My New Look

Sometimes dads are called on to check out scary noises. Sometimes dads are called on to kill creepy crawly bugs. Clean up puke, nasty noses, cuts and scrapes, and dirty little potty-training-bottoms. Other times we're called on to give horseback rides, piggyback rides, or even throw little kids up in the air. If you're a dad, you know that we try to do these things with lots of enthusiasm because all of those things are important to our little children. And we know that if we don't go all out, our kids know it and always call our bluff. So when you're called upon by your children to do something for them, even when you're not up to it, or you happen to ALSO be scared of the strange noise in the dark or the extremely venomous spider no bigger than a freckle...suck it up and give it 110% anyway.

I had the opportunity today to go all out on one of my daughter's requests. Karissa had her friend, Raven, spend the night last night. This morning they came to me and told me they were going to give me a makeover. So, realizing about 4 strokes of a hair brush and a hair-clippy would probably suffice, I eagerly followed them into their beauty salon (girls' bathroom) for what I assumed would be a quick and painless procedure. However, as they began brushing through my hair, they laid out this elaborate plan they've come up with where they're pretending to be Mary-Kate and Ashley, and Raven owns the beauty salon and Karissa works for her, and they do complete makeovers. Suddenly, I get the feeling that I may be in for a long ride. My first instinct when I see the tube of lipstick approaching my mouth was get up and run as fast as I can, but I decided instead to fulfill my fatherly duties and allow them to have their fun at my expense. :) So...after spraying my hair with water, conditioner, glitter-gel, glitter (that's right, pure glitter)...a thick eye-shadow application, as well as all 10 eyeshadow colors rubbed ever so delicately and professionally into each cheekbone...a healthy application of 3 colors of lip-gloss, chocolate lipstick, and who knows what else....I got in between the cosmopolitan makeover professionals, struck my sexy Zoolander pose, and snapped this glamorous photo:

Straight Eye For the Straight Guy

Last week I wrote the single largest check I have ever written to pay for anything, and it was both painful and rewarding, but mostly painful. For the first time ever, I had the delightful opportunity to take a purposeful stroll through the lovely and scenic downtown Fort Worth all the way down Main Street to the courthouse annex where I had the dubious pleasure of handing a clerk a check for an incredulous sum of money to satisfy my obligation to fund a portion of my community's schools, hospitals, staff, doughnut breaks, and beautification programs due to the simple fact that I am a property owner. We manage our own escrow account for property taxes for control as well as the little bit of interest we make versus letting some mortgage company dictate how much money we need to send them each month so they can make money off of our savings and then at year end say "Oops, we made a mistake in approximating how much your property taxes will be so you need to send us an additional $800 by tomorrow as well as an extra $100 each month, every single month this year, just in case we screw up again." HA! Wait a second...who are you calling cynical!?

Anyway, it was rewarding to be ABLE to pay that large sum of money, but it was painful to realize we now have ZERO DOLLARS saved for 2006 property taxes, due in one year. However, the pain is eased somewhat by 2 positive facts. The first is the homestead exemption that we now qualify for, thus reducing our tax burden for 2006. Secondly, we have the entire year to save for our reduced tax burden, unlike 2005. You see, when we closed in mid-March, the builder gave us his share of property taxes for Jan 1 through mid-March, but it was wrapped into the closing, not cash in hand. Therefore, we only had 9 months to try and save for a full year's worth of taxes!

A side effect from this monumental moment in life occurred Saturday morning while fighting my conscience (whom was urging me to be responsible and get out of bed to tend to our hungry children who were at the side of our bed imitating baby birds at feeding time). After paying so much for property taxes, I wanted something new to show for. I mean, I love our house and am very content with it, but this whole property tax thing made me want to invest in something nice for our house. So in between all the little birdies chirping for pancakes, eggs, bacon, or chips (?) I told Jennifer I wanted to decorate part of our house that we haven't done yet, and I want it to be a very noticable change. She starts kicking and screaming and begging me to please not spend any money decorating our house. OK, just making sure you are paying attention. Anyway, we decide to get up, eat breakfast, and load the family up for an excursion across north Fort Worth to Garden Ridge, which is a heaven-on-earth when it comes to house decorations. Can I lose my man card for saying that? Anyway, an hour and a half later and 427 reprimands to our cherubic children, we leave with a picture frame for our bathroom and curtains for our living room (it only took us 10 months!). The curtains were normally priced at $30 each, but were marked down to $5 each, so we saved $75!! After buying the sheers (?) and curtain rods, we managed to dress up our windows for a mere $50! WAHOO!

