Cali-where?

Long time no blog.  I won't make any excuses about why it's been so long, other than life just gets in the way sometimes.  Getting in the way most recently has been our move to Indiana.  New job, new house and a whole host of other things that go along with this sort of life change and maybe it's a little easier to see why blogging and more or less anything social media-like takes a back seat.
That aside, I must say that this has been a great step we've taken in our lives.  We had been looking to get out of California for years and had been mainly focusing on the South, Georgia, Tennessee, North or South Carolina. Maybe even Virginia.  I was very close in the running for a great position in Pennsylvania, which I obviously didn't get, but we never really thought about Indiana.  We still ask ourselves if we can believe we live here. 
I had some concerns about things like the weather and how would I deal with snow.  Serious snow, that is, but I must say that it really has been pretty wonderful.  Indiana is a much more family friendly place.  The employment seems to be really booming as all of my adult kids, and even my 17 year old, have secured jobs pretty quickly.  The cost of living is really great too.  Gas is at least 20-40 cents a gallon less, food and other things are generally less expensive and housing...well, it's just ridiculous how much more you get for your house dollar.  The home we have, with the 1/4 acre lot and huge swimming pool would cost at least twice as much as we paid and if it were in So Cal.  It would be the same floor-plan as every 5th house in the subdivision and they would ALL have that same "Southwestern" cookie cutter stucco and tile roof. 

I have trees! 

I like to tell folks that here, you cut down trees to build a house, while in California, they chop the top off a hill, backfill the lot with silt and granite chunks that pass through a 6 inch screen and then plant trees around the wood frame, chicken wire and stucco house to make it look like anywhere but California.  Then, once the sod takes a little bit of root, you realize it's far too expensive to run your sprinklers everyday to keep the grass alive and Voila! your yard is as brown as the "Southwestern motif" that your HOA requires you to maintain.
Do you get the sense that I'm glad I left?

My backyard

 

Under that blanket of 14 inches or so of snow, lies my swimming pool and my huge backyard.  You know what will be there when Spring comes?  Green grass!!  Can't even get that in California.

The kids were a bit upset leaving all that they knew behind, but they've adapted quite nicely and already have a lot of friends and new activities.  I feel like they're blossoming in ways they never would have if we had stayed out West.  Christi loves it too.  She's always wanted to live somewhere that has 4 actual seasons and she is enjoying the little things like the farm fresh veggies that we get that are actually grown right down the road.  The fact that deer come into our yard at night to eat the few leaves left hanging on the huge oak in the front yard and having the kids be able to ride buses to school.  She also likes that my commute is 15 minutes each way.  This is the first time in over 20 years that I have lived closer than 50 miles to work.

We also want to thank those of you who encouraged us to go for the Indiana move.  Lots of you who live here or have before, told us about what to expect here and gave us advice about preparing for winter and such and we appreciate all the information you shared.

We look forward to new challenges, new adventures and maybe even new blog posts.

Stay tuned!

Set your DVRs! Or not.

We told you that we'd let you know and now we are. The TLC version of Inside the human body is set to air tonight at 7 pm pacific time. We are looking forward to seeing what changes TLC made in their version. They filmed quite a bit more after the BBC was finished, so it could be very different from what we saw on the dvd BBC sent us. Christi also wanted me to mention that when we filmed this, she was at her heaviest and has since lost a little over 60 pounds (she really does look awesome!). I'm even 30 pounds lighter than I was then too. Can't do anything about my looks though. Jessica is coming over and we're all gonna watch it together. We'll have some snacks and enjoy our 5 minutes on the screen. Kinda silly, but it's one of those things we do.

We are the silly Casons, after all.

House update

Just a quick update and some info on the short sale house that we are buying. Here is a link to the listing for those of you that are interested. Our amazing realtor Leanna Bradshaw has been great throughout the whole process. She's been in this hunt with us now for almost 2 years and has stuck through 5 short sales, shown us countless houses, in the morning, noon and night. She has pestered sellers with all manner of questions for us and always has stood by us. She has learned to know exactly what we're looking for and doesn't show us houses we wouldn't want. She is now working out of Orange County, CA. If you're in need of a realtor, give her a call.

