The joys of moving

With Dave back on hitch (off and on because of jobs) I sometimes have his help to pack and sometimes it is just me. This past weekend I got lucky and had his help as well as his parent's help so we were able to take up three times as much stuff as I had originally planned. It was a good thing I had him because the weather here on the weekends has just been horrible - rain non stop almost. 

This past weekend my mom came to stay so I have had her with me all week, helping me back, organize, and clean. We are planning another trip up Saturday but the weather is calling for more rain! Ugh! 

So far things have gone well but downsizing from a 2400 SF home to a 1700 SF home will be interesting once we get everything up there. 

I have one more full week of work here at FESCO before we move. Once we get up there I am going back to real estate full time and I am very excited about it. I am joining the Pat Hays Group with Zars & Rogers Realtors. The Team is a powerhouse group based in San Antonio but breaking into the Comal/Guadalupe County area once I come along. 

We are officially homeowners!

Oh how I cannot wait to live in New Braunfels full time and get back to my sales life!

As a real estate agent I have the opportunity to meet some of the best people in the business so why wouldn’t I put together a stellar team for Dave & I to buy our first home together! 

Thank you to Rachel Pruneda with Envoy Mortgage! I am so grateful we met when I first moved to Corpus Christi over six years ago, even though it took me a few times "meeting" you to remember. You truly are the reason why I am able to get out of Alice! 

Thank you to Brent Wallgren and the Pat Hays Team at Zars & Rogers Realtors from San Antonio. I am so glad I didn’t negotiate my own deal (I would have gone crazy). And I cannot wait to start my journey working with the Pat Hays Team in the Comal/Guadalupe County area as a full time real estate agent again. 

Our new home will be in good hands with First American Home Warranty because of the best rep they have - Chase McRoberts from the Coastal Bend area! 

And if you are in the market to lower your insurance and work with a great gal, call Leigh Fetters with Miller and Miller Insurance in New Braunfels and she will hook you up! We are saving so much money on our policies. 

You don’t always have to use people that are in the same town as your new home…..that is the best part about real estate. We can all work together (that is the beauty of technology) regardless of our locations. If you want more information on the awesome people I worked with just let me know.

Now that we are living in New Braunfels, I will be working the Comal County and Guadalupe County areas along with my team - The Pat Hays Team from Zars & Rogers Realtors! If you or someone you know are looking for a home, give me a call. 

Dave and I are so blessed to be able to continue our journey in such a great little town, close to family and activities that we love to do.

Almost There.....

We are less than three weeks away until we close on our new house in New Braunfels but we have been busy around here......

We spent Dave's last week off from hitch packing up the house, going through what was garbage and what I could sell in a yard sale. His next days off we will have house guests and some things to take care of before we close on the house that Tuesday before he goes back to work. 

This past Saturday I was able to join in for the celebration of our niece's first birthday! My sister in law did an awesome job on her party decorations, her cute little outfit, and the food. 

I also tackled my furniture projects when Dave was off last. I needed to get all the painting done so he could distress them for me when he gets home. I have a kid dresser, a kid bench, and another piece that will go into the nursery (no we aren't preggo yet) but I couldn't pass up the furniture!

And I just purchased our first house warming presents!!

I have the perfect spots for these in the new house. 

Just pray about it

Dave and I are really making our current dream of getting out of Alice and into New Braunfels a reality. We found a house and we are under contract! It seriously fell in our lap and I promise it was all God's doing. 

I had 6 houses scheduled to look at on a Saturday. Dave was supposed to be working so I had asked my best friend to go with me for a second opinion. The morning I was leaving for San Antonio Dave said he could go with me so I picked him up at the yard and then we grabbed my friend. We met up in New Braunfels for lunch with my parents and a friend of my dad's. Dave & I were first to sit down and we said grace, including asking for help with our house hunt that day. About ten minutes later my dad's friend overheard Dave and I talking about our houses on the list for the day and he then informed us he had his house on the market for sale by owner. It was everything Dave and I were looking for!

After lunch we all drove over to look at it and it WAS everything we had been looking for! We decided to see the other houses on the list but by the end of the day Dave and I knew we had found our home.....the very first one we looked at. 

We are set to close October 20 and fingers crossing nothing screwy happens with our financing we will seen be calling New Braunfels home. 

The pictures are a little wonky... they were from when it was listed with a real estate agent that we found on the internet. 

The countdown has begun and I am all ready training my replacement at work. I am super excited about having our own home and being able to get back into selling real estate full time.

All the men in our lives are Virgos + CA Photo Dump

OK so I googled what exactly it says about Virgos and this was what I got for the most part. 

