Fun in the sun and scorpians

Today was such a fun day--with a mixture of emotions as you may guess from the title. We had the home inspection first thing this morning at the house. Despite the fact that the inspector gave us a list of about a million things that needed to be fixed, he seemed to think that the home was in really good condition for its age. It was so much fun to spend several hours just walking around the house, talking about what we can to do fix it up, clean it up and make it ours. I know that we won't have the money to do everything we would like to immediately, but we'll just do a little at a time and I know it will be so cute. So, inspection down, appraisal to go...We are supposed to have the appraisal on Monday and be ready to close by Wednesday.
After we got done with the inspection, we took Bradley, Gracie and Nacho to the Colorado River by Nelson's landing. We packed a little picnic and hiked down to a lagoon where we splashed around in the sun. We jumped off a little cliff (don't worry Amy and Gina-it was only about 10ft high and Jon jumped in first to make sure that it was deep enough), and skipped rocks. We ate our lunch on our towels on the shore. Once we were done, Gracie and I blew up our pool rafts and floated around on the water, and just as I was saying to Gracie what an amazing day and how fun this was, I felt a little tickle on my left ear. I reached to swat away what I though was fly or a bee--to my surprise, I pulled a scorpion out of my ear!!! I wildly thrashed around the water to try to get it off my finger. Too late, it had already stung the inside of my ear!! yuck. The rest of the day was not the same for me. Although I did manage to jump off the cliff a few times.

Nacho also had a really fun time--he swam all over. He even followed us out to the cliff. Every time he was on shore, he would run up and down and bite the incoming waves. He was SO CUTE!

We Got it!!!...Almost

Well, yesterday Jon and I found out that the mortgage company approved our short-sale! This is really good news for us, but we still have to hold our breath a little to make sure that a few key things go through without a hitch-the inspection and the appraisal. We are hoping that the inspection comes back with no major problems and that the appraisal comes back right on target for what we are paying. Barring something happening with one of these things, we should be closed by the 15th of August! That's like two weeks away! I can't believe we could actually be sitting in our new home in such a short period of time.

Now the responsibility of it all is kicking in--we are going to be responsible for making a mortgage payment! Yikes. I mean, we've spent hours and hours working out our budget to make sure that we can do this, but it's a little daunting to actually take the plunge. All day yesterday I vascillated between being really excited to get into our own place finally and being scared out of my wits that we wouldn't be able to pay for it for one reason or the other--does everybody feel like this on their first time buying a home?? It also just feels like we are grounded somewhere. I feel like on the one hand, we are gaining a lot of freedom and on the other hand we are definately rooting ourselves here for a while.

Anyway, Jon and I came to the conclusion yesterday that it's always scary to do something big that you've never done before--I remember being nervous that we'd be able to pay for our apartment-and everything worked out just fine. And ultimately we've prayed a lot about this and pretty much left it in the Lord's hands. I've always felt that if it was supposed to work in this house, it would. So, keep praying--we need all the prayers we can get! And hopefully we'll be sending invites to all of you for a house warming party very soon. :) Those of you who cannot attend can just send us a gift card or something. j/k! PS, the pics that I posted of the house before weren't very good-this one is a better picture of it so you can see what its really like.

Lots of stuff part II...

So, for those that have not heard, Jon and I put an offer on a home in the Mtn Vista and it was accepted by the seller. "By the seller" is the key part. The home is a pre-foreclosure which means that it needs to be approved by the mortgage company also. They have the final say so in whether or not your offer is accepted. And on top of this, it can take 4-6 weeks according to our realtor for them to get back to you. It's now been about a week since our offer was accepted and sent to the mortgage company for approval. So, we just have to be hopeful/prayerful that this will work out. Here are some pics of the home.

Isn't it cute!!?? It's a really cute house on the same street as the Bishop (Peterson)-Autumn Street. It has three bedrooms, hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances, a fireplace, updated kitchen/bathrooms and a nice sized yard for the burrito with lots of cute little flower beds. And the neighborhood has been kept surprisingly cute. Another great thing about it is that it's super close to everything that we want to be close to-my work, freeway entrance to Jon's work and UNLV. So say a prayer for us that we'll get it!

Lastly, I just got back from girls camp last week. It was so fun! The girls were so good and really took to our ward theme of peace. Sometimes girls can get a little catty at camp- but this year we had none of that. I saw these girls do so many selfless, caring and kind acts of service for eachother and for the leaders. It was really such a neat learning experience for me. They worked so hard all week long to make things run smoothly, and they really made me feel like I fit right in. I left on Monday early morning and came back Saturday afternoon. Jon took off work on Friday to come up and help us get the girls home. Of course after not seeing a young man, let along a really good looking man all week, the girls just went NUTS over Jon when he got there. He had all of our 12 girls just hanging on his every word. They were really cute. It was also really fun to have Gracie up at camp. She would come visit our camp everyday and we'd give eachother a little squeeze. It really helped me not be so homesick to have both her and John there, and of course Jon at the end. It was so so fun-I would recommend going to Girl's Camp to anybody who has the opportunity.

Lots of stuff...

Ok, I know that I've been bad at writing consistently in my blog--and I'm sure you've all been aching to hear all the intimate details of my life, but I really have been busier than normal. I have several things that I need to share.


First things first-aren't these pics hilarious?! A couple weeks ago, the JPM's were over at mom and dad's house and Laney ventured upstairs by herself. I went to look for her and found her looking at this wig. I put it on her and a whole new little personality came out. She definitely felt like a red hot red head with it on--although she was a little scared as well. She had a lot of fun posing for pics, and cookie even wanted to try it on!













































Secondly, Jon and I came home the other day from work to this scene...Jack and Cookie were the only two dogs in the house, so I'll give you one guess as to who created this scene...you guessed right. Cookie had gotten a hold of a box of tissues and taken them all out and shredded them all over the room-under the couch, on top of the couch, on the coffee table and under, between the couch cushions--you name it-and tissue was there.

Homeless Rojas'

Well, it's been some time since I've made an entry but that's only because we've been drudging through the house shopping scene. The process of searching for a home in the "buyer's" market of Las Vegas has been much more difficult that I had ever imagined. Before we started looking for a home, we heard from everyone under the sun that this was THE BEST time to buy a home and that people would practically throw their homes at us for rock botom prices. Well, perhaps this was unrealistic and has ruined my perception of what home buying would be like. We have now found 4 homes that we have wanted to make/had made offers on and then found that they had either already accepted an offer or had 3-4 offers already placed. It has been very difficult, but we know that we just need to keep our chins up. We know that something will come along better than the last and that eventually we'll get a home that's just right for us--the hard part is just staying positive. So, if you would be so kind, please say some prayers for us that we will be directed to the place where Heavenly Father would like us to be and that we'll get there quick! Thanks-Love you all.

Fun in the Sun

So, this last weekend, we had the Koch's and the Michaelson's over for a swim party. Here are some fun pics from the day: PS; if your eyes are sensitive to extreme bright white lights, you may need to put on your shades.

Last night whilst Mom, Jon and I were watching our favorite show, American Idol, Dad was in the office 'puttering around'. He excitedly signaled us to come over and see what he had been working on. When we walked into the room, we were greeted by the sight of Jack, very relaxed, and wearing Dad's ginormous glasses and golfing hat. He wasn't asleep but instead just looked at us as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was quite a sight to behold!