July 4, 2007

Hello Everyone,
Well, my marathon 3 weeks is over! We are totally moved out of our rental, it is sparkling clean, I got everything out of our Florida house, and now I'm back in Texas again. I have to unpack all our stuff here, of course, but there's no deadline for that so I'm hoping I can slow down a bit.
I am soooooooooooooo tired, still, even after 2 nights of decent sleep, and sleeping all the way home from San Antonio today (we went there Monday night and went to Sea World yesterday and the Alamo and Tower of America today). But most of the intense work is done.
I am so very glad to never have to clean that blasted tile floor in our rental again. I spent 8 hours cleaning it last week, no exaggeration.

Going back to Florida was very happy and very sad. I was so happy to see my friends again that I have missed so much, but it was also very sad to have to leave them again! Driving in to Rock Creek at 1:00 AM Saturday morning I just started crying because it was so weird to see all the things that were such a part of my daily life for 2 and a half years. It bothered me so much that I had forgotten little things like street names, and the way the roads have no curbs. I drove past the rock climbing park and the rocks along the lake where the little stray black cat lives and it just made me *really* realize that the South Florida part of our lives is over, never to return. I spent the weekend trying to analyze why I was so bothered. I mean, it seems like most of my friends there are trying to leave, so it's not like South Florida is just this awesome place that is better than anywhere else. I really think I was bothered by being confronted with the passage of time. We are done living in South Florida, our lives there will only be memories from now on. All the experiences I had there with my little kids are OVER, and not only can I never again return to these experiences, I can't even return to where they were. Ugh. Anyway, I spent the whole weekend either crying or trying not to cry and I'm emotionally exhausted. Add to that the really bad experience I had with the movers on Sunday (too long a story to even get into here), and it was a hard weekend. Florida is so beautiful. Living there, I began to take for granted how lush and gorgeous it is with flowers and plants just exploding everywhere, the sweet smelling air, the unreal clouds after a thunderstorm. I didn't get to drive out to the beach, but I really miss that too. Of course I know in anothe 2 years if we have to leave Austin, I will be just as sentimental about things here as I am about things in Florida. Sometimes I wish I could live life just a little *less* aware of everything.

We have a contract on our house out there (did I tell you?). However, that is also a sourse of stress as of course we have had to reduce our price several times, and the offer we got also included us paying 4% in closing costs for the buyers, making the actual contracted price about $55K less than our original asking price. Ouch. And now we are informed that the upstairs air conditioner is broken, and the roof likely needs to be replaced. Florida tile roofs are $15-$20K to replace, so that is a pretty penny. So we are still considering just pulling out of this deal since after everything, we're gonna be lucky to break even on the house. But the roof and air conditioning still need replacing, and we just don't have $25K sitting around, so it seems like the only way we can get out of this is to sell the house, and then put money from the sale into an escrow account for the buyers to replace the roof and a/c themselves. Ugh and yuck. I hate dealing with all of this. Sometimes it is really tiresome to be a responsible adult and have to make decisions and take care of problems like this.

Ok, last bit of bad news and then I'll have it all off my chest (I think). Angel is missing. She disappeared the first week we were in this new house. She commonly disappears for a few days after we move to a new house, we think she just goes and explores the new neighborhood. But it's been 2 weeks and she hasn't come back. I made up a bunch of signs and the boys and I have hung them on stop signs all around the neighborhood. We had 2 calls, one from a person who's been seeing a cat for 2 years (obviously not Angel), and another from a lady a couple nights ago who saw a light colored cat in her yard but couldn't catch her and didn't get a good enough look to know if it really is her or not. We've visited Travis county and Williamson county animal control places, but no luck. Of course I am so afraid that she's been run over or met some other unpleasant end. I hope that she's just been befriended by someone who hasn't seen my signs. But I miss her and feel so bad. We left Buffy in Florida (I did get to see her and she's doing great), and now we don't even have Angel anymore. I keep dreaming that we find her, but then I wake up and she's still gone. We've had Angel for almost 9 years.

Ok, this is the end of my really depressing complaining letter. I just needed to get all of that off my chest. I will try from here on out to be more positive in my letters, or at least to try to see the humor in difficult situations. I just have had a really hard time finding any humor in some of these things. I guess that means it is time to count my blessings, of which I have many, and for which I am very grateful. I'm sure once I get caught up on sleep a little, I'll feel better, too.

So happy 4th of July everyone! I'll write later on and tell about the fun trip we had to San Antonio.

Here are some pictures of the boys enjoying the fireworks. We went to a place in Cedar Park which was supposed to have a display, but it got canceled due to rain earlier in the day (guess they worried it might rain all night), so we just saw the fireworks some locals brought to set off in the park. The boys loved it anyway, so all is well.

Mosey's shirt says, "I want YOU to take me to the fireworks." He's been begging me to take him to fireworks since last week. He thought there were fireworks just going off all the time, and why in the world wasn't I taking him to see them?! He was pretty thrilled. The last time he saw firworks was when he was about 18 months old, and he doesn't remember.

Here's Boo-bear oohing and aahing.

Here's Joseph. I think he needed to go to the bathroom. Gotta love boys, huh? LOL!!!

Here are a few poor attempts at taking photos of fireworks without a tripod...