The Joys of Homeownership...

This past Friday was our two week anniversary in the new home! Yay! Right? Well, sort of. Last Wednesday the CSRA (Central Savannah River Area) got a wicked wind and Thunderstorm, much like the ones we've had all weekend, but with tornado-like winds. At about 2:30 am Thursday morning Chad wakes me up and says you're gonna freak out but you need to come downstairs. Sure. Sweet, I love being woken up like this...I get downstairs and there is a tree half-way in our living room. It seems that there were a few dead trees in our back yard that the previous owner had not taken care of and one of them was broken in half and the top half had been flung onto the roof of our Great room and half of it was in my den...on my new sofas. It was a miracle that it missed our gorgeous 12ft window, but it was a huge problem, none-the-less. When you move into your dream home and you have a mortgage for the first time, and no more landlords, you realize that you'll be handling all of the problems from that point out, but you dont expect this kind of problem, on your 11th day in the home.

I work full time, and Chad is working partly from home, partly from Columbia and partly from offices in N.Augusta, but he has a full days worth of work every day, so Thursday he put some time aside and met with tree removal companies. Luckily we found one who said he would not only remove the tree that afternoon but could patch the hole for us. Wrong. He removed the tree to find about a dozen holes where all of the branches had poped through, in addition to the two large ones, he said we needed a professional roofer. This was at about 6pm on Thursday, weather report for the weekend: massive Thunderstorms. We managed to get a roofer to the house Friday and by some miracle he finished around lunchtime, we were grateful for his speedy work but I was worried it wouldn't hold up. It poured Saturday and through the night and then almost all day Sunday and it's still pourng this morning. Everymorning I walk barefoot underneath the still gaping holes in our ceiling where we need a contractor to come in, to see if the carpet is damp at all. It hasnt been, thank goodness. We never let ourselves get stressed out over the tree and by the weekend we were able to laugh at the situation, Chad had been asleep on the couch in that room when the tree came through, and never got hurt, the baby and I were safe asleep upstairs. It can always get worse, we reminded ourselves. Our Great room is going to require some repair work, and new paint now, but we can find someone to handle it, and all it's really doing is pinching our wallet a little and postponing us from hanging some curtains.

There is a new development in our home life as a result of the storm, however. Morris has become a protection maniac. I sleep with earplugs so I didnt hear the tree hit at all, but he sure did. He is very aware that I'm pregnant and for the rest of the night insisted on sleeping ON TOP of me to protect me. At first we thought he was scared, he would not get off the bed and Chad tried to snuggle with him, but he pulled away from Chad. He slept by my side then on my feet, and none of it satisfied him, then for a couple of hours he sat directly on top of my at high alert. Finally I was so uncomfortable and needed sleep so badly we pushed him off the bed. No-go. He was back on. Chad moved his doggy bed to my side of our bed on the floor so Mo could be directly next to me and that helped a little but he never layed down. He sat straight up at vigil all night popping half-way up on the bed to check on me almost every hour. So this entire weekend that its been storming it's been the SAME thing, EVERY night. Now, I love on him and tell him what a good boy he is being and that he'd doing an awesome job protecting his little sister, but it's exhausting having him up and down and staring at me and nudging me all night every night, while we have the storms coming through. I'm so glad the rain is washing away the pollen, but here's hoping it doesn't rain tonight! I could use a full night's sleep!

We did make the best of our weekend despite the storms and had a great time with Greg and Carol who came to visit! We got to show them around and went to a cute little street fair that was going on downtown before the rain hit! They brought tons of maternity clothes for me from Nicole and Jen and the sweetest outfit for Noah! I was watching the end of Pretty Woman on Saturday evening and she tells Richard Gere that she "wants the fairy tale" I feel like I'm living the fairy tale every day, even when it's a horrible day I know I have it better than most, and have so much love in my life. Could it get any better? I think not, but then again I've got a baby on the way...so maybe it can! Just lovely! Layne