Philip, Jen and Peyton’s Pages

As we are nearing Christmas, we have a lot of things going on in the Sellers family.  The biggest news will close this afternoon…  Jen and I are buying land.  We don’t have any immediate plans for the land, but we are going to hold on to it and  hopefully build our dream home on it in a few years.  But, we have to wait for the market to come back and find the correct time to sell the house we are in.  

The land buying process has been almost a year and a half in the making.  We had been looking casually for land for about a year even before that, but around September of 2007, we found an 1.75 acres that we were really interested in.  It was near good friends of ours (psuedo-family) and it was enough land that we were happy, but not too much that we’d would be overwhelmed taking care of it…  The area was very nice and it was the last lot in the group to be built on - so the area is as developed as it should ever be.  

After negotiating for a few months with the builder who were selling it as a land/home package, we could never come to an agreement on the home and the price for the custom build.  So, we made an offer for land-only for what we believed the land was worth.  The owners wanted more but we were unwilling and walked away.  Fast-forward to October of this year and the land was for sale as land-only, and for much less than they had previously thought the land was worth.  We made an offer again for the same amount and this time it was accepted.  Thank you sucky economy for something…

Anyways, we close this afternoon on the lot.  Afterwards, Jen and I are going to drive out there and take a couple pictures of the land and of us on our land.  Then we’re treating ourselves to the Right Recipe for dinner as a celebration…  

Once we build, our address will officially change from Conway, SC, to Loris, SC.  And, its much more peaceful out in the country.  Its so quiet…  I absolutely love it and I’m so very excited about this.  Jen is, too.

Peyton is growing and developing so amazingly.  She’s smart as a whip and crafty, too.  She’s sweet and loving.  So much as happened since the last update.  She is talking up a storm and she’s got an natural need to understand and learn about the world around her.  She is a little sponge.

At daycare, she is learning the shapes and what things are made in those shapes.  She’s also learning her colors and what things are those colors.  She knows everyone in her class and she can tell you everyone’s name.  She is extremely social, which I find great since I have issues being social around people until I know them pretty well.  (Of course, you know that then all bets are off!)  She really enjoys and misses daycare when she’s not there.  She looks forward to seeing her friends.

At home, she is so good with technology.  She loves Barney and Elmo DVD’s.  As much as we have tried not to let her watch too much TV, she loves these programs.  She is glued to the TV while that big purple monstrosity dinosaur is on there.  And, she knows which of her DVD’s she wants to watch and she’ll let you know.  She also knows how to change the DVD and start it with the controls on front.  I watched her do the same at Gaga and Papa Sellers’ house this weekend - she’s mastered using their DVD, as well.  She’s trying to learn how to use my iPhone and our computers.  She really enjoys watching the picture slideshows on the TV or computer.

She visited Santa yesterday at Bass Pro Shops… She was a little scared of him and wouldn’t sit on his lap.  So, mom sat in Santa’s chair with her while Santa stood to the side…  We asked her while we were in line what she wanted from Santa and she said that she wanted “toys.”  When we asked what kind, she said Elmo.  So, we’ll have to wait and see what she gets from Santa…

Peyton also loves playing outside now.  She really enjoys being outside and she’s infatuated by the birds.  And planes, she can spot an airplane anytime there is one around.  Whether we’re in the car or playing outside she can spot them and will point and make sure we see them too.

One other change is happening.  Our little fearless girl is not quite as fearless.  This morning she awoke to Minnie Mouse looking right back at her and she was a little scared.  She called for her mommie to move Minnie…  But she’s also been scared of other things from time to time.  She was absolutely terrified of a hayride a few weekends back, though she insisted that Da-Da should ride it.   She takes her moments with tractors and other things that are loud.

In other BIG news, she’s now sleeping in a big girl bed instead of a crib.  We converted her crib this past weekend into a daybed with a rail to keep her from falling out at night.  But that gives her freedom to get up and leave the bed when she would like… no more bars!  So far its going well. She was very excited to sleep in her big girl bed the first night and she didn’t get out until the next morning.  The next night, she got up a couple times before she went down for the night, but not bad.  Last night, she fell asleep in front of the TV while watching the Tinkerbell movie and didn’t want to be moved, but once she did move to her bed, she stayed all night.

Anyways, that’s where Peyton is at 25 months…

The leaves are turning outside and fall has officially arrived - colder temperatures and all.  The time change has thrown the family for a loop…  Peyton’s schedule hasn’t adjusted.  So I guess, we’re adjusting to her.  Though, she has gotten better as the week has progressed.

We’ve had a busy month in October…  The last weekend of the month, we went to Cheraw for a BBQ at my parent’s church on Saturday.  Everything was delicious.  The following day, my mom threw Peyton a birthday party with the family.  We had a great time.

