A cultural shift...in the right direction!

Last weekend our new neighborhood had a block party.  We were really excited about this event because we've heard such wonderful things about our neighbors, but only have met a few.

When we attend group events like this, and bring Sadie, I am always a little nervous as to how people will react.  I worry that they'll be afraid of us, or be intimidated by us, or the worst...feel sorry for us.  So, I always dress Sadie up really cute, make sure her hair is fixed and that her face is clean.  I mean, Sadie is for sure a "looker" so I want people to see how cute she is FIRST, and her disability SECOND.

We walked to the end of the street filled both with excitement and nervousness...at least I was.

But people were SO NICE.

There was a karaoke machine and people were singing and it was loud where we were standing, so I moved Sadie over to the lawn area and just parked her there.  There was an older man (everybody was older) sitting at a table over there, and I could see her, so I just left her there.  And I watched her.  And people who had met her when we were standing in front of the speakers, or who I'd met and pointed her out to, went over and were talking to her, touching her head, rubbing her legs, etc.  It was really sweet to see.

Nobody was afraid of her.  Nobody was intimidated.  Nobody was obviously keeping a distance from her or from us.  Everybody was just super nice.

So, on Monday, I walked down the street and knocked on the door of one mom I met who has a 2 year old and a baby and asked if they want to go to the park with us.  Sadie spent a long time on the swings and had a really good time.  And I made a new friend.

But the most amazing part of this whole story is that my new friend invited us to a community Easter Egg hunt tomorrow morning!!  We're not going, because Sadie can't find eggs, and even if she could, I'm sure she can't have what's inside of them.  But, the fact that this woman didn't even think of that and just invited us like we were a normal family with a normal kid who would want to hunt Easter Eggs really made me happy.

I feel like this whole experience reflects a cultural shift.  When I was younger I didn't know about special needs kids, I'm not sure I was around them enough to be aware.  I remember staring.  I remember being afraid to ask questions.  I remember they weren't at my parties and in my classes and at the playground.  Were they hidden?  Or were there just fewer of them?  But now days it seems like special needs kids are everywhere.  I mean, autism diagnoses are booming, medical technology is so amazing that it is saving the lives of babies born at 20-something weeks, and, because of the internet and facebook, we are learning more and more about different families with special needs kids.  We are speaking out against the word "retarded" and adapting equipment and activities so that everyone can participate.

I am proud of my new neighborhood and the acceptance they showed us last weekend.  And I love that Sadie was seen as a 2-year-old, not a disabled 2-year-old who can't do anything.  I think we're really going to like it here.

So, tell me...have you had an experience like mine?  Where your kid was accepted as a kid and not as a special needs kid?  Did you recognize it when this happened or were you like, "we don't treat him/her any differently at home so we don't expect anybody else to either"?  How did you react?

Our Backyard Orchard

Back in the fall, Brian discovered a group called the Valley Permaculture Alliance, which is a group of people who grow things here in Phoenix.  There are only certain things that grow here in the desert, and even those require some special treatment.  So, Brian has learned a lot about what varieties to grow and how to take care of them so they'll bear fruit.  It's a lot different than having a garden in Oregon, where it doesn't get to be 115 degrees in the summer!

So, one day we visited a lady's house who claims to have a backyard orchard.  I was curious how she was able to plant multiple fruit trees in her backyard and make them fit.  Brian wanted to pick her brain about which trees she has and how she takes care of them.  Here are some pictures from our visit...keep in mind, this was December, so everything looks kind of scraggly.

This is her citrus, she had tangerines and oranges and lemons along the side of her car port

These are apple trees.  She had 3 or 4 planted really close to one another so they'd cross pollinate

banana trees!!!  (doing much better than ours!)

These are the apricots and peaches and plums along the other side of her house.

We thought this was a fantasticly brilliant idea!!  So, when we moved into our new house, we started making plans.  We quickly pulled out the GIANT oleander and the 4 bougainvillas to make room for more fruit trees.  Just last weekend Brian planted 5 new fruit trees he bought.

Our 5 new fruit trees: peach, plum, apricot, pluot, nectarine

Our 5 new babies all planted!!

I'm really excited to have these grow up and bear fruit.  Plus they'll create a nice hedge to hide that ugly, boring fence.  But, we're going to have to learn how to can!!

So, here's what our "orchard" looks like now:  4 different kinds of pomegranates (did you know there are different kinds?  You always just get Wonderful at the store!), 2 different kinds of guavas, the 5 fruit trees above, our 2 citrus trees (oranges and grapefruits), our 2 banana trees that we brought from the other house, and we have a blackberry plant (a special species that grows in the desert), a star fruit plant, and a goji berry.  Then, of course, we can eat our neighbors figs if we want them!   Next year, we plan on planting 3 or 4 apple trees out front.  And we'll build the beds for our garden and start growing our vegetables in there.  The goal is to not have to buy produce at the store!  I think we're on our way!!

