Property Taxes

My advice for the week: Pay attention to your mortgage payment. Ours just jumped up $85/month (which is a lot for a couple of poor students) and I spent the last few weeks discussing it, repeatedly, with our mortgage company (Wells Fargo), my title company, Maricopa county treasurer's office, the Maricopa land parcel office (or something like that), and my neighbor. Long story short, I just made (or, really, earned back) $2400! Whoo-hoo. Basically, when we bought the house somehow we were billed for the past year of property taxes and on top of that our mortgage company paid additional taxes on some other property (from our account). The county didn't care, as long as they got paid, and the bank blindly passed out checks from my escrow account whenever anybody wanted some. It took a lot of work, but finally we're getting our money back and our payments are dropping back down. Whoo-hoo. So the moral of the story is to closely manage your cash because if you don't others will.

Its Final!

Today our lawyer met the judge in Utah and finalized our adoption of Abigail. She is now ours, legally, for life. Next week we'll take her to the temple and seal her to us for eternity. We're so excited!