Well, we have received good news (even if I’m a few days late posting it to the blog). We will be closing on the trailer we were looking at on March 1st. After that the trailer, while in poor condition, will officially be ours.
As I’ve said, it’s definitely not the world’s best trailer. There is graffiti on the interior walls, mold in a couple of places, the living room carpet is in bad shape, and the vinyl tiles in the entry way and kitchen have come up in some places. The only appliance in the entire trailer is an older gas stove. But it is priced as something we could afford. In fact, doing the math, with the deal we’re going to get on this trailer, even if we put in $6000 in repairs in the first year we would break even with paying rent at $750 a month for a year. Then we will be benefiting from our upgrades and expenditures rather than just loosing the money in rent.
Our goal though is to try and be as frugal as possible with what we put into this trailer, so that down the road we can have a down payment towards something else. Since we have to redo flooring, walls, and kitchen cabinets as well as purchase appliances our money won’t go far.
On Friday, we did some looking around. We have a quote for appliances, and while we aren’t looking at the top of the line, what we’re interested in would cost us $3,000 alone. A quick estimate on cheap kitchen cabinets is around $3,000 as well. And that doesn’t include flooring or new walls. This all means that our money could go very quickly, and since we don’t have it all up front, it could take a while.
One of the things this means is that as we planned, we will have to do the work ourselves. We will also have to find some alternatives. Instead of purchasing all the appliances new, we’ll most likely use FreeCycle or Craig’s List. Originally, we thought about hardwood floors but then realized that since it’s a trailer, it would make more sense to go with laminate. Neither of want carpet in the house, and luckily laminate is cheaper than carpet anyway.
As for the cost of cabinets, well, we’ve all but decided to go another direction there as well. Instead of purchasing cabinets, we’re going to make them. Shane’s brother made cabinets for their mother a number of years ago, that have stood up to four moves. Therefore Shane is pretty sure he can make cabinets that would work also, “they’re just boxes.” We will have to purchase a few tools to make them, but according to some quick math it looks like we should be able to make the cabinets for about half the cost of purchasing cabinets.
Once we close on the trailer, we’ll go in and take measurements. Once we have those measurements, then we’ll plan out the exact layout we want. We may make a few changes in the layout, but there are some things that are harder to change then others. It’s not going to make sense to move the furnace, and while we could change the plumbing the less changes we have to make there as well, is probably the better.
Our plan is to redo the kitchen, it will most likely have a brand new layout, or at least a some updates to the layout. We are also planning what most would consider a massive island. We’re thinking about 5 x 7 in size, which includes overhangs on two sides for seating. Well, with an island that big in a trailer your not going to have room for a table.
Well, Shane has finally received his first paycheck. (He is only paid twice a month, not every 2 weeks.) This of course naturally started us thinking of when would we be able to move out of his mother’s. Part of what we want to be able to do is buy a house in the future when Shane has his teaching position. To be able to do that, naturally we have to put money aside now, while he is making a good wage from his programming.
So how do you pay rent and put money aside? Well, you either find the cheapest possible place to rent… or you try to buy a cheap trailer house. To this end, we believe we have found something that could suit our purposes. It’s an older trailer house, 1976 or 1977, a 14×70 with 3 bedrooms and 1 3/4 bath. It’s very rough right now, but at the price we would be able to go in and make improvements before moving in. Naturally we wouldn’t be able to make all the improvements we want right away, but enough to satisfy our immediate needs. Then we would be able to move in and plan to make other changes over time.
If this works out not only would we have the space we need (including an office for Shane), we would also be able to put money aside for a down payment for a home in three years when Shane graduates. Please wish us luck, we can use all the help we can find.
Today Shane had an operating session, and Allyssa and I had a leisurely day at home. She hadn’t wanted a nap, but I hadn’t been overly worried since she sometimes doesn’t take one. But, as one can see, apparently she should have. 
She was slowly eating her supper, so slowly in fact that Shane had finished his and I was doing the dishes while she was attempting to eat more. In the few minutes my back was turned she actually fell asleep at the table.
I was very surprised when I turned around and saw her asleep rather than slowly eating her food, so I had to go get Shane who was working on his finals. After a little bit she woke up a bit, at least enough to lay down on the couch rather than at her highchair. She never did finish her dinner because she ended up taking a fairly long snooze. Not to worry though, she ended up having some peanut butter bread later (one of her favorite snacks) and some popcorn. Unfortunately, I knew from prior experience that she wouldn’t sleep the night through, so I knew she’d be up later and she was.
It has been ages since I last posted to this blog. According to my looking through the past posts it appears like my past post was on May 24th. If you have read anything of this blog since, you can see that much has happened since then. I won’t bore anyone with the repeating of what you know has happened. Instead I will attempt to do an update on some of the things that haven’t been posted. Please do not think this is a complete list of other things that have occurred but it is some of them.
Currently when we’re out and about, Allyssa has two favorite games. They are both where you each take turns either counting or going through the alphabet. She now get bored counting somewhere in the mid to late thirties, but typically we will only count up to twenty and then switch sides. We will also switch sides when doing the alphabet and she knows them both very well. We are working with some flash cards, the only word she always recognizes right now is “ice cream” but she will go though the letters and the pictures of all the other flash cards easily.
