Thanksgiving, Snow in Houston and Fender Benders

Hi everyone!

Our first Thanksgiving went pretty well and it was good to see family again :) I didn't end up burning the food or catching the house on fire so that was a big victory in my book! We also went Black Friday shopping which went ok...it's not particularly my favorite thing to do since there are long lines and crowds of people...and I try to avoid spending money unless I have to but since there are sales and my mom likes to shop, we all ventured out into the chaos for a few hours. Mom and Dad bought us a steam mop (which I have yet to use but I hear works really well on tile) and Sterling picked us out some lamps for our living room - my husband has good taste :) And we got a great deal on them so that made me feel better about spending the money for them. Unfortunately (also) over the holiday, one of my dogs from home in Tennessee (Sampson) was killed. Two big dogs from in the neighborhood attacked him in our yard and he later died at the pet ET during surgery :( We had Sampson since he was born - he was our other dog Merry's puppy. It was pretty shocking and it will be sad visiting home without Sampson coming to greet us in the driveway. That event put a damper on the last day of the holiday vacation but we were still glad to get to spend time with everyone and happy that everyone made it back home safely.

Continuing with the bad luck of the holiday, I was in a minor wreck coming home from clinic last Tuesday. It started raining and traffic was crawling (~10 mph) on 59. There was plenty of space between me and the car in front of me and I was going really slow but I went to put on my brakes upon seeing brake lights come on in front of me and my car didn't respond at all and I went straight into the car in front of me. It was a very scary experience. I initially thought that my gas pedal had gotten stuck but now that I think about it, it is probably more likely that I hydroplaned and that's why my brakes didn't help at all. Anyways, since I was moving so slowly, the damage caused was minimal. It caused some rear bumper damage to the car in front of me (and he hit the guy in front of him because he was following too closely but damage wasn't bad) and there was very minor damage to the underside of my front fender. All cars involved were able to be driven away and there weren't any citations issued so hopefully my insurance won't go up too much because of this. It's pretty frustrating that there was really nothing I could do to avoid the wreck and it's probably still going to raise our rates...I mean, I would certainly understand if I had been talking on the cell phone or playing with the radio or messing with makeup or any of the other stuff that I occasionally do that's not safe driving practices...but oh well. I'm glad no one was hurt and the damage is only minor. I'm taking it in to get repaired this morning.

On a happier note, The Cummings family took their first Christmas pictures this weekend! We were feeling pretty Christmas-inspired with all of the snow on the ground so we decided to give it a go :) It was quite the time getting the dogs to cooperate AND using the delayed timer on my camera but the pictures turned out nicely and we are using the middle one below for our Christmas card this year :)

The Cummings First Christmas - Christmas 2009 :)

Snow in Houston!! Take that Global Warming Advocates...

We hope everyone is doing well!

Holiday Season is here!

Hey Everyone,

Last night we went to Adalia and Erik's wedding and it was a lot of fun! Adalia is one of Sterling's coworkers and the wedding was beautiful. It's always nice to see everyone dressed up more than usual and cutting loose with some wine and beer :)

Today we were feeling rather festive so we decided it would be a good time to put up our Christmas tree :) We made some hot chocolate, jammed to Christmas music and enjoyed putting the tree together and decorating with some new stuff we bought from Walmart this morning. We will probably put a few more things on it but this is what it looks like so far. Definitely a step up from our little Christmas ficus last year - though our ficus was fun to decorate as well and it was our first tree so we'll always remember our ficus fondly :)

Our ficus, Christmas 2008 :)

Our stockings on our fireplace - Christmas 2009

Our Tree! Christmas 2009

Christmas tree!

We are excited for family to come in for Thanksgiving. Sterling got a lot of cleaning and organizing while I was at work on Saturday morning, so we don't have too too much left to do before everyone arrives. We hope everyone is doing well and getting in the holiday spirit!!

Can't wait for the Holidays!

I only have clinics this afternoon and no morning client but I got up with Sterling around 5am and made breakfast/packed lunches so now I can't really fall back asleep :(

I am still somewhat recovering from the flu....my energy level is still pretty low and I still have a little bit of a residual cough but I've finished my courses of medicines and overall, feel a lot better than I was! Sterling has been having a lot of congestion lately - mainly allergy related though.

