Rachel pitched in and helped me get the car cleaned up.  Poor Ethan is throwing up a bit this morning, I think he caught Jane's bug the other evening.

On Saturday, I took the kids for a walk down to the park, since Stef was off at band practice.  Our path took us by the sales office for our subdivision, and I stopped in to ask a question.

When we bought our home, the documentation stated that our home was wired with fiber-to-the-premises, which happily is true.  Unfortunately, when we moved in, I called up the company (Paxio) that was servicing the neighborhood across the street (also a Pulte development) and found out that they weren't going to be servicing our neighborhood.  Which was a bummer, since they were offering a symmetric 10mbit Internet connection for $50/month, including static IP's and other such geeky treats.  So here I was, stuck with a big fat data pipe, and no one to service it.

And this is why I dropped in on the sales office.  I asked them if anyone was servicing our fiber now, and they dug around and found out that indeed we do get service on it!  Apparently, our connection is exclusively served by AT&T U-verse.  This is bad for a couple of reasons:

 

1.  I've not particularly enjoyed AT&T's service in the past (their technology is somewhat lacking and their customer service condescending in some cases.  I know how to ping the upstream router, and trust me, it doesn't matter that I'm doing it from my Linux box, thanks).
2. U-verse offers digital TV and Internet access, but oddly enough, not phone service.  I'll have to spring for a Vonage line or add a standard AT&T analog phone line if I go this route.
3. Being a giant media services company and not a smaller information transfer company like Paxio, they're not really likely to give me lots of upstream, static IP's or permission to host websites or services on the back of my connection.

 

Long story short, my worst fears ended up realized.  U-verse is offered in my area (good), but TV packages comparable to our current Comcast setup cost more, and for the same price that we'd get 10mbit symmetric on Paxio, I'll get their extreme speed 6mbit down, 1mbit up connection.  Whoopee, I get more than that on Comcast already, what's the point of my awesome fiber if the upstream service is useless?

 

We are officially DONE moving in! Everything is unpacked, set up, organized and hung up. We worked like crazy during the weekend and then this morning, I finished off the last minute stuff. We still need to hang our big mirror and then we'll be buying and installing ceiling fans for the kid's rooms.

The house is... beautiful. We're so happy here. The Lord has been so incredibly good to us! I was reflecting today and found myself so thankful to Him for making this process so easy for us. We have heard some rather scary stories from other couples; on the dangers of buying a home and the scams you can get caught in. People that want to take advantage and lie to you all along the way. Jason and I have had the opposite experience and we give God all the thanks for that. This has been such a smooth and even enjoyable process. We've met and worked with some of the nicest people and I hope even made some good friends out of it.

Our Realtor, Jodia Marfia is such a nice lady and comes highly recommend. She really made the house looking process very fun and stress free. It was actually her idea to come out here to Oakley and check out the new Pulte Homes. If she hadn't suggested it, we never would have looked here. For any of you interested in selling or buying in this area, you have to call her. You won't regret it. Visit her website at www.dreamhomesbyjodi.com

We are still waiting for our window coverings. Those are expected to come sometime next week. Once they're in, we'll start on the backyard. Our gardener was out here today giving me some landscaping ideas and discussing some options we have. We're hoping to at least have a patio and sod laid by the summer, so our kids and play outside.

In other news... our kids are doing pretty well. Ethan is loving the new house. Every time we drive down the street he yells "Efan's new house!" He tells me at least once a day that he loves not having stairs. I think its funny that he's even made the connection. Today, I asked him how he likes the new house and he answered with... "I like it. I wanna play soccer with Duncan." He got to go play at Duncan's house for several hours today and had a blast, to put it lightly. I had a very hard time pulling him away.

Our poor Rachel seems to be getting very sick. She woke up in the middle of the night last night, coughing and wheezing a lot. It actually made me pretty scared. I've never heard a baby wheeze like that. We plugged in her humidifier and I gave her some medicine and she ended up sleeping in until 9am. She wasn't having any trouble breathing today, but her cough sounds deep in her chest, so we're going to the Dr. tomorrow. She's such a trooper, even when she's sick. She's fussier than usual and wants to be held all the time, but she still eats good, sleeps good and is in overall good spirits.
Ethan was very concerned tonight when he heard her cough. He said "Mommy, we need to take Rachel Kathryn to see Dr. Barlo and get 4 shots." My poor son thinks shots fix everything.

So... aside from Rachel being sick, life has returned to normal; Bible studies, play dates and weekend fun.Tomorrow our home phone gets hooked up, with the same number we had before and then, as I said, next week we get our mini blinds installed. We'd love to start having all our friends and family over, but give us time. This house isn't big enough for parties with 50+ people, so we'll have to take it slow. We have company coming Thursday and Sunday, so that was good motivation for us to get this place in order.

Hope you all had nice weekends and are enjoying your week so far!
-Stef