House Hunting Not For the Weak

Chase and I decided that once we moved out here we were going to buy a house.  This is in part due to the fact that rent is so expensive.  So we got it all figured out with a lender on how much we qualified for and then met with our real estate agent.  We looked at 4 houses on Friday and then 3 the following Monday.  The last house we saw we loved.  It had the garage (5 car, 2 attached & 3 detached), the yard that we wanted (2.5 acres for our kids to have room to play in our own yard) and the house was great.  We got all excited and told both of the parents.  Of course it wasn't official but hey if we were going to write an offer than you might as well think of it as your house, right.  Well that night I kept waking up in the middle of the night and just wasn't excited about it anymore, and I couldn't picture us raising our family there.  I asked Chase how he felt about the house the next morning and he was still excited about it.  So I planned on moving forward and in my head I figured that if it's not meant to be then they won't accept our offer or something else will keep us from getting it.

That night Chase and I were discussing the house, since I had the melancholy feeling towards it.  This is when we had the brilliant idea to uh write out our budget.  A rough but close estimate.  We came to the conclusion that yes we could afford the house but no we didn't want to afford it.  Can you say reality check!  I still feel so dumb that we didn't have the novel idea to do that before looking at houses.  We have said all along that we don't want to be house poor.  However when the lender told us what we were approved for and then said but you can go this much higher, I think that made our brains think oh ok, so that means what were being approved for wont make us house poor.  Wrong-o!  At least now we know!  Good thing we all learn from our mistakes and we will know for next time :)  Ugh still feel dumb though.

Ok so we let our agent know that we didn't want to make an offer but told her we still wanted to meet with her to revise our plan.  She was afraid that we were just having buyers remorse before even buying the house since it's a big decision.  Rest assured it's not buyers remorse.  It's we want to be smart with our money.  Maybe a better way to put it would be, we want a house but we don't want to only own a house.  We want to be able to do other things as well :)

So onward we go with a whole new plan and a brand new slate of houses.  The house will probably be small and the yard tiny with a normal garage and in an area we hadn't considered before, but it will be our home!

Oh and I have to put this little rant in.  Pinterest is probably the worst invention ever.  Don't get me wrong though because I do love it and I pin things all the time.  However!  A lot of pinterest gives false hopes.  This is for sure a fact with me and houses.  I wish and wish and dream of having all of the qualities that I love on houses.  But let's be honest in order to get everything you want you would probably have to build the house yourself!  Plus it would probably end up being a million dollar house, and who has that kind of money for their first home.  Every pin I see that has to do with houses is not a cheap little home, because of course nobody dreams about what their starter home will look like.  We all dream about the home that we want!  Ok I'm done.

Yes this is what I dreamed about my first home being like.  P.S. I had Chase make this picture for me for work a long time ago.  It's what motivated me all wrapped up in one picture.  I had it as my desk top picture so I could see it every day!  To sum it up what motivated me was Chase having graduated, which meant he would have a job so I could quit mine, we could then buy our first home, he could have his Porsche, we could buy a dog and start our family!!!  Oh how grand it would be to get exactly what we want!  I do want to add though that just because I'm not getting a dream house doesn't mean that I'm not getting what we have been working towards!  He's graduated, I'm no longer working because I have to, he has a job, he has a car which he can restore, and the rest is still on it's way. 

Teaching the Gospel Missionary Style

So when we moved out to Michigan I knew that there would be differences.  The biggest one being that we would no longer be surrounded with a community of LDS people.  We would become the minority rather than being the majority.  It's definitely been a change and has made us really think about what we believe and stand for.

Luckily with that change has brought on a whole new experience.  This particular experience has been the missionaries.  I've really enjoyed having them in our ward and seeing them serve the members on top of helping others find the happiness that our church has to offer.

Chase and I have also been lucky enough to work with the missionaries a couple of times.  They are currently teaching a young couple (our age) that are from China, and have asked for mine and Chase's help.  It's been so fun being able to tag along and see them in action.  The first time they asked for our help I was so scared because I afraid of saying something that would take us off the topic that they were teaching.  I was also nervous because I really do love this gospel with all of my heart but at times I don't know how to express my knowledge or my thoughts and feelings very well.  Plus I've never been on a mission so I had no idea of what to expect.  So when the missionaries would ask me a question to answer I did the best that I could and prayed in my heart that that's what they wanted.  It was also so fun to be able to witness the interaction between the investigators and our missionaries.  It's amazing to see the gospel so fresh and so new in a person.  Something that I want to remember from this particular lesson was Nate's (the investigator) answer to praying.  One of the Elder's had asked if they had been praying.  He then asked to their response if he could know something that they had prayed about.  Nate replied saying that he think's his grandma is going to die soon, so he wanted to know what would happen after she died.  I just love that because he might be loosing a dear one soon, he wanted to know what happens after this life.  Nate I pray that you continue searching for answers and that you will find the comfort that we have in knowing that we will see our loved ones again.  It truly is a miraculous blessing :)