We are in the process of gearing up for the holidays. The Hill family Thanksgiving is going to be at our house this year. Last weekend, we went to the Nutcracker market and piddled around looking for some holiday decorations. We didn't find anything in our price range that we were crazy about, but we did get to do a lot of taste testing - which Sterling of course loved :) It was all I could do to keep up with him, jumping from booth to booth tasting sauces and dips and honeys and butters and spreads.....He had a good time :) We ended up buying some really good spiced tea, some "Country Cowboy" Amaretto Honey Butter (also realllllly good), some Irish cream hot chocolate mix, and a couple of mixes that dependent upon what you add to them, they can be used to baste/flavor different meats or made into a chip/pretzel dip. I might attempt to make some over Thanksgiving...

Rice Homecoming was also last weekend. We didn't go to the game as we had to be home for our alarm system to be installed, but we did go out to dinner with some friends who were in town. We went to a pretty good Mexican restaurant called El Pueblito . The patio area is really cool. Sterling said it made him feel like he was on vacation because the fans looked like palm leaves, haha. The boys ordered pitchers of Margaritas....needless to say, it made for an interesting time.

We also got some house stuff done over the past weekend. We organized our garage (one side is our yard stuff and the other side is all of the stuff we are going to either sell in the next garage sell or donate to goodwill). We still have a lot of boxes in the formal living room but I collapsed all of the big ones and left all of the dish size boxes alone. We have room in our attic for them but we are going to check with Perry homes first about putting stuff up there. They told us previously that it could be used for some storage but not to put too much up there because it could effect the ventilation of the attic (and subsequently, our bills and the moisture content of the house). I guess we will just have to find out how much is "too much". For the time being though, it doesn't bother me too much to just have them neatly stacked against the wall of that room. It's not like there is furniture in there and it's not really being used right now anyways. We still have a bunch of miscellaneous stuff in our 4th bedroom that we will have to clear out before mom, dad, Janna, Brett, Jessica and David come down. And the room that we are using as an office definitely needs some organizing....papers everywhere! We will see how much of that actually gets done before Thanksgiving....we are aiming to at least have the bedrooms cleared out. We have one extra queen sized mattress and then a queen size aerobed...we are going to see about borrowing another air mattress or two from a friend so that we can accommodate everyone.

We haven't gotten around to buying any decorations or anything like that for the house, but I did get us some new ceramic cereal bowls on sale from Ross :) They look pretty similar to the Biltmore phoebe cream china we already have and the Biltmore china only had the wide soup bowls - we needed some deep bowls for cereal. If you've ever seen Sterling go after some Reese Puffs or Cocoa Krispies in the morning, you know why :)

For Thanksgiving, I already bought our turkey and ham (great deal at HEB - buy the half spiral ham, get the 12lb turkey free!). Now I just have to figure out how to cook them :) I am also planning on making some of my mom's mashed potatoes, some sort of green bean casserole dish, stuffing, some bread/rolls, double layer symphony brownies, and roasted chicken pie florentine (sounds fancy I know, lol :) I learned how to make it from a lady giving out samples at HEB. It's pretty good!)

We are also excited to put up our Christmas tree and some Christmas decor outside. We have the tree (which is pre-lit) and a few ornaments (like probably 5 so far, haha)....we'll have to go find some more tree decorations and a few little outdoor decorations. We were thinking some basic outdoor lights and a nice wreath :)

When my parents come for Thanksgiving, apparently we are celebrating Christmas with them at that time also. I had previously been planning on getting presents during day after Thanksgiving sales and then just mailing them up since we won't be in TN for Christmas this year...so I'll have to add some Christmas shopping to our to do list next weekend. We are celebrating Christmas with Sterling's family this year in Maypearl :) We're a little jealous (ok, a lot jealous!!) cause they will be getting back from JAMAICA right around the time we go up there! We were invited to go but it wasn't really feasible for Sterling's work schedule. He has to be at work for at least 3 or 4 days before Nymex settle...and we also want to make sure he is doing all that he can to set himself up for a raise or a good bonus...or just to stay employed in general. With this economy, if companies think they can do without you, you'll get cut. Fortunately, Sterling has been doing a good job at work and seems to get along really well with everyone and the programs that he has written have been able to earn the company quite a bit of mula, so I'm not worried about him earning his keep :) I think they like him and want to keep him for the long haul :) Just like me :)

Other than that, we have Adalia and Erik's wedding next Saturday which should be fun :) Next weekend is shaping up to be a busy one!!!

