Obviously non of those talking heads has ever tried to get a home loan as a self employed real estate agent working on commission. I could be cliche’ and say they want us to sign away our first born child, but THAT is relatively “simple” compared to what they actually NEED us to do…things like provide account history documentation that only has transactions that contain the letter z in them (only a SLIGHT exaggeration on that one) or they need for us to will the IRS to send documents through the US postal service in a reasonable time frame after they have been requested multiple times (no exaggeration there)

10 Things I would rather do then ever have to qualify for another home loan as a self employed real estate agent paid on commission ever again:

100 belly flops like this

Walk a mile in these shoes (or even 5 steps)

Hire this guy as my trainer

Ride in this elevator

Have a baby that doesn’t like kisses

Stub my toe every day

get stuck without toilet paper

Eat the heel

Accidentally touch GUM under a table in public

Find this

So here we are in the 11th hour…supposed to be closing on our new house on Friday and we still are clueless as to what the status of our loan is.

Principals List for straight A’s and Award for meeting 331% of his reading goal for the quarter

So it took a little extra to get him this April Fool’s Day–logic can be clouded by a foil lined tray of goodness on the kitchen counter as you return from a long hard day at school…it is even worse when mom boils a pot of cinnamon to make it smell like she has been baking away all day.

digging in to a fresh tray of Brown E’s

He was delighted when I told him my plan to prank dad—it involved Saran Wrap

scene: low lights- Jas comes in from bright sun- PERFECT set up

Hunny- come help me get this to print I need to take it with me and I am running late….hurry!!

In the midst of the ATTACK- so wish the lighting could have allowed for video of this

APRIL FOOLS!!!!

Momma wins April Fools 2013…the trophy is the feeling of constant fear of retribution! LOL

Kinda of interesting the stuff you find when you are purging and packing to move into your new house isn’t it?

I finally decided to just snap some pictures for “keepsake” sake and toss the preggers pee sticks I have been holding on to for way over a decade. FINE- JUDGE ME

Anyways- I had to find some way to make the official “WE BOUGHT A HOUSE” announcement interesting since all of you already know anyways thanks to the gabby goose I am married to- bless his heart.

We close May 17th on our new to us home in Gilbert, AZ

This is a lame cell phone shot of the picture from the MLS because I have been too chicken to snap a pic when standing in front of it myself- fear of jinxing it I guess. We have the Loan PreQual, the inspections and BINSR part of the deal all done and now we just wait. And of course by wait I mean start packing yesterday much to the chagrin of Jas and the boys I am sure LOL.

Answers to some questions others have asked about what this means for us:

Where is this house?

In Gilbert in Settlers Point South practically in Sun Valley Community Churchs “backyard”

Where will the boys go to school?

We will be in the Gilbert Unified School district now and Higley is already being EXTREMELY helpful in making sure this transition goes as flawless as possible. TY will be in a JR high and Connor has 1 more year at and elementary school.

I will be finishing my general studies associates degree at Chandler Gilbert Community College this May and if the college can process my graduation application will actually get to walk on May 10th. I will then be going back to real estate school and finishing my real estate license so that my role with Jason Spectrum Group team at West USA Realty Revelation can be bigger.

For everyone who has been praying with us over the last few weeks, THANK YOU. We could not be more excited about the new chapter of our life that God is paving for us through multiple blessings.

Moving day is Saturday May 25th and we will provide food and drinks to all that help!

This was never meant to be where we landed for long. I am only in school so we can live in family housing and supposedly save up some money while we get back on our feet after the bubble burst. Thing is, here we are almost 4 years post bankruptcy and very little in savings (do not even talk to me about back taxes and the monthly raping we get from Uncle Sam for being on a payment plan over last years earnings)

All of these veiled “sacrifices” we have made by downsizing and living in 50 year old lead based paint asbestos filled former base housing on the ASU campus, driving hand me down cars that are hiccuping their way to their last trips and cutting out all non essentials and we are nowhere near being able to afford to live anywhere BUT here. Sometimes we barely make ends meet HERE.

