Nana Visit

The past couple of days my mom came down from cold and dreary WA to visit! Of course while she was here, the weather in WA was phenomenal and she was stuck in triple digits in Chandler. It’s a dry heat… that’s what I kept saying when we would escape from the car to speed walk into a store.

Alas, some of you know about the little problem we had with our HOA… specifically one HOA so-called President. To get a pool key so a pregnant lady can go swim in the pool we pay for and have forked over a couple of hundred dollars to in closing costs. –There are no known bylaws, they do not have a phone number that reaches a human, they do not have a website, and they do not have an office. Hinky.. I know. They have a phone number where you reach a messaging system that emails what you said to a cox.net email, promising a response within 24hours. After over 35 phone calls over the span of a month, I flipped(a little), okay, I flipped a lot! I found out where the HOA president lives, her personal phone line, her fax line and her email… GOOGLE is amazing by the way, and I sent out a scathing email detailing how she is breaking the law and that I have started a petition in the community and have sought legal counsel and if we do not recieve a response by the end of the business day then we will start the process the following day. Sure enough, I magically got a response that night. She didn’t even say anything about all of our previous attempts to get ahold of her, which were incredibly nice for 3 weeks. A week later Gabriel emailed her and asked if she hadn’t mailed out the key, then he would swing by her house on the way home from work… we recieved the key the next day. Why is it that sugar never wins out in the long run and only those that are threatening ever get paid any attention to? But, I digress.

Sure enough the pool key came just in time for my mom and I to enjoy the pool during the record breaking week she was here! SUCCESS! We power walked in the deep end and talked for about an hour each day. Simply wonderful!

We were also expert shoppers! Gabriel and I have been having a hard time finding baby bedding sets that we like. Most are too girly, about baseball, or simply have monkies all over them and you should know that I have an affinity against monkies and have had one since I was little. My mom and I went to Goodwill where Gabe and I picked up our oak glider for $24 dollars and we went on a search for babies things in good condition. My mom found the cutest bedding set that is actually from a couture line that looked brand new and was perfect! We got the baby quilt, bumper pads and dust ruffle for less than $11 dollars. The same set online costs over $250! What a bargain! Plus we looked for baby koalas for the crib and found two darling ones along with a chocolate and yellow lab! We then went and looked through all of the baby books and picked out 9 that we loved and they were all 99 cents a piece. All in all, being super shoppers has saved our family so much money! I have been in Babies R US, Buy Buy Baby and a couple of other boutique stores and have yet to find anything that I loved as much as the things we purchased at Goodwill. Granted, we were at a Goodwill in a really nice area, which I think helps but still = JACKPOT!

Tina had found a mattress that her coworker was selling that was of great quality and at less than 1/5 of the estimated cost of the actual mattress! When we went over to her birthday party last week she had it wrapped up and gave it to us as a housewarming gift. We are so blessed to have such great friends in our lives! And to top it all off Kyle made some killer burgers! Who knew that doritos in hamburger meat could taste so good?

And Gabriel was able to get the lifetime crib we ordered( a splurge) from Babies R US for us. First he tried going and picking it up with the prius, unfortunately for us, the packaging and rails are too big to fit in a regular car and he had to have a friend from work go with the next day with a full sized truck to pick it up.

SOOOO we were able to put the baby’s room primarily together when my mom was here. Bedding set we love: CHECK! Crib: CHECK! Mattress: CHECK! Baby Book Library Started: CHECK! Baby letters for wall: CHECK! Baby Koalas: CHECK! Glider: CHECK!

We are just so blessed!

Along with a lot of shopping… we ate some really, really great food- watched the new transformers movie- went to Mystery Dinner Theater- and relaxed and enjoyed the summer! And I will be in WA State for about 18 days this summer after I get back from WI for Tina’s wedding. I am looking forward to cooler weather and being surrounded with family before starting work on August 1st at the elementary school in my area.