I know it happened quickly, but we found a fantastic house and we're submitting an offer this evening! Whew! We saw the house on Saturday, decided to take the weekend to prayerfully think it over, and we feel very peaceful about our decision. So...here we go!
It is on an acre (ONE ACRE!!) in a nice subdivision, minutes to schools and the church, close to shopping...just very well situated. The one negative is that it is not any closer to Jason's office, so he'll still be driving about 25 minutes to work, but that isn't too bad.
It is an open floor plan (which we have missed since living in this very segmented house), three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and has a large, unfinished basement (perfect for eventually putting in two more bedrooms and living area). The house has great bones, but has many quirks (like painted grapes on the walls, green carpet in the bathroom, and plaster Greek columns as a headboard in the master bedroom), but we'll fix it up over time and really make it what we want. It isn't anything we can't live with for now. The yard is FANTASTIC, plenty of room for a garden and reading bench. There is a BIG shed in the back that is wired with electricity and water, and has a large loft. We completely fell in love with the yard. Oh yeah, and it even has a laundry shoot! Very reminiscent of Grandma's. We love it! So...we'll see how the negotiations go. Wish us luck!
Monday, January 30
Thursday, January 26
a change of plans
We are looking to buy a house!
We have to be out of this house by March 1st, so Jason and I had been looking and looking and looking for another rental, but none of them were right for us for one reason or another. Jason kept saying that he'd rather buy a house, but I wanted more in savings and a signed contract for a partnership buy-in first. I kept resisting and he went along with it. Well, after a month of that, and many *seemingly* unanswered prayers, Jason came home on Monday determined that we should buy. After one night of shock, I came around to the idea and am now convinced it's the right move.
Problem.
There is almost no way we can be out of here and moved in "there" in a month. On Tuesday we got prequalified for a loan, and this Saturday we're going with our realtor (who seems to be fantastic) to see five different houses. So now we just HOPE that it all moves quickly. Hope that we'll find a great house, in a stellar neighborhood, with great schools, near Jason's office, with a pretty fantastic backyard, AND that we can make an offer quickly and get the loan finalized even more quickly than that. Whew!
I've contacted a family in our ward who has a vacant basement apartment, and I'm waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully they'll let us rent it from them for a month or two. Otherwise, it's either we get a 6 month lease somewhere, or stay at an extended-stay hotel (veeeery expensive). So, we'll see.
But we are excited! For what we're paying in rent, we can afford a nice home...so why not? Things are going GREAT at the office now, and Jason just got a job in Richmond, VA to supplement our income on most of his days off. Yay! Things are looking good down South, I just pray we'll find our new home soon!
We have to be out of this house by March 1st, so Jason and I had been looking and looking and looking for another rental, but none of them were right for us for one reason or another. Jason kept saying that he'd rather buy a house, but I wanted more in savings and a signed contract for a partnership buy-in first. I kept resisting and he went along with it. Well, after a month of that, and many *seemingly* unanswered prayers, Jason came home on Monday determined that we should buy. After one night of shock, I came around to the idea and am now convinced it's the right move.
Problem.
There is almost no way we can be out of here and moved in "there" in a month. On Tuesday we got prequalified for a loan, and this Saturday we're going with our realtor (who seems to be fantastic) to see five different houses. So now we just HOPE that it all moves quickly. Hope that we'll find a great house, in a stellar neighborhood, with great schools, near Jason's office, with a pretty fantastic backyard, AND that we can make an offer quickly and get the loan finalized even more quickly than that. Whew!
I've contacted a family in our ward who has a vacant basement apartment, and I'm waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully they'll let us rent it from them for a month or two. Otherwise, it's either we get a 6 month lease somewhere, or stay at an extended-stay hotel (veeeery expensive). So, we'll see.
But we are excited! For what we're paying in rent, we can afford a nice home...so why not? Things are going GREAT at the office now, and Jason just got a job in Richmond, VA to supplement our income on most of his days off. Yay! Things are looking good down South, I just pray we'll find our new home soon!
Sunday, January 22
March visit
Just thought I would give a general heads up that the kids and I will be visiting Mom and Dad the very first week in March. Noah's school is having spring break, but that week Eric will be taking finals so I didn't think that having Noah home all day every day without Eric being there would be a great scenario, so we checked Southwest and they were having a sale this weekend-score!-and we got our tickets pretty cheap. So, we are flying in Sat March 3 and leaving Sat March 10. Kurt, Hillary, would it be alright if we borrowed the same car seats again? And could we plan a family something maybe Sunday the 4th? Is that when you guys would normally do your family dinner?
