Back in the blog saddle!

Since I (Linz) am officially a SAHM, I will have time to update our blog, well, until Nathaniel walks.... You'll be seeing more of me. But not right now, just wanted to warn you it was coming.

Moving on

The house is officially not ours....at least not now. We signed the release form today so now someone else can make an offer if they dare. So that is enough about 1517 W. Noble for now.

We also had our eyes on a couple other smaller houses that we thought would make great rental properties once we upgrade in a few years, but someone beat us to them. We are now just hanging out where we are and keeping an eye out to see if anything comes available that we just can't live without, otherwise we will wait until our lease is up in June and buy something then.

With all of that settled we are now moving on to personal improvements. I am getting braces and Lindsay will be getting laser eye corrective surgery or whatever they call it these days. I have already started on consultations for braces because I think I have to be done with them before I can go to pilot training. The ortho said it should take right about two years depending on how well I obey his instructions. Since I am getting them so late in life I will need to have oral surgery. My bottom jaw is significantly larger than my top so then my top jaw needs to be cut and then expanded so that it fits with my bottom jaw. I am meeting with the surgeon next Monday. I am not excited about the $7k-$10k it will all costs, but am glad to finally be getting it done.

I am still going through the semester kicking and screaming. My motivation drops with each and every assignment. So far I have yet to slack off, but the temptation is continually growing.

Lindsay came down with some sickness yesterday so was home all day relaxing. I think it helped quite a bit. We will see how bushy her tail is in the morning though. The base is having an exercise Thursday through Sunday so we will be up there doing....stuff. Heck that's two more days I don't have to be at Wal-Mart, but I also have to miss some class for it.

I think Porsche needs a new starter. That's no good. She picked a good week to crap out on me though. It is in the 70's all week so the riding has been great. She just got 4 brand new tires and the truck needs two new ones asap. I've got two new tires in the garage for the Buell as well. I guess you can't have too much good rubber laying around though.

This has been kind of a stressful week with projects due, sickness, car trouble and base exercises, but it is almost over so that is a great relief. I am actually ready for Monday already, that just doesn't sound right.

Oh yeah we just had Halloween. We went to my friends house in Moore who had a party. Lindsay wore her mom's flapper costume she made 20 years ago (very impressive and it looks great) and I dressed up as the Greek god Jasonious. Lindsay can tell you where that idea came from sometime later. We had fun and made it home safely so it was a good night. Lindsay posted the rest of the pics on her facebook.

Okay well I have rambled enough for tonight. I went to bed at 8:40 and realized that is way to early so I got up and this is what I found to do. My eyes feel pretty heavy now though so hopefully I can lay down and zonk out. Goodnight.

Graduation

Quick update. I just recieved my graduation packet in the mail today.....well since it is Sunday it probably came yesterday, I just didn't get bother to check it then. Anyway so long as I continue to attend most of my classes this semester I will graduate in December and have commencement on Saturday Decembe 12th at 2:00 p.m. I don't necessarily care if I walk or not, but I will probably end up going through with it. A big thank you to UCO for changing the colors of the cap and gown starting Fall 2009. Now I have to go buy a cap and gown instead of using Charles'.

That's all. Just thought you might want to know. I am sure there will be some kind of hoopla event afterwards with lots of balloons, streamers, kazoo's, pointy party hats and such. There will be more details on that later.

Ok that is all. You are dismissed.

Long month...

Ok so it has been over a month now since we updated and it seems like a lot has happened since then, yet we are still in the same place we were since we last talked. Anyway so the down and dirty is that we decided it is time to buy a house. We fell in love with a huge house in Guthrie which is what the slide show is of. After over a week of negotiating we settled on a price and then went to work on getting it inspected. It needs a LOT of work, which would take several years and several thousand $$$$ to complete. Well it now looks like the bank won't loan on the house unless we fix it up first?!?! We don't exactly have the $50k-$80k it would take so unless God really wants us to have this house right now it looks like we might just hope for sometime in the future. The appraiser didn't even finish the appraisal and said it is not worth the purchase price so there is not way we would get the loan anyway. This last month has been a good experience with getting our feet wet in real estate. We are now looking at getting two small houses. One to live in and one to rent. Then we can slowly upgrade over the years as our income increases and continue to acquire real estate as we go. We would still like to buy a house before Nov. 31 so we can get the tax rebate. We are going to look at a few houses in Guthrie on Monday.

