House 1 down the drain + could this be any more confusing?

We thought about making an offer on the cute little house I loved and Brandon asked some friends of his parents that buy investment properties and rentals all the time and they basically told him the land is worth more without the house on it and it’s a piece of crap. They had actually looked at this house to buy months ago and had done all the research on it. It even had leans on the property.

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UGH and they told us that we can buy houses that say cash offer where as the real estate agent said we couldn’t. Also why would you list a property that has leans on it?! No bank will finance that? And why can’t people just be truthful? If you don’t want a piece of crap house what makes you think I will???

Why can’t it be as simple as they make it look on HGTV? Here is a house at the bottom of your budget, one in the middle and one at the top, lets tour all 3, ok now pick which one you would like? And none of them have leans or hidden disasters.

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I had totally already started planning our life in that house and oh the yard and the garden and the chickens…… sad face.

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Oh well, onward and upward. I wallowed last night and now I am ready to start again.

 

This has nothing to do with houses but I saw this and loved it

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Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

I hope your day is filled with love, light, laughter, friends, family and of course way too much amazing food!!!!

My thanksgiving is not quite what I had hoped. My schedule at work just changed 2 weeks ago so today is my Friday at work and yes, I am working. I was invited to Thanksgiving with the BF’s family but there are eating at 1 and I now work until 3:30pm and wouldn’t even get there until 5 with the drive and needing to go home to let the dogs out first so no Thanksgiving for me this year. I did stop and get a Starbucks though this morning so that is nice.

My idea Thanksgiving would be a turkey trot in the AM then lots of family and food……one day.

What does your Thanksgiving look like?

House Hunting: It’s so much worse than I thought

My boyfriend and I have taken the plunge and decided to buy a house together……YAY!!!! Our monthly rent payments will now go toward mortgage payments and we can do whatever we want decoration wise to the house and really take care of our house and have pride in it, and of course get to see each other every day (we currently live an hour apart). What they don’t tell you is how stressful home buying is and that it can really test your patience and possibly your relationship.

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First things first, we are both adamant about not only sticking to our budget but trying to be as far under it as possible. We agree 100% on this which is wonderful. What we don’t agree on is patience and mind over emotional. I do not have patience, I try soooo hard then 5 minutes goes by and I am frustrated and he is drag his feet McGee so we are polar opposites. I understand that buying a home is a HUGE step but at some point you have to bite the bullet, no house is going to be perfect (especially not in our price range) and you can never guarantee that something wont go wrong the day after you buy it, the week after, 6 months after and so on.

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I like to think that on this we are balancing each other, I am nudging him forward a little faster and he is reigning me in so I don’t sign papers on day 1.

Mind over emotional……….The 2nd house we saw I was in love. It was cute and charming and on some land and almost 90 years old which brings a whole new set of fun things to deal with, and in a rural area which has much less guidelines on bringing things up to code. All in all I still love this house, it would require a little work but it has charm and character and is on the lower end of our budget, a total win right???? He doesn’t think so. All he can see is the work that needs to go into it and I would sign the papers today if I could. So once again we are balancing each other.

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The other joy we are facing is that months ago when we were still deciding if we were staying in Oregon or going and if we would buy or rent I told my roommates I would be out by the end of January, now here we are in November with limited time and options. This is also causing me to feel a little bit resentful toward my love, he does not have this time constraint so I don’t think he feels this time pressure as much as I do, which means his dragging his feet, examine everything from every angle is driving me more mad than usual. Breath in, breath out.

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And that is just the interpersonal issues! Now factor in the actual houses themselves! More than half of which are sold for cash only because there is so much work to do on them, or the ones that are so gross I am not sure we could even live in them while we slowly fixed them up. It is maddening. Buying houses is maddening, I have a new respect for people who flip houses and don’t know how you don’t all have ulcers; on the other hand I hate you all a little bit because you buy the half way decent ones in our price range, flip them and sell them for 50-100k more and now I can’t afford anything.

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I just need to remember patience, not to take my frustrations out on my partner and to pray we find the right house in time.

Mid week run and Artemis’ birthday!!!

So I of course don’t know if it is actually Artemis’ birthday but I got her 2 years ago in November so I picked a day and called it her birthday because I don’t remember the exact day I got her. We went for a 2 mile run and they I harassed her all night.

Check out that best time!!!! It was only for a few seconds but that is my fastest time ever!! That is probably when I ran across the street before the cars came hahahaha!

After my run, I was a little sweaty but it felt good!

Artemis had a ball, but at this point she was really ready to get back home. She has a leash on your just can’t see it with my awesome quality of photography hahahaha.

Back to trying to have some juice in the morning!!!! Carrot apple is my jam!

So I just finished season 5 of Grimm last night (I know I am behind like always) and I go to press play on season 6 (on amazon prime) and it costs money!!!!! NO!!!!!!!!!! Seasons 1-5 are included with amazing prime but not season 6. I HATE when they do that! Though I guess it makes sense since it just aired this year. But now I either have to buy an episode here and there or wait and see if it drops for free. I will also check the other TV sites we have like Netflix and Hulu. Fingers crossed.

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Do you watch Grimm?

What is your fav show right now?

Has winter hit where you are? How are your workouts fairing if it has?

I have a feeling this winter is going to be very difficult for me training wise if I don’t find a cheap gym. I can run in the cold (I don’t love it but I can) but when its cold AND raining its hard for me to get my butt out the door.