Also if any of you want to come visit Mom's that week, we would love to see you!
Also if any of you want to come visit Mom's that week, we would love to see you!
Tuesday, January 17
Dad's Trip to Utah
I thought you might be interested in the pictures that Dad took while he was at Grandma and Grandpa's anniversary party. Some of them are pretty fuzzy, I think the little camera is on it's way out.
Here are the happy couple.
Here they are with all of their children.
This is the extended family that came.
While he was there he went to see Erma and Junior. Erma had hip replacement surgery in the middle of December, but she is doing real well now.
Monday, January 9
School
I don't know just how many of you knew that I wanted to get a degree in teaching math. But it doesn't matter anymore because I've changed my mind. I've decided to go for a degree in Engineering. I haven't decided which specific field yet, or what school to go to yet, but I'm leaning toward Computer Engineering and University of Michigan respectively (though I think I would also enjoy Mechanical Engineering). Computer Engineering because computers interest me, and it does involve a good chunk of math. University of Michigan is my main consideration because of the clout I would have backing me up for the job hunt.
Jim & Joy Update
SURPRISE!! Joy took a pregnancy test this morning and as you can see it shows as pregnant! She should be due sometime the middle of September.
Friday, January 6
Hicks catch up
I've been waiting to post at a time when I could add pictures. However, that doesn't seem to be happening so I'm just going to write down a few things and post pictures later.
December was fairly busy for us. Charlie finished his masters program (finally!) and I finished up my semester. I lost my 4.0 finally in my financial management class (of all classes to lose it in). I got an A- in that class so my GPA is now a 3.98. I know, how terrible, right? Charlie keeps telling me it's not a big deal, but I have to admit I was pretty proud of my 4.0 and that I'd been able to keep one for so long. Oh well, all good things come to an end so they say. The kids had a ton of holiday concerts. They all did well. I have video clips of a few of them, but I probably won't post those. Video takes so long to upload. We had a nice quiet Christmas as a family. Then Mom came for dinner along with Charlie's sister, Jocelyn and her family. It was very nice. I will post pictures of Christmas morning later. We didn't do anything special on Christmas Eve. I didn't even remember about the puppets. I felt bad after I saw Jana's cute family pictures doing the puppet show. Oh well. We always play "find the pickle" on Christmas morning, but this year Charlie put a bit of a twist to it. He did a scavenger hunt to find the pickle. The kids worked the clues out together and had a blast. Chelsea was the first one to actually lay hands on it though so she got to open a gift first. We did a small Christmas this year. Initially because of our upcoming Utah trip, but then we ended up buying the new van and so really couldn't afford big anyway. It worked out good that we had already warned the kids not to expect a big Christmas. They loved what they got though, and seemed to enjoy themselves despite it being small. We got each kid one big gift and then a few smaller gifts. Lexi got a guitar, Merrit got a board game called Munchkin Quest, Makayla got a used Nintendo DSi (which we only helped her buy since she had been saving up for one), Chelsea got a night in a hotel room with a pool (she had asked for this to share it with the family and we thought it would be good to use while we were in WV anyway), Jaxson got a remote control car.
We went to WV over the new year. We hadn't intended to, but Sabrina announced at Thanksgiving that she was going to schedule her son's baptism for the 31st. So we thought we should make the effort to go. And it is an effort when you have as many animals as we do to find someone to look after for you. But we found (or suckered) a nice young man from our ward who came and fed our animals, including our little baby goat who still gets fed three times a day. He was such a good sport about making the time to help. We really owe him! The trip was fun and just the right length. There were 25 people smashed into Charlie's parents' house. Their house is probably about the size of Mom and Dad's, maybe a bit bigger but not much. So you can imagine what it was like. Fortunately, the days were on the warmer side so the kids were able to play outside a lot. It was nice to have that one night away. We did it Friday night and went up to Pittsburgh. We found a really good deal online for a 2 room suite (which fit us perfectly) and there was a children's museum not far from there to boot. So we went swimming Friday night and Saturday morning and went to the museum for a couple of hours before going to the baptism that afternoon. The Pittsburgh trip broke up the weekend very nicely. I had never been to Pittsburgh either. Although, I don't know that I'm in a rush to go back. The roads are set up not very nicely. We drove home Monday morning, on the 2nd. The roads were snow covered and very slick. We almost slid off the side of the road on a very steep incline (because Charlie's parents live in the mountains). We slowly made our way back to their house and regrouped. We left a little later and by then the roads had been salted and were much easier to drive on. We felt very blessed to have been watched over in such a way.