Virgo in a Nutshell:

Virgo exists in the mind, everything is inside. To the world, Virgo presents a calm and collected exterior but on the inside, nervous uncontrolled intensity in the mind, trying to figure things out, how to improve everything, analyzing and thinking. Virgo can tire itself out without even moving! Virgo has a constant drive to improve and perfect, this can lead to extreme pickiness and finickiest. They are pure, their motives are honest never malicious and they want to accomplish something. 

What it's like to be with a Virgo Man:

The Virgo man has a cool exterior with a sensitive interior. He has tremendous respect for a woman and will treat her like and equal. He likes woman who stir his emotions because he is reluctant to express his own emotions, which he tries and this often causes conflict not just inside himself, but it spills out into the relationship. This man takes patience and understanding. He will not get extremely close so do not try to enter his psyche and become closely entangled, this will make him feel threatened. He needs a classy woman who is not impulsive or unconventional. He leads a predictable life and a predictable woman will make him feel safe. He is perfect for the down to earth, conventional woman. He won't be romantic and sweep you off your feet, but he will be by your side and be very loyal. This man's sensuality comes out with time. For the woman who wants a stable, solid relationship with a visible, smooth sailing future is perfect for the Virgo man.

The point of all of this is Dave, Drew and my dad all have birthdays close together which was the point for the California trip however, Dave was working as usual. But I was still able to go and spend the extended weekend with my family which was great!

Josie took this picture...can't you tell?

Why not stop by a local brewery while waiting on Dad to arrive?

Waiting for the commuter train, Nixon and mom found a friend. 

 

Solana Beach

Auntie & Josie

My sister and J

Dinner Friday night at Blue Ocean Sushi

My dinner at Blue Ocean - it was absolutely amazing!

Carlsbad Lagoon

Made my sister rent a paddle board with me so we could take the kids out. Josie told me I wasn't allowed to stand. 

Sunday afternoon lunch at Fish House

The difficulty in shaving

For any of the oilfield wives out there whose husbands have beards...this is for yall! 

Normally Dave doesn't have to shave because of the locations he is on but he picked up a job (and it only last for 2 days!) where he had to shave. And this was the progression! It is seriously too funny not to share!

Leakey

Last weekend we had the privilege of joining our friends at their family ranch in Leakey. I love it there. I hadn't been about a year so it was nice to be invited back. With all the rain we have had this year the river was flowing nicely so I couldn't pass it up. 

This is the view of our sunset Saturday night from the back porch.  

I am not too sure how many acres the ranch is but I know I haven't even driven around half of it. Saturday morning the guys and I checked the hog trap and there were 5 little piggies stuck like chuck! Needless to say Dave and I were able to come home with three which is just such a blessing. They will be good eating for sure!

Sunday we were able to float the river and it was baby Charli's first time. The water was almost crystal clear, no one was on the river yet, and Charli did so well! 

Fingers crossed we can go back in a few weeks when Dave is off hitch next. 

I had no idea

When Dave started his coil tubing job from his production testing job (where we worked for the same company) I had no idea for a good while what exactly he drove when he would go out on hitch. I finally saw the units when I went to the yard and I was just astonished. I cannot even imagine trying to keep those trucks on the road or turning. 

He sent this to my sister and I today. My nephew Nixon loves Dave and big trucks. He is driving this thing out to Shiner today! I always send prayers and positive thoughts his way hoping he make it to location with no problems. 

And as always we are grateful to be both be working in The Eagle Ford considering everything that has changed over the last 6 - 9 months. 

A Step North

Today we said goodbye to a dream that Dave and I once had and were working so hard for. 

The little red dot is what was supposed to be the drive/gate into our 1.5 acre home-site that we purchased two years ago to build our forever home. We purchased it in Orange Grove with the intentions of raising our family in the small town close to his hometown. 

Dave never thought he would be back in Alice and I don't think he ever wanted to stay around here. I sure never had any thoughts of living in Alice or around here until I met him. But we met and things have just been easier while in Alice. 

Rewind a few months ago when he started mentioning wanting to move to the hill country. I thought it was just talk...so I would listen. But the more we talked the more it seemed to make sense. We finally put the land put for sale and we received an offer within the first week. If that wasn't a sign I don't know what is!

So the new plan for us is to wait another year here, pay down more debt and hopefully be up in the New Braunfels area within 12 to 18 months. We are going to buy a home first and build equity and then our forever home will follow. 

I think New Braunfels will be a great fit for us both. There is so much there that we enjoy doing and we have family all around us. I have lived in the Coastal Bend area for six year...the longest I have lived anywhere besides San Antonio, my hometown. 

Fingers crossed for good things to come!

