Okay, another week has gone by, and I'm sitting here going "What should I write about?"... Well, I did have an awesome weekend. I attended a women's retreat in Klamath Falls with my mom, aunt, and cousin. The speaker was great, and it was such a blessing to be able to get away for a couple of days and have some girl time. And kudos to my Beloved for being Mr. Mom in my absence (he did a great job, by the way). 
Not surprisingly I guess, I was feeling somewhat deflated by Monday afternoon (raging hormones not helping matters), but thankfully I am back on an even keel again.
Anyway, one of the retreat speaker's admonitions to us was to pray very specifically rather than in generalities, and to "pray the solution, not the problem." I knew I needed to give this a go in regard to our real estate problem, so I did, starting right then and there; praying very specifically that we would not have to make another mortgage payment on that place. Monday morning, who should call but our realtor (whom we had not heard from in about 2 weeks). In a nutshell: the market has gone from bad to worse (prices continuing to spiral downward, no buyers in sight), and our only real option at this point is to do a "short sale". Which, as I understand it, basically means selling the property for less than we owe on it and praying that the bank will forgive the difference. So that's where we're headed. Not exactly the answer to prayer that I had in mind, but if it works, you will NOT hear me complain. And it we can't get the bank to write off the difference, then, as Dave Ramsey (www.daveramsey.com) would say, we will pay the "Stupid tax" and move on. But even with reducing our price yet again (to the current "bottom floor"), there's no guarantee that we'll actually get a buyer. So we've still got a long way to go...
Speaking of Dave Ramsey, last week we started his "Financial Peace University" course, which is being taught at the church where the kids are in Awanas, during the Awana time on Wednesday nights. It's a lot of work, but will definitely be good for us, especially as we dig our way out of the current crisis. We've done some things right over the years (which is why we're still solvent right now), but we are learning that we still have a long way to go.
