10.14.2008

Desert Ridge Hot Dog Contest

Last night Young Life hosted a Hot Dog eating contest at Desert Ridge. Naturally, I was dressed as a hot dog. Laura spent the night hanging with kids. It was awesome. A gal from Cave Creek won the contest beating a boy from Pinnacle who had called in sick to work to participate - how awesome is that?!

Photobucket

10.04.2008

Buyin a house...


Believe it or not... The Colletti's are looking to buy a house.

It's pretty crazy and leaves me curious as to how little I actually control in my life (the answer is very little)... 2 years ago we moved to Cave Creek. I went to work for Young Life and Laura went back to school to get her teaching license. We looked at the "cheapest" homes in our community and laughed at the idea of us buying a $350,000 house... Ha.

Well, unfortunately for folks who bought and are now needing to sell, but fortunate for us - the housing market in AZ has taken a dive. We are now in position to be able to not only buy a home, but buy one for less than what we want to spend! How blessed are we.

We are currently looking intently at two houses and they are both "Short Sale" homes. This means that the owner of the home is facing foreclosure and rather than getting foreclosed they agree to sell the home for less than what they owe on their mortgage. It is a win-win because if they stay in it and can't afford the payments the consequence is larger than if they sell it in Short Sale. The issue with short sales is that the bank has to agree to sell the home for less than the value of the mortgage (losing money is never fun for them...). As a result, it often takes a loooooooooong time to respond and counter and get a deal done.

That's where we are. 5 weeks in and still anticipating news... The longer it goes, the more anxious we get. But the beauty of it is that in the midst of it all God is teaching us what we are going to do with the home.

We'll have a room dedicated as a Young Life club room so that each week hundreds of kids from Cactus Shadows can hear about Christ! We are going to create a home office so I can become organized and have a central operating location for working with Young Life in Cave Creek. We are hoping to move my Grandmother in with us so she can be with family more often...

Whatever house God gives us we are going to give it back to him.