Wisdom we wish we had

Can I blog in 5 minutes? Sure I can! Watch this!

So, I'm packing my house up, my parents are helping and it's really weird to not know where we're moving to yet! Praise the Lord the house is sold. Now He'll provide a house. This will be the third house we've bought in our nearly 12 years together. We've stretched ourselves with both purchases previously and now we're thinking about doing something different. We have two choices before us:

Choice A: Buy a bigger house with acreage whose mortgage payments take up a third of our income - yes, we have one in mind and it's really cool.
OR
Choice B: Buy a house that just meets our needs: yard, garage (for the Fury) and is el-cheapo and pay off my school loan quicker, pay off the mortgage quicker and be out of debt completely in the foreseeable future. We're looking at foreclosure homes as an option for this.

Right now we're leaning toward B. I figure we can always see it as a stepping stone house and move again. Anyways, my five minutes are up, more later!!!

Ice cream for breakfast!

I told Z that Daddy went to Utah. "Tootah," he echoed. Yup, that's where he's at. All the Tootah Day. Ben went out West for a week long road trip, mostly through Nevada, with his friend, Matt. He comes home tomorrow, and I can't wait! My mom was here to help me, so it wasn't so bad, but, I can't help but miss my man. I haven't heard his adventure stories yet, but their plan was to drive through Nevada looking for Ghost towns and volcanic springs to bathe in. Maybe I can get him to post next week to share about his trip! Then again, maybe not.



Well, early in the week (of course after Ben left), we got an offer on our house, we went back and forth three times in negotiations and finally came to an agreed price on Thursday. It's funny, it's almost $20K more than we bought it for, but it's about $30 less than we could have gotten for it three years ago. So, considering the current housing market, we're just thankful we got an offer.

They want to get the chimney and roof inspected, so if all goes well, it'll officially be sold soon. Yes, we're actively looking for a house now. We have one in mind that meets the land requirements that we're looking for. I'm excited to see what God provides in the next few weeks here, if it'll be a different house or the one we are looking at now.

I LOVE to house shop, I love to shop shop. I'm combing through real estate guides, on-line searches, checking out what I can find. Auctions, foreclosure houses, for sale by owner, mls listings are all game. I'm thoroughly enjoying the shopping part of this adventure, and wrestling at the same time how to be financially prudent. I've felt this entire thing is out of my hands from day one and that's a good thing.
Z's eating his Saturday morning ice cream for breakfast. It's a naughty tradition I started a few weeks ago so when he asks for ice cream everyday when he wakes up, I can say, "It's not Saturday." That is, until Saturday, when I get to say, "Yay! It's ice cream for breakfast day!"

I have a friend who did this kind of weekly rule for the ice cream truck. She'd say, only on Tuesdays, 'cause I guess the ice cream truck came everyday. Anyways, she got lazy and started telling them it wasn't Tuesday even when it was, because she didn't want to pay for it. So, one day she was in the car with her sister and the kids asked for ice cream and my friend said, "Sorry, it's not Tuesday!" and her sister said, "Ummm...yes it is!"

What I'm reading....
...and it's horrible...horribly convicting anyway...a good thing to read before we buy another house. My Dad arrived safely yesterday and he and my mom will be with us for two weeks. Perfect timing as we could use some help while we house shop and get some packing done.

Five Generations

Well, it's been a busy week, but I have a few minutes today to share what a wonderful time I had in Iowa. It was so neat to sit in a room with my daughter, my mom, her mom and her mom! I asked Juju's Great Great Grandma all about the Great Depression and for tips on survival if we should go through one again. I plan to share her ideas and others from my other grandparents in a separate post. We wondered if Juju favored any of us as babies and found baby pics of all of us except Great Great Grandma.

Here's Juju's Great Grandma VN at six months

Here's her Grandma J at 15 months

Here's her Mommy at six months
Here's Juju at 7.5 months!
I loved this pic of Juju and her Great Great Grandma G. For Better, For Worse

I had promised a few of you I'd answer your questions as to why Ben and I wear our wedding bands on our right hand. We had been married one year when we decided to make the switch. We knew that many Europeans traditionally wear theirs on their right hand and challenged the American tradition of wearing it on the left because why should we conform?

It was the beginning of our journey of challenging all sorts of norms and expectations we felt. Shortly after this we stopped attending the church we had been over-involved at. We weren't being fed by the seeker-friendly messages and were becoming jaded by the performance feel of the service. We went "churchless" for six years while we roamed in the wilderness re-thinking and challenging what a church is supposed to be at all. More than that, what was a Christian supposed to be? I've written lots already about my findings on this subject in my "Zerbik" labeled posts. Like everyone, we're works in progress. Though our motives may not always be pure, I think a lot of good can ultimately come from taking the road less traveled and occasionally going against the grain.

I Already Know!

Finally, I wanted to share some pics of what my mom calls her "therapy".
She lives in Germany and her newest grandbaby lives in Ohio.
So this is what she made to cope these past few months we were apart.

...and my favorite...So, yeah, you don't have to tell me my mom is the coolest...