In case you thought we were dead.

Well, we're not. We've been busy with the house hunt, life in general and when we weren't doing that, we were procrastinating. Notice I said "PRO" crastinating. Just means I'm really, really good at it. Just a little update: On the house front, we've made several offers on houses since our last house post. The one we were waiting for, with the urine stained carpet, went on so long that we started looking again. Surprisingly we found a whole bunch of houses that were in better shape and for the same or only a bit more money. We actually went into escrow on one that was pretty good, but I decided it didn't have quite enough space for what we'd be paying monthly. After a whole lot of searching, we finally found a short sale that was in a better situation than the stinky one. This home is immaculate and it's clear that these people took great care of this house. Since this house is not yet in arrears, the negotiations are going much smoother than a typical short sale. It is a 5 bed, 2 3/4 bath with 3 car garage, pretty good size backyard and a huge long driveway. There is also nobody behind us and no development likely for awhile. It is also on the outside of a bend in the road, almost like a cul-de-sac, and the wedge shape of the property means that our neighbors to each side are a bit further distance than most, and are at an angle so that our windows are not looking directly across at theirs. Long story short, we truly think this is THE ONE, so we've pulled all other offers and have stopped looking. Our agent says things are going smoothly.
In other news, the show we filmed for the BBC was supposed to have aired on the 5th and we are awaiting our DVD copies from our producer. She said the BBC would send them as soon as the show aired in the UK, so we're anxious to see it. It's called Inside Human Bodies just in case you happen to be somewhere you can watch BBC one.
That's it for now. Christi and I will try and get back to this thing, but only time will tell. My new job doesn't have loads of down time like my old one did, so no blogging from work.

Not much anyway.

Bumps in the road

We posted before about the house on which we made an offer, waiting for the approval of the short sale by the bank. It appears now that we have crossed the final hurdle of approval and now are merely waiting for the bank to open escrow. When we last posted about the house, we were going to see it with Christi's dad and some of the older kids. The house we saw that day, was not the same as the one we had seen and placed our offer. Since that time, the owners had moved and left their mother in charge of the house. She apparently had 3 little shaky dogs that had been having some accidents on the carpet. Sadly, at least 2 of the rooms in the house now had distinct dog urine odors. We left that day after having our agent contact the seller's agent and extracting a commitment to double clean the carpets upon completion of their move. Fast forward to last week and the owners had gone, and the carpet had been double cleaned. Sadly, the urine smell remains. It appears as though it has completely soaked through the carpet and padding and into the wood of the upstairs floor. The downstairs floor is concrete, but the carpet and padding will have to go. It is my hope that only the two main rooms of concern will need the carpet ripped out, but that remains to be seen. Christi was extremely disappointed because she had wanted to have a home that she could be proud to invite folks into and now it appears as though we may have bare floors for awhile because we won't be able to immediately afford to replace that much carpet. And when we do, it will be the good stuff with extra thick padding. This is going to be our home for a long time (God willing) and we want it to be right. We feel certain that we lost that previous house because it wasn't the right one for us. This one has all we wanted and more. We won't be letting our hard work go for nothing over the removal of some carpet, that's for sure. Christi, in particular has worked her little tushy off calling, calculating, and negotiating to make this work. I did my part, working every scrap of overtime I could get, but it was really her that made it all possible. I thank God for my wonderful wife and kids and now for this opportunity to put my family in a home they deserve. I'll be praying for a quick opening of escrow so we can get started on this new path before us.

Finished up filming for TLC and The BBC.

