July 2012 Updates

July has been a busy month. I was so good about blogging last month and lately I find time to read blogs (usually while nursing) but not to post. I still need to post a 1 YEAR update post for Leland. And every time I think about posting something, I think “not until I get that 1 YEAR post done.” It’s still a work in progress, but I thought I would update you in bullet points.

·         We celebrated Leland’s first birthday on June 30^th. I did manage to get a post – with pictures – done about this. Yea!

·         My parents visited from Florida for the party and the first few days of the month. We had a really nice, relaxing time.

·         The day after my parent’s left, Robert’s parents arrived for a four day stay. Leland had a great time with the new kiddie pool they brought.

·         We are moving forward with our home purchase. We had the home inspection this past Tuesday. There are no major problems, but we have asked for a few repairs and are waiting for a response from the bank. We got our appraisal back on Wednesday and it was AWFUL. The appraisal is full of incorrect information. He picked comparable houses from 5+ miles away with 1.5 acres of land when our house only has 0.25 acres and there are very recent sales of similar homes on the same street as ours. I spoke with the appraiser and he basically told me that he did anything he could to inflate the value. We have passed out concerns to underwriting with our lender and hopefully they will fight the issue on our behalf.

·         Robert has a job!!! It’s in a finance office at a “local” university. He got the call this past Tuesday and started work on Wednesday. He already loves it. Praise God - we are so thankful! It’s “local” to our new house, but about 1 hour and 45 minutes away from our current house, so we really need to move.

·         We have renters!!! Again, Praise God!!! We planned on renting our house when we moved, but hadn’t done anything to make it happen. About three weeks ago we casually mentioned to our photographer that we would rent our house when we moved. A few hours later someone asked her if she knew anyone renting their home. She passed them our information. That person was looking for something smaller and forwarded our information to someone else. They came to see the house a week ago and plan to come by this weekend to sign a lease. God is so good.

·         If everything keeps moving along – and the appraisal issue gets resolved – we should close on the house sometime during the first week of September and will move within days after we close.

·         I marked the first item off my 30 Before 30 list...more on this later!

·         We started one-on-one communication with our donors this month. Up until now all communication has gone through our wonderful social worker, but with the passage of a year we have moved on to direct communication. It's going well. 

·         Leland is moving up from the “crawlers” baby room at daycare to the “toddler” room one week from Monday (Aug. 6th). I am so proud of him, but it is very bitter sweet. This move will signal the end of our lunch dates for nursing. When I think about it I want to burst into tears. I know it will be better once we move and I am not wasting two hours of my day on the road to and from work, but in the meantime I feel like I am barely going to see him during the week. 

·         I've lost 0.2 pounds in the last month. But, we reduced my thyroid medication just over a month ago and am thrilled to have just maintained. Especially since I have added the occasional ice cream treat back into my diet!

·         Work has been crazy busy this month. I got my first Court of Appeals decision this week. I’ve filed an appeal before but withdrew it when the Juvenile Court judge reconsidered the case. This is the first time I have filed an appeal, submitted a brief, and waited for a decision. The Court of Appeals entered their decision on Wednesday and I WON! Then on Thursday, I got a call from a reporter asking for my thoughts on the court’s decision.  I have to say I felt pretty accomplished as a lawyer at that moment!

So those are the major things that have kept me busy these past few weeks. I do promise a post on Leland soon and  some posts expanding or following up on these updates. Thanks for checking in!