Team Edward vs. Team Jacob

New Moon fever has hit! My ticket was purchased the day they went on sale and I'm totally excited. I even designed a t-shirt for me and my peeps to wear. Oh ya, I am that big of a dork! Taylor is mad at me because I won't let her come along to the opening night but I have to sensor it first.
I suppose it's time to finally admit that after more than a year of pestering I finally broke down and let Taylor read the books. She wasn't allowed to read the first part of the 4th book for obvious reasons. Frankly she didn't want to, she's still young enough not to care about all the mushy stuff. She would skip ahead if it got to kissy for her. She's totally Twilight obsessed now, especially New Moon. She's read the book 3 times. She's in love with Jacob, the little traitor!!! So now we're a house divided. One for team Edward (ME) and one for team Jacob (THE TRAITOR). I love that kid! She's getting so old, how can it be that we're reading the same books and fighting over who's the cutest guy?!

Here's a little Edward yumminess for you...

My Mom

My mom had a stoke a week ago. I'm to tired and exhausted to go into details but it was a big one and it scared me. I saw her a few hours after it happended and it's something I'll never forget. I adore my Mom and I don't want to think about life without her so I'm happy to say that she's making a remarkable recovery. My dad emailed an update today and I though I would share it...

To My Family & Friends,
I thought I would give you an update on how Jeannie is doing. She is recovering rapidly. She was suppose to be in the ICU for three to four days but they moved her out the following evening. I was told she would be in the area where the stroke victims are for another four to five days. She was there two days and they moved her to the rehab center. I was told that she would be there for at least a week and maybe two or three. Yesterday the therapists told her she has made so much progress that she will be able to go home tomorrow with 4 days of occupational and physical therapy. I'm not sure if she was being seen by a speech therapist or not. She still slurs her words some but she is so much better than she was last Wed. when she had the stroke. I can understand most of what she says and what I don't understand is in part due to my loss of hearing. She has been walking on her own and has gone up and down stairs with someone with her. She won't be able to drive for a while which is probably a blessing for all the rest of the drivers on the road. She should be able to do about everything she did before but it will be at a slower pace. She will need to continue working on using her left side and retrain her brain. Thank you for your prayers on her behalf. I know they have made a difference. I also know that the power of the Priesthood is real and is the authority to act for God here on the earth. Our Bishop came to the hospital the night she had the stroke and we gave Jeannie a Priesthood blessing and she was told that through her faith and the faith of family members everyone praying for her she would fully recover from the stroke. Yes, I believe in miracles. The doctor in the ICU told me that it was the worst kind of stroke and that she may not live and if she did it would could take a long time to recover and may never fully recover.

NORMAN B. DILLE

...I want to add my testimony to my Fathers. I know God is real and that he hears our prayers. I know that the priesthood has been restored to earth. I have felt it's power in my life many times. I have seen it work miracles in my life as well as the lives of my loved ones. I am so grateful!

Memory Lane

So I'm spilling my guts here. After everything we've been through it looks like were going to loose our house in Georgia. We'll be enduring the big bad F word...forclusure. I know that's a little heavy for a blog but this is my journal so...
I thought I would write a bit about our house and what's happened along the way. We love this house and spent a lot of time and money making it a home. We lived there for 3 years which for us is a long time. Taylor was only 4 and Tanner was 2 when we moved into this home. I remember bringing Tate home from the hospital. My sister Michelle lived with us for 8 months here, good times. First day of pre-school, first day of Kindergarten for both Taylor and Tanner. Christmas. You get the picture, there are memories galore. We made the decision to lease it out and move into a house that we were going to fix and flip. When we moved it looked like this:






When our leasor jumped ship and took off it looked like this:






Alan and I flew to Georgia for 12 days over Easter and literally spent night and day trying to put it back to it's former glory. We also spent $15,000 that put is into debt and sucked all of our savings away. We did this so that we could put it on the market and sell it. When we got there we were shocked to find it in the condition it was in. The smell was sooo bad it would just knock you back. They had been breeding dogs in the house and it was just so foul. The damage was overwhelming. The flooring was replaced, every single wall was painted, every piece of trim was painted, I won't bore you with the endless list...Here's what we accomplished:










After all that work the house sat on the market for 11 months. 11 months that I had to work full time to pay the mortgage so that we never paid a single late payment. We had lost to much value in the real estate slump so we decided to risk it again and do another lease purchase. That didn't turn out to be a great solution. Our renters were always late paying rent and were full of lies galore. They missed months that I still had to pay the mortgage and my rent here in Puyallup. The final straw was when they didn't pay rent for 4 months. All while we were trying to buy our house here. We had to work and scramble to pay all of our bills so that our credit wouldn't be ruined and so that we didn't let our landlords down. It was one of the most stressful times ever. We had to go through the process of having the tenants legally evicted. They sqautted in that house to the very last second they could. Thankfully the lord blessed us and we were able to close on our house amidst all of this. We had hoped that we could rent the house out again but we have found out that it's been trashed again. So I'm afraid this is the end of the line for our Georgia home. We no longer have the money to do all the repairs nessissary, nor do we have the money to pay two mortgages. It's super sad and makes me want to cry whenever I think about it. It was such a beautiful house and I hope that someone will live there again that will love it and take care of it like we did.
Forclosure is scary and we don't know what lays ahead of us. We're trying to seek out legal advise so we can be prepared, I guess we'll see.