The Cleaning Lady

I remember as a little girl that we had a cleaning lady that cleaned our home. I’m not sure how often she came to clean, but I do remember that the day before she came Mom would make us CLEAN! Yes that’s right…“Girls, it’s time to clean your room Trish is coming tomorrow!” I’ve never really understood that until now! With my new job I am a member of the Chamber of Commerce and we have two monthly meetings. That is where I met Tammy. She is the owner of a company called Cottage Care. It is a cleaning service company that comes in and cleans for offices as well as residential homes. I was just curious in getting a quote on cleaning our 2500sq ft home so I asked her about it! Now don’t get me wrong I LOVE to clean, bbbuuuttttttt……..I really don’t enjoy doing the “detail” cleaning. It just takes FOREVER to do and I end up spending my whole Saturday cleaning. I can clean the living room for two hours. (I have a problem I know!) I can't stand clutter and on top of that I don’t think that the floor is cleaned until I get on my hands and knees and scrub! I got the quote back and discussed it with Josh and we decided that we would have Cottage Care come in once a month to clean the whole house for a “detail” cleaning job. (In the meantime I will be doing the weekly cleaning and daily chores.) Our house has been put on the schedule and the cleaning people will come the first Wednesday of every month. Next Wednesday they come for the first time and I can’t help but want to clean for the cleaning lady. What’s wrong with me!?! Oh well I guess I'm crazy like my mom! :) I am very excited because our first visitor is going to arrive just in time for the brand new CLEAN house! Lori (AKA Tooter Poot) has a teaching conference next Friday so she is coming to Little Rock and staying with us. I believe that she will be here Wednesday evening so the house will be super fresh for my baby sister! (I know Lori could care less but whatever!) I’ll let you know how good of a job they do….it shall be interesting since I’m tad bit picky!

Give Us Our Dog Back

Last Friday, Josh and I headed to Jonesboro for Homecoming weekend at ASU. We have been looking for a new place to board Koen and we got some good reviews on this place in North Little Rock called Premier Boarding After Hours Clinic (Do not bring your dog here!) We dropped him off Friday afternoon and we "checked" out the area for our precious puppy and everything seemed great! When Sunday morning rolled around we got up, got dressed and headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast before we left Jonesboro. I had the Apple crisp French Toast which was AWESOME by the way! The deadline to pick up Koen was by 11am. We cut it pretty close....we pulled up at the boarding place at 11:04am....the door was locked, however, there was the dude that gave us the tour of the place standing outside so Josh asked if we could get our dog. We had already paid for his visit and everything. All they had to do was give us Koen! The dude let Josh in the door and I waited in the car. About 10 minutes later, out comes Josh with NO KOEN and his face red as a beet! They told Josh that he could not pick up Koen and according to Josh he spent 10 minutes arguing with the manager. This made Josh VERY upset....the lady was rude and was not at all lenient in the pick-up policy (obviously they’ve had issues before). I understand that there have to be rules but really 4 minutes late..come on! Josh told the lady that he would “NEVER bring his dog back to this DUMP and that he would be calling the owner on Monday morning!” The manager responded “GOOD, I’ll do something even better, I’ll have you a stamped envelope waiting for you when you pick up your doing during our working hours!” Wow is all I have to say! I wonder if Koen was treated any different when we left. I went back at 5pm to pick him up and did the walk of shame with the ‘sorry my husband went crazy on you’ look on my face. So needless to say, we are not welcome back to this boarding place ever again. Back to the drawing board! I hope that when we have kids, it won’t be this hard!  

Koen the Monster...

HAPPY 32nd BIRTHDAY ADAM!!!!! Last night we had a birthday celebration for Adam (Josh's brother) in Hot Springs at Gran & Granddaddy’s new home. (It's beautiful by the way!) Josh had called Gran before we left and asked if we could bring Koen so he wouldn't have to be locked up in his crate all day. For those of you who don't know, Koen is our 1yr old puppy who can be quite a handful at times. He needs constant attention and can be a little rough! Of course, Gran said yes so off we went! I am very proud to report that Koen has gotten over his "motion sickness" problem and did not throw up once! Good boy! We had a wonderful dinner & dessert prepared by Gran...we were all having a lovely time chatting in the living room when Koen (AKA. The Little Monster) gets all wound up and starts to play with Granddaddy (who is very fragile). Next thing you know, half of Granddaddy's skin is hanging off his arm and he is bleeding on his opposite hand too somehow. Apparently Koen swatted his paw and Grandaddy was too slow to move in time. I am soooooo embarrassed and terribly sorry! He was just playing and I can’t help it that Koen LOVES to play with Granddaddy! This past summer Koen trampled Granddaddy over in our front yard and made him fall to the ground! He’s a wild one I tell ya!!! Granddaddy told me to be expecting a bill from his doctor…funny guy!

E-Baying It

So I decided to finally put my wreath on Ebay. Who knows if it's even going to sell! I made the teal/lime green wreath for about $35 and I hope to at least sell it for $50. I just enjoy making them...I tell ya what...if anyone wants me to make them a customized wreath, all you have to do is pay me for the materials and you'll get a one-of-a kind Ape-A-Lape awesome wreath :) I think my business has failed in this short time, but I am not letting that discourage me. I think my best bet is to sell the wreaths at a craft fair or something. Wish me luck on EBAY!!!!!

Kids These Days

“Godtalk”….What have we signed up for???? This past summer, Liz (one of our Sunday School Class members) had asked if anyone wanted to help out with the youth group on Wednesday nights. Not only were Josh and I the only ones who volunteered, but little did we know that we would be LEADING the youth group. Oh and one more thing, we are doing this every Wednesday night until May 2010.
There are two youth group directors: Chad leads the High School kids and Liz leads the Junior High kids. We have so many kids in the youth group that they needed two more people to help out. That's were Josh and I come in…I am with Chad and the High School kids & Josh is with Liz and the Junior High kids.
Liz is about to have a baby so Josh is taking over while she is on maternity leave…ha! But he does have some help, Chad’s sister Amy is going to be with Josh. Next Wednesday the high school kids will be splitting up. Chad will have the boys and I will be leading the girls. This should be interesting!
They call Wednesday night youth “Godtalk”. This is an opportunity for the youth to search harder, dig deeper, and explore further the plan that God has laid out for them. It is really an honor to hang out with these kids. I wish that when I was in youth group I had someone like me to be the teacher. I at least like to think of myself being “young and hip” even though I’m probably not! I’m not really sure if they like us just yet. They really don’t talk to us very much…but it’s only been a few weeks so they are just warming up; I hope at least! It’s really neat and inspirational to hear these kids’ views on the Bible. They know the bible and even though they whisper and chit-chat during the lesson, they are listening somehow. I did have to take away a cell phone last week and got some dirty looks, but hey it is church and you don’t need to be on facebook during the bible study. It’s rude! Anyway, many more stories to come in the school year ahead….