Wednesday, May 07, 2008

We managed to rule out about a dozen houses today just by driving all over town. Do you know how exhausting that is?

We are going to look at the cute 5 bedroom house tomorrow night. We did drive by it and peeked in the windows. It is vacant and needs some painting and minor cosmetic work from what we could see of the main floor. The outside is as cute as in the picture. The back yard is quite large and there’s a great storage shed in the back that looks like a rustic barn. And I don’t mean rustic in the run down sense - it looks rather new. There is definitely a bedroom and full bath on the main floor, so that means 4 bedrooms and 3 baths upstairs. The kitchen is on the small side, but open and renovated.

There is only one other house, a townhouse, that is still in consideration. The neighborhood is on the other side of town, which means a slightly longer commute for me. But it’s a newer community and it has a pool and a playground area just behind the row of houses.

Then who knows what listings our realtor will come up with that aren’t available online. Those are for Saturday though. For now, I’m mentally done.

Funny parody of Faith Hill’s Breathe.

Thanks to my Dad for finding it.

Have a tissue handy.

[via thinkling bill]

I’m proud to say that I have not read a single one of the 50 Best Cult Books.

[via chai llama]

I got home yesterday and chaos ruled until about 8:30pm or so. Jesse needed feeding, Beau and I got into an argument (my fault), we didn’t know what to do about getting dinner for ourselves.

We were waiting for our realtor to call about going to look at a newly reduced, bank owned house in our neighborhood. She was out and about all day, working on another house, and her cell phone had died so she didn’t call until about 6:45pm. Turns out she could meet us at that house at about 7:15pm, so we put Jesse in the stroller and walked down there to meet her. In all of the chaos, I forgot to get my camera - so no pictures of this house.

It has been vacant for about a year and the bank just reduced the price yesterday by about $70K. It is definitely an “as is” buy, but the seller is offering $2500 towards closing costs, too. It’s a steal.

The details are behind the link for those who care to read them.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

I’m taking tomorrow off to spend the day looking at houses. Will make sure to take the camera to chronicle the whole thing.

I’m tired already.

Not really.

I’ve read posts by Brant Hansen that I’ve seen linked at other blogs. He’s a funny writer with good insights into the Christian faith. His newest category addition is If Jesus Had a Blog and the first two posts are brilliant.

He just moved and this post sums up my apprehension about our newly pending move this summer.

Gilbert Meilander once wrote about moving.  He likened it, for the young, single person, to flitting about in a glider.  You want to go left?  You go left.  Want to dip?  You dip.  Wham.  That easy.

With a family?  It’s different.  More like commanding an aircraft carrier. You want to go left?  You signal about six months in advance, and begin a process that throws every hand on deck into upheaval.  More accurately, it’s like commanding an aircraft carrier to begin turning left, then losing your glasses, iPod, and underwear for a week.

I can’t find anything.

He’s been added to my blogroll.

Dadsense via Bryan.

For reference.

Monday, May 05, 2008

While it seems fast, we believe that God has opened the door for us to buy a house this summer when we sit down and look at the timing and options.

I called my credit union and it seems that we may qualify for more than we thought. Of course, that is just a quick quote based on basic info I gave to the lady on the phone and we are not going to try to max out that amount by any stretch. We know what we can and cannot afford in a monthly payment. But it will give us some wiggle room on what kind of house we can look at, including single family houses in addition to townhouses.

My credit union offers a full service program for members - they will find an agent and manage the mortgage approval process. So we’ve started the process and we’ll see what God does in the next couple of months.

Because one of the things that’s a huge factor is timing this move - our lease ends at the end of July. We are going to California for the last week of July. So we think we need to try to close-move before that trip and worry about the unpacking when we get back.

Yowzah.

[via dean via cute overload]

I made this over the weekend and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out for a first attempt.

More info and another ring here.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

There are things that we’re praying about and considering for our future. It’s funny how God presents things, opportunities, ideas and then we need to figure out which of them to pursue or leave behind. It’s weird to line them all up to see how to prioritize them and to realize that we really don’t know what to do, which direction to turn, which fork in the road to take. It’s why we, humanity, get so frustrated with God at times - because he gives us the map, but seemingly without directions. So here’s what we are thinking and praying about now.

1. Beau’s career options. Should he continue the hunt for a full time job or be a stay at home dad for a bit? Should he look for a part time job to bring in a bit of extra money if he does decide to be at home with Jesse?

He has put in for a couple of government jobs, one of which would involve an eventual move to the Dallas area, probably in the fall/winter. But there’s no telling if/when we’ll hear anything on either of them. So we wait.

2. My career options. There is a promotion opportunity opening up in my office. It’s the next grade up and it’s a significant pay increase if I get it. The thing is that 3 other admins in our office are qualified to compete for the job, too, although one of them is Useless One #2 and if management is wise she will never be considered. Because if she is? There will be three loud and legal complaints from the other three candidates. I have a leg up on the other 2 since I have a college degree and neither of them do, but that’s no guarantee that I would get the job. But I’ll put in for it regardless.

My boss is making retirement noises, so that is another possible promotion opportunity, but my chances for that slot are slim to none because of the two folks I know will put in for it and would be considered before I would. And the timing would be such that the new President could determine how things shake out with however he decides to appoint a new Marshal to the district.

