News!!

This past Saturday we had my dad's 50th birthday party. It was a lot of fun! Here's a couple pics from the day:

My sister, my dad, and me :)

Just me and dad :)
He got about 8 or 9 bottles of crown!
Definitely enough for another party! ;)

This is my Aunt Rose. She's the best.
But she lives in NC, so I don't get to see
her much :( 

So while we were drinking and eating and having a good time, Chris and I were talking to my cousins about this house they're fixing up. It's a 2-bedroom, 1-bath in Florissant and they said they'd rent it to us. We kind of laughed about it and let it go since we had never even considered living in Florissant. 

Well come Sunday we were driving back to Farmington and thinking, depending on what the house is like and how much they'd charge us for rent, it could be worth looking into at the very least. So we drove all the way back to Florissant just to go look at the house. And we loved it. The back yard is huge and has a nice patio. It has a one-car garage, a breezeway/mudroom type thing, and a good-sized basement. The only downside is that there's no dishwasher (but we generally eat off of paper plates most of the time anyway...) and there isn't a ton of storage in the bathroom. The closets are also a little small, but we figure with the basement and garage, that should give us plenty of extra storage for all the stuff we don't use on a regular basis. 

I called them on Tuesday to tell them that we officially want to rent it so it should be ready for us sometime in September. For those of you who are wondering, yes, this adds another half hour or so to my drive. Which will suck. But I have a couple options. 

I can always stay in Cape a couple nights if I really have to. And I'm hoping I'll be able to keep working from home at least one day a week. But I've also decided to start looking for jobs in St. Louis, even if they're just part time. I've got a few reasons for this. 

First, I'm already exhausted and I'm not even in school right now. So adding more time to my drive, plus classes is gonna make that worse. Second, because I'm doing so much driving, I'm spending a ton on gas and car maintenance. Yes, working for the university means I only pay 30% of my tuition, but it also means that I get almost none of the loan money I get approved for (I don't understand why this is but I guess they figure if most of my tuition is covered I don't need the extra money). So this semester--before we even decided to move to Florissant--I decided I wasn't going to take the tuition discount, because I get all of my loan money that way, which I need. So whether I continue working for the university or not, I'm not using that discount anymore, so I figured I might as well start looking in St. Louis. I'll just have to find a place that's willing to work around my class schedule. 

There's too much math involved to really get into the details. But basically if Chris and I are living and working in St. Louis and I'm only driving to school a couple days a week (instead of 5), we'll save a ton on gas and all that. 

And we get to switch our internet to AT&T! Unfortunately that means paying HughesNet's outrageous cancellation fees. But once that's done, we'll be paying about the same amount for cable and internet as what we're paying for internet alone now. So we'll be saving a lot of money as far as stuff like that goes once we move. 

We're super excited about the house and can't wait to move. The fact that we're so close to moving makes our current house seem that much more unbearable. 

Things will definitely suck for a while with all the driving and possible staying in Cape that I will have to do. But when we talked about it and whether we thought it was a good idea or not, we had to think long-term. I'll be starting my last semester of school this time next year. And we had plans of moving back to St. Louis after I finished school anyway regardless of where we were living at the time. Plus, my cousin said if we want to buy the house from him in a couple years, he'd sell it to us for pretty dang cheap. And we already know we like the city and the area and want to stay there, so if we end up loving the house too, why not buy it? So, thinking long-term, we just couldn't pass this up. 

Plus Copper is going to love that back yard!