So the other time we were able to help the missionaries out was at church.  They had extended the invitation of coming to church to the same cute couple (Nate & Val), they accepted so the missionaries wanted us to sit with the 5 of them in sacrament (we have 3 elders right now), and go to class with them as well.  It sure does make you listen to what is being said in a whole new way.  Sunday school was the most...... interesting to say the least.  Haha and on top of that I'm pretty sure the teacher thinks that we are investigators as well, hum...  I think she might of got the hint at one point though that we are not investigators.  I then took Val to Relief Society.  It was so cute how she introduced herself.  She let everyone (at least those who could hear her, she's very soft spoken (: ) know that it was her first time at church.  After she said that I could hear some of the ladies behind me asking each other if she was an investigator, so I slightly looked back and nodded my head so that they would know that yes she is.  Being able to be with Nate and Val during church warmed my heart.  I'm glad we were given that opportunity to do some missionary work.

lds.org   mormon.org  mormonchannel.org

Now the missionaries have also helped us as well.  They have been helping the families in the ward make a mission statement and goals for their individual family.  Well our mission statement say's: Strengthen our spiritual foundation so that we can help strengthen others.  We then have 3 actions and 3 goals to help us in achieving our mission statement.  They then typed up our mission plan on a picture of Christ, laminated it and added magnets so we can have it on our fridge.  Who knew that boys could be so crafty ;)  After giving it back to us they asked us a few questions and then gave us some suggestions on how we can carry out our mission plan.  It made us think and they gave us some good ideas.  I will say that ever since Chase and I made our mission statement and goals that we have been doing much better!  It's been awesome to have these goals and to be exercising them :)  Wohoo go us.

These boys are awesome and I'm glad that we are getting to know them!  Keep up the great work Elders!  Your mom's are proud :)

Me? Talk! What?

Ok so last week I was snagged, and I was asked to give a talk in sacrament.  They got me so fast.  Anyway  I have my sneaky suspicions as to why.  It just so happened to be the same day that I put the following quote on facebook.

"Your mind is a cupboard, and you stalk the shelves" 

-President Monson

So I got that quote from when Chase and I taught sunday school, two weeks ago.  I think it's a really great quote so I wanted to share it.  Go here to watch the video I got the quote from. 

Well I'm friends with the Relief Society President on facebook and her husband is in the bishopric, and he's the one that called me.  Since she liked my post I think it was passed on to him to call me to speak, and that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :)

Ok so the topic I was given was "We believe in being Honest."  Ugh I kind of panicked a little bit because that can go in any direction.  It took me all week to finally decide on where I wanted to go with it.  I was also planning on just writing down the points that I wanted to talk about and then "wing it" rather than writing out my entire talk.  Well that started stressing me out too much so I ended up just writing the entire thing.  I wish I was better at speaking so that I didn't have to write out my whole talk, but that's not how my brain works.  However I should be really good at giving talks or speaking because I like to talk a lot.  Now that's something interesting to think about.  When being asked to speak in sacrament, we are usually asked with the phrases of "Would you be willing to speak on Sunday?" or "Would you be willing to give a talk on Sunday?"  Hum.....  I guess technically all that we are being asked to do is get up there and talk about our topic.  AND.... since all of us know how to talk and speak than we should all be pros right? ;)  All we need to do is know our subject and just get up there and talk.  It shouldn't matter if we flow right?  Since we weren't asked to speak flowingly or give a flowing talk.   Hum........ food for thought :)

While I was "reading" my talk on Sunday I felt bad because we left the last lady 20 minutes.  The youth speaker right before me finished in 2 minutes and since I wrote everything out I couldn't stretch it.  At least that's what my head told me, ha.  I always hate how after you finish and you feel like you could've done better.  I have felt that way every since.  At least I have a really nice ward and hubby who have been telling me good job, and that their kids really liked the stories I told.  I guess if that's who I was supposed to touch than woohoo, mission accomplished!  The kids know stories of being honest :) 

Now that I'm done with speaking we are just waiting for the day that they ask Chase.  He'll do a marvelous job, so hopefully they get him soon.  Were also waiting for the day that we get a calling.  We've heard that the ward likes to give callings, so the anticipation is kinda killing me.  Maybe my talk was their way of deciding where to put me, haha.  Even though I know it doesn't happen this way I picture it kind of like the tv show The Voice.  All of the "judges" are just waiting to hear what comes out of my mouth before deciding if they want me on "their team" or not haha.  

