In this economy, it just might not be a bad idea to walk away from a mortgage. Here's an explanation of why that is.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Poll: Are you Losing Your Home? Can you afford your home?
Adoptive parents of large numbers of adopted special needs children need large houses. Large houses come with large mortgages and large payments. When the economy tanks, some of us lose our homes.I've set up a poll---> over there in the right column> Where you can anonymously give us an idea of how bad the problem is for large families.
If you have a blog, please post a link to this poll as well.
I don't think I'm alone in having trouble meeting my mortgages payments with the rise in food and gas cost and the general downturn in the economy...AM I???
Monday, October 20, 2008
Today's message from Neale Donald Walsch is on how to create peace in your life and the world:
>>On this day of your life, my friend, I believe God wants you to know...
...that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek,
but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that, and he was right. And
his wisdom holds true not only for peace in our world,
but for peace within ourselves.
All of our spiritual traditions teach the same thing. To
achieve peace, be peace. Yet how does one be what one is wishing to experience? By a sheer act of Will.
And...by causing others to experience what you wish
to experience.<<
A peaceful life cannot come from a mind that is angry or has lost hope. There is ALWAYS hope! If you want peace you must formulate it in your everyday life, starting with your mind.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Mental and Physical Weeding Out
On a mailing list I belong to, the topic has been cleaning out rooms. Someone suggested that they want a dedicated records room.I don't need a records room, but I do need a secretary. We have about a dozen boxes in our bedroom with records that my husband says he'll go thru. He doesn't know how long he should keep paper records. I tell him, I'm pretty darn sure it's not 40 years.
As someone who has had to go through my grandmother's house and choose what to keep and what to toss, I'm constantly aware at 61 that someday my own children will have to sort through our stuff and make those kinds of decisions. I know how difficult it is, especially at a time when you are missing that person. That's a very hard thing to have to do, and I don't want to pass on that core to my kids.
We have so many things that we've saved that nobody but us would have any interest in. A Phi Sigma Kappa throw pillow from 1966, the big sister gift I got from my Alpha Sigma Tau big sis. TV scripts I wrote in junior high for the show Bonanza for fun. The second Sunbeam hand mixer we got as a wedding gift in 1968 and never opened....
As for old photos, we started out in 1968 taking slides instead of pix. A lot of those slides are worthless now. Nobody, including me, has a slide projector anymore and we don't have the energy or money to send them off to be copied onto a CD. Kindof like the ancient wire recording my brother has of the voices of my maternal grandmother, my mother and father... Now there was a short lived technology.
We have two big plastic storage containers, the kind you put Christmas stuff in for storage, filled with photos. I use those for storage because at hurricane time I can duct tape them up securely so they won't leak (hopefully) and write our names, address and phone numbers in case of a hurricane where we might get wiped out.
I had spent a lot of time scanning photos and storing them on my hard drive, but I didn't get real far-it's a major time consuming chore. My oldest said, why bother. When we are gone they'll just sort them out and distribute them. But my mama's heart says, yeah, but will you be able to tell the baby pix of one of the 21 kids, one from the other? My husband can't even do THAT. I can!
And what about the antiques that I have kept to be handed down to my grandchildren. None of them worth a whole lot. A little book from 1832, owned by my poor great great grandmother, Margaret Clark who died of childbed fever in 1850, with her signature? Or the ancient prayerbook and bible from Scotland owned by another ancestor. Will anyone care enough to keep them in the family or will they toss them as "old books" or sell them on ebay? I shiver at that thought!
When it comes down to it, all the things that I have found to be important enough to keep, probably won't be important enough to save by the next generation. I find that incredibly sad. I have a beautiful gold expansion bracelet with a hidden picture thing that my great grandmother gave to my grandmother at the turn of the century (that is 1899-1900. I've cherished that, and I want to pass that down to a female descendant that I will probably never meet (so far my kids have produced only boys.) Will there be children that will respect my wish?
But when it comes down to it. I'll be in heaven having a good ole time. I'll have no use for those things in heaven. And I just have to let go of emotion about old stuff I've kept over 61 years and trust that someone will have a heart for at least a few of them.
So, knowing that someday one of my kids is going to have to go through mountains of things we've kept over the years, it is MY responsibility to at least narrow that down to a couple boxes of things I think need to be passed down. And to label as many pix as I can!
As someone who has had to go through my grandmother's house and choose what to keep and what to toss, I'm constantly aware at 61 that someday my own children will have to sort through our stuff and make those kinds of decisions. I know how difficult it is, especially at a time when you are missing that person. That's a very hard thing to have to do, and I don't want to pass on that core to my kids.
We have so many things that we've saved that nobody but us would have any interest in. A Phi Sigma Kappa throw pillow from 1966, the big sister gift I got from my Alpha Sigma Tau big sis. TV scripts I wrote in junior high for the show Bonanza for fun. The second Sunbeam hand mixer we got as a wedding gift in 1968 and never opened....
As for old photos, we started out in 1968 taking slides instead of pix. A lot of those slides are worthless now. Nobody, including me, has a slide projector anymore and we don't have the energy or money to send them off to be copied onto a CD. Kindof like the ancient wire recording my brother has of the voices of my maternal grandmother, my mother and father... Now there was a short lived technology.
