For all you techies out there, here is a link to another blog created by some guys I listen to about photography and another one about the Mac. They are having a contest that the winner can win a Drobo. I could really use one of these things but I probably won’t have a budget for one for a long time so I want to win one. If you haven’t heard of a Drobo check them out here. Very cool.
This week’s Picture of the Week is Brooke. She is the perfect study of cuteness. What can I say I love my family.
Like good parents we let her get her exercise and have fun by doing pull ups on the bar. Like bad parents we let her risk harm. If her hands were to ever slip, she would hurt herself pretty badly.
Today marks three years in our home! We’ve owned our place for about a month longer, but today marks the day we actually moved in!
Now I’m sure you are saying to yourself, “Big whoop! Why not just celebrate anniversaries that are multiples of five? Three is such an insignificant number.” Let me give as brief of an explanation as possible.
There is a program called the “Teacher Next Door.” This program helps what they call “revitalization” communities get quality people into the neighborhood to improve the neighborhood with their presence. This is for teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and EMTs. They offer homes that have been repossessed by the bank for bidding on a website. You don’t bid for the highest price, but an intent to buy at the discounted price. Most of the homes are in really bad shape and with such a low home price they hope the people will invest in renovating the place. They throw everybody’s name into the big witches’ cauldron and pull out the winner’s name. Three years ago we won! Here’s the catch. We are responsible for 1/2 of the mortgage and the other half is a silent mortgage that does nothing for the three years. Once the three years is up then that silent mortgage is forgiven. Every year they have sent us documents that we had to sign certifying that we still live in our condo. If we chose to sell before the three years were up then we would be responsible for the entire mortgage.
So here we are three years later and we can officially say that our mortgage is over half paid off. Add that to the fact that our home is worth a lot more than our purchase price, we are going to have a nice down payment for our next home–not that we are planning on moving because we love our place. We love our neighbors (a shout out to our neighbors who might be reading this), we have huge yard to play in, a playground, barbecue and picnicking areas, a basketball and a volleyball court, and the promise of soaking in the pool over the summer. Would you want to leave?
As geeky as it may sound, I recorded the message off our answering machine that says we won the house. I edited it for anonymity.
This is Rebecca talking to the lady about winning the house. We just couldn’t believe that we had won. We kept asking ourselves if it were real.
My stepdad Bob and I working on laying the flooring.
The huge mess of remodeling.
The end result.
The exterior.
We would like to thank again my family and Rebecca’s family who came over and helped us paint, clean, put the floors down, and generally renew everything from ceiling to floor.
This evening I was able to go to the Draper Temple dedication. What a wonderful experience that was. In honor of that I wanted to post a picture that I had taken of the Draper Temple, but when we went to the open house earlier this month, they made it quite impossible to take a picture. Right off the bus we were immediately shown into a covered walkway and weren’t able to see the exterior of the temple at all.
Recently, I was taking pictures of a wedding at the Provo Temple so that will be the temple that takes the place of the Draper Temple for today’s Picture of the Week.