The thing is, we can only stay as long as I am in school. Well I can really only stretch that out for about 2 more semesters and then we HAVE to fly this nest. Hell the college is tearing down and fencing off areas all around us, so who knows if we will even be able to stay THAT long. But the timing will be perfect in 2014, as it will be the summer between Ty going off to high school and Connor heading into junior high, so a move at that transition would be perfect.

I just don’t know that I can do it for another year. This 7th semester has by far been the hardest to readjust to. We are four weeks in and I still have not found my balance with school work, home, and work. My normal procrastination overriding tendency to get ahead on things and schedule out my tasks is already being run down by lack of motivation and contempt for the content I am being forced to swallow in my liberal leaning course work. That is a recipe for disaster when I have 12 weeks left.

Resentment and jealousy over knowing that people who started AFTER me are done and moving on with their life is also eating at me. I desire so badly to buy our own home again, to settle and let the kids have a place that they know as OUR HOME for the last few years that we have them under out roof. I feel like for four years now I have been in limbo “waiting for my life to begin.”

This is my MO though- I just don’t finish things. Like. EVER.

I could technically walk with a general studies liberal arts degree this May if I really wanted to be done with school ..but then what? And what if my lack of discipline leads us on a path to destruction all because I can’t handle taking classes for 1 more measly year?

I need to find that contentment again and be filled with the Peace that I am where God wants me and going where He intends.

I sure wish it were as easy as Pinterest makes it sound.

(all pictures in the post can be traced back to their original source on my Words to Remember Pinterest Pin Board)

This year they were able to customize a shelf to be used to display Lego Mini Figures.

We had fun tonight sorting through the bins of Lego and finding all of the different min figs from the dozens of sets that the boys have gotten over the years.

I really love that we are able to have a work of art that is functional and some of those pricey lego pieces are not just buried in buckets anymore- now they are front and center in the kids playroom!

Thanks a ton Aunt Gina and Uncle Steve!!

BONUS- they also got Connor a baseball display case so he could start showcasing his half way complete MLB baseball collection that he has been getting help from many friends and family in increasing.

I LOVE all the organization and neatness of these gifts.. they truly ARE extremely appreciated!!

With all of the strides you have made in the past 11+ years, I sometimes forget how black and white things can still be for you my sweet boy.

Here it is the night before heading back to school for the spring 2013 semester of 7th grade. We had a glorious Christmas break filled with family, gifts, food and tons of memories. You have grown out of the jeans we JUST got you and the replacement ones are already looking like they are not far behind. I think my new year’s prediction that you will be taller then me by the end of this year will be blown out of the water before your birthday this summer. Your independence and self reliance sort of scares me while also making me beam with pride. All of this is why I sometimes forget that your brain takes things exactly as they are said. Unless clarification is given you still lean to the literal.

That’s why tonight when you excitedly clapped your hands together exclaiming how excited you are for “your new school” I was caught off guard. The new middle school was JUST approved and they have not even broken ground yet- it won’t be opened until the fall, just in time for your 8h grade year. So why the sudden burst of enthusiasm for it- you won’t be going there until next school year BUT, we never did clarify that did we? All along we just kept saying “next year you will go to a new school” And dog gone it- it is now a new year is it not?

When I realized what your amazing brain had been setting your equally amazing heart up for- that you thought you would be waking up in the morning and headed to a brand new school I wanted to jump up off the couch and make that a reality. Oh the disappointment your body spoke, how you dropped your shoulders and hung your head as you realized everything is staying the same. It was hard to not sort of chuckle at how dramatic and rapidly the emotions had swung from pure elation to devastating let down.

I am so very happy that you have such enthusiasm for something new (too be honest, I have been fretting over the whole- transition to a middle school -away from the current K-8 you are at now- just for a year only to transition a year later to high school bit) but I think you are gonna be just fine.