We have two big plastic storage containers, the kind you put Christmas stuff in for storage, filled with photos. I use those for storage because at hurricane time I can duct tape them up securely so they won't leak (hopefully) and write our names, address and phone numbers in case of a hurricane where we might get wiped out.
I had spent a lot of time scanning photos and storing them on my hard drive, but I didn't get real far-it's a major time consuming chore. My oldest said, why bother. When we are gone they'll just sort them out and distribute them. But my mama's heart says, yeah, but will you be able to tell the baby pix of one of the 21 kids, one from the other? My husband can't even do THAT. I can!
And what about the antiques that I have kept to be handed down to my grandchildren. None of them worth a whole lot. A little book from 1832, owned by my poor great great grandmother, Margaret Clark who died of childbed fever in 1850, with her signature? Or the ancient prayerbook and bible from Scotland owned by another ancestor. Will anyone care enough to keep them in the family or will they toss them as "old books" or sell them on ebay? I shiver at that thought!
When it comes down to it, all the things that I have found to be important enough to keep, probably won't be important enough to save by the next generation. I find that incredibly sad. I have a beautiful gold expansion bracelet with a hidden picture thing that my great grandmother gave to my grandmother at the turn of the century (that is 1899-1900. I've cherished that, and I want to pass that down to a female descendant that I will probably never meet (so far my kids have produced only boys.) Will there be children that will respect my wish?
But when it comes down to it. I'll be in heaven having a good ole time. I'll have no use for those things in heaven. And I just have to let go of emotion about old stuff I've kept over 61 years and trust that someone will have a heart for at least a few of them.
So, knowing that someday one of my kids is going to have to go through mountains of things we've kept over the years, it is MY responsibility to at least narrow that down to a couple boxes of things I think need to be passed down. And to label as many pix as I can!
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Large Adoptive Family Cr*p
I know, I haven't posted in a couple weeks. Been busy. Mostly with the usual large adoptive family stuff, oh, you know, like CPS, kids behaving badly, house payments getting to be too much for us, my husband's hours being severely cut back at work...you know...THE USUAL CR*P.
I wonder if we would have signed on for this journey if we had known the hardships it would entail. Of course there is no way of knowing. And for a large family inclined mama nothing generally gets in her way.
Then we found out that the legal plan that we had on good authority would help us in case of CPS involvement really didn't. We were lied to by the people who said they were the administrators of the national foster and adoptive parents legal plan. Turns out that the FOSTER part was true, but not the ADOPTIVE. And the people who sold it to us were not even currently agents. I think they probably were when they sold it to us.
Now we've gotten a lot of use from the legal plan. It just wouldn't help us in a CPS investigation like we'd been told. Looking into alternatives.
This afternoon I was back in my bedroom, while my husband was cutting the grass and my adult daughter, who works for us, was with the kids in the playroom, Jeremy, who wanted to go outside with his dad (which no child here is allowed to do when the mower is running) ripped the molding that holds the glass in the one double door at the front of the house and dismantled it. QUIETLY.
Thank heaven we had years ago replaced three other similar french doors and had not gotten around to throwing the old ones out. So DH can take the molding off those doors to repair that one. But...come on now. It wasn't bad enough that he systematically dismantled his own bedroom door, broke a couple windows, banged multiple holes in the walls. Yet, I'm certain that we'r not alone in the home-destructiveness of a couple kids who have been adopted. I read Cindy's blog daily. I know it!
As for the CPS thing. It was stupid, and nothing will come of it. But CPS is NEVER pleasant to deal with.
I'm managing to stay very positive minded, though. I know in my heart that God has better things in store for us, and that we can ride out the bad. Together, we've always made it before and will again.
I wonder if we would have signed on for this journey if we had known the hardships it would entail. Of course there is no way of knowing. And for a large family inclined mama nothing generally gets in her way.
Then we found out that the legal plan that we had on good authority would help us in case of CPS involvement really didn't. We were lied to by the people who said they were the administrators of the national foster and adoptive parents legal plan. Turns out that the FOSTER part was true, but not the ADOPTIVE. And the people who sold it to us were not even currently agents. I think they probably were when they sold it to us.
Now we've gotten a lot of use from the legal plan. It just wouldn't help us in a CPS investigation like we'd been told. Looking into alternatives.
This afternoon I was back in my bedroom, while my husband was cutting the grass and my adult daughter, who works for us, was with the kids in the playroom, Jeremy, who wanted to go outside with his dad (which no child here is allowed to do when the mower is running) ripped the molding that holds the glass in the one double door at the front of the house and dismantled it. QUIETLY.
Thank heaven we had years ago replaced three other similar french doors and had not gotten around to throwing the old ones out. So DH can take the molding off those doors to repair that one. But...come on now. It wasn't bad enough that he systematically dismantled his own bedroom door, broke a couple windows, banged multiple holes in the walls. Yet, I'm certain that we'r not alone in the home-destructiveness of a couple kids who have been adopted. I read Cindy's blog daily. I know it!
As for the CPS thing. It was stupid, and nothing will come of it. But CPS is NEVER pleasant to deal with.
I'm managing to stay very positive minded, though. I know in my heart that God has better things in store for us, and that we can ride out the bad. Together, we've always made it before and will again.
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