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Josh Young  
Project Director

d: 713-243-4234
o: 713-783-8710
c: 832-477-5587

Harvey Builders
3663 Briarpark Drive
Houston, TX 77042

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Jack and Paiton

On Monday Mom will begin watching Jack full time when Cassie goes back to school. I know she is dreading it, but Jack and Lovey are going to have tons of fun.

BP MS 150

Friends and Family,

As many of you know I am participating in the MS 150 this year and I need your support. MS is a debilitating disease that effects millions of people. Visit my MS 150 page and see how you can support me in this effort. Josh's Page

While any donation large or small is greatly appreciated, I would like nothing more than to reach my goal by involving as many people as possible. The more people that participate the more people learn more about MS and learn about my journey. Please forward this on to family and friends who may not be on the distribution list.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, I should catch you up on my journey thus far.

I started looking for a bike a few months ago and boy was that a difficult decision. There are tons of features, brands and price points to consider. After several months of searching online I ended up finding a great bike in Houston.

So far I have been on three training rides and I have had a lot of fun learning more about the sport and meeting new people. This past weekend I participated in a 58 mile ride in Manvel and it was a great experience, but definitely a challenge.

With just a little over 1 month remaining till the MS 150, I have a great deal of work ahead of me.

Thanks in advance for your support.

Josh

Tractor Crankin

With the long weekend upon us, we were looking forward to some Aggie Football and Waco. My buddy Ty and his family have some extra season tickets, so Cassie, her best friend Megan, Ty and Myself got on the road around 10:00 Saturday morning and headed to College Station for the 6:00 game. We met quite a few friends at Blue Bake for a few Club Blues and Powder Blues . . . such good food. After lunch we headed over to the see Chris' new house. We also stopped off at Traci's new school and Cassie was floored with the technology and the amazing stuff her new school has set up. We hung around the house, played a little washers and then made out way to the Stadium. Before the game there are tons of activities and tons of tailgating so we all split up and went to see our people and hang out. The game was awesome, we had good seats (yea so what if we sat down, deal with it), we won, it didn't rain but was very cool, just couldn't ask for a better game day. After the game we headed to the after party at Ty's parent's hotel and had some pizza and refreshments before getting on the road. Going back to College Station after a 6 month stint was such a cool feeling. I really loved my time there and going back feels like home. My kids will not have a choice of where they go to school . . . end of subject.

We arrived in Waco around 1:00 and didn't waste anytime getting to bed. We were staying at Ty's ranch and the bed was very comfortable so we dozed off quite happy. The next morning his sweet grandma got up and made us a great breakfast and we checked out the Ranch. That afternoon we went and saw the Dr. Pepper Museum and went grocery shopping for dinner. We grilled a bunch of food and had a great time playing cards and hanging out with his folks.

Monday we got up early for a little Tractor Crankin. Ty's family is big into tractor collecting and it was like being a kid in a candy shop. I was a little apprehensive driving these beasts but I quickly got the hang of it and was having a great time. The girls were entertained with watching and playing games on my phone.

It was a quick trip, but before we left town we stopped at a small hamburger joint for some homemade burgers and pies, it was the perfect ending to an awesome weekend.

5:00a.m. came very early on Tuesday, but we pushed through the pain and made it back to work. It has been a short week and we needed it after such a busy weekend.

Dad landed on Monday for his 3 week vacation. This go around Dad decided to do a little golf work-shop so Mom and Dad have been staying with us since Wednesday and are going t0 their golf lessons up the road in Kingwood. Mom was very sunburned yesterday evening, but seemed like she was having a good time learning how to play.

On other fronts, Grandpa has been in the hospital since being released last week, they are thinking it might be pneumonia, so keep him in your prayers. The Methodist Church in Texas City also sustained quite a bit of damage last night from a Fire so be thinking of those church members.

This weekend we are going to finish hanging the stupid back door, and might do a little painting in the house.

Have a great weekend.

What is this blog you speak of . . .

So if you haven't noticed it's been awhile since I've filled you in on the happenings of the Young family. Quite frankly we have been busier than snot and the last thing I have wanted to do after some very long days is sit down and type . . .

There is no way to catch you up on the nitty gritty of the past months in great detail so you will be getting a very abridged version.

. . . . so we closed on the house and that was a very rewarding experience, taking ownership of something is a huge sense of accomplishment, but at the same time a very daunting realization of the responsiblities that lie ahead.

Before heading up to San Angelo for the wedding, I had to get a few surprises lined up. I needed to get a New Matress for our King Size bed (thanks Mom and Dad) . . . and needed a refrigerator for the house. Cassie threw a wrench in my plans with her interviews but I told her I was down helping my Mom with a surprise project and we worked it out. Cass left on Sunday and Dad landed on Monday. We ended up getting everything done and Made it up to San Angelo on Wednesday.

The wedding was awesome . . . not much more to say about that. Here is the info to see the pictures.

Click HERE and the password is 14001

Check out the pictures if you haven't already, besides that Cassie was incredibly gorgeous, and I cried like a baby when she walked down the aisle . . nough said.

After the wedding flew by we headed out to the Honeymoon spot . . . and boy was that an adventure. My poor wife was exhausted from all of the days events and wanted to do nothing but go to bed and I surpised her with where we were staying. It was a little ranch out in the middle of nowhere and I only sort of new where I was going. We drove around in the pitch black on muddy roads for about an hour before we found this place, let's just say there have been moments in our relationship where Cassie was much happier with me. But we found the place and we had a great night . . .

The next morning we arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed and a send off brunch where the family and out of town guests enjoyed an awesome breakfast.

As we were packing the car I left a travel book for the Grand Caymans in Cassie's seat to let her know where the actual honeymoon would take place. She was completely surprised and elated

We got on the road and made the drive back to Houston, now at this point Cassie thought we were going to stay at the apartment for the night and get up at 2:30a.m. to catch our flight to the Caymand . . but I had some surprises in the works and I had to convince her to play a long. The problem was is she thought there wasn't anything at the house, but I had gone and got the matresses, set up the bed, bought sheets and blankets and pillows and had it all set up to surprise her. So after a lot of persuassion I convinced her that the drive would be much shorter and we would get more sleep if we just set up some palletts at the new house . . . well that worked for th emost part, but the woman still made me load up every blanket pillow and towel we had so she could bare the thought of sleeping on the ground. She was thrilled though and we got some shut eye.

The honeymoon was awesome, we went in the off season so nothing was crowded, the beach was beautiful, we did some really cool excursions and just relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. I will put up a link to some pictures soon.

Since then we have just been busy moving and unpacking. Cassie has been working on school stuff night and day, but is getting the hang of it. I think she is overwhelmed with everyting that has to be done, being a first year teacher is a huge challenge.

Work for me is going good. Things are slowing down and I do not have as much to do, but I still enjoy going to work and cannot really complain about much.

This was just a refresher to get myself back in the groove, I will start keeping you all up to date with the details going forward.

Closing!

Well today is the day. We are scheduled to meet Matt at the house around 10:30 for the final walk-through and then head to closing at 1:00.

It has been a while since I have blogged so I will try to catch you up from where I left off.

After talking about the landscaping and fence more with the builder, he agreed to move the landscaping to where we had clearly marked it out to be, however, he talked with his boss who reniged on the moving of the fence. His excuse is that it would technically be in the wrong place and that they would have to get a variance like the person behind us did and they didn't want to go through all of that, but basically they just didn't want to pay for their screw up!

The house came along over the past week and they completed most of the items. Monday Cassie and I met with Matt around 8:30 for the initial walk-through and came up with a list of about 40 items still remaining. We got most of the paperwork taken care of on the builders side and we planned on meeting today at 11:00.

Last night Cassie and I headed out to the house to check the progress and throw a box on the back porch to cover up the exposed surround sound wire that we ran. Well I was unpleasantly surprised to see how little had been done since we met on Monday and discussed what needed to be done.

Now if you know my personality, im more of an upfront, attack the problem and get it fixed type of guy. Not a laid back, it will get done when it get's done kind of guy and I was not impressed. Not knowing how to handle this, I decided to make a call to the Sales Rep, Mike and see If I could get him a little motivated, and hope that he could motivate Matt.

"Mike, I'm sitting here, the night before closing at 8:30, and out of the 40 item list there are probably still 20 on it, I am trying to deicide, should I go to closing tomorrow and assume they are not going to ever be fixed, or do I put off closing to make sure they get fixed?" Well let me assure you this excited Mike, he got very interested and assured me "as a friend" that he would personally make sure it was taken care of.