I love you bean

I guess good advice has a way of blending into the background like white noise sometimes. You know how “they” say that everything that you choose to put online can be found by ANYONE? This sage wisdom is usually passed down in the theme of “don’t post pictures of your junk” online (better yet don’t even TAKE pictures of your “junk” to begin with) type lessons.

I don’t post (or take) pictures of my junk so that all just goes in one ear and out the other for me but sadly there was a lesson for even me to learn there had I paid better attention. A lesson that all parents that use social media or blog should learn. One day your child will “google” their name and if the last name is unique like ours and also part of your blog title, they will find your blog. The blog you write as a personal journal and share with the entire internet. The blog you even have neatly organized into Categories that you thoughtfully made to help you organize your “journal” with so one day you can go back and read about cute widdle tooey tondo and the time he whipped out the Bible to try and understand our parenting techniques or made glaciers in the middle of summer or tried to play hangman by himself.

Categories that you tagged posts about breaking the news about Santa categories all about venting, categories that highlight news stories that make you say “hole e crap” and categories for posts that you unravel some heavy depression related baggage on.

Heavy posts. Ones that you think even if they were to find my blog one day, they would be much older and be able to read it with some life experience behind their eyes and somewhat understand. You may even have enough common sense to recognize that some stuff you put online needs to have it’s viewers regulated, so when you talk all about how the principal at the neighborhood school put the Godfather to shame you put a password on those posts.

But that post where you talk about the heartache you endured when you had to face a very difficult parenting decision, the feelings you just had to share because so many people on facebook had been a part of helping guide that decision, the one where you prayed to God begging Him to let your boys be fine after getting an immunization and to keep “the shadow” we had known before from returning… THAT post you leave wide open. THAT post your 10 year old finds and reads.

Today while driving across town (because ALL great parenting conversations happen in the car you know) Connor who is wise beyond his years brought up “the shadow” and the minute he said those words I knew he had been reading my blog. I asked and he said “yeah- but I only read the posts called Connor and Tyler” IMMEDIATELY I tried to trace back EVERY single thing I have ever written about my children online..I have always been thoughtful to the fact that one day they may find my blog but like I said I just never thought A- they would actually read any of it (I am known for being LONG winded) B- would understand any of it.

I know that my son is going to be a great man one day but I sure do need to take the time to appreciate what an AMAZING kid he is right now. It is rare that a week can go by in this house where I am not just blown away by his mind. When I asked him how the post about the MMR shot made him feel he told me that “it made him feel like a part of his stomach was missing”– I probed and asked if that meant he was sad and he told me that “as I read it I felt like you were crying the whole time you wrote it.”

He is TEN

and he NAILED it.

You are so right my intuitive and bright boy. I was crying while I wrote that, just like I am now as I write this. But these tears are welling over because of how proud I am of you. You never cease to send ripples of astonishment through me Connor. I am sorry that I am sometimes guilty of not giving you enough maturity credit and I am also sorry for sometimes giving you too much maturity credit (meaning you have grown up in some areas of your life a lot faster then you probably needed to and no longer benefit from being a naive child) I am sorry that you were scared that getting that shot would give you autism and that reading how scared I was about that very very very slim possibility weighed so heavy on your little heart that it made you feel like your stomach had a hole in it. That feeling is called “heartache” my sweet boy and man am I SO sorry that you have experienced it already in your short 10 years of life. But know this, I have learned that God always finds a way to fill that hole up. Here we are a year later and nothing is different, all of that worrying for nothing- there is a whole lesson about anxiety we could learn right there! I love seeing the world through your eyes and it has been such a pure joy to raise you up from the tiny baby you once were into the young man you are today. I know that God has GREAT things in mind for your life. I can not wait to see what they are.

Love mom

P.S. I better never find any pictures of your junk anywhere mister

Who am I kidding- anyone who reads this blog also knows us “in real life” or follows me on Facebook so it’s not like we dropped off the face of the earth!

C’est la vie of a personal blog. You know one that is not used for advertising or marketing of anything. This year I have seen some of my friends that have had personal blogs that I used to follow on a regular basis turn into some real advertising/sponsored post machines which makes me sad.

