Jenn's Blog

I've been a bad, bad blogger. Everything seems to come in spurts. This past week was a whole lot of nothingness and it was awesome! We watched a movie a day, sometimes two. Went to the park once, a nature reserve (with a STREAM to play in) and that was it!!

We've been eating a lot of fruit this summer. My head spins every time I make a fruit run up at the local fruit stand...and it's not even organic fruit. Oh well, I guess. I just don't know why eating healthy food has to be so dang expensive!

We are pretty sure we're buying land now. 3.24 acres in Barnhart. We are in the process of purchasing it, but I won't say it's a sure thing because I've learned that it's not set in stone until the papers have been signed. We spent a lot of time pouring over house plans. We decided that since we have to build, we might as well build what we really want and do a modern house. We've met with 2 contractors and 1 box builder. We've also considered building a house out of alternative materials such as earth bags, cord wood, or such. We've also looked in to pre-fab modern houses and converted shipping crates. Getting permits is the biggest obstacle to all of that so I think conventional building is what we are looking at.

Speaking of houses, ours is still on the market and we've not had a single showing in the past 2 weeks. Our realtor told us it would be super slow this time of year but it just makes me cringe. We've actually decided not to build on the land until our house sells. We would have to use the equity in our home for the down payment on the land...but what if it doesn't sell for what we want/need? That just seems too precarious of a position to be in. So we'll keep the house on the market until sometime in September and if it looks like we'll just have too come waaay down on the price we'll probably take it off the market and try again in the spring. Once the house sells, we'll rent a house and then start the build on our new land. Moving twice will stink, but the cost savings will be nice and it'll be a lot less stressful for us if we only have to worry about building a house and not building and selling at the same time. So that's where we are with that.

This is the beginning of "Birthday Week" around here. Ben's birthday is on Monday and Chelsea's 16th birthday is on the 8th. So lots of fun and yummy treats in the week ahead.

I'm now 7 months behind in scrapbooking which is unheard of for me. I need to buy a new album, pages and page protectors. And that totals up to about $50. Gah. Hate to spend that even if it's usually good for 2 years worth of photos. Sometimes I'm SO tempted to get rid of all of the scrapbooking stuff and just do the photobooks on Costco....I would do it in a heartbeat if there was a way to incorporate items like birthday cards, etc, into the photo books. I love to hang on to those types of things...

Watched the movie The Jane Austen Book Club and now I want to read all of her books again. Then we watched Prince Caspian last night and I want to reread all of the Narnia books. Better get started!

Here's my big boy 5-year old on his birthday. It's rare that I get to snag a picture with him - I'm usually behind the camera. I can't believe he's FIVE!

Ben made up our very first batch of laundry soap and I just started a load a bit ago!! Yes, I've been talking about this forever, but our huge, honkin' container of laundry detergent from Costco FINALLY ran out yesterday. I was beginning to think something supernatural was going on there!

Will I have fresh, cheaply cleaned laundry in an hour? We shall see!

I'm loving summer. I feel like we've had enough events to go to so that we've getting out of the house, but not so many that we're overwhelmed. Thursday night our Life Group had a pot luck out in Festus. The kiddos were all there so it was fun for the whole family. Today we drove by a few houses and then Ben and I went to a housewarming party for our neighbors next door. We had such a nice time we didn't want to leave! Tomorrow is church and maybe we can find something fun to do as a family.

We've had 3 people look at our house this week. Still no buyers, but I think we are doing fine.

We looked at a house in Imperial a few days ago, but need to have some comps done to see if it's worth the price. It has over an acre of perfect land, a pool, a wrap-around porch, an amazing up-to-date kitchen, finished basement, and a screened-in porch. But it's 22 years old and there are a lot of small updates that need to be done and who knows if there are any large updates. And since we've already blown $$ on an inspection just for the deal to fall through, we are feeling pretty wary this time around....so who knows.

Yesterday we viewed two houses. The first house is a short sale that I've been eyeballing for a while. I love the style of the house and we love the neighborhood it's in. It sits on 3 acres, but we could really tell what the land looked like in back. We still like the house after seeing it, but it's 22 years old and has some maintenance issues. The house is at the top of our price bracket so it doesn't really leave us any $$ for updates. Bummer.

The second house was Ben's favorite. It was a great price and situated in the country. It had almost 2 acres, but they were very usable. The house is great and we loved it...but found out we can't get internet service out there. This is obviously a no-go!

Our realtor sent us a list of about 10 other homes which we scoped out today while our house was being viewed. We found one that we really like so far, but we need to see the inside before we get too excited!

We drove out to a few houses today. Couldn't look inside any of them, but wanted to at least get an idea of the area and lot. Then we decided to schedule viewings of 2 of them.

Went to Justin and Julie's house for fireworks and fun. There were two other little boys there that Luke had fun with. He really enjoyed the fireworks this year. Gabe's favorite part of the evening was drinking a cup of Pepsi. He really milked it! We had a good time catching up with people and just hanging out.

Well we found out yesterday that the Pevely house wasn't meant to be. The sellers reviewed our contract and decided we were asking too much of a price reduction and rejected our offer outright - no negotiating! So that's the end of that! Funny thing, just before we received the call, I was looking on Craigslist and found yet another house in Pevely. This one is on more acreage and is much newer. Still small, but bigger than the other house and lots of recent updates. Who knows if this is "the one" but it confirmed to us that SOMETHING is out there and we don't have to settle.

For now, we'll keep the house on the market until the end of August/beginning of September just to see what happens. If we sell, great, then we'll find something else. If we don't then we'll just stay put for now. No big deal.

Mom had the day off today so we met up with her at Rockwood Reservation and ate a nice picnic lunch and then hiked along one of the trails. We originally went to see the cave, but it must be closed off because we couldn't find any mention of it and the trail leading up to it was closed off. Oh well. We hiked for a bit and had a nice time. There were TONS of bugs - Daddy Long Legs, snails, spiders galore. The kids had a great time.

After naps, we headed over to the Fischer/Harvey home and had a nice little get-together. The Fischer/Harvey's are in our small group. Another couple from small group was there as well as friends, family and neighbors of the Fischer/Harveys. We really enjoyed ourselves and the kids did too. Gabe took forever to warm up, but Luke had a blast from the word "go". There were numerous children his age there and he just ran and played alllll evening. They came home and got a good scrubbing and then went to bed!

Gah. We had two showings yesterday. The first one was scheduled to be between 9 and 11, the second between 3 to 4:30. Soooo, I took the boys out to the zoo with a friend in the morning, came home for lunch and Costco ice cream (woohoo), cleaned up again and then took the boys to the park.

We find out today that one of those showings never even happened because the Realtor couldn't get into the house and while they were debating calling for the code they saw two cars driving fast through the subdivision and decided it was much too dangerous. Alrighty then. Great. No feedback on the second showing yet.

Oh well, if this week is anything like the last then we probably won't have any showings until next Monday or Tuesday.