I just boiled down the entire year into 3 minutes of wholesome kid cuteness. Made it with Animoto in a few minutes (they do all the editing).

Buying a short sale or pre-foreclosure house was a long and
bumpy road, but ultimately it was one of the smartest financial moves we've
made. Here's an overview (the good and the bad) of how it all worked out for
us.

In the Beginning
Knowing only about where we wanted to go, and about what we
wanted in a home, we sold our first home just before June, moved into a condo,
and begun hunting for “a house we loved at a price we could afford.”
Unbeknownst to us, months before that, the owners of the house we would come to
love, stopped making house payments to the bank. Their home was built in late 2007,
but with the slowdown in the market, and no equity to fall back on, they were
in a tight spot. Hoping they could sell their home before it was foreclosed on,
they listed their home with a realtor in April for the “break even point” -
$289K. We first saw the house in July, and liked it immediately, but at its
original listing price, we knew it wasn’t going anywhere.

Eventually, we’d seen enough homes to have a better idea of
what we wanted, and with the knowledge that the sellers of this home weren’t
making payments, we made a short sell offer of $191K in August.  (A short sale is when a buyer negotiates with
the bank to buy property for less than what is owed. This usually happens due
to the seller’s inability to pay, combined with a lack of equity in the house,
motivating the bank to sell the home quickly for below-market value.) Our offer
came as great news for the sellers because 1- it meant the foreclosure process
would be delayed, giving them more rent-free time in the house, and 2- they
would avoid a foreclosure on their credit, making it possible to qualify to
purchase another home more quickly.

Almost Lost it to Foreclosure Auction
Even as negotiations with the bank were nearing completion,
the home almost went to auction. We alerted the selling Realtor and gave him
tips on how to get the bank to stop it, as well as other advice to move things
along smoothly. Navigating a successful sale with the bank can be tricky – only
30% of all short sales go through. Having an expert team on my side made all
the difference – our team has a 90% success rate. The Realtor on the other side
was experienced, but not in short sales. If we hadn’t helped, it would have
cost him (and his clients) a successful sale, not to mention us losing the home
we were trying to buy!

Taking What Seemed Like Forever
We knew that short sales didn't always work out. Sometimes
they can take as little as 2-3 weeks, but the average is closer to 4
months or so (mostly due to lack of bank personnel). We planned to have a
backup in place. But of the many, many homes we saw, we just couldn't find
something that had the same value. (Though we saw a few homes we liked OK, our
best backup options were going to cost us $40-50K more up front or in major
remodeling work after.) And though things seemed to be working out, there were
doubts, especially after our 6 month condo lease was up. Steff drove me nuts
near the end with her endless questions: Should we spend more time finding
another deal? Are our price expectations way out of line? Should we settle for
something less or be prepared to spend a lot more?

Finally, on December 12, we bought the home! Though we probably
could have saved another $5-10K by extending the negotiation process, we were
sick of the back and forth and wanted to be in before Christmas. At the time of
possession, the seller was still finishing up cleaning/packing, so we had some
overlapping time, and we all worked alongside each other. Steff told the seller
how she had prayed for her family and gave her a hug – an ending as warm and
fuzzy as was possible, considering the circumstances.

End Result and Timeline:
The Sellers of the home list it with a realtor in April.
The bank began its first steps towards foreclosure in May.
We sold our first home in end of May for $242K. Nice home, a
little small, built in 1954.
We see this home in July and offer $191K in August.
We wait for and negotiate with the bank for 4 months
Six months after selling out first home, we close on this
home – larger, built in 2007 – for $215K, saving $64K off the retail/break even
price.

Was it worth the wait? Definitely. In my view, one dollar
saved on a home equals at least two dollars you make after factoring in taxes
you pay on income and all the interest on your loan.

We're now in what Steff calls her “Dream House”. It
certainly is an answer to many prayers for a house we love at a price we can comfortably afford. Our mortgage payment is less than our last house, and I'm my wife's
hero. Definitely worth the wait.

As you can guess, this has been part diary, part
infomercial. If you know of anyone who is thinking of buying in the next year
or so, please let me know, I'd love to help them out. If you know of someone
who needs to get out of their house ASAP, let me know. Our team has 3X the
average success rate, and has been doing short sales long before the market
started slowing. (I'm biased towards short sales over other methods because
there's often less competition and the purchase price is usually lower than the
auction price.)

Upsides of having Christmas a couple days after moving in-
-For us, it was nice not to be transients, vagabonds, and a
family without a home. We were glad to be in our own space after being guests
in our parents’ homes for 3 weeks.
-No headaches on what to buy my wife this year- just put a
bow on the front door and I’m DONE!
Downside- not really getting a whole lot of down time after
unloading/unpacking, sorting, etc.

Our kids are easy right now- they love to pretend, and the
favorite gifts were probably the dress-ups they got. Kai also got a superheroes
theme music CD. Coincidentally, he was opening his new suit just as the
Superman theme began to play. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something
about Kai?

We also stopped by the Ackerman's to participate in the annual nativity. Kai made up his own role- the grown up boy Jesus, and E.V. was a singing star "shining for the whole world to see".

