throwback thursday – amateur writer

My mom rocks.

There are a million and one different reasons why, but I’m going to just tell you one for now:

She saved all kinds of papers and report cards and other paraphenalia from our school days. Literally, from preschool through high school.

So, since we’re coming up on the seventh anniversary of my high school graduation, my mom decided that now was the perfect time to give it all to me.

Internets, I was quite the little writer. In this folder of fun school times I found such gems as:

this just supthing i want to giv you.
if the baby’s dont come at christmas i dont want to open my presis.

November 12, 1990 – 5 years old

My mom was pregnant with the twins, and apparently, I refused to open my Christmas presents if they hadn’t arrived by then. Which they didn’t, but I don’t think I stuck to my threat.

I want to be a teacher when I grow up. I want to teach kids. Some kids have to lern write from wrong. I like being a teacher they teach.

March 16,1992 – 7 years old

Before I discovered my disdain for people who learn more slowly than I.

My favrite Bible story is about Paul. Paul is a Good man. I like Paul. He prieches.

April 20, 1991 – 6 years old

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory, no?

In all seriousness, I’m glad my mom kept this. Not for the excitement of reliving childhood (although, lets be honest, don’t you wish that your mom would hand you a big folder of all of your most precious school moments?) but because it’s just another reminder to me of how thoughtful my mom is. My mom does not enjoy clutter – she is not a pack-rat, and yet, she set aside her desires for extra space (which was a hard thing to come by in my childhood home) so that we would have something to look back to – something they thought precious enough to keep.

It’s these little things that make me feel special. It’s something I hope to do for my children someday. Not because it’ll be fun for them when they’re 24 to look back at how they used to be completely horrible spellers, or totally inept when it came to sentence structure, but because it’ll remind them of how deeply I love them, and how much I cherish every little moment as their mother no matter how big or small.

pardon me while i step onto my soapbox

Let’s play a game, shall we?

Everyone stand up.

Ok then, I want everyone who has less than 5 children to sit down.

Wow, that certainly put a dent in the crowd.

Ok, now for those of you left standing, if you do not have multiples, you’re next on the chopping block – you can sit down.

Again, that looks like most everyone.

Ok, so now, I want anyone who does not have EIGHT children, 2 of which are twins and 6 who are sextuplets to sit down.

There now.

If you are sitting down, I would like for you to refrain from judging, criticizing, sneering at, and looking down upon the Gosselin family.

I am SO tired of hearing “Well, if she would have been nicer, maybe he wouldn’t have cheated on her….” “You know, that Kate, she’s just a WITCH, I don’t know how Jon even LIVES with her!” and other variations thereof.

Yes, they invited us into their home to witness their daily lives under such extraordinary circumstances. They have allowed, to a certain extent, this invasion into their privacy.

But no one deserves the sort of treatment they have been receiving over the last few weeks. They should be allowed to work out their marriage without the intrusion of cameras, snide remarks and busy-bodies who just think they know what’s going on.

More than anything else, I’m heart-broken for their children who will never again be able to google their names or the names of their parents without reading something crude or disrespectful about their lives, from those of us in the blogging community who don’t even know them.

Shame on us.

it’s starting to get old, isn’t it?

Interwebs, I have to talk about houses again, I just have to.

This season of my life will be similar to when I was getting married, and all of my prep for that.

Or when Husband was deployed and how well I handled that. (As an aside, I’m realizing now just how dark a period that was in my life….sheesh!)

This will be the house-buying phase, which will inevitably become the home repair phase which will hopefully be rounded out with the filling the house with babies phase. But I digress.

So, on Tuesday afternoon I, accompanied by my Dad and Lemons, set out to check out the first house – my favorite house of the bunch.

It’s in pre-foreclosure so it hasn’t been maintained well on the outside, but it’s only 4 years old, so there’s not much about it that looked shabby. We walked in the door, and I could still smell the “new house” smell, which is only rivaled by the new car smell. MMMMMMM.

Ahem.

It was in pretty good shape, considering the circumstances, and my excitement grew with each new opened door. It’s spacious and elegant, and in some cases, a fresh coat of pain will do the trick. There are some rooms in which I would have to hire professional carpet cleaners, and other rooms would need new carpet altogether, but it’s manageable. As a matter of fact, the worst part of the inside of the house was down in the basement, where it seems as thought the former owners just went nuts when they discovered that the bank does come to take your house from you if you’re not paying for it, and body-slammed themselves into different sections of the wall. Lets just say that I would be hiring some professionals to come fix the drywall in several places. But, again, it’s manageable. And for the size of the house vs. the cost of the house, it’s a steal.