Life is busy but good, we feel very blessed :)

November 2009 Update

Hi Everyone,

We haven't updated in a while so we figured it was about that time. Life has been really great and we have been settling into our home slowly but surely. We still have some boxes to unpack and a lot of things to take to Goodwill but we are getting there a little at a time. Progress has slowed recently as Jenn has been sick since Wednesday night. At first we just thought it was a bad cold but she's had a fever for a few days now so she went into the doctor today to get it checked out....It turned out that she has/had the flu (the Dr. thinks she is on the tail end of swine flu). But between Dr. Donna, Dr. Bui, and Dr. Sterling, we are making sure she gets taken care of. She is on antibiotics, antivirals, prescription cough syrup, a steroid dose pack (for her coughing), and her regular inhalers and nebulizer (to help with her breathing/asthma). She should be able to go back to work on Wednesday as long as her cough improves. And Donna put me on tamiflu (antivirals) to prevent me from getting her bugs :) I would be in between a rock and a hard place if I got the swine flu since I am having to take more responsibility at work and need to be around.

Work is going really well and I am learning a lot of stuff. There is a lot to know about gas trading and even though I have been working in the business for around 3 years I still learn new things everyday. I am progressing in my skills in operations, and am developing some processes and software to improve our business and deliver better quality of service to our customers / trading partners.

In house news, we got our appliances delivered and bought a dog house and a christmas tree. We got the Kenmore HE3 front loading washer and steam dryer, and an LG counter depth stainless steal french door bottom freezer refrigerator. We also got a cedar dog house from Lowe's but it leaked and the dogs got soaked in the rain. Since then we caulked it and sealed it up and put a tarp over it so it would be water proof. We also got our new U-Verse TV and internet. The U-Verse uses fiber optic cables and so the internet and TV are really fast. The TV changes channels quickly and allows you to see a live picture in picture preview before you change channels. It also has DVR capabilities, we could record 4 shows at the same time and watch them in any room in the house where we have a receiver. We also got a pre lit 9 foot Christmas tree (we got it at the same time we got our trash can because we had to rent a truck to carry it all home).

We can't currently find Jenn's cord to upload pics (packed away somewhere) so we found some online of our appliances and dog house for all to see.

Dog House looks like this (It's really big - Lady and Lucy seem to enjoy the space :)

The Refrigerator looks like this and looks great in our kitchen:Our Washer and Dryer both look like this (and we have the pedestals too, and those have drawers in them for storage which is cool).

That's all for now.

We are closing on our first house!

Jenn and I are both very happy because we are closing with Perry homes on our first house! The house is the one that I've mentioned (and Jenn has mentioned as our "nest") on previous posts. It is located in the Lakeshore subdivision, about 20-25 minutes north of downtown on 59 and beltway 8, on the west bank of Lake Houston. We look forward to running the trails with the puppies - and I'm sure that they look forward to playing in the yard.

We plan on closing in two weeks so we will have to get packin' this weekend. We got Perry homes to install a sprinkler system and wave the title insurance, but we will still be on the hunt for a refrigerator, washer, dryer, and a mower. And also for some window coverings. We will also have to run up there this weekend and read through/sign contracts, get a home inspector out there to take a look etc.

