2009 in a (Large) Nutshell

Since today is the last day of the year, and the decade for that matter, I thought that I would be typical and write about all that has happened this year, or at least the main things. It has been a strange year for sure! It has been one of the absolute best and one of the absolute worst years ever. So let's start this thing.

January:
Manda and I closed on our first house! It was so amazing! The house was a fixer-upper, but it was ours, and we were able to spend the entire month doing just that!

• Kitchen: 
• We tore up the floor and laid new tile.
• We replaced all of the handles and hinges on the cabinets
• We painted all of the cabinets
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We replaced the light fixture
• We repaired a hole in the ceiling
• We installed baseboards

•  Living Room:
• We painted all of the walls and ceiling
• We installed baseboards
• We replaced the front door
• Office
• We painted all the walls and ceiling
• We replaced the carpet
• We installed baseboards
• Bedroom
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We replaced the carpet
• We replaced the ceiling fan/light fixture
• We installed baseboards
• Bathroom
• We tore up the floor and replaced the tile
• We replaced the toilet
• We removed the vanity and installed a pedestal sink
• We removed the tub enclosure
• We replaced the shower head, faucet, handles, and pipes, in the bathtub
• We tiled the shower and installed a niche
• We removed the window and replaced it with glass brick
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We installed a fan/light
• We installed baseboards

• 2nd bedroom
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We installed carpet
• We installed baseboards
• We also replaced all of the windows in the house, had the stucco redone, replaced part of the fence, and are currently working on building a laundry room onto the back of the house.

During this time we also got a new little puppy! He is a black lab, pug mix we think, and he was 6 months old when we got him. We named him, his full name, Ricky Bobby Ricardo Martin Downing. We weren't really planning on getting a dog, but he really needed a good home so we took him in, and he quickly became a part of our family! :)

However, as exciting as all of this was, none of it compared to the most exciting part of it all. We were introducing the 2nd bedroom of our house as "The Baby's Room." We were going to have a baby! We actually found out Christmas of 2008, but we'll count it as 2009. This was one of the most exciting things in our lives! Everything was going great! We had a house, a dog, and a baby! It was wonderful!

February:

However, things quickly went from great to tragic. In February we had our first doctor's appointment for the baby, who we were calling "Shrimp." We were told that everything was looking great, and we scheduled our first ultrasound, but it never happened. The next day we lost Shrimp... This was probably the hardest time I have ever had in my life. I know that some people don't understand, afterall, we were only 2 months pregnant, it's sad, but not the same as losing someone who is born, but it was. It was terrible and sad, and Manda and I both went through an extreme time of grief and questioning of how and why God would allow this to happen. We changed our minds back to the idea that we weren't going to have a little kid running around, and "The Baby's Room" changed back to "The Game Room" or "The 2nd Bedroom." While, I still do not really understand why this happened, we both made it through, and I can say that I learned a lot through it and my faith and trust in God grew through everything.

March:

I got in a car accident, and completely smashed up the front of my car...I still haven't fixed it.

April - May was pretty much life as normal, going to work, going to church, things of that nature...

June:
We came home one night to discover that Ricky was not in our back yard. He had dug under the gate and gone off to explore the neighborhood. Now this was not really a new thing. He had started getting out of the yard on a regular basis, and we would get calls from kind neighbors who had taken him in. That night, however, we received no call. We looked all around for him, drove and walked up and down the streets of our neighborhood, but we couldn't find him, and he was a black dog on a dark night. Manda finally asked a neighbor if they had seen him, and they told us that they had seen a black dog run out into the street and get hit by a car. The neighbor told us that the person that hit the dog got out, picked him up, and drove off.

We were devastated. We started calling vets all around the city, and we found one that said they had a black dog that had been brought in earlier that night that had been hit by a car. I went to go see if it was Ricky, Manda couldn't come because she was too scared they would tell us he had to be put down. When I got there I found a bruised, battered, road rashed, and limping, but ok, Ricky. He looked like he'd been hit by a car...he had. They took a bunch of X-rays, but in the end he came home with us, and after a few weeks of healing, was just fine!

July:
This is when things started to get better. We found out we were pregnant again! Now we were very excited, but also extremely nervous. We were hesitant to tell anyone, we were hesitant to get excited. What if something happened? So we had doctor's appointments, and many ultrasounds, and everything was going just fine. We named this baby "Koopa Troopa" or just "Koopa" for the time being. The "2nd Bedroom" was once again going to be "The Baby's Room!"

Manda and I also went to Seattle at the end of this month for our 3 year anniversary. It was a lot of fun, despite being the hottest it had ever been in Seattle, and we got to go see a bunch of whales out in the wild, which was completely amazing!

