The reality check from Southern California

We pay more to rent an apartment in Southern California than we paid on the mortgage on our house in Washington.This should have been the tip off when we decided to look at houses around the apartment complex we live.

Saturday morning came and the entire family was loaded in the car following a church cleaning service project. Tyler and I voted to keep driving and look for houses on the market. (Ted was voting to go home but 2 to 1 sorry Ted.)

I had no idea how ridiculously overpriced houses are down here. My assumption was that we would perhaps be able to afford maybe a condo. There is a new condo development being built in our area starting in the 600,000s! Yowza!

The next thought was going further from the beach and looking at ramblers... 400,000s... sigh... Oh, the best part of the day and the one that solidified I was done looking. And done hoping for a miracle. We drove around a neighborhood. Not a super fancy neighborhood. We saw an "open house" sign and wanted to take a look. As we pulled up to the house I noticed it was 2 stories.

"We can't afford this Tyler."

Not even stopping the car to get out we drove over to the next street and pulled up the address on Zillow.... Are you sitting down for this one?

$1.7 million!!!!!!!!!!!!! (yes this price deserves that many exclamation points). This is a house that looks smaller than my parent's house and theirs would go for somewhere in the low 300s in Washington. It was drilled into our skulls from Washington friends that California is expensive. Yet, this was still a pretty big smack in the face. And with that, we headed home, defeated, and rethinking our plans... I will let you know....

On a much more positive note. Ted is amazing. :) I have been buying work books for him to practice his pencil grip and writing. These books have little mazes for him to do and he is so great at them. He also has books that use dry erase markers for learning to write. The other day I came up on Ted working in his book and following the outlines to write his letters! I had not taught him to copy these letters. He just figured it out on his own from practice following lines. I will mention, he normally holds the pen correctly in his left hand but he hurt his fingers on his left hand (so yes, I realize he is not holding the pen right). He is 2 1/2.

And now I am constantly finding him going through his book and writing all the letters. He may not know all his letters yet but he can copy them like a boss!!!

I'm sorry did you want to fold these clean clothes? Cuz I'm kinda tired so maybe you could come back later.