We’ve had a lot of visitors over the last few weeks, too.  Marolyn and Harry came into town for a week while Jen was in Columbia, SC, for work.  Peyton and I were able to go to dinner with them, although, I dont’ think I was good company - I was too busy keeping up with Peyton.  We know next time to block Peyton into a booth - works out much better…  The same week, one of my friends Leigh Ann came in from Chesterfield too.  I was able to have dinner with her and, let me tell you, booth is the way to go.

Jen’s parents came in this past weekend for Peyton’s Conway party.  They were able to stay with us for several days and spend time with Peyton.  She’s grown a lot since they got to see her last time. We ate out at Outback with Brett and Trina (Peyton’s Godparents) as well as Janet and Jim on Thursday for Peyton’s birthday.  Friday night, we went to Brett and Trina’s for trick or treating in their neighborhood.  Sharon and William and Brianna (B&T’s Godchild from Cheraw) came in town and they all got to go around the entire neighborhood.  Everyone had a really great time.

Janet and Jim went back on Monday…  Janet will be very busy now through Inauguration.  She’s going to be swamped with paperwork for the transition at the federal DOT.  Jim is keeping busy  working some and with his model airplanes.  Both of them are doing really good.

Jean and Emily Crawford came into town, also, last weekend for Peyton’s party and for a visit.  They were able to see where Jen works and Jen gave them the grand tour.  They also got to spend time with Peyton.  I visited our PF Chang’s for the first time with Emily and Jean on Monday night.  They stayed at our local bed and breakfast, The Cypress Inn, and loved it.  I think Jen and I will need to reserve a room sometime for an anniversary or something.

I start a new work schedule on Monday.  I’ll be working 7am to 4pm.  I have traded schedules with one of my co-workers who was previously working this schedule.  It didn’t work out for him because he was working too many evening hours in addition to his normal business hours.  So, hopefully it will work out for me.  I volunteered for the schedule change.  I’m hoping it gives me some more time in the evenings to do some things that need doing around the house or around town.  By the time 5pm rolls around now, its dark and I can’t accomplish anything.  Wish me luck!

I wouldn’t normally even blog about this topic.  I think its a very personal one for me…  But, over the past year and a half, we have made numerous changes to how we handle our money.  Almost two years ago, my close friend Kevin gave me a series of CD’s from a guy named Dave Ramsey.  I have to admit, those collected dust in my house for almost a year.  But, I did finally listened to a couple of them.  As I had started them, one of my co-workers and friends (my next-cube neighbor at work) began taking the entire Financial Peace University series with others of my friends through their church.  Frankly, I liked what I was hearing from them when they were talking about it at work, so it peaked my interest.  So, I worked my way through the series with Jen.  And it has made a huge impact in our personal finances.

The first thing that Dave advocates is getting rid of your debt.  I’m glad to say, we’re very close to our goal of having only two debt payments per month - our mortgage and my student loan payment.  By next May, our car will be paid in full and we’ll have met our goal.  That’s a huge personal accomplishment for us!

The second is one we are tackling tonight…  Getting rid of credit cards.  Tonight I had a monumental realization.  We HAVE over $50,000 in available debt credit on 6 credit cards!  $50,000 dollars…  It blows me away.  So, we’re canceling those — tonight!  After tonight, we’ll have only one major credit card, and a Victoria’s Secret card my wife won’t part with… because of the “free panties” - so we’re keeping that one.  We also have a couple no-interest accounts that aren’t paid up yet, but those will be closed in just a couple months, once they are paid in full.   Once those are paid, I’ll finally OWN this desk I’m using to write this post…  Anyways, I digress.

I may not ever post about this again, but finding out how much available credit we had just sitting around unused was a big impact to me - and that juxtaposed against our accomplishments over the past year was something to mention.  I may post more later, or maybe not…  It is a rather personal topic for me…

So, maybe I watch too much TV.  But, I’ve made the decision to remove our online photo gallery from this site and instead share our photos using PicasaWeb and the MobileMe Web Galleries.  These both have features for us to protect and share our photos with family and friends, while maintaining some privacy.  I want to ensure that Peyton is protected and photos of her aren’t just floating online for anyone to see.  I hope everyone understands.  If you’d like to get access to the Picasa gallery and you know me, just email me and I can share it to you…

Well, Jen and I just returned from Las Vegas.  We had a week long trip for me to attend the VMworld conference and for Jen to have a little vacation.  Jen was able to join some of the other wives and do things around town while all of their husbands were busy with the conference.  It worked out really well.

Jen and I were able to fit in a little time to relax at the pool on Monday and then we were able to see Blue Man Group at the Ventitian on Tuesday evening.  Jen also got to tour the Hoover Dam and go out to see the Grand Canyon and lots of Vegas sites.  Jen has started a gallery with photos online.

