Holding Chase

We love when other people hold Chase. Our arms like the break and we like showing off our baby.

Grandpa B...

Grandma B...


Cousin Jordan...


Chase had better get used to this backpack. I have a feeling he'll get a lot of seat time in it...
Mama B gets to hold him lots. You can tell by his double chin that he's gaining weight very well...

About Housing and Mortgages

When we purchased a house last year I was introduced to the scam that is "closing costs". I had heard this term thrown around before in sentences like "Well after closing costs your payments will only be XXX dollars!" or "The buyer doesn't have to worry about closing costs" we even had one mortgage broker who told us that we shouldn't buy a house from someone who won't pay the closing costs. I'm still not sure what people mean when they say "closing costs" except that it is a generic term for every miscellaneous fee associated with buying a house except the purchase price and taxes. These can include Realtor fees, title fees, credit check fees, etc...We even had a fee for paperwork (after all they have to document the fees!). The main fee though is the one for the loan. This is what mortgage broker's call points (sorry, points are bad, think of it like golf) banks get paid off of interest but mortgage brokers get paid off of points. Depending on the interest rate, bank and how shady your mortgage broker is points end up being 1%-4% of the loan amount. All told we paid about 4.5% of the value of our home in closing costs. This does NOT include the 6% the seller paid in realtor fees. These are fairly small percentages but they add up to a lot of money. For example let's say you buy a home for $190,000 (the average sale price in Salem, OR). You think "Well I saved up $10,000 so I'll have 5% equity in my home lucky me!" Nope. That's not the case.

Price: $190,000
Closing costs: $8,550
Property Taxes: $2,310 (1.22% in my county and must be paid at the time of sale)
Total: $200,860
Loan amount: $190,860

Yep, you now owe more on your house than you paid for it! Contgratulations!

Wanna be angrier? Think about how much the realtor's are getting.

Price: $190,000
Realtor Fees: $11,400

So, your home (the biggest purchase you'll ever make) could have been bought for $178,600 and you would have owed $168,600 but instead you owe $190,860! That's twenty grand more thanks to all the leeches.

Bills: Before we bought a house we had no idea how much the bills would add up too. We asked a few people and they all had wildly different answers. This is mostly because of consumption and region. Here are ours but they will almost certainly be different than yours.

Electric: 26.375
Gas: 106.26 (average over December, January, February and March, will hopefully go down)
Cell Phone: 60 (two of them, more when Megan get's chatty)
Garbage: 17
Water: 50
Internet: 20 (will go up after 12 months)

Family Visit

Megan's parents (Larry and Sandy) and brother (Dan) visited us in the Great Northwest about two weeks ago. They got to sample quite a bit of Oregon on their visit.Their visit included Silver Creek Falls, Portland, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Pacific City, and even the Spruce Goose! While they were here we also had a birthday party for Chase...



We sang all of the Holben birthday songs (there are three)...

I realized that I haven't posted a picture of Megan recently so here she is...


(This picture was taken two days after the fam left. It was absolutely beautiful and we could see all of the mountains. Should have stayed longer!)

He's adorable

Sorry, but he is...

Okay, I'm not actually sorry...


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