House Offer

Monday we received an offer on the 211 Spring Street house we’d worked so hard on. I think it was on the market about 2 weeks. It was a full price offer, but they wanted us to pay closing costs. We adjusted the price a bit to pay a little less of the closing costs and went with the offer. It should close in June if all goes well. I’m not sure we’re ready to jump into another rehab. It’s amazing how much gets deducted from the profit when you take out realtor fees, closing costs, taxes, tithing and so on. Still, I think Tom will feel he was pretty well paid for all the work.

We have several houses in the neighborhood, including the house next door (past the pond). We were curious about them, so we had the realtor take us through them. All are older and need updating, but seem to be pretty solid houses. But they are beyond our price range and would not give us the profit margin we wanted.

I’ve been slogging through the revisions on the book. Probably not as diligently as I should be. However, Orit came back and said, ummm, the people who are supposed to be reviewing the book are sluggish and I can’t get them to work faster. So things will slow down. But I want to make sure you’re paid. So I may get paid before the book has been finalized. Which is nice. Because I can’t control how long it takes these guys to put in their two cents. It’s a bit annoying to have it hanging over my head… but if I have money in hand, I’ll feel much better about it.

We planted the garden on Tuesday. We had two areas of “mulch” that had been sitting there for years. One out by the corral and the other next to the garden. We’d toss grass clippings or other stuff into them and they always seemed to be not-very-broken down. But I decided to dig them out anyway and surprisingly, there was rich mulch on the bottom, underneath the still-not-decomposed grass clippings. And I decided that stuff on top would still act as a weed suppresser. So we mulched were we were going to plant seeds and seedlings and put grass clippings around where the vines would grow. We have more mulch to dig out. But on Wednesday and Thursday the rains came again.

I decided I would not do well in the northwest. I don’t like days of rain. I feel very unproductive in this gloomy weather. It’s great for reading a good book in front of a fireplace… but not so good for focusing on work.

Thursday Tom and I spend the afternoon driving around the area looking at all the water. It was drizzling but we could see swollen streams and rivers. We didn’t have a lot of flooding around us. We went to the dam and watched the spillways pouring out water. We drove along the riverfront road and saw a few high water marks, but most of the houses seemed to have escaped damage. By Thursday evening the sun came out and it was hard to tell it had rained so much. Except our pond is still full-to-overflowing.

 Dam Spillway.

 Lake level is just a tad high.

 Here you can see it's not much below the top of the dam.

 Misty, swollen Norfork River.

Friday morning we started our drive to Oklahoma and the Warrior Dash. Ariana went with us and we drove her car since it has 4 wheel drive. We thought it might be necessary for when they parked at the race. But the ground there was pretty dry. We stopped at Deborah’s for lunch and a short visit on the way out. We got to Tulsa in time to shop at Costco and then go see Camden play a soccer game. I haven’t seen Camden smile so much perhaps ever. He had such a good time! And he was a pretty good soccer player and quite coordinated. We went back to Miranda’s for dinner and then Kera came with all the kids at home but Matthew. It was fun to see them.

Saturday Tom, Dan, and Aaron went to the race with Miranda and Katie going along for moral support. (Tom will blog about that.) Kera and I stayed home with the rest of the kids and chatted and had a great time. The kids had a good time playing outside on the swings, on the trampoline, and on a rope they hung over the ball pit. They would swing out and drop (about 2 feet) into the ball pit. Somehow this was great fun. They also played in some dirt and I was a bit concerned they would end up dirtier than those running in the muddy race.

After the runners returned home, we lunched and then went out for the traditional Andy’s ice cream and headed home. We stopped again at Deborah’s for some chili dip and chips. Yum! And for hugs from the grandkids. It was nice having three drivers. We took turns resting. We got home about 7pm and got most everything laundered by bedtime.

Today was fast Sunday. We had a good testimony meeting. There was talk on the essential need for the grace of the Savior to help us. As hard as we try, we can’t be perfect. But we can trust in the Lord and his promises to help us. When kids go wayward, again, we love them and leave it to the Lord to do his miracles in their lives in his timeframe.

Today I feel amazingly blessed. We have so much. We live in a wonderful time and in a great country and place in the world. We are blessed with a loving family and with good health. It makes it easy to choose to be happy.