After we took the grand tour through our new house, my aunt Joy, in from Atlanta, took us out to dinner yesterday at our new favorite Mexican restaurant, Nuestra Hacienda: great food and great service! 🙂
We had fun talking and listening to the kids. Joy bargained with Atticus to eat nine (not ten!) french fries and the rest of his chicken nuggets. Lucas explored various ways of annoying Kevin with his drink and food. My dad gave my mom the rabbit ears when I took a picture. Yenni, who (along with her brother) owns the restaurant, brought the sombrero out for the kids to have fun with.
A view into our new backyard ... with a rainbow on top!
Today, we signed the papers on a house!!!!
Finally, instead of investing in someone else’s property, we’ll be investing in our own.
Overall, the process has been as easy as it could possibly have been, but it’s still been stressful (mostly because Kevin and I both think and fret too much).
We are very thankful for the awesome ladies who have helped us get to this point.
Our realtor Gaynelle Crowder has also been a great friend in this process. I’ve known her pretty much all my life and was the flower girl in her wedding. 🙂 Always smiling and kind, Gaynelle is very sweet (and we love her!). She put up with our inconsistently picky requirements.
Katie Smith at BB&T has been so kind and sweet…and patient with us and our questions. She has really made the painstaking bank yadda-yadda not so painstaking.
And Gayle Wyatt at Carter Craig was so sweet and patient today, explaining that mountain of paperwork, so that we actually felt like we understood it a bit.
We’re really excited to be starting on this new adventure. YAY!
Now, if I could just wriggle my nose and move everything there…
This is one of the hanging baskets along Main Street, just down from the new Dan River Art Works gallery. In the background is, I believe, the old Hotel Danville.
I had to drive around the block a few times before I found a good spot near Zinc this afternoon after school. It was really weird…Cars everywhere downtown…
And — whew! — you can just see the heat of the day. TG4AC!
Wesley Holtsford & Laura Liem (with Danny Ricketts behind the camera)
Last Tuesday, my cousin Wesley Holtsford and his friend Laura Liem, both in from west Texas, played some bluegrass music with Kevin and his dad, Ryland Hawker.
Their impromptu jam convened at James Lynch’s house. He’s Wes’ great-grandfather and my dad’s sister’s husband. (You really wanted to know the details, I know. 😉
It was so awesome! The four of them really sounded great to have never played together before!
Kevin played guitar and sang most of the songs. Ryland, of course, played banjo. Wes played mandolin and fiddle. And Laura played fiddle.
(I sang some backup and one lead, I think, but was mostly on Kid Patrol. 😉
James was dancing and singing along. He invited his brother and his fiance over to listen, too.
Even Jo-Jo, James’ little poodle had fun … although he probably would’ve had more fun if Lucas and Atticus hadn’t wanted to play with him soooo much! (I wish I’d gotten pictures of that.)
And Wesley and Laura? Wow. They are really great musicians. And both sweet as can be. I wish they didn’t live so far away!!
6/18/11 UPDATE:
I’ve finally been able to sit down and figure out my file-transfer issue from phone to laptop. What a mess!
I used my Droid X’s (awesome!!!) TapeMachine app to record eight songs … and then my phone died.
I didn’t get the beginning of the first song or the end of the last, and I only got eight songs from the several hours of playing. (I wish I’d remembered to grab the H2 on the way out the door, but we only had about 15-minutes notice.)
I’ll come back later and post the individual songs, but here’s the whole of what I recorded, talking and laughing and all in between:
7/17/11 UPDATE:
Here, finally, are the individual songs that I recorded.
The Man Who Wrote ‘Home Sweet Home’ Never Was a Married Man:
