Today is not a happy day. We received the test results on our stray kitty yesterday. She had kitty leukemia. Being pregnant and underfed were also working against her. Having worms, fleas, and cuts didn’t help either. We had to make hard decisions. We learned that just because you try to do something good, there aren’t any guarantees that it will turn out good.
We prayed for her tests to come back clean, so that we could help her and not infect our Fat Kitty. They didn’t. It’s not for us to question God and His will, but the questions keep coming anyways. Our hearts feel battered.
~We bought a house, not my little farm and not Hubby’s house in the woods. We felt God was pushing us to this one, the price was right….though it wasn’t our favorite. We obeyed, are settling in, and waiting to see, “why here”?
~Two weeks after we closed, the Realtor from Hubby’s house in the woods called us to ask if we were still interested….after seeing that the market was dead, they had decided to accept our last offer. Too late though, since we had already signed on the line for a less expensive home in a kid neighborhood. We’re not sure what to make of that…..maybe the ability to sell it soon will factor in and we’ll be grateful we have a lower house payment? Wondering why God timed it, such.
~We’re still waiting on our security deposit from the rental house. Turns out our land-lord is planning to steal it. The house was immaculate, but he’s trying to finance his wife’s gardening hobby and have us pay for it! (The itemized list that they sent us for landscaping included things that were never even in the yard to begin with….we have pictures!)
After viewing the before and after pictures, the lawyers think he’s nuts, the rental agency thinks he’s nuts, but…..Florida Law leans in the favor of the Landlord. We disputed the charge and were told that our deposit would go into a 3rd party escrow until a settlement could be reached in or out of court. Now, they are telling us that that the statutes have changed and they are releasing our deposit to the landlord and we will have to sue to get it back. Grrrr. We are waiting for the final “letter” that will determine how this plays out.
This was going to be the money for a kitchen table (our classroom) and to help pay down some bills. Eating picnic style, won’t kill us, the kids have adapted to home schooling all over the new house, but it’s going to make things quite a bit tighter around here, financially. I don’t feel comfortable suing and elderly couple, it doesn’t sit right as a Christian. At the same time, the man is a crook and we are being robbed. We could end up spending more than what we would get back, by the time we go to court, miss work, pay legal fees, etc. Not sure what we will do. Life lessons reinforced: People can’t be trusted, integrity is nearing extinction…..nothing good to say, so I will move on.
~We have a new critter…..for the time being. A little kitty showed up on our door step and hung out for several days. We tried to find her owners because she was so friendly and clean, we figured she was a pet. The temps got into the 100’s and we noticed that she was really struggling with the heat. Then she disappeared for a day and showed up with cuts and skittish…she had had a very bad night. We put her in the master bathroom to keep her from our cat until we could figure out what to do with her. Now that she has some food and isn’t dehydrated, she is getting bigger by the day….the vet confirmed she is pregnant, and due next month.
We were just going to have her checked out and find her a new home…..now we aren’t so sure. We’re using this as a teaching tool for the kids about caring for God’s creatures, life cycles, and pet responsibility. Ideally, we will get her through this time and try to place her and the kittens in good homes. The reality is that we are all getting attached. She is a cutie and very sweet. Sarge named her Catalina (after the WWII planes PBY-Catalina, of the famous rescue squadron the Black Cats). She is a little 10 month old, short-haired kitty with big yellow eyes, that squeaks instead of meowing. Yeah….we’re getting sucked in.
Tags: Kittens, Landlords, real estate
It looks like we lost the farm house. Actually, they told us this was their last counter so we assumed they were serious and sadly moved on. After we placed a bid on yet ANOTHER house, this one is in short sale, the farm house agent came back and asked if we were planning to counter again (on the farm house…..the one that told us they were not negotiating any further….apparently they changed their mind.)
Well, we have already submitted another bid for the OTHER property and so we have to wait to hear back before we can do anything further. Hubby has declared we are putting everything in storage and moving into our RV, if this falls through. We hope to hear by April 3rd, latest….the bank is moving REALLY slowly. I keep hoping somehow the little farmhouse will happen…..but hubby doesn’t seem to share that sentiment (for THAT amount of money, anyways). I keep praying the guy will accept our other bid….not very likely, but I can hope.
