We're advertising our home online and I want to link to photos and may even add a video tour some time soon. This post will be a work in progress. I'll be adding more interior shots soon...I still need to pick up after our new tile floor was put in!

Unique Home in Desirable Neighborhood

Spacious Two-Story Conveniently Located

3 Bedrooms                           2.5 Bathrooms                      Built 1999

2,071 Sq. Ft. Home              13,000 Sq. Ft. Lot                2-Car Garage*

Beautiful Sunset View of the West 

v     Living Room with Vaulted Ceilings & Built-In Bookshelves

v     Spacious, Open Kitchen; Plenty of Cabinets & Counter Space; Walk-In Pantry; New Sink & Dishwasher

v     Master Bdr Suite on Ground Floor, Carpeted,    2 Walk-In Closets

v     Master Bathrm: 2 Vanities/Sinks, Garden Tub, New Tile Shower, Separate Toilet

v     Ground Floor Newly Tiled, Upstairs Carpeted

v     Full Sprinkler System, Fenced Back Yard

v     Neutral Colors, No Work Needed; Just Move In

v     Covered Front and Back Patios

v     6-Person Hot Tub Rated #1 in 2006 CnsmRpt

v     Formal Living/Dining Area

v     Ceiling Fans Throughout

v     Ample Storage Inside; RV/Boat Space Outside

v     Peach, Pear & Apple Trees Blossom in Spring and Bear Fruit; 2 Kinds of Jjasmine; Hibiscus

v     All Windows Covered in Wooden Blinds

v     Large Upstairs Bathroom: 2 Sinks, Tub/Shower

*2-Car Garage, Side-Entry

***** A HOME WAITING TO STEAL YOUR HEART; MUST SEE *****

Be sure to return to see when new photos are added!

4th of July 2009:

December 2008:

January 2007 (We don't usually get snow)

Flowers:

Interior:

Master Bath:

Upstairs Bathroom:

Kitchen as seen from the breakfast nook (Better shots to come)

Walk-In Pantry just past the fridge:

Sunsets:

Please Check Back For Additional Shots

Double Dog Skunking (edit at bottom)

Last night, our dogs got skunked. Again.

I think this was the fourth time in two months, but they’re all starting to blur together.

Midori, our old girl who has almost as much silver hair as black these days, took a direct hit under the chin. She came inside foaming at the mouth…a side-effect of skunk spray that I’m becoming intimately familiar with. Frodo’s eyes were bugging out from the intensity of the situation.

We’ve learned that you wash a dog who has been skunked with very warm water. It opens their pores and then you can wash out more of the spray. This reduces the residual effect of skunk scent coming out of their pores weeks after the actual skunking. For us, this means the dogs have to go through the living room and up the stairs to the bathroom with the large tub and the shower head on a long hose  that I once bought just for dog washing.

Specifically, what this means is stopping Frodo from rubbing on the back of the couch and preventing him from hiding under our bed, his safety zone. And for Midori, it means stopping her from jumping on the black chair in the living room where she loves to spend her time (the one piece of living room furniture the dogs are allowed on, and the chair in which I do the majority of my writing) and from going in her kennel, which is her safety zone, and soiling her bedding.

We were relatively successful at getting the dogs upstairs and into the bathroom. Midori spent some brief moments in the black chair and her kennel, so we sprayed down and washed the chair later and threw her bedding in the washing machine. No bigee.

Meanwhile, I was upstairs warming up the shower water. But first, the most important move, I tore off my jeans and top because no sane person wears clothes while de-skunking dogs. or You. Will. Not. Get. The. Smell. Out. With. One. Wash.  So I threw my clothes onto the bathroom counter, well up and away from the bath. It’s a large bathroom, perfect for kids if any of you wants to buy a home. It’s going on the market shortly because the military is transferring us. Yes, I interrupted this blog with a shameless sales pitch.

The dogs joined me in the bathroom thanks to Steve’s shepherding, and both flew into the tub. Yes. Both flew. No commands, no coaxing, no protests, no running to Steve asking him to save them from the mean lady.

Our dogs love water…Midori is an amazing swimmer and surfer, her dominant breed being Labrador. Frodo loves sprinklers and has come to enjoy swimming. Both let us wash them from the hose in the yard, but neither likes the bathtub. At all.

However, they hate getting skunked even worse. I usually wash the dogs one at a time, but they both flew in over the edge and into the tub in perfect synchronization. You would have thought they were dancing an athletic, choreographed routine. Both sat there, eyes begging for the washing to begin.

Then it hit me. OH EXPLATIVE! Yes, this good little Christian girl said it. With volume.

The one thing that works on skunk smell it VET SOLUTIONS brand shampoo. We were nearly out, the only place in town that sells it is our veterinarian, and I was procrastinating buying more until I needed to get Midori’s next refill of her arthritis meds. The vet closes at 6pm. It was 9pm. We had about one dog’s worth of shampoo left, but our friends’ dog got skunked a few nights earlier and they called to see if they could borrow our shampoo. Of course they could. We knew the misery of having the dogs stink overnight before you can solve the issue. I also sent the VET SOLUTIONS brand follow-up neutralizing spray with the friends. We had plenty of that and it’s wonderful if some of the scent still remains after the initial washing. It also helps when the smell comes out of their pores on a humid day weeks down the road. And it works on deodorizing furniture and rugs. And it smells good!

