Pictures

These are not the greatest pictures but this is the house we will be moving to. The front is fairly boring but we have lots of plants to put out there that will help. I will post inside pics when I get them. I sure will miss my big front porch.

A house

We found a house and get the keys Monday. I will post pictures when I get to take some... Thanks to everyone for all your support. I appreciate you all.

My House

Over 3 years ago we moved from a small duplex into the house we are in now. It is not much larger but we have 3 bedroom, 2 bathrooms and a large backyard. Our agreement when we moved in was to purchase the house after a year of being here. It was supposed to be a lease purchase agreement so whatever payments we made for rent were to go toward the price of the house. This was our thinking for the past 3 years. Last week we get a call from the landlord telling us that he would like for us to finance the house through another lender because he wanted out. We understood and it was cool but the kicker is that he wanted out within a month. I don't know of any bank that will work that fast. People have to come out and look at it and inspect everything and it is a big headache. It takes more than a month. When we told him we could not do it in that amount of time he did give us a little longer but all the while he was not giving us the whole story. The whole deal came to a head yesterday... It was a long freakin' day.

Yesterday afternoon we had some investors call our house. They wanted to see it. At this point we did not know what was going on, was our landlord selling the house out from under us? My husband and I talked a bit and agreed that we should just let them see the house all the while we were trying to get in touch with our landlord who was not calling back. I took 2 kids and left to pick Chase up from school and Mando stayed home to greet the investors. While I was out the landlord called me and tried to explain that he had called the investors to buy the house from him and that we would just work out a contract with the new owners. In our original agreement we were to pay $550 a month for 10 years and we would own the house. The new deal was $75,000.00 financed for 30 years at 9%. I guess its not a bad deal if you had not already paid over 3 years on another one. I was pissed, I felt betrayed, but I also understood that he needed money. When I got home the investors were leaving and Mando and I talked about what had happened. He thought the new deal was pretty good considering our house appraises for $92,000.00. Later yesterday evening the landlord called back to see if we had decided on anything. Mando talked to him for a while and when he got off the phone he told me that the landlord only owed back taxes on the house. To the tune of $35,000.00. So we had 3 options.

1st- Take the $75,000.00 deal
2nd- Get a loan for $50,000.00, Pay the landlord $15,000.00 and then pay off the back taxes on the house.
3rd- We move

All of it had to be done by today. I do not know anyone that can finance a house in 1 day. Apparently the taxes were so far behind our house was up for a tax lien bid.

So again Mando and I talked...

We paid our rent in advance. We are actually paid up until September. So then it was my turn to call the landlord. It was hard. When he finally called me back I talked to him about the options we had and the fact that I understood he needed to get this taken care of quickly, more quickly than we would be able to keep up with. I asked him to refund our unused rent and then we would be out of the way for him to do whatever he needed to with the house. He seemed to appreciate the fact we were not going to make any trouble, but wanted to be sure we were okay.

Our landlord has always been good to us. We paid rent on time and he usually gave us a break when we would make lump sum payments.

It is going to be hard to walk away from this house because of the memories it holds. I brought my 2nd daughter home here, Chase learned to ride her bike out front, we have wonderful neighbors.

But on the bright side we will be moving to a newer house.

I am already exhausted and we still have to find another house, pack and move within a month.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Easter

I know I am a bit behind but well that is just how it goes in my house. At least I get it done right? Easter was wonderful, we woke up early and actually went to church. My family was there already eating breakfast so we joined them and talked a bit. After breakfast the kids had a little easter egg hunt. They were so excited.

After that we raced back home to get ready for my family to join us for Easter Dinner. It was great. Everyone had fun.

Then it was time for the real egg hunt...

Good times all around.

The Easter Cake

I wanted to do something interesting and different for this years easter cake. So here it is.

Spring Break '08

This year we decided to go camping for spring break. We had an awesome time. I will tell more about it in some other blog since I am so tired now that I just want to go to bed. Here are a few pictures that pretty much tell the tale...

The rain

You know there is alot that can be said for and about the rain. We always need the rain. Now I do not have to water my plants. Rain makes for good fishing... the list can go on and on. From my perspective though, I think we have had enough.

Every time it rains my back yard floods. We have spent alot of time on many different occasions redoing our backyard. We have purchased dumptrucks full of dirt to spread out all over the backyard. Then we seeded. We had grass for a couple of months but then it rained and waterlogged the grass we had. It never grew back. So then we got many, many bags of mulch and spread them all across our back yard. Of course it looked great for a while until it rained. Then all the mulch washed away. This last time we spread straw all over the back yard. And now it is raining...

This is how it leaves my back yard after only a few hours of rain.