Now everyone is back to school and not very excited about it. I think we are all looking forward to spring break already. I have two classes again. Both are on Tues and Thur. One is Management Information Systems and the other is management science. I had toyed around with taking one more class. It was an elective that the school doesn't always offer but I have to have it at some point. I'm glad now that I decided against it because the two classes I have appear to be on the difficult side.
Lexi and I have started a challenge together. We are working on developing healthier habits and so are challenging each other to see who can do the best in three different catagories: exercising at least 30 min a day Mon through Fri; drinking 8 cups of water daily Mon thru Fri; going to bed at 10 pm daily Mon thru Fri. So far neither of us have had a perfect day and she is actually beating me overall so it should be interesting to see how things end up. We are going to try to go through the end of June to make it 6 month from now, but it might be hard once school gets out and we are off to Utah. We'll just have to play it by ear. So we hope that you all will cheer us on.
I have also decided that my kids need to start learning how to cook. For a long time now each of our family members has been assigned a day of the week for which they are to offer all the family prayers during. Monday is Lexi, Merrit is Tues, Makayla is Wed, etc... So I've decided that those are the days that each child will cook dinner, whatever they want. So I made up a calendar so they could tell me what they are fixing and when, and we wrote it on the calendar. That way I know what I have to shop for. They are pretty excited to do it and I'm excited to teach them so hopefully one day they will be able to make dinner more often than me (without my help). The only rules are that no one can make the same thing as someone else in the same week, you can't make the same thing yourself twice in a row and you have to include at least one vegetable with your meal (but veggies can be repeated as many times as wanted throughout the week). They were good with that. The first couple of meals they have picked are all easy ones like macaroni and cheese, ramon noodles and pancakes, but I hope that as they get more comfortable in the kitchen they will branch out and try different things. Otherwise, we may be eating mac n cheese a lot over the next few months. I'm excited to see where this takes us.
That's about it. Sorry this has been so long. I'll try to post more often so I won't have to write a huge tome next time.
December was fairly busy for us. Charlie finished his masters program (finally!) and I finished up my semester. I lost my 4.0 finally in my financial management class (of all classes to lose it in). I got an A- in that class so my GPA is now a 3.98. I know, how terrible, right? Charlie keeps telling me it's not a big deal, but I have to admit I was pretty proud of my 4.0 and that I'd been able to keep one for so long. Oh well, all good things come to an end so they say. The kids had a ton of holiday concerts. They all did well. I have video clips of a few of them, but I probably won't post those. Video takes so long to upload. We had a nice quiet Christmas as a family. Then Mom came for dinner along with Charlie's sister, Jocelyn and her family. It was very nice. I will post pictures of Christmas morning later. We didn't do anything special on Christmas Eve. I didn't even remember about the puppets. I felt bad after I saw Jana's cute family pictures doing the puppet show. Oh well. We always play "find the pickle" on Christmas morning, but this year Charlie put a bit of a twist to it. He did a scavenger hunt to find the pickle. The kids worked the clues out together and had a blast. Chelsea was the first one to actually lay hands on it though so she got to open a gift first. We did a small Christmas this year. Initially because of our upcoming Utah trip, but then we ended up buying the new van and so really couldn't afford big anyway. It worked out good that we had already warned the kids not to expect a big Christmas. They loved what they got though, and seemed to enjoy themselves despite it being small. We got each kid one big gift and then a few smaller gifts. Lexi got a guitar, Merrit got a board game called Munchkin Quest, Makayla got a used Nintendo DSi (which we only helped her buy since she had been saving up for one), Chelsea got a night in a hotel room with a pool (she had asked for this to share it with the family and we thought it would be good to use while we were in WV anyway), Jaxson got a remote control car.