Wedding Weekend in San Antonio

One of Dave's oldest friends, coaching buddy, and former roommate finally got married over the weekend in my hometown of San Antonio. It was a miracle he was actually off from work so we had to go. It was great for him to catch up with his old coaching friends and we were able to spend some time with his grandparents.

He cleans up pretty well! I am used to seeing him in boots and his Silverbelly but the dress shoes and suspenders were nice too. 

It was a nice weekend. But it is back to reality, for me at least, since Dave doesn't go back to work until Wednesday hopefully. 

Jim T's Clarification

Jim T. in fact did respond to my email and I thank him for that. He clarified what he meant within the article that he wrote. Us oilfield wives tend to get very defensive and protective of our husbands and families.

I pasted Jim's response below. Thanks for the invite to tell our story but it just isn't my thing to be in the spotlight like that. We are just another newlywed couple trying to start a family and find our way. 

___________________________________________

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for writing. I did read the article. I understand the reaction, but I want to assure you, I wrote the piece not to mock or look down on oil/gas industry workers, but to show a national audience how tough of a break they’ve gotten as prices crashed.

A few facts, I think, are really critical to the piece. The first is that there remains a huge gap *on average* between the earnings of college graduate and non-college graduates in America (see: here - http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm) – and over the last decade-plus, non-college-graduates, especially men, have seen their incomes fall. We’ve lost millions of factory jobs, for example, that used to pay solid wages for those workers. Here’s a piece I did earlier this year on a study that shows one look at those stats:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/06/the-21st-century-has-been-terrible-for-working-americans/

The second is that, indeed, more than 9 out of every 10 oil/gas workers doesn’t have a college degree. (The source for that is an analysis of Labor Department data by economists at the Brookings Institution, which they did at my request – I could send you the raw files if you’d like to see them.)

The third is that compared to the typical job for a similarly educated worker *not* in oil and gas, jobs in the industry pay really, really well. As you say, that pay reflects a lot of things, including how hard the work is and how hard the job can be on the worker’s family.

So what we meant in the story, when we said ‘lottery ticket’, is that an oil/gas job is a rare opportunity for a non-college educated worker to earn a lot more money than he could elsewhere in the economy. Not that he wasn’t working hard to make that money, just that, like a winning ticket, those jobs are really hard to find (in the context of the entire national labor market).

I would add that I would never call your family, or your fellow oilfield families, trash. I grew up in a small town in Oregon where a lot of my high school classmates’ parents worked in the timber industry, at a time when that industry, which had paid solid wages, was shrinking rapidly. It was devastating for those families, who worked very, very hard; a lot of what I write today, about the plight of workers and the middle class in this country, is rooted in that experience. I try to tell stories about people who work hard, whom the economy has failed for one reason or another. I’m sorry this one didn’t come across that way to you and your friends.

Thanks for your time. I hope you and your husband make it through the tough time in the industry, and that it recovers soon. And if you all would ever like to tell me your story, I’d love to hear it and very likely write about it.

Best regards,

Jim

My Response to Jim T.

The Real Oilfield Wives have a blog in which I follow. This morning one of the writers, Ashley posted THIS in response to an article written by Jim Tankersley which you can find HERE. 

I encourage everyone to read Jim's article and then read Ashley's response to how she felt about it. 

I, too, took to letting Jim T. know how I felt about what he wrote: 

Thanks for the response. I hope you read the article that Ashley wrote.

Let me start by saying you have not made friends with the wives with that article. I cannot speak for 

Ashley and her family however I can give you insight into mine down in south Texas, in the heart of 

the Eagle Ford Shale. 

My husband is an educated man. He graduated from Texas State University. He was a teacher and 

a coach for many years all over the state of Texas. He left that job to move back home to be close 

to his sick grandmother and was able to be picked up by a local oilfield company with whom have 

kids he grew up with. 

Fact - most men in the industry are educated. They may not have college degrees which is the education measure you used however they have to get certifications and special training to be able to properly and safely perform their jobs. Being educated doesn't mean you have to have a college degree. Just like Ashley stated in her article, she is a very educated woman by your college standards however I feel the same way in the sense that I do not know if I could perform my husband's job to his level of professionalism and accuracy and I too carry a BBA in Entrepreneurship and a minor in Real Estate from the University of North Texas. 

Working in the oilfield is not a lottery ticket. I do not even understand that term nor have I ever heard it. 

Just because you can claim you have a job in the oilfield doesn't mean that you all of a sudden are 

raking in the money. 