The second 1/2 of the year has been pretty good all around. Koopa has been growing just as she should, oh yeah, we found out we were having a little girl :), we have painted her room pink and brown, and have collected many picture of her!

 November:

Manda's car started acting up, it would randomly decide not to start. So we decided, not to spend time and money trying to fix it, but rather, to buy a new car. We sold her 1998 Honda Civic to my cousin and bought a shiny new 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid to replace it! It is beautiful!

December:

The main thing of note in December was our T-Mobile fiasco, which you can read about in my last blog, but that is all fixed now so everything is wonderful, and today looks to be a great day as well, ending out the year on a positive note! :)

So this year has definitely been full of both joy and sorrow, but through it all we have come to see how God works in the good and the bad, and we have learned, on a much deeper level, what it means to trust in Him and lean not on our own understand. Faith is not always the easiest road, but it is always the best, and God is faithful to stand by our side through it all, love us through it all, and bless us immensely!

May God Bless You, and Have a Very Happy New Year!

Terrible T-Mobile Tales

The last month or so has been a horrible rollercoaster of frustration for Manda and I regarding our T-Mobile account, but it reached a happy ending today. Let me explain.

At the beginning of this month we tried to refinance our new car, and we were told that we did not qualify because our credit was too low and we had been sent to collections by T-Mobile. We were completely shocked and upset because we had never been notified by T-Mobile, and I had paid our monthly bill that same day and our account balance was at $0. After hours of telephone conversations and going through multiple frustrating and completely useless Customer Service Representatives, we finally discovered that 3 years ago, when I was added onto Manda's account and we switched her plan to a Family Plan, T-Mobile had closed our account and left an outstanding balance sitting, which were never informed of. So, after 3 years, they finally decided to send us to collections, without ever notifying us, because, according to T-Mobile, they did not have any of our contact information, not even our phone numbers...Yes, that's right, our telephone company really told us, not once, but twice, buy 2 different people, that they did not have our telephone number.

Anyways, the amount that we supposedly owed was not a lot, it was along the lines of $130, but we were furious about what T-Mobile had done, and how it had affected us, and we were not about to pay it. So I wrote letters. I wrote one letter to the Office of the President, one to the Customer Service Complaint Department, and one to the Collections Agency refuting the claim. They were long, about 3 pages each, and they were very clear about the frustration and anger we were experiencing over T-Mobile's lies and deception, and I ended each one with an expectation that they would rectify the situation and remove the record from our account and credit report.

That was about 3 weeks ago...

Today Manda received a call from someone in the Office of the President of T-Mobile. She told Manda that she had received our letter, that this was a common problem because around that time the Sales Associates were being advised not to tell clients when they closed accounts and re-opened new ones, and that she was personally taking care of the situation and would have the record completely removed from our account and from the collections agency. We were told that it could be a month or so before everything was resolved, but that it was being resolved and there was nothing more we needed to do. So we will check again in about a month, but for now, this is a huge relief and a gerat blessing to end the year with! I am so thankful that someone listened to what we had to say and took the initiative to fix it! I only wish that such a large company would train all of its employees to work with their clients to resolve issues so that thing like this don't happen and we don't have to write to the President to get anything accomplished.

The Snow is Always Whiter

I've been thinking lately, I guess you could say, about the phrase "The grass is always greener..." In my case, however, it's more of "The snow is always whiter..." As it is now winter, and it's been cold here, and most of the country has been getting ridiculous snow storms, I have found myself being extremely jealous of those areas that are seeing snow while here in ABQ we have received very little, and I have been completely confused as to how anyone could ever be upset about snow or the prospect of snow. In my opinion, snow is one of the most joyful beautiful things. I love it!

However, thinking about this made me realize something about people. Humans seem to have an inherent desire for that which they do not have, and an inherent abhorrence, or at least a lack of contentment, with what they do have. If we live somewhere that gets cold and has lots of snow we desire to live somewhere that is sunny and warm. If we live somewhere that is sunny and warm we want to live somewhere that is cold and gets snow. We get bored with what we have, and we end up leaving electronic gadgets lying abandoned when there are other people who would be thrilled to own such gadgets. Those who travel a lot wish they were home more, and those who are home a lot wish they could travel more. We seem to never be satisfied.

It doesn't matter what we have, how good or how bad it is, we are almost never content, and this lack of contentment is, I believe, at the root of most of our problems as human beings. Thinking back to the original sin, it really was a lack of contentment, a belief that the grass was greener on the other side, that got us in trouble in the first place. We were given paradise. literally, everything we could ever need, bliss and immeasurable pleasure, but we were not content. There was one thing that we were not given, and that one thing was what we longed and lusted for, ignoring the beauty that surrounded us, even ignoring the fact that what was withheld from us was death. We blindly craved death with an insatiable appetite, and we got exactly what we wanted. However, once we got it we realized that what we truly wanted was what we had in the first place. We are fickle and schizophrenic beings!