So I guess we will see what happens. We will meet with Matt around 10:30, and then we are set for Closing at 1:00. I have mentioned I might come back to work, but Dan was quick, to respond to not worry about it and enjoy the day off . . .the response I was fishing for.

All in all, we are going about 100 miles per hour trying to get it all done, we are finishing up last minute wedding coordination items, we are supposed to pick up the programs this afternoon, and Cassie is working on the seating assignments. I am closing up all of my projects and trying to pass them off to Brooke so he can handle it while im gone for the next two weeks.

I will post some new pictures of the "completed" house later this evening.

Josh

Anything but Smoothly

The title pretty much sums it up, the house is coming along, but not very smoothly.

Two weeks ago I drove by the house on a Thursday to check out the progress before heading down to Texas City.  Things were coming along, and I happened to run into Matt and had a few questions for him.  We wanted to lay out the design of the flower beds if he would let us and he said sure, no problem.  He told us to come out on Monday and spray paint the ground and they would put in the landscaping on Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day.  Well after the long weekend of tile removal we made it over to the house and marked it all out. 

As usual I was itching to get back out there Tuesday night to see how it looked and see what they accomplished, and I was unpleasantly surprised.  The had installed the fence, planted the trees and landscaping.  Two problems, the trees and landscaping looked nothing like we painted out, and the fence did not line up with the fence behind us, but was off about two feet.  We walked through the house and noticed a few other small changes, but I was frustrated with the recent mistakes.

I sent Matt an e-mail and he didn't know what happened, but thought maybe the sprinkler company messed up the marking while they were installing their lines and the landscapers must not have seen it.  So we decided to paint it all out again to see if they would move it to make it like we wanted.

Wednesday we gave them the day off from the pesky homeowner's, but made it back out Thursday to discover they had still not been able to get it right.  The sod guys laid the grass on top of the paint this time and they once again could not see the marking.  After talking with the builder we discovered he would have to move the fence which meant the landscapers would be coming back out so he said we could paint it all out again.

The guys have still not bee back out to move the fence, landscaping and sprinklers, but he said they would be out on Tuesday of this week so I will let you know if they get it right the third time.

Today I drove out after work and was pleasantly surprised to find the carpet installed and the backsplash under way.  The carpet looks really good and I think the backsplash is going to come out just as we thought it would.  The house looks a little monotone at this point, but once we get some furniture in there, maybe some paint it will warm right up.

Enjoy the recent pic's.

Let the Story Telling Begin

It has been about a week since the last update, and trust me it has been a busy week.  We will begin last Friday with the details.

With the holiday weekend among us, I was in no mood to stay around the office late on a Friday.  The main office was closing early, the job was shutting down and most everyone else in the office was gone. I think the boss man Will was the only one who stayed all day.  Cassie was in San Angelo with her Mom and we decided to meet in San Antonio so she could get back to Houston without the hassle of flying.  We debated on what to do, but ended up deciding to stay in San Antonio with our friends Mike and Kim since we had both had long days of driving.  We went to eat at Zios, an italian food restaurant that has really good bread, and their Calzone isn't half bad either.  After dinner Mike informed us he had a Church league softball game around 10:00 that night and we had the option of going or not.  We were up for an exciting game of 45 year olds and a few 20 year olds playing a friendly game of softball.  We had a good time, especially watching Mike get real upset with himself for not playing well, the poor guy can't just go out and have some fun, he takes the event way too seriously.  Mike played baseball in college so he is competitive by heart.

After a good evening out we headed back to their newly renovated home.  They purchased a home in January and have been slaving away with repairs and renovations every night and weekend since.  Mike is one of the handiest guys I know and can pretty much accomplish any task he sets out to perform.  I hope I can get him to spend a weekend in Houston helping me with a few projects I have in mind for the house.  Buying a new house has it's perks, but one of the downsides is not being able to do those projects to put your stamp on the deal.  It just means I will have to use my energy and creativity to add value to the home with more custom features.

After staying up way too late and enjoying the company we took what seemed like a short nap and awoke early to travel home.

Now some of you may know this, but most of you don't.  Early in the week Mom got the idea of having someone come look at sealing the grout and tile in our Den and kitchen.  She made a few calls, and ended up calling one of her school children's parents to see if he knew anyone since he was in the flooring business.  Well as luck would have it, the salesman made a sale.  He talked numbers and square footage and they decided that for not much more than the cost to clean up and seal the floors he could put in a brand new floor all together.  We had talked about all of the pros and cons up until Thursday and decided that the best way would be to demolish the old tile to put down the new, and keep the elevation the same as opposed to putting the new floor on top.  Here lies the dilemma . . . he wanted a few thousand dollars more to rip out the old and that just wasn't in the budget.  So after talking it out, we decided to tackle the job ourselves.  We could rent a "Tile Scrapper" for about 40 bucks for the weekend, we would get some rubber maid tubs to make small loads for the dump and we would have it all knocked out in the two days alloted.  

Back to the weekend for a sec.

We got on the road around 8:30 and decided to make a stop at the outlet shops in San Marcos.  We have found some pretty good deals there in the past and we had some things in mind for the new house that we wanted to do some price checking on.  You never know with these places if the deals are really good, so we needed to get some info.  Cassie has been saving her "Lee Bucks" for a new table and she has been on a serious hunt for a deal.  We did not get lucky with the table, but we found a few small things that were good deals and we couldn't pass up.  I think we got out for about a hundred bucks with 2 new chairs and a brightly colored duvet for one of the guest rooms/cassie's new craft room.

Back on the road and we were in Houston by around 3:00.  We stopped by the Apartment to unload a few things and then got back on the road for Texas City.

When we arrived we immediately got to work.  Mom, Kimber and Ginny had been killing themselves the past two days cleaning out the rooms in preparation and it was down to putting up plastic and moving out the appliances.  Well it took a few trips to Lowes to get the appropriate plastic. . . . my mother is very stubborn and even though I was very specific about what mill plastic to buy she opted for something else, the plastic that was much heavier and more difficult to tape to the ceiling because it kept wanting to fall.  She was fooling herself into thinking that the thicker plastic was going to protect her millwork from the flying pieces of tile, but  had that covered with a plan to use cardboard in the areas we were working.

After checking out the "Tile Scrapper" she had picked up earlier in the day, I realized we were in trouble.  The machine was designed for scrapping linoleum tiles, not ceramic and it was not making a dent in the 30 year old ceramic tile.  Of course it was a holiday weekend and the store closed early, but we lucked out and our next door neighbors happen to be related to the owner of the rental company.  We were able to get ahold of their son and he quickly brought out the correct chipping hammer that I had set out to get in the first place, but the "man" on the phone told me this was much better . . . I will go with my experience the next time.

After chipping away for a few hours, I managed to tick off my sister and wear myself and Cassie out so we decided to call it quits around 10.  We got about half of the kitchen knocked out, but there was plenty more to go.  

Sunday morning we awoke, sore and very slowly . . . boy those muscles get sore when you don't use them very often.  After a few more hours of chipping it was near 12:00 and we needed to make our first trip to the biosphere.  Cassie and I loaded up and we dumped the 10 tubs while Kimber went for lunch and Mom cleaned off some surfaces to eat.  

After lunch we got going and after about 10 minutes we hit another road block.  It appears the machine and extension cord were getting overheated and we began a small smoke storm which melted the extension cord and freaked my beautiful bride out.  She thought the house was going to burn down within minutes but I tried to calm her down.  After showing her it was a small predicament we decided to let it cool off for an hour while we dumped a few more tubs and went for an ice cream break.  Keep in mind that while we were waiting for the appropriate tools we were using sledge hammers to break the tile out and that wears you out very very quickly.  

When we got back we still could not get the chipping hammer to work so we called the guy back and he wouldn't be able to get us a new one till late that night.  We decided to get back to the sledge hammers till then and see how much we could get done.

Around 9:00 that night he showed up with a new one, but we were too tired to even pull the thing out of the box so we called it quits and decided to save the fun for Monday. 

After a few hours of chipping the next morning we had completed the kitchen, and decided to leave the Den and entry way for the professionals.  We'd had enough and there was no way you could convince us any amount of money was too expensive for the exhaustive physical labor removing a tile floor.

After cleaning up and relaxing a little, we grilled some burgers and hot dogs, had a few smores for dessert and then headed out to the new house for a tour with the Parkinson Grandparents.

I will have to update you on the progress of the house in the next post.  I will go ahead and put up all of the new pic's though.  

