Texas

Monday afternoon at 2:00pm Peter, Arabella,and I pulled out of our driveway in Peter's truck packed to the gills and a Uhaul equally as full and headed to Dallas. We quickly learned that we could not travel faster than 65 (and slower regularly) due to our load. We needed to be to Dallas by 5:30 on Tuesday. As time passed it became apparent we would be pulling an all nighter. Peter is lucky that I have gained some great skills at staying up all night with little sleep. We took turns switching out every 2 hours or so and stopped for an hour when we both slept. Arabella was so good!! We did finally make it to the apartment Peter would be staying at for the next two months until our house closes. House, you ask? Well, Wednesday morning we met with a realtor and saw 10 houses. We had narrowed our options down from 78 to 10 and it was a full day of house hunting. At the end of the day, we had narrowed it down to 3.

House number one: 5 bedrooms, decent yard, and the back fence had a gate that lead to a park. (You would still have to go with your kids because you would not be able to see them, so good and bad.)

House number two: 4 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, wonderful yard-large, hot tub, storage shed, big trees.

House number three:4 bedrooms, 3 living rooms including the huge game room pictured below, decent yard.

This house was the winner in the end. We revisited our top three on Thursday and made an offer on house #3 that afternoon. Crazy!? We affectionately called this house the Texas house. You may be thinking :"Well, duh!?" but all of the light switch plates were metal with silhouettes of cowboy like stuff, ie: horses, stars, boots, cows. There were stirrups for hand towel holders, cowboy boot shaped night lights and the two lighting fixtures pictured below. Yes, that is a wagon wheel with guns and branding irons and the one to go over the kitchen table is antlers. The owner accepted our offer and we will close on November 3rd. Peter stayed in Dallas to start his new job and I flew home this morning. Grandpa Rabner played Mr. Mom for a week to Joey and Jon and they had a great time. Our deepest thanks go to him!

These are a few more pictures of our house hunting experience. Arabella loved a chance to crawl around and not be in her car seat.

Friday while awaited a call from our Realtor, we went to Peter's office and he signed some papers and I met is very nice boss. I think it will be a great place for Peter to work.
After that we headed to the State Fair. It was great! I could not believe how big it was. It was rainy and cold every day we were there except Thursday, so it was a bit chilly at the fair.

This was a garden train they had set up by Big Tex a huge statue of a man in the middle of the fair (you can see his red boots in the picture). He is animated so that his mouth and head move. He makes announcements about some of the happenings at the fair.

This sculpture was made entirely out of butter and this is only a shot of half of it. Amazing!

Peter took his picture by yes Peter the Great the bull. He was massive. He weighed over 2600 pounds and measured 64 inches from the ground to his shoulder.

But the pigs/hogs were not to be outdone. check out the size of that pig!

All in all we had a great time and were able to get so many things in place. I was able to interview for my job and signed a contract. My start date is Dec. 7th or sooner if I can get my license and a few other things in order. I feel much better about moving having seen the school Joey will go to and the chapel we will attend. We ate dinner at my cousin Alexis' house and she is about 30 mintues away, it is nice to have some family nearby. Moving to Dallas will be good and now I just have to pack a million boxes (or at least a hundred).