The Wargo Blog

Anna and I ‘finished’ the fort today. When her sister was in town last week, they sewed a cover for the main part of the fort. We attached it today and it turned out great! check out the pics:

A Bookmark Elizabeth Made for Me

For some reason I’ve been able to read a lot of books lately. It’s probably because lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on the front porch watching the kids play with the neighbors and I usually take a book out with me. I’ve said this before, but the neighborhood is WONDERFUL and the kids have a lot of fun playing with the neighbors. I usually let them roam free (Anna’s a little uncomfortable with this) and just sit on the front porch so I can see what’s going on as they run from house to house to house.

Anyway, I’ve had this huge collection of books I’ve purchased but not read and I’m making a bug dent in them. Just in case you’re interested, I’m publishing my reading list through Amazon’s book list application on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jwargo23 – you’ll have to be linked to me to be able to see the list). The other day Elizabeth made me a bookmark to use when I’m reading. Here’s a picture of it – I love it.

As you may have heard, we’re putting an extra garage in the back yard. Originally it was intended to be a workshop for me (our house doesn’t have a basement, so I needed a place for my tools) but we later decided to move my office out of the bonus room into the outbuilding. The builder we hired showed us a garage that he built that we really feel exactly fits the bill for my needs. We spent some time at the other garage getting a feel for it and we loved it.

Before we hired the builder, we spoke to several customers plus the owner of the garage. The garage owner said something that really hooked us – he said that if there’s ever a serious storm in the area, he’s going to leave his house and hide out in his garage – he said it was so well built it could weather any storm.

Anyway, the builder was kind enough to share some pictures of the garage – this is what my new garage will look like although mine won’t be brick, it will be the same as the house, grey stucco.

Well, we’re all moved in to the house and getting ready to build a garage. We hired a builder, we have preliminary plans and I’m excited to break ground. One of the things we needed for the builder is the survey that was done on the property as part of the closing. I sent email after email to the closing lawyer asking for a copy of the survey and got no response (McMillan-Terry, they suck).

I asked the Realtor for help and she said that she had a copy of the survey she could give me. She said she’d drop it by the house that afternoon. For some bizarre reason, she said she’d put in the mailbox (rather than drop it off at the door).  I looked later in the afternoon for the envelope and couldn’t find it.  I called her and what happened was she stuffed the survey in an envelope and put it in the mail box.

At the time, I had letters in the mailbox to be picked up and the flag was up. She put it in the back of the mailbox, away from the outbound letters but still in the mailbox. Now, don’t get me wrong, we love our Realtor – but in this case, she apparently wasn’t thinking although as you’ll see it all worked out. Well, our harried mailwoman grabbed the outbound letters AND the envelop our Realtor placed there.

I called the Realtor and of course that was the only copy of the survey. Gone, it was just gone. Crikey!

Well, repeated calls to the law firm came up with nothing. I finally got someone to respond, but it’s been two weeks now and nothing’s happened.

The other day, I got an envelope in the mail. It was thick, like it had several envelopes in it. I recognized the name on the return address, but didn’t know why. As I opened it, I learned what happened to the survey my Realtor put in my mailbox.

The US Postal Service, in its infinite wisdom, got the letter – saw that it said ‘John & Anna Wargo’ on the front of it and didn’t know where to deliver it. They:

1.    Opened the letter
2.    Saw the address of the Surveyor
3.    Stuffed it in an envelope and delivered it to the surveyor!

Yep, they delivered it to the person listed inside the letter rather than the people identified on the front of the letter. I can’t imagine that there are that many John and Anna Wargo couples in Charlotte – I’ll have to take a look.

Anyway, the surveyor, being smarter than the US Postal Service apparently, opened the letter, saw it was for us and mailed it to the address listed on the survey. Long and circuitous route, but I finally got a copy of the survey. What fun.

Anna had a sorority reunion this weekend, so I had the kids all to myself all weekend. On Sunday, we were hanging out, playing in the yard and so on. Before long it was lunch time and I had a house full of kids. August and Elizabeth had been bugging us ever since we got here to let them sell lemonade in the front yard and they asked me again. Well, it was a hot one; it got up to 92 degrees, so I told them they could do it after lunch.

