Boring....

Nothing is happening. At all. Well, I guess I can't say that, cause there's always something happening, just not the usual chaos and mayhem that's usually going on. The kids are getting along, dinner is on the stove, and all is mostly well. I'm still stuck on the kids getting along part.

So the budget is going well, and I officially have $400 towards the $76K we need to start building. So we only need $75,600! Woo-hoo! The spending is still in check, although I know I'm gonna have to drop some cash on school supplies for the kids. That sucks. I'm still really excited about building, though, I can't wait! Not a night goes by that I don't dream about building or living in a new house. I think I'm mostly excited about the fact that we will be building with our own two hands (well, 4+ hands because it'll be me and Charlie and some help) and that we get to design the house based on our needs. That's so much more awesome than buying a house, since when you buy you're stuck with whatever the person who designed the house put into it. And since we've been living in our current POS home for so long, it's easy to see how we'd like things to be different. I've been bothering the guy who owns the company that makes building for so cheap possible with random phone calls and questions, even though we still have 3 1/2 years to go before we can start building. It's only been like 3 weeks since I learned of them, so imagine what the next few years will be! I can't help it, I'm so excited. I've been drawing up floor plans for the past week, and my mother in law is just as obsessed as I am.

So I have some good news: my uncle gave us a brand new fridge! I'm so excited! Who said a girl can't get excited over an appliance??? It's black and it's bigger than the old fridge, and did I mention it's brand new and FREE? Apparently someone screwed up an order for a rental property my uncle owns, and he got so mad that he told Charlie if he could find a fridge to fit the home we could have the other one. So Charlie measured the space and got a fridge, and now we have the other one.

It's also cooling down here, which is awesome. Not running the A/C can be tough, and there are some days when I'm am so freaking tempted to turn the darn thing on. Like to the point where I'm having dreams about closing the windows and sitting next to one of the floor vents. It sucks. But at the same time, we end up saving so much money by just toughing it out, and all I can think is that by saving a little here and a little there we are so much closer to building a home we can be proud of, a home that will be so well insulated and energy efficient that we can run the A/C to our heart's content and not worry about forking over an arm and a leg each month in electric payments. It will be worth it. That's what I keep telling myself.

So we had a pretty awesome opportunity come up. A relative has a $200k house that he's willing to sell us for $150k, but we would have to make and maintain payments of $1,400/month. With interest and taxes and everything it would take us like 10 years to pay it off, and it's not as big as the house we're planning on building. There's no way in hell we could put that much into a house for that long. As it stands we're putting aside $2k/month for almost 4 years from now and we'll 100% own a 2880 square foot house. It would be nice to not live in a broken down manufactured home, but once again I gotta think about long term. Do I want to get in over my head? Hell no. Do I want to live in a nice house on 3 acres? Absolutely. Is it worth being in debt for 10 years? No. Now, is living in a crappy house on a short 1/2 acre for 4 years worth having and owning an awesome house? YES. It's totally worth it. So (sigh) we are not moving to the fancy house down the road, we are toughing out the crappy house in hopes of bigger and better things.

This is getting pretty lengthy, so I'm cutting it off here. Thanks for reading (if anyone even does).