Tony and Paige.com

Tony and I had a delicious Valentine’s dinner at The Magnolia Cafe on SoCo.   It was the best restaurant we have been to since we moved to Austin. Heart-shaped mushroom and sun-dried tomato ravioli in a tomato cream sauce for me, portobello fajitas for Tony and black bean and chicken tacos for Matthew with chocolate dipped strawberries for dessert. Pure foodie heaven!

They seem to have a little bit of everything on the menu, great prices and colorful atmosphere. It seems more like a place for locals than a touristy place. We will definitely go back again.

I was looking through some old photos today and this one popped up. I think we forget sometimes how small our child use to be. He was such a sweet baby then and now he is an even sweeter kid!

Today is very special. It is the birthday of the best man I’ve ever met. I cherish him more than he realizes and I look forward to the many more happy birthdays to come. He such a thoughtful, loving husband and the most attentive, caring dad I have ever had the joy of witnessing.

Thanks for being you. Hope today is as great as you are.

Love,
Paige & Matthew

Today’s doctor visit was amazing. Long story short, there are two different procedures for my condition. We will try one first and if that is not effective we will go on to the second one. I will also have physical therapy.

The doctor took one look at my old MRI’s from Paris (the ones that every other doctor said was normal) and showed me exactly what the problem was. In layman’s terms, it is a ligament syndrome that was made worse by the repetitiveness of getting in and out of my car over and over again for my old job. That’s why the pain is on my left side.

I feel good about everything the doctor told me and I should have my life back after six to eight weeks. This doctor also reassured me that he had done over 8,000 of these procedures and had a 100% success rate. He has never had any complications or even a skin infection for any of his patients.

This is great news and I am hopeful for the first time in a year of pain!

I can not tell you how happy I am right now. Tony’s insurance is officially in effect and I have an appointment Friday with a new doctor that was recommended by the only other doctor that was able to help me at all with my back pain!

I don’t want to get my hopes up too high but I have hope now that at least improvement is on the way. I just want to get back to being my old self again. Wish me luck!

Today is the home inspection. Since the house is less than 2 years old we do not expect anything to be wrong. That is the scary part. Because it is so new, if something is wrong, it will most likely be major-like plumbing or wiring. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I also decided to join Facebook last night. I decide I held out long enough. Tony accepted me as a friend-so far so good! Just kidding.

Hope everyone coming to Austin for TCEA has a safe trip!

If everything goes well this will be our new home after March 2nd. It is on a cul-de-sac in the Sonoma addition and .60 miles from the elementary school. We live too close for school bus pickup. I’ve always lived a far ways from school so I didn’t even realize that was a policy. I wasn’t wanting Matthew to ride the bus anyways-in my experience nothing good ever came from riding the bus.

Today we also drove by the two different swim parks for the neighborhood. The first one has more things for smaller kids like sprayers, sprinklers and wading. The other one has a large water slide for older kids. There are also several play scapes so we hope Matthew enjoys them and maybe it will be a good way to meet people in the neighborhood. I am hoping Matthew can find some new playmates. He misses his friends and still asks me on occasion to take him to visit Jackson and Brock in Paris.

We hope this neighborhood works well for us. So far, it all looks like it will.

Just as I finished typing the last post my phone rang. It was the Realtor. We got the house and they accepted our offer as is-no counter offer.

Glad I didn’t have to wait on that one. Did I ever say how much I hate it that money doesn’t fall from the sky?

Just had to try.

WhoooHooo!

Remember in my last post I said we didn’t want to basically get into a bidding war over this one bank owned property?

Well, our Realtor said that we should put in an offer at the amount we were happy with and just see how it goes because we liked the place so much. So we did and he called yesterday to say our bid was the highest bid. Huh…didn’t expect that. The REO Specialist that works for the bank emailed our Realtor saying we were the highest bid(there were only two!!) and that this offer looks good. She needs final approval from her boss and then we will know if there will be a counter offer or if they will accept our offer as is.

The bad news is they can take 72 hours to respond and they were closed half a day Tuesday because of the ice in Dallas were their office is located. So we probably will not know anything until tomorrow. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate waiting?

We have officially begun the home search. We have our pre-qual letter and have decided that the Round Rock area is going to be the best fit for us. It reminds me a lot of Frisco but with a whole lot of outdoor activities to enjoy.

We found one house in particular that was great but it is in foreclosure and after we submitted our bid the listing agent sent out a notice that they had multiple offers on the home since it was priced so far below market value and wanted everyone to amend their bids to as high as they are willing to go.

So …we thought about it and there are so many homes for sale in the area we love and in our budget that we decide we had no desire to enter a bidding war. I do not like playing those games. Way too stressful for my taste.

Anyway, we are going to look at 5 or 6 houses today in our target neighborhood. We drove by them all last night and liked all but one-the one with the creepy neighbor hanging out in a lit up, open garage. I hate to say it but that lady gave us the creeps. It’s too bad really because the house itself was adorable.

So wish us luck. Hopefully things will go smoothly.