Jack ‘n Tracie

First the new addition to our family: She’s a beautiful 18 month old “puppy” named Kendra. (Her name was Kenya when we got her and no one liked that so we changed it to Kendra which is close and more feminine.)

She’s a pure bred AKC golden retriever. One that my aunt bred. The family that bought her originally decided they couldn’t take care of her. They were keeping her locked in the kitchen… They couldn’t take care of her because they bought a house with no yard at all (tiny front yard with no fence, and it backed up to a cliff, so it literally had no back yard) and it was too hard to take her out on a leash to go potty. Why anyone with a large dog would buy a house with no yard is beyond me… She’s had her locked in a kitchen for 6 MONTHS! So this poor baby is a overweight from not having any exercise. They originally lived in California and moved without word to my aunt. They called her last week cause they had moved to this house in Portland with no yard and were feeling bad about locking the dog in the kitchen.

My aunt knows I’ve been wanting one of her puppies, so she called me right away asking if I was willing to take an 18 month old dog instead of a brand new puppy. 18 months old is still a puppy though. Just not a small puppy! I talked it over with the kids and Jack and we all agreed we’d take her. We’ve been in golden retriever bliss since! Both Randy and Kendra have pretty much taken over the house and love to play. She’s awesome with the kids (she loves to lick Cody’s face). She’s still adjusting and for the first few days she was sooooo hyper. But she’s already mellowing out as she gets used to us.

Here she is getting stuck under my desk last night:

For those wondering about my sister and her diagnosis of breast cancer, she’s doing ok. I imagine depressed at the same time. She’s going for genetic testing to determine her future.

Update on us: I’m very very happy to be in a New Year. Last year was hell…. I know there was some good things that happened but I’ve been avoiding doing my annual recap of the year because all I can think of are all the depressing things that took place in 2006. I’m grateful to start 2007 with a new puppy who brings a whole new level of joy and fun to our home! Jack and I will work on the recap later. Overall we’re all healthy and doing fine, just crazy busy.

You’d think we’d want to slow down this year and just recoup from 2006, but … no, not us. Instead we’re looking to make some major changes. The biggest is a new house. Yes a NEW HOUSE!! hehe

We started half-way looking last May. And have kept our eye out since that time but with everything going on never really had the time to really devote to looking for a bigger house full time.

Here’s the situation: When we bought this house it was listed as 3 bedrooms with 2 bonus rooms. When we saw the bonus rooms, we figured we could remodel them to be bedrooms. 3.5 years later we’ve not even started. Kevin took one of the bonus rooms for a while, but then decided he hated it and started “temporarily” bunking with Casey and Cody. It’s been that way for over a year. Three boys in a bedroom that can barely handle 2 kids has not been fun.

What we did not know about the bonus rooms upstairs is that while they looked finished, they really aren’t. There is no climate control at all. No heat in the winter and no cooling in the summer. It’s miserable up there. Even the second room which was the “music room” is hardly used because Jack is not comfortable up there but only a few months out of the year. So basically we have an entire floor that’s being ignored and not used *at all* and it’s been that way for most of the time we’ve been here. So we’ve never felt like we moved into a bigger house. That’s just wrong to me. We kept meaning to start the remodel but the more we found out about the issues upstairs, the bigger the project became and the further it got shoved back on our list of priorities.

We also started to re-landscape the front yard. Then found out two trees needed to be removed and that halted our progress. Then we got screwed over (sorta) by the guy who took down the trees (he never finished the job, leaving us roots to chase down still but then he also never came back and charged us…. he showed up, dropped both trees, chased down some of the roots, then disappeared…)

We have started or intended to start many projects on this house, and are at a point of do it or get out. I can’t stand living cramped another year… no one can. The list of what needs to be done to this house to fit our needs has continued to grow and we’ve became horribly overwhelmed. The financial aspect alone is a lot bigger than we originally thought. The house has gone up in value considerably, “as-is” so we have a decent amount of equity and we figured we could take out a second mortgage to do the remodels..

Instead we both keep fantasizing about a bigger house that already fits our needs. And when we snooped around last year at houses on the market it was with the excuse that we were “just looking” but I think we both have realized this isn’t the right house for our family and our hearts are not in it to make it work.

We’re undecided if we’re going to keep this house and rent it out or sell. Right now it’s a buyer’s market so buying should be a different experience than our first buying experience but selling isn’t going to be easy right now. We’ve been given a ton of advice but the majority of it seems to be to sit on this house as a rental and wait before selling it. It’s a financial risk (what if we don’t get renters? what if we don’t get GOOD renters? and a lot of the work that we intended to do still needs to be finished, but that’s true whether we sell OR rent).

In a nutshell, there could be a lot of changes in store for us in the new year. Hopefully positive ones!