The Lee Family

Video of Mommy and Lucy

2009-05-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

Enjoy:

Mexican Riviera Cruise

2008-12-18T22:37:00.000-08:00

We went on a Mexican Riviera Cruise on Royal Carribean at the beginning of December and it was AWESOME!! We had so much fun! Unfortunately, after only taking 4 pictures, a bottle of baby formula was accidentally emptied onto our digital camera so we had to buy a disposable one. The picture quality is not as good as it would have been... but hey, at least we got pictures.

October Update

2008-10-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

It's been forever since we posted anything and a lot has happened since our last post. Lucy has been crawling for weeks now and she took her first step about a week ago. She is still struggling to walk any sort of distance but she's getting better and better every day. Here are some pictures that we've taken recently:

Disneyland Pictures

2008-08-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

Disneyland and a Plumber Who Doesn't Know How to Fix Plumbing

2008-08-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

So we went to Disneyland on Sunday and it was really fun. We got up around 7am and left around 8:30am. We picked up the tickets at the Ramada close to Disneyland and then went to Target to pick up some essentials. We bought a digital camera at Target because we had forgotten our camera at home (we ended up putting all the pictures on the computer and then taking the camera back hahaha). I don't have the pictures with me at work to upload them to the blog so I'll try to get some pictures uploaded tonight. We got into the park at about 10:30am. Lucy loved it! She was just amazed at all the people, all the bright lights, and all the commotion. She especially like the Tiki Room. We took her to my parents' house at around 3:30pm and went back to the park to enjoy some of the 'big kid' rides :-) We went on Star Tours, Space Mountain, the Matterhorn, Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones, and Pirates of the Caribbean. We had a blast. We went to the timeshare company provided motel after the park and were not suprised to find that it was really gross. There was even a roach on the wall. We were so tired by this point that we just decided to deal with it and we crashed at around midnight. We woke up early and got Lucy. It was nice seeing my parents and Ann Marie (Samantha was sleeping). We don't see them often enough.

In other news, we got the leak in the master bath tub under control.. The first plumber that came out had told us that we have mold. We had Todd McCord come out to get rid of the mold and he said that there was no mold, but went ahead and bleached it anyway just to be sure. Then the home warranty company Fidelity called out that same plumber again, who apparently didn't know how to fix our problem because about an hour later, he said he would have to open up the stucco on the side of the house in order to fix the leak and that he was not comfortable doing it. Fidelity sent out a different plumber and that plumber confirmed with us that there was indeed, no mold and that the other plumber had made the problem even worse by screwing the drain cap on too tight and cracking the pipe. The second plumber came back the next day and fixed the plumbing (without having to open up the stucco on the side of the house).

I like having a home warranty. It's like living at an apartment cuz you don't have to fix things yourself. All you pay is $55.00 for a copay and then they fix the problem. Our Air Conditioner is covered on the home warranty too and it has not been working as well as it needs to so we called yesterday to have the A/C fixed too. It's kind of awesome. Depending on how much the home warranty will cost us annually, we might consider renewing it next year.

-David

July in Retrospect

2008-07-31T13:24:00.000-07:00

Since we haven't posted for a while I'll give you a summary of what we've done over the past month.

First, an update on Lucy. She is officially 7 months old as of today. She is pretty close to being able to crawl. She can push herself up on her knees and then rocks back and forth. She knows that she can move her knees from this position but hasn't figured out that she needs to move her arms forward too so she just falls flat on her face... sad but very very cute.

After draining the tub in the master bathroom a couple weeks ago, there was a waterfall of water that fell into the kitchen from above. We filed a claim with our home warranty company and a plumber came out to take a look. When he cut a hole in the ceiling he discovered extensive water damage in the ceiling and walls and mold in all of the walls and ceiling. Because the mold is still wet, it does not make the air harmful to breathe, but as soon as it dries it can become a big problem. I filed a claim with our homeowners insurance for water damage there and also for water damage in the living room where the planter drains directly into the floor haha. Oh, the joys of homeownership. Hopefully we can get all this stuff under control soon. We've also had problems with our our automatic pool cleaner. It only actually works about half the time. It's been a rough tim getting ahold of the Hayward warranty place too. Just so many things that one takes for granted as an apartment dweller :-)

We are going to Disneyland on Sunday. We went to a timeshare presentation and that was our gift for listening to the guy talk for 2 hours. We're going to take Lucy with us during the day, then drop her off with my parents and go back to enjoy the evening together alone at Disneyland. After Disneyland, we're going to a crappy motel, also courtesy of the timeshare company, and will spend the night there and pick Lucy up early the next morning. It should be a blast!

We've keeping very busy around the house since our last update. We planted a bunch of plants in the backyard and it's looking very nice. The bedrooms and bathrooms are all put together and the number of projects on my plate for the next few weeks is dwindiling slowly but surely.