Before I knew it, I was dragging my kids and a neighbor’s kids into the house for lunch. August decided he would take everyone’s orders and serve lunch to everyone. I had a really hard time making him understand that he was a waiter, not a waitress.  He would take orders, get the stuff together and I’d help make the sandwiches. He’d pour drinks, spread peanut butter on bread and all the things he needed to do. It was too cute.

After lunch, we all worked together to make a pitcher of lemonade and signs. We dragged a couple of tables outside, collected cups from different houses and got to work.  We setup on the corner so we could get access to cars from the maximum number of directions (three in our case) and got to work. A little while later another neighborhood friend came by and hopped out to help.

Lemonade Stand

A whole lot of people stopped and bought lemonade. Those that didn’t at least drove by with a big smile on their face. Our local Carolina Panther (that’s American Football for those of you who don’t know) neighbor stopped on his cool, three-wheel motorcycle and tossed over $20 for the kids (didn’t take any lemonade). In all, the kids took in $40 and had a great time doing it (it proably cost me about $5 in materials – which I didn’t get back). We took all of the money into the house and sat at the table to split it all up. August suggested that everyone make a bank out of green plastic cups, so everyone had their own, special place to put their earnings.

I’m sure we’ll be doing it again soon. Anna promised to make some cookies or Rice Krispie Treats to add some food to the list of sale items. Could be fun.

OK, so of course I have an iPad and I LOVE IT.  I’m having some troubles with Wi-Fi connectivity and I hope Apple does something about it soon. The kids have been playing with it a lot so I’ve downloaded a few drawing applications for it, just so the kids have something to do. Here’s a picture Elizabeth drew on it.

Elizabeth's iPad Drawing

Elizabeth was invited to a birthday party yesterday afternoon and, since August wasn’t invited, I decided it would be a good time for the two of us to have some quality time together. I was going to say ‘he and I’ but worried that Anna would correct my grammar, she’s always doing that, so I went back and changed the phrasing.

August and Elizabeth had been bugging me to go play golf, so we decided to head over to a little Executive (Executive is a euphemism for short attention span) Golf course in a nearby town. It’s a Podunk little golf course and it’s not in very good repair, but it was enough for August. We ended up playing 6 holes. He started out being really goofy and not trying very hard, but for holes 3 through 5 he really tried and did fairly well (for a six year old). Late on 5 and all through 6 he just wasn’t paying attention, so we headed off to Sonic for dinner.

Here are some pictures of August at the course.

At one point, he’d been using his 7 iron for everything except putting so I started having him use different clubs just to get a feel for them. I noticed he had a hybrid club (kind of a mix between an iron and a wood) so I suggested he give that one a try (special thanks to Aunt Sue and Cousin Robert for the clubs by the way). He positioned himself by the ball and took a swing and the ball went further than he’d ever hit a golf ball before. It was way cool. I shouted my praise for the shot, walked over and gave him a bug high five and he hugged me and said ‘I love you dad!’ It was a great night and I can’t wait to do it again (and again and again and again…..)

Every morning before I start work, I head over to the area of the house where the kid’s bedrooms are and check to see what lights and fans were left on. This morning, every single light and fan in that entire part of the house was still on. They turn everything on in the morning when they get up. If only I could teach them to turn things off when they’re done with them.

One of the reasons we purchased the house was because it had a huge backyard and a beautiful, screened-in back porch. As the trees have started to bloom, I’ve been really struck by how close the little forest in the back yard is to the porch. Here’s what my view looks like into the back porch and beyond.

I played golf this morning with my neighbor and of course August wanted to go as well. I’d promised August we’d play this weekend, so we made plans to head out after Anna finished running some errands. During the day, we got out our clubs and some practice balls and spent some time hitting balls in the front yard. When it came time to go to the driving range, August decided instead that he wanted to play miniature golf. So, we trucked over to the miniature golf place and played a round.

The place also had go-karts and other activities for kids, so I purchased a ticket for August to ride on the rookie track before we started our game of golf. Here are some pictures (more of the story follows the pictures).

After our round of golf, I took August on the big kids go-karts. I drove a double seater and August sat next to me. For about the first 30 seconds of our ride, he screamed at the top of his lungs. Then he started kissing me on the shoulder – he was so happy. I’m sorry I couldn’t get pictures of it, I will when I take the whole family some time in the future.