The Miller Country Adventures

It's time for a blog post! I finally broke down and purchased a prepaid Verizon JetPack so I could get online. It's been driving me crazy. The phone company has to run a new line to our house and that was supposed to happen 2 weeks ago, and I haven't heard a peep from them. I wonder if we will ever have a home phone and Internet access?

Did I mention that I painted a chalkboard wall in one of my bedrooms? I turned it into the kids "playroom", it's where I put all of their toys and books and stuff and I let them mess it up during the day and we clean it up together before we go to bed at night. I just think this wall is so cool, and I kind of wish I had done this in the kitchen, or in my own bedroom...

Take a look "Before"...

And now "After"...

I will also admit that I have been kind of struggling without my dryer, and here is my pitiful attempt to hang a clothesline:

Even with repeated attempts to tighten my lines, they just keep a sagging. Some day I will do some real research and learn how to do this correctly with pulleys and all that, but for now, this will just have to do.

I'm still trying to grasp the concept that we are living in the country, I just can't believe it. I love it!
The children have been outside more in the past 2 weeks than they have been in the past 7 years in our old home.

The only 2 really negative things so far is that it is horsefly season, and these bugs are everywhere and they are nasty. They chase you and they are BIG. This one wouldn't leave my car door this morning and it was as big as my THUMB. Gross.

 

 

The other negative is that many of the people (and moms in particular) that I see out and about, have tattoos and smoke. Not that I'm trying to make sweeping judgments, but I'm slightly worried about exposing my kids to the "redneck" element and having them think that underage smoking and tattoos are in anyway "cool". I'm also worried that I will have nothing in common with anyone that I meet (as in too-goody-two-shoes for the neighbors and not-Catholic-enough for the Catholic homeschoolers that I haven't met yet, but hopefully can find them around.) Hopefully I will get this figured out. I'm pretty much a loner and one local Christian friend (who has small kids and is not 20 years younger than me) who can put up with me and my rosaries and my hyperactive kids and Ohio State loving, sports-fanatic, beer drinking husband, would be a Very Good Thing!

Have a wonderful day everyone!

(And I can't resist a few more shots, I just love this...)

Unplugged

Well, we've been really busy these past few weeks... we moved our house-full of stuff into our new house out in the country (a whole ordeal in itself), and we have been working diligently on getting our old home ready to sell and listed (another massive ordeal), driving back and forth each day to drop the kids off for their last few weeks of day care for the month of July. It has been busy indeed!

In our new home we currently have:
1) No Internet
2) No Home Phone
3) I lost my smart phone before the move so no Internet Phone Access, using a prepaid dumb phone
4) No Cable Television (I don't watch TV, but my husband is catching a few stations on his rabbit ears)
5) No Clothes Dryer (ours started smoking...) been drying them outside on a makeshift clothesline and wherever I can.
6) No Oven (I've been using a crock pot and microwave to cook family meals).
7) No Dishwasher (We've been doing it the old fashioned way!)

We are also a good 10 miles away from all the fast food places and convenience stores that we were so accustomed to hitting up and we have a big 'ole gravel driveway with an old rusty gate that we keep locked up now to prevent strangers driving down looking for things to run off with... (apparently this can happen occasionally out where we live if you invite it, so we keep the gate closed, which is what the neighbor we share our driveway with tells us we should do) It is a pain in the butt to unlock, so we've been spending our evenings at home unpacking boxes, cooking at home, and trying to get settled in and organized - it is kind of a deterrent from driving anywhere you don't really have to go. But I truly feel "unplugged"... no Internet, no phone. I realize how much I have missed being able to surf the Internet, google interesting things, get on Blogger, and read and respond to email, or drive a mile down the street to go to Starbucks, Panera, or Goodwill. I'm checking email right now in our vacant old house, which still has our access temporarily... It feels so good to be able to do this right now because it has been so long! It's going to take me a while to catch up with everyone.

All in all, we are so blessed, even though still stressed and maxed out financially, hoping that our old home will sell quickly, but very very thankful to be in our new home and looking forward to a simpler lifestyle, more privacy, more nature, and more time with my kids. I want this move to bring me closer to my husband, my family, and to God, and lately, I think we have been in over drive mode, it's been having the opposite affect, but today, my husband and I got to go to confession together alone, (only 2 more days before full time kids = crazy mode :-) and a nice relaxing lunch and walk downtown. It's an amazingly beautiful day today. Going to catch up on my email now... while I have a chance to do it!

Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

We have been working very hard on getting our new home "ready" to begin moving into it. A lot needs to be done. Installing a mailbox, new carpet, painting, cleaning, scrubbing, power-washing, electrical work, carpentry work, siding repair, concrete repair, septic pumping, and the list goes on and on. We've been driving out to the country several times a week after work to check up on things and get started. It's taking a toll on everyone, and every time we go, we don't get home until late and the kids are up way past their bed time.  I'll try and take some pictures eventually and post them because we are going to do a complete transformation on this house so I want to capture some "before and afters". I signed up for Angie's List. So far it has been an awesome $20 well spent. We have found some great contractors from recommendations on the site, and it is so valuable to read the feedback and see the ratings. I wish I would have known about this years ago, it could have saved us a lot of trouble.

Last night we drove out to the house to check up on the (new and better) painters from Angie's List. They were an excellent choice! 1000% more professional than the last crew that stole my paint. (We decided they were not going to be doing any more work for us.) I picked a gray color for my house.. actually.. a cross between a gray and a beige.. apparently this is the "new" thing.  It's called "Greige"... The color I picked is Sherwin William's Perfect Greige. 

Do you want to see it?

