July 3 - Happy Birthday Dad!

My Dad is 68 today! Happy birthday Dad, you are one of a kind and I love you!

So, I'm trying to fit in some work today around looking at a few more houses this morning, and all of my family being around the rest of the day. It should be a fun, busy day!

My folks were over this morning to watch the kids while Cyndie and I hit the houses. We had donuts (with candles for my dad), oatmeal, and eggs for breakfast ... the breakfast of champions!

The houses we saw were interesting. Still no "gotta buy it"s. We'll keep plugging. Cyndie is meeting with a lawyer to try to get our Trust up to date in advance of heading to Cancun!

Holiday Weekend Cometh ...

Not a lot is happening now ... just gearing up for the holiday weekend. Jane comes tonight (will stay with Gowans). Tomorrow we're going to look at a couple more houses. Then I'll work a half day and help celebrate my dad's 68th birthday! Yeah Dad! Then it'll be more family time throughout the weekend.

Saw a few houses ...

So we saw four houses this afternoon and really discovered what a house for under $100k in Lake Geneva looks like:

1. Small - It's likely going to be 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, maybe another BR if the house is trashy enough.
2. Old - The houses going for under $100k are those that have been around for 50+ years, which means they're also 1) Small.
3. Trashy - These are handyman specials folks.

So we saw four houses with two definite "no"s and two "maybe"s. It looks like we'll try to see a few more places on Friday morning.

Starting July Off Right!

So, we're starting a new month, and kind of starting a new era for the Wildwood DeVries. We've sold the CA house, and now have quite a bit of money, certainly more than we've ever dealt with before, to steward. On the way to and from the cabin (20 or so hours total in the car) we listened to some CDs by Dave Ramsey, a financial guru who happens to be a Christian (but whose advice is not overtly Christian). Anyway, we are very convicted that we don't want to let ourselves get back into the mode of "now we have some more income/money, but where is it all going". We want to be more intentional with what we do with our money, and how we manage it on God's behalf. So we're doing two things.

First, we're going to have a monthly budget (which Ramsey calls a Cash Flow Plan). His point is that if you don't direct where every dollar is going to go before it's on hand, then the dollars tend to seep out here and there and by month end, you haven't put aside anything for saving, and you're short on this bill or that, etc. So here we are ... more financially free than we've been for a while, but on a budget. And we're happy about that. It's actually pretty liberating to know that, "yeah, I have $50 to go out for dinner ... I don't have to worry about that". Or, "no problems, I can deal with a $500 water treatment related bill because I have a fund to deal with large, bills like that". Anyway, it's good stuff, and we're excited to start that.

The second thing is that we're going out today with our local realtor to look at some investment properties. We've really been blessed with how real estate has worked out for us. And we're not afraid to get our hands dirty and but in some sweat equity into a place. So we'll see where that goes! Should be interesting!

So there you have it, a new financial dawn for the Wildwood DeVries. It'll be a little work, but we're excited to be able to see some results!

Meet Bill, Lars and the Real Girl

Saw a couple of flicks on vacation ...

Lars and the Real Girl (4.1/5)
Pretty darn good movie about a topic, mental illness/delusions, that would never, ever, be addressed in a studio movie. This was light most of the time, while getting serious occasionally. Definitely not a feel good movie per se, but also not so heavy you want to go jump off a bridge. Ryan Gosler did an excellent job portraying the earnest, lovable, but struggling protagonist ... quite a different turn than his star creating roll in the Notebook. All in all, it was an interesting look at something that doesn't turn up much in the movies, and was worth the watch.

Meet Bill (2.1/5)
This was a pretty stupid movie about a guy having what was essentially a midlife crisis. There wasn't anything really redeeming about it. The acting was "eh", the story kind of lame, and in the end it was really kind of pointless. Initially I was thinking 2.8, but dropped it after I wrote this ... steer well clear!

Movies I've seen recently:
Juno - 4.8/5
Slumdog Millionaire - 4.6/5
Iron Man - 4.2/5
Lars and the Real Girl - 4.1/5
Wall-E - 4.0/5
Traitor - 4.0/5
The Dark Knight - 3.9/5
Star Trek - 3.9/5
Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - 3.7/5
Kung Fu Panda - 3.5/5
The Passion - 3.5/5
Valkyrie - 3.5/5
The Incredible Hulk - 3.4/5
New in Town - 3.2/5
Horton Hears a Who - 3.0/5
Meet Bill - 2.1/5
Jonah, a VeggieTales Movie - 2.4/5
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1.9/5
Burn After Reading - 1.5/5

Back Baby!

So, we're back. Working, playing, doing the summer thing, yeah!

We had a great trip! Here's the quick recap:

• Friday/Saturday - on the road. Driving, stayed the night in MO and enjoyed the pool at the hotel both Friday night and Saturday morning. Hung with my cousins, Marc and Erik a bit on Saturday. It was fun to catch up with them.
• Saturday pm - hit the cabin! When we first arrived, a decent sized oak tree was down across the whole driveway! Luckily we could park in their "guest" parking spot. Cyndie and I managed to pull the limbs out of the way with Uncle John's old F100 pickup! (I gave him a hard time that with all the equipment/tools/etc he has out there, he didn't have a chain saw!) Fished a bit, swam a lot ... this will be a re-occurring theme for the rest of the vacation.
• Sunday/Monday/Tuesday - our good friends, the Hobbys, and their six kids visited. That was a lot of fun. The kids really liked playing with their kids. We had fun just being with Chris and Vicki. I think it was Monday morning as Chris, I, and their two older boys were shoving off to go fishing, that Chris got his cell phone out and had this conversation (with his boss), "how would you feel if I extended my vacation a day?" It cracked me up that he made the call from the fishing boat!
• Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday - relaxing with Cyndie and the kids. Daily activities included swimming, games (UNO, Game of Life, Monopoly), rides around the lake in the golf cart (Emma did a great job driving all by herself ... once I convinced her that she needed to press the gas and brake with the same foot so that she couldn't depress both at the same time. Tim, not such a good driver. He's convinced that to drive you need to constantly turn the steering wheel ... left, right, left, right ... makes for a wobbly ride!), fishing (after the Hobby's left we stopped saving the fish and threw them all back. But we had one big meal where all 12 of us had fish!), playing on the association playground. Good stuff!
• Friday/Saturday - Uncle John and Auntie Diane stopped by for the night. It's always fun to spend time with them!
• Saturday - slowly packing up, while still enjoying the cabin.
• Sunday - marathon trip home. Left the cabin about 6:40a, pulled into Lake Geneva around 6:05 p. It actually wasn't too bad of a drive!
• Weather - smoking hot!!!!! It was in the high 90s or 100 all week at the cabin. Even the evenings and mornings were not much better. We were SO grateful that the cabin had AC! The lake was very refreshing, but by the end of the week, it was probably in the high 80s temperature wise.
  

Now we're back in the swing of things, and looking forward to a long July 4th weekend!

So One More

Well, we're sitting here killing time between eating breakfast and a swim in the pool, so I'll make use of the last bit of internet connectivity for one last post. We had a pretty uneventful drive yesterday. A good stop in a Burger King with a play land in Sterling, IL. We stayed the night in Bethany, MO. Crazily, it turns out we went to the same Subway here for dinner that we stopped at 20 months ago when we were driving the opposite direction during the move. We enjoyed the pool here last night, and will get in one more swim this morning before heading off to KC to meet my cousin Marc. The kids had a bit of a rough night ... sleeping in the same full bed, with us in the room, etc. Oh well, that's life on the road!