3. Our home options. We rent and while our rent is lower than the average for this neighborhood, it is still pretty high. And our neighborhood is in an interesting area. We’ve noticed a lot of realty signs go up in the past several months, including at the home next door. Beau sees them all when he takes Jesse for walks every day. We figured that some of them might be foreclosures, but then the thought occurred that maybe some of the abandoned houses are the result of the new crackdown law on illegals in our county. So this morning, he picked up one of the realty brochures at one of the houses on our street and called to find out the listing price. It is ridiculously cheap. I’m talking prices from about 15 years ago in this part of Northern Virginia - well below $200K - these houses sold for over $350 just a couple of years ago.

I did a search on realtor.com and found more than 350 houses listed for less than $175K in our town. Astounding. Of course, many are in parts of town that aren’t that great. But there are several in very nice neighborhoods, clearly bank owned, and for sale “as is.”

I found the listing for the three on our current street and all are priced low. All are vacant and have been for at least a couple of months. But I’m most interested in the one next door. First, because it’s next door - no truck would be needed for the move. Second, it’s an end unit townhouse. Third, the online listing included extra photos and it looks to be in good shape and it’s the same size and basic layout as the one we’re in, including the basement configuration.

So we’re thinking we should buy a house this summer - as soon as possible really, in order to get in before the military transplants come to town looking for houses and buy up the one(s) we may want. But we have nothing for a down payment and we’d have to try to get a mortgage on my meager salary. As low as the listing price is, I’m not sure we can get a mortgage for it.

I’ve got a nervous knot in my belly just thinking about it.

And then if Beau gets the job in Dallas and we just bought a house here, then what do we do?

It’s too much to think about right now. So we pray. Pray. Pray. Pray.

Oy vey.

We discovered On A Clear Day through previews of it on another DVD. We can’t remember which one. But it looked cute, so I put it on the queue.

Frank determines to salvage his self-esteem and tackle his demons by attempting the ultimate test of endurance - swimming the English Channel.

The movie is set in Glasgow, Scotland, and the accents are thick. We were about 20 minutes in when Beau said, “I need subtitles.” So I took the DVD player remote and hit the subtitles button. Voila! he was now able to understand what was being said.

We both really liked the movie. It is low key with quirky characters and a touching subplot. The only recognizable actors (to me) are Brenda Blethyn and Billy Boyd, although the guy who plays Eddie is a bit familiar.

I highly recommend OACD - very sweet and funny movie. 4 stars out of 5.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

I think Jason Castro has overstayed his welcome on AI. However, he is a pretty talented dude and might actually have a recording career at some point.

Chris Rice‘s Clumsy.

1. The Crock Pot Indian Chicken: we both liked it a lot. Instead of the yogurt, I did use coconut milk. I also cooked the rice in half coconut milk, half water. It was delicious. I think that next time I need to use more seasonings to counter the sweetness of the coconut milk since yogurt is not nearly as sweet. More garam masala and I might add some curry powder to it as well. I cooked 8 frozen chicken breasts on low for 5.5 hours and the pot reduced to warm where it sat for another hour since Beau came home later than I expected. It was perfectly cooked.

This is definitely a repeater and Beau suggested we consider it as one of our dinners at Disney. Jaynee, would you eat this? Oh, and Jesse loved the chicken - shoveling in the pieces I gave him as fast as his 8.5 teeth could handle.

2. LOST: Thinkling Bill’s live-blog recap is here. Be warned that it is spoiler heavy since he does live blog while watching the show.

3. The Office: This is one of the most uncomfortable TV shows to watch. Michael is such a loser. Ryan is a loser. I’m glad Jan is gone - she always annoyed me. Toby is sad. Jim is awesome as is Daryl (who is hilarious). Pam in her glasses is my hero.

4. Housecleaning: The plan is to steam clean the basement and Jesse’s room carpets today. We’ll see if that actually happens.

5. The Other Boleyn Girl: Yes, I’m still listening to it. I have 3 discs to go. I think after listening for a whole day last week that I overloaded. And I forgot to take the CDs back out to my car. So I started a new book in the car and TOBG languished in my home office all week. I listened to 2 discs yesterday. I’ll try to listen to more today. But really, I’m pretty much done with it - it’s way too long.

6. I am part of a family of freaks. I say this with total love. Here’s the deal - we have a long history of getting into arguments over where we will eat when we eat out. So the amazing thing is that so far in the Disney vacation planning we have not had any arguments about this. We have reservations for lunch at all of the parks already, except for Epcot - I’m sure we’ll get into it on that day because all of us are interested in eating at different countries. But a new debate was started yesterday.

I had suggested that we celebrate Mother’s Day together on our vacation and we gals have been trying to figure out something we can do together while the men watch the kids for a couple/few hours. One suggestion was a spa day or mani-pedis. Then Mom suggested we do tea at the Grand Floridian and a whole new can of worms was opened. Jaynee isn’t interested in tea at all. Dad is interested in going to tea. I think Denis and Beau are neutral on the idea. So now I think some of us might go to tea (on the same afternoon that CG goes to her Alice in Wonderland tea also at the Grand Floridian), but we still need to come up with a gals outing for the Mother’s Day thing. Cracks me up.