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We moved out to the country

May 2019 we moved to the country. It has been fantastic. There have been some learning points there were hard and negative but also some points of great positives. I will update with more info as we move forward. We also got a few chickens and a horse as well as Jeb and Sim.

Richie update

It’s been a long time since we updated and boy have things changed. Richie left us to go to college! We didn’t think that was going to be possible but it was a super cool situation. He ended up going to College of Desert a junior college which he was able to get on the football. He went with a bunch of his friends from Southridge and seems to be doing great. We will continue to pray for Him as he works though what he learned in Oregon with us and his friends

Stuff since the trip to the Philippines in May

So quick update. We are well into the adoption process for the Philippines but heard yesterday that the psych eval was not a good one. I am apparently suicidal? No idea why but that’s what my test score says so we are in the process of figuring out whether the Philippines will still be cool with us adopting. Suicidal ideation really doesn’t look good so we are currently doubting it. It’s actually pretty hilarious that I’m the one that was targeted in the psych department. Anyway if it doesn’t work out we are going to be looking at doing in country adoption. We will just pivot. We’ll se how it goes but we are both feeling like this is a sign that the Philippines may be out of reach at this point.

We have another high schooler living with us. His name is Richie. He’s been with us since October. He has taught us a lot abo dealing with teeagers and the rules and boundaries you have to set up to deal with them. He comes from a drug background and left Connecticut to finish out his senior year in Oregon since he has some estranged family here. Here a some pics of his football season. The game that night was just nuts. Southridge was down by two touchdowns and scored two to make it back and win. It looked like a loss which would take them out of the playoffs but they scored two in like 2 and a half minutes. Crazy game.

Anyways last part is that I’m on the hunt for another investment property and we’re still planning on getting land to develop. We have come close but nothing has hit our fancy quite yet.

I will get back to you on more info later.

Part 2

Philippines and South Korea 2017

More “paid” design stuff I’d been working on

Moving to the country

Gonna eat me a lot of peaches. (Not really, not keto)

So Sarah and I want to move to the country. We’ve settled on finding a patch of land in Yamhill county. Specifically in Oregon wine country. We want at least 40 acres. We had a property that we were going to put under contract a couple of months ago but were outbid just at the last second. We also have one we are still currently looking at that is 160 acres. The only problem is it can’t be subdivided and we really don’t want to fit the bill. It’s on the market for 550k without timber rights. We don’t ever want to be house poor so paying that much makes it a deal breaker. We were going to look at subdividing it but according to the county we can do it but we wouldn’t be able to put a house on each parcel. We will keep an eye on it and see how it looks in a couple of months and if the seller wants to lower the price.

In terms of why we want to do this:

Sarah really wants to have a camp and I really want to make a cool modular event space for weddings, corporate retreats, Holiday gatherings, Christmas markets, and the like. I think we can make money on it and she has always wanted to help kids with animal therapy so its kind of the best of both worlds.

Hopefully when everything is up and running we can make this dream work, have the business pay for the land and all the bills that entail having such a large patch of land, and be able to raise our kids in the great outdoors.

Lifestyle and habit change

Small changes make big changes possible. - Me

So I’ll start by making the caveat that I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out. It’s really a starting point but I like that small changes are really making a heck of a difference.

Let’s go back. About a year ago I went to the doctor and got blood tests done. They found that I was pre-diabetic. Which for some reason really rubbed me the wrong way. I mean it wasn’t that I was diabetic but the fact that I was on the borderline really rubbed me the wrong way. I hated that I was unhealthy. I hated was gaining weight. I hated that I wasn’t doing anything about it. So I decided to make a change.

Sarah was talking about a doctor who had lost a bunch of weight doing a ketogenic diet. Basically you end up eating an incredibly small amount of carbohydrates and replace those by eating a large amount of protein and a large amount of fat. What perked my interest was the fact that the keto diet also made most people’s insulin levels go back to normal and those who had to take diabetes meds were able to control their diabetes with diet alone. Anyways klong story short. I’ve but a lot of the carbs I used to eat on a regular basis. No rice, no bread, no pasta. Also I was able to cut out a lot of sugar. I didn’t realize how much sugar I was actually consuming and how much of an addiction it had become until I went off cold turkey and basically felt miserable for about 4 days.

So i tried this diet for about 3 months and dropped weight pretty significantly. I was at around 198 for a while and all of a sudden I was at 180. That’s 18 lbs. in a matter of months. Crazy. After that drop I stalled for a bit and basically decided to add working out to the mix. I’m doing a high intensity training thing.

Here is the workout regime:

You basically have 4 workouts you do intensely for 4 minutes and then rest for a minute.

1st set:

10 pushups then jumping jacks for rest of the 1 minute

10 Burpees then jumping jacks for the rest of the 1 minute

20 in and outs “

20 Russian Twists “

REST for 1 minute

2nd set:

10 pushups “

20 Mountain Switching Climbers “

20 Jump Lunges “

10 Bear Crawls “

REST for 1 minute

3rd set:

20 Switching Mountain Climbers “

20 In and Outs “

20 Leg Raises “

20 Russian Twists

REST for 1 minute

I do this workout 3x a week.

