Hello!

Well...it is a fine summer day in Spokane USA!! The sun is shining, the birds are out, and I am stuck in my office cave. It literally is a cave. I am on the back wall side of a circular cubical at this branch. I actually chose this place to get away from a co-worker with chronic illness. I just couldn't handle her coughing and hacking and snot snorting all the time. It was making me insane. I do get a lot more work done at this desk, but I do not have much to look at. Oh well.

So many posts!! First let me start off with my take on the foreclosure issue. Start off by contacting your mortgage company. Hopefully it's a larger lender because most large companies have entire departments dedicated to homeowner retention (ours is called the Home Preservation Team). Contrary to popular belief, the bank does not want your home. When all is said and done the bank will lose a lot more than they will gain on a repossession. They will probably be very willing to work with you. A lot of times they will put you into a plan with reduced payments for a specified time period then add the back interest onto the tail end of the loan. It allows you a reduced payment for 6 -12 months and you are not responsible for any type of balloon payment along the way.

On Kindergarten...I am actually thrilled that Lizzy is going to miss the state cutoff (Aug. 31st) and be forced to stay home another year. I believe in my heart that kids grow up way too fast as it is and if I can squeeze out one more year before I throw her out into the real world than so be it. When I look back on my life I can't figure out where the time goes...one more year at home is not going to hurt at all. And...if she turns out to be the sporting type one more year of maturity will give her an edge over the other kids. She is perfectly capable of going this year as she can write all of her letters and read small words, socially she is 4 going on 14...I just think that there is no hurry. I actually have a school all picked out for her, now I just have to wait and hope that we get in. It's a public school that is a Continuous Curriculum School. I am so excited to think that we will have several short breaks over the year opposed to a long summer break. I think she will stay sharp and we will have less behavior issues to deal with. There are only a few in our area and only one in our school district. Eli and I have really been on the fence between public or private and this is a great compromise. I was also a summer birthday kid (June) so I was younger than my classmates and it worked out fine, but as MaryStarr pointed out...if she needs to go up a grade down the road, then so be it. I have a lot of friends with September birthdays who were held back a year and they all loved it. They were bigger than their classmates, got to drive sooner...all that good stuff.

We are also preparing to plant a garden. Eli has greatly expanded our garden area from what it was last year and we are in the rock picking phase of our operation right now. It's very tedious, but I think it will be well worth the effort. Also going to be painting our house in the next few weeks...I will post before and after pictures of the grand event!!

We bought a kid pool off of Craig's List last weekend and I think it will be warm enough tonight to actually get into it. We filled it up last night and it too almost two hours. It's an 8' by 30" round one. Just big enough for Lizzy to stand up and not be over her head. Allie will have to be under constant surveillance though. I am hoping we can teach them to swim this summer. I like it because it has a filter system and is big enough to put chlorine tabs into so we can fill it once and keep it clean and I don't have to worry about bugs or algae. With our last pool I would fill and dump every time we used it because I am paranoid. This will be much better.

I guess that's pretty much it. I hope everyone is enjoying spring!!

Hugs,

Maigan