Q & A

OK, folks, it's time for a little Q & A with GSG. :-) I got a few questions from you readers, and here are the answers.

Elaine at Little Bitty Pickle asked:
"As a little girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Now, as with most children, I had lots of ideas about what I wanted to be. But the first (and most memorable) career path I laid out for myself was paleontology. I LOVED dinosaurs and studying all about them. I probably checked out every book about dinosaurs from the main library in town at some point between ages 6-9. After that I became interested in Egyptology, followed by a desire to be a veterinarian. This was followed by a period of not knowing what I wanted, then I wanted to be a teacher or a band director. That lasted until the end of my freshman year in college, when I changed my major to Anthropology. And now I'm in massage therapy school, so that just goes to show how crazy life can be, haha.

My second question came from Heather at Life and Times With the Ryans:
"What were the best and worst parts of buying your first home?"

I haven't asked the Mr. his opinion on these questions, but I can pretty much guarantee that we will be of one mind when it comes to the worst part of our first home purchase. We were fortunate enough to purchase a newly constructed home straight from the builder (it was already finished, but unoccupied). While this was awesome on many levels, working with the builder was a nightmare. First we had to deal with them being confused about the incentives they had offered and that were listed on the MLS (notably the $3000 fence/closing cost allowance) and tried to tack an extra $3000 onto the contract price. After that, we didn't have many problems with them until the week of closing. We had a pretty long list of repairs that we had mutually agreed that the builder would take care of before closing, including replacing a dead tree and several other things inside and outside the house. The day before closing these things still were not completed, and after several trips to the house the day of closing, only 1/2 of the items were completed, although the builder told our realtor directly that they had been finished that afternoon. Questionable, no?? So we signed the closing papers but were unable to obtain the keys until the builder completed the repairs, which didn't happen until the following afternoon. To top it all off, the trees didn't get replaced until the following day!

On a more cheerful note, the best part of buying our first home for me was imagining what our life would be like in each of the homes we visited and truly picturing what our future might be like. Although we never know what God has in store for us, I believe that He has many wonderful things placed in our future, and buying our first home was the first step in that journey. This reminds me of a scripture I received via email yesterday (if you're interested in receiving a daily Scripture, email "SUBSCRIBE" to scripture-subscribe@lists.tagnet.org):

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time.
He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so,
people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from
beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11

Please stay tuned for a mega-update/photo tour of the new house (coming this weekend to a computer screen near you)...