You guessed it.

I will be starting my 3rd month of my 3rd pregnancy next week. I know it's a bit early to tell the whole world, but I know how sick I get and I know how quickly I show. I'm also lucky to have never had a miscarriage, so I don't really expect one this time (and if I did have one, I'd want your support, not comments saying "what? you were pregnant?"). So I decided this time, I'd rather the whole world knew sooner rather than later. (It's always confusing to people when I go around acting so sick and it never goes away, but I say it's okay because it's not contagious.)

Alisha won for guessing the correct guess only 12 minutes after I posted the question. But then, she's got baby on her mind anyway. :)

Jess won for being the first to think of something different after having read the first comment. (Curtis WILL be getting a new job soon, his will have petered out and died by Thanksgiving, probably sooner.)

Josh won for the most interesting, out-there guess (I think raising pygmy goats sounds kinda fun). Cam gets second prize for that one, but really, Cam, Fiji?

Michelle won for guessing (based on how close she knew we wanted our kids to be) before I even put up the "guess what?" post. Sorry, I almost forgot about that one.

I'm due April 5th. But, since I've always gone 4-5 days early, I expect we'll have an April Fool's baby. Thanks for guessing!

Guess what?

No, really. Guess.

Camping in Richfield, Manti and Bear Lake (twice)

So, we've been lucky enough to go camping quite a few times this summer. First we went to Richfield with Curtis' family (all the siblings came too). It was really fun. I love seeing the nieces (Hadley's it for the boys so far) and catching up with their parents (Curtis' siblings). But when I went to post about it, I noticed that we didn't take any pictures at all of it. Oops.

The day we took down camp at Richfield we also set up camp in the mountains around Manti. That was with Curtis' grandparents and their siblings. That was really fun too. Here's our "Tubbsmahal" (it's kinda far away from the camera so it doesn't look as big as it is).

Koda loved not being tied up (he had to be the whole time we were in Richfield).

We accidentally left Hadley alone with the bag of Cheetos.

Adelyn loves to help.

Here's the load of wood we cut down and took home. Curtis tried to cut my leg off with the chainsaw but I forgot to take a picture of the wound until it didn't look very bad, so the picture of it I do have is lame enough that I won't post it.

Next we went to Bear Lake with a few families in our ward. That was really fun. We went through Minnetonka Caves (the kids didn't do so well). And we went to the beach. Here's the kids sharing a stool, eating their lunch on the beach.

Finally, we went to Bear Lake again with my family (minus one sister and her husband). We went to the beach and to another lake (but I can't remember the name of it right now) that was absolutely freezing cold, but fun to look at, hike to and skip rocks across. This is us in front of the freezing lake.

I tried to get more pictures of the last trip uploaded (because I actually had more), but it kept telling me that it was "a bad request", whatever that means. So I only got this one. I don't know why all the pictures are grainy this time, I didn't do anything different. Sorry!

No more court for us

After talking with a lawyer in our stake about our chances of winning a lawsuit against our past renter we found out we'd most likely lose no matter what we do.

-We can't sue for $900 because that was the deposit amount and that has already been decided upon.

-We can't sue for any of the costs over that because it is still connected to the deposit. If we had wanted that money, we had to have sent in a counter-claim to his original suing us.

So we've decided to just drop it and move on with our lives. We're so sick of it all anyway that it almost feels like a relief to just forget about it. Now we just have to figure out how to get $1,000 to pay him back. (he isn't allowing us to pay it off in installments like he paid it to us in the first place -- it seems he thinks we're rich and that anyone rich in the world owes him something -- well, he's wrong on both counts but he knows his way around the system well enough to get away with it)

*Update on last post

So, I was just corrected on some information that makes the judge sound like a better person, but I still feel like we lost on a stupid technicality.

We didn't lose because we didn't file a counter-claim. Whew, because nothing we ever read on any of the paperwork we got from the court system mentioned we had to do that if we thought we were innocent. I was ready to have a very long word with the court system.

We lost because we didn't send, officially, in writing, a detailed list of the repairs, etc. and their costs to our past renter -- officially explaining why he didn't get his deposit back -- within 30 days of receiving his new address.

We thought verbally telling him was enough (and verbally we did, lots and lots), and besides, the only time we were able to get his new address was on the summons papers for court. We figured it was a moot point sending it then.

Anyway, it doesn't sound quite as bad now, but we still lost the money (and I'm still just as mad). We're considering suing him for all the repairs, etc. we had/have to do. We figured it to be more than $3,000. Did you know, I had to scrub cat pee off the walls for over two hours (cats were strictly not allowed), and when I was done, the house still smelled.

AAAARGH!!!

That's just me very loudly venting my frustrations online. (I think I sound like Charlie Brown)

Today, Curtis went to court. Our previous tenant (we're renting out our old house) sued us because we didn't give back his deposit. For the record, he didn't deserve any of it back and, in fact, actually owed us money, but we figured we'd never get it out of him, so we didn't do anything about it.

Well, we talked to a few people, made sure we had plenty of evidence on film and everything documented from our dealings with this past renter. We figured we had a solid case and the judge would just look at him and ask, "So why are you suing him?"

We were told that if we wanted, we could counter-claim and see if we could get the money back that he still owed from damages done to the property. But, again we figured that even if we won, he'd never pay. So we decided to be the nice guys and wait until court to defend ourselves instead of going on the offensive.

Well we were wrong.

Curtis went to court. Our past renter explained his side of the case (very poorly, the judge had to keep pulling him back on track, and he ended up never actually presenting a case against us), and so did Curtis (with the evidence we collected). Then the judge pulled out the rule book and said that our renter won because we didn't file a counter-claim.

So that is that, we now owe over $1,000 (which we have spent repainting, cleaning, repairing and replacing things in the rental -- all due to him) because we didn't look closely enough at the "Rental Laws". The judge said it was a learning lesson for us, albeit an expensive one.

I'd just like to kick a few people today.