College bound, Part II

Ok, I'll try and fill in the gaps. The apartment we got for Amber is just larger that a studio, they call it a Jr. apartment. No roommate due to having 1 bedroom. We signed a 9 month lease. I'm concidering purchasing a home so I can at least have a tax write off and equity. (that's another story). Amber should be in the area for several years. She will reapply to Cal St. Fullerton in Fall of 07, due to the jury for the Masters Program. Aimee may also be going to school in this same area so having our own place would be great.

Karen, the hotel story goes like this. We stayed at the Ritz Carlton which was located 2 blocks from Amber's place. We were beat from the move, and I had not secured a place for us yet. We had a very nice room which came with comp. breakfast. The room had a seperate livingroom, so that would be good in the future with Aimee came with us, she would be able to have her own space. We settled in for some much needed sleep. At around 1 am, an there was this LOUD anouncement coming in through our room. "Attention hotel guests, it is now safe to return to your rooms." I thought I was dreaming or something so I nudged Guy and asked it he just heard that. He said he had. What was funny was that we never knew that it was ever unsafe to be in the room. Had we slept through the evacuation announcment? The return announcement was SO loud I could not amagine that I had missed it, but then again we were very beat. I peaked out the window to see if there was any activity, but there was none to see and we only heard one door close in our general area.

When we went down to breakfast, nobody else was talking about it, and I just had to wonder if we had imagined the whold thing. At check out I just couldn't ask....just in case it was a dream.

P.S. Congratulations to Pam and the birth of her baby girl.

Amber Off To College

Well, after many challenges, Amber is now residing in Orange County, Brea California to be exact. What an adventure! Enough to make a mom grey. It started out like this......

We had anticipated her math grade from her summer class. Her admission to Cal State Fullerton was on hold pending this class. Grades came in and she didn't quite make it. Needed a C or better. So we were hoping that they would let her enroll on a probationary basis while she retook the class.

We were set to fly Thurs. Aug 10, leaving at 2pm at arrive in Santa Ana at 3:30. That would give us time to meet with someone at the school and getting that out of the way so we could use Fri. to secure an apartment. And then it happened, the first glich. There had to be terrorist messing up my plans. Our plane was delayed and we finally landed at 6pm. We picked up our car and I learned that Amber is an expert map reader. So now we launch plan B.

Plan B would be to get to the school early, speak w/her counselor and then off to apartment search. Went to the school Friday morning and learned that there wasn't gona be any chance that they were going to let her attend. They all were very nice about it though. We also found the list posted at the school of people needing a room mate. Took numbers of ones that sounded good, and called them. They of course already found room mates. Time to launch plan C.

Plan C would be to take a transcript to Fullerton College so she could enroll there take the math class, (any others) find an affordable apartment. Well the college wasn't open on Fridays, and out of all the decent, and semi decent looking apartments, there were none available. :(

The clock was ticking....we did find a cute apartment in a gated community, very safe and secure, but very expensive, (just under our current house payment) I was panicking so I put in a call to dad for guidance. He said we have to do it so we did. We called the manager to let them know we were coming in with the required deposits. It was now 5pm and they closed at 6. First stop at Washington Mutual to get the money orders, and it was Friday, so long lines. By the time we got to the front it was 5:40. We were in Fullerton and the apartments were in Brea, a 20 min. drive through town. We put in another call to say please don't close we were on our way...we got there at 6 and they were closed. But as a courtesy they left a contract for us in the drop box. I gave up. We were both drained. This always calls for a shopping trip. Luckily Brea has a great mall. We did a little shopping, ate at California Pizza Kitchen, and went back to our room to regroup. We had hoped at the beginning of this trip we could meet Randy for dinner, but it just couldn't happen on this trip. Sorry Randy

So where are we now???oh plan D. What plan D ended up being we would Fed X the apps along with the deposits. The got the forms Tues. morning and the apartment was ready for her to move in on Friday. Now our luck starts to change. We loaded up the uhaul and left Friday morning at 5am. A LONG DRIVE. Because of traffic, or something, we finally made it just before 2. Got the keys, moved her in, purchased some necessities, oh by the way we had to get her a fridge. It was delivered on Sunday and the door hits the stove when it is open. Saturday morning we headed to Fullerton College and we got lucky here that they were open, and she was able to enroll in her classes.

I left a lot of the adventure out. You'll have to call and ask me how I had to get the electricity turned on while we were driving down I5. (i forgot about this) and about the announcement we heard in our hotel room at 1am that it was now safe to re enter the hotel, and how we'er keeping her cat for her and it has it's own room in our house.

Don't you wish you were a Cheatham so you could have this much fun?