unit...GROSS...but then we realized that the noises were of some PERSON rustling through the things. Summer and I quickly closed the door to our unit and got into the car, when we looked back at my sisters unit, we saw the door bulging...like somebody was trying to get out!

Somebody was living in my sister's storage unit!

However, thanks to the quick thinking of me, I had latched the unit shut, he was effectively shut inside the unit. Not knowing what to do, I got out my trusty little cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. I quickly told the dispatch lady of everything that was going on and asked for them to send someone to help us, because we didn't know if this person had a gun and wanted to kill us or what...all I knew was that I was not going to go near that unit until the cops showed up. While we were waiting for the police, we continued to watch the storage unit. The next thing that we saw really surprised us. All of a sudden what looked like a screwdriver was shoved through the metal wall of the storage unit. The person inside of the unit was trying to dig his way out. Whenever the genius inside realized that a screwdriver was not going to work, he decided to look for something else to help him get out of the unit. His next weapon of choice was a wooden back scratcher (he may not have been the most brilliant person ever). He jimmied around with the wooden back scratcher but was not getting too far with it. Next he decided that my sister's curling iron would help him escape the unit.

As we watched (and waited for the police) we saw his hand finally reach outside of the unit, he had managed to free his hand from the bonds of storage unit-ness. The only problem with him having his hand outside, was that he had freed his hand roughly 2 feet above the latch that he was reaching for, and he could not reach the latch to free himself from its grasp. He then pulled back inside and began frantically to escape again, once more freeing his arm from the prison of storage. This time it appeared that he was going to get the latch, but once again my quick thinking allowed me to stall him for a moment. While his hand was sticking out of the unit, reaching for the latch I honked my horn-I imagine this scared the poop out of him, because he jerked his hand back inside the unit VERY quickly (which we later learned cut his hand up VERY badly). After a few silent moments his hand emerged once again, this time with a very determined effort and his mind was set stedfastly on his goal...FREEDOM. Finally the inevitable happened and he was able to unlatch the door.

The door was now open but he quickly shut the door. My first thought was "Shootout at the OK Corral." I thought he was now going to be loading the gun that he had or that he was going to make a break for our car or something. So in the most heroic voice that I could muster I stammered to Summer, lay your seat down and hide, just in case he decided that he wanted to shoot at us (I will admit, I learned that from a TV show). Then the door opened again and I could see him struggling with something, like he was trying to take something with him.

Now if you remember, I said that their was hardly room to get IN the unit, let alone put something else in the unit...this guy had aparently been in the unit, and was storing his bicycle in there as well. He was pulling his bicycle out of the unit. He then proceeded to get on the bike and ride off like nothing happened. He crossed the street and headed straight for the open field across the street. Just as he was getting to roughly the middle of the field the police showed up (better late than never). One car headed after the biker and one officer went with us to the unit.

We told him what had happened, and what we had seen and then the cool part...watching those CSI marathons really helped. The police started doing what they do on TV, putting on gloves, checking for fingerprints, taking DNA samples from the blood that the man poured all over the place, getting the pieces of skin left behind from yanking his arm through the sharded metal wall. It was AWESOME...afterwards.

We told the officer what the man looked like: Grey shirt, navy blue shorts, a hat rough hair, very dirty/bloody, blue bike.

The officer said that they had caught a man and they were going to need us to get in the car and go with him to try to identify the man that they caught (Summer and I high-fived...we were going to ride in the cop car). He asked if the man was kind of chubby, and we told him that he was very small (which apparently means that the man that they caugth was chubby, so that was the wrong answer, so no police car ride...BUMMER!

In the end, what should have been a 5 minute stop at the storage unit, ended up being a 2 hour stop.

After the police had left, my sister was beginning to look to see if anything was taken, and she saw a bag, remembering that Summer was looking for a bag, she pulled it out and asked if it was the bag she was looking for, because Megan did not recognize it. It was not Summer's, and then Megan realized that this was the man's bag. We called the police officer back to get the bag, and he looked through it. Inside were some of my t-shirts (that jerk) and the lock that he had broken, the makings of some cigarettes and some other stuff. The guy apparently had left in such a hury that he forgot his bag...sorry guy.

As we were getting ready to leave, the owner of the storage units showed up and we gave him a run down of the situation, and all he had to say was, "Bummer." Next I asked if he had some locks that we could have to replace the ones that were cut, so that he didn't come back to get his bag-which was now being put into an official evidence bag (AWESOME!). The owner guy said, "sure, they cost $10 a piece."

WHAT!?!?!? A guy who broke into our storage unit, was living there in the units that you own, you have not even said "sorry" and now you are going to charge us money for another set of locks? I wanted to punch the guy. Oh well, at least we will have locks again. This time we got those circular locks that cannot be cut, or at least the jerk that owns the place says.

We then headed to my parents house for a cookout and now we are going to make sure that our packing is finished so that we can leave for the airport at 3:00 AM Sunday.

This seems like it will be an AWESOME trip!

Scotty

P.S. We never found the dumb box...

Hey, it is Scotty!

I am now writting a blog post!

I have nothing specific to say, but I am saying it!

And now, I am finished!

Scotty

*insert title here*

This is our first blog post! How exciting!! We decided to get a blog because our very good friend Megan is moving to Alaska at the end of July and we wanted to keep her updated. Sure, we could just send emails but it's not as fun as blogging. And this way, more of our beloved OC family can stay updated.
So I guess I'll give a run down for now. Not much is going on so this probably won't be that exciting. Scotty graduated OC in December and I graduated May 1st! We BOTH wanted to move back to our hometown, Rogers, so that's where we are! I emphasize "both" because some people thought I was dragging him back with me. That is incorrect. Since moving back to Rogers Scotty has started his job with the church. He's having a lot of fun. It's exactly what he wanted to do, so God has really blessed us. His goal right now is to get another job so we can get all those loans paid off. I'm going to be teaching piano at Carousel Studios with my former piano teacher. I'll start that in a week or two. I'm also babysitting on the side to help with the loans. So if anyone needs me, just let me know.
Besides getting ready to start work for the rest of our lives we've been staying busy with fixing up our parents houses. My mother has a long list of to-do's and Scotty's mother has an even longer list! And in between working on houses we've been playing Wii!! That is the best game ever invented. I've been really into the Wii Fit. It hurts the self-esteem quite a bit but it's actually a really good workout!! I was surprised.
The most exciting thing happening in the near future is we're going on a Disney Cruise on our 1 year anniversary! We are so excited!! I'll be sure to put pictures up and tell you all about our adventure.