Veteran’s day and running report

Happy Veteran’s Day!!!!! Thank a veteran today in some way!!! I probably wouldn’t be able to blog about everything I do if we didn’t have wonderful people who fought for our freedom. Regardless of how you feel about the military or politics these people fought for us.

Meal prep

Longest video ever hahahahahaha

Running this week:

Sunday: Rest day

Monday: 1.53 miles. Couch to 5k week 3 day 3

Tuesday: Rest Day

Wednesday: 1.89 miles Couch to 5k week 4 day 1

Thursday: Rest Day

Friday: Rest Day ( I over slept and ran out of time)

Saturday: 1.9 miles + 10 minutes of strength training Couch to 5k week 4 day 2

Total rest day then run day

 

I may have been a little delirious

I slept for a total of like 13 or 14 hours and woke up to puppy cuddles

We relaxed in the AM then got out for a run and there was actually a little sun!

When I got back I tried to be good and stretch a little, forgot how much I hate stretching hahahaha, since I hate it so much it must mean I don’t do it enough

Don’t you love my crazy bright outfit? I actually had a darker blue sweater thing on top when I went out for my run.

Anybody else have a problem finding boots that fit right? My old boots were starting to be a little thrashed so my sweet BF bought me some new ones and the foot part fits by my calves are bigger from running that they are tight!

He is going to return them and buy a half size bigger and see if that works. I hope so cause I think they are soooooo cute!!!!

Running Recap

Here is how my week went:

Sunday-Rest

Monday-2 miles on Couch-2-5k Week 2 day 3

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Tuesday-Rest

Wednesday- 1.64 miles. Today was a lot slower due to me not feeling great since I ate too much candy!

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Thursday-Rest, I made the lazy kid in me very happy. The BF and I ordered Pizza hut and had a Stranger Things season 2 marathon!!!!

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Friday- 1.73 miles, much better pace today. And I got to run with my man which makes me very happy.

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He doesn’t love to smile, or take pictures hahaha

Saturday- 10min strength training

For a total of 5.73 miles for the week.

As you can see I am starting back slowly.

Also found this awesomeness on Pinterest

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This has been awesome and true so far as the temperature drops here. Now I just need to find my gloves and buy some kind of ear cover headband and find a hat if I have one.

How cold does it get for winter in your area?

Do you prefer to run on a treadmill when its cold or still get outside?

This will be my first year really getting outside to run during the winter.

European Cruise: Day 18 long day of travel

We have a little bit of morning in Barcelona, like just enough to sleep in and have some coffee and a pastry while people watching before we head to the airport. We depart just after 1 and land in LAX around 10pm hahaha, and yet we will be traveling for almost 17 hours.

This was the only photo I took hahahaha. At this point I was tired. We ate lunch at the airport then boarded the flight to Amsterdam, it was about 2.5 hours then we hurried through Amsterdam because we had about 1.5 hours to make our connection and had to go through passport control. But we made it. Then started the long 11ish hour flight. I didn’t want to sleep since we would be getting into LA at night and I wanted to be able to get back on normal time. I watched like 5 movies. We landed in Salt Lake City with 1 hour and 5 minutes to deplane, get through customs, get our bags, recheck our bags and get the third person in our party a boarding pass because for some reason we couldn’t print their last boarding pass in Barcelona and go back through security…….we made it by some miracle however Carra’s and I’s bags did not because we got them checked only about 40 minutes before the flight took off. Thankfully we were already staying overnight in LA so we just picked them up the next day.

We got off the plane spent about 40 minutes waiting for our bags then learning that they didn’t make the plane, then we boarded a shuttle to our hotel, got checked in and walked next door to McDonald’s then ate in our room and passed out for about 5 hours. \

We woke up early, got back to the airport, got our bags and got on the plane to finally get home…….are we there yet????

European Cruise: Day 17 Barcelona

Today is our full day in Barcelona and we are going on a tour!

First let’s touch on the Catalonian referendum that was going on. This was Sunday, the day of the vote. We drove by this on the way out of town on the cruise, it was a demonstration. If you haven’t heard of the referendum, Google it. It was very interesting to be here for this……a little nerve wracking as well, we were on high alert the whole time, no way was I going to be caught in the middle of a riot.

We headed out of town about an hour into the mountains to visit a monastery.

It was like a mini little city, there was a hotel and a hostel and a little restaurant

That is the funicular to the top of the mountain.

Inside part of the monastery.

This was supposed to be the most powerful spot, geothermal waters run under it and the original church stood in this spot.

Lots of candles

hiking!

The mist was pretty, it started to burn off as we climbed down.

Back in town, people gathered in a plaza to keep apprised of the situation.

Gelato and a church!

another church!

there is a fair type place near the water, we went and rode the ferris wheel

Bye Barcelona!!!!!

European Cruise: Day 16 Barcelona

Today we disembark the ship! The ship docked at 5am in Barcelona. I slept in until 7:30am. Everyone but me is taking a dis-embarkment so i need to figure out what I want to do. Once we get settled into our apartment its time to start cramming in those sights to see again!

I got off the ship and took the bus from the ship/port to the actual town then started walking around to find where everyone else would get let off their tour.

On the way I happened to find the Starbucks!!! And got my 3rd you are here mug!

Then I stopped and had espresso and a croissant then met up with the others and dropped our bags at our residence then headed back out.

By then it was snack time and I may have gotten an espresso with vanilla gelato in it!!!! It was delicious

Time for sightseeing!

Nice view of the city and ocean beyond

Park Guell

Amazing bakery we stumbled upon.

This empanada was so good and only 1 Euro!

Sagrada de famillia