Other than that exciting news, work has been going well. I was excited today because I found out that we subscribe to a weather data service (WCG : Weather Commodity Group). That means that I will have data to feed my economic price forecasting models - which is one less thing that I have to ask Texla to pay for in order for me to do my job :)

We went to Cafe Rabelais in the Rice Village for dinner to celebrate. We split a really good beef tenderloin/mashed potatoes/green bean dish and a small cheese platter. Neither of us really liked the cheese platter - they were all pretty bitter tasting. But the wine and beer were very good, and we actually got them free tonight because some other patron (an older woman) came up to us and was asking us if she could buy us a bottle of wine so that her party could move to our table....the manager saw her and came over and told her she couldn't harass us and then comped our beverages for the evening, which we both liked :)

That's all for now. We will post some pictures of our house when it is officially - in writing - OURS!

-Sterling

Dream Nest Update

Man, what a day! After spending the day battling with little kids (literally, physically battling during tantrums), I sure was glad to get a call from Erika with some good news. (And also that I had already prepared dinner in the crock pot over my lunch break so it was waiting and ready!)

Perry homes countered our last offer and they did come down another 5k on the house, and it is a reasonable price for the homes in the area (based on comparable sales). It is still a little bit higher than we were hoping for (probably unrealistically hoping for) but it is totally doable. We countered back and said that it's a deal if they can install a sprinkler system around the house and wave the title insurance.

The sprinkler system would probably be around $2500-3000 if we were to hire someone to do it ourselves and the title insurance is going to be around $2k. Waving the title insurance is something that this builder regularly does if you choose to mortgage the house through their preferred lender....we aren't using their preferred lender, we will actually be paying cash and mortgaging through a portfolio loan, but it is still something that is realistically within their power to make happen if they want the sale bad enough. Erika thinks that the sales representative that she has been talking to (Penelope) really wants the sale, so we should be able to get at least one of those concessions, if not both. So let's hope Penelope does some lobbying with her bosses and makes it happen. :)

That's the latest! We'll keep you posted.

Latest House Update

Ok, really quickly - here's what's up.

So Perry homes came back with their "bottom line price" again and it was another 10k off what they have it currently listed on the HAR website. It's still about 10k over what we are wanting/going to pay for the house but they are coming down...hopefully no one else will bid on it and they will cave and give it to us at our desired price :)

We countered back and came up a little more - not quite to our maximum that we are willing to pay - but we came up a decent amount, hopefully an amount that they will take and run with. We are waiting to hear back from Perry homes through Erika :)

Keep your fingers crossed! I WANT MY NEST!!!!! hahaha :)

We'll keep you updated as it all unfolds....In the mean time, here's a throwback picture of Sterling and baby Lucy :)

The pups will be excited to have a yard of their own to patrol :)

Some Good News (We think, We hope!)

On Tuesday, we told Perry homes that we were not willing to pay more than what is a fair market price for the house we liked and we turned down their "final offer" for the house.

We talked with our buyer's agent (Erika McCann) last night and she said that she had received a call from the Perry Sales representative earlier that day asking Erika if she thought we had anymore price flexibility (to which Erika said no because even though we do, we aren't going to pay over what we could reasonably expect to get back in a resale situation). She also asked Erika to send over her comparable analysis of the houses similar to this one that have sold in Lakeshore recently (what they were listed for vs. what they actually sold for). Erika said that Penelope (the sales rep for Perry homes in Lakeshore) said that she was going to show them to her boss. Erika said she also noticed that the listing price on the house on HAR was reduced by 4k.

We figured that if a price was going to be agreed upon at all, that it probably wouldn't be in the first week but this is good news for us because it tells us that they are pretty motivated to move the house. Ultimately, if we are the only ones who have a bid in, I think they might cave and sell us the house for what we are willing to pay for it. I think they reduced the listing price so that they could get some more people looking at and potentially making some offers for the house over the coming weekend, because bid wars are probably the best way to get the most money out of the house...

Anyways, it seems like promising news, we'll see how it pans out. We are going and looking at some other homes in the area with Erika on Sunday afternoon, so the hunt continues and we'll keep y'all updated.

P.S. Please pray for my mom. She had another surgery on her knee yesterday. It was thought that she had a bone chip that broke off into the joint and has been the reason for her continued pain since her total knee replacement last year. However, when they went in they discovered that the bone chip wasn't the problem (and they didn't remove it....not sure why...) but it was actually her ACL/MCL. I haven't had a chance to talk with my family in depth over what that means about where she goes from here (another surgery? physical therapy??) and I'm not sure what exactly was wrong (torn ligament or scar tissue issues?). So anyways, just say a prayer for her. She's pretty frustrated about it all and has been through a lot over the past year.