Remember in August when I posted this? Apparently since the BBC documentary will also air on TLC, they wanted a bit more footage for the U.S. version, so they sent a second crew out to film us. The crew included our Director/producer Gwen Isaac, of Midnight Swim productions, Cinematographer Gavin Brennan, and our sound technician, whose first name was John, unfortunately I didn't get his last name. As we got acquainted with our crew, Christi was beside herself to discover that Gavin had worked on the Deadliest catch on the Time Bandit boat and John had worked on the crew of the Ghost Hunters series on SyFy. These are a couple of the family's favorite shows and everybody had lots of questions for the guys. While the last post was titled "The British are coming!", in this case our crew were from New Zealand; (Gwen), Australia; (Gavin) and America; John. Gwen was Fabulous and has been all over the world, Christi did not enough time to question her too much.
It was a pretty good day, and the kids had a lot of fun playing soccer in the front yard for the camera. It was funny as Gwen kept telling the kids to kick the football and the kids would look at her and she'd have to say, "soccer ball". Afterwards, Christi and I did a pretty candid interview regarding our ability to have so many kids and our experiences with birth and such.
All in all it was a pretty good day and I hope the footage they got makes for a great documentary when the final cut is done.

Waiting for our castle

Not too long ago, we made the announcement that our backup offer on a house had been moved up to the primary offer and we were in the waiting game for bank approval. Well, some paperwork has been shuffled and the previous owners are moving out and we are a bit closer to actually getting this thing done. We are going to see it with Christi's dad today so he can have a look at it (postponed from a couple weeks ago) plus the older kids. A few of you have asked, so I'll provide this link to the listing, for your viewing pleasure. As before, I'll ask any of you that pray to keep us in your prayers to get this house. I think it is the one we were meant for.

From the back of the line, to the front, and no cuts, no butts, no coconuts.

At a time like this, the reptilian part of my brain tells me to refrain from talking about things like this, in order to avoid the wrath of the Real Estate Gods. But I seldom listen to my own superstitious thoughts and so I'll tell you that Christi and I are now the primary offer on what is probably the best house we've seen yet. As noted here, we lost out on a short sale on which we had been waiting almost 6 months for a final answer. It was rather heartbreaking as we weren't even informed that our offer had been dropped and so we were on the hook for probably 2 months unnecessarily. As I said in that post, we had since put in offers, 2 of which we were in backup offer status. Well, it happened. The primary offer on a 5 bedroom 3 bath house, with 3000 plus square feet fell through and our offer was submitted to the bank. Unfortunately, the previous buyer lost his job, and our sympathies are with him for that, but I think that this is our time. As Christi kept saying after we became the backups "the backup offer on the previous house got it" so she and I kept some very high hopes. It looks like things just might work out this time. This house is the best we've seen yet as it keeps us in the schools we wanted, has nearly double the footage of where we are now, 5 bedrooms and a 3 car garage. The backyard is completely walled in with concrete block walls and the landscaping shields the backyard from nosy neighbors. Most importantly, it has that one feature that Christi has been dying for for so long, a fireplace. In fact it has 2, the most awesome one being in the master bedroom right in front of the garden tub (read: Luuuv tub). The kitchen is large with great cabinets and stainless stove and dishwasher (another important feature). We are taking her dad to see it on Thursday, to get his opinion, but I'm sure he'll be just as pleased with it as we are. My hopes are hanging on this one, but we feel really good about this house. If you pray at all, please pray that things work out for us with this house.

It will feel so good to finally have a place of our own.

Just a little update

Christi has been posting on her facebook about various events that have occurred in our lives recently, so I'm going to try and update on these things and fill in some details about what has been going on with us lately.

Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea: The Cason News Update!

For those of you wishing Dalton well, he has an appointment on the 20th to have some upper GI and lower GI scans and an ultrasound to have a thorough look at his innards and see what this mass is all about. The Doc at Loma Linda said that whatever it was, it would most likely involve some sort of surgical intervention, we just need to find out more and see what is what. We hope that those of you that pray will do so for a simple diagnosis and easy treatment. He says it's not hurting much anymore, but we want to get this thing out and finished so he can get busy with college and work and whatnot.

