renting fun

rebekah at rachel at the walmart playroom. with caleb in the background.

ok, this post is backwards. the pictures are at the top. sorry. we went to the snow over civil rights day, and had a blast with friends. we were the only family with actual snow clothes, so everyone else was freezing. we didn't stay too long, but had a good day anyway. it was nice to be out of the heat for a day!! the boys loved sledding though. they would have stayed out there all day!!

christmas eve jammies. they were so dang cute this year!!

so i was not informed on all the joys of renting before i decided to do this. there are crappy appliances, flooring, and cabinets. you don't get to choose the kind of stuff you want, or if it matches your own stuff. but i have learned that there are some up sides to renting as well. there is a landlord that you can call with your honey do list!! when something breaks, instead of adding it to the million things your hubby has to do, you call a number, and a guy comes to look at it! for free! since we have moved in, we have had 2 ceiling fans go out and get replaced, the water softener under the sink spewing water, so that was taken out. we had the back fence blow over and break in a storm, the dishwasher not work, and the stove knobs were crappy. last night the garage door died. when the landlord came over to look at it, he found the the motor had gone out completely. so just in the last few weeks, he has fixed the fence and stove, had the dishwasher cleaned, and now the garage door. all i can say is......I DON"T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!!!!!!! that is the upside i have found to renting. on to pictures

Was I wrong to respond?

Hey all its Nate. As you know we recently lost our home and were forced to move. Towards the end we payed a company a lot of money to assist us with the lender in renegotiating our loan. This loan mod company promised us a 50% reduction in our payment and a loan remodification to current value. Naturally we signed the papers and they took our limited cash and ran. We constantly called to find out what was going on...nothing was usually the response. We eventually received a modification that would have RAISED our payments, naturally we declined, and this angered our rep to no end. In the end, this same rep came to our home, told us his company had done all they could for us, yelled at my wife when she reminded him of his promises (I wasnt there or he wouldnt have a face anymore), then pulled out the papers which we signed which ended up having none of the guarantees he had promised us. He basically took our money and ran. Today I received this email.

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Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:20:00 -0800
Subject: Choice Loan Consulting Info
From: freedomteamjason@gmail.com

I am contacting you about your loan modification with Choice Loan Consulting. Here is what is going on. Please respond and let me know what you want to do. If you would like to be contacted by phone please email the best phone number and times to call and I will contact you as soon as possible.


Choice was doing a great job, up until 6 months ago. They were doing their banking with M&I Bank, and M&I was also doing their credit card processing. Choice’s volume went up from 100 deals a month to 1,000 deals a month within a 3-4 month period. M&I got scared of the possibility of future charge backs, so they seized $700,000 from Choice’s savings account, and told them they would release the funds 6 months after the loan modifications were completed.Choice was not able to make payroll and almost all of the sales offices immediately quit turning in new files. Freedom Team Financial was the largest sales organization for Choice, and since they had hundreds of clients in the middle of their modifications, they chose to try to work together with Choice to try to save the company. But for the last 6 months, customer service has been horrible, and since Choice had 2,300 homes in the middle of the modification process, they just couldn’t afford enough staff to keep up. For the last 6 weeks, I and the rest of the negotiating staff have worked without pay to make sure no one lost their home. Finally, last week, Choice shut their doors and is filing for bankruptcy. Freedom Team Financial pulled all of our own files, to modify them for free. They also purchased all of Choice’s data and intellectual properties, and hired me and 10 other top processors and negotiators from Choice to try to clean up this mess. So, at this point, we are trying to help as many Choice clients as we can.

Remind me of these things if you could:

What was the latest status on your modification?
How much is your home worth?
How much do you owe?
Credit card debt?
Lender?
Interest rate?
Monthly payment?
Gross monthly income?

If you don’t want to keep your home there is a short sale option:
Many of our clients that have had their homes decrease in value as much as yours have had Freedom Team Financial negotiate a short sale agreement with their lender in order to get out from under so much debt. Most experts believe that home prices will continue to fall over the next 2 years or so because the foreclosure rate is still increasing. The advantage of short selling is that you avoid having a foreclosure on your credit. A foreclosure can make it impossible to buy a new home for anywhere from 4 to 7 years or more. If you short sale, FTF will negotiate with your lender and they will agree to sell your home for less than what you owe and with the new FHA guidelines you could have perfect credit again in 2 years or less. Would you like to get more information on this option?

OR

Freedom Team Financial is doing the negotiations on their own files for free but they also want to help as many of Choice’s other clients as well so they will be putting on an educational forum that covers the “frequently asked questions “ about loan modifications to try to help people finish their negotiations on their own. Most clients have had a lot of problems with attempting this on their own so FTF is taking on Choice clients for just $500 to finish the negotiation process. They are only taking files on that they are confident that they can finish so if you are interested in that, I will have to dig into your file and call your lender to find out the status and have our underwriting team look it over to decide if the will take it or not. Is that something that you are interested in?

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to call me...