Allyssa has unfortunately started trying to be a picky eater. Perhaps that’s the wrong way to put it, it would be more accurate to say that she often decides that she doesn’t want to eat when it’s meal time. She’ll say she’s not hungry then, but just after we leave the table she’ll want some sort of treat be it M&Ms or cookies, or whatever.
Eating isn’t the only thing that Allyssa can be stubborn about. She’s also that way about potty-training. Yes, we are currently working on potty training, but progress seems to be very slow. We have even purchased big girl panties for her but even that doesn’t seem to be incentive enough to try to remember to use the potty rather than go when- and wherever. When we are home she is on the potty for 15-30 minutes every hour, but she still seems to be able to go when she’s not on the potty. Sometimes I think she misses, because she is still sitting in the high chair because she hasn’t finished eating yet. But as much as I want her potty trained, she has to eat more than 2 or 3 bites of food for a meal. (Yes supper tonight was a bad night for her and eating. The sad part of that is what we had for supper was tacos and refried beans which normally she really likes. But not tonight apparently.)
Well those are my thoughts for the moment, I’ll try to post more again later. Promise not to hold your breath though.
So this past Sunday I finished my U.S. History class, and those of you who know me just KNOW that I absolutely hate U.S. History. This course was early U.S. History up until the Civil War, and the final project was to create a timeline of events that led up to the war, and an essay that explained the timeline. I worked on it for several days right up until about 12:45am Monday morning, leaving only 15 minutes to submit the assignment for a grade. Again I told myself that it wasn’t good enough, but since I had no time left I had to submit it.
Anyway, the paper was worth 200 points and with having turned in a few assignments late while I was sick, I needed a good grade on this paper to be sure I was able to get a decent grade. What I turned in at 12:45pm was what I basically had done by 10:00 Sunday night, but thinking it wasn’t good enough I kept trying to add more to it, or changing this or that to make it better. Unfortunately, I found out today that I had submitted the copy I had saved at 10:00 so all the changes I made in the following hour and 45 minutes were not even seen by my instructor – I felt like such a dumb ass.
Then today I get my grade – 185 out of 200, and what I lost points on were NOT items addressed during that wasted time late Sunday night. So again I have been reminded that I am too critical of my work. I guess in the future I need to write enough to satisfy the requirements and not second guess, since EVERY single final I have done since starting school has been about the same. Each time I submit a final I think to myself “you should have taken more time and done a better job”. Then I get the grade and always seem surprised when I get a higher grade then I expected.
Oh, and for the record, the final grade for the class was an A-, the very FIRST time in my entire life I have earned higher than a C in any History class. To date, I have three A’s, two A-’s and 1 B- and my cumulative GPA stands at 3.67. Now I have the rest of this week off before starting my next block of classes, AED201: Teaching as a Profession and HUM205: World Culture and the Arts. I was supposed to take the Humanities class in my last block but withdrew from the class when I could not afford the $110 for the required textbook, which arrived today. Wish me luck!
Yeah, I know, heart attack time right? Since moving back to Holmen I have been so busy trying to find a job that I just have not been able to do much of anything else. Then last month I got involved in writing some plugins for the Wordpress software which has taken up quite a bit of time. One of those plugins I wrote was for sharing recipes, called Recipe Share, on Wordpress blogs. For fun, I added that plugin to this site so I can share some of my recipes – there is one up already.
Allyssa is getting bigger and is really smart too! She knows the entire alphabet and can count to ten, though some days she needs a little coaxing to get through them all. She is also at that stage where she wants to be “naked”, well, except for a diaper, and refuses to wear clothes. She also refuses to sit on the potty so potty training is progressing very slowly, or not at all right now.
Her favorite movie right now is Cars. Well actually, it is Mater and the Ghostlight which is a bonus on the Cars DVD. I think I have seen that over 100 times already. It is kind of annoying too, because every time Mater breaks his headlight she has to scream out “he broke his light!” Oh well, she’s still the most wonderful part of my life right now.
The job market in the area is crap, and although there have been a couple of options, none of them have panned out. So, Laura and I have decided to use my knowledge to build a business. We are working now on a Business Plan and actually have about a half dozen customers already, so it just might work out. The trick will be to actually keep working towards that, and not playing games on Facebook (hint hint Laura).
Shoot, gotta get back to work now. In case you don’t hear from us in the next couple of months, just remember that it is NORMAL to for us to not update the blog, so things must be normal.
Those of you close to us already know about this, but next week I will be moving the family back to Holmen, Wisconsin where we can be with family and the activities we enjoy. It has been an interesting journey to Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City, but I guess the old saying is true, “Home is where the heart is”. It took a while for me to realize it, but I just need to get back to a place where I can do the things I enjoy doing and be with my family.
I’d like to say there won’t be a lot of posts for a couple of weeks with packing and moving and settling in, but a lack of posts seems to be the norm for this site. So get ready for this blog to be normal! Maybe once we are back and we have things to share we will post more. Then again, we will be sharing those things with the very same people who read this blog, so we may not feel a need to update. Geez, what is a person to do?
Currently I am not working, nor is Laura, except to build up our new business venture. Hey, we already have nearly a dozen clients so things are looking up. We will be focusing on the area around La Crosse, WI in the coming months, so if you know someone who wants a cheap web site, send them on over to $150 Sites, OK?
