good heck!

i keep trying to catch up... and end up getting farther behind! so i'm going to post something current and then finish posting past events when time permits!

derek's been so busy studying for the bar exam. i'm really glad we live in st. george. i actually was not excited about living here for the summer... it's just stressful living with other people, no matter how fabulous your in-laws are!!! but i've been a single mother this summer and it's been nice to have other family and friends around for me and the kids to go play with while derek's trapped in the library all day!

last week i started feeling anxious that we hadn't found a place to live in kingman yet. we thought about buying, but decided renting would be better for awhile. we want to get to know the area and derek's job before we take on a mortgage! anyway, i decided to take a trip down to kingman and look at rentals and hope. all weekend i was online and on the phone with property management companies getting a list of houses to go look at. i conned my sister-in-law, jen, to come with me, and we went just for the day. i had picked 8 houses from a list online that a property management company had sent me. we went to that office and my list went from 8 to 1 in about 5 seconds because all of the houses i wanted to see had recently been rented. we were about to leave with the the key to one house when another lady walked in and said there was a house they hadn't listed yet. it was a little out of my price range, but i decided to go see it just for fun. this house was awesome. the cleanest place i had ever see. the owner has it cleaned every 2 weeks when it's empty to keep it dust free etc.! anyway, it had 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, big closests and the family room and kitchen were huge. anyway, i really liked it. so jen and i went and looked at about 10 other houses... pretty much the only thing available in our price range and nothing was even close to the first house... and really, nothing else was even livable. it was just sad. there were a lot of nice rentals available, but they were too expensive. to i decided to make an offer on the first house for an amount that was in our price range... $2oo less than what the owner was asking, $100 under our rent limit. i took the offer/application into the office at 2:30pm and the lady who worked there told me she'd call me when she got the owner's answer. i was freaking out. it was our only option, but if the owner didn't accept the offer i didn't know where we were going to live. jen and i were starving so we went to eat and i kept asking her if we should just go home or drive around kingman and wait for her to call back. we went to a couple other management companies and kept seeing more and more crappy houses. i was dying waiting for the lady to call back, and kept wondering if we should just go home. at 4:40pm she finally called back and the owner had countered $100 more than my offer... which was in the limit of our rent amount!!!! and the owner usually doesn't let the house be held for longer than 5 days and he was willing to hold it until august for us. i was so excited! so they needed me to get a $50 money order for the background check etc... so we ran to walmart to get one. the other 2 times i've gone to kingman i've been too scared to go into walmart. i couldn't handle finding out the only place to shop in kingman was nasty. well, we had to go there so i walked in AND IT IS THE NICEST WALMART I HAVE EVER SEEN!!! ha ha ha ha ha seriously... my day couldn't have been better! i just feel so blessed that i was able to find a good place for us to live. i know i had help finding this place and i'm so thankful. i called my mom to tell her and she said, "things always turn out the way they are supposed to, but we acted surprised every time." it's so true! i'm just so happy, and i'm not dreading moving to kingman anymore... which is a fabulous feeling.