House Update

Assuming all goes well .............. we are buying a house!

A while back we found a house that I felt we were supposed to look at and we ended up liking it and putting an offer on it (look back to older post). That was December. We went back once after that and I still really liked it but not as much as the first time. Well the first offer didn't go through and instead of counter-offering us for more money they simply made us start from square one with a higher offer. So we played the game because we had time, our lease here isn't up until the end of this month.

Well we finally were starting to realize that we were going to be stuck in this horrible apartment complex for longer than we ever planned on if we stuck with this house. So Greg kept his eyes out and found another that he wanted to see. So we saw it and we loved it. We like the house better but the location is a little less than ideal, although the other one was as well. The downside... no community pool like the other, the positive side.... lower HOA fees! And it's a bank owned and not a short sale so we got an answer back really fast. We submitted the offer Monday, they accepted it Wednesday morning, and we have already had our inspection done that came back with great results (of course there are the minor things but those I can live with!).

So tomorrow we start the financing part of the game and are set to close the middle of next month. The details: It's almost 2400 sq ft, 4 bedrooms plus a den, 2 baths, 2car garage, and one story. The lot is over 9000 sq ft but I don't know exactly. There are tons of other details but I won't talk about them and bore you all. The inside of the house got painted by the bank last week so it is all white now. I didn't mind most of the colors but it will be fun to have a new slate to start with and do what I want, although the thought is slightly overwhelming. It's going to be white for a while, I already know it! But at least I don't have to worry about washing walls and all of that when we move in!

Front of the house (not a very good picture):


Kitchen:


Dining Room:


Living Room: Not a very good picture. The living room is huge and wide open to the kitchen which I love! I'm more likely to clean my kitchen and cook if I can watch tv while doing it (sad I know)!! The carpet is brand new and great! Nice and dark for the terrors!


Den: It's right off of the living room. I think we will either do a play room or more likely our office/scrapbooking room. I'll have to hang curtains or something so I can hide the mess.


Masterbed and bath:


1 of the Bedrooms (no longer these wonderful girl colors for Axton):


Backyard: It needs a lot of work but I won't be hearing that Greg's bored anytime in the near future if we get this place!


We are excited for this new adventure in our lives and can't wait to be in it! I am really hoping everything goes smoothly and quickly, the quicker I get out of this place the better!

Update on Living Cookbook

I have been asked by several people if I still like the software and........ I DO!! Of course there are things I would change but that is the case with most things like this.

The downs I have so far:

I like that you can create your own cookbooks with whatever recipes you want (it comes with over 900 already in the software, some scary, some not so bad). I have put in two of my cookbooks that I use fairly often and it is time consuming since you have to type it all in but it's worth it to me. Getting recipes off line or through emails, etc. is definitely the way to go, it takes all of like 30 seconds to import them!

The nutrition I have found matches exactly with some online recipes and not so much with others. But it is usually pretty close, I think some of the online ones are the problem but that's just me. Plus if you know the nutrition you can override theirs and put it in.

The thing that bothers me the most is that it doesn't always link the ingredients with cost even though they are all in there somewhere (at least THEIR prices). I think their prices are pretty high too but maybe I just buy cheap ingredients. But with time I can get the ingredients and prices of the things I use and make it accurate so that won't be too big of a deal.

That's all I can think of that I don't like and all of them have solutions if you put in more time. Plus I got it for $35 and you can get updates (mostly yearly, and only if you want the newest version) for only about $10 once you have the software. So in the long run I think it is a great thing for me and my family.

Talking?

Swimming

$aving$

I am not very good at finding "the deals" or cutting coupons. I have tried but they end up expiring before I can use them or they aren't really things we use or need. Plus I HATE going to more than one grocery store. Going to Fry's and Costco is almost over doing it for me! I hate spending the time finding the deals, clipping coupons, matching deals and coupons together, and then driving to 5 different stores to get the best deal!! So I managed to do it all in one store!! I didn't get much, but I saved 75%!! All of this was less than $8.

Don't judge me for the sugar cereal and granola bars! I bought them as bribes for Axton in those situations when I really need him to be quite, like Sacrament meeting! And the gum: almost all of it completely free! I love gum when I am craving junk!

Living Cookbook

My new find: a recipe organizing software! I am in heaven!


For those of you who don't know, I have been on this crazy quest to get prices for all of the food items that I buy regularly (and even some that aren't so regular). In college I took a "home ec" class and in it we had to calculate the cost of the meals. The teacher had a huge binder with every ingredient broken down to how much it would cost per cup, TB, tsp, etc. So since Greg and I are sticking to a budget finally (and doing pretty good) I have found that I only have about $2.70 per meal for all three of us! That's less than $8 a day for all of the food we consume!! Oh boy, is that a task. So I started collecting prices to see how much each recipe costs us and find out which ones we really splurge on and which ones are cheaper than cheap (spaghetti and tostadas with home made beans win).

However it is extremely time consuming getting these prices and having Axton with me doesn't make it an easy task. Plus I feel a bit awkward carrying around a notebook and going isle by isle writing down prices without buying anything, oh the looks I get! Needless to say I only got Costco's list done and it took me about a week, several hours a day, of walking down the isles. Then I plugged it all into my computer and low and behold our computer crashed, leaving me to do it all over again! Luckily I had kept most of my handwritten notes instead of throwing them away when I was done.

