Photos

I love all types of photography, but every once in a while I really get in a “black and white” mood.  A lot of people misinterpret that as a “low” or “depressed” type setting, but it’s so far from the truth.  Black and white photos can be very inspiring, calm, respectful and really make you see what you’re looking at.  I just felt like sharing a few of my favorites.

High hopes

Quick update:

We’ve put in an offer on a house in Lehi and right now we’re basically waiting for a response.  Well, we submitted it on Wednesday of last week and were told they had until Monday by 5:00 to respond.  What I didn’t realize was that it was 5:00 Monday that the OWNER had to respond.  We can’t even submit the offer to the bank until the owner responds and signs the offer.   Today, Carriene said that she talked to the sellers realtor and our offer is the best and highest right now, so they’re confident that we’ll get it, but still, they can’t go anywhere until the owner signs.  There’s a lot of junk in the house and she told him we’d even be willing to clean it ourselves if they’d just light a fire under their butts and get going!  I’m SO ready to move, it’s disgusting.  Bart and I are both exhausted from looking at houses and fairly “blah” about continuing after this.  We both really want this house and my hopes are up way higher than they should be… I’m just so ready to be done.  Ugh.  Here’s a look at the house:

It’s not the most glamorous house, but we both love it to death.  I hope that everything goes smoothly, that there’s nothing nightmare-ish during inspections, etc.

Today is such a beautiful day and I’m despising being cooped up in the office.  This is the kind of day that I want to go outside and literally soak the sun into my skin and take deep breaths.  I wanna lay on the grass somewhere and read a book and get as much Vitamin D into my veins as possible before it starts SNOWING (supposed to on Wednesday… Grrr).  I’m just ready for the Spring to be Spring and Winter can stay Winter… at the OTHER END of the year.  It’s already April. WHY is there still snow?!  I think Mother Nature is getting confused with time lines.

I’m insanely tired today.  I know who/what is at fault though.  Me.  It always happens when I take naps.  I didn’t even intentionally take a nap yesterday afternoon, but I fell asleep in the chair while reading my book.  Because I took a nap, I wasn’t tired when I tried to go to sleep last night.  On top of that, I was insanely hot all night and even after taking all my clothes off, I was still extremely, uncomfortably stuffy and hot.  I’m so tired.  As a matter of fact, I’m too tired to even finish writing.  Whatever I intended on writing, has escaped me and I have no clue what I was going to say.

Happy Birthday to my (little) big sister!

Today is Harmony’s birthday!  Happy Birthday Harmony!  We had a “girls night” on Friday night at my parents house and watched “Twilight”, “Clueless” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” (Although I fell asleep less than halfway into that one).  It was Harmony, Lena, Mommy, Kaitlyn and me.  Daddy had to stay upstairs in his room :P.  lol  It was really fun though and felt good to spend time with them since we rarely see each other without all the kids, spouses and entire loud, running, rowdy family.  She so doesn’t look 30!  Maybe 30 just isn’t as old as I used to think it was… lol.

So, yesterday we looked at two other houses.  The house I really like, (which I call the “Wood house”) is only $159,9k and is in Lehi, but Bart doesn’t “feel anything for it”.  I know what he means, but I’m a little disappointed.  I mean, I know when you walk into a house, you need to feel like you see yourself living there are have a good feeling about it.  Although I love it, we both have to love it for it to make sense!  We also looked at a house that is listed at $139,9k (WOW) and I LOVE the house, other than the fact that the previous tenants completely trashed the place before moving out.  There’s graffiti and profanities spray painted all over the walls (and CEILINGS) and they knocked holes in some of the walls, shower, ceilings, etc.  Really though, if FHA approved the house and we were able to get like an additional $20,000 loan to fix it up, I would totally buy it.  We’ll have to find out if that’s possible.  FHA is fairly strict when it comes to stuff like that and I don’t know if it’ll work.  We’ve discovered that the only way we can get a house right now is to have a co-signer.  Hopefully it’ll all work out.  Emily has agreed to co-sign for us and although I’m really excited and happy that she would do that for us, I also have the feeling that I don’t want her to do anything she isn’t 100% certain of.  We’ve researched it and talked to the mortgage broker and it should work out just fine.  As soon as my credit is acceptable, we can remove Emily from any obligation to the loan and add me onto it.  Man, I am just so ready to move!  It’s like a roller coaster though… I get my hopes up and feel like we’re getting closer, then no houses work out and I feel like we’re back to square one.  It’s easy to feel like I just want to give up and forget the whole thing – we’ll just live in an apartment forever, but it isn’t supposed to be easy, otherwise it wouldn’t be such a big deal to buy one.  I know we’ll find something and everything will work out, it’s just exhausting.

