Lots of you that know me know I’ve been talking about moving back down to the city, out of redneckville Northern Michigan for about four or five years now. My best friend B and her husband S bought a second home a couple years ago for her brother & his wife & they ended up backing out of the arrangement which left them with a 2nd house payment. It had been rented out but recently became available again.

These past two weeks down here have made me dread going home. We started talking about the house being available for rent and I found myself getting excited. I didn’t want to get too excited because I have the lease in my apartment, Caleb’s ‘home’ is up there, Caleb’s dad is up there, etc etc. But as for me - there really isn’t much up there. Yes I have a couple friends that I hang out with once in awhile but other than that there is nothing up there. My family is up there too but even being up there I don’t see them a whole lot.

I figured all I could do was talk to my landlord and see what the consequences of breaking my lease would be. Things went way better than I anticipated! Then there was Caleb’s dad that I had to talk to. I have been waiting ALL day to write this blog post and share my exciting news. But I had to wait until I finished a conversation with Caleb’s dad.

So without further delay…..

Pictures of Our New Home!

Caleb standing outside at the front door:

My New Kitchen:

Another Kitchen Pic:

I’m Most Excited About This! LOL

Living Room:

My Bedroom (it’s kind of dark):

The Bathroom:

The Hallway:

There are 2 other bedrooms but I didn’t snap pics of those. One will be my office (how exciting to have a room dedicated to JUST my home office!). I didn’t take pics of the little ‘deck’ off the sliding glass doorway in the kitchen because the lawn needs to be mowed really bad. LOL

I wasn’t expecting things to fall into place so fast. I was thinking I could have a good couple months to get everything up North situated and then move but it’s happening all within the next couple WEEKS! I have to have Caleb enrolled in his new school down here by Sept 24th when they do head count because we are doing school of choice (meaning he’s going to my friend B’s daughters school instead of the school that is by our house) so they have rules that have to be followed.

I am so EXCITED! And for me to full excitement about something again is a good sign! I’ve been so down in the dumps lately that I’ve finally got something to look forward to.

Woo Hoo!

And I’m paying the same amount for rent on this house as I was paying in my apartment so everything is still going to work out ok financially.

Tish

Share This

We just had some excitement here that we find rather comical now that it’s over and done with. First before I go into this story I have to mention that B & S and their daughter were up North for a weekend several weekends ago and when they came home they found that a raccoon had found it’s way into their house. It made it’s mark by entering the fireplace and leaving black soot all over the carpeting, on furniture & even on the wall. I didn’t mean to laugh when she told me the story because I can only imagine what a mess that was to have to clean up.

That story is even more comical now after what happened tonight.

B ordered pizza for dinner because by the time we got home from her daughter’s cheerleading practice it was late. After everyone got done eating we sent the kids outside to play (Caleb, K & one of K’s friends). As the kids came inside from playing outside they were standing by the door & the next thing we know the kids are looking down by Caleb’s foot. B and I were sitting on the couch so we couldn’t see what they were looking at. Then B leans over a little & she thought it was a big spider (like a tarantula even though we knew that wasn’t possible) because all she saw was this mound of black. Then K’s friend yells BAT. The kids scramble away from the door & then there is this bat flying towards me as I’m still sitting on the couch (I had a bit of a delayed reaction…LOL). I’m pretty sure I’ve never moved that fast in my life or screamed that loud.

Caleb dived to the floor, the girls ran downstairs & locked themselves in the bathroom. B and I are running around screaming & we take off out the front door. We stand there in her lawn with the door wide open hoping this dumb bat is going to fly back out the way it came in. Her neighbor pulls up & is laughing at us & says isn’t S getting it? B is like no S isn’t home right now. I figured he’d come over and come to the rescue. I mean hello there are 2 hysterical woman on the lawn you would think that any NORMAL man would come save us (oh yeah men AREN’T normal). But no of course not. Instead he makes a joke to B about her house being a wild kingdom.

Eventually the bat did fly out on it’s own. And now we are laughing about it but man it wasn’t funny when I was sitting there and a bat was flying at my head!

Share This

Last Saturday we took the kids to a place called Outdoor Adventure. It’s a big (scratch that it’s HUUUUUGE) campground with an outdoor pool, indoor pool, beach area, miniature golf, a trolley that takes you all around the campground, etc. It was neat and Caleb loved it. After leaving there we went to B’s friend J’s parent’s place on the lake for a BBQ, fishing and paddle boating.

Caleb, K & B

Caleb, K, B and S

Caleb fishing

Caleb and K fishing - Caleb’s first catch of the day

Caleb’s 2nd Catch

And Catch #3

K, J and Caleb

It stormed pretty bad as we were on our way back from J’s parent’s place. At least the bad weather held off until the kids got to do all the fun outdoor stuff!

Share This

If you read my recent post I told you about having 2 days of he** because of a virus infecting my computer. That issue got resolved and my computer worked for a little while. Today I got in about an hour worth of work and that was it. Once again I was without a working computer.

So on top of everything else I’m now about 4 days behind on work and it’s the end of the month which means it busy for me anyways because of trying to get projects completed before end of the month so I can send invoices. I’ll be pulling some all nighters the next couple days to try and get caught up. Seems how I’m still having sleep issues it won’t matter if I’m up all night working anyways.

I am currently running a backup on my system right now. Kelly told me about Mozy and for $4.95 a month I can backup unlimited amounts of data. $5.00 a month is so worth it. I don’t ever want to go through the whole virus thing again and fear the loss of all my data. Not a good feeling.

So anyways….I’m back up and running once again after about 12 hours (I went down at 10:30am and just got back up and running and it’s now 10:53pm).

Tish

Share This

The past couple days have been heck. My computer got a virus yesterday. My anti-virus software caught it but somehow it still got installed on my computer. And get this - it was an antivirus software virus. It was crazy and a big ole mess.

Last night and this morning things weren’t looking good for software/data recovery. But thankfully B’s husband S has a total computer geek friend that builds and works on computers so he was able to help S get my computer fixed. And it was all done without me losing any software or data (thank God!!!!!). The only thing I lost was 2 days worth of work.

I did learn a very valuable lesson throughout the past couple days and this ordeal - there’s no exceptions for not backing up my computer anymore. I have too much to lose to use the excuse of not knowing how to do a system backup. I’ve never been so freaked out and sick to my stomach as I was over the last couple days. Thinking that I had lost everything was the worst feeling in the world. All I can say is thank goodness I was down here when I got the virus and had someone to help fix it. S is going to teach me how to do back ups so I can start doing them on a regular basis!

And for whatever reason this whole incident just had to happen to add to all the other stress going on in my life. When it rains it pours is so true!

Share This