In other news, we decided we wouldn’t have the full month to move our home, one room at a time, like we originally planned. On Sunday, we started the official packing process. We emptied the attic into our garage. I now have a mouse-maze of boxes stacked shoulder high, winding through my garage, leaving pathways to the freezer and washing machine. We have boxes coming from one of the neighbors too……BIG fun, I tell ya! Sigh.
We recently watched the movie RV…..funny stuff. We can relate to that movie quite well. We have now dubbed our coach “The Static Turd”, because every time it gets driven somewhere, SOMETHING breaks. Living in it with rambunctious kids and the 5 of us should provide lots of blog-fodder for your reading amusement. There’s always an up side, right?
We bid. They countered. We re-bid. We’re still waiting. sigh.
We’re making a bid on my farm house!. The one that Hubby thought was too small….but I LOVED from the beginning. I know it is smaller, but the land and out buildings make up for that. (After considering RV and Boat living….it’s not that small!) If this falls through we will start down the path of subdivision houses with Home Owners Associations, cookie cutter houses, nosy neighbors, and critter restrictions. I will have to accept that we weren’t called to farm after all and that will change everything that we thought God was calling us to do. We haven’t found any other farms to bid on in our price range. So this looks like our last chance. Sigh.
The drama of property #3 continues. We had bid on it twice and walked away because they didn’t seem like they were going to work with us. Then they called us a week later, to check our status. Encouraged, we made another bid, the bank countered, and then we made our final bid.
It looked like we had a chance, they were asking questions to close up the offer and we were very clear that this was our last offer before we walked away. Then the selling agent contacted us and asked for our “best and final offer” because there was another bid on the property. “What!? The property has never been lived in (for 2 years)…..we were the only bidders because it was listed too high for the market…..and a few hours before we get our answer, somebody shows up to bid?……How convenient!” The agent/owner assured us that she would award the house to the highest bidder. Suspicious that she was trying to drive up the bids, our final bid stayed the same as our last “final bid”. (We were not kidding when we told her that was our last offer.) We wondered and speculated all weekend. At least if we lost the house, we wouldn’t have to watch it go into foreclosure and then sell for less than we offered, in 6 months.
We got the call last night. Our offer was rejected…….the verbiage used was as if WE were the only bidders, there was no talk of the other party. Our agent checked into it……….. the house is NOT under contract. That means that the agent was trying to drive up our bid as we suspected. There was NO 2nd party making an offer, she lied to try to get more money, even though we had told her that was our best offer. She could have left us alone and we wouldn’t have been drawn into the last 2 weeks of bidding and stressing over a property she had no intention of selling to us. She could have rejected us on Monday when we told her it was our final offer. But…..she lied and strung us along.
The fact that we lost the house is annoying, but I am more upset that she lied and drug our family through an emotional roller coaster for the last 2 weeks. There’s also the fact that we have lost time messing with this property……. for nothing, we are fast approaching our move out deadline.
Hubby and I are BEYOND sick, of looking for houses. We are both trying so hard to be open to anything and listen for God’s will in all of this. Unfortunately, we aren’t getting anything real clear. We are running out of time and we are back at square one. Do we rent, do we buy, do we sell everything and move into the RV? We are open to anything here, we just want to be in God’s will. We keep going through the motions of looking at properties, waiting for God to show us “the one”. We’ve picked out 2 RV’s to trade ours in on, and found storage. We’ve looked at boats and rental properties. We’ve prayed about this move for a year, prayed for God to open and close doors clearly and provide clarity for 6 months, and prayed for Hubby to have a clear leading on where God would have us. So far we’ve got nothing solid. We thought we were to continue our current ministry as well as begin to learn farming and gardening. Very few of our current prospects have room for a garden, let alone anything else. We are getting very discouraged. We have never sought God’s will harder, or felt further from it.
We go to look at another farm house (that we ruled out for various reasons early on) today. Then we start the list of cookie-cutter subdivision houses that have restrictions against our RV, the farm animals, and even the money-saving clothes line. The RV is starting to look really good at this point.
We’ve already lost two of the properties that we had hoped to secure. The 1st one got snagged in the auction phase of its foreclosure. The 2nd one, we were the only one bidding, then all of the sudden we were pulled into a bidding war with 4 other families. It looked like we still had a chance…..due to the highest bidder walking away after they agreed to work with him, but it didn’t work out. Now we are bidding on yet another house.