Thursday, June 12, 2008

PARENTS CUT CORNERS, BUT NOT KIDS' SPORTS
In lean times, families still spend in hopes of giving them a leg up in college

BY LISA KENNELLY Star-Ledger Staff

Preschoolers now tackle assignments, and some wonder at what cost

An early start on homework
Preschoolers now tackle assignments, and some wonder at what cost

BY CARRIE STETLER Star-Ledger Staff

Remember That Dream House We Over Bid On

So that "dream house" that we over bid for, (see May 20th posting), honestly it is really like dream house #4 in our house search, anyway a few weeks ago one of my son's classmate's mothers who live on the block that the house is on told me that she heard that the winning bid was falling through, we were already full steam ahead on another house but the next time I talked to our real estate agent I told him what I heard, he looked into it and said that the dream house #4 deal was going through fine.
So we forgot about it.

Now a few weeks and a large down payment on another house later our realtor tells my wife that the "dream house #4" deal fell through, I told my wife that it was too fucking late, the people we are buying our current house from are good people who already have a new house in mind and more importantly we've already signed the paperwork and given them a deposit, also and who ever our realtor spoke with two weeks ago did the sellers a major disservice by lying and saying that the deal was going fine because they are going to cost their client a whole bunch of money.

Real Estate is pretty fucked up. Actually I guess it is people with large sums of money on the line that are fucked up no matter the endeavor.

p.s.,
I just spoke with my realtor, he says that no one could have known about the buyer's problems until this morning, so the house I had heard there were problems with must have been another house on the block, I don't know if that's true, but it's still annoying either way.

No Gifts?

My 6 yr-old who just had a birthday was confused about the agreement he made. (See my May 22 entry) He knew people were going to make donations in his name to save baby seals and babies, but he did not realize that it meant he was not going to get any gifts from his classmates for his birthday. I reminded him that I had fully explained to him how we were asking for his classmates to donate to charity rather than giving him gifts, reminding him that they COULD bring gifts if they wanted to stop the tears that had began to flow.

Luckily his party went fine and he got gifts as well as donations for his charities so it all worked out.

I also learned that you can't let kids know that there is a surprise toy in their gift bags if you don't want them riffling through them before you are ready to give them out. Another thing I learned don't let a kid touch the pull string pinata before you are ready either because a windfall of candy being a few colorful string pulls away is way to much temptation for a six year-old to deal with.