4 Paones

My 2 year old is going through that phase where he revels in anything that gives him a little more power over everyone else. Right now that just happens to be door locks. He will run ahead of you into a room and quickly lock the door. He’ll sit on the other side and “play” while we try every trick in the book to get him to open up. While visiting family in Austin last week, he pulls his lock trick just as we’re packing up and trying to get on the road. Justin and I tried everything we could think of for about 10 minutes. The only thing that worked was when I call out to his sister… “You want to watch a video?” He immediately threw open the door not wanting to miss out. My daughter just cracked up that the technique worked and kept going on about how smart I was… heh. (Yes, I’m enjoying it while it lasts)

Anyways, so fast forward a few weeks. My mom now how a litter of newborn puppies which she’s keeping in her room for safe keeping. Well, what do you know, Jude decides to lock himself into her room to play with the puppies. Justin and my mom are freaking out, again trying everything. My 5 year old strolls up and offers to try. She call out… “I think I’m going to go eat all the Cheerios!” Sure enough, the door flies open within a few seconds. My smart little girl. We’ll see how long this tactic lasts.

My mom’s dog had a litter of nine, beautiful, red goldendoodle puppies yesterday — well, minus the one white one! So my kids are helping grandma socialize the pups and, in the process, helping to name them. We’ve been watching some of the classics we enjoyed as kids with our little guys, like Superman, Star Wars, etc. So, today, in naming the puppies, my 5 year old immediately dubs her pup, “Princess Lea.” My son, not to be outdone, picks up the one white puppy out of the red bunch and calls him… “Darth Vader.”

Today was one of those days. It started off by waking up to no water. The neighborhood had decided to work on the water and hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. So no water till 3.  My sister comes in saying the ice maker’s not working properly, followed by Justin discovering that the car may have some problems we need to get looked at. Follow that up with a dousy like… Oh, the water heater valve springing a leak in the attic.

So Justin had been running from one emergency to the next and had saved the day by spending a few hour on that leak in the attic. It’s 9 p.m., kids are down, the day is *almost done.* I bring out the can of beer I’d stuck in the freezer, and yep… it’s frozen! Justin’s sitting there half dead, looking at the beer and finally asks… do you think I can just stick this in the microwave? We all broke out laughing. What else could go wrong?

Old Republic Home Protection has repairmen in our home today covering yet another home repair, so I thought I would do a small promo on their behalf since I have been very happy with their service thus far.

To give a little background, our realtor inserted a clause in the purchase agreement requiring that the seller purchase a Home Warranty as part the sale. He obliged and thus began our coverage with Old Republic Home Protection Warranty for our new (older) home.

Within the first 2 months, our upstairs AC/Heater/Blower had broken down. They paid for the repair/removal and replacement. They estimated the cost of the unit at about $3K, not to mention the code upgrades and labor. Our fees were $60 for the initial diagnosis.

Within 6 months, our water heater went out. It took them a little while to get the right unit, but they eventually got a new unit installed and we were set to go. We would have been looking at another $1-1.5K with that repair.

A month later, enter our 25 year old microwave. The unit stopped working. After a checkup, Old Republic gave us a check to buy a replacement unit, now installed and working beautifully.

I was hoping that this would be the last repair until the new year rolled around, but a week ago, our main AC/Heater stops cooling our Texas home right at the start of summer. We call the repairman and find out that our nearly 30 year old unit is giving up the ghost and needs replacing.

So here we are, 9 months into the warranty, the repairmen are upstairs working on installing the new unit. The old blower unit is all rusted out and corroded. The AC unit itself is frosted over in several places and also corroded. The repairman says a unit like this one typically costs approximately 8K, although I’m sure Old Republic can find it cheaper. By now, our allotment for code upgrades is gone, so we are having to shell out $700 for “non covered” items (ouch), but all in all, it seems a small price for everything that HAS been covered.

Thank you, Old Republic. And I can’t stress enough how important getting a Home Warranty is if you purchasing an older home. Things may look great and, in our case, the previous owner told us he’d replaced the AC units (and the condensers did look new), but you just never know.

One of my favorite blogs,The Mysterious Blog, by my husband, Justin Paone is back online after a year or so hiatus. Although I enjoy blogging about my family and our journeys and things we learn along the way, here on the Paones.com, Justin’s blog and posts are usually very insightful, unique and varied. Whether it’s about investing in silver, world events or the location of Eden, there’s always something new to learn.