Then we went outside. Oh the outside. There aren’t really words for the outside except to say that if I wanted to rent out my yard for sledding in the winter, except the sledding would be like a cross between sledding and chicken, because the slope is toward the house, not down and away from it, I would make LOTS of money.

It was REALLY discouraging, and something I would consider to be a deal-breaker. (“But can’t we just move this house onto another lot?” I questioned to myself, frequently) My dad did mention the possibility of hiring a landscaper/contractor to level the yard out and make it look really nice with a retaining-wall-type-thingy, so now I’m exploring that option. Well, I’m not exploring it, Mr. Palmer from church is exploring it. Because I haven’t used him enough as it is. (he also hooked us up with our realtor, and has been an absolute life-saver over-all so far in this process) He’s going to take a look at it to determine whether it’s a. feasible b. acceptable to the county and c. worth all the trouble.

After I left the house on Tuesday, I actually planned on crossing it off of the list, but there’s just something that keeps coming up in my mind about it, and I just can’t let it go. So I’ll be exhausting every possibility with this house before I count it out entirely.

Maybe because when I was walking through it, I could picture where I would put the Christmas Tree, and y’all know that once that happens, it’s curtains.

all kinds of words – wednesday

Guys. Have you heard the mom song?

I was going to post this on mother’s day, but I never got around to it. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. I still laugh every time I watch it, and I’ve heard it about a million times.

So, here’s a video of a woman singing a song of all of the phrases moms say in a 24 hour period. Be prepared to laugh. Literally out loud. No kidding.

a beautiful journey

The Associate Pastor of my church and his wife, recently adopted a little girl from India. He and his wife played a major roll in my life as a teenager, and now as an adult, they have impacted me even greater.

Husband and I have always discussed adopting, but it seemed a distant dream. So out of reach, so intangible. There is the occasional family in our church who adopts, but nothing has been so close to home as this particular journey.

Since I work for my church, and my desk is right outside his office, I’ve actually been blessed to “listen in” on their journey from the very beginning.

From the very first time they received a picture of little Siddhi, to the moment just 2 weeks ago when they received the news that they could finally go get their daughter. It has been an incredible journey to witness and to pray through.

God was in every detail, but the most incredible thing for me to witness was this couple’s willingness to just let God lead. They knew that this wasn’t anything they were in control of, and so they didn’t try to control anything. What an incredible lesson to learn by watching the actions of these people, who opened themselves up for everyone to see.

This is their story.

light at the end of the tunnel….what’s that?

There were 2 pressing things that Husband and I had to do first in order to get this home-buying ball rolling.

First – we had to submit our application for approval of eligibility for a VA Loan.

The VA – or the Veteran’s Affairs – Loan is not actually a loan. BUT! It’s this really cool certificat-ey type thing that basically says that if Mr. & Mrs. Fancythis default on their loan, (EEK!) Veteran’s Affairs (aka the government, aka, that means you if you pay taxes, and thanks if you do!) will take on the burden rather than the bank.

For the record, we don’t actually plan on defaulting on our mortgage, so I really hope that your hard-earned tax dollars will not go toward this particular purchase. First of all because that would mean that my husband lost his job or something equally as horrible, but secondly, because, well, I’m sort of of the belief that the government/the people shouldn’t have to bear the burden of my, well, burdens. But that’s another post entirely.

The second thing that we had to do was meet with a Realtor that a guy in our church hooked us up with. I will say first and foremost that because I trust the man in the church, I therefore trusted the Realtor. But after our meeting with him, I realize why I trust the Realtor all the more. He was completely honest, didn’t sugar-coat anything, and told us what we needed to know for the particular stage that we’re in. In other words, he was wonderful. It definitely made the impending largest ever purchase of our lives seem a little less scary. Which is nice.

However – isn’t there always a “however”? – the aforementioned VA Loan application for eligibility can take up to 3 WEEKS to process and then arrive. And I found a house (THE house?) that I love, LOVE, LOVE, and in my impatient-ness, I’m super-concerned that it won’t last on the market for another three weeks (because, you know, the market is just hopping right now) and then we’ll lose it, and how devastating will that be?

And….breathe.

We just started this whole thing and already I’ve bitten all of my nails off and now I’m acting frantic.

Next up – finding a lender. That oughta be entertaining.

well, would you look at that!

You blog about your impending first-home-purchase and the lurkers come crawling out of their hiding-places!

At any rate, I’m glad you’re reading, and I LOVED the advice y’all gave. It was helpful, insightful and in some cases, just plain funny.