Pic's of the tile are in two places, we finally got mom trained in taking and uploading pictures to the internet.  We got her a digital camera for mother's day and she has loved using it.  When the guys were laying the new tile throughout the week she couldn't stand not being able to share the photos so I walked her through uploading and she has it down (for the most part)

I also have some pic's up on my site.

Enjoy!

Moving Right Along

The house is moving right along.  Since I last posted there have been a few changes.  The cabinet guys came to trim out the rest of the cabinets, and it looks really good.  The tile guys have been working on the Master shower for what seems like a week, but they are getting close.  Yesterday I went out to the house and Matt (the builder) happened to be closing up the place and we walked through the house to check out the progress and I let him know I wasn't very impressed with the tile job in the master so far.  The area where the tile meets the surrounding surfaces, wall . . . etc.  were not looking very good and he agreed with me.  We came up with a solution, but they are going to have to tear out quite a bit of tile to make it look right unfortunately.  The sprinkler system will go in at the beginning of next week and the landscaping will follow.

Other fronts . . . Cassie and I are still ironing out the details for the wedding.  I ran into a hick-up with the programs and we are not going to be able to go with out original idea because it would have to be run on the large printing press and that would be out of budget ( man i have some great ideas . . . ).  Cassie is in wedding bliss . . . or it could be a nightmare, but she has been in San Angelo since Monday making decision after decision.  She has met with the caterer, wedding planner, florist and the list goes on I'm sure.  Can't believe it's only 1 month away.

Enjoy the picture update.

The Party's Over

Well we made it through our last pre-wedding celebration.  Today we met at the Bergvall's house for a party with everyone from the Church.  It was a great time, all the ladies went to a ton of trouble and made it great or Cassie and I, we had a great time.  Cassie was a little nervous about meeting all of these new people, but she acted like a pro meeting everyone and remembering more names than I can even remember.  I do have to admit I had to ask Mom to remind me a of a few names, but it was great seeing them all.  

The house is moving a long nicely, this was Cassie's mom's first time in town since we have been building so we took her by the house before heading down to Texas City.  She was really pleased with the progress, and enjoyed getting to see the new place.  

I am tired as usual and can't wait to start a new week of work (can you hear the sarcasm??)  but it looks like I will get a lot done with Cassie out of town, and I will definitely be looking forward to a three day weekend.

Check out the new Pictures.

What's goin On?

Well as usual it has been a busy, hectic, stressful and event filled week thus far.  The house is coming along nicely, They began laying tile in the Kitchen and entry way yesterday and they were finishing up the laundry room, secondary bath and master this afternoon when Cassie stopped by to see how it was coming along.  Today Cassie drove around to all of the school in the Kingwood area and Humble area that she is interested in working with.  It took a lot of encouragement and persuasion, but she did it and I think she was pleasantly surprised with the response from the secretaries.  She was able to meet one principle, but asked to set up interviews with the rest of them, who knows if they will call her back or not, but she dropped off 12, so hopefully a few will get back with her.  The economy is tough right now, even for teachers and that is not helping Cassie worry any less.  I was talking to Mom and Dad last night about how much is going on and how stressful life has been the last few month's but we are nearing the end and we are ready for the much needed break.

This weekend Cassie's Mom will be coming to town for a wedding shower at the church and we are looking forward to her visit.  This will be the first time we have taken her out to the house and since so much has been done on it, she is in for a surprise.  

I am still working on getting in better shape for the wedding, I always seem to do good throughout the week, but as soon as the weekend roles around, all bets are off and I spend the next week getting back to the same point I was a week earlier.  I am going to force myself to work-out and eat right this weekend so I can stop the trend.  Cassie is cracking me up because she is trying to loose weight right a long with me (she in no way  needs to loose a pound), but she will go up a pound one day, down the next . . . she's not really loosing any weight but it's driving her crazy to see me loose weight.  It really is much easier for guys to loose weight in my opinion, I know exactly what to eat and how much I need to exercise to make it happen and it works every time.  

This week we are trying to finish up the design for the programs, get the invitations to the rehearsal dinner put together, print some pictures for the rehearsal dinner and knock a few other items off the list.  We have tons to do in my opinion, but I'm sure it will all get done.  I regret opening my mouth and volunteering to do any part of it, but they will look good (at least to the untrained eye).

We are going out to the house tomorrow and we will take pictures, there are a few new ones up from the painting, but it's difficult to notice much of a difference in my opinion, white it white.  The window did finally come in and the cabinets should be installed on Friday.  Fence might go up this weekend.  Stay tuned . . .

Austin Wedding

Well the Weekend was enjoyable, but too short.  Saturday I got up around 9:00 and threw on the gym clothes for a quick work-out.  I lifted some weights, and used the elliptical machine for about 45 minutes to start the day.  I then decided a quick dip in the pool would help cool me off, so I ran back and changed and then hung by the pool for about 45 minutes as well.  It's a great pool and it's a shame we have not been able to enjoy it more in the year we have lived here.  After taking a shower and getting ready, I had to iron a shirt for the wedding and then I was on the road to Austin.  

I made a few tops, one to get something for breakfast because my beautiful darling despises waking up and not being able to eat immediately, and since we were staying in a nicer hotel they did not have a free breakfast, and her second biggest pet peeve is having to pay for breakfast at a hotel.  So I took some time to make sure Sunday got off to a good start, I also forgot my belt in Houston so I had to stop at a Dillards and get a new belt.  

When I arrived at the wedding location I was hoping there would be a bathroom to change in, but I was sorely disappointed . . . so I stripped down in the parking lot and began to get dressed.  Now I was fortunate that I was a little early and there were only a few cars already there, but luck would have it as soon as I was pulling up my suit pants the bus from the hotel where most of the guests were staying pulled up for an early show.  It was a great deal of fun getting dressed to the tee, tie and jacket in the middle of a caliche parking lot, but I made it happen.  

The wedding was really a great event, the view was unbelievable and the company was par to none.  Of course we had our favorite photographer along for the ride so it was good to see Lacy and enjoy getting treated like celebrities as usual.  Lacy loves taking out photo's because we are such beautiful people . . . right Lacy!

After a long night of I do's, wedding cake, caramel apples, an ice cream bar, and plenty of boozers, we headed to the hotel for some much needed rest and relaxation.

The sheraton downtown was a great location, I asked for a downtown view if possible and we got upgraded for free so that was a huge plus, the view was great and the floor was a "preferred floor" so it was nice and quiet . . . after a little SNL, we were out like a light.

Today we met Mom, David and Ginny at the house to check up on the progress and show them some of the cool things that have ben happening.  We also took a few measurements to start preparing for the furniture and ideas of built-ins we have.  We ate dinner at a mexican food restaurant by the house that was really good.

Cassie has Bridals tomorrow, Lacy will be utilizing the Woodlands shopping area and Kimber will be helping Cassie with the hair and Make-up.

I will let you know how the week ahead is coming, more updates on the house to come.  Check out the Pic's.

Quick Update

Today was a short day, had a quick meeting with the 1500 team about helping them with some new work, then to lunch.  I had training at 1:30 which was boring, but I suppose necessary.  After training I picked up our new ladder for my boss Will to borrow and headed out to the house.  Will recently moved out to Fall Creek and speaks very highly of the community, he has a leaking window and no extension ladder.  Moving on, the trim was installed and the stone is still in the garage.  The mantel was installed and the garage doors put on.  Progress is being made and everything is still looking good.  Check out the pictures.  I am headed out to Austin tomorrow morning, but it's time to clean up the house before the honey get's back. 

The Progress is Visible

For those of you who are keeping up with the progress of the house, you are behind, and not because you missed a post, but because they are moving too fast for me to keep you up to date. I must admit I was somewhat amused by Cassie's amazement at the speed in which they were building the home, I have watched homes go together pretty fast . . . need I remind you I built a 3600 sq ft home is 58 days? (Yes, I enjoy tooting my own horn every now and then  . . . okay often)  That being said they are flying through some of the phases that should take more time than they really are.  Now my first concern is obviously quality, I want to make sure the job is being done right, not just fast, and there are a few things I have pointed out to Matt but overall they are doing a great job.

Sunday I drove out to check the progress and see where they were with the home and I noticed the brick and stone had been delivered.  Monday I got a call from the sales rep to let me know that the stone had showed up and they were beginning to install it.  I decided I wanted to check it out and make sure they were doing a good job, I have seen entire walls of brick ripped off and redone when they were done sloppy and I wanted to nip it in the butt if they were not doing a good job.  So Monday evening I drove out to check the progress and discovered my sales rep was a lier, they had not laid  single brick, but they had done a few things inside which perked my interest so the trip was not a complete waste.  

