Real estate notes, music, photos, and us oh my!

A Big Piece of Me

There are few things in life that bring a tear to my eyes. Raised in a house hold like the one I was you learn to grow a tough hide (more than you should, of course I am a softy when it comes to my kids, I cant help it, they are some of the few). And I must give credit where credit is due. Through out my childhood and teenage years I didn't have many friends, being moved from school to school all the time (no I wasn't a expelled, it had nothing to do with that), what I did have (and this was owed to my fathers need to make everything into a business) was a horse, Khali. Of course he didn't talk much but he sure could listen. I would climb on his back after I had fed all the horses and cleaned the stalls and be gone until the sun would go down, sometimes my best friend and self appointed sister Michelle would go and other times it was just Khali and I off to explore the ditch and the river bank. Lets put it this way, if I wasn't working I was riding.

Riding my horse (at the time) was the only thing that made me feel at home. No I don't mean he reminded me of the place I lived, I mean that I felt that I was where I belonged when I was on his back. This also went for other horses, but none of the others gave me that sense of home like he did. I can still close my eyes and feel the wind in my face, and here the leaves rustle on the trees and even more important the beat of his hooves as they hit the ground taking me away from my worries as we galloped along on our path to nowhere. 

He is now almost 26 years old and still the same gentle soul he used to be. For a while he has been out of my possession, it is a long story but I will say that what I saw the first time seeing him in a year threw me into labor 2 months early. He had lost drastic weight because the person who had him decided to move him from his home, and change his feeding routine drastically, not to mention the lack of veterinary attention. My heart sank as I stared at this old friend of mine, who has already been through enough and here he was with his ribs showing through and his hips poking out. For the next two months while in and out of the hospital I panicked as to how I was going to "fix" this (be reassured that I did start him back on a healthier feed routine), with lack of funds and no where to put him, I cried all the time.

Shortly after baby Nev was born, I plucked up the courage to ask someone I had only met three times for help. I knew that they were good people but I have always been bad at asking for help, actually I am petrified of it (strange I know but there is a reason). To my relief, they were more than willing to help me find someone who could take him in for a while. It just so happened that they had a friend who was looking to lease an older horse for her 8 year old to ride in the walk/trot classes in shows and she wouldn't mind helping me get the weight back on him. The best part of the whole deal is that I can come and ride him (after he has recovered of course) and take as much part as I want to in his life while they lease him, including being able to see my 4 year old ride in his first horse show :) something I had always hoped I would see him do on my old horse, who I have always planned on keeping until he passes away (It's the least I can do for the best friend I ever had). So  extreme thanks are in order.

Thank you Jamie and Connie G. and an even bigger thank you to Carrie F. for taking him in. It means the world to me.

For Now,

Lauri

Boy meets world

Hello world, this is Dwayne. You all have met my beautiful, intelligent, sexy, and very pregnant wife, Lauri. Its my first post so bare with me. I am a loving and devoted father and husband. I love my family with all my heart, I don't think I could love anything more. My baby girl will be making her debut in just a few weeks, of course you all will get to meet her soon. Now as my wife has told you all I am a music producer/recording engineer for local artists. I hope to one day go national and international, producing and recording artist from all over the world. Also, some day I would like to go into films (scoring, writing, and even directing). I am always watching movies and listening to music, analysing them and seeing what I would do differently. Ideas are always running through my head about movies and scripts, mainly comedy, I love to make people laugh, especially my children and wife. I'm not trying to be rich and famous, well not famous anyway. I just want to do what I enjoy doing and take care of my family. That's all that's important to me. Good-bye for now. Dwayne "Dubb" Kent.

Little Pirates for Halloween

Hey all,

This photo is from last Halloween. As I have said before, my oldest has a very vivid imagination, he tells everyone we meet that he is Harry Potter and that his little brother is Ron Weasly. Because I believe that there is nothing better than a good imagination, I play along. Although some days I do ask him to be himself again. I even had to make him and his brother Hogwarts costumes last Halloween because they don't have Harry Potter costumes in toddler sizes (which was a feet and a half for me as these costumes were the first thing I had ever sewn in my life and I designed and made the patterns for all of them), actually I made all the costumes in that photo. I even made the ties by hand. as you can see from photo 2 little Ron wasn't too happy   because we had to spray his hair orange for the costume.

