Some pictures

Here are just a few pictures of our house from the outside.  The exterior is not finished yet, we still need to plant the vineyard, but that won't happen until next spring.  I just took pictures of the house in front only, but didn't take any of the surrounding land or even the back or sides of the house.    Will do next time.

This sign should be taken out soon and the land that you see will be filled with grape vines by spring.

This is the right side of the house..my camera sucks.

These two pictures are the view I get from my front door...I need to take some from upstairs. 

Yes...we live in a mansion and I think I'm falling in love with it...let's just hope we'll be able to stay for a while.

Finally

We're done moving all our stuff into the new house.  WHAT A FREAKIN CHORE!  I almost about died from exhaustion.  We were close to finishing last night, but couldn't quite fit just a handful of items into the van or truck. 

By 11:00pm we left Roseville and headed to our new house in Loomis.  I was a little nervous about driving there because the area we're moving to is a blackout community, which means there are no streetlights!  Pitch dark with lots and lots of critters and animals that may run out the road anytime.  Hence whenever we head over to the house, there's at least one road kill.  Over the long weekend, there was a dead dear on the side of the road and didn't get scooped up until Tuesday.  Everytime I drove by I screeched and screamed from squeaminishness  (say that 3 times in a row fast).    I drove slowly and the winding road made me a little car sick.  Not only did I have to watch the road in front of me I had look on the side of the road just in case I saw an animal about to run out in front of me.  Lucky it didn't happen, but the area where there was that dead deer, I saw another deer right by that same road. 

I thought I was gonna pass out from exhaustion last night, I wasn't feeling too hot.  I was nauseous, tired and filthy.  We took a shower and went to bed.  BUT I couldn't fall asleep.  I was itching like crazy, apparently I ended up with some godawful rash or hives that was driving me up the wall.  After a few hours I got up and checked to see what the heck was going on and my side and backside and part of my back was all bumpy.  I put some lotion on it to see if it would calm the itchiness, but it didn't.  But I did finally end up with a couple of hours sleep.  

Still tired, we had to go back to the house to pick up the rest of our stuff, clean up a little and then head to the grocery store to pick up some cheap frozen food because I don't think I'll be in the mood to cook for a few days. 

Now for the awful chore of organzing and putting stuff away.   AND cleaning the new house...it's still has a lot of dust and dirt, plus we've been trekking more into the house with the move.  We don't have any type of shelves because we couldn't add them to our budget.  D plans on building some...hopefully soon.  I need pantry shelves, closet shelves and drawers, garage storage and shelving, etc. etc.  I'm trying to find free or cheap shelving for the office...just temporary use because stuff is everywhere.  It's hard to organize anything if you don't have a place to put it.

On a rotten note, the sale of our house in Brisbane got cancelled.  We were about to close by the end of this month, but the guy who was buying the house had to pull out because the company he works for may be cutting salary and if they cut his, he may not qualify for the loan.  CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!  We were depending on that income to help us out with the new mortgage.  

We're both very nervous about not being able to make the monthly mortgage.  But I'm hoping that things will work out.  That maybe in the next few months we can move forward. 

I know I keep saying I'm gonna post photos, but I haven't gotten a chance yet.  We got computer hook-up here at the new house on Tuesday late afternoon, but I haven't been able to get on till this morning and evening.  So I'll try my best by next week...if I get a nice long break from trying to unpack everything. 

moving is not fun

We couldn't afford to hire movers or to buy boxes, so we've been making trips back and forth and it's exhausting.  We're not even halfway done yet.  We need to be out of here by the 14th, so that gives us at least 7 more days of moving.  I calculated how many days we would need to clear out both garages, the kitchen, our bedroom and our office.  I think we may need to do a few two trippers  We've pretty much cleaned out the rest of the rooms. 

In addition, after we're all moved out, we need to patch up any holes, touch-up paint and misc household problems.  Sheesh.

On top of that we're filming another infomercial at our Roseville house on Friday, which takes away from one day of moving.  I'm feeling a little rushed. 

Today we purchased a brand new washer and dryer and just for spending over $2000, we can purchased a 32 inch plasma tv for $150.00 promotional price!  So would you buy it or pass it up?  We bought it.  Two days ago we were at Sears and got close to purchasing a Kenmore H5 Washer and Dryer, but after checking out the reviews, we decided against it.  I wanted to check out the Whirlpool Duets which had really high ratings.  We went to RC Willey's to check out what they had and in the end we purchased a set of Maytags.  Apparently they've had a real bad reputation in the past 10 years...funny though we've purchased Maytags twice, once for Brisbane and again for Roseville and have not had any issues at all.   Anyway, we were told by the salesperson that they're trying to make up for the bad reputation by modifying their W/D units, they've made it more commerical grade.  We purchased the unit which comes with steam assist, it's suppose to clean your clothes better and to also get wrinkles out.   The saleslady was very informative.  Did you know that your clothes get cleaner if you use less detergent?  That's what she told us and said that we should test out the theory.  

