Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Should we stay or should we go?

We built our house 9 years ago. It's a modest house in our neighborhood at just over 2600 sq ft, but it's nice (in my humble opinion). We chose the lot, the options and did all the landscaping ourselves so the attachment here is real.

We have just under half an acre for our yard, which has allowed us to put in a nice play set for our children, a covered patio, a chicken coop, fire pit area, an enormous garden and we still have room to grow.

When we moved here, settled in and got to know our neighbors, I decided I could live the rest of my life here, I love it that much. What's the problem? We have a four bedroom house and we're eight people. Could we make it work? Sure we could, but it's crowded sometimes, and even more so when we have houseguests--which we do from time to time.

Right now we have our four girls paired up in two rooms and our oldest son has his own room (the smallest room of them all), and that leaves the baby in our room with us. It's working for now, but ideally, I'd like our little guy to move out of our room....I'm sure you can imagine multiple reasons why!

Right now, there's no space to move the baby to though and this has us contemplating selling our house and buying a bigger one. The very mention of this has differing reactions from our children--one being excited at the prospect of her own room, two freaking out at the idea of not having their best friends just a few doors down, some refusing to change schools no matter what enticement we may find.....They have only agreed to look into the idea with us if we stay close by. Honestly though, we'd like to stay in the area since the schools here are top-notch.
A view of the last half of our back yard. We have nothing behind us but the nature conservancy.
One problem is that our mortgage here is over $100,000 less than the houses in our area with our size requirements for house and yard (hoping for 6 bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, a basement--which we do not have here--and at least 1/3 acre). We really don't want to go from having an enormous yard with plenty of playroom and a bountiful garden, to having a tiny space with a few little garden boxes!


We have a few garden boxes for our sage, onions, potatoes, garlic and we also moved some of our raspberries this year.

These pictures are from shortly after we planted our garden at the end of May.
This shows the plastic mulch we use to keep the weeds under control. The plants do very well with it.



We've had conflicting opinions from realtors about the value of our home, two of them telling us to list it for significantly less than some competing properties. Funny enough, several of the ones they email me to pique my interest are comparable to what we have now and they cost quite a bit more! Ugh!

We have some debt (yuck, I know) that we want to pay off, and so we don't want to sell with a realtor if it means we can't pay off those debts and have a down payment for another home. But I'm hearing conflicting opinions about how hard it is to sell a house on your own. But if we do this, we can ask for a lower price, pay off what we want, do it on our own timeline......It's all just so overwhelming!

I wish I knew some expert that we could trust in helping us in the right direction, but those seem to be in short supply just now. Pretty much we've just about decided to spend the next year de-cluttering, re-painting, cleaning carpets, etc. and then possibly listing around May of next year. We're not sure if that's the right decision, but we aren't going to rush into something that doesn't feel good.

We shall see, I suppose. Any ideas or experiences here would really be greatly appreciated. :)

Friday, February 14, 2014

Valentines are Not Trophies

I saw this story in my newsfeed on Facebook. It was a teacher under fire for sending home a letter to parents instructing them to make sure their child brings a Valentine for every child in the class if they chose to participate in the passing out of Valentines. Funny enough, people thought this was outrageous. Some even likened it to receiving participation trophies for kids' sports. Some were talking about how this teacher needed to help prepare these children for the real world. Perhaps I should mention that this teacher is a kindergarten teacher. What does a 5 year old need to learn by not receiving Valentines cards?

This wasn't the first time I heard this sentiment though. I was surprised to read it on the Matt Walsh Blog too:
"I still have my pity-trophy, it’s right up there on my pity-mantle, next to my pity-game ball and the mandatory Valentine’s cards I only received because elementary school rules required every child to give one to every other child."
He had me agreeing with most of what he said until that point. Because I'm trying to see what trophies have to do with kids receiving Valentines along with every other child on Valentine's Day. I wasn't aware it was an award. Did these children do something special to deserve these Valentines?