We went to WV over the new year. We hadn't intended to, but Sabrina announced at Thanksgiving that she was going to schedule her son's baptism for the 31st. So we thought we should make the effort to go. And it is an effort when you have as many animals as we do to find someone to look after for you. But we found (or suckered) a nice young man from our ward who came and fed our animals, including our little baby goat who still gets fed three times a day. He was such a good sport about making the time to help. We really owe him! The trip was fun and just the right length. There were 25 people smashed into Charlie's parents' house. Their house is probably about the size of Mom and Dad's, maybe a bit bigger but not much. So you can imagine what it was like. Fortunately, the days were on the warmer side so the kids were able to play outside a lot. It was nice to have that one night away. We did it Friday night and went up to Pittsburgh. We found a really good deal online for a 2 room suite (which fit us perfectly) and there was a children's museum not far from there to boot. So we went swimming Friday night and Saturday morning and went to the museum for a couple of hours before going to the baptism that afternoon. The Pittsburgh trip broke up the weekend very nicely. I had never been to Pittsburgh either. Although, I don't know that I'm in a rush to go back. The roads are set up not very nicely. We drove home Monday morning, on the 2nd. The roads were snow covered and very slick. We almost slid off the side of the road on a very steep incline (because Charlie's parents live in the mountains). We slowly made our way back to their house and regrouped. We left a little later and by then the roads had been salted and were much easier to drive on. We felt very blessed to have been watched over in such a way.
Now everyone is back to school and not very excited about it. I think we are all looking forward to spring break already. I have two classes again. Both are on Tues and Thur. One is Management Information Systems and the other is management science. I had toyed around with taking one more class. It was an elective that the school doesn't always offer but I have to have it at some point. I'm glad now that I decided against it because the two classes I have appear to be on the difficult side.
Lexi and I have started a challenge together. We are working on developing healthier habits and so are challenging each other to see who can do the best in three different catagories: exercising at least 30 min a day Mon through Fri; drinking 8 cups of water daily Mon thru Fri; going to bed at 10 pm daily Mon thru Fri. So far neither of us have had a perfect day and she is actually beating me overall so it should be interesting to see how things end up. We are going to try to go through the end of June to make it 6 month from now, but it might be hard once school gets out and we are off to Utah. We'll just have to play it by ear. So we hope that you all will cheer us on.
I have also decided that my kids need to start learning how to cook. For a long time now each of our family members has been assigned a day of the week for which they are to offer all the family prayers during. Monday is Lexi, Merrit is Tues, Makayla is Wed, etc... So I've decided that those are the days that each child will cook dinner, whatever they want. So I made up a calendar so they could tell me what they are fixing and when, and we wrote it on the calendar. That way I know what I have to shop for. They are pretty excited to do it and I'm excited to teach them so hopefully one day they will be able to make dinner more often than me (without my help). The only rules are that no one can make the same thing as someone else in the same week, you can't make the same thing yourself twice in a row and you have to include at least one vegetable with your meal (but veggies can be repeated as many times as wanted throughout the week). They were good with that. The first couple of meals they have picked are all easy ones like macaroni and cheese, ramon noodles and pancakes, but I hope that as they get more comfortable in the kitchen they will branch out and try different things. Otherwise, we may be eating mac n cheese a lot over the next few months. I'm excited to see where this takes us.
That's about it. Sorry this has been so long. I'll try to post more often so I won't have to write a huge tome next time.
Sunday, January 1
Mathers Christmas
Here's a couple pics from our Christmas up north with my mom's side of the family. My family is very German so we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve and open our presents then. It's very nice to sleep in on Christmas morning. We usually have a big dinner Christmas Day, too, but being German and Irish we usually have a big dinner whether its a holiday or not.
Here's Harvey visiting with Santa at this awesome house in Charlevoix. It must take them months to put all the decorations up. See below, too. And, yes, that is a Model-A behind Santa and Harvey.
Besides being German, my family is also Crazy! Harvey and Oliver are the only two grandchildren at the moment so between the two of them they probably account for half the presents in this outrageous pile.
My family! The picture needs some touching up but this is the first full family picture we've taken in years. I love all the family pics that we have with the Hutchinsons so I insisted we get everyone in on the pic this year.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Here's Harvey visiting with Santa at this awesome house in Charlevoix. It must take them months to put all the decorations up. See below, too. And, yes, that is a Model-A behind Santa and Harvey.
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