Our dreams may be dashed by Penicillin

Well...black mold actually. Our home inspector called today with the results from the mold test we had done due to some rotted drywall behind the toilet in the house we were preparing to buy. He reported it came back positive for the "bad mold" or toxic black mold.

It's amazing how a little thing like this:

Can turn into this if left untreated:

Yuck! Needless to say the amount in the house we were checking out wasn't near this bad from what we could see. Without opening up the wall we wont know for sure and we just don't want to go there. Ugh... back to square one I suppose.

We're trying to buy a house...hooray!

Joshua and I finally got serious about trying to buy a house for the ultimate Christmas present to ourselves. We found one last Saturday and started the ball rolling with making an offer, being countered (yuck), raising our offer, and then crossing our fingers. We're on to the financing phase, we think. Here are some initial photos. Can you picture us there?

Cons: The typical Utah split entry, smallish (only 1500+ sq. feet), ugly wallpaper, ugly tiki-hut wood panneling, ugly carpet, fence needs repair/replacing, way out west.

Pros: seemingly good neighborhood, large yard (.23 acres) with pretty good landscaping, new kitchen cabinets, 2 car garage, affordable, new deck, spot for a garden, fireplace, bigger than our apartment, and it would be ours.

We plan to close on the 10th of December. Grab a moving box, a paintbrush and c'mon over. We'll buy the pizza!

The little people are comming

It is unfortunate that it was a flooded house that ushered in April's visit earlier than planned, but hip hip hooray...the North Carolina little people are coming. After we left them in sobbing hysterics after our very brief visit (less than 24 hours) last month, I've seriously been craving little punkins. T-minus 2 hours...and they'll be here!

(Not pictured here...little Max. I don't have any pictures...yet.)

Boo...winter has begun.

It's snowing and cold. I must fly south soon.

If the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity...

I'm not jumping on the doomsday bandwagon, but I do think our nation is walking a very fine line in recent years. I've though much of late about the words of Mosiah (29:27) when he taught the people that, "...if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land."

I watched this video of Elder Bednar that came in my LDS Living email today and I think it's some worthy food for thought regarding California's Proposition 8 and the "ripple effect" that comes from these choices. The "voice of the people" is making me more and more nervous.

Yes, I kicked your bumper!

Yesterday I took my car in for an alignment. Since Firestone was just a 1/2 mile or so up the road, I dropped it off and walked home and walked back to pick it up a few hours later. As I approached the intersection, I checked both ways before crossing and made sure the light still indicated my right of way...because I know how to obey traffic rules. Suddenly out of nowhere, a car came barreling around the corner and missed hitting me by just a few inches. Now my first instinct of course was self preservation, so I quickly jumped out of the way. Amazingly, she wasn't stopping. She was either clueless to my near death experience, or just so self-important that it didn't matter to her. My next instinct, after realizing the woman (on her cell phone) had slowed ever so slightly to complete her turn, was an outraged kick to her bumper.

Well of course this caught her attention, though nearly killing me didn't. She pulled over and rolled her window down and stared at me with arms in the air as if to say, "Did you really just kick my car?" So I shouted, "Yes you self absorbed idiot, I kicked your bumper. How about checking for pedestrians next time." I quickly regained my senses and kept walking, leaving my almost-assailant staring in disbelief.

I'm not totally proud if the little scene I created, but the moral of the story is this: If you think your agenda is so important that you don't have time to follow simple traffic rules, (like yielding to pedestrians) you need a swift kick in the...uh...bumper.