Kelly's Mom and Bill

2008-07-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

Kelly's mom, Ann and her husband Bill (Moss) came to stay with us over the past 2 days. We stayed up until midnight on Wednesday night putting the guest bedroom bed together and getting the hardware in the guest bathroom ready, and they arrived on Thursday at about 3pm with Kelly's brother Jeff. We went to Anchos for dinner and stayed up late just talking and laughing about pretty much nothing at all. I went to work on Friday, got home, went out to eat with everyone, and we basically just had a great time. Kelly went with Ann and Bill to visit with Ann's mom and dad in Yorba Linda and they took some great pictures. They left about a half hour ago and we're sad to see them go but we had a great time nonetheless.

American Idols Live Concert

2008-07-08T11:25:00.001-07:00

Kelly and I went to the American Idols Live concert last night and it was aweseome! It was at the Staples Center. We dropped Lucy off at Kelly's dad's house and got to the concert at about 6pm. Our seats were at the very front frow of our section on the aisle. They were very good seats because they were 1 step above the floor, which was high enough to see the stage without having to worry about a tall guy sitting in front of us. The singers played in the order they were eliminated.

10 - Chickeze: I thought he did really well but Kelly didn't like him that much. He was much better live than he was on the show. Not necessarily my style of music but entertaining either way.

9 - Ramiele Malubay: Compared to her performances on the show, she did very well. It was decent.

8 - Michael Johns: Other than the fact that all the women/girls in the audience would not shut up, he did amazing. He didn't make it far in the show but I think that's only because he didn't do what he was capable of. VERY good set by Michael Johns.

7 - Kristy Lee Cook: Other than with David Cook, Kelly and I were most impressed with Kristy Lee's performance. Her voice was right on. She did some songs from the show and some ones we hadn't heard her sing, but an amazing job by Krisy Lee.

6 - Carly Smithson: Her first song was by Evanescence and was incredible. The rest of her songs were just okay, but she did a pretty good job overall.

5 - Brooke White: Kelly and I were actually looking forward to Brooke because we like her sound but we were kind of disappointed. The highlight of her set was Yellow by Coldplay. She was kind of boring on stage but her voice was decent and Yellow was worth watching her whole set.

The 6 people that had played up to this point came out and sang a song that I really liked but can't remember what it was. Then there was an intermission so we could go to the bathroom, etc.

4 - Jason Castro: He was the least impressive performer in my opinion. He didn't bring anything new to his performance since the show and just seemed like he was there because he had to be. He was okay and his Somewhere Over the Rainbow song was really good, but I was expecting something a lot better from him.

3 - Syesha Mercado: Syesha did awesome as expected. She sang some hip hop song first (Kelly would be able to tell you the name of the song but I have no idea) and she did very well. She deserved to be in the top 3 because she was awesome.

2 - David Archuleta: His first song, Angels, was good but the rest of his set was not-so-much. He was everything you would have expected him to be... lame and full of "we're all so grateful" comments in between songs. Ugh...

1 - David Cook: By far, David Cook stole the show. He was absolutely amazing. He started his set with Hello by Lionel Richie, which he also performed on the show, and did amazing. He then played the lame song that has been his single since the finale of the show, Time of My Life. It was good but the song is lame and doesn't fit his style very well. After that he dedicated My Hero by the Foo Fighters to his brother (who I believe is dying of cancer) and it was one of the best songs of the entire night. He followed it up with I Don't Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith and even though that song is so played out, he did an amazing job with it. He got off the stage after that song, then came back and played an AMAZING rendition of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson.
After David finished his set, they all came back and sang "Please Don't Stop the Music" (or something like that) by Rihanna (or someone like that). It was pretty good.

All in all it was a VERY good show and was worth the couple hundred bucks we paid for the tickets.

Lucy's Official 6 Month Pictures

2008-07-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the past few months

2008-07-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

Baby and Mommy: Sitting up with a little help:
Her first owie :-(
Lucy and Mommy again:
Her first time sitting at the table at the old apartment:
At the Spectrum in Irvine:
Daddy loves Lucy:Discovered her feet:At the Spectrum with Daddy:
Jeff and Dave helping us move from the apartment:
Dad working his butt off painting the house:
Shana helping move stuff from the truck to the garage:
Jeff and David struggling with a heavy antique sewing table:
Mommy and Lucy helping move:
What an accomplishment!
Mommy and Lucy at David's parent's house:
Nice hair!

Check out her cute little headband:
David coming in from doing yardwork:
First bath in the sink:
First time in the pool:
Mommy and Lucy relaxing:
She loves her jumper but it also makes her so tired:
Finally eating baby food:
Our plant in the back yard must be happy about something:
Daddy and Lucy:
Enjoying some lunch:

Getting Situated

2008-06-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a VERY busy weekend for us. It's incredible how dirty the house was. It's like the people who lived here before never cleaned EVER! Kelly has been cleaning non-stop for 5 days and it is finally beginning to be clean enough to live in comfortably.