Tuesday I decided to stroll back out with the same intent I had Monday, but I was sorely disappointed.  As I turned the corner to head towards the house, it appeared the front and right side were complete . . . As I got closer I realized the entire house was complete with brick and they were only missing a few pieces of stone.  I was astonished that they had bricked, and installed the majority of the stone in one day!  This should typically take 3-4 days with 5 guys working from 7-3:30.  I have no clue how many guys were working on the house, but it was done none the less.  After a thorough review there were a few flaws but I am extremely hard to please, but overall it looked great.

When I was out last night I realized there was going to be a lot of stone left over and I wanted to get my hands on it.  So today while I was bored at work and falling asleep, I decided to take a little break and run out to the house, in hopes of running into the builder and finding out his intent from the remainder of the stone.  Sure enough he was in the neighborhood and I was able to ask in a smooth way, he said no problem, but I would need to move it.  He was going to throw it out, but assumed the neighbors would carry off most of it after a few days.  So I immediately called my buddy Ty and asked him what his plan were for the evening.  He obliged and I promised to treat him to dinner if he would give me a hand.  

You will have to check out the pictures, but we cleaned up a full pallets worth of stone, my wheels are spinning and I assure you I will come up with some cool things to do with it.  That is if it's still there by the time they get the garage doors on.  Things have a very strange way of disappearing in neighborhoods under construction.  The neighbor across the street informed me this evening that the door next to him had been stolen 4 times.  Now don't be alarmed, this is very typical for the Houston area, and there is not really a crime problem.  These are usually inside jobs and once the construction is done the thieves move on to the next new development.  

Not much else is going on.  Cassie and I have a wedding in Austin this weekend for one of her friends from college.  She is a bridesmaid so she will be up there early to hang with the girls, but I am driving up Saturday morning.  I am looking forward to finishing out the work week which includes an Astros game tomorrow night.  I will keep you up to date with the house if I can stay caught up myself.

Sheetrock

Yesterday May 1st, was Cassie's Birthday.  I am a complete JERK and woke up, got ready for lunch, kissed her goodbye and forgot to tell her happy birthday!  It wasn't till I got to work and started filling out dates on forms and realized I was in deep shit!  So I called and started off with I'm sorry and of course she knew and said it was okay . . . so I've decided she has to take the good with the bad, I am good at planning and making memorable moments i.e. the engagement, but I have some work to do on remembering the little things.  She said she would forgive me and never think twice about it . . . I heard about it later that night incase you were wondering.  I decided to make it up to her I would take her to lunch and let her pick.  After being at work for about 2 hours I left for the day and ran over to Kroger for some last minute gift giving supplies.  I picked out a singing card, and some naturally planted Gerber Daisies (her favorite flower of all time).  She always complains that she does not like receiving flowers because they die, and are a waste of money, but there are small ones planted in dirt, so hopefully they will last a little longer.  At lunch Cassie ordered her favorite greek salad and I got the special.  The special was a kobe beef burger with caramelized onions and mozzarella cheese, it was delicious (I decided I could eat whatever I wanted because it was Cassie's birthday).  After lunch, I sent her on her way with a kiss and I was off to my Friday training.  Each Friday all of the Harvey newbies get together at the main office for a few hours or war stories and tips for certain parts of the job.  They are usually pretty good and we hopefully learn from the owner's mistakes so we don't have to make them ourselves.  After training I ran by the house and picked up Cassie for dinner.  We planned on meeting Mom and Kimber at Cheddars and we were a little early, but I wanted to beat the traffic on the Gulf Freeway.  As we were heading down we passed Harold Reese Jewlers and Cassie reminded me we still needed to pick out our rings and I so without blinking an eye I took the next exit and said sounds like a plan, let's take care of it.  I think I caught her off guard and she wasn't in the right mid-set to make this decision, but we would at least take a gander at what they had to offer.  Well if you don't know how Cassie is, let me tell you . . . she can be very stubborn.  At first she didn't like anything she saw and had her mind made up with a ring she saw in San Angelo.  Well after a little coaxing and some encouragement she decided to start looking around at the other rings and we found a very good match for her ring.  I tried to talk her into getting taking her stone out and putting it in a matching set but she shut me down.  After talking with Mr. Reese for a few minutes he tried to talk her into it aswell, but she's holding strong.  I picked out a simple gold band, no frills, no diamonds, just plain and simple.  I think it's very similar to my Dad's first wedding ring . . . I say first because I think he has gone through 3 of them to date.  After doing a little damage to the credit cards, we headed down to Cheddars and enjoyed a very good dinner with Mom and Kimber.  Mom got Cass some shopping money for the honeymoon, and Kimber got her a very nice charm bracelet from James Avery, which she absolutely loves.  

This morning I slept in late . . . till 10:30, it has been a very long time since I have slept in past 10:00.  After some much needed sleep we got ready and went out to tackle some errands we needed to get done.  First we ran over to the Best Buy to pick up a few things.  Cassie is also seriously looking for a dinning room table for the house so we went by a few stores before Panera Bread for lunch.  After a decent salad and some very good bread we checked out eh table options at the IKEA, typically a more modern design than either of us care for, but there was one contender.  After IKEA we stopped by the house and picked up the camera for a ride out to the new house.  After walking with Matt ast week he told me that sheetrock would start Saturday and that the brick should be delivered by Friday afternoon and they might start laying brick on Saturday.  When we got out to the house about 2:30 all the sheetrock had been hung, and they were 75% done with the 1st coat of mud.  They flew through that house, but it's possible they put up the sheetrock yesterday.  

After checking out the house I came back and sat by the pool for a while and Cassie squeezed in a nap.  I am starting to look pretty white compared to Cassie who has been spending some time in the tanning beds so I soaked in some rays.  

Go check out all of the new pic's it's easier to see the division with the sheetrock for you novice visionaries.   

Insulation

Just a quick update and some new pictures.  Cassie and I made a run out to the house to check out the progress and we were happily surprised.  I went out yesterday to do a pre-sheetrock walk-through and found several things that needed to be addressed and many of them had.  They also delivered the stone which looks even better that I thought.  I don't know if Cassie is still on board with the color on not, but I like it.  I think she like the color thats at the house next door better, but I think it works out, she can look at their house anytime she wants to so were both happy.  After looking at the house we ran over to Fiesta for a last minute need at this weekends Fiesta.  Go check out the pictures, I know you are all waiting on the edge of your seat to see how cool it is.

Pre-Construction and then Some

Today I met Matt at the House around 2:00 for a pre-construction walk-through.  We started on the outside and found that the air conditioner lines were run in the wrong place, so he is going to have them move that.  I was also able to convince him to move the fence back behind the dinning room window which we are very happy about, we didn't want the only view from the dinner table to be the fence 10ft away.  On the inside we had to move a few wires that were not put in the best location for TV's and plugs, but he was cool with that and agreed that they needed to be moved.  We also discussed all of the options and upgrades that we chose and we are on track for that.  He is throwing in the 8' French doors to the study, and the under-cabinet pre-wire for free!  

Last weekend after Cassie and I wired the house we stopped by the sales center to say hey to Mike, as I was leaving he asked me if I minded putting down some more earnest money, It caught me off guard since he had not said anything about it before now, but I agreed since the money would go towards closing.  The next day I received an e-mail from him now asking for even more earnest money, but he assured me it would go towards closing.  Well this just didn't sound right so I started bouncing the proposition off a few people and really just got a bad taste in my mouth about the whole situation.  Later that day I gave Mike a call and told him it really smelled fishy and that it was coming off that Highland was having deeper issues if they were coming back for more money, now the amount of money was nothing compared to what it costs to run a company, my few thousand dollars was not going to have any affect on their cash flow, but it still seemed really fishy.  So I decided to ask around and it seems our Sales rep got a pretty big butt chewing at the previous weeks meeting for not getting the option money upfront like he was supposed to.  Apparently after we make selections we were supposed to write him a check for 50% of that to go towards closing, but he had never said anything about it.  Well he had to go back with his tail between his legs to 5 or 6 other buyers and ask them to pay this money.  So we got to the bottom of it, but I will be honest, I would much rather someone be honest with me upfront so I know what to expect, don't lie to me and then expect me to give you more money.

Well some good news!  Yesterday for a few hours the rates dropped and Cassie and I were able to lock the mortgage rate at 4.5%.  We both have pretty good credit and we were expecting to get around a 5% rate, but you cannot beat 4.5.  If you do the math we saved about 80 bucks a month if you compare it to 5.25%.