 

After we got home last night, the kids were exhausted. They were so dirty from playing outside, I had to give them baths even though it was 2 hours past bedtime. That is when I found a whole head full of lice on my oldest daughter's head. Ewww yuck! :-) My 3 year old had a few of 'em too.. Let's just say, I spent almost 3 hours last night trying to de-lice the kids and I'm going to have to probably do it again just to be sure I got them all. My daughter's hair is so thick and brown it is extremely hard to see and get to them. It was no easy task. Poor kids... I feel terrible for not noticing earlier.  Lauren said she wanted to go to school and tell her best friend all about it. She loves nature. Aren't kids funny? I suggested she keep this one to herself, so people don't start making fun of her. Now I am wondering if home-schooled children have to deal with this? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Thanks for reading my blog!

The painter who stole my paint

Ten years ago, I used to sell real estate - back when the market was booming mad. I used to work for a well known national production builder and sold those cookie-cutter McMansions. I also had my real estate licence and worked as a buyer agent. Times were very good then. I was putting my husband through college full time when he decided to go back to school in his mid 30's. (Never say it is too late to go and get a degree or change careers! It is not.) I remember one couple who I sold a home to had zero down and over $70,0000 in credit card debt and a credit score of 560. We were able to credit-repair them up to a 600 FICO over a 3 month period and qualify them for a home. (With zero down!) Four years later they foreclosed on the home!  This is an extreme case, but there were many instances where I was showing homes to people who had no business buying homes and they were hell bent on buying the home for zero down. And they did it too! This thinking is what got us all in the mess we are in now.

Anyway, having recently gone through the buying process and having a little knowledge about the subject, it is just amazing to me how much harder it is to buy a home now, then it was then. We have very good credit, good income, etc. a "good buyer" - and this process was very grueling. Lots of paperwork, lots of conditions... One of the issues why we couldn't close was because there was some children's artwork on some of the walls of the home. My kids were actually fighting over who got to have the room with the "ladybugs" in it. It wasn't Picasso, but it didn't bother us at all. The appraiser commented that it was "graffiti" and we had to get drywall holes (one was a rough in for a whole house fan - that we didn't even want covered up...) and the bedrooms painted as a condition for loan approval. This was a major hassle. The bank wanted us to pay half of $1750 to have someone come in and put primer over the existing "artwork" and fix drywall holes. My view was that if I was being forced to pay money for a painter - then at least let's get colors that we like. They weren't having any of that - they were only going to cover up the markings with a neutral paint color of their choice.

After haggling about it and getting nowhere with our Realtor and the bank Asset Manager, we stopped by to meet with the contractors while they were beginning and decided to "work a deal" with them directly. They were already getting $1750 to paint 4 bedrooms and cover 3 drywall holes and put a makeshift cover over the whole house fan rough in. They told us to go buy the paint and pay them $300 and they will paint our colors instead of the plain white in the bedrooms. (We wanted to paint the girls bedroom 3 different "fun" colors - keeping it very bright and unique. The rest of the bedrooms - a warm gray color.) The painters told me to get 8 gallons of gray and 1 each of the "fun" colors, pink, red, and purple. This paint cost over $400. I knew it was too much paint, but I was looking forward to using the rest of the gray elsewhere in the house - the hall way, the bathrooms, the family room, etc. And I had plenty of plans for the "fun" colors too.. to do all kinds of cool stuff for the kids. In the past when we have used painters, they always leave the paint - especially when we have bought and delivered our own paint! Anyway, these painters totally took our paint. We didn't want to make a major deal out of it, my husband asked if there was any left over. The painter who was loitering around to clean up said, "Oh, my partner must have taken the red..." and then my husband saw the huge 5 gallon pail of gray in the back of his truck. He casually said, "Oh.. that is for my next job..." (yeah, right... after my hubby's evil eye, he ended up bringing it back in and putting it in our living room when we were in another room - so at least we got that. It's over $130 worth of paint - that I need to paint the rest of the house that I thought was pretty obvious.) Next, I picked up the purple gallon can that was left in our living room - it was virtually empty. (This was used for 2 10 x 10 walls.. so we are talking only 200 sq. feet.) - No way. I didn't say anything, but I was just kind of wondering what happened to all the paint? I wanted to use that paint to decorate letters of my kids names for their new room and paint some new ladybugs for them on their new walls. As the painter was packing up and turning to leave, I heard my husband say, "You have purple paint leaking out of your duffel bag onto our front porch." Sure enough, in his haste, he had somehow managed to pour at least a half gallon of that leftover purple paint into some unknown container when we weren't looking and put it in his duffel bag... and it started to leak out in a big glob all over our porch! AWKWARD! I kinda consider it stealing. Or to give him the benefit of the doubt - at the very least, really tacky and highly unprofessional. I hate to write a book about it, I mean who cares - take the paint - fine. But I do want to ask my readers a few questions for some perspective:

a) When you buy paint for your painters (especially in a wacky color), do they leave the paint behind, or is it acceptable for them to take it?
b) Do you tip your painters? (Obviously, I did not tip.)

c) Am I overreacting?

We bought a Homepath Home!

Well, it has been over 7 months of fighting for it, and we actually did it! We bought a Fannie Mae Homepath home - a bank owned property out in the country. It has been an emotional, draining, stressful, long, and frustrating 7 months. We are no where near done either, the process is just beginning because we have numerous issues to fix and our current house to sell... but we got to this point (which I was doubtful that we would). It's all in the quest for a "simpler" life - it is just going to get much more complicated before it can get simple though... but we knew this before taking this plunge. The foreclosures on the market are unbelievable. So many people are losing their homes. You really can take nothing for granted. The benefit of having a job, a source of steady income, and all that comes with it, is a real blessing.