I had my meeting with the Mountain Housing Opporuntities (MHO) people yesterday morning. They had 2 programs to offer. One was very similar to the Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) program. The other was more of a work program. They have a big plot of land outside of town that they have divided up into 5 building lots. They will get 5 families to do cooperative building on all the houses. Each family has to put in 25 hours a week building the houses, and everyone works on every house. No one can move in until all of the houses are finished. In exchange for all of this work, they waive your down payement and sell you the house for about $45k less than market price-around $100k. You also have around $15k in equity immediately.

This program appeals to us in many ways: you work with your neighbors for months and months before you move in, so it is a true community, your mortage is affordable and you make a killing upon selling the house. There are also a lot of down sides: there is no clear time table for move in, it is farther away from town/work, that's a hell of a lot of work to put in while caring for a toddler and working full time, respectively.

We are going to have to sit down with a list of questions, get all of our questions answered and then figure out which program is the best fit. MHO has a waiting list for the NHS comparable program, so we don't know when we could get into that anyway. The MHO program is a bit better than the NHS program because they only want a $1k down payment, and the mortgage is almost the same as if we put down $5k with the NHS program. That would give us $4k more to put into savings. It is all very confusing and complicated. Lists clearly must be made.

In other news, I have officially started my grant writing class. I took the first lesson and took the first quiz and I kicked its ass with 100%. Go me!

Kyle and Anthony are going on their hiking/camping trip this weekend. Yesterday I brought Henry over their house to play with Noah and Anthony handed me a folded drinking straw with a huge grin and told me to give it to Kyle. I asked him what it is (a question he was clearly waiting for) and he revealed with glee that it was soap! He had lightened his pack by a whole .2oz by ingeniously pouring just enough soap into the straw and folding it up to carry! Wow! Amazing! He then told me that he had done the same with his toothpaste and other assorted items, and that Kyle should do the same. Should be a fun weekend. Except not. Anthony is clearly a Type A personality and Kyle...well, let's just say Kyle will probably be chucking some stuff into his pack approximately 5 minutes before we leave. I seriously doubt he will be spending his evening depositing minute amounts of various toiletries into pilfered McDonald's straws.

Jess and I are toying with the idea of having a slumber party while they are gone. Noah and Henry would have a blast and it would be fun for us to have a drink and paint our toes or something. We shall see.