On the home buying front: Some of you know that we were in a contract for a house that was a short sale and were waiting to hear if we had bank approval on the first mortgage (we were told that the second mortgage holder had approved us). Apparently, without contacting us, the listing agent heard from the bank that they wanted an offer of at least $6500 more than we had offered and they chose to go with a backup offer without contacting us and giving us the chance to counter. We had been waiting just shy of 6 (six) months thinking we had it in the bag, when I just happened to drive by the house and saw that the swimming pool was full of clean water (it had been near empty with some stagnant rain water at the bottom when we saw it). Curious, and knowing that our agent had been unable to reach the listing agent for some time, I thought I would just call the main office and inquire about it as though I were just looking. I called and asked and was told that the house was set to close escrow the very next day, but they had many more lovely houses in the area to show me....

W.T...um...Heck????

I was obviously quite upset by this, and made my displeasure known to the agent who had answered the phone. She didn't have any answers and was, honestly, pretty dismissive of my outrage. After several messages left for the listing agents and having our agent make some inquiries, we figure that one of the listing agents probably screwed his fellow listing agent by dumping us and taking the bigger offer without notice and may have taken the lion's share of the profits too. While I know we could probably have raised a legal stink about this, it would have cost us money we can't afford to lose and so we took it as a sign from God that the house was not the right one for us. We have since made a couple offers, on which we stand as backups and are continuing to look.

We will find a house.

We have also been contacted by a young lady from the BBC and it appears they would like to interview us for a documentary on the human body. We will be featured in an episode on reproduction, (naturally!) and we're told that it will air on TLC in the U.S. in 2011. They originally intended to film the birth of #16 but the hospital balked for safety reasons (read: liability) and so it will just be the interview. That's going to happen on the 29th, we'll let you know how that turns out.

Speaking of #16, Christi is scheduled to be induced on the 1st, because the Doc likes to keep as much control due to the high risk associated with numerous pregnancy moms. Of course, that is assuming that the baby will let us get that far in the first place. Christi has been having some interesting contractions lately and the thought is creeping in that we may be in for an early arrival. Kids never pay attention to schedules, do they? This one we'll definitely keep you up to date on. Certainly on facebook, maybe on twitter if the laptop we bought arrives in time. That's another small piece of news, we bought our first computer in 8 years and we're excited about not having to wait 20 minutes for the computer to boot and then logon and access the web. We have been using Chad's laptop, but he needs it for school now, so it's gone most of the time. Got a really sweet deal on ShopNBC.com too.

Along with the contractions, Christi has been having a really hard time with migraines. She has had to deal with them on several pregnancies, but this one has been the worst. Her Doc has given her some stuff for pain, but it is of limited help and nothing works completely for her. It will ease off and get better, but she has headaches that last for days. At the moment, she is headache free, and I hope she can stay that way for awhile. She's been to the hospital several times for these migraines and while they eventually get rid of it, they pump her full of meds and she feels hungover all the next day. Pray for her to have some relief until the birth.

Also, as you may have seen on my facebook, I was in Washington D.C. recently for some work training at our company HQ. I got to walk around and see some great sights, but it really made me miss Christi and the kids not having them to share it. I got a few good pictures, but the camera gave me some trouble when I tried to photograph the White House and some other neat sights. I am already hatching a plan to get the family there for a vacation as soon as I can swing it. I'd like to make a loop through Philadelphia, D.C. and some Virginia Civil War sights. Maybe in the Spring so it's not so hot and humid as it is now. I'll try and get a few of the D.C. pics and a post on my blog when I can.

That's about it for the update, but with us, there will always be something coming up.

Stay tuned.

