so glad it's gone!

in looking back over the events of 2006 and looking forward to 2007, one of the most important events to happen for us was the sale of jerry's home in webb city. we had put the house on the market in august of 2005, knowing that we were making plans to marry and combine households and also knowing that houses don't always sell immediately.

well, it was almost exactly a year from the date of listing the house to the date of closing on the house. i was actually sick to death of the house, myself. we spent hours and hours and hours painting layer upon layer upon layer of kilz and off-white paint over the atrocious and offensive sponge-painting throughout the house. when the realtor first saw the house, she just laughed at the paint and color schemes throughout the house and said, "that HAS to go before i'll even show it!"

i know it's hard to believe, but one particularly ridiculous room actually took 7 layers to cover up the horrid sponge-painting design. it was one of those things that was just so ridiculous and idiotic that it becomes hilarious in the process. we laughed and laughed at that room, the design, the idea, and everything -- all as we continued to paint layer over layer trying to hide it from the rest of the world.

there was one particularly good point about this house, though. it had a beautiful deck on the back, leading from the kitchen upstairs to the pool downstairs. it was brilliantly designed and built, with gates at the top of the stairs, at the bottom of the stairs, and before the pool area -- insuring that the small grandchildren couldn't sneak into the pool area. i was amazed when i found out that jerry had designed and built the deck himself -- all without a printed pattern but from the picture in his mind!

there was nothing more exciting than getting the call that said the deal was final. we were closing on the house and moving on in life. yeah, we had some good times there -- but there were many more bad times there than good times for both of us. now we could dump this albatross from around our necks and move on in life toward more good times and good memories.

this was the absolute most exciting piece of mail that we received all year of 2006! the feeling of freedom that this gave us was almost unbelievable!