My husband is not on the drilling side which is where the majority of the mass amounts of money is, which is also the side of the industry that your subject of your article was on. The service companies took a big hit, as did the drilling side when the rigs started to get stacked. My husband is on the completions side. A very different aspect to the oilfield that most do not think about. He is still working for a very large and prominent coil tubing company. Yet again, as Ashley stated in your article, we are facing tough times and keep our fingers crossed that we make it through any more layoffs. 

If I could just say that your article seemed one-sided and degrading to the wives of educated (college degree or not) oilfield workers who continue to bust their butts regardless of the industry's current standings. We are not oilfield trash as many people call us. 

If I could ask where you got your stats on the education level of oilfield workers that you mention? "More than 9 out of 10 oil and gas jobs are held by men without college degrees."

Thank you for your time. 

___________________________________________________________

If you want to contact Jim T yourself you can do so at jim.tankersley@washpost.com 

or on Twitter at @jimtankersley

The Spirit of the People

"You ask me what I like about Texas I tell you it's the wide open spaces!

It's everything between the Sabine and the Rio Grande. It's the Llano Estacado, It's the Brazos and the Colorado; Spirit of the people down here who share this land!"

Gary P. Nunn penned those words a good while back. They have never held more true in my heart after what I experienced this past weekend. With our rivers and lakes overflowing with water, I witnessed firsthand the "spirit of the people down here who share this land!"

Last Monday on the 25th, my wife decided she wanted to spearhead and coordinate a flood relief donation drive in conjunction with our church, Cross Trails Cowboy Church. Being 200 miles away didn't stop people from caring. The love and generosity that overflowed from the Orange Grove, Alice, and Corpus Christi communities exemplified that "spirit!" Our living room and garage was soon filled with supplies and we sorted them throughout the evenings. A horse trailer was left open at our church to hold donations that were dropped off and it was filled to the top. So much so that another was brought in to accommodate the overflow.

Sunday, May 31st, we headed north with three trailers in tow. Along the way we made a stop in San Antonio's North side, to pick up more items. A friend used her bar, Cootey's, as a drop off point for those in that community who wanted to help as well. I don't know how we were able to get that large donation to fit, but old school Tetris skills may have come into play.

We continued to San Marcos, where the majority of the items were donated and dropped off at the school district's warehouse. These are earmarked for the 38 or so families from Travis Elementary who were affected by the flood. We then headed into Wimberly, where we dropped off 1500+ pounds of pet food and live stock feed with W.A.G.S. (They are being used to distribute pet supplies to area shelters and to the loving families who have taken in foster animals at this time.)

Finally we made our last stop at Wimberly High School, where we dropped off cleaning supplies. It was in that gym that my heart sank. What I witnessed in there was that "spirit!" The amount of items donated at that one drop off point showed me a state that didn't fall apart during tragedy. Texas is not a place that looks to gain something when others lose everything. Texas is a place that holds out it's hand to lift those who have fallen. And I'm proud to say I have seen this to be true.

We want to thank everyone who donated their time, energy, and resources to this cause.

The spirit of the people down here, truly is beautiful.

Dave wrote this letter to the Alice Echo Newspaper after they ran an article on our efforts on Friday. 

Not even everything we took. We still had a stop in San Antonio

The crew that made the journey to San Marcos to drop everything off!

Approx 1500 lbs of dog/cat/livestock feed we dropped off in Wimberley at WAGS that eventually made its way to Martindale. 

RR 12 bridge

RR 12 bridge

Texas Floods of 2015 in Pictures

Words cannot express how devastated most of the state of Texas is right now. From Dallas south is just soaked and there is more rain in the forecast. There are still so many people missing, power still out, and families who lost everything. 

If I wasn't working full time and in need of my paycheck right now Dave and I would be up there right now working this whole week while he is off hitch. But we cannot afford for me to not work so the next best thing we could do was spearhead collecting donations and drive them up ourselves. 

San Marcos was a hard hit central Texas area. I actually was coming back from my parent's place in Georgetown on Sunday morning when I got work they had shut down I-35 because it was under water. Thank goodness for the 130 toll road. Dave went to college at Texas State in San Marcos. He loved it. It is by far one of his favorite places when it comes to the Texas Country Music Scene. 

Facebook rallied and within hours groups were created to disseminate information and provide means of communication for people to help. I was able to reach out to a Teacher at Travis Elementary School and the 38 families there became our main focus for our donations.

To find the Facebook pages you can look up 

Wimberley Flood Information 2015

Wimberley Citizens Disaster Relief

Wimberley Flood 2015

San Marcos Flood 2015 

Please pray for the missing, please pray for those lives that were lost, and please pray for healing for everyone affected by mother nature. It will take weeks and months for us all to recover but as Texans do, we help each other out no matter where we are in this big state! 

For more information on how you can help the city of San Marcos visit their Flood Resources Page