It seems to me like everyone and their dog is pregnant right now.  (Ok, cat… Dianna’s cat is pregnant!)  I am proud of myself that I’ve been able to be excited for them, but I have to admit there’s that piece of me that aches.  Robin, her sister Tori, Natalee, Jessica, Candice and Janice are some of my closer friends who are pregnant.  I know of a lot of other people (like a couple of my clients, etc) who are pregnant, but these are the ones that even affect me. Robin, Natalee and Candice are all having boys.  Tori is having a girl and Jessica doesn’t know yet… I’m excited for all of them, but it’s hard too.  Robin is due in May, so it’s not that far away.  She’s naming him “Cayden”, which is what I planned to name Dustin when I was pregnant with him.  Natalee is also having a boy and ALSO naming him “Kayden” (just spelled differently).  I think Candice said they’re naming their boy “Jaxon”, or maybe it was “James”, I don’t remember for sure… A few people from my birth mothers group are pregnant too (not placing, but pregnant after having already placed).  It’s emotional for me, because I see so many people around me being happy about their babies, which is wonderful… it just forces me to think about what I didn’t have the chance to be a part of.  It doesn’t help that time just continues to go on and I hear nothing from Dustin’s parents.  I really have “let go” and have been doing really well with it, but it’s inevitable that I still have those days where I can’t help that it hurts to think about it.  I still write to them and it’s hard to write to someone, knowing that there will be no answer.  It almost makes it difficult to write… difficult to know what to say.  I’ve just been keeping things totally the same, talking to them the same as I always have, as if I’ll be getting a response to my one-way conversation.  Hopefully Dustin will just continue to receive the things I send and he’ll understand one day.  It blows my mind to really think that in less than 11 years, I could be in contact with him directly.  One of the women from my birth mothers group just got in contact with her daughter and she’s only 15-16 years old.  Dustin will be that old in only a few years.  lol.  *Sigh*, how time flies.  Let me tell you, it flies whether you’re having fun or not.

Anyway, this is just random writing.  I’m done for now.

Shock, surprise.

I really can’t say that I’m surprised, because I knew that something would get in the way of us getting a house.  I know that’s a bad attitude to have, but I was right… right?  Well, we went on a month-to-month contract at our apartment because we fully intended on basically having a house before the end of March (maybe not closing and moving in and all that, but seriously… at least finding one).  Well, up until now, everything’s been fine.  We’ve gone through what feels like a gazillion houses, submitted an offer on the house we wanted, continued looking at houses, started not trusting our realtor, fired her, canceled our offer on that house, etc.  Well, we’ve met with our new realtor (the realtor that helped Zack get his house) and we totally love her, then we started working with her sister, who is the loan officer/financial person (whatever her title is… she’s the one that gets you the loan).  Well, she ran our credit yesterday and as of like this week, there is a judgment on my credit from Comcast.  I was completely shocked about this because I had no idea what it could be.  First of all, I haven’t had Comcast in my name since I lived in Orem, which was like 4 1/2 years ago.  So, I called Comcast and this judgment is listed for a modem that I rented that was never paid for or returned.  This is funny for two reasons.  First: I never rented a modem from them, David, our old roommate, gave me his modem before we moved and Second: I DID return it after I moved because they basically accused David of stealing it, although Bart and I were under the impression he purchased it.  I remember returning it.  Now, 4 1/2 years later, it’s being reported to my credit.  My first annoyance is that they didn’t send me anything to even tell me about this or say that I owed them anything or whatever, so I had NO clue about it.  If I had received letters or some kind of communication, I would have definitely fixed this before it became a judgment.  This judgment, by the way, has dropped my credit score by 20 points, making it impossible to approve me for a home loan.  That’s right, we cannot be approved now.  Even IF (or should I say WHEN) Comcast removes the judgment and even if they can put my credit score back to what it was, we’ve learned that as of February 26, 2009, FHA requires a 620 credit score, so my credit would still be too low.  Therefore = We cannot get a house.  At least not right now.  I’ll have to fix this shit with Comcast and then figure out a way to raise my credit score so we can try again, hopefully before next YEAR.