So I got burnt out! I had looked up programs before to see if anyone had come out with what I was trying to do but my search turned up nothing, I don't know how that happened though. So I was in office max checking out spyware cds when low and behold I see a recipe organizer!! It was $40 and I wasn't sure if it did everything I wanted so I decided to go home and research it again. Then I found it. A website rating the top 10 programs. Unfortunately the one I really wanted (and it was cheaper) isn't compatible with Windows Vista (darn this new computer) so I had to settle for my second option (the sites #3 pick). It was a little cheaper than the one I had originally seen but it has everything I want!!

They have about 10,000 ingredients (just a few- horse, squirrel, moose, ostrich, yup not even kidding!) with average national prices for all of them. No more price shopping for me! Ok, that's a lie. You can also add your own stores and their prices manually if you want to (which I am just crazy enough to do) so that you get more accurate pricing. But on top of this you can add any recipe you want, if you get it from the internet or anything off the computer such as word, etc, it will automatically convert it to the program for you or you can manually enter them in. The recipes will all generate nutritional info for you so if you are worried about calories, or doing a diet such as diabetic, carbs, etc, you can create menus based off of that. I think it is awesome! You can creat menus, shopping list, etc! Plus Greg and I can both rate each recipe so I know which ones we both like, Greg is more honest when filling the ratings out than he is when I ask him as he's eating it! Plus I can email any of these recipes to others, and if anyone else has any kind of software similar to this I can get all of theirs!

I am in heaven!! It is really time consuming up front to get all my info in it but I am pretty confident that once I do, it is going to make planning meals so much better, easier, and faster!

March 13, 2009, 4:00 a.m.

Big Love? Big Deal
Yes, Mormons are targets, but let’s not get too excited about it.

By Orson Scott Card

In the aftermath of Proposition 8, it’s open season on Mormons, and the producers of HBO’s series Big Love are in the best position to give the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) a big slap.

The series focuses on members of one of several splinter groups that have left the Mormon Church over the issue of polygamy. To understand what this means to Mormons, it’s worth indulging in a little history.

When the Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff declared in 1890 that it was God’s will that Latter-day Saints no longer take multiple wives, some Mormons clung to the “Principle of Plural Marriage” and rejected the authority of the president of the church.

This is akin to what happened when Protestants declared that they would no longer follow the pope, and polygamist sects are about as Mormon now as Baptists are Catholic.

The fastest way to get yourself excommunicated from the Mormon Church is to advocate plural marriage.

But the polygamist sects still do most of their recruiting among Mormons, and there is a constant struggle between the church and the polygamists.

Many of these polygamists still believe that it is in Mormon temples that their marriages must be solemnized. The temple is a focal point in their religion — but if they admit they’re polygamists, they can’t get in.

So it actually makes artistic sense for episodes of Big Love to center on their effort to get into the temple. It reflects the real concerns of some polygamists, and it is accurate to show the official church as doing its best to keep them out.

You’re not supposed to enter the temples, once they’re dedicated, unless you’re a member of the church who is keeping the major commandments — which polygamists most flagrantly are not.

Big Love is not doing anything new. Anti-Mormon groups have been describing, depicting, or showing ersatz versions of the temple ceremonies for many years. Anyone who wants to know what goes on in the temples can find out with very little effort. So why are we Mormons upset about Big Love’s foray into anti-Mormon “exposé”?

It’s offensive when believers in one religion hold up the sacred rites of another religion to public ridicule. So we’re hurt — but we’re not surprised.

Mormons have always been the exception to America’s policy of religious tolerance. Throughout our history in America, Mormons have been oppressed by government, killed or driven out by mobs, slandered, and libeled — always by fellow Americans who professed to believe in religious tolerance.

So while we don’t like what Big Love is doing, we’re not doing much about it. We’ve learned by observation that protests and boycotts merely increase the publicity, and therefore the viewership, of such hostile productions as the Big Love temple episode.


So the church’s official advice to its members is: Ignore it.

My favorite response came from Terrance D. Olson, a Brigham Young University professor who does research in family studies. Those who refuse to respect other people’s sacred things, he says, hurt themselves most of all.

My own essay at MormonTimes.com, published by the church-owned Deseret News, strongly urges my fellow Mormons not to write angry letters, because anger never persuades anybody, and expressing it isn’t particularly Christ-like.

Most Mormons are seeing the Big Love temple episode in the context of the recent outpouring of hatred and bile from those who most vehemently opposed Proposition 8. Mormons have been targeted for business boycotts; some have lost their jobs because they contributed to the campaign to defend marriage.

The result is that few of us have any desire to act as the worst of our opponents have acted. After someone has boycotted a friend’s business, it makes it a bit harder for you to want to call for a boycott.

By and large, while we’d prefer that everybody handle differences of opinion peacefully, we’d rather be persecuted than be the persecutors. The few times in our history when we have departed from that principle, the results have shamed us for generations. Tolerance works better.

What Mormons keep foremost in mind is this: We’re a worldwide church. We might be going through a rough patch in America right now, as we butt heads with the oppressive New Puritans of the American Left, but that has nothing to do with how the Mormon Church is growing in Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, or Taiwan.

Big Love is just an entertainment; nothing they do will diminish the sacredness of what goes on inside our temples.

Our primary work is helping people in and out of the church to live a more Christ-like life. Now and then, when a deep moral issue is involved, we get involved in political action. But when we do, we expect that others won’t like it, and we take our lumps.

The more they attack us, the more people they bring to us as allies and, occasionally, as converts to our faith. So rave on, brothers and sisters!