Drama

Happy Monday everyone,

Things with us are okay. We've hit a minor set back with our surgeries - after going through everything that we have done to prepare... we've found out John's company excluded the proceedure from our insurance plan. Which means that currently - there isn't any coverage for us to have the surgery. (The surgeries cost $25,000 a piece) We're working with John's boss, and vice president to see if the company will help us. They have the ability to write an exception to the policy for us, and are trying to figure out how that is done.

It has been a struggle for us because it is very hard to understand why companies pick and choose what their employees are covered for medically. One arguement that I have heard is that there aren't enough employees that benefit from the proceedure to warrant the costs, but in my opinion - I pay for others to be covered for things that I don't use as well... for instance - organ transplants or heart surgeries... I haven't needed those services, but gladly pay for it to be covered to save someone else's life. Therefore, why can't we raise the costs of our insurance minimally to save mine?

Our surgeon that we originally chose is retiring as well - he won't be doing any more proceedures after October... so we're in the process of figuring out where we'll go once we get the insurance mess worked out.

In the meantime, I found a show on TLC that is called Big Medicine. It's a show about two doctors here in Houston that work out of Methodist Hospital, and have a program that chronicles their patients and surgeries. It is a good show if anyone is interested in looking it up and watching it - they just did a surgery on the show that aired on Saturday afternoon on a 600 pound man... and I'm really interested to see how this man's life changes... he's 26 years old, and hasn't been out of bed in 7 years! (he was up to 850 pounds or so, but they got him down to 620 or so before surgery.)

At any rate - I applied for John and I to be a part of the show. I had to write a one page letter to the producers and send them pictures, but I told them our story - and who knows maybe we'll get picked. I don't know if the show covers the costs of the surgery or hospital costs, but if it does - then even better!! The doctors on the show are really neat - it's a father and son team that both do the weight-loss surgeries. The son seems to be the best fit for me - as he's much more of the type that is compassionate and will hold your hand through the hard times. His Dad is more matter of fact and might be a better fit for John.

We'll see what happens, and we'll keep you all updated as things progress.

Furniture

Hi everyone,

Just a quick post before I run off to church this morning. John and I decided that we needed a break from our normal weekend of projects around the house... one month and it's about all we've thought about outside of work. Anyway - we had a date day yesterday, and went shopping for furniture.

We must have gone in every furniture store we could think of, but we actually found a dining room set that we liked, and some tables for our gameroom. Our dining room set is really nice - the table has two leafs, 8 chairs, and a china cabinet... it was the best deal we saw all day. It was on sale because the store was celebrating their anniversary - so we scored!! YEAH!

We also got all of our drawer pulls and cabinet knobs for the house - we're mainly staying really simple on everything except for the kitchen. We found some pulls that we think are perfect for our kitchen, and once John gets them put on the dawers - we'll post pictures of them.

My goal for this afternoon is to get the last two rooms cleaned up and pictures taken of them... then I can post an album on "Hawkins Family Pictures" for everyone to enjoy.

That's all for now. I've got a long post coming for tomorrow... so watch for that...

More on Brooklyn

Brooklyn Jade has arrived and I now have her official stats:

She was born at 9:49 AM - a VERY quick arrival!

19.5 inches

7.3 Pounds

You can find these pictures and a few others by clicking the link on the right called "Hawkins Family Photos"

A picture of the new family... Taylor is much more excited than she looks!

Aunt Kim steals a moment with her youngest neice.

Uncle John's turn...

We hope all their moments together are this sweet (but alas - we know they'll have a few not so sweet)... but here is a first kiss for the baby from her very proud big sister.

She's Here!!

I just got the official call from John... by way of his Dad... that Susan & Ryan have a new baby this morning.

Brooklyn Jade has arrived!!

I will be making my way by the hospital tonight and will post pictures of the baby and her family as soon as I can. I can't wait to see how Taylor interacts with her new baby sister. It should be really cute!

I hope that everyone is doing well today... nothing much else to report yet - other than we still don't have my car back yet (should today) and still don't have our yard fixed...

Craziness Continues

The craziness that is our lives these days continues... yesterday - as I was driving to work, my car decided to start shaking violently. After driving up Telge Road to 290 - the engine light came on... so I pulled over and called John. He thought it would be best that I drive it back home and park it there. Since he's carpooling again - I could use his truck to get to work. At the time - the thought was that I probably had gotten some bad fuel somewhere, but upon further review in the evening - we decided that probably wasn't the case since there was only 1/4 of a tank left.

So my poor car was wisked away to the hospital on a flatbed trailer... only to find out that one of the pistons in the engine wasn't firing correctly... thank goodness for extended warranties!! The other good news is that since they had it in doing warranty work - they checked out my car's famous noise and are fixing that too. Apparently that had something to do with the air conditioner... but was always a comical side to my car... passengers never knew what to say the first time they experienced what we lovingly called my car's "flatulence" problem.
Another interesting turn of events came when a brick truck decided to trench our yard on their way out of the community. It's really nice...

We're still waiting to hear back from Morrison Homes as to how and when this will be fixed. GEEZ - can't we get a break with these people?!

John's Creation

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!Oh my gosh - this is so funny!! Apparently you can go to www.jibjab.com and make your own videos now!! Enjoy!

