Gotta get it off my chest!

Okay, I don't usually post on our blog, but I have something I need to get off my chest. Some of you may know that I have been working a second job (Selling Pest Control door-to-door) in the evenings from 6-9pm. Now I sold for 4 summers during college and didn't mind it. I swore I would never knock another door again, but here I am! Anyways, Some funny stuff happens every year when I am knocking and this year was no exception.

It all started on Friday night, July 10th. I was out as usual knocking, it was hot and humid (103 @ 6:30pm) and everything was going great. I had just made a sale two doors prior to the following incident. I rang the doorbell and waited, but there was no answer. Now after a few seconds it is routine for me to then knock on the door. I did that and waited some more. I could hear people in the house, so I waited some more. Finally a man answered the door and said: "What do you want!" I said: "Hi, I am with Romney Pest Contr..." (Interrupted by the man) "I don't need it!" SLAM!!! Now this happens all of the time, so I just brushed it off and went on my way around the corner. After a few doors, I had to head back and knock the other side of the street and much to my surprise, guess who was waiting for me on his porch, Yep the guy that had just slammed the door in my face.

Now I did not say anything to him, just kept doing my thing when he walked out to the end of his driveway and started yelling at me. He was telling me how I am not allowed to solicit in his neighborhood and bla, bla, bla! I said: ''Sir, I don't know why you are attacking me, I did nothing to you. You slammed the door in my face and I left, so stop bothering me at my workplace! (you like that?!?!)" He kept threatening that if I didn't leave, he was going to call the cops. I told him to go right ahead. He pulled out his cell phone and hit a few numbers and then proceeded to give my description (which he was not very nice, I would consider myself heavy set, not fat!) anyways, this has happened to me in the past and I know that when this type of situation happens, Is all they want you to do is leave. I didn't! I just kept on knocking and basically waited for the police to arrive. They never did. (I think it was a fake call)

Well to shorten things up, I for some reason got really bugged (pardon the pun) by the whole situation. I could not let it go. I vented to my wife and a few other people, hoping someone would tell me to go back and beat the you know what out of him. No one did. The next day as we drove up to Walmart, guess who walks out with a cart full of beer? Yep, the guy. I tried to get my wife to pull over so I could have a talk with him, but she wouldn't. Good thing she is the bigger person! I let this whole thing fester over the weekend and got so worked up about it that it was all I could think about. Then Sunday rolled around and much to my dismay guess what the lesson in church was. Yep, Forgiving others.

I had been thinking of all kinds of ways to get back at this guy (My favorite was to give his address to a spam company or egg his house) and then on Sunday I hit a crossroads. I could continue to let this affect me, cause you know he has forgotten about it and it is not affecting him, or I could move on and forgive him of his shortcoming. Well part of the purpose of me posting is so I can get it off of my chest and move on.

Final Thought:
Heavenly Father has a funny way of teaching us all the lessons we need to learn in life. You never know what the next "door" in life might bring. I hope everyone can learn from my mistake and not get worked up over the little things in life. Life is too short to let these kinds of things hold us down.

Regards,

Jed
P.S. I would still like to hear some of your thoughts on what would have been a good & legal way to get back at him. :)

4th of July

Our 4th of July was not at all what we are used to doing - but it was still a ton of fun! Stephanie and her girls came back down on Friday and stayed until Saturday night. The girls played for almost 30 hours straight and amazingly enough there were no melt downs - even though they didn't even go to bed until almost midnight. They built a tent (fort) and slept in it in the front room. Stephanie and I weren't any better - we stayed up until 1 am chatting like old friends - it was so great to catch up!

On Saturday we were all so tired that we had a very relaxing day - INSIDE!! We didn't even go outside until that evening when we lit some sparklers (It was still about 95 degrees). It was actually really enjoyable, but I have to say that we did miss all of the fun activities in Oakley - the parade, the kids activities, and the Rodeo - maybe next year:)

Even though we didn't go out anywhere we still had fun celebrating! The girls got all dressed in their patriotic outfits (including the flag tattoos) and we had a wonderful BBQ (thanks Jed) that ended with star brownies and red, white and blue ice cream. Thanks Arnell's for the fun memories! We will miss you tons!

Summer Fun

Here are some pictures of what we've been doing so far this summer. Jed's cousin, and my friend, Stephanie has been living in Austin for the past month with her family. We lived next door to each other when Olivia and Taylor were toddlers and it's like the girls haven't skipped a beat. They play so well together. Adi is their middle child (sorry about the spelling?) and then they also have a baby, Leah, who is a month younger than Lexi. We were just so excited to see some more familiar faces down here in Texas - even though it does make us a little home sick.

Olivia has been busy reading her books that we've been checking out from the library - hoping to keep up her reading skills.

Alexis has finally started crawling. It's about time - Livvy was crawling at 6 months so we were beginning to think something was wrong with Lexi. The Doctor informed me though that 9 months is a fine age to start crawling - she also told me to never compare my children! Parenting lesson #1 million learned - aren't we always learning new things every day:)