The NFC B-Day Chat Thread

[N F C]

Good morning, everyone. Hope you all have a wonderful New Year.

Good morning Mark, happy New Year's to you & Susie!

 

[N F C]

My son got home from Wyoming about 20 minutes ago. They headed out at 3:30 yesterday and drove straight through. His friend broke his wrist yesterday so Quinton drove the whole way. A third of the way home the heater in his friends truck puked out. There was enough heat to keep the window unfogged. He was pretty cold. They are home safe though, thank goodness!

Glad your son got home ok DMC, that was a long drive. Did his friend break his wrist sledding? Hope it heals quickly.

 

[DigMyChicks]

Glad your son got home ok DMC, that was a long drive. Did his friend break his wrist sledding? Hope it heals quickly.

Thanks, me too Debby! Yes he did. That’s what happens when you hit a tree. My son hit one last year and did a lot of damage to his sled and only ended up with a cut shoulder. The boys were lucky. Trees are pretty unforgiving.

 

[sourland]

Good morning, OF.

 

[Grammy60]

Good morning everyone enjoy your day

I gave up on trying to make it until midnight a long time ago.

Opie is a chunk for sure...18 pounds 11 ounces according to the vet scales a couple weeks ago. Just more of him to love I guess.

That's a big cat more to love

Good morning all.

Good morning DMC

Good morning y'all!
Good morning, DMC, Blooie, & IM.
DMC, I hope your hubby will feel better today.

Good morning Janie

Good morning DMC, IM and Janie!

DMC, hope your DH's cough clears up soon.

Janie, are you working today?

IM, enjoy your day off!

Good morning Debby

Good morning, everyone. Hope you all have a wonderful New Year.

Good morning Mark

 

[Grammy60]

Good morning, OF.

Good morning Sour

 

[rjohns39]

Good morning folks

Good morning all.

Good morning DMC, have a great day... Hope hubby is better quickly & glad the boys are home safe.

Good morning, DMC!

Good morning Blooie, have a great day... Love the house!

Don’t I wish! I was thinking the same thing when I replied

One of the grandkids said delisherous instead of delicious for a long time. It’s one of our family words.

Good morning IM, have a great day

Good morning y'all!
Good morning, DMC, Blooie, & IM.
DMC, I hope your hubby will feel better today.

Good morning Janie, have a great day

Good morning DMC, IM and Janie!

DMC, hope your DH's cough clears up soon.

Janie, are you working today?

IM, enjoy your day off!

Good morning Debby, have a great day

Good morning, everyone. Hope you all have a wonderful New Year.

Good morning Mark, have a great day

Good morning, OF.

Good morning Sour, have a great day

@JaeG Hope your son is feeling better quickly

 

[janiedoe]

Good morning, everyone. Hope you all have a wonderful New Year.

Good morning, Mark.

My son got home from Wyoming about 20 minutes ago. They headed out at 3:30 yesterday and drove straight through. His friend broke his wrist yesterday so Quinton drove the whole way. A third of the way home the heater in his friends truck puked out. There was enough heat to keep the window unfogged. He was pretty cold. They are home safe though, thank goodness!

Glad they are home safe, DMC!

Good morning everyone enjoy your day


That's a big cat more to love

Good morning DMC

Good morning Janie

Good morning Debby

Good morning Mark

Happy New Year's Sue!

Good morning folks


Good morning DMC, have a great day... Hope hubby is better quickly & glad the boys are home safe.

Good morning Blooie, have a great day... Love the house!

Good morning IM, have a great day

Good morning Janie, have a great day

Good morning Debby, have a great day

Good morning Mark, have a great day

Good morning Sour, have a great day

@JaeG Hope your son is feeling better quickly

Happy New Year's Bob!

 

[DigMyChicks]

Good morning everyone enjoy your day


That's a big cat more to love

Good morning DMC

Good morning Janie

Good morning Debby

Good morning Mark

Hi Sue!

Good morning folks


Good morning DMC, have a great day... Hope hubby is better quickly & glad the boys are home safe.

Good morning Blooie, have a great day... Love the house!

Good morning IM, have a great day

Good morning Janie, have a great day

Good morning Debby, have a great day

Good morning Mark, have a great day

Good morning Sour, have a great day

@JaeG Hope your son is feeling better quickly

Hi Bob, you also and thank you!

Good morning, Mark.

Glad they are home safe, DMC!

Happy New Year's Sue!

Happy New Year's Bob!

Thanks Janie!

 

[Madhouse Pullet]

Good morning everyone, happy new years eve!

Ahh..just got back from my Nephrologist today. Mine are looking good. Took a couple of photos on the way the home. Getting more snow tonight.View attachment 2944750View attachment 2944747View attachment 2944753View attachment 2944754

Wooooooow Cynthia, those photos are amazing! Those snowy mountains are beautiful

Okay, my computer is still missing in inaction, but we did manage to find the keyboard for my iPad. So I guess I can type my saga with this….at least it‘s easier than trying to do it on a touch screen! This is going to be LONG!!

I‘ll start with the move, although it kinda combines the kidney sage and the house saga a bit. Back in very early spring, my numbers tanked. A GFR of 15 is usually when they start talking dialysis (which as most of you know I refuse to even consider), and my number had crept down to 19. I sank into a bit of a depression - it seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep those numbers up. I’d have a pretty good series, in the mid to upper twenties, then start to drop again. One day I looked around at the old trailer and I burst into tears. I told Ken that I didn’t want to die in that old place. I know, melodramatic, but that’s exactly how I felt. So we started looking at modular homes. He let me do the choosing. I chose the Mt. Hesperus, by Champion.