My second bit is also frustrating, but not quite as much as the above.  They discovered on my credit that I have an “Alias”.  I found this out by the loan officer very politely asking “I need to know if you’ve ever gone by any name other than Destiny”.  The tone of her voice implied that she was pressing toward something.  I have an alias on my credit = Heidi Kroeber.  Coicidence… that’s my sister’s name.  I felt ridiculous doing it, but even sent my sister a text asking her if she’s ever, for any reason, used my social security number… of course she hasn’t (and I didn’t have any real thought that she HAD) so I have no idea how that could be on there.  Either way, it doesn’t look good on me.  It looks like I’m not who I say I am.  Ugh.  I have to dispute it, but in order to dispute it, I need a printed copy of my credit report, which takes up to 10 business days to receive.  So, now we wait.

I can’t help but feel like crap.  It is always me pulling us down.  My past; one way or another, drags us down.  I’m grateful Bart doesn’t have to deal with stuff like this on his credit, but I feel like crap that he basially has to deal with it anyway, because of me.  He always cleans everything up for me and I wish I could just do something on my own for once, without needing anyone else.  I can’t erase my past or go back in time and make different choices, or handle things differently, so I get to live with it forever… forever haunting me of stupid shit that I did, or didn’t do, 4++ years ago.  Will it EVER completely go away?!

Changed direction

To make a long story short – the house we wanted really bad, is not going to be possible.  It’s too high in price for us right now and although we COULD make the payments, we don’t want to be that tight on money.  I’m still kinda sad that we won’t get it… BUT, on Saturday, we fell in love with another house.  It’s a lot smaller, but it’s newer (built in 2006) and wouldn’t need ANY work, but has potential for changes if we wanted.  It’s right in our price range (the LOW end of our price range too!)  It’s in LEHI though, which neither of us wanted and we’re both surprised that we actually WANT to move there.  haha.

It’s a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath.  It’s really nice and everything is practically brand new.  It looks like someone maybe lived there for like less than a year and then the foreclosure process started.  I LOVE the master bedroom too.  It has a big walk in closet and a big bathroom with TWO sinks!  WOOHOO!  I love the big counters because I always have so much stuff.  lol.  It also has a separate bathtub and shower, which I like too. 

We’re putting in our offer tonight, but we’ll continue to look at houses just in case this falls through.  I’m so tired of looking!   I just wanna move!  I’m already getting my hopes up about this house because it doesn’t seem like anyone else has been interested in it.  It’s been vacant for a while and Bart noticed that there was a notice on the garage door that said the house was going to Auction on Feb. 2nd… so obviously it didn’t sell at auction either!  *Crosses fingers*.  I really hope we get it.  Even more… I hope we get it fast!  LOL

The hunt

Most of you may already know that Bart and I are house hunting.  It’s been a pretty fast process… Well, we started “looking” months ago and have been talking about it for even longer, but it’s only been within the last week or so that we’re actually actively pursuing it, have a realtor, talked to the lender and know how much we can get, etc.  As fun as it is to look through dozens of houses and not find anything that you REALLY want… I’m so tired of it already and it’s only been a week.  The other day though… we went to about 5 houses in one evening and the last house of the night was a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house, about 2064 square feet, big yard, cute, big quiet street… we fell in love with it.  At least I did… I’m using that term.  I am IN LOVE with it.  The second we walked in, I immediately felt comfortable and like it could easily be “home”.  With all the houses we’ve looked through, I haven’t felt that for any of the others.  I’ve literally been having dreams about this house every night since and can tell you exactly where our things would go and everything.  It’s like we already live there in my mind.  I don’t know what to do, because I’m SO stuck on it for some reason and it very well might be too expensive.  I now COMPLETELY understand how people can get caught up and end up spending too much on a house they just so badly want.  We want to make an offer on it, but I’m getting discouraged because our realtor doesn’t think it’ll go for any less than the $189k it’s at right now.  We could do that and be fine, but it’s stepping just like a quarter of an inch over what we promised our limit would be… if we make that quarter of an inch exception, how far will we allow ourselves to go?

We do have a second house that we really like and I wouldn’t at all be “sad” if we got that instead of the first one… but I’d definitely be disappointed, just because it’s so much like home.  It makes me want to cry because I pretty much know that we’re not going to get it.  I know I should be optimistic, but I’m having a hard time with that right now.  I honestly feel like giving up on the whole idea of getting a house right now.  *Sigh*  Well, I guess we’ll just see how things go.

