Lots of PINK

A lot of big events have happened in the past week:

1. I ran my first 5K since 2007.
2. Mom was admitted to the hospital again.
2. Travis and I bought our first car.
3. I turned 25!

Last Saturday was the Liz Hurley Ribbon Run in Huntsville. 5,500 people registered for the race, and there were over 4,000 in the women's race that I was in! I ran for probably a month to get ready for the race, and my goal was to finish in 27 minutes. I was a little bit slower than that (27:29 officially), but that's ok. If I'd known that the course was downhill for the last stretch, I would have gone faster I think. Hopefully I can run faster next year. The race raised over $250,000 for breast cancer research!!! Very exciting!

Before the race

I ran "for" my mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother

Me and Travis

Lots of pink!

Almost finished!!

Afterward!

My supporters--thanks for coming!! :)

Mom started running another fever Sunday night and felt bad all day Monday so she ended up back in the hospital Tuesday morning after seeing Dr. Bondly. She had to stay until mid-day Thursday. They ended up giving her a blood transfusion, antibiotics, and potassium while she was there. Jenn surprised Mom by coming home Tuesday afternoon and showing up at the hospital so at least one of us was there for her! She also had several visitors come by to see her while she was there, and she was in the same ginormous room as last time. She's definitely glad to be home though!

I mentioned in my last post that we were officially car shopping since Travis's car bit the dust last Monday. I'm proud to say that we bought a car on Wednesday! If you know us very well, that's a pretty big accomplishment because we don't usually move too fast when it comes to big decisions. I guess the idea of only having 1 car for too much longer was enough to speed up the process!

After test driving a Fusion, Camry, Altima, and Accord over the weekend, Travis decided that the Altima was his favorite. It has a special type of transmission called CVT that means that it doesn't shift gears like a normal car does. It really is a smooth ride! He also liked it the best from a looks perspective too. We narrowed down the candidates to 7 Altimas that had the features we were looking for and were also Nissan certified and under 40,000 miles. Two of them were in Decatur (one was the one we'd driven Saturday) and five were in the Atlanta area. Monday morning Travis began to call each dealership and start the haggling. By Monday night we had two serious contenders who had already dropped their prices fairly close to what we were willing to pay. Lynn Layton in Decatur wouldn't budge much, and the other places in Atlanta either never returned Travis's phone calls or wouldn't drop their prices enough. By Tuesday night, we had a plan. We were heading to Marietta and Roswell, GA first thing Wednesday morning to check out the two contenders. The cars were very similar (same year, model, features, and only 3,000 miles difference) which worked in our favor.

So, we left the house at 5:30 AM Wednesday to head to Roswell first. We got to Regal Nissan around 10:30 AM (EST) and checked out the first car. It was just as nice in person as in the photos online. We drove it around town and on the interstate, and it was a really good ride. Once we started talking prices though, that's when things started to get interesting. This dealership had had this car for about 2 months, whereas the other place only had their Altima about 10 days. We haggled with them for a little while, and they ended up dropping their price even lower than we were hoping they would. We told them we would have to call the other dealership and see if they could do better than that; if so, we would head there to check out the other car. When we called them though, they actually said they would pass on the deal. I guess they didn't want to drop their price that much since they hadn't had their car very long. Overall, Regal dropped their price almost $4000, which I felt like was pretty good. I'm sure they still made a profit on it because it was a leased vehicle, and they leased it out originally. We were so excited to get a good price though!

After signing a bunch of paperwork, we headed to a different office where somebody pestered us for at least 20 minutes about buying an extended warranty on the car. Since it was a certified used car, it already had an extended warranty, so spending an extra $1000 to cover us for only 5 more years would have been crazy. The car is only 2 years old, so we're banking on something breaking after 5 years from now, not before. It's just funny that when they are selling you the car, they tell you how nice it is and everything, and after you've agreed to buy it, then they tell you how things will break and you better buy the warranty just in case..haha. They also tried a last-ditch effort to convince us to finance it, but we didn't get baited on that either. Whew.