Not that he only pretends that he is Harry, sometimes he is spongebob, or spiderman, or Lightning McQueen, or he is a ghost hunter, and the list goes on. However, Harry is his absolute favorite. He will drop any character for Harry. As a matter of fact my mother has helped his imagination along letting him think that his sister's name is Hermione (from Harry Potter) and no matter what I do he has that stuck in his head (you would laugh at the argument that goes on, which is exactly what my mom does). Our most recent change of identity is now Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, Captain Jack, except now I have 2 Captain Jacks. Guess I get to make pirate costumes this year.

For now,

Lauri

Kids say the darndest things

Hello!

My oldest will probably kill me later on in life for sharing this with the world wide web but it was just to good to pass up.

I was in a hurry to pick up my mom from the train station and I had asked my oldest to go potty before we left, as the ride was at least 30 minutes away. Just like most kids who are just getting down the whole potty training thing, he always asks to go potty at the least opportune times.  So he runs off to my bathroom underwear around his ankles (as he seems to think that he must be fully ready to "go" long before he reaches the toilet). I was getting our youngest ready  when he comes running out (still with his pants down) and says "I THINK MY WACKY (Yes that's what he calls it) AND MY BUTT ARE OUT OF BATTERIES, 'CAUSE I CAN'T GO POTTY ANYMORE." To this day  I still don't know where he got the idea that he has batteries but I thought it was hilarious!

He as also much more recently asked me if I "ate his sister" and told me that my mouth "isn't big enough for her to come back out" I don't really care to explain that one. But then again, can you blame me?

For now,

Lauri :)

About us

Hey world!

This is my first blog (So bear with me)!

My name is Lauri and my husband's name is Dwayne. We met roughly eight years ago while I was dating his boss's son. He worked at large car dealership as a lot tech. (which is fancy way of saying that he parked the cars) exciting I know, but hey my boyfriend at the time had the same job so even rich boys can have crappy jobs (well lets face it, he wasn't rich...his daddy was, he just wanted to be). Anyway It was a brief meeting but I knew I would never get him out of my head. And no, I didn't leave my wanna-be-rich-boy for him, not that Dwayne had asked me to considering the only thing said was "hi".  Actually we didn't get together for almost a year after that (long after rich lot boy and I had broken up).

After rich boy's dad sold the dealership, I went back and applied as a sales person (HUGE MISTAKE!!).  I'll own up to it now, I was terrible at selling cars. Not for lack of trying or knowledge though, I'm a grease monkey's daughter. My home away from home was a car shop which was family owned and run. The problem I had with selling cars was that I was young for your average car sales woman (for which the average age is around 40), not to mention that I was thrown to the wolves...Used car sales. And yes used cars salesmen or at least a HUGE percentage of them are everything they are stereo typed to be. So my bad sales record in hand I transferred to the Nissan side of the dealership, where to my surprise Dwayne still worked.

We flirted for what seemed to be forever (just as a side note forever is 8 months). Over the last two months of our endless and shameless flirting I gave up on him asking me out and asked him. It took me two months to get him to go and play pool with me...POOL it wasn't even a real date and it took two months for him to say yes! Thank God it wasn't a marriage proposal. I will say this to be fair,he's shy, really shy. After that night, we were inseparable.

By November of 2001 He asked me to marry him (yay!), by January of 2002 I was pregnant (not planned, we had said we would wait 3 years before kids and of course two minutes later I was prego but not unhappy), by May 2002 we were married. Now we have 2 and a half kids. Number 3 is our last and is due in October. Our two oldest are boys and this one is a girl :)  I know, we don't waist anytime but hey, when your on a roll...

We are real estate note or seller financed Mortgage investors, meaning we help people who had to finance (partially or in whole) the house they sold to make the sale. Most people who have had do this didn't want to but needed the sale and for the most part they aren't aware that they can cash out of those promisary notes and get a lump sum of cash now. That's where we come in, we offer to give them that lump sum of cash so that they can have the money they could have gotten from the sale of their home.  When all is said and done they can invest that cash in whatever they want or need, vacation, car, braces for their kids. If you are interested in for yourself or know some one in that situation check out our website at: www.cash4cashflows.com/lkent

Dwayne is an extremely talented music producer, he specializes in Hip Hop and has been doing this for over 12 years. Hopefully soon, we will be able to add on a few samples for all those interested in hearing what he has to offer. 

I am a photographer, and an author. I'm Currently working on getting my first book published. I'm mainly interested in Young Adult but I do have a few children's picture book and Adult thriller projects in the running (I know those two couldn't be farther apart but hey who said you can't be diverse?).

Well for now I'll let you go

Lauri :)