But I also have seen some bloggers that do the whole sponsored post intertwined with their personal stuff REALLY well- like Amy over at Amalah who can write a hysterical sponsored post about alcohol and Elizabeth over at Real Estate Tangent does awesome at weaving in her real estate career and her personal life and making it interesting. So the balance between blogging our lives and making money can be found.

Still my heart smiles when bloggers like Jodi over at Jodifur have stood up to say NO MORE ADS on their own sites because they want a return to the days of actual personal blogs and comment interaction and I like that.

Who knows what 2013 has in store for this little corner of the web. I likely once again won’t attend any conferences (though I have always dreamed of meeting some of those ladies in person and getting inspired to take my blog to the “next level” whatever that may be. I just know I would end up the wallflower too shy to even approach anyone so never invest the money or time. I do know this little place is mine and I have not given up on it totally yet.

As you can see I did discover photo collages very recently ( awesome an easier some what creative way to share 18 photos of this ordinary life that I just took with my phone on the internet instead of just 1!!)

Words seem to have escaped me for so many months.

I hope to visit here more often, possibly blog some of the stuff that weighed heavy on my heart in the last half of 2012, or maybe not…maybe just leave those things to memory so they can better fade away with time.

I do know I WILL eventually blog our fabulous Disney Cruise vacation at some point because those are memories I never want to fade.

I don’t usually make “new years resolutions” but it was fun to discuss them at dinner last night. I kept circling around to being more intentional in pretty much everything. A more intentional listener, lover, friend, worker, student, parent and Christian.

It has been an interesting year, filled with moments of amazement, heartache, joy, sadness, laughter, pain, lessons (both learned and unlearned) and lots and lots of growth.

Until my fingers once again find the words-J

I spent some time before the spring semester was up interviewing the misc math professors to be sure that my learning style meshed with their teaching (and most importantly their testing styles) I got very comfortable with one gentleman who happens to be the math department chair and I felt a little more at ease over my decision to try and take such a  big bite out of math in such a short amount of time.

As with all semesters, 2 days before classes started I logged in to print out the map of where the class was and see if the syllabus was already online.  Low and behold, the math professor I had chosen was now listed as TBD

This is how seeing that made me feel:

Anyways- I showed up and it was evident after the first 30 minutes that I was NOT going to learn a damn thing in this math class–BUT if I played it right I could pass it and walk away and never have to take another college math class EVER again in my entire life.

I went ahead and stuck it out for 5 weeks.  I passed- with an A. But I did NOT learn a single thing, if I had to take the next level of math there is no way I would be prepared to take on new concepts and use information from MAT151 to build upon.

This experience taught me several things:

1- I can BS my way through more then I thought I could-even math which sounds like it would be harder to accomplish

2- a Good teacher will instill confidence in their students and prepare them to move forward- a bad teacher makes you feel like poo—and I realize now I had a LOT of bad teachers growing up.  Just because someone has a job as teacher/professor/instructor does not mean they can teach.

3- Sometimes doing just what is expected and nothing more is fine.  I put in the work and regurgitated what needed to be regurgitated in order to get a certain grade, but I did not learn anything–I got what was required out of the class–a passing grade (an A even).  I had hoped for more.  This was a big lesson on disappointment due to expectations that *I* set.

Good news is- I slayed that math dragon once and for all.  In fact it has given me enough confidence that I have actually toyed with the idea of going back and refreshing my real estate classes and taking those exams for my own license after all…one more thing I could “finish” that I started.

Who knows what tomorrow with bring.

Half a year, 6 months, 24 weeks, 180 some odd days or so.

Since my last blog post.

So very much has gone on in the life of the Geroux Crew. I don’t know if I will ever have the energy to blog it all and give each item its due press on here.  I also am not big on doing yet another whirlwind summary catch up post.  Besides- those 2 of you that even read this corner of the web know us in real life and are not out of the loop anyways. However, I use this space as therapy for myself and the fact of the matter is that I can feel the effects of not having released my thoughts on here or anywhere for months on end…plus one day I am sure I will go back and read all of this lunacy and I will freak out wondering what happened in that chunk of 2012 that I just didn’t blog. So I have to at least TRY to get some of it written down.

