the house

My camera is broken, so I took some video of the house.  I will try and get nate to take some photos on his phone tonight so we can document the transformation.

Mikah is taking her first real nap this week and I am supposed to be putting in our mail box.

My mother in law told me that there was nothing wrong with having a painter paint for your.  I thought it was just her way of getting out of helping us paint!! Ha ha.  I am so glad she suggested it.  We are having our whole house repainted inside (minus the doors which I will eventually replace).  It has been stressful enough living in a barley furnished house with all of our belongings in the shop while dealing with the little ones at home.  I cannot imagine trying to paint on top of it.  I am also grateful for our shop.

Here are the details on what is going on and what will happen:

• Dry wall guy came and did a lot of repairs, including taking down a useless wall in the girls room. 
• Painter is painting the whole place.  I choose a buttery yellow for the majority of the house.  Our lighting is so bad in here it looks different all over the place.  Once the place is put together I think I will be fine with it.  The bathrooms are a blue gray, but they are looking more blue than I expected.  Again, hoping for it to look better when it is all done. Jake's room will be blue too and Maesyn's room green.  It is Mikah's room too, but she has no opinion on the matter. 
• Had and are having 3 toilets and a pedestal sink installed.  The other toilets were all different colors. We also had the plumber fix some pipes and make our washer and dryer hook up.  
• Having the cabinets painted a creamy white.  We asked for a quote and it was too good to pass up.  We are glad we are doing it.  Our kitchen has dark wood floors and the white cabinets will brighten it up.  Eventually we will have a nicer counter top installed and a sub way tile back splash. 
• Having all the trim painted a bright white color.  
• We are also going to trim out all the windows with moulding.  Our windows are few and there are not many.  We will not do curtains in our house- we will have blinds in the bedrooms for privacy, and then my mom will make us sheers that will be held on with pressure bars for all the windows in the house.  
• When money allows us, we will put nice fancy covering on the big window in the front of the house.  For now, I'll try not to hang out naked there! 
• Clean up the yard.  We took out at least 8 bags of trash from inside the house and have a huge pile of stuff to garage sale.  They also left at least 40 bags of pine needles on the side of the house.  My kitchen window looks out over the garden.  It is a mess.  I'd like to have it full of planter boxes, but for now I can just clean it up. 
• Front yard landscaping.  My dad is good at that.  We need to trim our juniper bush and then re do the garden bed and remove the random flower beds in the middle of the yard.
• Put closet doors on the closets
• Install ceiling fans and replace ugly fixtures
• have our deck repaired (and eventually stripped and stained!)
• Put a garage door on the shop (in a while) and a back door on it. 
• and in about $3000 or $4000 we can re do our awful bathroom.  I'll have to post a picture. - but we will need a new furnace before that happens!  

Aw...home ownership. 

Identity... Who am I? Lost of things..

I would not say I struggle with knowing who I am.  It is not that I'm floundering not knowing.  The thing is, I cannot pin point just one thing.  Some are things that you can just tell with out really knowing me.. or you can assume.   These are probably amoung the most importaint:

• Mother (if you see me driving my mini  van or with my kids at the school or grocery store- I am usually with my kids). 
• Woman- obviously.  But you can tell that I am not a girlie girl, or a diva.  I generally don't wear make up, I do on Sundays- but still minimal and I am always comfortable.  I do love a skirt. 
• Wife- wedding ring tells it and I talk about Nate quite a bit.  I am happy to know that I am sealed to my family for ever.  I love them so much.
• Daughter- to my parents obviously. 

