buying our first home

It has been a dream of ours from when we got married almost 7 1/2 yrs ago to buy our own home. Although we have begun to step down that path a number of times, it has never happened to date. God has spoken fairly clearly to me a number of times on the issue giving quite a loud NO, not now. The most recent of these words to wait and be patient was on the 1st January 2006 through psalm 37...

At the end of January our landlord Kaine told us that he was putting his house on the market. So when you're renting it works like this: if the house isn't sold to an investor you are given 42days from when the sale goes unconditional to move out. Reuben told Kaine that we would be keeping our options open as to whether we would move out before then. We began to pray for Gods perfect timing over the sale of Kaines house and us finding a new place to live.

The search then started. we watched on the net and papers for potential rental properties for us to move to. We found two houses in particular which seemed like they should be perfect. Both in good location, one of which the christian landlord wanted to reduce the rent so we would take it, (reuben & I agreed that it didn't "feel" right, and so let it go) and the other the house of old family friends (another party offered to pay MORE than the asking amount of rent so we missed out on this one also)...

Cruising on Trade Me one friday night I noticed a cute looking place for sale out in Papakura. We had to vacate our house for an open house the following afternoon so decided to go check it out. This started us on our most recent exploration into home buying. This house (we'll call it the blue house) really caught both of our attention. It doesn't often happen that Reuben and I both think a place is great. So we got the parents through, met with a broker and decided to make an offer. To cut the long story short, it became a multi offer scenario. We put in our best offer, prayed that if it was meant to be that we would get it... and then lost it to the other party by $5K. We were so disappointed!

Over the next three - four weeks we waited in hope that the sale of the blue house would fall through. Alas it didn't. The door felt like it was opening for us to continue looking to buy. So we did - and we looked at lots of awful houses in our price range. The blue house seemed to grow in our memory and we wondered if we would find anything as good.

I had seen a place on Trade me (the yellow house) that looked okay but didm't bother investigating it as it was $45k over our maximum price. As it happened they listed their house with Harveys (now at $25K over our absolute max). An agent told us about it and took us through. It was an OK place but we weren't that excited by it and decided not to take it further. A week later, the agent rang to say the owners really needed a quick sale as the had bought themselves. We decided to do a a second look with the parents. It felt still too expensive for us and we didn't feel emotional about the house anyway.

After talking to a couple of wise friends we decided we may as well make an offer and maybe get a good deal. we made the offer at our max amount possible. The owners rejected our offer and that was that. didn't feel sad about it at all! Four days later, the agent rang back to say the owners now wanted to accept our offer and were we still keen. We said yes - $25K below asking price! And now it started to grow in our minds and we started to see how much better yellow house was than blue house.

So you remember how we were praying for everything to line up... the agent for Kaines house was absolutely perplexed as to why it hadn't sold. well we found out this past saturday that Kaines house has sold. And what would you know, the date we need to be out of here (42 days) is the same as our move in day to yellow house...

Gods timing and plans are perfect!

she's gone

Grandma died on thursday 20th April, 10.22pm. She went into Hospital wednesday afternoon after suffering a massive stroke. My mum was with her when she went. Grandma opened her eyes and smiled at her, then closed them and the space between her breaths got longer and longer till she didn't breathe any more. Kind of a funny thing to contemplate what happens in the moment between life and death...

snazzibabes

Go to this website and click on snazzibabes... Check out those two cuties in their green butterflies... snazzipants

slowly fading

so after my first two blogs came thick and fast there's been a lull. and i've gone down hill. I have been tempted to get up and write at about 11pm for the last two nights, to wade through the mind mess, but I haven't. My friend has been trying to keep me accountable to going to bed at a reasonable hour so it was really her influence that stopped me - or it could have been the fact that i was just too shattered..

the back of my eyes feel wet and yet still too dry. i want tears to come out of them and to feel the release that comes from letting out emotion.

i don't want my grandma to die(now the tears are coming out and i can't see the computer properly) i'm not ready. she's not meant to die now.but i see her and shes not the same.i'm sick of well meaning friends telling me they hope for her sake it doesn't take much longer and that it would be better for her, for this part to go fast.easy words spoken with well meant compassion but they make me want to hurl.some moments i just want to open my mouth up and screw my eyes shut and throw my head back and scream and scream and scream...in fact i kind of did that yesterday. what with one baby screaming and the other having a tired tanty (while trying to change her nappy), a headache and sleep deprivation (my sleeping has gone mental again) i lost it for a moment. when i finished having my moment i looked down at miss almost two and she was gazing at me with an expression as if to say "what the crap?.." (it did stop the tanty!)

and right now i feel a little better.this outburst has cleared some saddness for the now. maybe i need an annonymous blog for all of this, or maybe this is okay. just keeping it real...

midwives & the media

Have been thinking about the way midwives are getting trashed in the media at the moment in NZ. I was pretty frustrated after watching 60 minutes on TV3 last monday at the biased & factually incorrect information that was being relayed to mr & ms general public. They had two tragic cases of babies who had died during childbirth and whom had midwives as their LMC's (that's lead maternity carers). 60mins angle was that midwifery care is insufficient, unsafe and that women should be birthing in hospitals with obstetricians (that's baby/mum doctors) running the show. Sad how the tragic, isolated cases call into question the whole system. I guess it is the longing to be able to place blame at the foot of someone or something. Completely understandable although possibly misguided. Just as my experience shouldn't dictate how others should choose to birth, neither should theirs. The program talked about how by medicalising birth (think early 20th century) they made it so much safer for women and how perhaps we should revisit doctors having control over pregnancy, labour and birth. (see note at the bottom...)

During my first pregnancy, i did a whole lot of reading about labour etc trying to get myself prepared. (check out http://www.homebirth.org.uk/) What I found is a whole lot of evidence that giving birth in hospital is not necessarily safer (for someone sho has a normal healthy pregnancy) and can actually be less safe than birthing at home! (yes I know, heresy isn't it!) We (me and Reuben) meet our midwife Rhonda when we were 24wks pregnant (had to dump the first one as it just wasn't working, but that's another story). As the weeks passed and we got to know her, we become more and more confident in her ability to care for us as a family and most importantly to ensure a healthy baby & mummy at the end of it all. She gave me confidence in my ability to do what billions of women before me have done.

And yes, we did it - twice now! Without the need for doctors, drugs & sterile rooms. So here's to midwives, who work long unreliable hours, who are on call 24/7 and who on the whole do an amazing job.

note... when we started telling people we were considering home birth, naturally we had significant numbers of less than favourable opinions handed to us, including from my mother and grandmother. not that suprising given their birth experiences. Both experienced highly medicalised births. My mums 5 deliveries (1970's & 80's) including high forceps x 2, caesareans x 2, epidurals, inductions, being shaved, enemas etc, nice... My Grandmas 3 births (1950's) under general anaesthetic (one can only imagine how they got those babies out!). The funny thing was when Grandma realised that her mother (my gt grandma) who gave birth in the 1920's had two successful births at... home - with a midwife! oh how things come about...