It's a Wonderful World

As we all know the great state of Massachusetts had a pretty big election last week - that was highly unfavorable for the dems.

I generally find myself right in the middle of conservative and liberal, leaning more towards the liberal side on social issues.

Now that there is a lot of uncertainty with this healthcare reform, I must say this.... This past month I had a few visits to the hospital. I am 100% healthy and won't be sharing WHY I went on the internet...

However.

The bills that I received, being insured through my husband's bank, (banks have great benefits) were terrible!! Thanks be to God that Scottie and I can afford these bills. But I can't even imagine having to pay for that out of pocket without the help of an insurance company.

I'm a prime example of why SOMETHING needs to happen. I am a college graduate. I have been working for three solid years after graduation. Yet my employer does not carry health insurance because it's too expensive. They'd go out of business. If it weren't for my husband, I'd be one of the millions that does not have access to health insurnace. Let me refrase... GOOD health insurance. Yes I am a hard worker --never have asked for a dime from the government -- and yes I have a degree yet I still would not have access to insurance if I wasn't married.

There's something wrong with that.

The costs HAVE GOT to go down. And trust me, I don't necessarily believe that the government running a hospital is a good idea. I also believe that a doctor SHOULD be paid a lot for his or her services. If it means it will save a person's life, than I believe that six figures certainly is worth somebody's life.

But there has got to be a solution. I personally believe it all boils down to COMPETITION. Let's not rely on these silly insurance companies to choose WHERE I get MY healthcare. Let me shop around, like I would for anything else, and make my own decision. If patients choose how much they will spend, the hospitals would be forced to re-evaluate what they charge for their services. And not charge my insurance company thousands of dollars for a stupid visit.

That's all.

Cheers.

I promise, I do have a life outside of my house.


I'm so excited for E's big day. October 2010 will come very fast ~ I'm totally stoked to be apart of this.

It's official! We are IN our house! Wow I never thought the day would come. And while we are still working away at getting everything organized every night, I must say it's great to just hop into bed and go to sleep after a long days work. We still need to...

Since we purchased our home, I have been the one who has lead the painting project. For the most part, it's been easy. I had an inspiration picture of our living room and consequently matched the paint color to that. We got our master bed spread as a wedding gift so that dictated what color the master would be. Our bathroom tiles are brown so we went bold in the bathroom and painted it Trusty Tan by Sherwin Williams. And I was veeery forward thinking with the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms by painting them kid friendly colors. Note I said *very forward thinking, no bun in the oven yet.

Well, we are making progress. Unfortunately we are STILL not in the house. All we need is 1) Grouted tile in the bathtub, and 2) An installed toilet. Both of which are supposed to be complete tonight. The rest of the stuff can be completed while we are living in the house. I am praying that the above projects will actually be done tonight. All I want for Christmas is to sleep in our house on Christmas Eve!!

So now that we've been home-owners for almost a month, I can pass on my wisdom to those less wise than I.

Who would have known owning a home was so sexy? Scottie and I have been proud owners for exactly one week. On October 29, Scottie and I closed on our first home.

The day we closed we went for one final walk through before the closing. The previous owner did a great job with cleaning - especially considering she was no spring chicken and it probably took a lot out of her to clean so much.

We went to closing not knowing what to expect. The closing went just how they show it on HGTV! Scottie and I bought some champagne and handed it out to everyone as all of the checks were distributed. What I found strange was the our Real Estate Agent and our Mortgage Broker both said they NEVER had champagne at a closing! OK so maybe HGTV does exagerate a bit on the closing process but I couldn't have imagined our closing without a little bubbly!

That night we had my parents and Scottie's mom over to pretty much rip EVERYTHING out. The previous owner was a smoker so we had to remove carpet, counters, the entire bathroom, amongst other things. She really hadn't done much to the house in about 25 years so there were old built in desks and super old light fixures that had to come out.

I will post "before" pictures soon. At this point we pretty much have a completely gutted house. This past week has been a ton of work but hopefully by next week we can start bringing new things in. Right now the two biggest projects include priming and painting all the walls, sanding down the bathroom walls since they were tiled and now the old ahesive is on the walls, and installing our new hard wood floors in the dining/living room. Yes, we are doing that all ourselves. Luckily we have so much support around us so we are getting tons of help.

During this past week, I have felt the following adjectives:

Happy, relieved, fortunate, complete, nervous, anxious, excited, exhausted, mad, annoyed, sad, patient, impatient, cold, hot, overwhelmed, confused, strong, weak, wet, smelly, bloody, bruised, defeated, empowered, did I mention exhausted?

But most importantly I have felt BLESSED to drive up to the house and call it OUR HOME.

On Scottie's birthday we had a few friends and some family over at my parent's house for some cake and ice cream. I made a yummy banana cake that seemed to go over well. It tastes just like banana bread but with a great cream cheese frosting on it. Every little thing about this cake is fattening... Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband. Today Scottie turns 26 years old. He is now officially closer to 30 than 20 ... oh boy! I've known Scottie for 11 of his 26 years and I'm still learning new things about him everyday. Happy Birthday monk!

We just heard back from Chase, they have given us the final approval for the mortgage! Yes! Now we just have to wait to hear back from the Rural Department (which is backing the loan) and we should be clear to close! I'm hoping it will happen before 10/30. *fingers and toes are crossed*