You could probably tell that I was a bit stressed out in my last post. I have calmed down quite a bit.

We got the wheat cut a few days after my last post. It only brought in 16 bushels / acre. Before the hail storm, when we counted heads and counted berries in the head, it looked like we were going to get around 40, so that sucked. But, the 16 got us our contract ($4005) and we have about 250 bushels left over. We got the check for that and the check from the hail insurance (only $2353...coverage is going up next year!) and were able to make the land payment and the line of credit payment on time.

Line of credit is now at $0 and we only owe about $14,000 on this piece of land. (This is 80 acres of farm land he bought about 5 years ago.) We both agree that if we ever get ahead and have money left over to throw at some debt, that is the one to throw it at. To actually own the whole piece of land...how awesome! And, it is the highest interest rate at 7%, because all of our other debt we can deduct from our taxes, or is just low, so the effective interest rate on everything else is ~ 5.5%.

Baler got fixed from the last post, and even though I had been swathing for 6 days with him basically sitting still, he got caught up with me last week. Of course, the baler broke again. This time it will be a $600 part which they had to order from Canada, so he was working on that this week. He got the baling done last week before the rain came in...just in time. But, he wanted to get the beans planted last week and didn't get it done before the rain. We got 2.5" on Thursday night, so that put the stops to my swathing for him last weekend.

Now, for south house news. I called my mommy (I'm making fun of myself here) about the same time as my last post, and just about cried. I had been working 10 hour days and staying up until 2 in the morning to work on the house and I wasn't getting much done, in my eyes, and then going back home and swathing for 3 days in a row and then coming back and starting over. The house work was slow and steady, but it felt slooooooooooooow and jerky. Well, she volunteered to come help me! I met her and my sister (who will be a 7th grader this upcoming year) and drove down here on Sunday morning, and I thought all we would do is paint the window sills and finish the bathroom. That was my goal. Well, let me tell you, they did SOO much more than that. I worked with them all day Sunday, and we did get the windows sills done in all the rooms, and the bathroom was recaulked and that stuff looked great! But, when we were taking off the last bit of tape in the office late Sunday night, it pulled the wallpaper off below the window. After cussing (and getting reprimanded for exposing my little sister to that) we decided that we could just texture it.

Well, that meant painting the whole room, which needed it anyway. We were going to go to home depot to get the paint, but you know what is cheaper than buying paint? Finding the paint that the previous owner used on a shelf in the garage! Yep, that turned out great. I went to work the next day (and the next day, and the next day...they ended up staying until Thursday night) and my sister textured the wall and they painted the whole room. The office was some kind of funky almost translucent white wall paper that had an ugly border on it, so the paint in here really helped. They spackled the 2nd bedroom nail holes and used the old paint to cover that up, and it looks like they repainted the whole room! Yes, a fresh coat of paint really brightens up the room, but it turns out, just getting rid of the nail holes does the same thing.

They worked all day and when I got home from work I helped. We painted the trim in the hallway and painted the hallway the same color as two of the bedrooms. My air conditioner had an ugly piece of plywood that had a 19" x 38" hole cut out of it so the air could get through it, and we painted the wood the hallway color and got two 20" white vents and covered that up. The kitchen had a similar thing for the water heater, and we covered those vents up with 16"x16" vents. We spackeled the master bedroom, pulled off the border and painted that with left over paint, and also painted all of the trim in that room. I got some plants from Loew's and mom planted them in the little garden in the front, with some pretty red ones right by the door.

Last thing we did was make curtains for the master bedroom. There are two windows that sit side by side on one wall and another window on another wall. We had looked at walmart for some curtains, but it would have been $25-$35 per window had we gone that route. We found some twin sheet sets with a pretty pattern for $9 a piece and bought 4 of them. These made all the window covers, and had the 4 pillowcases and the fitted sheets left over. I gave mom the fitted sheets and put the pillowcases on the pillows on the bed, so that all matches. We finally left late (like 11:00 p.m.) Thursday night.

Oh, thank you, thank you, mom and sister! It just looks awesome in here now. Some day I'll fix up a house and actually live in it for a while! And paint it so I like it, not so it is generic (but, I actually do like some shades of beige...) I did spend a bit of money. Buying the plants, buying the vents, buying more kilz, buying some hardware. But, holy cow, it was worth it. Probably $200, but the only thing left to do is paint some trim if I want to (it doesn't look bad as it is, but it MIGHT look better if I painted it) and get a gate for the back yard fence. One of DH's friends is a contractor and he is working on that part, so after that, I don't have to spend any more money on this house.

Of course, my sister didn't want to eat home cooked meals at all (she kind of thought of it as a vacation, even though she worked SO HARD, at least it wasn't outside in the heat), so mom took her to McDonald's every lunch and I brought home some KFC and Pizza Hut every night. And she got her ears pierced (in my family, we are supposed to have to wait until we are 13 to get our ears pierced, but she is 12 and doesn't turn 13 until December. Mom and Dad made her call all 6 of her older sisters to see if it was ok with us...we all said yes).

New real estate agent brought her entire office here yesterday, and they ALL liked it. One of them brought a client back tonight, and even though she didn't give us an offer, she did say, if someone else offers, let her know. No one is complaining about the window sills anymore, no one is complaining about the ugly hole by the air conditioner, no one is complaining about the hallway, or the borders, or anything. I can't say it enough, thank you mom and sister!

Now, let's just get this house sold!

One last bit of good news. I had a skiing accident a year ago in February...about a year and a half ago. I slipped on some ice and basically did a cartwheel down the mountain and the back of the ski on my left leg hit the mountain and did mucho damage to my knee. ACL, MCL, and meniscus. I had surgery on it March 2007. Well, ever since then, even after therapy, it has hurt, and my hip hurt. I told the surgeon and the therapist, but they didn't do anything about it. I just thought that that was the way it would be the rest of my life. I did something to my back a few weeks ago and needed to go to the chiropractor (for the first time since the accident), so while I was there, I asked him if maybe it had something to do with my hips. I mean, as hard as that ski hit and as much torque it put on my body, physics says that all that impact wasn't absorbed by my knee. He felt the inside of the knee and asked "does that hurt?" YES! Stop pushing on it! He felt the back of my knee and said it was swollen. So, he popped my hips back in place, and I DON'T HURT ANYMORE!!! It is amazing! I have been walking around with my hips out of place for a year and a half now, and my knee has been constantly in pain, and now, nothing. I can finally start exercising and not hurt and maybe stick with it cause I'm not in pain! Yeah!

Final thing. We signed the papers at the title office on Friday for the 320 acres we are buying from his cousin. Another $750 for closing costs, but now it is OURS! We now have 400 acres. His dad paid for some of the planting we did for him (about $550), and he gave us $200 just for the heck of it, so that covered that! I am sooo excited. Of course, that means we own 3 houses now (the south house which I am selling, the north house we live in, and the farm house that had druggies living in it up till about 3 years ago and so it needs to either be fixed up or tore down). Now we can work on getting water to the place and a fence around it so we can put cattle there. Exciting stuff.