-Jenn

On the hunt again!

Good morning!

We put in an offer for a house that we really liked in the Lakeshore community and we had two counter offers from the builders. Unfortunately, the builders were very unwilling to budge on their price. They came down $6,900 on their first counter and none on their second counter. Our offer was a pretty reasonable offer given what the market is and that similar floor plans by this builder within the neighborhood were going for much cheaper, so I'm not sure why they think that they will be able to get 30k over market for that house. I guess they are hoping that an idiot with no real estate knowledge or representation will come along and be willing to pay 30k over what their neighbors paid for comparable houses just because this house was built 4 months later than the others....who knows! They told us "Oh well you are certainly welcome to look at our homes on the other side of the neighborhood that are in a lower price range" (read: smaller and on smaller lots) but there's really no point to that because we would be buying the more expensive house on that side of the neighborhood (which would be stupid) and if they aren't willing to negotiate their houses down to around what comparable market price is then we aren't going to deal with them. It would be stupid to pay a 20-30k mark up for an inventory home from the builder when there is no chance you will get that money in a resale situation. (Regardless of whether or not the house is in your desired price range!)

Anyways, it was pretty annoying and a little disappointing....I had already kind of made this house my "nest" in my mind, hahaha :)

BUT there WILL be other houses that fit our criteria and our buyer's agent, Erika McCann is awesome, so I am hopeful that we will find a place to call ours when the time is right! Hopefully that time will come before the first time home buyer's tax credit runs out but we will see :)

And who knows, maybe the Perry sales representatives will call us back in 2 weeks when they realize they aren't going to get that much for that house in this market and our offer sounds more appealing to them...One can hope :) We will keep you updated!

Rainy Monday Boredom Post

Hey y'all.

I've got a bad case of the mondays and a 3 hour gap before I have to see my next client...so I am doing my best to fight the temptation to cuddle up with the pups and take a nap by writing another blog post. I think if I were to nap right now with the rain going as hard as it is outside I might end up accidentally sleeping through the afternoon!

Last night we went to a surprise birthday party for our friend Michael Gaines. He and his wife Rachel were the leaders/hosts of the financial bible study that we went to all summer and made a lot of church friends through. It was just a small little get together but it was a lot of fun catching up with everyone/having dinner and eating cheesecake. I am a SUCKER for cheesecakes. I could probably eat an entire one in one sitting if no one else were there to stop me :)

Anyways, here are a couple of pictures from last night:

Sterling hiding behind the kitchen wall waiting for Michael to unlock the door...isn't he so cute?

Michael, before he caught on to why everyone was in his apartment...

Our bible study group, minus Glenn, Ed, Carrie, Sean, and Marsha....Happy Birthday Michael!

In other news, we are officially putting in an offer on a house this week!!! CROSS YOUR FINGERS!! We are so excited and hope that we are able to get this house!

-Jenn

Update since the wedding...(Sterling)

Hey guys. Married life is going great, we are both enjoying it a lot. The honeymoon in Cancun was awesome and we've been working hard on getting into a routine with work and home life. I am extremely lucky to have Jennifer as a wife. She has very good values and is a lot of fun and we balance each other out very well :-)

I recently got a job with Texla Energy Management where I am a transport analyst / scheduler / fundamental analyst. I am responsible for the efficient pathing of our gas on our existing transportation contracts as well as finding new opportunities in the market and predicting more macro trends in price spreads in the gulf region. So far, I really like it a lot and I enjoy working downtown. I like my coworkers as well. Jenn and I have made some friends with some young couples from work so it has been fun going out with and getting to know them.

Right now, we are looking at buying a home in the northeast part of Houston where 59 meets beltway 8. We looked at a community called Fall Creek and both liked it a lot. It looks like it is very safe and it is a master-planned community so they keep all the riff-raff out (except for us I guess...). We also really like the Lake Shore community which is just a bit east of Fall Creek and borders the south west side of Lake Houston. It is newer than Fall Creek and smaller. The houses in Fall Creek and Lake Shore both have homes that are 4 sides brick which I think makes them look very nice. We are looking at possibly making an offer on one in Lakeshore over this weekend, we are pretty excited.