-Jason Schumacher
-650.291.1106


Here is my response
Jason
Well this explains the ineptitude. We lost our home and were forced to move. The promises made to us by your company were fantastic and your negligence on our behalf criminal. Your rep, hiding behind legal jargon at the end, was ridiculously lost and completely incompetent, yelling at my wife and reducing her to tears because he could not keep his promises. We lost our dream house, we put our souls into that home and tried everything we could to keep it. I have no home for you to try and salvage, but if I did, what in the world would make me want to try anything with what is left of your shambled company? Your excuses below do not make up for the misery your company brought into our lives. Unless you plan on giving us our money back for all the "nothing" you did for us please dont send me emails like this again.
Nathan Gresko

Too nice? Too mean? What do you think? Should I have responded at all? I thought I was ready to move on..getting this email REALLY upset me. Opinions ya'll opinions.

way behind

ok, so i was appalled to realize that i haven't posted for over a month!! wow. i guess i've been busy!! well, here are the kids ready for church the week before christmas. the girls are wearing beautiful hand me downs.

then here is my oldest sister kirsten, who came down to visit for a few days in november.

here is my oldest niece, morgan with the twins on her lap. beautiful girl!!

rebekah pushing all the others. there is rachel, caleb, colby and james. the only ones missing here are james and tat's kids. the others are too old to ride this!!



rebekah pushing rachel in a swing at the park

and here is our picture with santa. surprise surpise, caleb didn't want to. anyone else not too shocked?? :)

then we have the 3 triplets, abby and sammy, and rachel, born 3 months later.



and tattie snuggling with abby on the couch

rachel loves smiling for the camera. say cheese sammy!!

and last but not least, andrew and caleb being silly in matching pjs. boys will definitely be boys!!

we had a wonderful christmas few weeks. nathan's brother, and his family came down on saturday before christmas. the only problem is that i woke up that morning with a really bad case of vertigo. it made the next few days pretty rotten for me. fortunately, the kids had cousins to play with and occupy them. they were lifesavers! then the other brother, and both sisters and their families made it down too, making a hectic and fun filled few days! my younger sister came down too, so we got to juggle both families. it was very fun!! now we are alone again, and the quiet is unusual. here's to having lots of visitors again soon!! our house may be small, but we still love having people crammed in it with us!!

new family pics by dave

hey everyone, it's that time of year again. time to have our family pictures done and show off our beautiful family to everyone!!! here they are. colby is 8, rebekah 6, caleb 4, and rachel just shy of 18 months. yahoo. where does the time go?? sheesh!!

thanks to dave, for taking our pictures for us, on such short notice, and even doing a little touch up work on them for us. we really appreciate his expertise in this area, and letting us benefit from it!! :)

it has been a great thanksgiving weekend. kris and heather and their families have been down since sunday, and we have been having a very fun time. we haven't done anything super exciting, just enjoying spending time together. and a big thank you goes out to all the crowther girls for entertaining my kids and heathers. thanks to jenna, kellie, alissa, and katie!! we love you, and the kids love you. it has been a good chance to get to know these wonderful girls better. i keep telling kris that she can loan me one every month or so!! it makes such a difference to have older and helpful kids around!!

nathan's birthday is today, so i want to say how grateful i am to have him in my life, and that we can be together as still like each other!! he is truly my other half, and i love him more every day. thanks for being my best friend and love of my life!!

right now we are having a tailgate party watching the byu game. have a good weekend everyone!!

time really flies

ok, per heather's request, i am officially back to the posting world. although i really don't think that anyone else cares!! for those who don't know, we were asked, not so nicely, to vacate our home, and we had less than a week to do it in. we were told on saturday, found house on tues, and moved sat, mon and tues. we were officially in on wednesday, when the tv was turned on!! :) it's been a crazy, rollercoaster of a month so far. we didn't have enough time to prepare and pack properly, so basically everything was thrown together into the nearest box if we wanted to keep it. this eliminated a lot of clutter, but the stuff i thought we would sell or donate, ultimately ended up in the dump with all the rest of the excess. we were told that the house was fine, but the yard needed to be completely cleaned up. if it wasn't nailed down, it had to go. so another 2 hours and a few meltdowns after we thought we were done, we actually were done.

so now we are in our new house. it is almost half the size of the previous one, but does have a pool and little grass area with a side porch for the kids to run around on. they have a toy room, and were able to bring their beds, which is all they cared about. kids are amazingly resilient!! we are back in my old stomping ground now, my elementary school is literally around the corner. it's a little crazy being back in the old ward, but enough people have moved in and out that it is a very different place. hopefully we will fit in soon. the kids have a hard time not knowing all the neighbors and having many places to run. but they will live, i'm sure. we are all very blessed, and we just keep reminding ourselves all the time of that fact!! nathan's work is less than 3 miles away, and as long as the car runs, the kids school is less than 10. so we are happy.

i just tried to get new pictures with my camera, and it is black!! aah!! i will cry if it is broken!!

lost addresses!!!

hey everyone, i accidentally deleted my listing of everyone's blogs on the side of the page!! if you don't see yours on here, can you please send me a link to it!! i am sad that i am missing out on so many people's stuff! there are fun pictures and stories out there i'm not getting!! thanks

colby's stuff

well, this post is kind of about colby today. i posted the pictures backwards, so we'll start with tonight. colby earned his bobcat award for cub scouts, and he's only been a scout for a month!! we are so proud of him! for earning it, dad got to paint his face with different colors and places representing different qualities they want the scouts to possess. it was very cool to see!

he kept his eyes closed, like he was afraid dad would stick the paint in his eye!

then we have colby's baptism. he was baptized on saturday the 17th, and confirmed an official member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was an amazing day. here's the happy parents with him!

he was baptized at the same time as his 2 cousins, logan and katie. here they are with their baptizers (josh is katie's older brother, and was able to baptize her, it was awesome)



dad and colby

the crazy kids, logan, colby and katie, waiting for the big event!!

we are so proud of all of you guys!!