It’s important to note that this workout is supposed to be focused on intensity not time so when you do them you need to make sure you are keeping the intensity up.

Overall my goals is to drop another 16 lbs and 22% body fat. I’m currently at 178 as of this morning. I want to hit a healthy weight so I don’t have too much weight on my body as I get older. I want to be there by 4/2018. Big goal, but I think I can get there.

The main thing I’m wanting to incorporate is fasted cardio. I think that will help me exponentially in taking the next leap.

Time has flown by

Oh how the turn tables….

So how do I start this post? Well i guess the best way to start is to apologize for not doing this more. I’m writing to my future self so not getting stuff down on here is actually a detriment to myself. One thing I really hope though is Tumblr never goes out of business or bought out. Although I actually completely forgot about this whole blog so I may not even notice. Reading through this thing has been really fun though so I hope I’m able to read this when I’m 90. I wish i had been better at getting life changes written down. Maybe I’ll put a reminder every couple of months to write at least something down.

Life has take a dramatic turn for the better. Let’s start with the bigger news and work our way down:

I’m now real estate investing.

We currently own 5 units. 2 Duplexes and our current Village Lane house which we are going to make a permanent rental as soon as we buy some acreage. Yep, you heard that right. We plan on living out in the country. Really… like in the country…. with animals and acreage and barns and such. More on that later.

I started thinking about this whole thing about summer of 2015. I hated my laboratory job and wanted a way out so I decided to start doing a bit of graphic design on the side and trying to start up a business that way. I got a couple of clients and we were off to the races. Turns out anything in the creative fields are really hard to get up and running and I soon found myself working a lot for a very minimal amount of money. It just didn’t make sense to keep going. Here are a couple of pictures of what I ended up doing.

I’ve got more on my computer, these are the only ones I have at work. I might add some one later. Some of these I’m proud of others not so much. Anyways I decided that this was not what I wanted to do. I was pretty bummed it wasn’t going to work and I was at basically square one again but then I started reading financial blogs and getting financially literate and realized I could try out real estate. My parents had done it, Sarah’s parent’s had done it and I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, it just made sense and after that we went off to learn as much as I could. If January 2016 started looking for houses, got rejected, switched realtors, got made an offer and got accepted in April, got to work, it really sucked, and in July we got our first renters in and started making about $1000 a month. We were really happy with the results and decided to do another one. We bought our latest duplex May of 2017. We are finishing up and going to try to get it rented September 1st. Fingers crossed it works. Then we’re off to the next one.

The plan for the whole thing is to continue buying houses and getting them rented out and making money every month from the tenants. Its going pretty well. After we get this last house stabilized I will then be making as much as I make at my job at St. Vincent’s.

The main goal is to basically be financially independent in the next 2 years. We want to be making $5000 per month of passive income from the rentals. Then I can quit my job and move into making money by buying larger apartment building using other people’s money. That’s the goal right now but by the age of 40 I want to be making $10,000 a month.

I’ll leave this post here for now and move on to my next bit of news. Working out and changing my food habits and lifestyle.

Time at the Harbor

Yesterday I went to the harbor to lead music over there. It was a really good time. They had a section called glimmer. It is when the guys openly talk about how they saw God work over the past week. Some guys had some really cool things to say. I always really enjoy getting to hang out with those guys. I mt a guy named Jim who had just started to come to the Harbor. He had been there 3 days and was just coming off a meth addiction. His speak was all over the place but he genuinely felt very at home and loved at the Harbor. Hopefully I will get to see him again. I should also talk to Danny about going once a month to help out. It really is always super encouraging when I’m able to go.

Crosby loafing around.

Riley and Crosby fighting.

When we first got him. Baker, Oregon

REcatching up

So may things have happened since we spoke last its really hard to think back about the important stuff but here is the list

1. We’re going to Uganda. It is though an organization called Peace for Paul. It was started by a nurse who Sarah used to work for at Serenity Hospice.

2. We got a new dog named Crosby. I will put video and picture up soon.

3. We are going back to Royal Family this summer. I am very much looking forward to that. Remember those times you would be very let down after a mission trip because of all the cool stuff you got to do an experience? Yes. That is what happened after camp last year. That almost never happens. Even on the last mission trip I went on.

4. Sarah got a job working at St. V’s as well. She is on the cardiology unit with my mom.

I can’t really think of anything else that is taking place currently but I will put up pics and video of Crosby.

I need to remember this

In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty; in all things love — Rupertus Meldenius

It is important for everyone to remember this. Liberty in non essentials and love in all.

John get married

The weekend after Thanksgiving one of my best buds John got married. I was in his wedding as a groomsman. It was fun being on the other side of the equation. See I was the first one out of all my friends to get married. It was very foreign to all of us in my friend group and now that we have two of us it definitely helps me out. I'm not the only one that has to "check with his wife." Which is awesome! The wedding went really well, much more fun than any of us thought it would be including John.

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