This Friday is Cassie birthday so we have plans of going to dinner with Mom. We also have the family shower this weekend.  Aunt Debbie and Aunt Cheryl have been working their behinds off to throw a cool Fiesta so we are really looking forward to spending some time with our family before the wedding.  So much has been going on over the past few months, but it's been a ton of fun and we are enjoying every second of it.

On other fronts Cassie and I are trying to get in the best shape possible for the wedding, I have been doing pretty good staying away from the sweets this week, I don't know if I'll be able to hold out for another 7 weeks, but I'll do my best.  Cassie doesn't need to loose a pound, but she is doing some arm toning workouts, and this pull-up training program.  I'll have to let Cassie explain the program . . . but the gist of it is she will learn how to do a pull-up over the next 12 weeks.  I can't imagine how it would take 12 weeks to learn how to do a pull-up, but every time I walk in the room while she's working on it, she gets real embarrassed and kicks me out . . . gotta love her.

You may remember me telling you a few co-workers were finishing up on their part of the project, well Dustin left so my darling fiance went up to my office tonight to move some furniture around and give me a bigger office now that we have more room. 

It's almost Friday, but don't hold your breath.

Life as Usual

Last week I left off not feeling too well, but I'm getting better.  The guys at work have been giving me a hard time about spreading the swine flu around the office, I still have a cough though so I'm not out of the water yet.

This weekend Cassie and I ran down to Mom's to hang out and watch some Star Wars . . . Cassie was not impressed and I think we only made it through half of the first one.  None of us were in the mode to really watch movies, so we played with the dogs and I mowed the back yard. 

Saturday evening Cassie and I went over to our friends Clayton and Kristina's, they got married in November and this was their first get together as a married couple.  We had some really good BBQ sausage, chicken and burgers.  Cassie and I took an olive and cheese tray.  Cassie had a really good time talking with all of the girls, a few of them are teachers so they had plenty to talk about.  There were a few guys from work there and the others are in construction so there was plenty of trash talk about who's company is better and who is doing better in this economy.  

Sunday Cassie and I headed to the Home Depot for some wiring supplies for the new house.  I got the bright idea to wire the house for surround sound in the living room and speakers throughout the rest of the house.  The only problem was I didn't really know what I was doing, so I called our A/V consultant late Friday and got about 10 minutes of verbal instruction.  So Cassie and I set out to wire and the first plan was just to run the conduit for everything and then run wire later, well that didn't work so we moved on to plan B.  We decided to wire just the living room for surround sound and that was enough, it took half the day and by 4 we were pretty tired and ready to go home.  One perk was that the ladder I had was too short and so we had to go and get a taller ladder, I still had a Home Depot gift card so we got one of the Little Giant knock off's.  It's a pretty cool ladder that makes about 15 different set-ups and extends to 22'.  

Tomorrow I have a pre-sheetrock walk-through with the builder to make sure we are good with the location of all the plugs and data ports.  I also have a few questions about some other things im not crazy about.  My experience can be a hinderance sometime, but I have high expectations and I want to make sure we are getting the best home our money can buy.

Work is winding down a little, two of the guys have left because their projects are wrapped up so it is getting a little quitter around the office.  I am keeping busy though and getting involved with the project across the street.  

That's all for now, I will upload some pictures soon.

Being Sick Sucks

The title pretty much sums it up.  This past weekend while we were in San Angelo, I started getting a sore throat after the first night of sleeping in the hotel.  Now I'm not blaming it on the hotel, but it was pretty odd.  This week it has gone from a sore throat to feeling like crap, coughing my head off and some serious congestion.  This morning I slept in and tried to regain some energy and it seemed to help.

After a long day of work I drove out to the house to check on the progress.  Today the windows were installed, minus the one on the back wall where we have a small issue with the fireplace.  The alarm system was roughed-in, which means they ran all of the wire and put the security panel in, the TV and Data cable was also run.

Not much going on besides that, I had a lot of cleaning to do with Cassie gone.  A very interesting phenomenon occurs when Cassie leaves town that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around.  For some reason the clothes pile up all over the house, take-out containers clutter the coffee table, and a stench lingers in the air . . . this never happen when Cassie is in-town.  I have a plan though, I'm going to put up surveillance cameras to catch the perp who's doing this.

Preparation for the wedding is going well.  Cassie ordered a few more things, the list continues to grow and we are ironing out all of the details.  Most of you know I can be pretty opinionated, and I'm not sure Cassie and her Mom alway appreciate my opinion about the wedding things, but I remind them it could be a lot worse.

The weekend ahead should eventful as always.  We are going out with Megan and Ty for dinner and a birthday celebration tomorrow evening, then we are headed down to Texas City for a Star Wars marathon with Mom.  After it came on last weekend and Cassie admitted she had never seen them, we decided a long day of lounging was in order.  Sunday we plan on going out to the house for some minor preparation for speakers after we move in.  I'm going to run wire incase we decide to put in a surround sound system later on down the road.

That's all for now.  If you haven't watched The Office this week, your behind on your laughter quota, go get caught up.

Where to Begin?

Well first things first.  This weekend we had a really good time in San Angelo.  Cassie, Mom and I drove up Friday morning to make it in time for the cake testing.  The cakes are good, mine is going to be especially great, I won't tell you what it is though because I don't want to ruin the surprise.  Saturday we all slept in and met for lunch around 11:30 at Mr. T's, a small restaurant that Cassie and her Mom love to eat at.  I had  a really good burger, not sure what the rest of them ate, I was to concerned with myself.  (Yes I can admit it every once and awhile)  After lunch the girls all went back to get dressed, even squeezed in a small shopping trip before it was time to be there at 1:30.  After the girls left to go Shower, I went back to the hotel for a nap.  Eventually Candy called and said it was time for me to make my appearance, and yes, I did  get another round of applause . . . what's up with these people?  I'm not that cool am I?  The shower went well, Cassie is getting a lot of her Polish Pottery, which she is thrilled about.

After the shower, we all went our separate ways for dinner.  Cassie, Mom, Melinda and I went to Henry's, a pretty good Mexican restaurant with white sauce.

When we got back to town, I went by the house to check on the progress.  I have uploaded two batches of pictures so go check them all out. PICTURES HERE

That's all for now, I am tired and I have been working on this post for about 2 hours, but I keep getting distracted or interrupted so I am just going to call it quits, I will update with more details later on.  I will never be as detailed as Christopher's Blog entries, but I will try to give more.

The Sticks are in the Air

So the common verbiage for residential construction is Sticks and Bricks.  Well we have part one of that phase in action.  Today Cassie and I ran out to the house to sign the change order for the selections we made for our house.  Yesterday they dropped the framing pack and I anticipated seeing some progress today and I was right.  The framers are about 3/4 of the way complete and it's pretty cool seeing it come together.  Cassie was blown away by how much had been done in the last two days, I am used to seeing it, but it was cool to be experiencing it on my own home.  After checking out the framing, we went to talk with Mike.  Earlier in the day he called to tell me that the company they used for cabinets has changed due to some delivery problems they have been having.  The new cabinets are supposedly an upgrade product, something they typically use in their 500+ product.  After signing the paperwork and finishing up the chit chat with Mike I decided we would go by the Huntington Model to see the cabinets in person.  Cassie was not in love with them, but I think they are a better quality so I guess we will need to pick out a new color in the next few days.  Pictures are up!

Cassie and I are about to pack for the weekend, she is pouting because it is nine o'clock and I have not packed a thing.  Cassie has to have everything planned out and taken care of way in advance so I am going to wait to pack till the morning just to get even.  

There is a lot going on this weekend, so I will catch you all up when I get back to town.  Cassie is going to stay (if she can manage to be away from me fore more than a few days) in San Angelo for a week and then fly back to Houston next week.  

Have a great weekend!

down day

So life is taking us through the ringer.  The last few weeks have really been challenging with everything going on and I am mentally exhausted.  The funny thing is that is has nothing to do with the house, the wedding or anything that it should be related to. Funny how you can prepare for one thing and put your guard down everywhere else in anticipation for what you think is going to go wrong and then it's the opposite.  Work has been very challenging the past few days, I am getting very mixed feelings about the impression I am leaving on my boss and that's frustrating. . . Moving on.

The house is coming along.  Last night Cassie, Ty, Megan and  went out to dinner at Star Pizza to relax and have a good time, it was a much needed break from all the stress.  Afterwards we drove out to the house to check on the progress, but not much had happened.  Last week I got a general schedule from Matt the builder and I thought they would be dropping the frame pack yesterday, which would have meant the walls would be up by the end of the day, but that apparently did not happen.  