Fun with baby Abby

For our entertainment tonight we got the pleasure of watching Abby. She's the nine month old daughter of our friends, Robby & Sarah. She is such a sweetie pie! Even when she's under the weather she is still a fun baby to be around. This first picture is of Abby and I playing on the floor with some sorting blocks, and other fun toys left from Taylor's baby days. (Interestingly enough - Even at 5 years old Taylor still goes right for the basket of these toys whever she visits.)


The second picture is John's turn at playing with Abby. She loves playing with him too - they had a great time with Tickle Me Elmo once we got him working again.


Abby really loved watching our fish tank. We have a really big white frog in there that is very active. She would just dance and talk to him. It was really cute. I think she might have to get a fish tank for her house at some point. :-)

We had a really good time playing with her! We now know that our house isn't quite baby proof yet, but with boxes and stuff everywhere still... we really didn't think it was. HA! Maybe on her next visit - she can crawl on the floor and not find so much interesting stuff to try to put in her mouth.

Sad, but True...

Let me start off by first telling you that the tile in the kitchen was fixed on Friday - so all is well with that. They arrived as promised to fix it on Friday morning, and didn't cause any delays or problems for John & Mark's trip.

We had to move the fish tank yesterday so we didn't get much done in terms of hanging pictures on the walls - but as soon as we do that - I promise to update with some photos, and if I get brave enough maybe a video tour of the house.

So after working all afternoon on various things around the house - I decided that it was time for me to get started with my math class. I have to finish a certain amount of work by October 21st - and I hadn't started yet. So, with that said - how incredibly sad is it to be confused on the first page of the freaking book? That's me... all goes okay until they start writing the stuff out with symbols... then it looks like greek! It is very frustrating, but I'm going to write some notes out and make myself a chart to remember what the symbols mean... maybe that way I can actually read the problems in the homework! ARG! I really don't like math... but am trying to remind myself that there is a good reason I'm doing this... so that I can have my dream job next year... it's going to be a looooong semester!

Thanks to John & Mark

On Friday my wonderful husband, and friend Mark Jeter went to my Mom's in Midland to get the rest of our furniture for the house. They drove the 9 hours there on Friday night, picked up the furniture and turned around to drive 9 hours back. They left Midland on Saturday at 9AM, and got home to unload the truck at about 5:30 PM. They were extremely tired, but were troopers... I really appreciate their hard work more than I can tell them. It was a little tough getting the couches upstairs for the gameroom - but they did it! They even were able to take a couple of breaks to watch the crazy ending to the Aggie game.

If you didn't hear about that one... we won in triple overtime! It was a nail biter - but they pulled it out.

Thanks again to my two heroes!!

Sign of things to come?

Is it a sign of things to come when you move in and initially have problems getting your warranty work done on your house? We've been in the house for a week, and have called in a few minor problems - but today took the cake.

Before we closed on the house - our builders were notified of some stains on part of our kitchen countertops. They treated the areas initially and found that the stains wouldn't come up - so they agreed to replace the two areas of the countertops surrounding our stove.

We closed on August 24th and thought that since we weren't moving in until August 30th - they had plenty of time to get the situation corrected before we moved in, but no dice. They replaced the counters yesterday, and in the process realized that they didn't make the new tops the same thickness as the old ones. So this is what happened to my kitchen in order to get the new granite installed.

I left messages yesterday to have the backsplash corrected, but wasn't getting any response from our normal contacts. So about mid-afternoon, I got fed up with waiting. John had contacted the Vice President of Constrution for the company a time or two during the building process - so I decided it was time for my evil twin to contact him.

I sent him a very long email explaining the situation that happened yesterday - there was an issue with the color of the new granite and the builder telling me that this was what they were installing. He also said that I was lucky that the area was across the kitchen and no one else would notice the difference. (It really isn't that different now that I look at it again - or at least no more than normal when dealing with natural stone products.) Bottom line though was that I didn't feel like I was treated like a customer deserved to be treated, and I thought that the boss should know how his employees are acting.

Let me just tell you that it works every time. I not only got two calls from the VP but also from the guy, Brian, that has been working with us since our final walk through. Brian hasn't been the one that we've had problems with in the past, and let me tell you - he was really quick to call me and make sure that the situation was corrected.

I am glad that it will be fixed tomorrow, but I can't help feeling a little bit like Rocky or "She-Ra -Princess of Power." HA!

Putting it together...

After church today - we did our weekly shopping - and can I just say... Wal-Mart is a terrible place to go on Sundays during the school year! John got himself a grill today on sale - he found a great deal for the Labor Day weekend. Once we both got home - we spent a good part of the day putting the patio furniture together and the grill. We got it all out on the patio, and enjoyed it for a little while. John played fetch with the girls. We all enjoyed our new yard.

Not much was done in terms of unloading more of our crazy boxes, but that will come in time. Our plan for tomorrow is to get everything distributed to the correct room. Hopefully that will clean out the breakfast room, and allow us to set that room up for use. In our old place - we would eat our dinner in front of the coffee table in the living room because of the poor location of the breakfast room. Now we're going to be able to eat at the table instead, and it will make serving dinner and clean up much easier. I'm really looking forward to that.

We haven't gotten around to thinking about painting the rooms that we want to yet, but that will come in time... It's really going to look nice.

Break

Hi everyone,

After two days of moving and unpacking - and a minor meltdown... John and I took the day off. John's Mom & Dad took us to get some patio furniture today, and it was a nice break. We got a great set from the Great Indoors, and we are really excited about it. They also took us by a nursery and we bought a couple of hanging plants to go out there as well. We will post pictures of the patio once we get everything put together and set out there.