At first, from the moment I chose the house and the dealer, a wonderful young local woman named Hannah, things went fast. She and I spent hours choosing options, designing my dream kitchen, redesigning, adding windows in the bedrooms, choosing cabinets and flooring, and I could feel my spirits lift with every phone call, text message, and email. Funny, I’d never stepped foot in this house until it was delivered to Cowley, and even then I could only get into one half at a time. Hannah doesn’t have a show lot, and that’s why she can sell the same homes for thousands of dollars less than dealerships in Billings. Instead her clients become her friends, and they are thrilled to let her bring potential buyers for tours of their homes, just as we will be. The models aren’t the same, but the quality, some of the options, the color schemes and so on gave me a real good idea of what I liked and what I didn’t. I found our home online, I studied reviews online to find the best dealer I could, I contacted her online, we met at her house/office a few times finalizing pricing and options, she helped us find the best financing - online though a local bank - and finally on April 30 we closed on our construction loan. Then fast slowed down….way down. By then there was a 300% increase in demand as people were flooding out of Covid and violence-ridden cities and coming out west to buy up any postage stamp piece of land they could and putting up modulars. So we were delayed. And delayed. And delayed even more as building supplies were all but dried up. But we hung in there. Hannah is a night owl like I am…she has 7 boys so nighttime is when she gets most of her work done. It wasn’t unusual to suddenly get a text message from her at 11:30 pm saying, “Hey, Di - what color did you want your soap dishes in the master bath?” or the trim on the outside, mosaic kitchen tiles as shown, or something else? I was enjoying myself tremendouosly. And my numbers started going back up. I think in 2 months I went from that scary 19 to 29!

One of the people whose home we toured lives close by, 6 miles away in Byron. We were there when it was still a foundation with 2 halves on the lot, then we watched the process of her house being set on the foundation. The company that does the setting is from Sheridan, Opie’s Mobile Home transport. So I told him our biggest concern was our giant trees…could he even set one on our lot? (we had already had ‘The Giant’ removed at a cost of $5000, and sure couldn’t afford to take down anymore) He came over and took a look, and assured us that he could. (He wasn’t just bragging - he could back a 64 foot modular section through a keyhole and line it up perfectly with the foundation on one try - we watched him do it with ours!). Anyway, he asked us what we were going to with our old 1972 trailer and we told him we had no clue. He went inside, looked around, and said, “I’ll take it.” Now bear in mind that to move that house off our lot, a house that had been sitting in the same spot since 1972, would have cost us about $8000. Instead Opie gave me a dollar for the house, I wrote a bill of sale to please the port of entry authorities, then I gave him the dollar back for prepping the house and moving it off. He hauled it to Sheridan, where he donated it to a young lady with two teenaged daughters. She’d lost her home in a fire, no insurance, and had been living out of 2 storage units for 3 years. She works part-time for his wife in a thrift store in Sheridan, which was how she’d been accumulating household goods. She was thrilled.

Okay, so the house was ordered, arrangements were made for removal of the old trailer, financing was approved and the money already in our construction account…..piece of cake, right? If you think that, you don’t know Blooie. We got word that construction of our house would start at the factory on September 13th. We had set up the timing so that Opie would move the old place off the lot on October 2. Ken and I had Motel 5 1/2 set up and we moved into it on September 28th, since by then all of our household stuff was already out of the old place. We figured it would just be for a few weeks, and the weather was still nice. We had no running water, and had to rent an outhouse, but it was just for a few weeks. Yeah, right.

Our contractor started the foundation on October 5th. We were supposed to be moved into the new one before Halloween. The new house was actually not delivered until October 21. So much for Halloween. We had one section across the street to the north and the other across the street to the east, and an empty foundation. Finally the house was set on the foundation on November 8th, so we figured we’d be in before Thanksgiving. Nope. It was getting colder and colder, with snow, and that outhouse wasn’t fun at 2 am. The issue was the finishing work, some of which is still not finished. But on December 4th, after two days of temps in the single digits, Ken said, “That’s it….come hell or high water I’m sleeping in the house tonight. We‘d had power, water, and sewer already going. What we didn’t have was gas. No gas, no heat. Gas wasn’t hooked up until December 3, and by then the house was so cold that it was taking forever for it to get warm in here. He and Kenny went to the storage unit and brought over our bed. We set it up, and began a bare bones existence among the ladders, the bits of trim and wallboard and people popping up out of the crawl space, but by golly we were IN!

It’s a beautiful home, with three bedrooms, two baths, and a totally custom kitchen totally designed by yours truly. It’s 1856 sq feet, a palace compared to where we’ve spent the last 25 years. We have a long way to go to be totally settled yet, the front porch isn’t finished, and all we have surrounding is dirt - no more lush green yard with flowers everywhere, but that will come! In a separate post I’ll put up some pictures…this one has already gotten too long!

What a journey! So happy for you and your new home, it sounds like a dream come true...despite the delays. You're a really good writer.

View attachment 2944977View attachment 2944978
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Living room….and Kendra.

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Pantry….this sold the house for me!

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Kitchen
View attachment 2944986

View attachment 2944987
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Our room….with a tote and a box needing to be unpacked yet.

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Dining room
View attachment 2944990
Office/den
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Guest room
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Master bath

i'm with Debby on the pantry-envy. The kitchen is so pretty, everything looks open (unless you're just a skilled photographer) And that shower looks huge! Is it a shower and bath? Congrats Blooie its gorgeous!

Don’t I wish! I was thinking the same thing when I replied

One of the grandkids said delisherous instead of delicious for a long time. It’s one of our family words.

That's cute!

Hubby is hacking so I did not sleep well. He still is not back to normal or he caught another bug.

They say COVID can really linger, too. I hope he gets better though!