Ok ok a topic like this shouldn't have been as long as I made it.  All you need to know is that I spoke in church on Sunday and I was nervous.  The end.  

While the boys are away the girls go out and play

Ok so since I don't have a job, I try to find things to keep busy.  Usually that consists of blogging, haha.  Now you know why I have written so much.  Some days I hang out with Emily.  Emily is a girl from our ward and her and her husband Bruce live in the same apartment complex.  They are also from American Fork & she also doesn't have a job.  So one day we decided to walk down to the Troy Historical Museum.  It's just a little area that has some of the old buildings from when Troy was first settled.  They have a cabin, school, general store, printing press, church, and a wagon shop.  It was pretty cool, but it was mainly nice just be out and enjoying Emily's company.

We have also gone to the Detroit Temple.  It's about a 10 - 15 minute drive from our apartment so it's nice and close.  I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of how small temples operate.  I'm so used to just going anytime that I want during the day and having everything to choose from.  Here that's not the case.  We have to call and schedule everything.  Also the thing that has baffled me the most is having the temple closed during the day and only open during certain hours and days.  Even though all of that is different it's all the same once you are inside, which I love.  

It was funny though because the guy who took our recommends kept examining them as if something was wrong.  So when he handed them back and didn't say anything we didn't know if we were good to go in or not.  Needless to say we had to ask, haha.  I also think that because it's a small temple the workers automatically assume that you know where you're going.  Wrong-o.  It's still possible to get confused in small temples :)  Thank goodness they realized that we didn't know where to go so we were escorted to our destination.  Good thing too :)

It was so lovely being in the temple and being able to just enjoy the peacefulness.  I love having that time to not have a care in the world and to just listen to the spirit and feel of God's love for us.  I think the temple and I need to see each other more often :)

P.s. I've been on this website a lot lately!  You'll most likely hear why another time ;)

A Birthday

Um I don't believe I agreed to let anybody celebrate birthday's without me, especially their 1 year birthday!  Good thing we got to skype and watch the birthday girl eat her cake though!

Lucy turned 1 on 8/11/13.  I can't believe she is already one.  I distinctly remember the day she was born.  Waiting for babies to come is so fun :)  Anyway happy birthday to our favorite Lucy girl!

Here's some pics that we have from her 1st year.

Apparently when you take pics from instagram they turn out fuzzy.  The fuzzy ones are too cute though so look past the bad quality and just focus on the cuteness.

Lucy we love you lots and lots and we loved that we got to live right next door for most of your life.  Now please don't forget how much you loved us ;)

Weekend Adventures

I love having Chase to myself on the weekends.  It's 2.25 days of bliss.

This weekend Chase gave me the duty of figuring out something fun to do for our Friday night.  Since we love movies so much I came up with a grand plan.  The last time I went to the beach with the ladies in the ward I noticed a sign that said they do movies on the beach.  It's like a movie at the park but on the beach, so it's even better! :)  So that was my grand plan.  The parks website didn't have a list of what was playing so instead of calling the number to find out which animation movie was playing, I decided it would be fun to have it a surprise.  We ordered pizza and picked it up on the way so that we could have a picnic.  I was so worried that we weren't going to get there before the movie started, but we made it with plenty of time to spare.  So we ate our yummy pizza, walked on the beach, took some pics of the stunning sunset, listened to the music and people watched.  We found out that our movie was Madagascar 3, which was fun since neither of us had seen it.  The movie started around 9 and got over at 11.  Good thing we didn't have little kids, because in my opinion that's late.  I really enjoyed our night and I'm glad we went.  Oh and I'm so happy the mosquitoes left us alone, because we couldn't find any bug spray :)

This was his I'm not going to encourage your "take pictures for the blog" habit, face.  HAHAHA

The next day aka Saturday we decided to go back up to the park, but this time we were going to swim. The water was cold but as soon as we got in it felt great.  We swam around for awhile and then we decided we wanted to go down the big blow up slide they had.  Little did we know that you have to actually pay to go down it haha.  Oh well, at least Chase got to talk in German a little bit.  While we were waiting in line a group of kids came running up behind us talking in a different language which just so happened to be German.  I always love listening to him talk in German.  When we were leaving for the day we ran into our friends from the ward, the Bruner family.  They were just getting there to play at the park :)  I'm tellin ya this place is full of fun things to do.

Uh the clouds made the afternoon a tad bit chillier than I wanted.

