Memories

Our house in Little Rock was small, in an ok neighborhood, and was an older home. We bought it right before we got married. We bought it at a decent price but to us it was a lot of money. I had just graduated from UCA, Bradley was working on a PhD at UAMS and I was enrolling in graduate school. We didn't have a lot of money but we were really thrilled to have a home of our own and of course a backyard for our precious 4 legged kids.

When we found out we were moving to Batesville, we had already been thinking about putting this house up for sale because it was too small for our growing family. But we had to quickly put our house up for sale and get ready to move to Batesville. So for the past 6 months we have had to make 2 house payments and everything else that goes with owning a home. Fortunately, Bradley's current company, Future Fuel, has a great relocation process for their employees. We were reimbursed for some bills and payments on at least one of our houses. If our house in LIttle Rock didn't sell within 6 months, his company would buy it from us. This week has been 6 months and bittersweetly, we no longer own our first house.

We had so many memories that came from living in that house. We spent the first 5 years of our marriage there. THis was also Parker's first home. Parker had the cutest room. Bradley and his brother, Brandon spent numerous hours working on painting parker's nursery. It was blue and brown with dog paw prints on the walls. We had many memories of Parker being an infant in that room and in that house.

In this house we also saved many dog's lives and help give self confidence to some pretty shy dogs. I'll do another blog post about all the foster dog's we've had...it's pretty comical.

We met our dear friend, "Cox". He lives in the house next to ours. When we were looking to buy our first house, "Cox" was outside in his backyard. We got to ask him questions about the neighborhood, house and the area in general. I think he really sold us on the house. As time grew on we developed a great relationship with "Cox". It was more than a neighbor relationship...I would say it was more of a grandfather/grandkid relationship. He had coffee for brad every morning and they would sit out on our deck and talk about sports, neighborhood....anything. "Cox" would also have bacon for our dogs every morning. Well, it started off every morning but then progressed to every morning and ever evening and sometimes inbetween. When Parker came along, "Cox" wanted to be called "Cox". On the day that I was induced to have Parker, I had to be at the hospital at 5:00 a.m. Cox was there at 5:30 a.m. and he didn't leave the hospital until after Parker was boring (the next day). I think he was the hardest part about leaving this house. He had become apart of our everyday life. When Bradley traveled for work (and he was gone A LOT) he offered to help with Parker, would make me a frozen pizza because he knew I needed to eat, and he was my friend. He listened to me complain about Bradley being gone and about dealing with my dad who is sick. Parker loved Cox. He would climb the deck just to get over to him. Cox usually had some sort of snack for Parker..usually crackers or a banana. One time, when bradley was out of town, one of our foster dogs escaped the fence. Cox fixed it for me. I don't think I could have made it through that time without Cox. We miss him terribly.





Here are a couple of pictures and Cox playing.

I am glad to finally own one house now. Moving is a pain and selling a house is a pain!