Honestly, I'd always thought of Valentine's celebrations at school as being much like another trick-or-treat or reason to have a fun party. But let's say it's not. Let's say these cards and little candies that the children pass out during school hours are awards and they should be earned. What, then, makes a child unworthy to receive one? Are they not pretty or handsome enough? Do they not dress well enough? Do they need to bathe more often? Are they not rich enough?

In all my school years it was always said by the teacher that all students should receive a Valentine from students who chose to bring them. It made some of my elementary years more bearable, because the students actually listened. I'm sure that in grades 3-5 that had that not been the rule, I'd have gone home feeling even more worthless than usual on that day. Why? Because I was bullied. Many of the kids didn't like me. I wasn't like them. I didn't go to church. I smelled like cigarettes. I dressed myself. I did my own hair (and not very well, I might add) and I lived in a trailer park. People called me "Smelly Nellie" and "trailer trash" among other things, they'd actually follow me around the school yard to do it.

Every morning I would wake up to my alarm clock, force myself to get ready for school and to walk to where I knew people were going to be mean to me. How did I handle it? I laughed. I acted like I didn't care and then I went home and cried my eyes out on the particularly bad days. But Valentine's Day was a good day. I was treated, miraculously enough, like anyone else. I got to take home my Valentines and show my mom and sister and feel like everyone else for a day.

What can be so terrible about what this teacher asked? None of these children earned any of those Valentines. It's just an excuse to have a little fun and celebrate. If every student in elementary doesn't get one, then none of them should. Valentines in school has nothing to do with accomplishment and everything to do with fun, and perhaps a little about teaching them about love and friendship.

Are people seriously advocating leaving children out of this? For what purpose? Is giving them a Valentine somehow going to leave them ill-equipped for the real world? I highly doubt it. But leaving them out feels a lot like bullying. For teachers to not make this rule in their classroom seems wrong to me. What is right about allowing a child to be left out of the passing of Valentines? How is that going to strengthen their character or teach them good lessons?

You may be surprised to learn that I don't believe in rewarding children for nothing. We don't go for the participation trophies here. We encourage our children to work hard and to do their best. If they win, fantastic! If they don't, hopefully they did their best and learned something and will do better next time. But we don't want them receiving what they didn't earn. We want them to be prepared for the work it takes to make it in the real world.

But Valentine's Day has nothing to do with this. And once these kids hit Junior High and High School, they get to choose whom receives their Valentines gifts and they understand the deeper meaning behind those gifts. In elementary they don't yet understand this, and they don't need to. They're children. I think there are already too many ways some children are ostracized. There's no need to provide one more way. If they want to do an extra special Valentine for their very good friends, by all means, let them do it, but don't encourage them to be mean and leave someone out because they don't like the way they dress, smell, talk, etc. This doesn't teach them anything valuable.

Just my two cents. Happy Valentine's Day! :)

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Great Deal for those Xbox Fans

We love our Xbox 360 and use it everyday. It's not just for gaming. We use it for Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant, etc. We'd be lost without it and it's made our cut from cable/satellite much easier.

One thing that makes it do so much for us, and enhances all those Call of Duty games my husband and oldest son like to play online, is the Live membership. It usually runs about $60 a year, but I can almost always find it for less on Amazon (another reason I'm an Amazon Junkie!). Today I got an email from Amazon saying that the 12 Month Xbox Live Membership is discounted $20 today until February 1 (which is this Saturday) or while supplies last, making it $39.99! This is an awesome deal and one you'll rarely find! This deal is for the online code only (which works perfectly).

Just thought I'd share it! Tell your friends :)

Friday, January 17, 2014

What Happened to Honesty in Business?

Maybe I'm naïve to think that it ever existed, but I'm sure there must've been a time when people didn't try to cheat each other--when they actually did what they were supposed to do and didn't try to hide a mistake when they made one. I've had multiple bad experiences throughout my life with unscrupulous people, but I've still, somehow against all odds, managed to stay optimistic.

