The Offer

Hi, Nation.

Hey, remember when I said we were moving?  Back up to Michigan?  Well, a big step of that process, in addition to the packing and moving and getting jobs and all that crap, is the selling of our current house.  The housing market has improved somewhat since when we bought the house three years ago, so we were optimistic about selling our home relatively quickly.

But we had NO idea just how quickly it would go.

We hired a realtor named Ken, who came highly recommended from one of Kris' church friends and happens to be one of Central Florida's Top 100 realtors, and he came over and snooped out our house.  Now, we're not slobs or anything, but we didn't realize our house was as well-maintained and clean as it was - Ken looked around, asked some questions about the property, and informed us that our house was in amazing shape and we should be able to get what we wanted for it no problem at all.  This was indeed good news.

See, three years ago the couple that owned the home (the only people to ever live in the home, by the way - they built it) put it on the market at a pre-appraisal rate their selling agent recommended.  We checked out the home, loved it, and put in an offer for that was about two grand less than what they were asking for, as that was all we could get from our lender at the time (despite our excellent credit rating, we had no money for a deposit, having not all that much saved up at the time, thank you very much second child.)  Despite our lower offer, the elderly couple liked us, thanks to our 'adorable' little kids who we brought along with us to view the property, and accepted our offer.  When the property appraisal came in, it valued the house a little less than their initial offer, which is what we ended up paying for it.

(Hooray.)

Don't ask me what the hell's up with our tree.  I won't miss it.

Fast forward three years to Present Day.  In the couple years we've owned the joint, we've paid off about $7,000 on it, and it's valued at over thirty grand more than what it was when we bought it.  Ken decided to list it at that price, based on comparable properties in the area, and see what happens.  We figured we'd generate a few bites in the first weekend, but none of us - Ken included - dreamed of the amount of frenzy our modest, little house would generate.

The ad went up Thursday morning, and within hours Kris (who was the contact number for the property) started receiving phone calls from buying agents like crazy.  She showed the house to one set of buyers that morning, before she went to work, and scheduled six showings for the next day, during that hour between when she had to drop the kids off of school and when she went to work.  Then, on Saturday (when Yours Truly was dealing with alligators, six-year-olds, and oppressive Florida sun with the Daisies, if you'll be so good as to recall), our house was bombarded with a steady stream of buyers.  

Long story short, we received over a dozen offers - some generous, others comically awful - and lost count of how many people viewed our house, but by Sunday morning we had narrowed down all of our offers and interested parties to two buyers.  Of these two, one ended up being cleared right away, and we pounced on it.

And so, dear readers, we have now begun the so-called 'closing' process once again, this time on the other side of the bargaining table.  We'll be walking away from this whole house-thing with a considerable nest egg, having nothing more than the dumb luck of buying a house when the market sucked, taking care of the place, and selling it back when the market was awesome.

To say we're happy about this turn of events would be. . . well, one hell of an understatement.

As our good friend John "Hannibal" Smith used to say. . .

- Brian

The A-Team: Mr. Hough Returns to School

Hi fans,

So once again, the state government is demanding I 'work' in order to receive a paycheck... no more paid summer vacation for me.

(frown face.)

While sitting around the house playing video games, tending my yard, soaking up sun, and (not) sleeping is fun and all, the State has convinced me that working is, in fact, 'where it's at.' We'll see. I get to jump back into a classroom and, once again, attempt to teach the indifferent youth of America a bunch of stuff they'll end up forgetting the minute they step out of class when the bell rings.

Hooray.

This year, my school is placing me in charge of what I like to call 'The A-Team,' or 7th Grade, Team A (I personally like 'A-Team' better... sounds more explosion-y). The A-Team is made up of all the kids that scored a 1 or 2 (but mostly 1) on Florida's infamous, standardized disaster, the FCAT. This is the lowest score possible, so these kids need the most help in school.


Enter Mr. Hough.

My administrators tell me that this position of mine was established due largely to my 'visual, hands-on style of teaching.' I do a lot of projects, too, and I do I think this is part of the reason... but only to a small extent. I think the real reason they stuck me in this spot and not, say, one of the veteran, senior-ranking, teacher-of-the-year types was because they did not want to lose any of those veteran, senior-ranking, teacher-of-the-year types.

The A-Team has the sound majority of the discipline problems, it has the sound majority of the students with learning disabilities, and it has the sound majority of the students who are ESL (speaking English as a second language). With all this in mind, it's easy to see why some people get burned out relatively quickly working with this sort of roster. Our school, like the loving parent that it is, shielded their favorite children (those teacher-of-the-year types) from the A-Team, and instead placed their red-headed, stepchild-from-a-previous marriage (Yours Truly) in the thick of it to handle the situation.

Booya for me. I guess that's what I get for not submitting my lesson plans in a timely manner.

Now, oddly enough, I tend to enjoy the organized chaos that comes with working with kids like this, though - I hate quiet classrooms. They're creepy.

Anyway, the administration decided that if I were to be wrangling kids of this nature, and seeing how I'm so project-based and all, they'd upgrade my room to something larger than the broom-closet I've been teaching in for the last two years. So that right there's the silver-lining to this ol' posting: Mr. Hough has some new digs. Cowabunga.


Behold the pics. Enjoy.

- Brian

- From the front door of the classroom -

- Art and project displays from previous years, set up for the parent open house -

- More of the same -

- From my desk in the back of the room-

- Another shot from the front of the room -