Other "lables" that I find to be importaint are:

• Daughter of God- We are all children of our Heavenly Father.  I don't think that we realize that of each other or of ourselves.  If we would identify with that label more often I think we would live our lives differently. 
• Family History Consultant:  This is my calling in Church.  It is really fun.  I don't even know if everybody in my ward knows that that is who I am.  My kids sure know and I like that. 
• A Mormon: I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

The Final ones, these are ones that sort of validate me.  I don't think that I necesssarly need to have these as the ones above should be enough to give me worth, as they are worth the most.  But these are little things that sort of make me feel a little proud of what I have done outside of the above.  I need to work on making sure that the ones above are enough to fulfill me.  But here goes my list:

• Artist/Potter:  I don't really think that I am that great of an artist.  I have a degree in Art Education and I'd say I know a lot.  I really enjoy pottery, but I would still consider myself a novice. 
• Runner/Athlete.  I've thrown the "Athlete" label in there just recently.  After training hard with purpose, getting faster and attaining a goal (a sub 4hour marathon), I feel that I could call myself that.  It sort of consumes me and it is something I really enjoy. I love the other athletic women I train with and who are my friends.  We often validate each other by pointing out our individual and collective accomplishments.  Aside from being dedicated runners/marathoners we are mothers and we sort of pride ouselves not only in what we have done as runners, but also in how we have taken this hobby of ours and done our best to make it have a minimal impact effect on our families. I cannot say it does note effect them at all (and some is good and some is bad) but in waking up at 4:30 several days a week to get our workout in before our family wakes is an action that comes up in conversation often.  That way we can do what we ejnoy, but not leave our family out.  (Sure we might need a nap later). 
• Gardener: This is failry new, I know very little and have only had a garden one year.  I don't know that I'd throw that around quite yet as a major label for myself. I don't want to get caught up in a conversation that I know nothing about.  For now I am learning- and have years of learning to go.
• Granola girl with gobs and gobs of fun:  I've often called myself this.  An all inclusive label for my love of being outside, camping, hiking at all the sort.  I hope to throw mountain biking in there next tax return.  I am a summer granolla girl.  I don't really like the cold and snow, nor do I have a passion for any winter sports (but I am willing to try snowboarding next year)

So, I guess if there were a photo to describe who I was- encompassing the important things to me it would be.

• Me after a dirty trail run, sitting down with my family to a recovery meal eaten out of a wheel thrown ceramic bowl.

The bitter sweet.

Before I complain about my stress levels and the pain it is to buy a house, I should begin my counting my blessings.  Well bulleting them.  By the way.  We close on Tuesday (hopefully)

• We found a house and are going to pay an awesome price for it.  Although it is difficult to sell a home in the econemy, we have have found a great deal. 
• Nate is employed.  After years of hard work (and 4 degrees) he has a great job that he is good at. 
• We are not living month to month and have saved money up for needed repairs in the house.  Now, we won't have the home in perfect condition right away, but we can afford some things right off that will make it seem "new enough" when we move in. 
• We are buying a short sale, that can come with lots of problems.  We have had problems but they are minimal. 
• We were able to qualify for a zero down loan.
• Our inspection was very detailed and found some problems with the home.  Most are minimal in expense and we will make a list of priority to have them fixed. 

Now for what we are dealing with and how I am doing - this is mostly for posterity and may not be very entertaining:
The House:

• Carpet.  We were not going to shop around and just go with the place that was recomended by the most people.  After we got our quote we realized we needed to shop around.  I was able to find a recomended installer and save us a few hundred dollars.  I also am ordering my carpet at a much cheaper price and getting better carpet.  I am saving over $11 a yard.  
• We are going to install comercial vinyl tile in our pantry and play room.  I got a better deal on install but I still want to make sure I'm getting a good price on the tile. 
• Paint.  After some  consult and adivice we decided to have a professional painter paint the house.  We are paining most of it yellow and the bathrooms blue and Maesyn's room green.  We are getting a great deal on Dunn Edwards paint.  I don't know what the cost will be yet, but I am going to save. 
• Dry wall.  We did not realize we needed dry wall work until our inspection.  There are lots of cracks and even holes that need paint and texture.  I have gotten 2 quotes and am unsure of who I will use. 

There are other things that need to be fixed.  Nate and I will make a list in order of priority and then when we have the funds/ time we will get to them.  These things, although cosmetic in nature, will give us a fresh entrance into the home.  There will always be something to fix, upgrade, make prettier.  I will try and post before and after pictures.  But for now I'm sick of going into the house.