I have recently discovered Pandora which is a very cool website where you can enter an artist or song you like and they will automatically find similar songs / artists and play them for you in CD quality. My favorite stations are Soundgarden (which plays alot of 90's grunge alt hard rock like Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Temple of the Dog, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam) and Josh Abbott Band (which plays alot of Texas Country music).

Over this weekend, we went to Laff Stopwith Adalia, Erik, and Jake (I work with Adalia and Jake, and Erik is Adalia's fiance). Adalia had won free tickets and invited us all to go. Jenn, Jake and I were sitting on the front row... so we got harassed a little bit. Overall we had a lot of fun and plan on going back, especially since they often give out free tickets.

In other news/events, I'm glad that they are shutting down ACORN and that the US, Britain, and France walked out on Iran at the G20 summit. That's all until next time.

Update since the wedding...(Jennifer)

Since we got married a little over 3 months ago, I have taken a job working as an ABA therapist for a company called OATH. (ABA stands for Applied Behavioral Analysis; OATH stands for "Overcoming Autism Through Hope"). I work with children ages 2-9 years who have varying degrees of Autism Spectrum disorder. So far, it has been really fun working with the little kids, and really rewarding to see them improve. They are pretty entertaining and it's amazing some of the things they come up with. Of course, there are good days and bad days, and some days can be very trying on my patience level, but overall, the job itself I enjoy and I think it is great preparation for whenever Sterling and I decide to take on parenthood down the road.

However, since I have been employed with them, there have been some issues with getting the number of hours that I was promised during the interview process...so I've been picking up as many administrative duties as I can to try and bring in the amount of income we originally planned for in our budget...and we've certainly been praying about it...but we'll see where God takes us. I am trying to keep my mind open either way. If there is anything that I have learned in the past two years, it's that the things that I want to happen/try to plan/organize/sometimes even try to force to happen, is not necessarily how God is going to make it happen, if at all. And even though things might not work out exactly how I envisioned them--more often than not, things turn out to be better than I could have ever imagined. I certainly never saw myself married at 23 that's for sure! But I am very grateful that I am - married life suits us both really well. I am so thankful for Sterling. He's such a good man and a great husband and he makes me want to be a better person. God really blessed me by bringing him into my life--and with such perfect timing too!!

Other than that, I have been busy trying to find places in our apartment for all of our presents! It's amazing how quickly we have grown out of 900 square feet. Well, not necessarily "grown out of" but we have a lot of stuff! Sterling says it's because I have too many shoes....I say it's because he has too many books!! In all honesty, I've somewhat given up on trying to find places for some things. We have a rather large pile of boxes in our 2nd bedroom which we used to use as an office before the boxes and piles of paper took over the place! We also have some in our closet, as well as in our living room.

On the administrative side of the whole marriage process, we have officially closed all of our "single" banking accounts, combined all of our finances, made a budget, made chore charts, and I have changed my name to Jennifer Hill Cummings with the social security administration. I still have yet to change it on my license. Long story with that one, but basically I am waiting until we visit my parents over Thanksgiving to get it renewed in TN, rather than getting a TX license because we don't want to pay to get my car inspected, registered, new tags etc....there's a good possibility that we might end up having to get rid of it in the next year (long story there too. Sterling can tell y'all that one).

Needless to say, we've been keeping busy. Oh yeah, AND we are also looking for our first home! Yeah :) Exciting times ahead :) We'll keep you posted!
-Jenn

We've joined the world of blogging! :)

Hey everyone!

I know, I know...blogging is kind of goofy...but we decided it would be a great way to keep all of our family and friends informed and up to date on all of the exciting things happening in our lives right now--and also for in the future! Since we've both entered the working world, we've quickly discovered how little time we have to catch up with everyone, let alone with each other, so having a blog is great solution for us to stay connected with everyone we care about on a more regular basis than we are able to right now.

We hope you enjoy following our updates!

Jennifer and Sterling