We plan on going out tomorrow evening to sign some paperwork to finalize the deal and check to see where they are at.  I will take the camera and put some pictures up.  We are also in the process of trying to lock in an interest rate for the mortgage.  I am working with the mortgage company that Highland Homes is in partnership with and we are obviously trying to get the best rate.  The big challenge is that rates are anything but constant, they can change as many as three time in one day so it's very hard to gauge.  I have been relying on a website www.mortgagenewsdaily.com for information about the industry and the rates.  They have a ton of information and resources that can influence the rates, so it's been helpful.  For the most part we are looking at between a 4.5 and 5 % rate and comparatively that is outstanding.  MiMi was telling me a few weeks ago that 40 some odd years ago they purchased their home in Texas City for the same rate, and Mom told me that their first home on 3rd was at 16%.  The market is ever changing and always interesting, but I think this is a great time to buy and a great time to lock in at a low interest rate.

Well we are preparing for another weekend in San Angelo.  Cassie has another wedding shower to go to, and I will plan on showing up at the end for another round  of applause . . . I don't know if I mentioned it, but the last time I was there for a shower, when I showed up at the end Candy introduced me and they all started clapping . . . VERY awkward. But what can I say I am a pretty cool dude and any girl would be so lucky to be with me (I'm gonna be in trouble for that statement, I will let you know how bad the beating is) .  So it should be a good relaxing weekend besides all of the driving, I know Mom is looking forward to spending more time with us and enjoying some time with Cassie doing wedding things.  

I hope everyone is having a great week, and please do not get worried by the first paragraph, it just reminds me of a new county song on the radio that's chorus is "It sounds like life to me"  that's what is is, just life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Easter

When I left off we were going to go out to the house to write our names in the concrete.  Cassie's best friend Megan drove up to Houston to spend some time with us and see where the new house is.  We went to eat at Niko Niko's, a small greek restaurant near Westheimer.  JOSH IS COOL. I LOVE HIM. LOTS.  (Cassie couldn't help herself, she just had to put her two cents in)  So we had a good dinner, the Gyro's are the best I have had by far.  Their pita bread is soft and warm, just like it should be.  After dinner we headed our to the house, but by the time we got there it was already getting dark, and the slab was already hardening more than I anticipated.  Luckily we took a screwdriver to write with, and I'm glad we did because a stick would have broken off.  Megan was a good friend and took a bunch of pictures . . . but I have no clue where they are, all I can think is she accidentally deleted them.  We will have another opportunity when they pour the back porch to leave our mark, we will do that during the day so the pictures turn out.  

Today we are relaxing, at the house with Mom.  We have had an eventful few days so the rest and relaxation is very much needed.  Dad of course is in Saudi Arabia and missing us more and more, we miss him and wish he was here, but he will be home before we know it for the wedding.  Incase your not counting, it's about 9 weeks.

A Quick Update

First things first, we have a foundation.  This morning I sluggishly got up for work and strolled in around 7:45.  I was not really in the mood to be working, especially with the anticipation of the foundation pour.  I made a few phone calls and forwarded a few e-mails, mostly talked to Mom and Dad on g-chat for a while and then left the office around 9:45.  I swung by the house to pick up Cassie and we headed out to the new house.  When we pulled up to the house the pump truck was set up and the finishers were just sitting around waiting for the concrete trucks to show up.  About 11:00 the trucks started coming, and there was a constant stream.  In a matter of an hour most of the concrete was poured and the finishing work was well under way.   I stood around and talked to the builder while we were watching the guys.  We have a lot in common both being in construction, he was in College Station for a while going to school, but finished up at Sam Houston.  Sam's program is similar to ours, and he told me a lot of the professors teach at both schools, which I found very interesting.  Sam Houston is about a 45 minute drive, but in Houston that's a typical daily commute so I suppose that's reasonable.  Cassie sat in the car and got caught up on all the latest healthy cooking trends and home crafting magazines.  She loves those magazines . . .  Speaking of Cassie, she updated her blog so you should go check it out sometime.  

Cassie's friend Megan is headed up to Houston for a bite to eat and then we are going to go mark our claim and write our names in the new concrete.  Incase you couldn't tell we are pretty excited about the new house starting.  

Go check out the New Pictures, we have uploaded quite a few pictures in recent weeks so snoop around while your over there.

House Selections

A few weeks ago Cassie and I met with the interior designer that was set up to help us make out selections for the interior finishes.  If you remember me talking about this earlier, I mentioned it wasn't too bad.  Cassie and I pretty much agreed on the color scheme and we only disagreed on a few things, but we both made a compromise or two and got through it.  I'm glad we get a long so well, it make life much easier.  The PICTURES are a little more yellow than they really are generally speaking.  I tried to adjust the white balance, and it depends on the monitor your viewing them on, but trust me they do not look as gold in person.  The tile is basically neutral, but has a rough edge that makes it look more like stone.  The cabinets are very dark and that's a cool contemporary look Cassie and I prefer.  The granite is the one the looks very different in the pictures in my opinion.  After I took the pictures and viewed them, I looked back and it almost looks gold in the pic's, but it's really a cream color.  So we are pretty stoked about the house if you couldn't tell.  

On other fronts, Cassis is still in San Angelo.  She is working her little butt off on wedding things and school, trying to accomplish as much as she can before returning to Houston on Friday.  She decided that two weeks was just too long to be away from me, so the original plan is out the window. . .  I know, I know we were just there this weekend and I thought that would appease her, but obviously it did not.  We will all be going back to San Angelo the following weekend for another wedding shower as well as meeting with the cake people and the caterer. 

Invitations are in, they look really sharp.  I was a little hesitant when I first saw them, but I only saw one piece of the puzzle and all together the invitations are pretty cool.  The list is becoming an animal in itself. Adding names, making corrections, e-mailing it to everyone who has people on it, trying not to forget people, sending it to all of the people who need it for showers . . . that freekin list is something I dread.  I already made a mistake and accidentally left a few people off when we were sending lists back and forth so I hope we do not make that mistake again.

Work is giving me a little heart burn right now.  We are winding down on some of the specialty floors that were separate from the majority of the tenant improvement floors.  The building consists of 50 floors and a few of them are executive, conference and cafeteria. The rest of the floors are basic, they have offices around the perimeter and core walls, or they have cubicles throughout the floor.  They have a lot of cool things that are much more impressive than most office buildings, but none the less they are nothing like the specialty floors.  Back to the point.  With these specialty projects ending soon there are a lot of loose ends that are getting lost in the mix.   All of the projects run together on the same logs and same paperwork, but they have different PM's that are leaving the project.  A few weeks ago I brought this up and we started wrapping our heads around the amount of work that needs to be done to close out the project and that means I have a lot of work to do.  In the middle of my office we have a stack of stuff that has been moved so many times, and been the responsibility of so many people that I will basically be starting over.  We have a submittal log with over 1000 items on it, and my job is to take that pile of mess, and clean it up.  We have submittals missing, rejected and needing approval, never submitted when they needed to be . . . it's just a pile of junk.  This means over the next few weeks I am going to be very stressed out and working late to get things in order.  When I first started in June of last year I has a similar project to tackle and I have that on track, but this one is a much greater task, and the main problem is that it started three years ago when the project started and I have no clue what three quarters of it is.  Okay, enough of me complaining.  

So back to work and back to the fun things in life.  Enjoy the pictures and feel free to leave comments.