What we’ve been up to

In the past few weeks Christi and I have kind of been absorbed by our house hunting efforts. We saw a number of houses here in the local area and even put offers in on several. We had high hopes for one that was only a block away from where we live now, but had a complete ½ acre that was already landscaped, a fireplace in the master bedroom that Christi fell in love with and some great spaces that would lend themselves to renovation for extra bedrooms. Unfortunately that one was scooped up by an investor with cash in hand. We were initially following the strategy of bidding high and asking for closing costs but it seemed to get us nowhere. Then a funny thing happened. A house in short-sale that Christi and I had seen online before our pre-approval came through, came back onto the market after the escrow on it had gone south. The asking price on this one was $175,000. Our initial move was to again bid high, we offered $206,000 hoping to completely shut down the competition. They actually counter-offered with $200,000 but asked for an extra $3900 cash before closing to satisfy a second mortgage. I’m not exactly sure what happened to us then, but somehow even though the actual price came down, the sudden addition of the cash for the second rubbed us the wrong way, plus Christi’s dad took a look at the place and suggested that maybe the price was a bit steep, so we didn’t sign the counter offer and let it slide. We went on to look at a few more places, and even submitted another offer on one that we weren’t completely thrilled about. As we were in the office working up the paperwork, our agent was scrolling through the listings and came across the short sale we had offered on before. Apparently, the other buyers who had been countered at the same time we were hadn’t returned the counter offer either so it was once again available with no pending offers. It was then that Christi and I decided to pounce. We countered with our own offer at asking price, $175,000 and asked for some closing, while agreeing to the $3900 cash for the second. Surprisingly, this was accepted by the owner. Last week the bank holding the second accepted their portion of the offer and now we are just waiting for the main bank’s response. We’re told it will come no later than the 19th so we’re almost there. Our agent feels pretty certain it will be accepted because the bank initially accepted an offer for the same amount. I’m hoping it comes in sooner rather than later. I’m itching to get into escrow and get both the home and septic tank inspections completed. This house is such a great fit for us. It’s a 4 bedroom, 2-1/2 bath on a 1/3 acre lot. It has a nicely upgraded kitchen, new carpet and tile, upgraded bathrooms that all match and each of the bedrooms are really pretty large. Plus it has a “family room” area that will be perfect for adding in a 5th bedroom. It has a huge laundry room area and a nice 2 car garage. Best of all, it’s in a nicer area with low tax rates and not on a racetrack like our current place is. We’re looking forward to moving as a chance to clear out our clutter and start fresh in a new place. This is gonna be sooooo good for us and the kids. We’ll update as this process moves along.

Life gets in the way

Sooo, we started off this blog with a bang, on Sept. 11th of all days. And then...? Well, life got in the way. Here in the Cason household, we've gone through a bout of the flu (Walker, Emma, Morgan, Laura, and Bailey have all had it to one degree or another, now it's Dad's turn). All the while, Christi and I have been shopping online for a used car to replace the one recently totalled. This on top of the normal daily routine of Christi getting 10 of the kids out the door every morning to 4 different schools (I help a bit, but Christi is a blur and makes me look like I'm standing still), laundry, feeding the 4 littles still left at home, and a myriad of stuff I try hard not to think about (it would make my eyes bleed to think about the finances she juggles). Christi is also planning to go to her 20-year high school renunion in San Diego, so she's busy plotting the getaway with her sister. I'm so happy for her because she deserves a break for a couple of days. She's been in touch with a few of her old school friends on Facebook and she's looking forward to it.
The kids are fully in the swing of school now, with 5 of them in one band program or another and just the usual to and fro. Chad is driving himself to class everyday and Dalton is chomping at the bit waiting for his Aunt to get a new car so he can buy her old one. Austin is doing double duty with both marching band and jazz band, he plays the Euphonium (Yeah, I'd never heard of it either until Dalton and Austin started playing them) in the former and the trumpet in the latter. Gage also plays the Euphonium in the middle school band while Bailey plays the valve trombone. Even Kaylee is in the swing having started the clarinet in the 5th grade band program. I guess they got their musical abilities from Christi's side somewhere, because it sure didn't come from MY genetics. When I was in the service, a friend tried bravely to teach me to play the guitar, but he soon pointed out that maybe I should keep my day job.
That's pretty much my excuse for not posting for a week. It's not much, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.