Then we had to wait on them to make us a second key and replace the battery, so by the time we left there, it was 4:30 PM EST! We ended up driving straight home and straight to church. When we finally got home, we were exhausted but thrilled! Car buying wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. You just have to do a lot of research, know what you're doing, and not get talked into anything by a smooth talking salesman.

09 Altima

Pretty!

Yipee!

He's pretty excited!

Today, we went to the Pink Luncheon put on by one of Mom's good friends who had breast cancer several years ago. This year's them was "Boil Out Breast Cancer" and we had Frogmore Stew for lunch. It was yummy! Everything was decorated in pink, and there were lots of good "pink" desserts. They raised over $9000 for breast cancer research, which is awesome!

Mom and her girls!

Travis wore my Liz Hurley race t-shirt since he refuses to wear pink...haha

Sisters :)

Claire came for a little while too!

Last night Travis and I went out to eat at Red Robin for my birthday, and I opened a few presents when we got home. Thank you Cheryl, Alisha, Tyler, Emily, and Melissa for the soup bowls that go with my fine china! I'm excited to have more stuff to fill up my china cabinet. Travis also got me the teapot and vegetable bowl for my collection. Yay! I also got some lotion, body splash, and a new pair of earrings. It was a pretty good day! Tonight we are celebrating my birthday with Mom, Dad, and Jenn (Felix and Gabby came with us for the weekend too). I'm looking forward to some yummy chicken casserole for supper. Tomorrow, Travis and I are going to the Bama game against Tennessee. Hope we get another W!

A better nose, improved flower beds, and our hunt for a new car!

I've had a new patient since yesterday morning. So far, he's behaved himself pretty well.

Travis had outpatient surgery yesterday to hopefully fix the breathing and sinus infection issues he's had since he broke his nose 5 years ago. We had to be at the Surgery Center at 6:30 AM, and we were home by a little after 10 AM...so it was pretty quick overall. The surgery itself lasted less than an hour. Dr. McCary said Travis's septum looked pretty bad, but he said he got it straightened up nicely. Travis and I can tell his nose points differently just from looking at it, so it's gotta be a lot better than it was! Travis was so funny right before we were about to leave to head home after surgery. He was very concerned about understanding all of his instructions perfectly...like he thought I wasn't listening or going to follow them when we got home..haha! I kept telling him that I'd take care of everything, but I guess he didn't trust me :)

Luckily, he doesn't have packing in his nose (which is supposedly terrible), but he does have stents. He said it feels like he hasn't blown his nose in centuries. His post-op appointment is tomorrow morning, and he'll get the stents taken out then. I'm sure that will feel much, much better with a clear nose. So far, the worst part has been using saline nasal spray every hour, but I'm making him do it even though he doesn't want to. I'm such a mean nurse. He declined my photo-op when I wanted to document him wearing his nasal dressing, so y'all won't get to see a picture. Let's just say he'll be glad to not have to wear that thing hopefully after tomorrow!

Mom had her 4th chemo treatment on Monday, and other than feeling pretty "blah" yesterday and today (which is normal for day 3-4), she's doing pretty good so far. Unfortunately, I couldn't go down there this week like I've done in the past since I had my own patient here in town, but it sounds like she's surviving without me. Next 4 treatments will be a different chemo drug, Taxotere. Hopefully that one will have less side effects. No sense in worrying about that drug before we get through next week...hopefully with no fever and hospital stay this time!! :)

This Saturday I'm running in the Liz Hurley Ribbon Run. I ran 3 miles on Monday and yesterday, and it wasn't too terrible, so I think I can do the 5K without walking. My goal is to finish in 27:00 or under...pretty slow compared to my high school PR (21:00), but oh well. What can I say? I'm getting old and slow! I'll let you know how it goes in my next blog post...