The majority of this work needs to be paid via check, so no credit card.  My fix up budget incluedes funds  through the end of April...that would be fine if I could put it all on the old credit card (which would be paid in full at the end of April).  I cannot , so I have made a very primitive looking paper pencil list with current funts and then new funds and the dates we will have them. 3 pay checks in March is a bonus and then our tax return will be around 3 weeks after we sign and fax a document that sits next to me.  Although my credit card plan was a fine one (because the money was on its way) it is easy to get carried away with a credit card and end up will a bill much higher than expected.  This will keep us more on track.

The Loan:
We shopped around for a lender and believe that we saved by doing so.  We qualified for a loan that is income based.   In the mean time Nate got a raise, which is a good thing, but we have been fearful that it would disqualify us for the loan.  Doing so would mean we would have to do a loan with a down payment and set us back as we raised the funds.

Some hasty mistakes on our part made the lender have to do more research and set worry in me (not a hard thing to do). I paid my cc bill twice in one month resulting in deposits into my checking account from over draft protection and then a refund deposit.  With our loan we have to make under a certain amount of money each month, but you also cannot have too much money in your bank account.  So if you have too much money in savigns (in our case we were saving to do fix ups on the house) you could be disqualifed.  You just cannot win in some cases.

The lender is awaiting our latest bank statement and then we should hopefully be good to go.  If we don't get our loan we will have to come up with some cash quick and we won't have any money left in savings to do the wanted fix ups before moving in. 

My lender, while pretty confident that the loan will go through, advised me not to pay for any of the items or services we want for our home until we close.  Buying a short sale or forclosrue is risky. 

Our house we are renting:
I feel that the place is a constant dissater.  There are many causes.  1.  I am running errands and not home to do regular clean up. 2.  I am home, but on the computer, phone or something else and cannot prevent some extra messes (flour spilled all over the carpet) or simply don't get around to regular clean up so it piles up.  2.  I have time to clean up but am stricken with stress that I just do nothing (this is a huge low for me).
I have let my house hit a record low standard of clean.  I hope that that standard raises in the future and this is not my new benchmark.
We need to be out on the 31st or I am paying rent for all of April.  I am not willing to do this, so we may have all our our belongings in the garage and sleeping on matresses on old carpet while we await the work to be completed. 

My Children:
Maesyn: I forgot about her singing practice on Monday as I was meeting with a drywaller that I schedueld to meet with during her parent teacher confrence.  Her teacher gave me the condenced version.  She is tip top and way smart.  She also competed in Odysessy of the mind last weekend and did great!
Jake:  Although this is stressful, I have decided that I did not want to neglect my kids.  I have made an effort to continue play dates and park trips.  They have not been as frequent as they should, but they still happen.  I do not do well with other kids at the house and I sort of shut down, but I hope they do not notice my incompetence as a person and enjoy the play.  In the end I feel exausted with all that I'm doing in addition to tyring to keep up my regular duties.  Then I am resentful of the lack of gratitude in the end.
Mikah: She is not helpful, until she takes a nap and then she is very helpful.  Today while comparing paint samples with a friend Mikah climbed on my back and pulled my hair as if her goal was to rip fistfulls out of my head.  She is a camp at taking all canisters out of my cupboards and trash bags out from under the sink.

My Parents will be taking the kids next week.  Hopefully I can be very organized and productive during that time.

Nate: 
I put Nate in charge of the lender, but I am controlling and sort of take over things.  So he will communicate with the lender and then I have to find all the paperwork - but he faxes it.  Truth be told, because I have been in charge of all that stuff I know where it is and can find it with more efficency.  I have also tracked our money.  Nate is excellent at excel and if I gave him the chance he would do fine, but I've sort of been doing it so long and know where stuff is kept.  I'm sure he cringes at my primitive skills and sloppyness.

Heidi:
Well, most of this is about me.  In addition to the move that I sort of command, I am training for a race.  In the end I will have trained 18 weeks total.  I am supposed to get pleanty of rest and eat well these two weeks prior.  We will see.