Peyton stayed with Papa and Gaga Sellers while we were in Las Vegas.  She got a little sick during the week and ended up having to go to the ER in Cheraw.  She had a spot of congestion on her lung and a really bad sore throat.  Antibiotics prescribed cleared everything up.  I’m taking her back to the doctor tomorrow morning just to make sure that everything looks good.  She is acting like she feels much better than she was feeling middle of last week.

Peyton has begun potty training too.  She recently moved into the 2 year old classroom at daycare and they’ve begun working with her to potty train.  We’re trying to continue that at home.  She has gone pee-pee in the potty a couple times now.  So, our world is becoming pull ups and pee-pee for the next little while…

Work is going great for both me and Jen.  Jen is settling back in after a week away.  She missed her annual teacher’s dinner last Tuesday evening.  Everything went well.  I am trying to decompress and process everything I learned at the conference last week.  There was so much, its hard to get everything together.  I’ll be briefing my co-workers sometime this week about everything that I learned…

I also started a second blog - one where I can post about my job, technology, and things in that arena that interest me.  I posted heavily about things from the conference and surprisingly, I’m seeing a lot of traffic to my blog because of that.  When you Google some of the topics I blogged about, my site is showing surprisingly high in the searches.  That translates to traffic and readers - which is very exciting for me.  I didn’t expect that - this was just something I wanted to do for myself.  You can check it out at http://tech.philipsellers.com, if you’re interested.  Its still a work in progress, but I’m working on it as I have time.  One of my post even got picked up by the vendor’s blog and they linked to my post - pretty cool in my eyes…  It was a nice birthday present - oh yeah - I turned 28 on Saturday.   My best birthday present so far was Peyton singing Happy Birthday for me…

Just wanted to post another quick update - actually from last weekend.  We went up and visited my dad on Friday and Saturday and he is doing fantastic.  He is up and moving around - doing almost anything that he wants.  All the problems that prompted the discovery of his herniated disc have disappeared and he’s almost fully recovered from the surgery.  He still gets a little tired at the end of the days and he has some discomfort in the muscles at the back of his neck where they worked on his spinal column.  But, the best news is that the tingling and numbness in his arms is no longer there.  Any nerve damage will take some time to heal, but the fact that those symptoms have disappeared is really awesome!

I have several posts out here that I have started and never posted - so I’m taking the time to post them this morning.

In other news, it looks like Tropical Storm Hanna is heading for our warm sandy beaches.  The last forecast I saw shows it coming ashore just north of the Grand Strand.  Yesterday, it looked to be trackingbetween Georgetown and Myrtle Beach, but its been adjusted north.  Past history kind of tells me that it will hit Wilmington or the Outer Banks of NC, but you can never be too comfortable.  Work the past two days has been hectic, making contegency plans for our datacenters and trying to be as prepared for the worst as possible.

We visited with dad yesterday and he is doing extremely well.  His symptoms have disappeared…  The tingling and pain is gone from his arms and shoulders.  He is even seeing improvement with his scoriosis, which came on out of no-where.  I think it may be related to nerve damage or the stress on his spinal cord from the herniated disc, but we’ll see about that.  

He was really happy to see his baby, Peyton, this weekend and get to spend some time with her.   His spirits were good and he had a few visitors while we were there.  I wish we could have stayed longer, but we had breakfast plans this morning with friends who’ll be out of town for a while visiting family in Hawaii, so we came back.

This afternoon, my dad had surgery on his neck.  The doctor told us that he had a hurniated disc in his neck that was putting pressure on his spinal cord.  He is doing extremely well and looks to be coming home tomorrow, which is very promising.  He is in good spirits and time will ultimately tell how successful the procedure was…  Just keep us in your prayers.

For everyone who didn’t know about this, my dad has been having back pain for a while.  Its mostly in the upper back and sholders.  He has also developed some tingling and numbness in his arms.  Its worse on his right arm, but also affects his left.  I heard more today than I had previously while he was telling the nurses in pre-op about the problems.  Turns out his GP was blaming diabetes and arthritis for the pain and problems, but dad requested more to be done and was sent to have an MRI in Pinehurst.  The MRI showed that he had a herniated disc and he was referred to a doctor in Florence, and went in for his first visit on last Thursday.  The doctor showed him exactly the problem and gave him his options.  Basically, though, he stressed that dad should have an operation as quickly as possible.  The doctor primarly operates with McLeod Regional Medical in Florence, but couldn’t get dad into surgery until late in September, so he called the other major hospital there and booked it for today.  

Its really a wonder that dad has been as functional as he has and that he hasn’t had more major problems than he has had from looking at the disc.  Mom and I were able to see the MRI (which was on CD) over the weekend and it looked scary.  But hopefully he is on the road to recovery now…  more soon…