Latest

The buyers came by on Tuesday with an inspector and a hardwood floor guy to take measurements(apparently they don't like our tile selection). The wife kept apologizing to Leslie because she knew we had built the house and felt bad that they would be making all these changes to it. I think you can call that a pretty good sign that the sale is going to go through. It better because at this point, in my mind, I've already moved out. We had a guy in the ward who is a general contractor come check out the old house and he confirmed what I thought the first time we looked at it. That would be the time I laughed and told Leslie she was crazy. He determined that there were only two major problems with the house, the roof, which has some pretty serious fire damage in the attic, (but the fire took place over 30 years ago so we shouldn't worry about it), and the foundation which is sinking causing the floors in the house to warp. So just the roof and the foundation, everything else in between seems to be OK except for what you would expect from a house built in the 1920's. Like the fact that in some places you can see into the crawl space, and most of the windows are stuck, another sign of a sinking foundation along with doors not wanting to close, the electrical hasn't been updated since the 70's and most of it is spliced together, we'll make sure to go heavy on the heat and smoke detectors, it kinda smells like mice and mold, but we can still get high speed Internet and dishtv. The dishwasher works and the toilet flushes. Hopefully the septic tank was designed to support a family of 7 or we're really going to be in trouble. The good news is that it is only going to be temporary. We've decided that it would be more cost effective to live in it while we build a new house and then bulldoze the thing. Somebody send a video to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I'll start working on the sob story.

Here's an idea

Amy just generated an epiphany. Who's in charge of the family reunion next summer. I think it would be a great idea to converge on Benjamin, Utah. I've got an excellent service project. I hear that the family that works together.......... It could be fun.

The Move

OK. It's looking more and more like we really might be moving so I'll give out a bit more information. We have a buyer for our home, which I thought would never happen, and we had an inspector out to the house we are looking at on Saturday. Leslie has been watching this house for a year now and when the guy put it up for sale she said we should buy it and I laughed and told her she was crazy. See photo. The home was built in 1920, has two bedrooms, kitchen, living, ONE bath and is approximately 1100 sq. ft. Never one to deny anybody of a dream I told Leslie sure let's put our home up for sale and see what happens. We made an offer on the house contingent on ours selling. Let me reiterate that I never thought that at what we were asking and the way the market has been that we would find a buyer for our home. I was even told just recently that homes in our price range have been staying on the market for 18 months on average. Well we put our home on the market and 3 days later we had an offer for what we were asking. What!?! I was in Georgia when Leslie called to tell me she had sold the house. Fortunately by this time I had been up to the new(old) house and was able to catch the vision. I've always enjoyed watching episodes of this old house, now we'll get to find out if I enjoy living it. Hey any excuse to buy new tools sounds like a good time to me. The real interesting part will be the seven of use moving from 5 bedrooms and 4 baths to two bedrooms and 1 bath. It's a good thing we all like each other. It's not a done deal yet but we are getting pretty close. We're supposed to close on both properties on the 15th of October. It should be fun. Now I'll really have something to write about.

St. George

Leslie and I went down to St. George Thursday - Sat last week. I played in a golf tournament and Leslie just had a few, well deserved, relaxing days away from all that she does. The weather was perfect for three days of golf and the team I was playing on won, so I had a good time. Leslie did some shopping and spent some time with Lane and Rhonda. It was a really nice couple of days. Here's some pretty interesting news. Leslie has found a house she wants to buy and remodel. We made an offer contingent on our house selling. It's been on the market for three days and we already have two serious offers. I'll keep you posted on any news on that matter.

Def Leppard Concert

So yesterday was the big day. Cooper had asked for concert tickets for his birthday. I thought 'Oh man, who am I going to have to go listen to?" When he told me he wanted to go see Foreigner, Styx (he pronounced it Stykes), and Def Leppard, I thought "is this his birthday present or mine." "Of course we can go see Def Leppard!" The concert was really good, if there hadn't have been people there it would have been even better. Of course the majority of the people that were there were in their mid-thirties to early fourties reliving their high school days. From the looks of it many of them hadn't stopped living their high school days. Reminded me of the parties I attended with friends in High School except I couldn't give 8 thousand people a ride home, good times. I'll just say this, if High School Musical is any reflection of what the high schoools are like today they have made some great improvements dince I was in school. Maybe it's just the high schools in Utah. My kids don't ever come home with new dance moves or anything though....... Check out Coopers blog for a more detailed description of the concert.

The Long Weekend

I finished up early in Long Island last week and made it home Thursday instead of Friday. With Monday being labor day it made for a really nice weekend. On Friday Leslie and I went up to the Mt. Timpanogas temple; Cory and Lindsay were having Samari sealed to them. Saturday they had a little luncheon/baby blessing. We were really glad to have been there. Uncle Rick and Aunt Kathy were there and it was nice to visit with them. Peeled back another layer of the onion that is Uncle Rick. We got to talking about horses and he told me that when he was a kid he and Willie Shoemaker worked together at training facility for race horses. Shoemaker was a trainer and he was a groomer. He told me that when he got back from Korea he read a headline in the local paper 'Talk of the Turf' it was a story about Shoemaker. That was the first he'd heard that his old friend 'Shadow' as they called him had become a famous jockey. We also heard stories of him delivering beer out of his uncles bar in Chicago. I wonder what else that guy has done. Kept us entertained the whole time. Carrie and the girls came down for dinner on Sunday and we had the traditional Waffle-rama on Monday morning. Pretty good weekend.