As I write tonight I am faced with a quandary. I know that many of you have gone back and read my early blogs on setting up a budget and have a budget in place, but I also know that there is a lot of information there if you haven’t already read them. When my book is completed I will have an easy solution to this dilemma. I will simply say, go read chapter “whatever” in my book 🙂 However, my blog is not as concise as my book will one day be, so… for today I am going to …
Owning the Process… and then Owning Your Home
Buying a home is such an exciting adventure, but it can also be one of the most stressful times of your life. Amidst the paperwork, and house hunting, and sudden immersion into the totally foreign world of mortgages, and realtors, and escrow accounts, and down payments… it can be very overwhelming. I am not promising to be your comprehensive guide through the jungle this week. There are very thick books that have been written on this topic… and I don’t feel like another writing one 🙂 However, I do want to present you with some thoughts that you may not …
Maybe Monday?
So I am about halfway through my next “mortgage” blog and I am just not going to be able to get it up tonight…and realistically, probably not tomorrow night either…so maybe Monday 🙂But in the mean time, you hopefully aren’t buying a home this weekend, so relax and have a wonderful weekend. And if you are buying a house this weekend… well, maybe you should wait until Monday 😉
Castles in the Sand
I have always loved making sand castles on the beach. From my earliest memories, I remember making sand droplet castles with my Mom and Dad and brother. My Dad would always build these lovely castles with deep moats that would fill with water. But being made of sand on a beach with a strong tide is a very precarious predicament for a castle. We would always search for yesterday’s castles the next morning and there would be hardly a trace. I guess if you really want a lasting castle you need a better location, a stronger foundation… and it would …
From the Party
What a week it has been so far! The markets of the world are being driven by fear, and the rest of us are just spectators at the stampede. I have no idea how this all will resolve, but again and again I am thankful for the peace that passes understanding which guards my mind and heart. (Philippians 4:7) I read yesterday again about so many people withdrawing from the stock market and moving their money to the safety of bonds. The only problem is that they are doing it at a point where the market is at an extreme …
Fear Itself
Noah and I were driving in the car the other day when he said to me, “Mommy, you know the bad dreams that I have sometimes? Well, I know what those bad dreams are.” “What are they honey?” I asked, totally intrigued by what he would answer. “Mommy, those bad dreams are just fear. It is just fear trying to get me, it’s not the real thing.” So profound and so straightforward. How many times do we let fear convince us that it is a genuine threat? How often do we give over our peace, our finances, our future to …
Paying for the Party
“Arrrgh,” shouted 14 young pirates as they chased me down the side of my home. We were on a treasure hunt. The cake had been eaten. The sword fights had been won. And now the real adventure had begun. Through Alligator Alley, past the Tunnel of Stinkiness and the Forgotten Grasslands, and through the Forbiden Gate… and over a dozen pirates were all of a sudden charging from my back yard and down to our mailbox (the Tiny Cave of Hope) in search of the prize. Then back through the house they stormed in a mad chaotic quest. There was …
A Birthday Party
Today is Noah’s birthday party, and tonight 13 pirates and their 17 parents and our family members will be joining us for a pirate party. What was supposed to be a small party in our home has all of a sudden become a festival. We decided for the first time this year to just let Noah invite who he wanted to the party. So really, just a few friends…. And their siblings…. And their parents…. and Noah’s cousins…. and his grandparents. How did this happen? A very small drop in what is happening in the global ocean today, but to …
In the Midst of the Storm
Everything I have read or seen in the media the past week has just been fear, fear, fear.. It is easy to get shaken. It is easy to see fear as the big picture. But it is not. Fear is just a reaction to perception. Not a single newsman, or reporter can predict the future. They don’t know what is coming and the more unstable the events of the day, the more they fear tomorrow. The sad thing is that they have nothing else to give but fear. In an unbiased report (which seems impossible to find), they would simply …
A Family Again
Somewhere in the back of my mind I imagined that my husband going out of town would mean that I would have a vacation. “I’m not going to cook all weekend,” I thought with joy. I also dreamed that I would just write all weekend, joking to Matt that it would be a writer’s weekend for both of us… yeah. Somewhere in my head I was getting the weekend off, overlooking one tiny fact: I still have three kids at home with me. The house doesn’t magically stay clean when Matt is gone because (shocker) Matt isn’t the one making …