How we lost $210 to stupid people...

Ok so here's the story and yet another reason why we no longer desire to be landlords. Every year we usually need to find new tenants for one of our places. This one is for a couple that wanted to move into our Riley house basement. They saw the place, signed a contract, and paid their $400 deposit about mid-July and were to move in in September. Mid-August comes around and they come over to get keys and let us know if they want anything moved out (i.e. couches that we provide). They say they'd like one couch removed.
Fast forward to one day before they are supposed to move in. We get a phone call from them saying they are no longer comfortable with the place and would not like to rent from us anymore. They promise to find replacements and to meet all our conditions as laid out in our sublet clause of the contract. This clause also clearly states that $200 will be charged for subletting. They are aware of this and in fact bring it up. They find replacements and everything goes smoothly until we return the remainder of their deposit ($400-$200). We can't be entirely sure, but we think the husband was not aware of the required charge and the wife was because we only spoke to her during the transition. Needless to say, the husband was angry that we would charge them for subletting because "they never moved in." Arguments continue...blah blah blah.

Ok, break in the story to explain why we charge this fee: 1) We have to deal with BS like this (excuse my french). 2) We need to make copies of new contracts, have an interview with new people, approve new people to make sure they are sane, travel back and forth from Salt Lake to Provo to show new people the place, continue to talk to old people about this and that, get old people's new address to send security deposit back, move couches AGAIN, etc. You get the point! We did a lot of stuff because someone changed their mind.

A few days later we get another phone call from them saying "We're going to take you to small claims court for not giving us the money back." Frankly, we think this is a bluff and also do not care either way because the contract says in black and white that we charge it. They have no argument in court. So we don't mind either way.
It turns out they weren't bluffing. Ok fine. We will win no problem. Our pre-paid attorney agrees. But we lost money right?...
Court was today. In small claims court you can mediate or wait for endless hours to litigate. John, with our attorney, decides to mediate to see if they could work this out because this is a waste of time really. Basically, the attorney calls him an idiot (by calling him kid over and over...i thought that was humorous because he was acting childish) and wants to go forward with the case. John, on the other hand, does not want to be there all night waiting for his turn with the judge so he continues to mediate with them. After being called kid over and over they probably realized they would lose if they went forward with their argument and so they agreed to accept $225.
How this happened...they were suing us for $360 total. The original $200 from their deposit plus $160 in court fees. Back and forth arguing with dumb people doesn't get you far... everyone was getting frustrated and just wanted to go home. John and the couple decided on $210, but the husband would not get over a measly $15 more dollars. So the attorney, so fed up with everything, pulls out $15 and ends it. Now everyone can go home. We could have won the case and gone home owing them nothing, but our time is valuable and we just wanted them to leave us alone. Sometimes I wonder why they let retards reproduce. It's really not fair to the rest of us. So, here's to paying people to shut up. Cheerio. Now I can play my video games in peace.

Jace's Birthday

This past Monday we were all able to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law to celebrate my nephew Jace's birthday at Jungle Jim's Playland. We took Victoria there last year for her celebration just with us and she had fun and so she had fun again! Jace and Victoria were able to go on a lot of rides together. Mikayla and Ellie were able to have some fun too though. In fact, they had a crawl race and never finished...thanks to the many distractions, but it was still cute. And they're off...

Peekaboo! We're on the market!

We finished! Sort of. We have finished most of the exterior paint. There is about one days of work more to completely finish, but nonetheless, we decided it was presentable enough to put the P Duplex on the market. We hope that we can sell it soon and that some of our troubles will alleviate. We are asking $229,000, which may be a bit high. Truthfully, we're not sure. The housing market is not good right now, but we have made it look really nice and we think based on the rents people can charge that it is worth that. If not, then we'll either keep it with renters or accept a lower offer. It's kind of just a waiting game now. Wish us luck.

In other ados about nothing, Mikayla plays peekaboo all by herself and it's really cute. She holds the blanket up, waits a few seconds, and then drops it down awaiting my response. It's so cute! Maybe all babies can do this...I don't know, but I thought it was pretty unique since I don't recall Victoria doing this. Here it is...enjoy.