So now were at Sunday.  We were lucky enough to teach the Laurel's and Priest's (16-18 yr olds) sunday school class.  We had 9 kids and they were great!  I'd teach them again any day :)  They were a lot of fun to teach and it was fun getting to know them a little bit.  Unfortunately we were a little late getting to class because the guy who talked in sacrament went to BYU the same time Chase did and we wanted to say hi :)  Him and his wife are not in our ward which is why we had to catch them at the end of sacrament.  He works for Ford, so they live South of us but north of Ford, but I think we are going to try and do something with them anyway.  So that was our new adventures at church this week.  Thanks for being so kind to us during sunday school :)

To top off our weekend we got to skype with the Johnson clan :)  Where we learned that Cadence wants to be a maggot haha silly girl.  Watching things decompose is pretty cool.  Good things she's a youngin and will probably decide to be something different :)
We can't wait until we get to spend lots of time with them!

So there you have it, this weekends adventures 8/9 - 8/11!  I'm betting next weekend will be just as much fun :)

Mountain Biking

Last Saturday (8/3/13) Chase and I went mountain biking with two bachelors that Chase works with.  Chase loves mnt. biking and I really want to love it too so that it can be something that we do together.  So I am working on not worrying about slowing him and others down and getting more comfortable on the bike.  I remember mnt. biking when I was younger, but then I became afraid of it.  Now that I have a reason to go I'm really hoping I'll quickly fall in love with it.  I'd love it if we can have this as a family activity, so as our kids grow up they too enjoy riding.  Time will only tell :)

Ok so back to our adventure.  First thing first was figuring out how to fit two bikes into my car.  It would be a tad bit easier if the back seat would fold down but it doesn't.  Ugh.  It also would've been easier if we hadn't decided to leave the bike rack that my dad was letting us borrow in Utah.  However, we left it because it didn't fit my car great and every time my door's were shut I was afraid the window's were going to break.  It was nice having it while we did though.  We then drove down to Novi to meet up with the boys.  After a short detour because we missed our exit we finally made it.  Wohoo.  When we took off Chase stuck behind me while the other two floored it.  I was feeling good until Ivo (which is pronounced Eevo) told us that we needed to turn around because we missed the real trail.  This is when he also informed us that the trail is 10 miles.  Ah man was I afraid.  My heart was already beating good and my lungs were getting a workout too, so how was I ever going to make it 10 miles.  Good thing I didn't pay too much attention to my worries because I'm glad we turned around.  The trail we rode was so much fun and gorgeous!  We were under a canopy of trees for most of it and the temperature was perfect.  I kept telling Chase that he didn't have to ride behind me as long as they would stop and wait for me.  Around this time was also when one of the boys, Sam, decided that he was tired and wanted to be the caboose.  I think he just wanted an excuse to have to go slow because he was stuck behind me.  I sure there is one time that he wishes he wasn't behind me.  I couldn't make it up a hill so I had pulled off to the side to let him by.  As he was trying to pass me he was telling me that I could make it and then he tipped over, haha.  I like to say that I made him crash.  All 3 of the boys were so patient with me and didn't seem annoyed that I was slow :)  Chase was cute and was giving me pointers, which unfortunately I've already forgotten, and would make sure I would make it around the "tricky" spots :)  What a good hubby.  We ended up not riding the whole 10 miles, which I think Ivo was a little disappointed about.  At the end he told us that we missed the best part of the trail.  Maybe next time Ivo.

They even let me take a picture :)  Next to Chase is Ivo and Sam is in the Green.

So our first mountain biking adventure in Michigan was a success!  Chase and I both really enjoyed it and I'm glad I got to join in on the fun :)  Lets go again!

A Day At The Races

On Saturday, July 27th we spent a day at the race track.  I was hesitant to go at first but I'm so glad I went.  Chase and I really enjoyed our day!  The race track is called Waterford Hills Raceway and is 30 minutes north-ish from us.  It's located in the middle of all of these houses and you have to drive down a dirt road to get to it.  A big difference from Larry H. Miller Track, haha.  One thing we are also having to get used to out here is that a lot of places only take cash!  We had to go find a grocery store because we didn't have any cash on us to get in.
So one of the reason's Chase wanted to go on this particular day was because they were having a vintage race day.  It was fun to see all the different cars and to just be with my hubby.  I made sure to get video to send to our dad's since I'm sure they enjoy the rumble of an engine as well :)
For lunch we ate some bbq that was being cooked on the coolest smoker.  I immediately thought of my dad's yummy smoker and thought of how my mom would think the wagon's were cool.  I thought they were sweet myself.  I would be ok with having one of those in my backyard :)  The food was good too.  We got a combo plate so that we could try a little of all of the meat.  Yum, yum.
At the end of the day we got rained out and had to take shelter until there was a lull in the storm and we headed to the car.  Luckily it provided some awesome thunder though.

This Porsche won the race..... of course...

I tried adding the video so that you all could listen but it's not happening, so sorry.