King of Surprises

Friday afternoon around 12:00 when Mom had made it home for lunch she gave me a buzz to ask a favor.  She has a few honey do's building up since Dad left and she was hoping to get me to come down this weekend and help around the house.  I had actually already thought about it and planned to go down there, but Cassie was getting in the way.  I talked with Cassie on Thursday evening and she was acting all sad and depressed that I wasn't there, and she was missing me so I was really torn.  I know Mom really wanted to go to San Angelo for her shower, and I wanted to be there to enjoy the weekend as well.  I had to tell Mom sorry, I wouldn't be able to come down to Texas City this weekend, because I was going to San Angelo and wanted her to come with me.  She was pretty shocked, but said she would see what she could do to get off.  She threw a bag together on her lunch break and loaded the car and was able to leave work around 4.  So mom calls around 4:30 to tell me she is a few miles away from 610 and I said no problem you should be here in about 15 minutes give or take.  We decided to eat at the new Freebids that just opened up in out new shopping center and I was headed over to eat before she got there so I could drive and she could eat in the car.  About 30 minutes later I gave her a call . . . . Mom, are you lost?  Of course she was, she informed me she had entered Josh's work on her GPS instead of Josh's Home, okay, no problem it's only 6 minutes away she should be here soon.  About 20 minutes later . . . Mom are you still lost?  "YES! I'm across the highway, and I can see your apartment, but I don't know how to get over there!"  So finally she found the Walgreens near my house and I told her to stay put, I would come and get her.  About 30 minutes later, we were on the road to San Angelo, me very frustrated but taking deep breath's.  So I cooled off and we got to talking, we stopped along the way to get Mom a bite to eat and finally made it to San Angelo shortly before 1 am.  Before we left I jumped on to priceline to reserve a hotel room and that was a bad mistake.  I have had pretty good luck with there name your own price feature, but only in major cities.  I thought I would give it a try for San Anglo, but we got stuck at the La Quinta, I suppose it was worth the 50 bucks, but not a cent more.  I will not make that mistake again.

The next morning we got up around 7, excited about surprising Cassie.  I called Candy the night before and had her start talking about numbers to throw Cassie off and informed her of our devious ways.  We arrived at the house around nine and they were all upstairs in the master bath getting ready.  I nocked on the door and put my hand in the crack with the newspaper waving it around.  Cassie stopped blow drying her hair and turned around and her mouth just dropped and she ran to me.  The night before I had given he such a line of bull about being at a work function with Dan and then going out to a bar with a buddy of mine, and she believed every word of it.  She was floored that I had made it and was just as excited to see Mom.  She ran downstairs to give Mom a hug and then finished getting ready.  The girls all went off to the shower that Betty (Lee's Daughter) was throwing for her and us guys (Lee, Josh (Melinda's Josh) and Me) sat around talking till it was time to go pick up the loot.  Click HERE for more Pic's

The girls had a great time, the event went off without a hitch and we were given some very nice gifts.  A huge thank you to everyone for their love and support, starting our life together is going to be much easier with all the help.  The rest of the weekend we relaxed and enjoyed the company, worked on the wedding list some more, we have to get those baby's out in a few weeks so we are trying to get it wrapped up.  This morning we went to 1215 for a quick breakfast and then got back on the road.  It was a very short weekend, but well worth the effort!  

On the way back to Houston Mom and I decided to go by the new house to see if the lot had been cleared yet.  When we met with Matt last week, he told us it was on the schedule so we assumed it would be cleared.  We dropped by the apartment to get Mom's car and then headed over to Fall Creek.  The lot was indeed scrapped and it looks even larger.  We were able to get a corner lot (the last one) and we knew it was larger than most of the lots, but it is very clear once they are scrapped and staked.  The lots in this section are 50' wide and about 110-120 feet deep.  This lit being on the corner is 60' and it has a 15 foot easement for the sidewalk, so it's gigantic compared to the little 50' lot next door.  It was supposed to have a 5,000 premium on it, but our Sales rep threw it in for free.  So the lot is scrapped and over the next week they will begin setting the forms.  I promise to keep this updated with news and pic's. CLICK HERE for More Pic's

UPDATE: 9:13 . . . phone ringing . . . "Yes Darling?"  "Hey! what is this about we went over to 1215 for a quick breakfast?!!  Shouldn't it read we went over to 1215 for a world Famous delicious egg casserole that had been slaved over for hours before we arrived.  And shouldn't you say how delicious and beautiful Cassie's fruit salad was with all the colors?"  . . . So there you go, it was the best breakfast I have had all day and I won't forget it!  Thanks for keeping me on track Momma Gregston!

Where Did My Baby Go

You might be wondering what the title is all about, Cassie left today for some Wedding Shower business and wedding planning in San Angelo.  She will be gone for a few weeks, but I will be up there to see here April 18th for another shower. The wedding planning is really pretty easy in my opinion, but Cassie and her Mom are doing most of the work, so I can only speak for myself.  

The house planning is going well.  This week we met with the Sales Rep (Mike) and the guy who will actually be building the home (Matt).  I have to say I feel bad for the guy, I doubt he has had the challenge of building a home for a builder, so I know it will be a difficult challenge.  If you know me at all, you should know I have a little bit of perfectionism in me, and that multiplies the challenge.  We sat down for about 2 hours to go over the plans, and pricing.  

The plans were pretty straight forward. We are moving the fireplace that was originally centered on the wall to the corner, this will allow a lot more room for an entertainment area, if we didn't do this the only option would have been to hang a TV over the mantel.  Moving the fireplace meant we had to move the door and delete a window, but it will be worth it.  We also put in an arched opening between the kitchen and the dinning room, it's weird that the plan didn't have it, but Mike said most of the homebuyers that picked this plan have done the same.  We added a bay window to the back and upgraded the living room to a Study, and that about wraps it up.  Now of course I pushed some boundaries and tried to get a feel for what the builder would let me do on my own, and so far, not much.  I will have to wait till the house gets under way to see what I can get away with.  We would like to rough in some electrical and maybe a few other things that would be much easier to do while the house is in the framing stage.  We have plenty of time, and I can buy tons of bribery beer before it's too late, so I will let you know how successful I am.

The pricing wasn't nearly as bad as we thought.  We met with the Interior Decorator last week to make our selections.  The whole experience went pretty smooth, but the organization at highland left some things to be desired, well sorta.  So when you go into meet with this lady, all she can tell you about pricing is if it's a level 1 upgrade or level 2 upgrade, or level 3 upgrade . .  . you get the point.  Going through the house making the selections we would get to the carpet and have 6 choices, you could then upgrade and get 6 more options, but they couldn't really give you a price.  So what I thought, and the designer agreed was to just go through and pick everything you like, and then when the sales agent gets the selections he prices it all out and tells what the damage is.  I thought we did some serious damage, we picked pretty much everything we like purely for looks, not price, but it really wasn't that bad.  All in all I think we added a few thousand dollars to the deal, but it's definitely worth it.  

Work has been going pretty good this week, I was working on bidding out a new floor the past few weeks and then all of the sudden they decided to pull the plug on the project.  I went to a ton of trouble and work to get the proposals done, but what are you going to do?  All of the subs who bid the job were pretty disappointed, but were still crossing our fingers they will change their mind, something they do on a daily basis.

This weekend I will be relaxing and working on the 99K house.  We are ramping down, with only the interior work to go.  I wrote an article for the company newsletter next month over the 99k house, I'm hoping to get some bonus points for that.  In this economy I have to do everything possible to keep my name out there.

I'm really looking forward to the new house and will keep you all updated with pictures as we start making some progress, I hope to be framing up a lot in the next week or two.  As a closing thought, remember to spend time with your family, I am seeing too many people that I know work themselves to death and forget to just enjoy life.

Bachen it . . .

Last weekend was great and relaxing.  Cassie's Mom was headed to Houston for a week of Bridge playing and we were looking forward to it.  She made it in around dinner time and we headed over to the Grand Luxe, it's one of Candy's favorites and we usually eat there at least once while they are in town.  We had a great dinner and had the chance to meet one of Candy's bridge friends who came to be her partner for the week.  

Not much was planned for the week, Cassie was planning on leaving on Wednesday for a wedding in San Angelo, but we were still working with Highland to make sure we were not slowing down the progress on the house.  When we signed all the paperwork last weekend, Mike encouraged us to get in to the design center and make all of our selections ASAP so we would not be holding up the paperwork they needed to release our house.  I talked with Mike and since the designer was out Monday and Tuesday and we didn't know if she would have any openings later in the week, Cassie decided to leave.  She had set up an appointment with the music coordinator who is gathering the different musicians for the wedding and they needed to make some final decisions.  

Thursday I went and picked up Candy at the hotel and took her to get her car.  We left it at the apartment for the week so she wouldn't have to worry about parking it downtown.  After she left I had a easy going relaxed evening.

Work has been going pretty well.  Thursday we had our monthly PM/Superintendent meeting and it was shorter than last week.  Harvey is taking a very strong stance on safety this year, some of it is because we have had a few bad years safety wise and we are trying to turn that around.  The other reason is because in our line of work safety is so crucial to our clients and it needs to be our focus as well if we want to continue working with those clients. The meeting went well and I didn't have to write a check back to the company for any safety violations so all in all it was a good meeting.  