From that day forward we yo-yo back and forth. Why do we steal? Because we are discontent with what we have to such a great extent that we take what does not belong to us to try and make us feel content. Why do people have affairs? Because they are discontent with their husband, wife, or partner and they try to find contentment in someone else. Lying, Cheating, Murder, Disobedience, almost everything, can really be traced back to a discontentment and a desire to have or obtain something that one does not currently possess.

We are the same today as we were at the beginning. God has given us the most lavish, beautiful, valuable, extravagant gift that anyone could hope for. He gives us hope, love, peace, purpose, safety, salvation, and so much more, and many accept it, but before long we become discontent with it and once again crave the depravity of everything outside of Him. God talks about this very thing:

"You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place." - Revelation 2:3-5 

"As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness." -- Proverbs 26:11

So my challenge, God's command as outlined in the verses above, is this. Stop constantly longing for the things of the flesh. We have a love and a calling that is great beyond compare, and we should be far more than content to stay within God's arms and follow his laws for us. Afterall, outside of this we only have discontentment, which will lead us in a tragic cycle in which every time we finally get what we think we want it turns to vomit in our hands. God is all we should want, and He is all we will ever need! The snow is no whiter, the grass is no greener, than it is with Him!

Testing Still

I wonder what happens when I email my blog...The photo text did not
appear to work.
--sadarcher777

This is test blog to see how blogging via text works. I am seeing how truly mobile I can be!

Presents?

Another newsletter post. It comes after Christmas, but that's ok.

Christmas is coming up quick, and before you know it, it will be Christmas morning, but what’s this whole Christmas thing really all about? Presents of course! That’s why we have a tree, to put presents under. That’s why we have bows and ribbon, to wrap presents in. That’s why we bake cookies, to give Santa, who brings us presents. It’s all about presents, what we are going to get and what we are going to give, right?

When I was a kid we lived close to the ocean, and we would regularly visit the beach. On one such visit, my parents discovered a shirt, buried in the sand and soaked in salty ocean water. It was just my size, and I think, had planes or some sort of vehicle on it. So what did my parents do, what anyone would do! They picked it up, took it home, washed it, and gave it to me as a gift. This shirt became one of my favorite articles of clothing!

Christmas really is about gifts, or rather, a gift. Jesus, all powerful God, became a weak human baby in order to ultimately give us the gift of salvation through Him! He willingly wrapped Himself in the dirty, sandy, salty, wet shirt of humanity, and then He did what we could not, He cleaned it and made it sparklingly pure, and finally, He gave it back to us, a present of salvation. You can deny the present, refuse to take it, say that it’s not good enough, or He’s not good enough, but ultimately it is the greatest gift you will ever receive, and once you accept it you will want to wear it and show it off to everyone around!

So, while you are getting and giving gifts this Christmas make sure that you don’t miss the best gift of all, the one that God has given you!

Merry Christmas!

SADness

To start off this blog I am going to post a few things that I wrote for the X-Factor newsletter. Look for more stuff to come soon.

How many of you have a name? I'm gonna make a wild guess here and say...all of you! We all have a name, at least one name, and many of us have many names. We have a first name, a middle name, a last name, a screen name, and we all have at least one nickname. Some of our names have a lot of meaning and some are no more significant than the story of the lady who named her newborn children Lemonjello and Orangello after looking at the desserts on the hospital menu...seriously.

So let me tell you about my name. We'll start with Scott. It's a good name. I like it. I was named after a cute song that my parents happened to like, "Watching Scotty Grow," which actually gives me one of my nicknames as well. My middle name, Alexander, came from my dad, who likes history and named me after Alexander the Great, so I guess that means my first name is good, but my middle name is great. Then we have Downing, which I just sorta got by default. Individually, these are all fine names, but when you put them together they are just sad...literally...my initials are S.A.D. My parents named me SAD! LOL But I actually really like being SAD! Everything that makes me SAD, not sad, makes me unique and wonderful, and the same, I'm sure, is true of each of you.

You identify youself with your name, and who you are is unique and wonderful! Every one of you is "fearfully and wonderfully made" by God, and He tells us, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..." He made us perfectly, and He knows our names. So although you may feel like the name God gave you, how you see and define yourself or how others see and define you, is SAD, MAD, BAD, ODD, SEX, FAT, DUM, etc... remember that God knew what He was doing, and He made you unique and wonderful with a unique and wonderful purpose. Allow Him to shine through you and turn your SADness into dancing! (Psalm 30:11)