I loath dishonesty in people. I try to live by the motto: Treat others the way you want to be treated. I'm not going to say that I'm perfect. Certainly, I'm not. But I work hard to be a good person. I teach my children the same thing. And most days, I guess I think most people are trying just as hard. But this past week, well, I'm losing faith fast!

We took our SUV into Les Schwab a few months ago for flat repair. We waited quite a while, about half an hour longer than they said it'd be, and then when they gave us our keys back, they said it was on the house. We were pleasantly surprised and figured it was because of the long wait. We thanked them and they said to just keep them in mind when we were in the market for new tires (which were getting close. These are the only words exchanged.

This is what the stem looked like with their cover.


This is what we found under that cover. The stem is broken.
A few weeks later we started losing air in the tires again, so Tony went to fill them up with his air compressor. One of the stems was broken on a tire that Les Schwab had repaired, it had been covered by one of their valve covers and we'd never noticed. Tony was unable to put air in it because part of the stem is broken off.. He told me to call them about it, to see if they'd fix it. I should have, but I didn't.

Why didn't I call? Well, I've been working on getting out of bed in the morning. Putting one foot in front of the other. Keeping my children fed. Working hard to not about what I lost. Trying not to cry daily. Tying to keep track of appointments. Trying to focus and concentrate, because for whatever reason, my brain feels all out of whack.

Basically, it's taken everything in me to just do the basics. Everything extra has gone out the window. I'm working on it. Trying to get better. I think I've improved because my daughter Ashlyn said to me last week, "Mom, what happened?" I asked what did she mean. She said, "You look happy again." I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I felt awful that she'd noticed I wasn't feeling myself before. I thought I'd done better at trying to be normal.

Anyway, I didn't call. I didn't want to deal with it. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal anyway, since we were soon getting new tires. Well, turns out it's a big deal after all, because that stem has a sensor in it and that sensor runs from $60-$80! We just found this out on Saturday. So I girded up my loins (I can say that, right?) and told Tony we needed to go in there and talk to them about this. Thus began my disillusionment with this business.

The technician had put it in the notes that the stem was already broken before we brought it in and that they'd talked to us about this before we left the store. Really? When? No such discussion took place. They "repaired" our flat, gave it to us for "free" and sent us on our way with a smile.
This is what the covers look like on all our other tires.
It's also what our cover looked like before our visit.

This is what the stems look like on all our other tires.

It's their cap on the stem. My husband had filled it before we even went in there, so we KNOW it wasn't broken then and that it had been our valve cap on there beforehand. A few weeks later, boom! It's broken underneath their cap, instead of the one that is identical to all our other caps on our other 3 tires (I wonder what they did with our cap? I'm guessing they didn't put it back on because it wouldn't fit on after he broke it....). When we showed the manager our stem, he said he couldn't believe they would let us out of the shop like that--with a broken stem and the cap shoved on there like that. He said he would talk to his tech and get back to us on Monday.

Well, Monday came and went. Tuesday came and went. Wednes....well, you get my point. So I called them today and asked what the decision was going to be. He said his tech insists it was already broken or that it was more severely broken after we left the shop over the last few months. He said that if it had happened at the shop, they wouldn't have let us leave like that. Well, they did! The cap should prove it, if nothing else. It's their cap!

Our ownership in this mess is that should have checked the work before we left the premises. Also, we should've brought it to their attention when we caught it. I can't keep letting my emotions get in the way of my responsibilities. I'll admit those mistakes. Had they said that the length of time was the reason for not replacing it, I'd have had to accept that. But this was an outright lie!

I told the manager that I understood that he didn't know us personally, and he wasn't there when this all occurred, so he has no reason to trust us. But I told him, "I know that we don't lie. I know that we're honest people. And I KNOW 100% that when we brought our car to you, our stem wasn't broken." He offered to give us the part at cost. I have to accept that. It's better than nothing. But it still gets to me. I'm not upset at the manager really. But that technician....well, that's another story. I hope he learns the value of honesty. I won't hold my breath.

I guess the best we can get out of this is that we know to not take our business there anymore.....