Our Old House - Acquisition Part 1

Sorry this may get long.  But this is for my own journal as well.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF HOW WE BOUGHT A HOUSE -

          It has always been a dream of Perry and I's to move out of the hubbub of the big city.  As Perry's job has always required him to be near the city, we figured it would be something we would do when he retired.  We have had places that we loved and that we thought we would look at then. 
         I have always had a hobby of looking at MLS home listings to see what was for sale.  I like to look and dream and see what is out there and what the possibilities are.  It is a fun hobby!!
         Perry about two years ago asked at work what the company policy was on telecommuting.  His boss said they didn't have one and if he wanted to try 2 days a week they would see how it went.  The group he works with works out of a couple of different offices across the US and they communicate 95% of everything through emails, conference calls and skype type meetings.  So he started at two days a week which soon turned into 3 which soon turned into 5.  Nobody even knew.   They now have several guys who don't even live in a city with an office.  As long as he has an internet connection, he can work from anywhere.
          So with that event and the fact that our youngest will graduate from high school in the spring and then leave on a mission, we decided to start thinking about moving sooner.  We started considering several areas and I started doing more of my hobby.  We figured we would get serious next spring.
        Our favorite area was out pricing our budget and headed for a major influx of people so we decided that maybe we would consider Sanpete County as it would be closer to my mom, it is reasonably priced, still fairly close to the Wasatch front and not too far from the grandkids.  And best of all RURAL!!!!    I started perusing the Sanpete County MLS listings for fun.  After all I had a whole year or so before we would be really looking.   Who knew?  I found some fun houses and enjoyed looking.
         In June we decided to go "WANDERING" one weekend for our anniversary (definition of "WANDERING":  to travel in the car with no real plan, maybe a destination and maybe not.  No reservations, Just drive and see where one ends up, may be for  n hour, may be for days.)   We did have a destination in mind though.  We though we would wander through Sanpete County and see if any one town seemed like a likely place to land some day.  I had found several houses that were listed for sale in different places through out the county that we thought we would just drive by and see what they looked like.  None of them were "the house"  just a random assortment of possibilities.
        Now, just as a side note,  we had a few ideas of things we really wanted to have in our next home.  Big gathering area for family dinners, shop for Perry or place to put one, a little space between us and the neighbors,  still enough bedrooms for family when they come home, along with not going into debt for it.
        So anyway, we headed off with our list of houses and blankets and pillows in case we had to sleep in the car.  The first place we stopped in Sanpete County was a little town called Fountain Green.  Population 1100, one gas station, one grill/grocery store,  Quaint, quiet, pretty.  The house we wanted to drive by was a 1914 Victorian with an addition and a separate shop sitting on a little over one acre.

 It was a foreclosure and gov't owned.  (FannieMae/Freddie Mac).  As we drove by I said to Perry, "It's empty lets go look in the windows."  So we did and lo and behold a door was open in the garage!!!  So in we went. Shhh don't tell!!!!!!  We loved it and could see so much potential.  We spent over an hour looking and discussing the possibilities.  We left and wandered on to the next town and listing.  We looked at quite a few more little towns and several listings.  We eventually stopped in Fairview, ate dinner at a local restaurant and booked a hotel room.
       Perry said, "I wish we had a tape measure."  "Why?" I replied.  "So we could go back and and measure rooms."   "The grocery store will have one."   So we went to the grocery store, bought a tape measure and went back.  We spent another hour measuring and sketching a floor plan.  We left and spent the evening planning and plotting.  Now mind you this was all very hypothetical.  We had a house and 9 months before our son graduated.  But it was so much fun to imagine!!!
       We finished the weekend with more little towns and more house drive-bys.  It was a great weekend.   We returned home with only two houses that we would even consider IF we were looking for real.  One that was overpriced for our budget and the little yellow victorian.  Neither of which would still be on the market by the time we were really ready to move!!
        A few weeks later, the victorian went off the market as an offer had been put on it.  I was kinda bummed.  That was our house.  I looked at other listings online but nothing had the character or potential that it had.  Oh well such is life and it was all just a fun day dream anyway.  Or was it?
      Watch for the next installment coming soon!

     

Please refer to my children's blogs to see what fun we've been having!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(They do such a good job at posting all our family fun!! And they can do it faster than me!)

Yes, Again!!!