Kelly's mom is moving this month and she had a TON of furniture sent to our house and it arrived on Friday. Now we have a bedroom set for the extra bedroom plus all of the furniture we need to furnish the downstairs. It looks really nice. We also now have everything out of the garage and into the right rooms but we're still working on getting everything organized upstairs. The downstairs is pretty much set up how it's going to stay and our next step is the bedrooms.

We pulled the wrought iron out of the kitchen cabinets, pulled out the glass, cleaned it, and re-installed it with some new moulding to hold it in and it looks awesome.

The master bathroom toilet started leaking on Friday and I spent 5 hours on Saturday trying to fix it only to need to call a plumber to come fix it for $160.00. I hope I will become more handy as time goes on. We ended up needing a new copper pipe soldered onto the existing pipe in the wall and the entire toilet needed to be reset with a new wax ring. I would not have been able to fix it without a plumber's help anyway. It would have been nice to know that BEFORE I attempted to fix it from 8am to 1pm but at least it's done now... that's all that really matters.

Fedex delivered the water heater parts on Saturday and I was actually able to fix it myself. We enjoyed hot showers for the first time on Saturday and it only took until four days after we moved in haha.

Until next time.

-David

FINALLY!

2008-06-13T06:56:00.000-07:00

The house did not record with the clerk-recorder on Tuesday like it was supposed to (big surprise...) but it recorded on Wednesday which happened to also be my birthday. It really didn't matter to us that it didn't record on Tuesday anyway because my dad didn't finish painting until Tuesday, so when it was finally legal to actually move in, the painting was completely finished. It looks awesome! We haven't had a chance to take pictures yet but as soon as we are all moved in, I will post some.

We will be moving in over the next few days and will probably be pretty settled in by the end of this weekend. I'm back at work today and will be taking the train to work starting on Monday.

We have already run into our first set of problems as homeowners, but I guess that's pretty normal. The water heater has been giving me problems and we have yet to take a hot shower at the new house. GE is sending out parts today and hopefully we'll be able to enjoy hot water tonight. Since taking a shower is colder than the pool, Kelly and I jumped in the pool (for the first time ever) yesterday evening and it was quite refreshing.

It's an interesting feeling to be an actual homeowner. We love it so far.

Believe it or not...

2008-06-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

Our loan actually funded yesterday. All that has to happen now is it has to record with the county clerk-recorder's office and then it's officially our house. VERY exciting!!

My dad (and Scott Hicken) worked on painting yesterday. They painted all the walls in the bedrooms, the ceilings in the bathrooms, all the doors, all the cabinets, and all the railings. What still remains to be painted is the walls in the kitchen, family room, great room, and bathrooms. My dad said that he might be almost completely done with everything today. That is amazing isn't it? I can't believe how fast he is able to work. It would have taken me three weeks to do what he has done in 3 days of work.

I'll take pictures of the interior of the house before we move all the stuff in. It's going to look awesome!

-David

People Who Can't Do Their Jobs

2008-06-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

In line with every experience we have had with this transaction, the lender did not fund the loan nor did the house record on Friday as it was supposed to. This time it was the fault of the seller (the bank). Escrow requested a signature on a few documents at 10:30am from the seller and it took them until 4:30pm to sign them and get them back to escrow. Since it was their fault this time, they agreed to waive the per diem penalty for not closing on time up until Tuesday.

Even with all this going on... there is actually light at the end of the tunnel.

According to my loan guy, the lender and escrow now have everything they need in order to fund today and record tomorrow. I would not be suprised if there was some sort of obstacle preventing this from happening when it should, but I really can't imagine what else could possibly go wrong.

My dad is going to start painting again starting today, even though it's not our house yet. We're at the point where we can't just keep putting our lives on hold and my dad can't just keep rearranging his schedule whenever somebody drops the ball completely outside of our control. Being that the loan is supposed to fund today, I don't see it being a big problem even if they do find out that he's doing work on the house but let's keep our fingers crossed.

-David

Loan Documents and Down Payment

2008-06-06T09:01:00.001-07:00

The loan documents were FINALLY prepared on Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday at 7am, Kelly and I met a notary at Starbucks in the Tustin Marketplace and signed all the documents. We delivered the signed documents to the escrow company and the escrow company sent the documents by courier down to the funder in San Diego. The funder received the documents at 10:15am. We wired the remaining balance of the closing costs to the escrow company yesterday afternoon and now it's just a waiting game.

My loan guy said it would likely be today that it would be funded and recorded, but it all depends on how quickly the funder gets through our file. I called the escrow company this morning and they have not yet received the wired funds.

