Random Stuff

This weekend was busy-I cleaned out about 25-30 storage totes of the girls clothes (newborn all the way up to size 10 in little girls), Jaybird decided all on her own to finish up potty training when she heard me say I wouldn't buy any more diapers and she'd have to wear cloth (which she hates). She even went to Wal-Mart in big girl panties! She also plays Nintendogs on the DS, by the way. She must be a genius.

Shane & I had a big talk (on our new satin sheets he bought at a garage sale! Very funny-silver satin sheets under a country looking quilt, lol. Not sure we like them but it was fun-the girls wore their silk pjs and slid around a lot). Oh, the talk-it was about our housing situation. Thanks to those of you who have been praying about this, it means a lot.

I went to church solo yesterday since some of our crew was sick. On the quiet half hour drive there I was thinking about our debt and our housing needs. We are in total bondage to the credit card debt. It takes 1/4 to of our monthly income to meet the minimum payments each month. If we had that money in our pockets, we could easily make a house payment on an adequate (but not huge) house. It's so frustrating.

That's when it hit me. If we were in a tangible bondage, we'd be doing anything we could to get out of it. Since it's financial, and somewhat abstract, it can almost be ignored.

As I look to our future, I think about Ashlyn going to college in 6 years or so. (!!!) Once she starts, we'll have at least one child in college for the next 16 years! I'm sure during this time, the weddings will start, then grand babies will be on the way...and what if we're still in this bondage? We'll be heading straight for retirement with all these credit cards still looming over us. Neither of us want that.

We see that we have two choices:

1. Put a repossessed manufactured home on the land and spend the next few years paying off the debt. Depending on how much we decide we need to help our kids with college and where they go, we might could build a house then. It'd be fun to give the mobile home away or something...

2. Sell our land. This is a little heartbreaking, as we've spent seven years yearning for the day we could live there. We think (but would verify before moving forward) that we can get enough for the land to pay off all the debt and have a nice down payment on a new (to us) place. The downside is that we'd have to wait for it to sell and that the few properties we've thought were basic (3 bedroom brick home with a few acres) are in the $250K range-which is NOT in our budget even without the debt. We need to do some more looking before we put our land on the market for sure.

I know this update is less than earth shattering, but something this big during an economy this poor takes a process to work through. Well, for families that are serious about having mom home to take care of the kids/homeschool it's big.

Thanks for listening, carry on with your own processes going on in your heads...