2 down 18 to go...

We did it!! We got another loan paid off!!! SOOOOO exciting!!! We still have a lot more to go, but we have 2 less to worry about. It feels really good. The day we paid it off we celebrated by going to Red Robin and eating a free burger and eating all their fries. YUM... I think we then went to my parents and played their wii! Which reminds me that one of my students last week told me the Wii is only for old people..."only old people like to play that..." Really kid? I made him take it back. :)

Another very exciting thing that is going on is the church plant! We had our 1st meeting w/ the future congregation yesterday. It was SO encouraging! We had LOTS of questions to ask b/c, as far as I know, it's still in the early stages. Most people were concerned a/b the money issue, the children's ministry, the youth group, the future name, location, etc. So I'm sending out a prayer request! We have a building in mind that is in a part of town that is growing a lot! There are hardly any churches out that way AND it's close to the airport so a lot of people from out of town (especially those wal-mart folks) will see us. We have such an opportunity to reach out to A LOT of people! I don't know details about this location but we were told that it is the best option for us. And I think it's in the negotiation stages. So pray hard that we are able to get it...and if we don't get it pray that we can find something else! Also pray for funds. Obviously, that's kind of a big deal. For now, all our questions were answered and we were reminded that God is able to do anything. I don't know a/b you, but sometimes I forget, so it was nice to be reminded. So if you could, pray hard that everything works out so we can save more souls!

That's What She Said...

Okay, so it's the last day of the year and, yes, I feel the need to look back on what '09 brought. It was quite a busy year but it went by SO FAST!!
We started our year in OK so I could finish my last semester of school. It was definitely the easiest semester of all....and that's probably because I slacked off. But that's okay because I had super grades.
I finally graduated and we moved to Rogers, AR! That was probably the most exciting thing about '09. We caught a lot of grief from our OK friends though. People are excited when you tell them your moving overseas but when you tell them you're moving 3 hours away they freak! We didn't want to stay there though. Whatev...
We went on a Disney Cruise!! I've changed my mind...THIS was the most exciting part of '09! I think about it everyday and we are already planning to go again when our loans are done. Then when we become millionaires we will just go every year. I would say billionaire...but lets be realistic. :)
We remodeled a house! That was cool. But we have more to go this coming year.
I started working at the piano studio and Scotty started his job with Arvest. That was a blessing for sure!
Finally, we started paying off our loans. That is not exciting at all, but we've done okay so far.

Who knows what 2010 will bring. I get a little nervous thinking about it...but when am I not nervous? I hope you have fun plans for tonight, but please be safe!!

Tourist Trap

Scotty and I took a trip to York, NE the day after Thanksgiving for our friends wedding. We usually don't drive that far just for a wedding but I was playing the piano for her...so we kinda had to. We were a little bummed out about having to drive that far just for a day or two. You know, gas prices aren't that great. But Scotty had the brilliant idea to see what kind of silly tourist traps we could find on the way up there. And just saying...Missouri has A TON of tourist traps. We didn't stop to see many on the way there because we were on a time crunch but we definitely took our time getting back home and this is what we found...

This is the worlds largest mushroom. It's a lot bigger than it appears in this picture. This is somewhere in MO.

This is what you see the majority of the way to NE. So exciting.

This is the worlds largest coffee pot!! Yes, it is a water tower. You can find this just as you enter NE from Iowa.

This is the worlds largest covered waggon! Again, it's small in the picture but it's HUGE in person. This was somewhere in NE.

We took this picture for Megan since she lived there for a while.

And this next picture is the best of all. It's close to downtown Kansas City. Before we left for our long journey we were just going to rely on our TomTom to get us there but within minutes of our trip the power cord pooped out. So we had to find this thing the old fashioned way. Needless to say, we drove around for about 45 minutes before we found it. And of course, the map that we had told us Exactly where it was...but I was looking at the other side of the map that was more detailed so we didn't know it was there till we already found it.

And you would think...."how hard is it to find the The Worlds Largest Shuttlecocks!?!" Well...it was hard for us...so there. There's 3 or 4 of them in the largest courtyard outside the art museum. They are super cool.