Friday I had a meeting at the 99k House.  Harvey has taken on a challenging project, building a residential home for less that 99 thousand bucks.  The main challenge is that were not residential builders.  We have been relying on our relationships with commercial sub-contractors to build this hose, these are businesses that are used to having 2 million plus contracts, not 2 thousand dollar contracts.  I volunteered at the beginning of the project, thinking with my residential experience I might be some help and it's been interesting.  We met for about three hours to discuss where we are on the project and where we need to be in the next four weeks.  

This weekend I have been chilling.  This morning I got up and went for donuts, come home took a nap, ate lunch, and I'm still sitting on the couch.  It's been a great relaxing day!  Cassie is out at the wedding and I don't think she's having too much fun without me, but it's great to be doing nothing for a change.  

Tomorrow Cassie is coming in to town and we are going to head down to Texas City for dinner with Mom, Kimberly and Jeremy.  Cassie is going to spend the week with Mom going to school and observing for the week, something she needs to do for a class.  We are meeting with the designer one night this week to make the selections so it should be another fun filled week.

Nappy Poo

Nap Time

Cassie didn't get much sleep last night so she's snuggled up on the couch. I just figured out how to send posts from my Blackberry, so I might get better about updating you guys from now on. We will see how this process works.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Pic's

I know i'm going to get ton's of crap (Dustin) for this, but I know a lot of you want to see the pic's. Cassie and I spent a few hours (more like the whole day) taking pictures last Saturday and they are posted on our Photographer's web-site.  Lacy is a long-time friend of the family and she does amazing work.  She really deserves some credit for putting up with Cassie and I for the day in order to get some pretty cool pictures we will hang on our walls till we die . . . I mean these things are going to be around for a while, let's make em good right.

www.morethananimage.com is where you can find the pic's.  Once you get there, click the picture on the far left and that will take you in to her photography site.  At the top click "View your Event" and the code is 14001 to see our pictures.  Let me know if you have problems getting them.

That's all for now.

It's Final

Over the past few months Cassie and I have been working through the process of buying a house.  We have been working out the financing, getting a realtor and looking at homes.  Over the past few weeks we have looked at several homes, we found some we really liked, one in particular, and some not so much.  We narrowed down the area to Fall Creek, it's a cool master planned community across the way from where I did my internship with Perry Homes.  It is home to the Shell Houston Open, a nice gold course, but I couldn't afford it, even if I did play golf.  In our search we found one section in particular that we especially liked.  The homes had a more rustic look to them, with the stone and brick combination.  Every time we drive through the neighborhood there are people out working in the yard or talking to neighbors and you just get a good feeling there.  We found a house in this section about a week ago, and by the time we got our offer in the homeowners had already accepted an offer on a different home.  Cassie and I were pretty bummed for a few days, but we started the search again.  Cassie has been looking during the day with the realtor and when they found something they thought I might like we would go check it out after I got off work.  This past week we found one that was a good second choice, it was a Perry so I knew it was built well, and it had a few upgrades, but it still didn't have the stone that I liked, and it was not in a section that we were crazy about.  After looking at that home we discussed possibly going back to the section that we found the other home is and talk to the builder who still had some lots available.  We had already visited the builders model and even though they were offering 15,000 dollar incentives, we still would not get as much for the money if we were able to find a good deal.  We decided to set our price and give the builder  challenge.  We knew we would not be able to get the upstairs seeing how is was a 27,000 dollar upgrade, but we pretty much wanted everything else for the same price we would be willing to pay for the other home we found and liked that was a Perry.  We met with the Sales Rep, Mike, last night along with our realtor and started talking about the options.  About two hours later, he had us sold.  The list was long, but not impossible . . . We got the bay window, stone elevation, study option, and brick on the fireplace.  Cassie and I are on cloud nine, we didn't think he would be able to make it all happen, but he did, and he even threw in another 3,000 for good measure.  The lot we picked out is on the corner so it is about 15 feet wider, and while it's not much deeper, it is still deeper than the other option and will give us about a 30 ft deep back yard.  The corner lot will be really nice the house will not feel so closed in with the 5 ft lot lines that you would typically have.  We were able to give the other side yard about 8 ft and the left will be plenty big because we have the sidewalk all around.  Go check out the pictures we took of the lot here, we also took tons of pictures of the surrounding homes by the same builder so we can narrow down our brick and stone combination.  That's all for now, we are really excited to be buying a home, and being able to build is really awesome.  With my experience I really feel bad for the superintendent building the home, because I will be all over this thing, but I guarantee it will be the best house on the block by the time I get done with it.  I will try to keep the blog up to date with the progress of the house construction, pictures etc.  I never thought in a million years I would be at this point in my life so soon out of college, but Cassie and I are very fortunate!

New Camera

For Graduation I wanted one thing, and one thing only . . . a new camera.  This week Cassie and I met my Dad, Mom, Kimberly and Jeremy for dinner.  It was Jeremy's last night in town and we needed to take some stuff down to Texas City so we crashed the party.  We showed up a little earlier than them, believe it or not the traffic was worse in bound than out bound on 45.  With time to kill I decided now was a great time to make the big purchase I have been waiting for.  I finally had time today to pull it out of the box and start playing, and man do I love it.  Expect tons more pictures in the future.  I had all of my pictures up on my mac account, but that has expired and I have been too busy to get them all on my web-site, but I will get it done soon so I can start publishing all the cool pics.  I ran down to Texas City to help Mom move some stuff and had the opportunity to take one last shot of Sammy before Mom decides to run over her again.

We had a good weekend.  It was the company Christmas Party last night.  One of the superintendents was stealing all of the attention by getting a little too friendly with some of the wives at the party.  I was reminded by many people not to make a scene at the Company party, so not to worry, I'm good till next year.  

Today Cassie and I went to lunch with some friends, and then to the Body World Exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science.  It was a really neat experience to see the inner workings of the human body.  Seeing what we are made of is just mind blowing and just reassures my belief in God.  Our body's are an amazing work of art, I know I appreciate mine more.  There were several eye opening features, but the most impressive was the set of lungs from a non-smoker and a smoker.  The smokers lungs were so dark and much smaller than the healthy lungs. You can only hope that every smoker who walks through there makes the decision so stop after seeing how harmful it is.

It's off to bed in preparation for an exciting week at work.  I discovered Saturday morning that I made a rather large screw up on a project that starts Monday, so I have very low expectations for tomorrow going well . . . can't wait to tell my boss what a dippy doo I am.

Have a great week, I'll hopefully get some more pics up soon.

12.3.08

Last night around 10:00 I was getting ready for bed and noticed a few bumps on my arms and chest that resembled mosquito bites, I thought nothing of it and jumped in bed, scratching a little, but tired so I fell asleep pretty fast.  FF to 2:30 a.m.  I awoke itching from head to toe.  My chest, my back, my legs, everywhere . . . I jumped out of bed and started searching the internet for something . . . Scabies!  Everything I found said scabies, so great.  By this time I was wide awake and there was no chance of me going back to bed.  I got dressed and headed to the office, I can assure you I was the first one to the office Today (Made it in by 3:30).

Throughout the day I had to listen to all the crap talk and bantering, but I made a doc

tors appointment for the afternoon.  I am currently wor

king on three different projects for work.  I have my full-time job (Chevron), the job I might be going to after this job (Shell) and I am also working on a charity project that Harvey is working on (the 99k house).  So things are really busy for me at work.  

Cassie came down to the office for lunch, which I was no fun at . . . I was tired and had tons of work to do so I pretty much just listened to her eat her crunchy pickles and chips (my most favorite things in the whole world incase you unfamiliar with my likes and dislikes).  She was pretty busy the rest of the afternoon, she made tons of calls for me and helped me get some stuff off my to do list (I'm really gonna like this marriage thing, I may not make her work after all).  She even had time to make a cool Christmas Wreath for the 230 door.

Around 3:00 I headed over to the Doctor's office where I waited for about 30 minutes (which was odd because the waiting was empty and yet there was still a wait)  Turns out there was no need to worry, just the Hives.  The doctor said it was either food, drugs or some type of allergy flare up.  So Im on the Benadryl . . . . and trust me it's working, im not sure how I'm going to make it through this post.

After I got home I had a delicious, low-cal (I'm still trying my hardest to get in decent shape for Hawaii)  cold pasta salad, and it really was good.  A friend of mine rates his wife's cooking on a 5 point scale (things get nasty when he gives her a 1 or 2 - you don't want to be there for the 0's), but I just told Cassie it was a keeper, to put it in the recipe box.

She also made some really good pecan bars for the guys at work, and they are loving them.  

Well it's time to finish Kung Fu Panda and get some sleep.  Have a good night, check back soon.