Last weekend was a 4 day weekend for both of us. It was Travis's Friday off, and he had Monday off for Columbus Day (gotta love government perks!). We spent most of it working outside in our yard. Friday, we spent several hours pulling up everything in our front flower beds. If you remember from prior pictures, it wasn't much. The few shrubs we had were very pitiful. However, they did NOT have pitiful roots. It was near impossible to pull some of them up, so we ended up cutting them as far down as we could. Saturday, we spent most of the morning and afternoon helping Jessica and Collier move into their new house (which is very cute!). I can't wait to see it once they get everything set up! Monday morning, Travis and our neighbor, Rob, worked on trimming the bushes in between our houses. They had gotten very tall and out of control. They worked for several hours, but there is still a lot to go. What they did get done looks much better though! Monday afternoon was dedicated to pulling weeds and loosening up the ground in our flower beds. It was so compacted that it was literally hard as rock. Poor Travis...he got the rough end of the deal....swinging the pick axe all afternoon after working so hard that morning. By the end of the day, he was tired and sore all over. Big thanks to Cheryl for giving up your afternoon to help us...we really appreciate it! Although our flower beds are bare now, they actually look better than they did with the old shrubs in them. Next up is mixing in some soil conditioner, lining the beds with stone, and then we'll be ready to plant!

Before

Before

After

After

Ready for planting!

Those bushes were out of control!!

Much better!

Can't post in my blog without adding some pictures of the kittens! They are growing bigger every day! If they're not sleeping, they're chasing each other, wrestling, or eating. Not a bad life...

Can you find Felix in all of that junk? :)

Gabby likes to nap in her bed occasionally...

Felix prefers this chair

One of these days, I'll get the chair recovered...

Our other big news of the week is that Travis's car died on Monday. It's a 95 Honda Accord with at least 220,000 miles on it, so it's just time to give up on it. The clutch is what quit working, and it would be pretty expensive to replace, so we're just going to get a new car instead. We're looking at family sedans similar in size to my car like the Fusion, Accord, Altima, Camry, etc. We're thinking about getting something that is a couple of years old with low mileage. Hopefully we can get a good deal and find something in the next week or so! Feel free to shout out car buying tips if you have them b/c neither of us have ever done this before....kinda nervous about it...

Time to get back to taking care of my patient! Hope you're enjoying your week so far :)

A rollercoaster!

That's what this week has been.

To catch you up on what's been going on, I think we've pretty much decided to wait and get Travis a new car. The master cylinder is fixed, and we are $300 poorer, but at least the car works! We got a lot of advice (thank you, thank you!), and we feel like it is smarter to use the money we have saved for a down-payment on a house rather than spend it on a car right now. Hopefully, the ol' Honda will keep ticking for several more months (or years!!) without needing any major repairs. 

Last Friday, we looked at several houses in the Harvest/Monrovia area. Six had been lived in previously, and four or five were brand new. All of them were in the same general price range. The realtor who showed us the houses was awesome! We met her not really expecting much because I'd contacted her about a month or two ago about a house she was selling. We didn't know anything about her, and we figured we'd end up using a realtor who had been recommended to us already (we've got the names of two or three). However, she really, really impressed us. She wasn't pushy at all. She let us walk around and explore the homes on our own without hovering. She pointed out bad qualities and things that needed to be fixed as well as the good qualities. She was very knowledgeable about the whole process of buying a home. She just seemed like a real person...not a pushy salesman. It was great! So, that was a definite step in the right direction. I feel like we can actually do this with her help. As far as the houses that we looked at, they were awesome. I could see us living in any of them, really. They are all one-level, full brick homes with flat yards. But, here's the problem--they are too expensive!

Looking for a way to be idiotic? Here's how: Go look at several nice houses before you sit down and redo your budget to see what you can honestly afford. 

Ok, we could afford them for sure with both of us working. But, in a few years when we (hopefully) have kids, I'm not going to be working...and we'll be down to one income. Will we be able to afford that same house then? I know Travis will be getting raises between now and then. He should bump up to a DB3 in two years hopefully, which is supposed to be a $10,000 jump in salary. But, it's probably not smart to assume that...not when you're talking about a monthly mortgage payment. 

