Only the Lawsons...

O.K., so Lee and I are currently on our "Babymoon" in Santa Rosa Beach (amazing, by the way!), but I had to take a second to blog about what happened to us right before we came down last week!
As most of you know, Lee and I were scheduled to move into a rental house in Old Cloverdale, which is somewhat like the "historical" part of Montgomery. We were super excited at first, and were very thankful that the Lord provided us a rental house that we could move into before the baby came. There are not many rental houses available...at least one the size that we needed! We still have renters in our house in Fairhope that say they are interested in buying, but who really knows what they will end up doing, and we really don't want to own 2 houses at the same time, so renting was our best (and only!) option.
So, over the past week I have been boxing up stuff at the apartment and we have been taking small loads here and there after Lee got off work. The movers were scheduled to come Saturday and move the big stuff. Let me say this...the houses in this area are OLD, hence the historical part of the description. They remind me of the mid-town Mobile houses. Might sound weird, but we love those types of houses with all of the uniqueness and character and hardwood floors in every room, etc. Anyways, we were pumped.
About 2 days before we were suppose to move in, I was cooking dinner in the kitchen and heard on the news that 2 people were shot a few miles down the street from the house. Wowsers. Didn't love hearing that, but just sort of played it off as not too big of a deal since that was a rare event and we had an alarm system. I also think that I let the thought of all the extra square footage down play it as well. That was red flag #1. Red flag #2 was equivalent to about 10 red flags: as Lee and I are taking one last load the night before our trip, we did one more run through before we left. As we are walking out, we looked back and noticed 2 small holes in the wall with some dark colored stuff on the floor beside it. We were like "What in the world is that??" and we as we got closer we noticed it. I hope you are sitting down for this: The holes were RAT HOLES IN THE WALL WHERE RATS HAD CHEWED THEIR WAY IN and the brown things were RAT DROPPINGS!!! Disgusting! I immediately went into panic mode and started to breath deep and fast...dying to run back home and take a shower because I felt so nasty. Lee just stared at it, then at me, then back at it, then back at me. Speechless. We had pretty much moved more than half of our apartment into the house and were leaving early in the morning...only to come back to movers at our doorstep to move the rest of us in. Lee tries to assure me that everything will be o.k., and that we will NOT be moving into the house. I remind him that we just signed the lease a week earlier and I doubt that they will let us out of it. We get into the car and I start full out crying as I am having visions of rats crawling into Knox's crib at night. We go home and I call my mom to cry to her for about an hour, and Lee gets online to look for other rental houses in Montgomery. It was too late at night to call the owners of the house and beg them to let us out of the lease, so all we could do was pray, pray, and pray that they would have open hearts to our situation and call them first thing in the morning. When we woke up we were suppose to be excited about the babymoon, but instead my eyes were swollen shut from all the crying and we were both still so shocked. Lee called the guy at 8 a.m. and had a conversation with him. Bottom line was that he said that he would be o.k. with letting us out of the lease as long as another tenant could be found within a few days. At that point we weren't sure how to feel. I mean, the likelihood of that happening was slim. So, we finish getting ready and head out the door for the trip. With Maddox in tow, we head to the beach trying not to think about the disaster. Well, about 15 minutes into the trip, Lee's phone rang and it was the owner's secretary calling to tell us that they had found another tenant for the house and they would let us out without any financial obligations!!!!!!! Yay God!!!!! However, the people needed to move in THAT DAY, so we had to get our stuff out ASAP. Lee hangs up the phone, we do a praise God/victory dance, and then head straight to a Penske truck rental place. We got a truck, went to the house, loaded up everything, and drove it back over to the apartment. Lee pretty much threw everything in as fast as he could so that we could get back on the road and start the vacation. Even though there was a lot of stuff to move, we were smiling the entire time because we were so thankful that we were about to get out of the lease.
SO, we are now enjoying ourselves on vacation, but will be headed back to an apartment filled with boxes (that I do NOT want to unpack just to pack up again) at the end of the week, and nowhere to live! ha ha. Only us. We did make some appointments to see some other rental houses when we get back, so hopefully something will pan out there! I am confident that the Lord will provide, and this time...we will do a MUCH closer run through before we sign any leases!

Happy Birthday, Carley!!

Ok, so to make a long story short, my sister painted my niece's room a little while back and has had trouble finding artwork to go along with. She asked if I would paint something for Carley for her 3rd birthday. I thought, "Why not?? I am just sitting here waiting for Knox to come, and it will be a good way to entertain myself while Lee is at work." Holy pajamas...it was the most stressful thing I have ever done, and it might be the very last! Haha. Ask my friend Cathie, she will vouch for me. I vented to her on a daily/nightly basis. I have never done something this big, and I am really not an "artist", so it was sort of an issue. Everything also needed 4 to 5 coats as well! Ahhhh! It definitely took me All day EVERYday to finish this sucker! Anyways, the bottom line is this: It is complete and I am alive. Thank you , Jesus! Oh, and tell me this isn't one of the cutest little girls that you have ever seen!