To be very vulnerable, I am hoping that by reviving this blog with a rehashing of the last six months of my life I can get a bridle around the wild horse that is my cyclical depression that has started to rear it’s ugly head recently. There are entire websites dedicated to the health benefits of journaling–so here it goes. Bare with me the next few days. If you read at all.  Eventually I will get to a happy place where I will share a butt load of pictures from our recent Disney Cruise Vacation  Until then though- I have some gaps to fill in. For myself, for my healing and for my recovery.

Back in April (Cue squiggly lines and dream music that indicates time travel)…..

Jason got word that his brokerage was going to be making significant changes.  Not even 24 hours after I dropped that last post bombshell on him about not wanting to work with him.  At first they gave a long 4 year time frame in which none of the agents needed to worry about their jobs for “at least 4 years”  But then the broker had a heart attack and the reality of how short life is (or can be) hit both him and his wife. That time frame was abruptly shortened to accommodate changes in their lifestyle that they needed to make. See, he had recently dropped everything here in AZ and taken a job literally over night in another state. Living four years apart from family sounds like no big deal when you aren’t recovering from a massive coronary. So I can completely understand the shift in priorities, trust me. It doesn’t make it suck any less for those affected though. Jason was told he had until the end of 2012 to get things in order so he could transition his 60 plus property portfolio to his own brokerage.

This was generous- believe me I recognize that.  They absolutely did not have to allowed him to even keep his portfolio.  Such is life as an employee- you are at the mercy of the business owners. So I am ever so grateful that  my husband’s hard work was not snatched away. Decent people they are in that regard.

Now, all of this meant Jason had to some how take 90 hours of night schooling and pass several tests costing several hundreds of dollars. Our life was starting to feel as sucky as it was sounding. We never saw him.  Like never.

The truth is, he was running too thin trying to work full time at Orchard Africa and also keep all of his property management balls in the air  AND go to school for his brokers license at night. The latter of which was not in “our plan” for at least a few more years, but were things thrust upon him out of the blue. Unfortunately a few sloppy mistakes (nothing huge just consistent oversights that added up like putting Glendales tax rate on a Gilbert contract, cropped up right at the same time that the broker was hating everything to do with property management stresses which made it very easy for them to decide to just chuck “it all.”  (“it all” is in quotes because I found out in the last month that they had decided to keep a few hand selected PM clients and stay in the business, just “not with Jason or his large portfolio.”)  Eventually it all caught up with him and he had to make the very difficult decision to walk away from that calling at Orchard. It was only a short contract with no guarantee for renewal. He had to focus on his long term career that provides weekly for our family and he need to be able to fully meet the demands that were being thrown at him.

Things were going fine until the acting broker came to Jason and said “we can’t take the stress of this responsibility anymore, you need to be done ASAP.” So 4 years went down to 8 months down to what sounded like “tomorrow” to essentially start up a small business…all while he had JUST taken a 50% reduction in pay in order to meet their earlier demands on time.  So our bank account was already taking a hit with the loss of income, now we were looking at footing thousands of dollars (from where??) in order to propel all of the hard work he had put into building that property management division the last 2.5 years forward and not lose it all. They eventually agreed to work towards an October time frame.

I have wrestled with how I feel about how the last 6 months were handled as far as my husband’s position with that brokerage goes. I have also debated whether or not I wanted to even blog about it all, because in reality at this point it’s all over anyways. It is sort of sad that I have to even consider worrying about potential social media backlash by being real and honest and vulnerable since the people (I am not naming) are truly connected online.