By now it's lunchtime, but our decorating craving has not been satisfied, so we stop for a break at McDonald's. Funny story - as we walk in, a young couple compliments my Brett Favre jersey. They just moved here from Wisconsin, home of the Green Bay Packers, so we exchange our mutual compliments of Favre and the Packers before I catch up with the family to order lunch. Afterwards, Jenn and the kids went to the play area, so I get our food and start towards the play area, but I'm so excited in my instant bond with the Wisconsin couple that I have to go back and talk to them more! HA! What? I'm crazy? Whatever. I find out that they have been to Lambeau Field for Packers' games many times, and I can't help feeling like I am in the presence of 2 higher beings. OK, that's a little overboard. But really, it was exciting knowing that I was talking to two people who had actually seen Brett Favre play with their own eyes. It was also fun to talk with people who were on the same wavelength in terms of Favre and the Packers. They gave me some pointers on how to get tickets to a game. Jenn realizes I may be awhile, so she comes and gets the food so our kids can eat - HA! Knowing I must part, I welcome the couple to the area (they literaly had a map on the table looking it over) and go join the family. I apologize Jenn, but during the entire lunch conversation, I was sorely distracted with dreams of Lambeau Field and Brett Favre. :) If he doesn't retire, and I think we'll know within a week or two, Jenn and I will see him play at Lambeau Field this fall.

We leave Mickey D's and go to Wal-Mart to buy some paint for our dining room and kitchen, which is enough to satisfy our decorating binge. We buy a deep red, along with some supplies, and finally make it home safely for a fun-filled weekend of painting. UGH! I'd rather someone tear my head off and throw it in my face than paint! In fact, reliving the whole painting experience this weekend is making the pit of my stomach turn in circles, so I'll skip the details. However, I'll include some before and after photos of the living room windows and the dining room/kitchen, and hopefully the photos won't be too dark. Try clicking on each one to blow it up - that might help see them better. We didn't clean up before I took the pics, so don't mind the mess. :) I'll close by saying that I really like our new decorations a lot! Our home feels cozier and while the red paint was very bold and scary at first, now that we are finished - I love it! Of course, we may wait 2 years to do anymore painting... :) Next month we will buy wall decorations for the kitchen and dining room.

LIVING ROOM WINDOWS BEFORE

LIVING ROOM WINDOWS AFTER

DINING ROOM BEFORE

DINING ROOM AFTER

KITCHEN BEFORE

KITCHEN AFTER

Just For Fun

I post onhere so infrequently anymore that every time I do, I feel like I have to catch you all up on everything. So, I decided to post a new blog only 4 days after my last one with just some fun stuff for the heck of it. I'll pose a few questions, and I'd like you to answer them.

1) You have 1 week this year to take a vacation...where would you go? There are so many places I'd love to go, it's hard to decide. Definitely somewhere in Europe, and it's so hard to pick someplace other than Italy. I know I should see other parts of Europe, but I just love Italy too much. I didn't get to see the Sistene Chapel or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. An italian girl on our train tried to point out the tower as we went through Pisa, but at best we got a half-second glimpse from quite a distance away. SO I think I'd like to see those two things as well as Venice again, and then settle down in a Tuscan villa with the whole family, enjoying the simple life, and interacting with the Italian people the entire time.

2) What would you like to see anywhere in the world that you have never seen? I'd have to say the Northern Lights, Statue of Liberty, and of course Lambeau Field.

3) If you could choose one, with no negative side effects, which would it be: a pill to take that kept you from ever having to go to sleep or a pill to take that kept you from ever having to eat again? Definitely for me it would be the pill that allows you to never go to sleep.

4) If you had 10 million dollars to give away to one charity/organization, what would it be? I would donate it to a cancer research organization.

5) If you could be a doctor, what specialization would you choose? Orthopedic surgeon.

OK, this may be silly, but I thought I would do something different for a change. Now...leave a comment with your answers!

Hello Blog Strangers!

Well here I am for what has become my monthly posting. I haven't kept up with this, and I've even quit reading my friends' blogs that I use to read everyday. Why? I have no idea. Maybe I'll go catch up on theirs after I finish this post. Let's see, what has happened over the past month?

I ended up winning the Fantasy Bowl for my first ever OFFL Fantasy Bowl Championship! Go Texas Thunder Thighs! We had a great Christmas and New Year's celebration. I made out pretty good! I got a double-disc DVD on the history of the Green Bay Packers, including the "Ice Bowl." I also got a cool playstation game and quite a few books, including "Favre" by Brett and his mother. I now have 6 books to read, and I know it may be surprising, but I'm already half way through my first selection - Favre! It is so fun to read about games and decisions and events of Favre through his own eyes. After I finish that book, I'll probably either start "1776" or a book by Francene Rivers called "Caleb" which hopefully will give me a better idea of who Caleb was in the Old Testament so I can pass down my son's name's meaning to him as he gets older. It's amazing how the kids can get so much for Christmas and still complain about being bored and having nothing to play with. Anyway, we all had a great time over the holiday season. Oh one more thing - we got a carpet-shampooer-steam-cleaner (?), which I used last Sunday night, and I LOVE IT! It took me 2 hours to do just the living room, but it made the carpet like brand new again...of course, the high traffic area is already beaten down again, but all the little spots are gone! WAHOO!