Unfortunately, I got my heart set on one of the houses that we looked at Friday. It's PERFECT. Perfect, perfect, perfect. And perfectly too much money. I was so excited Friday and Saturday...thinking that it was THE ONE. Then, we sat down with the dreaded all-powerful Excel spreadsheet, crunched the numbers, and boom. I was crushed. All of the sudden, he's wondering if we need to just wait another year or two to buy. That house won't be there next month most likely. My emotions swung from one extreme to the other in the span of a couple of days. Normally, I'm really not that emotional. Ask anyone who knows me very well. Travis is probably the crier in the family (shhh...don't tell him I told you!). But, not the past couple of days. I shouldn't have let myself get emotionally attached. That was a huge mistake. There will be other houses out there when we're ready. They may not be as nice as what we were looking at, but they'll be home. 

So, after a lot of number crunching, Excel spreadsheeting, thinking, praying, crying, etc., the plan is that we're going to look at some much cheaper (as in $40,000 cheaper!) houses tomorrow with Darlene, our realtor. I think there are 7 on the list. Wish us luck! Who knows what we'll find. They won't be like the ones last Friday, but that's ok. This may be the convincing I need that we should just wait a while longer, save up a bigger down-payment, and be able to afford something nicer down the road. 

We'll see how it goes. I'm just glad to be back to my normal, mostly level-headed self, and I know Travis is too! Tomorrow, I'm going to attempt to be more objective, not get my hopes up, and not get attached to anything at first sight. This is a big decision, and rushing into it on an emotional whim would be stupid. Especially rushing into something we can't afford on one income. 

So, the search continues. Updates are sure to follow :)

BIG decisions!

"Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard."

That Coldplay quote sums up nicely what I am feeling about making adult decisions! Sometimes I wish I could be a kid again...with "important" decisions about what flavor ice cream to eat and what cartoon to watch on TV. Well, I can't turn back the clock (and I really don't want to!), so I guess it's time to face these decisions head-on. 

I'm sure you're wondering what decisions I'm talking about.


Well...


I'm guess you all know we've been saving, saving, saving for a house. That's one of the main reasons we're thankful to be living with Baugay...because it's letting us save faster. No apartment rent = more of our paychecks that can go toward that downpayment. I've been looking at houses on ValleyMLS for months now, and we've gone to several open houses. We've been hounded by several realtors (yipee!), and we're even meeting one on Friday afternoon who will be showing us 4 houses in Camden Cove. And, you don't have to remind us that this is a great time to buy a house with the interest rates being so low. 


We've got about $20,000 saved right now. So, what's the problem?


Well, Travis's car is in the shop AGAIN. Apparently, it's the master cylinder this time that needs to be replaced. It will cost a little over $300 to fix. Last summer, we spent over $1000 getting new belts and other stuff fixed on it. The car is 15 years old and it has at least 210,000 miles on it. The guy at Bryan's said that the next thing to go will be the clutch, which will cost over $900 to replace, and it probably won't be too terribly long before that happens. 


So, we told them to just replace the master cylinder (since the clutch is still working fine), and that will give us some more time to make a decision. Does it really make sense to spend another $900 on a 15 year old car that is worth only about $400 (according to Kelly Blue Book)? If not, then we need to be looking for another car. The best time to buy a new car from what I've heard is at the end of the year (last two weeks of December). 


So, should we go ahead and just get Travis a new car now (a.k.a. before the end of the year), or hope that the clutch on the Honda holds out a while longer? If we do go ahead and buy a new car, should we pay for it all at once? I did some research on AutoTrader yesterday, and I found several 2-3 year old cars (Altimas, Accords, Corollas, etc.) with 25,000 miles or less on them that are under $16,000. So, we can definitely afford a new car, but paying for it all at once would pretty much wipe out our savings for a house, and we'd be back to square one. Or, should we just go ahead and keep house hunting while the interest rates are so low, and hope that the car keeps going for another year or two? I'm afraid that we're going to find a house, buy it and move in, and THAT'S when his car will need to be replaced. 


So...that's what's been on our minds this week, along with work, Bible class teaching, and planning for a big Alabama-LSU game party here at our place. (I'm making gumbo for the first time!)


If you have any advice about what we should do, I'd love to hear it! I want us to make the best decision possible, but sometimes it's not always clear what to do...


I know one thing that will help...praying about it!


"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God" ~Philippians 4:6

Hope you're having a fabulous week :)