Another blog I find very interesting is Justin’s father, Ken Paone’s, The Weather Alternative blog. I’ll have to keep an eye on his long range weather forecasts for Hurricanes this year as I hear we are in for an especially active season. Now, if only Justin hadn’t given away all our plywood.

And finally, a newer favorite is EndTimeInfo – The Future Foretold, a newer blog/website by an old friend of mine, with podcasts, blogs on current events. He looks for news and articles you generally won’t find on the front page of CNN (at least not the US version) and links it with Bible Prophecy. Pretty cool stuff!

Keep up  the good work, Justin, Rick and Ken! Keep those posts coming!

I got home from work today anxious to see my little guys. I miss them when I’m gone all day. As I’m driving up to the house, my sister meets me to tell me a little 4 year old girl who lives a few homes away had gone missing about 10 minutes earlier. Sure enough our entire neighborhood is already out looking for her, searching the woods, yards, in pools. The police come blaring into the neighborhood. I took right back off driving around to help with the search. Everyone I met was so anxious. Our neighborhood is small. A little girl would be easy to find if she had just wandered outside. I was starting to get all teary eyed and praying hard as I drove out to start to search beyond the neighborhood when my sister calls to say the little girl was found in her home. I was beyond relief. I drove straight home and hugged my kids all evening long.

I’ve been wanting to get the kids a box or a small trunk — something to store things that are special to them (or me). I told my 5 year old  about my plans today. She was curious about what kind of stuff she would be putting in there. So I told her it could be anything, special pictures or things that they want to remember as they grow up.  She looked thoughtful and finally said, “Mommy, when I’m older and don’t have to wear glasses anymore, can I put my glasses in there?”

Justin and I have been really busy over the past 2-3 months. We’re working. We spend our free time building businesses.  We’re still setting up our home, landscaping the yard and planting trees. And then… there are our two wonderful children.

Before I had kids, I envisioned being a stay at home mother who lived for her kids and made childhood fun. I would get have all the latest schooling materials and have organized school time. I would play with them, take them on excursions to everywhere but the moon and have a great time just being “Mom.”

Enter reality and guilt at the end of each long day after the kids go down as I think think about all the things I DIDN’T do with them.

The other night I was indulging in that guilt a little as I cleaned and organized the room after they’d gone down. I decided to sort through the pile of their artwork that has been building up for the past 3 months. As I’m sorting and looking at each picture, it dawned on me that they were all pictures of happiness. There were pictures of princesses, castles, our happy, smiling family, mountains, rainbows, LOTS of cats.  There was even what I’m pretty sure was a portrait of Spiderman by the little man himself.

Looking through those pictures put things in perspective and helped me realize that even though I may be failing in attaining those high standards I set for myself, the kids are okay. They’re happy. They’re enjoying life. They’re experiencing the freedom of childhood. They’re discovering the world for themselves as they poke around the yard, run through sprinklers, chase lizards, tackle each other, build pillow castles and tents, play make believe games with their their horses, knights and dragons, and yes… draw plenty of happy pictures. It reminded me that much of childhood just happens –  if we let it.

We finally got out the door to go camping last week. It was just overnight to a park about 20 minutes away, but the kids (and Justin and I) loved it. The only problem was… it happened to be the one night in the past few months that a cold front blew in.   We still had fun and that went well,  so we decided to go camping again tomorrow night. We were all set to spend a few nights at my in-laws camp ground only to find out that… surprise, surprise, the drought of the past 3-4 months is taking a break to drop some rain/heavy storms on us. Maybe if plan more camping trips, Houston would get over it’s drought. Heh.

Our little girl loves ice cream. Last night’s birthday the ice cream was definitely the highlight of her evening. At the end though, as we’re getting ready to head home, she decides to save the last little bit of ice cream for her little brother who hadn’t come along. I figured once she realized it was all melted, she’d realize saving ice cream wasn’t really doable. Well, her little brother was asleep when we got home, so I didn’t think much more about it. First thing this morning, our daughter comes into the room all sleepy eyed and tells her brother “I saved you some ice cream.” Sure enough, there was her little white cup on the shelf with about half an inch of melted ice cream in it. Jude was thrilled and gave her his most enthusiastic “thank you” “thank you, sister!” as he carefully ate the melted ice cream, or “hot chocolate” as he called it. — I’m going to miss these days.