Life as it is now

It's been over a month since I've posted on our blog because we've been so busy. Thus, here's a very breif update of what's been going on with us:

We've decided as a family that we're tired of being landlords. The last straw was after an incident where our LDS neighbors gave us two days notice and then left us with an entire month of no renters. And the chaos never ends. People argue the contract, complain when things don't go there way, bail on the last month of rent, etc. Not to mention how much time it takes to maintain all the properties. We know it's not the best time to sell our houses, but the remainder of this year and next year we will continue to be really busy trying to get the properties ready to sell. We plan on keeping the Riley house for the time being while we decide where we should be and where our business ventures will lead us. Our first goal is to put the Provo Duplex on the market...so we've been giving up most of our Saturdays (and Labor Day) trying to get the exterior finished painting. Here's the before picture of the Provo Duplex.












And the progress...we're painting it brown and blue, with accent white.

A few months ago we bull dozed our backyard...attempting to level it. I don't have a before picture, but just imagine a forest. Ok, it wasn't really a big forest...but there were about 4 or 5 huge trees in the middle, plus everything was unlevel.

Also, we believe it was last night...we were robbed. We stupidly keep some of our power tools lying right in the back yard. Anyone in our neighborhood could easily see what we have and come and take stuff in the middle of the night. Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't happen until now. What was stolen was a power washer (thank goodness we were done using it), a compressor, and a gas powered chainsaw. We are most dissapointed about the chainsaw because we had just got it this year to finish cutting down more trees in our backyard and we weren't done with it. So now, it's probably sitting in a pawn shop and without a serial number we can't do anything according to the cops. My tax dollars at work...doing nothing!

So that's the brief summary. We'll continue to be busy working to get our houses presentable for the market. We really want to be out of this business. It's taking a toll on our family and so we've shifted focus. Please keep us in your prayers...we need it. If you want details feel free to ask.

A Trained Monkey or Two

So about a week or so ago I declared Victoria officially potty-trained! Yay! No more diapers...for her anyway. She does have a few accidents every once and a while, but I'd say she's pretty good. What did it take? Lots and LOTS of stickers. Particularly the green ones. She has taken a liking to green and always wants a green sticker.
And, Mikayla is now crawling! She's not crawling on her knees all the time, but she does sometimes. She mostly drags herself everywhere, but I don't care. I'm just glad to see her moving about finally. Now she can at least try to get the stuff she's not supposed to. :)

4 years

Tomorrow will be John and I's 4th anniversary. Yay! We made it! I guess 4 years isn't really that long, but when you consider that 41% of first marriages end in divorce in the US I'd say we're doing pretty good. :) We will be going to eat somewhere (ask John where) and then we're going to watch Harry Potter! I'm way too excited for this movie seeing as I'm 24 and probably shouldn't be dressing up like I'm going to Hogwarts, but you're only as old as you feel I suppose. So let's just pretend that tomorrow I'm really 11. Besides, I've been waiting way too long for this movie.
Anywho, I have discovered that 60% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages end in divorce in the US. So, basically...if you don't get it right the first time your screwed. I think people just expect to marry the perfect person and well, I hate to break it to you guys, but that guy doesn't exist! John and I have had our fair share of good fights, but I think we both realize that everyone makes mistakes and that helps. If only everyone could do the same, maybe we'd all have better relationships...so, here's to marriages! Mazeltov! And here's to Harry Potter finally coming out...cheerio!

Poker Face and frogs

Victoria's favorite song right now is "Poker Face" by Lady GaGa. Whenever it's on the radio she sings it and at home she dances to it. Here's a video of her dancing to it and if I can get a good one of her singing it I'll post that too. We think it's funny.


Also, Victoria is still learning to pronounce things correctly (of course) so things come out a little wrong sometimes. The other day she was watching her Baby Einstein DVD and saw a frog on there. She started screaming "Frog! Frog!" Not a big deal usually, but when Victoria says "frog" it comes out sounding a lot like a vulgarity that I'm sure you can figure out. Well, for some odd reason instead of just saying "Frog!" she was saying "Frog me!" So of course we all turn to look at her like "What did you just say?" And well, yeah. Oh the joys of motherhood and translating for your daughter.