The Kenmore was priced on sale at around $2400 which includes the cost of upgrading to gas dryer, tax and delivery.  They Maytag including the $150.00 TV plus an antivibration rubber thingy cost pretty much the same AND they gave us a box of free detergent.  AND after paying $59.00 for shipping (included in the amount) we would get free shipping for a whole year and any purchases we make we get 2% cashback rebate!  Well now...anyhoo, delivery set for tomorrow!  That's quick!

I was expecting to pay less than $1500 for both units, so needless to say, budget blown, but I'd rather pay just a bit more for something reliable.  AND since we didn,'t hire mover and are doing the moving on our own we've saved money. 

Too bad it wasn't like the old days when all our friends were younger, single and strong.  We could call them up and they'd all come to give us a hand.   Now they're all OLD and busy with annoying kids...just kidding about the annoying kids part....okay...and the old part too, especially since I'm in the same category and even older than most of my friends by a few months to a few years. hahaha

I've also got a long list of to do's for moving.  Switching bank accounts, changing addresses, informing everyone of my change of address, etc. etc. etc. 

Changes

MAN life changes and shifts on a daily basis.  So I guess I can finally start writing about our new house.  Yes we're moving, actually we need to move out of our Roseville house by mid October.  

In 2006 Darrell and I purchased around 4.5 acres of land with the hopes of building our dream home.  After we purchased of the land we were told by the community that we need to have the house built and finished within a given amount of time.   So we started immediately with plans and drawings for our future house.  In order to build the house we had to secure a construction loan...believe me it was NOT easy with the economy taking a downturn around that time, we were lucky to get that loan, it took almost 4 or 5 months to secure that loan, but we got it. 

So for the past 18 to 20 months while the house was slowly being constructed, we suffered through a lot of financial strains and weren't sure if we could even manage the mortgage payments that would start as soon as the house was finished.  Which is basically why we kept everything on the downlow. What's the point of telling anyone if it ended up that we couldn't even keep it. 

Somehow we've managed to stay afloat with our meager finances and maintain our sanity throughout all the chaos.  So many ups and downs...mostly downs in the past two years.  With my Mom's health and subsequent death, with D having to get a job and then only to lose it half a year later, losing major tenants in a few of our commercial properties.   It's been a huge struggle and continues to be.

But things seem to be changing a bit for us (knock on wood), hopefully for the better financially.   I think we've finally sold our house in Brisbane, not exactly at the price that we wanted...but better than nothing.  We slashed the price down considerably mostly because we needed the security of knowing that we'll be able to cover our mortgage for the new house for a few years and to maybe take the profits from the sale to reinvest in something else maybe.  Hopefully we'll be able to close on Brisbane within the end of the month.

In addition we've also leased our current home in Roseville, actually leased to own...so now we'll only have to worry about one mortgage instead of three.  We'll still have to take care of the property tax and property insurance for Roseville, but we won't have to worry about the mortgage or any other utilities for this house.  And hopefully in three years the lessee will be able to afford the purchase of this house on the agreed upon price.

Our new house is located in Loomis...yeah...I hear you, where the hell is Loomis?   That's what people use to say about Brisbane and Roseville, but you'll see Loomis is gonna be big.  haha

We'll be moving into a gated vineyard community.  The entire community must grow vineyards in the front of their homes.  I'll have to post pictures for you all to see if you're interested.   But seeing as how I only have like 5 people reading my blog, this is probably just more like a journal for myself. 

I do have one picture of Mom sitting in front of our fireplace in the great room.  This picture was taken in May, the house was almost finished, we still had to do the carpeting in some of the rooms, I don't recall if she ever got to see the stove.  I wish I had taken more pictures of her, I could kick myself right now for not doing so.  She was excited and anxious for us to grow our vineyards and lots of fruit trees.  She wanted to bring her friends over to see the house when it was done.  She was also looking forward to the second master bedroom that we built specifically for her visits with us.  She made it clear that we weren't allowed to let anyone else sleep in HER room.  She was joking I think...but alas...she won't ever get a chance to enjoy her lovely bedroom.   I'll always consider that her room.  I miss her so much.

MMS