Steve called our friends but they didn't answer, so I ordered him to go to their house. It was 9pm, they might be morning people but they might still be up. I felt like I was making Steve live that scripture about the neighbor who woke people up in the middle of the night to borrow a loaf of bread. But these are good friends and they know skunkings happen at night.

Meanwhile, I washed the dogs with citrus scented people shampoo. It didn’t do as good of a job as the VET SOLUTIONS brand stuff, but it took more than an edge off.

Steve came back with the spray and some peroxide and baking soda. But I didn’t want to mess with that concoction…it works fairly well, but doesn’t hold a candle to the VET SOLUTIONS brand shampoo and I knew I’d be getting the shampoo the next day. However, I DID use up the entire bottle of VET SOLUTIONS brand spray. I used most of it on the dogs, but also sprayed the stairwell and the black chair.

Midori was skunked so hard that whenever I went to give my sad girl a hug, I’d wretch from nausea and my eyes would sting and water.

We slept with the windows open. The front ones…the back of the house had skunk scent thick in the air.

We lit candles until the last moment before bed. And I re-lit them in the morning while I got ready for work. They seriously help.

There are still pockets of smell in my house, but I know from experience that they’ll be gone in 2-3 days with proper airing and candle-ing.

I came to work today, constantly feeling like I smelled skunk. It made me feel a bit sick. I thought I must be crazy. I hoped I might be pregnant…you know, the whole sensitive-to-smell symptom. But it’s my last day of work and I decided to just ignore these imaginings and get productive at the office.

And then it hit me.

My jeans.

I’m wearing the jeans that were on the bathroom counter when I washed the dogs. They never touched the dogs, but PHEW it was pungent in there. They must have absorbed a ton of skunk fumes.

I ran to the office bathroom and smelled my jeans. Sure enough.

I’m walking around in skunked jeans.

No wonder my eyes smart and threaten to water. It’s giving me a bit of a headache. And it’s nauseating me.

I’m finding myself walking REALLY FAST from one place to another in the office in attempt to create a breeze that will take the scent away from my nose.

I’m finding myself thinking that I’d rather be in a home where they are cooking chitlins than being in my jeans. Anyone want to trade? If you know me and chitlins, that’s saying a lot!

I’ve apologized to my boss for the smell, but he says he doesn’t notice it.

I’m living for my lunch break when I will go home and change and put the offending denim in the wash!

Have you ever reeked at work? Do tell the story. I’m tired of laughing at myself. Let me laugh at you.

 Question: We just had new neighbors move in next door. They have a dog, a german shepherd mix. I'm thinking of bringing them a bottle of the shampoo and some home made cookies as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift. Will they think I'm insane? I just think it helps to be prepared.

EDIT: I went home on lunch and changed into a different pair of jeans and scarfed some leftovers and gave the dogs some love. Back at work, I still swear I smell skunk, though the odor has improved now that I have on clean jeans. Now it's only mildly nauseating and my nose it twinging but the headache is gone. I bet it's INSIDE my nose the same way it can cling to skin. Awful!

My poor dogs...if I'm suffering like this, imagine how they feel. Their sense of smell are exponentially stronger than humans'.

My boss told me a hilarious story from when he was in high school. His friend got skunked one night when they were out doing god-knows-what 50 miles out of town. It was 40 degrees outside, but they made the poor guy ride in the back of the pickup all the way home. The next morning, the guy went to school. Everywhere he went, the school REEKED. After about 30 minutes, the principal came and kicked him out of the building and told him not to come back until the stink was gone. LoL.

I'm making these today, so I wanted to move the post to current-time. If you've never tried these, you're missing out!

This is a re-post from last year...I'm so in the mood for these cookies, and 'tis the season for pumpkin, so I thought you might enjoy these too.

EDIT 1: I'm making them right now. Holy cow, the cookie batter alone makes this worth it! DEEEE-licious. My husband is coming home with sushi soon. I think I'm going to reach food-nirvana tonight.

EDIT 2: I made a double recipe so I could use the whole can of pumpkin meat. The double recipe made a little over 5 dozen cookies. I baked them for 12-13min. I substituted most of the sugar for the "Splenda Sugar Blend" and a little of it for "Splenda Brown Sugar" (maybe about 1/4 of the sugar was the brown sugar). The splenda blends didn't do anything bad to the texture or moisture of the cookies, so I'll do that again.

 + =

Okay, so I coined the name "nerf cookies" years ago when my super roommate made these for us. But they are really called "TwoBoyCrazy Family Pumpkin Cookies" or "Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies" and she was kind enough to share the recipe with me. It's been a long, long time since I've made them, but I'm craving them. My husband will be coming home to them when he gets back from his trip.