But I think I need to say it out loud so I can move on. It really hurt. Not because I did a poor job of separating personal relationships that I had formed with these people that I admired from business (I did and that didn’t help), but because of how these people began treating Jason.  The condescending, rude, impatient communication was rampant the last several months of his employment with them. Not just between him and the acting broker either, between the acting broker and Jason’s clients. He was often putting out fires created by hasty emails that were fired off by someone who had obviously written off that particular part of their job weeks before.  He HAD to put out those fires, because he wanted and NEEDED to keep those people as clients.  Where once the brokerage would stand proud behind an agent and always give them the benefit of the doubt, they suddenly cast criticism on Jason’s competency at every turn.  The fact that they got audited by the department of real estate in the midst of all of this, certainly played into this big time I am sure. One pissed off tenant that blamed Jason for the tight wad decisions that the homeowner made went online and pussyfooted her way around a bad review of Jason  and that single negative review carried more weight then the six glowing reviews that buried it.

In order to truly move on I need to do more then just vent about it all, I need to forgive as well.  So here it is.  I forgive everything above.  Since the act of forgiveness is to set ME free from being a prisoner to the resentments I have built up, this does not have to be done directly to the “offenders”. (A very hard lesson I learned this summer, that will get blogged about later)

Jason was no saint in all of this by any means. He made his share of mistakes on paperwork, and there is no excuse for that, especially since he was working towards being the BROKER himself, which meant no safety net to catch those errors with.  I say no excuse, but I do justify it somewhat simply because in a very short period of time, other people had turned our life completely upside down and thrown at him responsibilities that he had not been preparing to have.  He was forced into a position to slap together anything he could in less then 6 months time frame and then when he was just about to cross the finish line…red tape stepped in.

His finger print clearance card that had been on file with the state from when he had worked for the Governors Council expired and was no longer on file with the Department of Real Estate.  He went to DPS to start the process of getting another one issued, but it was July at this point and with school starting at the beginning of August, every teacher, crossing guard and lunch lady hoping to be employed by a school was in que to get their clearance. They were beyond back logged.  Jason was quoted as much as 3 months until it would come in,which put him well passed the date he needed to have been up and running his own brokerage in order to meet the October deadline. He called them EVERY SINGLE DAY to check on the status.  He had to be up and running by September in order to get everything transitioned for the October deadline. That was not going to happen.  He could not do a single thing in the mean time.  As much as he could do without his actual brokers license he did in hopes that a miracle would occur and it would get shifted to the top of a pile. His brokerage said they would budge on the time frame… and “budge” they did…they gave him exactly 15 more days.

We later found out why they had such a hard deadline for him to “get out” in.  They dropped yet another bombshell announcement on their agents that the brokerage had been bought out and was merging with another. This significantly effected how business was going to be run, processes that were in place and most importantly to the agents their commission splits would change.  That merger was set to take place gradually but I am certain played into the unwillingness to stick to the original end of the year commitment they had made.

As the weeks went by and the tasks to get his own brokerage up and running piled up due to his lack of finger print clearance card, Jas started to take a hard look at formulating a plan B.  All that time and preparation and money and neither one of us had even let a PLAN B cross our minds.  I think what we may be tempted to call circumstances may have been God actually closing a door that we had both been so narrow mindedly rushing towards.  We had both been praying, but of course with certain outcomes in mind… outcomes that WE wanted to see.  We were both blinded by the path we were heading down, mostly because we had been essentially shoved out of the airplane window and told to fly…so we were desperately flapping our arms. Just as we were about to slam into the ground, God provided a parachute.

I don’t even mean that in a cutesy “christianese” lingo sort of way either.  I truly in my heart feel like the way God stopped us from heading into certain disaster was by getting Jason to LOOK UP and read the road signs around him and to do that He made him run over a huge pot hole and get a flat tire.

At this point it would be ridiculous for me to claim “long story short” but the gist is- Jason went and interviewed with a premiere real estate agency in town that has a robust and thriving property management team.  They welcomed Jas and his portfolio with open arms. So right now he is in paperwork overload getting all but nine of his properties transitioned over to this new (not his) brokerage.

Wanna know the “funny” thing?

The very day Jason signed on with the new brokerage, his finger print clearance card arrived in the mail.