What do you think?  Anything else you think we should plant?  What do you like to grow at your house?

Thanksgiving Day 11

This week we signed the short sale acceptance papers for the house we want to buy. And I am so thankful that it's finally happening, because it seems like there are so many things that can go wrong when buying a house...especially when it's a short sale.

When we saw this house, it wasn't even on the market. We pushed our way into this house, not once, but twice. The tenant was confused and a little creeped out, and when Brian went without me she reluctantly let him video with his phone, but she didn't want us to take pictures when we came back. I've been in this house once, Brian's been there twice. That's it.

The reason this house wasn't on the market was because someone else had made an offer. But it wasn't moving very quickly, and the selling agent didn't seem very competent, so we didn't have a lot of hope. And Brian convinced me to throw all our apples into this one basket, and that scared me because I didn't have a lot of hope. Nobody did.

But all of the sudden the other offer fell through, our offer was accepted and things moved along quickly.

Now we have a close date of Nov 23.

And I am so thankful that we have been blessed with this house. It's big enough to grow into. It doesn't need a ton of repairs. And it has no pool (which Brian is really excited about). I'm mostly excited that there are enough rooms for me to have my own office/craft room.

Let me repeat that; my OWN office/craft room!

We will get to walk through again with the inspector on Monday, and I will get to take pictures. We have started thinking about furniture and packing and hiring movers. Hopefully now we can get moved in and settled so that we can start the new year with a new life in our dream home.

House Hunt Update

My last post was about the dream I had about the perfect house, now I have real news to share with you.

We have been looking for the perfect house for many months now. In fact, we thought we'd be moved into it by now. It's just been really hard to find the perfect place to live. When we started out we were mostly looking at the size of the kitchen and making sure there weren't any handicap hazards. But then we (and by we, I mean me) had visions of living there for the rest of our lives. I want our next house to be the place where we raise our children, where they live all their lives and where they come home to at Christmastime from college. I want it to be Grandma and Grandpa's house where our grown-up children bring their children and tell them stories about growing up there. This is how I grew up, and this is the culture I came from, and this is the experience I want to share with my children. So, as you can imagine we've had to be very very picky.

So, we got creative. We thought maybe we should find a house at auction and asked our realtor to send us a list of pre-foreclosure properties. The list was 27 pages long, with 10 houses each page. All we had to go on from the list was square footage, really. So, I started weeding through them. I'd look at the ones that were big enough for us according to square footage, and then I'd type the address into Zillow and Google Maps and I'd get an idea of what the house was worth and where it was located. And out of the first 10 pages or so, I came up with a list of about 7 houses. And then we asked the realtor for previous MLS listings on these 7 houses. Out of all of them there was one that we were really interested in.

There were no pictures. We could tell from Google Maps only that it didn't have a pool. We knew what the square footage was. It had an auction date for sometimes in October. But for some reason we wanted to know more and to go see it, so we had our realtor call and get some information.

It was complicated and I'll spare you all the crazy boring details, but basically the house had an uncooperative tenant, one offer, and the owners lived in California. But after some poking and prodding, we got a chance to go look. However, that was a day that Sadie was struggling, so Brian went by himself. He decided he really liked it and he took a video (which isn't really that good) where I could kind of get an idea of what the house looked like. I liked enough of what I saw that I was willing to write the offer...but we were lucky enough to get in there and see it again.

We didn't have a lot of hope, but we submitted the offer, which was $10K higher than the other offer, so our only chance was that the other buyer would back out. The selling realtor didn't really think the other offer was that serious anyway.

We pushed and pushed and pushed. And luckily we have an EXCELLENT realtor who has a lot of experience (probably more than the selling agent), so he was able to kind of use some leverage and suggest some things that we were unaware of. But we still didn't have a lot of hope, in fact we were starting to look at other houses. And then we had a breakthrough.

Just today, we got an email from our realtor saying that the other buyer had cancelled and that our offer had been accepted!!!

He also told us that as far as short sales go, at this point in the process, we're in the best situation possible. I think it's because since there was a previous offer the short sale process was started and a lot of the "foot-work" has already been done. So, hopefully our offer just shoots right through smoothly and quickly.

We're hoping to move in for Sadie's second birthday (January).

What makes this house so perfect? Mostly it's the neighborhood. We want to live there the rest of our lives, we want a nice, established neighborhood. But the house itself has 4 bedrooms...plus an office. It has a nice, big kitchen. 2 of the bedrooms are in a separate wing from the other two...perfect for slumber party all-nighters where mom and dad don't want to be bothered! It doesn't have a pool, but it has a nice yard with some mature citrus trees. Brian has promised to plant our pomegranate trees in the ground when we get there...and of course we'll be digging up and bringing with us the banana tree.

Hooray for the perfect house!!

Find more information about Jim Gordon (our fantastic realtor) here, and find him on facebook here.