Quote of the day

I had to steal this from Heather’s blog, because sometimes reading her blog is my main source of happiness during work days.  I have to assume this came out of Eli’s mouth:

“I’m not kicking him, I’m trying to smash him.”

HAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!  That kid Crack Me Up.  LOL! Last night I went to their house and did laundry (and played with the boys while Heather and Christopher went somewhere) and they just never fail to make me laugh.  I always feel refreshed with laughter when I leave there.

Tonight, Emily, Sam, Ashley and I are going bowling… with Aimee!  Yup, Aimee’s in town (from Oregon) just ’til Saturday.  I’m excited to see her.  I can’t really think of the last time I saw her specifically, but it was at least 6-7 years ago.

Today’s a slower day at work, so I really have nothing to do so I got on here… but now I don’t really have anything to say.  I’m in a good mood, which lately is rare (while at work), so I’ll hold onto it.  I’m hungry though… now.

La mujer escribe

This week went by really fast, which is actually kinda odd to me considering that it’s been a pretty lazy week.  I pretty much finished quarterlies by Monday, Tuesday I went and hung out with Eli and Isaac while Heather and Christopher went to the temple and while I was there, threw my back out lifting Isaac up… couldn’t go to work on Wednesday because I literally couldn’t stand up (learned that I couldn’t by doing so at 4am and passing out), then was able to come in for half a day yesterday.  Ha.  Today it’s much better, so I’m pretty sure I’ll live.  It’s already Friday though!  I guess staying home from work made it feel like a weekend, so it’s odd that the “real” weekend is already here.  Harmony and David came over on Wednesday and hung out with me all day while I sat at home.  Haha.  They helped the day go by faster and it was just nice to have them around.  I don’t see them very often.

I have one more week until I officially “let go” of my hope to get a letter from Magui and Geary.  My logical mind knows that I won’t.  I know I won’t get anything and I’ve even accepted it, like I can say that out loud without breaking down, but there’s still a small, silent part of me that thinks “you never know, there’s a whole week left of the month and you could get a call next week!”  That’s what I need to stray away from.  By allowing myself to think “you could get a call today… or today…. or maybe today”… that’s what ends up driving me down until I end up crashing.  I have to let go of that.  I have to.  It was just a personal commitment to myself… gave myself the mental time frame so I’d have something real to place in front of me, because them continuing to say they’ll write and they don’t… I can’t hold onto.  Anyway… I’m prepared.

I feel like things are definitely looking up for this year.  Bart got a raise effective Jan. 1st and I’m close to paying off my Doctor’s bills and getting caught up with student loan payments, so maybe in a few weeks or a couple months, we’ll be back to “normal” financially and I won’t have to stress myself sick all the time.  It’s just crazy because I honestly can’t figure out why we’ve been struggling.  Things always end up getting better though :).  I’m confident in that.

So, Bart and I started using “Rosetta Stone” to learn Spanish.  It’s AMAZING to me that just in 3 “chapters” of Rosetta Stone, I feel like I’ve been able to retain more than I did the entire 3 1/2 years of Spanish I took in school.  I think it’ll be extremely useful to be fluent in Spanish and it’s something I’ve really always wanted to do, but never had the time or money to take official classes.  I’m having fun with it though and I love the concept they’re using.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m difficult to teach.  Mostly because I have a very hard time paying attention.  I have an even harder time paying attention when there’s nothing to “grab” my attention.  Rosetta Stone uses pictures, which right there is a wonderful thing for me.  I’m a very visual learner.  It makes sense too… I mean, how did I learn how to speak English?  From seeing things!  When you’re raising a child and he’s learning to speak, you do that by basically pointing to something and saying aloud what that thing is.  So, now I have pictures to view with the word they’re saying, then they reuse those words over and over and over in each section.  So one section will teach you the word “manzana”, then the next section will teach you “rojo”, so they’ll combine it and end up with “La manzana es rojo”, or “La mujer come la rojo manzana”.  I still totally need to practice and learn the usage of “la”, “el”, “ella”, etc.  I’m still not sure whether that sentence needs to be “la mujer come EL rojo manzana” or “la rojA manzana”… you get the picture.  Anyway… I’m excited to learn it :).

