Happy Birthday to Mom and Sarah!

Today half of my family turns a year older. I'm very glad to have them in my life, and I hope they have a wonderful day!

My Piano

About a month ago, my parents loaded up the piano that my sister and I learned to play on and brought it to my house. After Brent and I decided we were going to stay in our house for a while, I thought it was time to bring the piano to Cabot.

A little bit of history first. Before the piano lived in McGehee, it lived at Ma and Pa's house and my Aunt Snooks learned to play on it. I can remember playing on it at their house when I was little. I started taking piano lessons in the 3rd grade, and my sister started a few years later, so we were in need of a sturdy piano. So the piano was moved and to McGehee where it lived for the next 22 years. While I was at college, I played on it some when I would come home, but for the most part, I have become very rusty in the 10 years that I've left home.

Our house that we live in now is where Brent spent his pre-teen and teenage years, and during that time his mother taught piano lessons after school. And her piano sat in the living room, so I knew where my piano had to go. I measured and made sure it would fit through the doors and not take up too much room. We asked some friends from church to help us move it on the house (HUGE THANKS to Austin, Jon Steelman, Jeremy). Dad had warned Brent that it was heavy, and I think they didn't believe him until it was time to lift it out of the truck.

Once it was in the house, I was a little overwhelmed with it. Visually it was larger than I had anticipated, but it fit in the spot perfectly. The next week, I called the piano tuner to come out and have it tuned. He told me that the piano was in very good shape, and while it had some aging, it was still a fine instrument. I was curious about the age, so he looked up in his book and determined that it was built around 1899 in Boston by Vose and Son. I couldn't believe that it was over 100 years old!

So here's it is...my piano. There's a bench in the corner, but it's just about to fall apart, so I have to use the chair instead. One thing I have noticed is that when I'm trying to read music is that i have to have all the lights on...guess that means I'm getting older and my eyes aren't what they used to be. I've been playing on it some and I'm trying to get better. I can still do a rousing rendition of "Heavenly Sunshine."

On a side note, my sister-in-law gave me a gift certificate to Uppercase Living, and this was one of the things that I ordered. The "H" is etched glass and is made to go on glass, and I thought this went perfectly on the piano. I've got some other transfers to use, but have to find something for them to go on because I don't want to put them on the walls.

Back Yard

About a month ago, when the rains were coming down, the floods were coming up. We had a discussion with the city, thanks largely to the neighbor's help, and they agreed that there is a drainage problem in our backyard. The vacant and unused lot behind our house belongs to the school, and they also agreed that we could have the old pasture fence taken down. So when the city said they would take it down for us, we were ecstatic!

Behind this brush was supposed to be a drainage culvert that didn't really drain anything. It was so grown up that the water would rush right through our back yard creating a huge mess when flash floods came. There have been a couple of storms over the past few years that when it rained hard and fast, the water would rise about an inch from our back door. Scary stuff! This was taken back in April when it flooded the patio. Once the rain left, the dirt was left, and I spent two hours power-washing to get it all off. It was a huge mess. And it smelled like a lake. Well, it's been a while since we heard an update from the city, and when we got home yesterday this is what we saw.

Imagine our surprise when it was all cleared off. I'm not fond of the openness and we'll probably have to spend some money to put up a privacy fence later, but I'm very happy that the chances of us having any more floods has decreased! The city is going to do this all the way to the highway, hopefully!

Our next issue is going to get rid of some birds that have decided our front door area is the perfect hotel from them. I am NOT fond of the deposits they're making either, so they are going to need to vacate. If you have any ideas on how to make them leave, please let me know.

Slacker

So I bet you guys probably think that I am lagging on my blogging...and you're right. But the reason that I haven't blogged is that we haven't been doing anything blog-worthy. School's out, Awanas is over, and our evenings are scott-free. It's really been great! I've been the library just about every week, and we've rented some movies at the Redbox. Last weekend we looked at apartments with Monkey, who is moving back to Little Rock in July (whoo hoo!), and it looks like this weekend I will be hanging out with my Sunday School girls, cleaning my house, and going to a 2-year old birthday party. I also hope to get some back-yard laying out time in as well.

These past few weeks, Brent and I have also been working on our finances. We went to a Dave Ramsey seminar last year where we learned about the debt snowball, but for whatever reason, never actually got the ball rolling. Well, we finally did that this week, and we are pretty excited about it. If our plan works out, we will have three major debts paid off by the end of the year. If his job holds through the end of the year (and we're 75% sure that it will), that will be a huge answer to prayer! But in order for this to work, we are going to start using the envelope system to pay cash for things. The debit card is just too easy to swipe and we ended up spending a lot of money on unnecessary things. So we're changing our way of thinking, and praying that God will bless our efforts to be obedient with what he's given us.