Guest Blogging!

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Hi there – it’s Jenny, Andy’s very own guest blogger and wife! Hi guys! Andy wanted me to write a little about something I did right before we left on vacation. Andy found this website called www.bridesagainstbreastcancer.org – it’s a very neat organization that takes used wedding dresses and sells them to other brides to raise funds for breast cancer research. They were having an event in Irving on October 20th, so I took my boxed up wedding dress, and handed it over to a very nice lady who just got married this April, and found out in June she had cancer. This organization is very near and dear to her heart!

The event was at the Las Colinas country club, which is a beautiful place not too far from home. I was all cool and nonchalant about the whole thing until I walked up to the doors, then I had a moment of freaking. “I’m just about to hand over the most expensive, most beautiful piece of clothing I will ever own to a group of complete strangers and walk out. What am I thinking?!?”

God is so good, though. As I’m having my minor freak out, a young bride and her mom walk out carrying a dress to buy from the thousands in the ballroom. Guess what it was? It was MY dress in the cream color! She was oohing and ahhing over this wonderful dress that she could now afford because of this group. I leaned over and said “that’s my dress!” and she sort of jumped in surprise. I think she thought we were about to have to arm wrestle or something over that particular dress, until I explained that I was donating that very dress in white to the group. She asked me how I liked mine, and I told her it was the best dress I had ever owned. We had a moment.

So, I highly recommend doing this if you haven’t thought about it before. Some of you sentimental peeps out there are probably having a panic attack and thinking “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE TO YOUR FUTURE DAUGHTERS? HOW COULD YOU?”, but I have saved my veil and headpiece, and those are the sentimental pieces for me. I want the experience of taking a daughter someday to try on dresses at the shop – that’s the memory I want someday. Check out the website for more details – they also take old/stained dresses and bridesmaid dresses and turn those into quilts! How cool is that?

Stay tuned for more info and pics of Disney – we haven’t even gotten to that part yet!

Good-Bye, House

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I gleefully write this update from my new mini-office in our apartment in Las Colinas, enjoying a blazingly fast cable internet connection and the comfort of my black office chair. We moved the last box out of the house today and emptied our storage unit. Right now the apartment and our garage (not to mention my parents’ van, which I still need to unload one more time) look like the random chaos of matter that slowly merge into stars. Boxes, papers, and STUFF are everywhere. Sometimes I enter our new home and see more stuff, as if it reproduced during my absence. Other times a recognizable object, such as a sofa or bookshelf, becomes visible through the chaos. We have family coming over this weekend, and we have two days to make this place presentable! Last night I had a short moment of sadness as we packed up most of the remaining belongings from the house. It was a great house, and we’ll carry many great memories from there as well as some difficult ones. It served us very well, and I hope the new occupants enjoy it as much as we did. We’re also scheduled to close on the house tomorrow morning. The buyers have already signed their paperwork, so it looks like all systems are go.

Moving Boxes

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Hello, neglected readers! I do apologize for the delay. Internet access was difficult to find in Disney World! We returned on Saturday after a wonderful week of fun, relaxation, great food and drink from around the world, tons of pictures, and memories that we’ll treasure for years to come. I’ll spare you a full trip report for now, but I’ll try to get some pictures up in the next week or two. The big news now is that we are moving tomorrow into our new home! We picked up the keys and bought some bedroom furniture this afternoon as a warmup. Our high-speed (what a beautiful phrase!) Internet connection won’t be up until Wednesday, so bear with me as we get settled in. We are extremely excited about the coming months and years and look forward to seeing what God will do in us and through us. Check back in a few days for a progress report AND an AndyBox.com first: a guest blog post from my wife! But for now, I must hit the sack. A 24-foot moving truck has my name on it tomorrow morning.

Our New Home

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We are excited to report that we passed our interview with the apartment manager! We will be serving at The Landings at La Villita, a gorgeous new community in Las Colinas off Riverside Drive. Our manager is extremely nice and helpful and a big supporter of the CARES concept. We chose our apartment, which is a beautiful 2-bedroom 2-bath with a sunroom on the third floor, and toured the property. We plan to move Oct 29, right after we return from Disney World. Fortunately I’m off all that week, so I should be able to get our home in decent shape before I have to return to work. We’ve tentatively planned a few events for November, including a pancake breakfast, pizza party, and Cowboys watching party. Many residents own dogs and like to walk them along the canal after work, so we’ll likely spend lots of time outside with Holly making friends. Thanks to all of you who supported and prayed for us during this process. God seems to have worked it all out in His perfect way.

Knowing Where to Tap

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I love the story about the owner of a broken machine who called an expert to fix it. The expert showed up, took out a small hammer, and tapped a piece of the machine back into place. Just like that, the machine was fixed! The owner was overjoyed until he saw a bill for $1000. “This is outrageous! All you did was tap one part into place! I want this itemized!” The expert calmly wrote it out for him: “Tapping part: $5. Knowing where to tap: $995.”

I found a plumber online to fix the faucet. He showed up Tuesday afternoon, on-time, and assessed the situation. Then he pulled off the top of the faucet (just like I’d tried to do and failed), changed out the $0.25 washer that I’d been trying to reach, and put it back together. Problem solved. The actual work took maybe 3-4 minutes. Then he helped me pull off the faucet handle I’d broken so I could replace it myself. Total bill: $39 just for coming out plus $80 for “rebuilding the hose bib” for a total of $119. He left off the $9.95 fuel surcharge that his company wanted him to collect.

Morals of this story: 1) Learning home improvement techniques can save you a lot of money. 2) It’s a darn good thing that there are people who know more than I do about many different topics. 3) One way to make a good living and improve job security is by knowing where to tap.

hAndymaning

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Our sellers requested two repairs: replacing the fireplace vent cover on the side of the house and repairing a leaky faucet in the backyard. Ever eager to save money, especially on this house, I attempted to repair both. As you might already know from previous posts, my do-it-yourself projects in the past often follow this pattern: 1) Discover a problem. 2) Get excited about fixing it myself and try to figure out how to do it. 3) Attempt repair. 4) When repair doesn’t work or makes it even worse, try something else. 5) Give up and call a pro. I have almost fixed the fireplace vent cover, but I finally threw in the towel on the faucet. I found several articles online about how EASY it is to fix a leaky faucet. Unfortunately for me, the directions don’t seem to match my faucet. I don’t know why. Since I broke off part of the faucet handle trying to remove it (who knew those were so flimsy?), and I have to get the handle off to get to the washer that’s supposedly causing the leak, I finally asked for some quotes from real plumbers. I’ve never hired a plumber before. I’m almost embarrassed to do so, afraid that he’ll laugh condescendingly as he fixes the leak in ten seconds with a flat-head screwdriver and then hands me a bill for $200. But at least the job will be done, and my buyers will be happy.