1 Loan Down.....19 to go...

Come Novemeber 9, 2009 we will have one loan completely paid for! What a relief. Now in December we will only have to make 4 separate payments and not 5. We shouldn't have to do that for long though.

We've been living with the Roller's for almost a month now. It's been interesting. I've had a lot to learn about family roles and how things really work around here. I'm starting to get used to it, I think.

Our room is still a mess. Usually I can have a room put together and organized in a timely manner but I have been sick for the past 3 weeks. Yes....3 weeks. Each week brought a different illness. I'm still not 100% but I can deal. Our immune systems aren't used to living with children. Every little illness our nephew's get we get it too. Not......fun...... This could be a long 4 years.

Other than that our lives haven't changed. It's been boring and uneventful.

If Jimmy cracked corn and we don't care, why do we sing about it?

These are the pictures of the room. I apologize if they are hard to see.
















This is the wall we knocked down. It's kind of funny because when Scotty's family first moved in they had to build this wall because there were 4 kids and they needed the extra room. So now, 17 year later, we are knocking it down. This room used be Scotty's room.

This is the other side of the wall. This room used to be Scotty's sisters room, Megan. The previous owners had 2 little girls and these 2 rooms were sort of one. There was a partial wall here at one time. One room was for sleeping the other for play. When the wall was built they left a doorway between the 2 rooms, which is what you see on the right.

This is Megan's room again with the closet, taken from the doorway between the 2 rooms.

Scotty's room again with the closet, taken from the doorway. Under the plastic is a bunch of stuff we put in a garage sale pile.

This is Scotty's room and the mess we made knocking down the wall.

Scotty was super tired after knocking it down. He might be exaggerating a little bit.

And the 2 rooms shall become 1. It's a 2 level room so we built a step.

Knocked down wall from Megan's room.

Final product of Scotty's room.

Scotty's room again. There used to be a closet there...but it's gone.

Megan's room. The wall on the left is new. The door leads to the closet and inside the closet is the previous closet. I think they call that a double walk-in.

Megan's room. Closet on the right, the other door leads to the hallway.

I can't seem to find the pictures we did of the living room. I'll find them someday. So that is Scotty's parents new master bedroom! It's quite a down grade from their upstairs room. I feel guilty taking their super large room but they keep reassuring me that it had to happen for Darrell's sake. So there you have it.

We've Finally Arrived

I must say, me and Scotty are pretty much professionals now. We have successfully finished the first part of the remodeling of his parents house. Overall it took 4 long months. We started in the living room taking off popcorn on the ceilings and patching holes or other imperfections in the wall. We textured the ceiling and painted everything. It looks really good. Then we moved to the back bedrooms. That's what took the longest. We made two bedrooms into one which consisted of knocking down a wall, building a closet, painting everything and putting carpet in. It's sounds easy enough but there are lots of small details no one bothers thinking about. I have yet to put the pictures on my computer so you'll have to wait to see the before and after.

This past weekend we were able to move his parents downstairs and started organizing the upstairs. When springtime gets here we are having a HUGE garage sale. I'd like to say the upstairs is completely empty and ready for us to move in but it's not. It's full of things to put in the attic and garage sale stuff. We put the first coat of paint on last night and we'll put another one on in a few days. Our plan is to start the moving process Friday (weather permitting). Because of the storage incident that happened in June his parents rented a POD and have put it in their yard so we don't have to worry about someone making a home of it. So all of our stuff is occupying a lot of the space and we can't get the garage sale stuff in it till our stuff is out....but we can't put our stuff in the room till the garage sale stuff is out. So it's going to get a little tricky but we'll manage. It's going to be so nice to see all of our stuff again.