We are keeping the door open for the first house we want just in case God blesses us with some financial miracle. We have gone back and forth on this house that I don't even know what I want anymore. This is a good thing for me, I think, because I know my emotions and desires shouldn't get in the way of what God is trying to do so hopefully I will be more receptive to what God is trying to tell us. Either way I it looks we are about to be in the middle of a change of seasons in our lives. We will be buying a house(s), changing jobs, moving cities, contemplating children, finishing school and beginning civilian pilot training. The next 3 months should be very revealing of what the next 5 years will produce in our lives.

So essentially nothing physical has changed in the last month but there have been many hours of thinking about what is about to change. We will update again when something changes....or after many more hours of thinking about it.

We appreciate all of your prayers and welcome any advice you may have for what we are experienceing. See you later.

One more thing...

We had our two year anniversary August 5th and we actually sorta kinda celebrated it......well at least more than we did for our 1 year anniversary (which we didn't do anything because I was deployed and by deployed I mean hang out in California at Travis AFB). We just got all fancied up and went out to eat at a restaurant by the lake. We thought it worthy of a special occasion, but there were more people there just having a casual dinner with the family and kids than anything else. During our 20 minute wait to get in on a wednesday evening, we were sickened by the people who had enough money to blow on $15 minimum/plate for a casual dinner. Lindsay was a little jealous, but I seriously can't imagine spending that much money to go out to eat on a regular basis. Anyway it quite delicious. We started with a some calimari I think, followed by smoked salmon, mashed red potatos, seasonal veggies and finished off with Something Chocolate (that is what it was called). It was a nice evening and the weather was lovely as well. Until next year.....

End of Summer

Since I am still stranded in school we are going by the school calendar which means summer is over. We ended summer with a bang though. After returning home from a week in Texas we both went our separate ways. I went north to Wisconsin and Lindsay went south to the Caribbean. Looking back I now see she got the better end of that deal.

I went for some military training for about 11 days. It was a lot of fun and I recieved some valuable insight from 3 pilots that went with us. The weather was great and we thoroughly enjoyed teh 60-70 degree daytime highs. We didn't do much sight seeing....as well there is not much sight to be seen. We did make our way 3 hours across the state to the Mall of America.......not worth it. It's just a big mall. If you don't excited about going to your local mall then you shouldn't get excited about going to that one. It's just bigger and has 3 old navy's instead of 1, as well as many other multiples. The roller coasters in the middle of the mall all seemed to be pretty childish so we didn't waste our money on them.

When we came home from that trip I spent the following two weeks working at the guard base doing odd jobs around there......basically whatever I could to delay going back to Wal-Mart. I started back there on Monday as well. I was ready to quit for good within the first hour of being back. I somehow made it through the first day and the following have been much better. It has turned into a very intense micromanaging enviroment which I can't stand. I think after the first day the managers remembered that it wasn't really my first day, I had just been gone for a month and finally began to let me do what needs to be done without them breathing down my pretty blue shirt.

School should be fun this semester. I have two real estate classes and two finance classes. I can already tell there will be a lot of overlapping information so that should help out. I am also only working 26 hours a week at Wal-Mart and am done by 4:30 mon-fri with weekends off. This semester will be much more enjoyable than the previous 6 years of schooling has been. Most importantly I will not be dealing with ROTC at OU.......That will begin another paragraph...

My time with the pilots in Wisconsin got the wheels spinnin to consider pursuing a pilot career in the guard. Long story short that is what I am now doing. I am no longer in ROTC and am now preparing to apply for a pilot at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base here in OKC. Once I get my degree this December the only thing I will be lacking is some flight time. Turns out I have several connections with flight instructors.....So beginning in January I am going to go full time flight school and get my private pilot certificate (license). Then I want to deploy and make some $$money$$. I will interview for a pilot position in September 2010.

Anyway that's probably enough about me for now. If anyone reads this and wants to know details about Lindsay then you should comment and let her know, because we don't think we really have people that read this thing so she doesn't take the time to update it.

Off to bed now.