From Obern

This is part of an e-mail from Obern. . . .

We're living in the basement of ShawnDell's parents. The real estate market here is quite ridiculous. ShawnDell's parents' home has increased in value over $40K in the last year. It makes us sick to even think about buying a home, and yet we keep getting urges to just go ahead and bite the bullet. It's just money, right? (Yeah, LOTS of it!)

My work is decent. It's taken awhile to get used to what it is they expect of me. Did I ever mention that I switched jobs 6 months after moving here? I moved from the CPA firm to Western Petroleum as an accountant. They sort of made up a job for me because they needed a bunch of reconciling completed; however, they soon began giving and taking other responsibilities as needed.

We miss getting together with family. Since we live with the only family here, we hardly ever venture out with others. Thank goodness for Emmalee; it helps us occasionally socialize with other parents. She just finished baseball and swimming lessons, and she has a tumbling class once a week. I'm really hoping we can get her started in music lessons as school begins. She has shown interest in both piano and voice.

We ended up towing away the maroon Pontiac after the engine decided to go belly-up. We had replaced it just a couple years before, and the warranty had just expired. Anyway, after much debate as to what vehicle to replace it with, we ended up with a truck. I can't say I ever imagined myself as a truck owner, but I quickly got used to it. It's a silver 2000 Ford 150 with over 100K miles, but it was in really good condition and came at what we felt was a good price. I mainly use it to go back and forth to work (a whole mile each way), but we've also enjoyed it a couple times camping and 4-wheeling.

We purchased Eli's 4-wheeler from him as he needed some debt relief while going to flight school, and we've enjoyed using it. I can't say I'm a big fan of helmet hair (or squished cheeks, or bugs on my teeth, or dirt plastered to sunscreen, or ...), but oh the excitement of careening down a dirt path at a heartpounding speed headed towards certain doom.