I keep having extremely strange and vivid dreams and it’s kinda causing me to not sleep very well.  I’m grateful that they’re not nightmares, but at the same time… they’re so strange, I try to block it out after I’ve woken up.  It’s almost been the past week to two weeks that I’ve been dreaming about having a baby.  It’s just really strange, because it’s not like I’m seriously WANTING a baby right now… as a matter of fact, I can almost say that I really DON’T think it’d be good right now… but I can’t figure out why it’s in my subconscious.  I don’t “consciously” think about it, so I don’t understand why I’m “subconsciously” thinking about it.  It doesn’t make sense.  At first I was thinking maybe it’s just because of all my thoughts about Dustin, etc. but usually when I think about Dustin a lot… I have dreams about HIM, but this baby is clearly not him in the dream.  It’s a blonde/red haired little boy.  It usually “starts” with me being pregnant, doing regular things like going to the doctor, feeling him kick, etc. then delivering, which is strange because the setting is exactly the same as when I had Dustin, just different faces.  Then it fast forwards like 2 years.  LOL!  Ok, I just don’t know… it’s just bothering me that I keep having these dreams.  It’s making me feel weird, like almost dumb that I’m even thinking about it.  Of course NOW I’m “thinking” about it, because I’m talking about the dream.  I haven’t told Bart about them, but really only because I feel so silly :(.  I haven’t told anyone, other than anyone that reads this.  LOL  Which is not likely to be anyone :p.  Ok, I’m done!

Sadly misunderstood

Society really doesn’t know much about adoption.  At least the majority of people, I guess.  I try not to let it bother me when people say insensitive or almost stupid things, thinking they’re actually helping me or making me feel better.  I’ll give some tips for things to not say to a birth mother:

1. “I bet that was hard” – this isn’t necessarily insensitive, it’s just stupid.  Shut up.  No, it was the easiest thing in the world… are you serious?

2. “Just move on arleady” – There is no such thing as “moving on” when you gave life to someone.  I’m pretty sure that every birth mother would agree with me that it doesn’t matter how many years go by, that child is always in your heart.  I understand that when this is said, most people are basically implying that you should, you know, get a job, go to school, fall in love, maybe have more children of your own, etc. but still… it doesn’t matter how much my life changes, Dustin will always be the piece of my heart that is missing forever.

3. Anything implying that just because I cry, or get sad sometimes, that I must “regret” my decision to place him for adoption.  Because I’m sad?  Seriously?  Not that I have to prove anything to anyone, but I will say it clearly… that no matter how sad I get and no matter how much it hurts and I miss him, I will never regret my decision.  Even though I haven’t heard from his adoptive parents in three years and I don’t know why, no… I still don’t regret my decision.  If I was that selfish, I would have just kept him in the first place, since that is what I wanted.

4. “Oh I could never do that” or “I don’t see how you could do that”.  …again… shut up.

I shouldn’t be judgmental to people that don’t understand it, because logically, there’s no possible way.  You can compare it to other things, like giving your goldfish away, you may even come close, but still… don’t TRY to understand something or pretend that you do, if you’ve never even come close to experiencing it for yourself.  This is usually why I don’t really like telling people that I have a child.  A lot of times, I have no problem talking about it and explaining a little about adoption, but when a person starts throwing out opinions and their views on it, I wish I had just answered “No, I don’t have any children.”

*Sigh*.  I’m sorry for the useless rambling, but sadly, I feel better having vented it.

Flying by…

I made it through another year.  Dustin is 7 years old.  It really is surreal to think about.  Sometimes I feel like it never happened, like I saw this all in a movie somewhere and my brain is just thinking it was me that lived it.  Sometimes it feels like it was yesterday that I had my baby in my arms, 7 lbs. 12 oz. 21 inches long.  He had the longest fingers and all the nurses commented on how beautiful he was.

This past year has not been the easiest for me.  A lot of things play into it, but I’m able to look back and actually feel proud of myself for living through it.  This year will be better.  I still haven’t heard from Dustin’s parents, nor do I expect to.  I’m glad that I can acknowledge that as the truth now.  I probably won’t hear from them, possibly forever.  I just needed to accept it and I think I have.  It doesn’t hurt any less, but at least it’s something real.

Yesterday was a good day and I only had one instance of random tears, but it only lasted about a minute and I wiped them away.  We didn’t do anything special, just stayed home and stayed in pajamas and watched movies all day.  It was good for me though.  I’m so glad to have Bart around to hug.  The past couple weeks, I’ve felt happier than I have in a very long time.  I can’t think of a specific reason, I just know that I’m happy.  Things feel “normal” again and I can feel myself improving my attitude and outlook on everything.

Well, Happy Birthday baby boy.  I love you forever.