So . . . 29 years ago on Feb. 8, my sweet husband proposed to me. He didn't want to do it on the cliche' Valentines Day so he did it earlier. Every year we celebrate on the 8th instead of the 14th.(Crowds are definitely littler.) We went to dinner and tried to get a hotel room in the "Hamptons" (no not the ones in N.Y., the Hampton Inn. It makes it sound like you went somewhere spectacular to say you spent the night in the Hamptons.) Anyway it was full as was every other hotel within miles. This was on Friday night. On Monday, the actual anniversary of our engagement, he sent me these flowers at work!! The ladies were so impressed with how sweet he is. The net is an actual fly fishing net I have been wanting that he took to the florist and had them make me an arrangement in it. The card said, "Still the best catch of my life." Isn't he a great husband? I'd still say yes to that proposal 29 years ago!!!

Christmas 2009

Wow, what a lot of fun!! We had a houseful with lots of fun, food, family and presents. We had all the kids home with their families and also Perry's parents. We had Perry's sister, Vicky and her daughter, Pamela; and daughter and son-in-law Christina and David with their two children here for Christmas Eve day, also. We spent Christmas Eve having our traditional ham buffet with all the goodies and played games all day. A good time was had by all (24 of us).


A quick but rowsing game of Wacky Six.


Kamri, Kylee and Laryssa in their Christmas Pajamas!!

Christmas morning we discovered that the jolly old fat man had indeed found us and we opened presents and then spent another great day playing games and eating more yummy food.




Chanse and Kylee looking over a present Chanse got.

It was a great Christmas!! I enjoyed every minute.

December 23, 2009 Boom goes the trailer!!!

Ok, I'm back up and running. I don't have much incentive to blog when my kids beat me to it. Hence, no Aruba blog. Then my camera quit and I just got a new one. All my pictures until now were hand me arounds from my kids so they already had them on their blogs. Anyway ....

December ... ok, let's start with the 23rd.

All the kids plus Perry's parents were coming for Christmas. So we decided that rather than using the air mattress - which no one likes to sleep on - we would just put a couple out in our 5th wheel. It has a queen size regular mattress and it has a great heater. So we gave it a test run the night before where we lit the heater to make sure it would get warm enough in there. This is the coldest winter we have had in 5 years (according to the weather man). It was plenty warm out there so we were ready to go. On the 23rd, I went out to start the heater as we needed it that night. As I opened the door, it reeked of propane. I closed the door and decided to let Perry check it out when he got home. Perry came home and I told him about it. He went out to see about it. About 5 minutes later, I heard what sounded like a sonic boom and the whole house shook. I knew it was Perry in the trailer and that it had exploded. I was sure he was dead. We all ran to the trailer. J'see and Charlie found Perry outside the trailer door applying snow to his burn face and hair. He had cleared the propane and then started the heater. When it flashed, it dived out the open door. He has some minor burns on his face and hands, a lot of singed hair and no eyebrows or eyelashes. He was one lucky man. I was a basket case all night. We brought him inside to check him out and thought we needed to put some aloe vera on his burns, which was in the trailer. He went out to the trailer to get it and discovered the bathroom cupboard on fire. I called the fire department because I wanted to make sure that if the fire got out of hand, my house which is 5 feet away from the trailer didn't go up too!! We got the fire put out before the fire department got here. They put out a smoldering roll of toilet paper and checked Perry's burns out. Anyway, all's well that ends well. I have a husband still!!! The trailer is pretty much totalled as you can kind of see by the following pictures.

All of the exterior walls were bowed out about 5 inches from the blast, all of the window frames were pushed out and bent, the screens were pushed out the window openings and the curtains farthest from the heater were melted. You can see gaps between all of the cupboards and the exterior walls because of the bowing of the walls. I don't know what it would have looked like if the door hadn't been open to vent some of the blast.

Spring Break

For our spring break we decided to take the trailer and go to Goblin Valley. We spent Saturday with Grandpa and Grandma W. having our annual easter egg hunt then left Sunday for Goblin Valley. We spent a couple of days there. We climbed on rocks for hours. Goblin Valley is a lot of fun and it's huge. There are all sorts of rock formations. To the west is a big yellow pavilion that you can see from all the high points so it's hard to get lost. Chanse and Miah are both part mountain goat and if you give them rocks to climb anywhere they are happy. So they climbed to their hearts content, from sun-up to sun-down. They played hide and seek and tag and climbed some more.







We then hiked through a slot canyon called Little Wild Horse Canyon. (Where we ran across two families from home. You can't go anywhere, far or wide, over spring break without running across someone from home.)





We had a great time!!! You'll have to join us next time!!

A New Granddaughter

Zach and Lindsay are the proud parents of Laryssa Jo Shore. She was born on March 21st. She weighed 5 lbs. 12 oz. and was 19 in. long. Zach thinks she's a cute little thing. And she is!! The long dark brown hair surprised us. I went up to see her on Sunday night. She is so little!!! It's so fun to have grandbabies!! I think I need lots more!!!