This paragraph is about the NFL, so if you're not interested, go ahead and skip down to the next paragraph. It came as a surprise that Mike Sherman got fired as the Green Bay coach. I thought he helped the team stick together very well through all their adversities this year. I think (and hope) he will get picked up rather quickly by another team. That move doesn't bode well for Favre's potential return next year, but I'm waiting in high hopes that he WILL return anyway! You could argue that it would be good for the team to have a veteran QB help teach Aaron Rodgers, Favre's eventual replacement, the new coach's system. However, I think physically, Favre still has several more years in him (especially with a healthy team)...but he and his family have been through sooo much recently, it would not be a surprise if he decided he was ready to focus more on his family than playing football. I will be checking the news every single day for the moment he announces his decision. I must admit, I was somewhat disappointed today to learn that Parcells extended his contract 2 more years. I've liked him less and less over the past couple of years. Oh well. This weekend will be fun! Wildcard weekend! I predict the Bucs will beat the Skins, Panthers over Giants, Pats over Jags, and Steelers over Bengals. However, none of these games will really mean anything because I think the Colts will beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.

One other quick football note - the Texas vs USC game was one of the best football games I have ever seen! I was so nervous from early in the 1st quarter all the way until the clock expired! I did pick Texas to win, but I felt like it would be a close game. I've only been watching college football over the past 3 years or so, when Chance Mock was QB for Texas...because he's my grandmother's sister's grandson. There is so much more emotion in a big college game than in the NFL, but I think the fact that they don't have a playoff system is absolutely ridiculous! That is why I've stayed away from college football for so long. I have yet to hear a logical argument for the way they determine the championship. Just pick the best 16-32 teams, throw them in a single-elimination playoff tree and see who comes out as the last man standing and there's your champion. I know the bowl games are important because of all the money, but you could still have bowl games in a playoff tree. Each playoff game is a bowl game if you must have bowls. And don't tell me there's too many teams because they use a playoff bracket in NCAA basketball. Anyway, I'll quit ranting about how stupid the current setup is in college football. What I don't get is that most people agree with me, but the system hasn't changed yet.

OK, this blog was not supposed to be entirely about football, but let's face it...my passion for football runs very deep. On to other things though....the most exciting news I've heard recently is that our friends from Milan, Italy - Laura & Marco, whom we met up with 2 years ago in Rome, Italy, are coming to visit us this summer at our house for 2 weeks!! I've really talked up my "Kirkburger" pretty big, so I hope they won't be disappointed. :) They went to Berlin over New Year's and we just received a postcard from them today - Thanks Laura & Marco! It will be a fun experience! They may decide to wait a long time to have children after spending so much time with ours! HA!

Work is going well, but we're approaching a very busy time of year. Hopefully I won't have to work late too many nights. Our director of Marketing has been in California all week working with our biggest brokers on an exciting deal. They bought another advisor's book of business ($90 million) who is retiring to the Hawaiin islands, so Jackie went to help them transfer everything over. We should get a meaningful portion of those assets, maybe half, which would increase our revenues by $450,000 per year!!! Our current assets under management are $160 million, so that would push us over the $200 million mark! Awesome!

It's late Friday night and I think I'm about to go to bed. Not much is planned for the weekend - watch some football, play with the kids, help my school friend from St. Lucia (Carribean) move some furniture from her old apartment to her new one, and that's about it. I feel sorry for my friend, Lua. We went through our MBA together and she was looking for a job here when her visa was about to expire, so she had to hurry up and find ANY job to extend her visa...so she's managing a Waffle House and absolutely hates it! She can't find dependable staff, so she has to work double shifts all the time filling in for people who don't show up or quit after 3 days. If you know of any job down here or even in Wichita Falls that she could do, let me know. Her boyfriend is still in Wichita Falls going to MSU, so she'd be happy to move back if she found a job. Also, a few things to keep in your prayers - Jennifer's back has been hurting her pretty bad, Kylie is sick (again) and could have asthma, and my grandpa is in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia. He wasn't doing very good at first, but has been showing signs of improvement the past couple of days, so hopefully he is on the road to recovery - at his age and condition, it could be very serious.

Have a great weekend and make sure you leave comments!