Input needed- my goal is to scale back the buying of lots of stuff,
esp. as the kids get older, and to have more emphasis on family travel and
activities for Christmas. Know anyone that successfully pulled that off w/out a mutiny? I think like most things, I need to start early.

This year we decided to do a few activities to express our
thankfulness for all our blessings and celebrate Thanksgiving throughout the
month. This will be a new tradition for us.

One, little, two little Indians. Kai and E.V. dressed up
like Indians and acted out scenes as Steff read from a library book about how Indians
raised, gathered, and hunted food.
We did several activities to show our thankfulness for our blessings by helping
others, including: giving blood, helping with food drives, and church service
projects, and lots of focus on the blessings we have.

In dwelling on our blessings, and doing these activities, we’ve
had a deeper appreciation, and hope to pass this along to our kids.

We are thankful for our nation, and want to help make it
better- I’d like to become more involved in good causes down the road. Our
little family participated in our first political protest this Saturday. We’re
indoctrinating them while they’re young! What cause makes young
parents passionate enough about something to take a break from packing up our
house to drive downtown and protest?

-The Federal Reserve is just as "Federal" as Federal Express. It’s
a private bank that’s inner workings are unknown, and runs contrary to the US
constitution.
-The U.S.
$ has lost over 97% of its value since the founding of the Fed in 1913. Savers, fixed income folks lose out the most.

-The Great Depression, and several severe recessions have
hurt our nation after the fed was founded.

-The U.S.
$ is no longer backed by gold.

-The Fed is not the first central bank in the U.S.; other
banks were seen as the evil they are and were eliminated by the people.

There was a very diverse group of people at the protest. Conservative-looking
couples and families, young punk and hipster-looking kids, and a lot of Senior
citizens. Over 1/3 of the protestors looked to be in their 60s or older. Inflation hurts those on a fixed income, so it makes sense that
more Seniors would come out and make their voices heard.

I felt a little sad that so few people, only a hundred or so, came, while
hundreds of thousands got worked up over that day’s BYU UofU football game. With the same passion, together, we can take back our money. It's happened before in the USA, we can do it again.

Here's a link to the news story, and video of Steff, Kai, Q, and E.V. at the protest (there were 100-200 people there, not "dozens" as the story says)

For more info, history, background, and thoughts on some of our nations leaders
on the Fed:http://www.fdrs.org/federal_reserve_fraud.html

Why use weights when you have household items
like chairs that work just as well? Also, don’t forget to use protective eye
gear, just in case. 

Steff loves playing dress-up with the kids, and depending on what activities we have, the kids get 2-3 different costumes for Halloween. This year Kai’s main costume was a homemade Iron Man suite. The bright light made him easy to track and got a bit of attention- he was thrilled to hear kids say things like “that’s the REAL Iron Man”, or having a little boy look in awe at him and say “hi, Iron Man.”
E.V. was excited about being a witch, but didn’t like wearing her “witch hat” for more than 5 seconds at a time. She also freaked out at clung to me whenever she saw anything remotely scary, like a spider, skeleton, her cousin dressed as Darth Vader, or any moving halloween lights- “I don’t like that!”
Before the main event of trick or treating, we took the kids to the mall dressed as a knight and a lady, to take part in the mall’s festivities, which was not worth it, it was just stores handing out candy to the kids. But kai did get a chance to be a knight riding a dragon.

Very short clip here with bro-in-law Dave Ackerman and Steff (audio is very quiet, hard to hear). Steff cooked up a skit idea about a struggling pioneer couple and how Dr. Phil saves their marriage. This is just the first few seconds, more to come later if Dave gets around to it- maybe Dave can fix the audio, etc also.
“it’s hard to keep these pioneer broads happy. they don’t have a lot to live for.”

My niece Dana (in the picture above with her bro, my bro, and my kids) was visiting our house and saw some of Kai's math flash cards, and said: "Is this for Kai's fake school?…maybe fake school is better than REAL school…but maybe real school is better than fake school, cause in real school you get REAL recess…"
Well said Dana, well said…

Kai is 5, he has been home schooling for 4 months.
What Steff likes about home school so far: lots of time to spend with kids, that Kai and E.V. are great friends, having a clear picture of where Kai is in his learning and what we need to focus on to help him.
What Kai likes so far: get to play a lot, get to learn a lot, that he can read by himself when he wants.
What we don't like: always having to explain to others (esp. our parents) that our kids won't be social retards and that we have good social networks for them.

Hello Comrad! Yes, we are deeply troubled by our goverment's continual spiral into socialism. As of this writing, the bailouts for banks, auto industry, etc. is in the trillions. Some of the intervention will help things short-term, but with looming deficits and increased spending for social security and medicare, we will see more government spending of money we don't have, and more pain down the road.

So, till further notice, we've fled the country to Switzerland, a country populated by paranoid, fiercely independent folks that resisted Hitler and all sorts of problems. These folks all have guns, they hoard gold, have secret bank accounts for regular folks- they will resist the coming global financial panics in style. (not really, trip to park city/midway. we will stay in the USSA for now)