So far, in the days since I originally posted about our decision to move forward on the largest ever purchase in our lives, I have run the gamut on different emotions. They are as follows:

Excited
Inquisitive
Overwhelmed
Petrified
Angry
Overwhelmed
Confused
Frustrated
Overwhelmed

And it’s only Wednesday!

On the positive side (because this is the sunny side of life) I now officially think I know what escrow means. Don’t ask me to repeat it though, because I shouldn’t be your source for that kind of knowledge.

What I have learned that is of the utmost importance, is this:

I need to take things one step at a time instead of trying to look at the whole package deal at once. Good advice huh? You can thank my bestie for that. So that’s what I’ve started doing, I know what our first step needs to be, and we’re on our way – I just have to wait for Husband to come home on the weekends to do his part.

The other thing I’ve learned?

Buying a house is a whole lot more complicated than buying shoes; I believe I’ve finally met my match.

to my secret (non-commenting) readers

You girls are incredible – you know that?

This year as a youth leader has been one of the most challenging, eye-opening years for me.

I had some pre-conceived notions about most of you, and you have amazed me with your depth of character and willingness (ok, sometimes I forced you) to open up, even when we’ve been talking about some pretty personal stuff.

I know that ever since this day – most of you have been reading (all the way from the beginning, no less!) my blog.

And I just wanted to tell you here – on the interwebs how much your kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity on Friday astounded me.

I’m SO glad that NONE of you are graduating this year and that Katie and I have the privilege of being your leaders again next year. You girls are the little gifts God gives us to show that our work does not go un-rewarded here on earth.

All my love,
Laura

it’s official

After 2 and 1/2 years of marriage, 1 year-long deployment (in which we actually saved money), a 6-month-long hiring process with a police force (in which he was recently hired), and living with my parents separate and apart for almost 2 of those 2 and 1/2 years, Husband and I will be starting the long, arduous process of purchasing our first home.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, finally.

I really shouldn’t say long and arduous. We couldn’t be first-time home-buyers at a more perfect time. A great tax credit, low prices, and houses that keep getting bigger and bigger (in our particular price range) as the market continues to slump are in store for us. I’ve already found several that I LOVE, but we have to hook up with a lender first.

That should be fun.

I’ll actually have to learn what escrow means, instead of just nodding and smiling while everyone around me discusses it. I also think that I’ll have to stop arbitrarily buying shoes and purses whenever the urge hits me, and since I barely use the purses I do own, I should consider selling some of them on eBay, because, you know, it’ll be nice to have some extra cash lying around in case the toilet falls through the floor or something. I don’t know, what else would you keep cash on hand for?

The thing I’m most looking forward to?

No, it’s not getting dressed without the fear of one of my siblings walking in on me. (although, that’s a close second)

Buying our home will mean the end of my most famous phrase (at the moment):

“Oh! This will look GREAT in the insert name of room in house here (example: dining room)  that I don’t have in the house I don’t own!”

Although, I will be a little sad to see it go. It did bring about a hearty chuckle from all who heard it.

So, internets, this is where you come in. You experienced home-buyers. What advice do you have for a property virgin such as myself? What do you wish you knew when buying your first home? Do you wish you had been more picky or more flexible?  What was the most valuable lesson you learned in the process?

And most important of all – how much money can I count on you to donate toward my purchse?

my husband’s body has been taken over by aliens

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but my husband and I are total opposites.

I mean, completely different – as in, when we find something that we have in common, we like to write it down. (although, more often than not we forget. Hey! That’s something we have in common! Where’s my pen……) So, my husband is a pretty humble, laid-back, go with the flow kinda guy. You can assume what you want to about my personality based on that very sentence.

Ahem.

I’m pretty proud of the fact that he’s a Lieutenant in the US Army. It’s kind of a big deal to me actually, so before he went to the police academy, I sort of thought that it was such a silly idea for my husband. After all, he is a Lieutenant in the US Army, what could the police possibly teach him that he doesn’t already know?

But my husband doesn’t think like that – he’s humble, remember? So, off he went. The compliant, obedient one. As an aside, I don’t really think I’d last very long in either profession.

Today I received my first email from him, and it was only at this point in our marriage that I wished that he had taken on just a little of my personality – to buck the trend or something. Instead, this is what I read:

The instructors of Class 134 have been kind to us and are allowing us to write one quick email on the third day we are here…….Things are difficult here but I know I am getting into much better shape and am learning a lot……..for right now, its time for me to return to my room and prepare for tomorrow.

Um, I’m sorry, but did we take a wrong turn somewhere and end up at alien reform school? I mean seriously, I think a robot wrote this email.

I don’t even want to know what he’ll be like after another 5 months and 3 weeks of this.