Hopefully they get them soon and we can get the ball rolling to be able to take possession of the house today. I'll keep ya'll updated.

-David

Busted!

2008-06-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

Our real-estate agent called me yesterday at about 1pm and was like, "The pool man called the selling agent and said he saw a piano in the house, that you guys were moving in, and that you were doing a bunch of work to the house."

Okay first of all... this is a pool man. A POOL MAN! He needs to get a life. He had the audacity to give me his card, trying to maintain me as a customer after we take over the house... and then tattle taled on me. That is ridiculous. The dude needs to find something better to do with his time. This is really a victimless crime. Nobody is hurt by it. Loan documents are being prepared as we speak and we are going to be closing escrow by the end of the week. This guy really found it necessary to tattle tale on us even though he has nothing to do with any of it. What a loser!

So anyway, I told my agent that we had not moved in, that we had only moved our stuff into the garage, and that my dad was doing some painting in the house. She said that we needed to move the piano out of the house and to stop doing work on the house until escrow closed. She said that a lot of selling agents are not as bothered by this kind of thing but that this one had a bad experience recently so she's "gun shy." I get that it was not technically our house yet but come on... it's only a few days and it worked out with my dad's schedule. We couldn't just keep extending our rent at our apartment so we had to do something. It kind of works out just because my dad's back is in so much pain. It will give him at least a day off. It's not worth painting the house if it break's my dad's back in the process.

Well, as I had mentioned before, my loan guy called me this morning with news that the loan had been approved and that his docs department was going to prepare loan documents and send them over to the escrow company, at which time I will go over there, sign the documents, and we should close within 2 days from then. Hopefully it will be this week.

-David

Illegally Moving In, My Dad's Back, and University of Illinois

2008-06-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

Escrow on the house has not closed yet, but we had to get out of our apartment by May 31, so Kelly's dad and brother helped us move all of our belongings from our apartment to the garage in the new house. U-haul gave us a very short window to use their truck so it was pretty intense there for a while, but luckily everything went smoothely. Technically, we could probably get in trouble for doing anything to the house before escrow closes but we really had no choice.

While we were in the house with plastic all over the place and paint buckets in plain sight, the pool guy (who was hired by the bank) came by the house and was questioning us because I guess he knew the house was supposed to be vacant. He took down my name and took pictures of us moving stuff into the garage. He said he had to tell the bank what we were doing but hopefully it doesn't get us in trouble. The place is vacant and we're just waiting for escrow to close so I can't see it being a major problem but you never know how the bank is going to respond to something like that.

My dad's back is really hurting him lately and we feel so bad because he is working so hard. So anyone who reads this, put a little prayer in for him. I know he would appreciate that.

So back in pain, he prepped the whole house and painted all of the ceilings on Saturday. It looks amazing already. I can't wait to see it once it's all done. We're staying at my dad's house until escrow closes. Hopefully we will be able to move into the house by mid-week or so. My dad will probably be almost completely finished with the painting by then so it kind of works out well as long as the bank doesn't get mad that we are doing work on the house before the close of escrow.

I'll make sure to keep ya'll updated if anything happens or if we move in this week.

I have some other good news... I got accepted to the Online Business program at Univerity of Illinois and I start in the Fall '08 semester.

I got my AA at University of Phoenix recently and now is the perfect time to switch schools. I will be studying Business Administration. I am very excited.

Until next time...

-David

Preparing the house to be painted

2008-05-29T22:42:00.001-07:00

Well it's almost time for us to move in. We will probably be moving in next Wednesday or Thursday. Today, I took the day off of work to get the house prepared for it's much needed interior paint job. I took off all the electrical outlet plates, took out all the door knobs, removed a lot of screws from each of the closets, and tore down a very interesting shelving concoction in the living room that the previous owners of the house must have thought was a good idea.

My dad has graciously offered to paint the entire interior of the house for us and since there is no furniture (and now no ridiculous shelving/screws/blinds/etc.) in the way, it should make it a little easier on him. Dad, if you read this, we don't know how to say 'thank you' enough.

I took some 'before' photos of each of the rooms. I didn't get done with everything until night time so that's why the pictures aren't during the day. Hopefully I will have some 'after' pictures once my dad's all done with the painting.

We are soooo excited... you don't even know!

-David

Our first post

2008-05-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally decided to start a blog for our little family. So... where do I start???

Lucy is already almost 5 months old. She rolled over from her back to her tummy for the first time on May 15 and is rolling over like crazy now, but then after she rolls she gets mad because she can't roll back to her back and she gets frustrated. She is also finding her voice more now. She tries to mimic our tone and everything. It is sooo cute!

We bought a house out in Riverside and we move in sometime within the next week or so. Here are some pictures of the house:

-David