The Fun Is Over

So much for the thrill of living in a small motel room, not having a place to call home, and not having a job to study for because that fun is over! We ended up getting the house that I mentioned last week. We moved in on Monday and Tuesday and I started classes on Wednesday. It was an answer to our prayers that we got a good house in a great location, even though we had to wait a few days on the power.

We had all utilities ready to go on Tuesday, except for power. The power company must of wanted us to live old school style for awhile and see how it used to be back in the day. After taking showers by flashlight (water heater is gas, thank goodness) and living by candle light for two days, we all agreed that we wouldn't have liked to live in the era before electricity in homes.

We finally got power on Wednesday afternoon, just in time to watch the World Series on our new 50" flat screen tv. It is awesome...well worth giving up buying groceries for a month and the four gallons of blood I had to sell for cash. Other than being light headed due to the lack of blood and food, I enjoy watching the larger than life picture box.

As for the house, it is approximately large with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was built not that long ago and in a real quiet neighborhood. As you can see I don't know all the details, but it is very nice. It has vaulted ceilings in several rooms and it has nine foot ceilings throughout the whole house. Our address is 4037 Austin Lakes Circle, Sherwood, AR 72120 for those of you who would like to send house warming gifts or birthday presents...such as cookies. You can Google Earth the address and see we are about a quarter mile from a large park and the same distance from a man-made lake. We are the house on the southeast corner where the street turns north. Here are some pictures of the new crib:

The front of our house

The front of our house...a little further away

The backyard...and the dog came with it

The kitchen...thankfully the appliances came with it

The kitchen and dining room...minus the dining

The living room

The living room from the other side...wow, what a photographer

The pride and joy of the house...our new 50 inch devil box

The fireplace

The master bedroom

Our master bathroom. The door on the left is to the throne, then the shower door, and the door in the middle is the walk-in closet

Now that you have had the tour of our home, let me tell you what else is going on in the Presley's world. First, Candi's mom had her kitty scanned this week and they found that the cancerous spot on her liver was completely gone. We are all so excited for Vita and Randy and the family. Vita will continue with the chemo treatment to its end, but this is great news- she's cancer-free!

Second, I started class this past week as I mentioned. It is always like a mule kick to the head when you have to learn a new aircraft with all of its systems. It is no different this time around and they keep adding more engines and more systems, so it isn't getting any easier. They expect us to get up to speed quickly, so I will be spending some time reading the lovely smut novels...the owner's manuals.

Lastly, we are trying to learn how to drive...er...survive the Arkansas drivers and road systems. Peaches (our roommate that followed us here) said it best when talking about the design of the road systems when he said, "they should have sent their engineers to out of state higher learning institutions." The designs here are like they tried three different systems and just put them all together. They are the only state that has roads going the opposite direction on each sides of the major roads, so that you have to cross traffic coming head on just to use an on-ramp. It is hard to describe, but just know that even as bad of a driver as I am...I am scared and often find myself in the fetal position on my floorboard, crying. Arkansas drivers also haven't embraced the idea of merging while driving. We found this out the first day when we tried to get onto the interstate and ended up in the grass on the shoulder of the road. Then one of the first things they said on our in-processing briefs was for us to watch out for the non-merging locals.

Other than that, it has been nice so far. Everyone is very friendly to us Northerners and if the weather isn't horribly nasty, it is very nice. I guess there is no happy medium. The other thing is that everyone and everything has a Razorback on it. The University of Arkansas is in Fayetteville which is three hours northwest of here, but you wouldn't know that you weren't on campus by the looks of it. Everyone (even the girls) refer to periods of time with respect to the U of A Razorbacks football schedule. One lady told us that her husband died the day after the "Hogs" (locals term for the Razorbacks) played Kentucky.