Fishing in the Snow

So on monday i went fishing early in the morning to Scofield. It started raining before we left but i had planned for that. I had my rain gear and some warm clothes so i didnt get wet at all and almost stayed warm... That is until it started snowing really hard. I had caught the only two fish of the day and everyone decided that they couldnt feel thier fingers so it was time to go. It was a good chance for me to test out my rain gear and i got to catch some fish as well. I was actually a lot of fun. I even cleaned and cooked the fish before Koren could really complain about the fact that i had fish at our house.

General News

Well i haven't posted anything for a little while so i thought i would comment on some of the general stuff that is going on. First i had a second interview with a company that i applied with in Provo. This time i met with the CEO and they told me that they would be sending over an offer today. So depending on the offer i will probably be changing jobs. If that does happen i will talk more about that later.

It is a long weekend this week and i am really excited as we have a lot of plans. First on Saturday i am going to be working on the garage. I have it completely cleaned out and i am going to paint the whole thing Saturday morning. Then hopefully start building the shelves and storage areas. I will take a lot of pictures as the progression of that project will be really cool to see. Then on Monday BJ and i are going fishing. He just got a new boat so that will be fun to try out.

My ten year high school reunion is coming up and that should be fun. i never know what to expect will things like that as they could be really fun or really dumb.

Well i think that is all for now.

Latest Photos

Here are some of the latest photos of our two chitlins. I will get all of them and post it on here soon but i wanted to get some up now.

Video Test

This is Isabelle eating dinner last night. I recorded it on my phone and i want to see if this works to post the video.

Micah is rolling over

Koren called me to day to tell me that Micah rolled over for the first time on his own today. He has been sitting up on his own for a few days now and those are two very exciting steps in his life. pretty soon he will be running around the house chasing Isabelle. But for now no more couches or beds for him alone.

This is my cookie...

Another Isabelle story that i forgot to put on my last post. The other day Isabelle, Koren and I were eating lunch and Isabelle ate all of her food really well. So after we said she could have a cookie. So we each got one cookie and we sat down at the table to eat them. Isabelle was sitting on my lap but then i needed to go outside for two seconds. So i sat her in my chair and set the half of my cookie that was left on the table. When i came back i saw Koren laughing her head off and Isabelle's mouth full of cookie. So i thought she must have shove what was left of hers in her mouth all at once. But then Koren said "Isabelle where is daddy's cookie?" and Isabelle smiled her huge smile and opened her mouth to show me a big glob of chewed up chocolate cookie. So i said well who's cookie is that on the table then. Isabelle picked up that cookie and said "this my cookie, daddy's is all gone". Koren explained to me that right after i left Isabelle got a huge smile on her face and told Koren that she was going to eat daddy's cookie before i got back. So when i got back all that was left was her cookie and she obviously gets to eat her own cookie.

The best part is that she shoved my whole cookie in her mouth because she knew i wouldn't be gone for very long. But then when that one was gone she SLOWLY took small bites of her and enjoyed it as if she were taunting me or showing me her dominance.

She is doing more and more of these funny things.

I'm getting worried...

I am really starting to worry about my ability to out think my children. I will give you a couple short stories of why i am getting worried.

1. Isabelle was eating lunch with Koren and she wanted to be done and have desert. She only had three pieces of chicken nuggets left on her plate so Koren told her that as soon as there were no more chicken nuggets on her plate they could have desert. So Isabelle picked up the three remaining pieces and put them in her lap, gave Koren a "i am smarter then you" look, pointed at her empty plate and said "desert now please".

2. Isabelle has a new awesome book with the Disney princesses and each page is a two sided puzzle of the princess. So loves to do puzzles and so that is one of her favorite books right now. She does have a hard time keeping track of all the pieces. We have not lost any so far and for have about 100 uses out of it already i am really proud of her for keeping track. Yesterday morning though we were missing a couple pieces and so Koren asked Isabelle where they were. (we ask her because 99.9% of the time if we ask her where something is she knows. It doesn't matter if it was a week since she had seen it she remembers.) She looked around for a second and then told Koren that the neighbors dog ate them. Now the dog ate the homework if very common in older kids but i would almost guarantee that Isabelle has never heard that before. That was all her idea.

Her favorite things to play with are puzzles and books and i know that is not making her any dumber. I love that she loves books. Now that i am writing this... She loves books, has dark skin, almost too smart for her own good. I think she is DAMON!!! if he had died i would believe in reincarnation. As long as she is Damon and not Bret!!

A Common Mortgage Mistake

As i hear common mistakes from borrowers i will try to post them on here so that you don't have to make the same mistake. Today i was talking to someone and they were asking about refinancing. They said that they were told and thought that it is not worth it to refinance your house unless you lower your interest rate by 1% or more. If it were only that simply... I know of times that i could have lowered someones interest rate 3% and it wasn't the right thing to do, and other times that we lowered their interest rate .125% and it WAS the right thing to do.

So how do you know????

there is one major issue that you are not considering in just looking at the interest rate. That is the fees that you have to pay to do the loan. If we can lower your interest rate 3% saving you $200 a month, but it cost you $20,000 in fees to do that. It probably isn't a good idea. But say we can save you .125% or $15 a month but we can do it on a no cost loan. Then you save money from the very first month.

There are a few other small things to consider after looking into the two big ones (rate and fees) and those are how long are you planning on keeping that mortgage? If you are going to pay fees to lower your interest rate, do you think rates are going to go down even more? And do you care about the lost time of payments that you have already made? These are minor compared to the rates and fees but are something that you should consider.

Fed Funds Rate Droped .25%

The fed lowered the Fed Funds Rate yesterday. (the fed actually only manipulates the FFR as i explained before) to 2%. They are getting close to the post 9/11 numbers that we saw and if the mortgage companies ever figure out what loans they want to do rates should come down a lot. We can only hope.

Oh and if any of you have a HELOC that is tied to prime, prime lowered .25% as well. It almost is always 3% over the FFR.