On top of all the work we've been doing we've gotten some bad news lately. Last month sometime we received an email from AES (American Education Services). They told us our first payment is due soon. We thought that was strange because as far as we knew all of our loans were through Sallie Mae. So Scotty emailed them back and told them they have a mistake. A few days later we received a phone call explaining that if we don't pay they will file fraud charges. We were utterly confused. So Scotty called the number back and asked for all sorts of information. I emailed our financial counselor from OC to see if she knew anything. I figured she had taken out a loan without his permission. I thought that because she did the same thing to me while I was in school. I kept a close watch on the activity with loans and noticed an extra $2,000 that wasn't suppose to be there. When I confronted her she said I had asked for it....she was wrong. She fixed the problem but she didn't own up to it. So needless to say, me and her aren't the best of friends. So I just assumed she did the same thing with Scotty. But after Scotty talked to someone on the phone we found out that it wasn't a mistake. At the time we thought our financial counselor took out ALL loans from Sallie Mae except one....which is really annoying and stupid. So here we are with an extra loan we didn't see coming. But don't worry it doesn't end there.... Just this week we received ANOTHER letter from a DIFFERENT service saying that we start payments soon. I can't believe this has happened again. I'm so glad that Scotty is so calm and collected. I was in the middle of a break down when Scotty got the smart idea to find the credit report Arvest pulled on him a few months ago before he got hired. It had listed every single loan, including the surprise 2. Needless to say there shouldn't be anymore surprise loans. Now if you're thinking if we had it on the credit report this whole time why didn't we know about it? Well, me and Scotty were absolutely positive that we knew where all of our loans were from. Our credit is good so why bother looking? Wrong. Our financial counselor from OC finally emailed back and said that she did indeed take out ALL loans from Sallie Mae except one, and that is the most recent one. But the one from AES was a mystery until we found out that Sallie Mae sold it right as we started paying them off. I'm sure they sent us a letter about it but they send us a letter about everything so we probably just skimmed it and threw it away. Bad idea. It's still really frustrating though. Why would our financial counselor do that? I know it's not her fault, but because of the history with her I'm still going to be mad. So when my loans are out of grace period in December we will be making 4 separate payments to get them paid off.

Our goal is still to pay them off in 4 years. We have set out a plan and we are going to be successful. But some words of advice....read every letter your loan service gives you and make sure you understand it. Ask your financial counselor where all your loans are from and how much they're for. Hopefully your financial counselor was better than ours.

A New Found Respect

Well, I was hoping by now that me and Scotty would be in our new place but that hasn't happened yet. We're still working on getting the house ready. We've knocked down the wall to make the 2 rooms 1, built a closet, and covered a pre-existing door. It sounds easy enough but I had no idea how much work it took to build a wall. And of course, once you start building these things you start to remember other small details that need to get done. For example, we built a new closet...well, there aren't any racks or shelves in the closet so you have to build them. For some reason I thought when you built a closet the racks and shelves just magically appear. Tearing down and building up walls is a hard job and I have a lot more respect for people who do that as a living! I'll try to get pictures up soon!!

Our first goal was to get moved in by the time school started which was a month ago. Now our goal is to get it all done by October 1st. We'll see. Scotty seems optimistic about it--but when is he not? I don't think it's going to happen. With both of us working now it's not as easy to get over to his parents to work. And it doesn't help that they are raising a grandchild AND his siblings feel the need to drop their kids off without warning so our work has to stop. It's all very frustrating so when this project gets done we'll be happy.

Thank you to those who have been praying for us and our loan situation. In the past 3 months we've managed to pay down quite a bit. If we can manage to go at this pace they will be paid off in 2 1/2 years. If we decided that we didn't want to be losers and live with our parents it would take us till 2025 to get them all paid. I'd rather be a loser than stay in debt that long.

And there's some more good news. Scotty got word the other day that at the beginning of next year he will be permanent and we'll get benefits! I know this is weird but my teeth are craving the dentist. I don't know if we've explained this before but Scotty is classified as "seasonal" as of right now. Arvest Mortgage has grown a lot in the past year and they needed more employees but they didn't budget for it. So all the "seasonal" people are getting paid like a full time employee but they don't get benefits. Not a huge deal, but as soon as we get dental insurance I'm going to the dentist!

Oh, and I almost forgot. Southside Church of Christ is going to need some serious prayers because we have decided to plant a new church in town! Don't worry, nothing is wrong with the church. We aren't splitting we are PLANTING! The elders are still working out details but what we know right now is that it will be west of I540 and our family minister (Marshall Brown) with his wife and kids will be the minister. It is very exciting and very scary once you start thinking about what all has to be put into this. So keep the church in your prayers.