These cookies have the most amazing texture. If you like soft cookies, try these!

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

• 1 cup pumpkin (one small can is more than enough)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 egg

Beat the above ingredients together before adding the other ingredients.

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 or 2 tsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup chocolate chips (or less if you prefer the pumpkin part over the chips)
• a pinch of nutmeg

Mix.

Drop by the spoonful onto greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes. Sometimes they need 12 minutes.

Notes from my roommate on the recipe: The longer these cookies sit, the more moist they get. She said the secret is to make sure that they are as fully cooked as they can get. Sometimes 2BoyCrazy cooked them until they were "good and brown." At first they will be dry but they will get their moisture back a few hours later, especially if they are in a sealed container. Recipe by TwoBoyCrazy, the friend who introduced me to Xanga.

We just found out that we're moving. In February.

We knew we were moving in 2010, but sort of thought it would be May/June.

Woah. Head spinning.

But excited. Ramping up for some hard work and adventure.

When we leave Texas, we'll split our year between New Mexico and coastal North Carolina. It will be a year of training for my husband. Methinks it could be a good year for writing my next novel.

But between now and the end of February, life will be B-U-S-Y!

First of all, we need to put our house on the market ASAP. That means getting the renovations done (they're supposed to finish today but the workers have yet to show up!) and learning how to actually sell a house. It means weeding out a good quarter of our posessions and move them to the garage, in order to "stage" the house well.

It means keeping the house clean. All. The. Time. Clean. [I am so not a neat freak...I hope it's not too hellish to live as one.]

And then there are all the Christmas projects and the pay-it-forward gift I'm planning to send to some of you.

It means reduced Xanga time, which means not reading everyone's posts all the time. It means not writing so much here. It means sporadic contact with you beloved friends.

But I'll still be here...sporadically.

The following memo was circulated around base personnel and spouses. I found the info very helpful and insightful. It's been my habit to get out my drivers license, registration and insurance card while waiting for a policeman to run my plates. And I've always left my car running. Now I know better.

This is worth the read and worth sharing with others.

What to Do During a Traffic Stop

Believe it or not, the most dangerous part of a police officer's routine is
when they pull over a vehicle for a traffic stop. A traffic stop is when a
police officer is most likely to be injured or even killed. Official Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics report that nationwide, more police
officers are killed during vehicle pursuits and routine traffic stops than
in any other situation except making arrests.

There are standard procedures to follow if you've been pulled over by a
police officer. By following these steps, you put the officer more at ease
and may even help yourself get by with just a warning instead of a ticket.

First and most important is not to get out of the car! Don't open your
vehicle's door, either. The officer will perceive this as a threat, and he
will act accordingly. Stay in the vehicle unless you are told to get out.
When a police officer first pulls you over, it seems like ages before he
approaches you. This is because the officer is running a computerized search
through the police database to check your license plate. The police officer
is checking to see if your car is stolen or wanted for any reason. Don't get
nervous during this period. Just sit still inside your vehicle. Don't start
getting out your driver's license or insurance papers yet. The police
officer can't tell the difference between you reaching for insurance papers
or a gun out of your glove box.

As the officer starts to approach the car, keep your hands on the steering
wheel in plain sight. It helps to have your vehicle turned off. Preferably
put your keys on the dashboard easily visible to the police officer. Sit
calmly until the officer reaches your car.

Attitude is of vital importance when the officer gets to your vehicle.
Regardless of how unfair you think the situation may be, never lose your
temper. Don't have a disrespectful demeanor. Don't be argumentative with the
officer. Respect may get you out of the ticket completely.

Follow the officer's instructions and answer his questions politely. Don't
attempt to retrieve your driver's license or any other documents until the
officer asks for them. When the officer does ask, tell the officer what
you're doing before you do it.  For example, if your registration papers are
in the glove box, tell the officer before reaching over to get them.

Don't become concerned if another police car drives by or even stops behind
the other police vehicle. This probably doesn't mean that you are about to
be hauled off to jail. It is starting to become a standard procedure if an
officer is available because of the danger involved during traffic stops.

The officer will then return to his police car to check the validity of your
driver's license information and possibly run other background checks, such
as information on the auto registration and outstanding warrant checks. If
you've been unlucky enough to get pulled over without a valid license or
auto insurance, get ready to walk.

This is the point at which the officer decides whether to issue a ticket or
let you go with a warning. Your actions during the traffic stop will play a
big factor in his decision. Police officers are humans, after all. If the
officer decides to write a ticket, you will be informed of the citation.

I have attached the above memo provided by the SFS
Superintendent Chief Johnson outlining what your actions should be if pulled
over on base.  Please share this info with your dependents as well, Shirt

Jeffry M McGaffin MSgt, USAF

First Sergeant 47th FSS/CPTS/WSA

Aren't you glad you read this now?

Okay, and how about some funny follow-on to the above info...

[Warning...there are cuss words in this skit.]