Our new investment home in Goonellabah

OK, so we came back from East Timor in Sept 2008,  and after 2 months of prayer about what God wanted us to do, Samuel was offered a 12 month job at St Andrews Christian school, Grafton.  We soon decided that it would make sense to try and get a loan to purchase another house while Samuel was receiving a regular income.  We also wanted to find somewhere that had some sort of space or land which could be utilised by Samuel's dad. We also wanted to be able to pretty much cover any loan repayments with the rental income from the property. We drove up to Lismore one day before school started in Jan 2009.  We visited 7+ real estate agents, and looked at a couple of places, but weren't real keen on any.  We were happy to pay up to AU$400k or AU$500k. (we owned our home at Ulmarra, didn't have any loan on it, and by now it had risen to $300+k in value.  So we could use the equity in that to purchase another place.  We finally walked into patchandtaylor and a yonger agent was chatting and listening to us about what we wanted.  He finally said "There just might be something that may interest you" He explained about a large house on a huge block of land.  The problem was there was no access to the large piece of land at the back.
So off we went for a drive to look around the area and decide if it was worth us looking through the house. 
The house looked ok from the road, nothing special.  The driveway was steep, and behind it was a lot of trees.  We looked on the map and decided to try a couple of nearby roads to see if we could get close to the back piece of land.  As we got closer we noticed a new development, and realised that we may be able to get access somehow with one of the new blocks and maybe buying access off a bordering neighbour.  Somewhat feasible.  We thewn imediantly drove to the council to see what exactly were the lands borders.
What a shock!  The land backed right up to the new development! It also had one long border with a council reserve, and a small creek through the lowest corner,  the rear border adjoins land owned by Summerland Christian School.  We then started ringing the agent responsible for selling the new development.  2 blocks were already sold, the third had a sewer line running diagonly through it, as well as an easement along the border of the land we were looking at.
We rang the agent at Patch and taylor, and arranged a look through the house.  Upstairs was 3 bedrooms, 2 with built-in cupboards.  A lovely bathroom with spa, a nice kitchen, lounge, dining and a huge deck out the back overlooking the trees and the pool!  Downstars was another bedroom with an ensuite, a simple concrete floor room, a laundry and a large rumpus room.  We new that it would work for Uni students.  They were asking $415k, we made an offer of $385k, we finally settled at $395k inc some of the furniture to remain.  We also offered to buy the best block from the new development, but the new owners were keen to keep it.  So we decided to buy the weird block and settled at $100k.  (they were asking $115k).  So by March we owned the house, and placed a family in upstairs with the condition that they rent out downstairs to uni students.  Samuel and the tenant built two rooms in the rumpus area and built a 3 way bathroom and kitchenette as well.
We received about $500max/week this past year as rental income from it. 

Second day of school

Well, so far so good. Trying to ease us all back into the routine.  Serenity is quite excited to prepare "school" for Israel. eg she dresses him in special clothes and brushes his hair, and packs some snacks for him in his little backpack :) then she chooses some pages from his collection of activity books (like dot to dots, matching things etc.)
He loves having his own things to do during the first intensive parts of my school work with Serenity.
We start with reading a chapter or two (or sometimes 3-4) from the Bible.  We started from Genesis a year or 2 ago, and are currently up to the end of Job.  I read it straight most of the time, but occasionally i translate some tricky words.  I found a great resource of activity sheet sets, which include a colouring page she does while i read, a sheet of true/false statements relating to the particular reading, and a word find and maze.  All with 2 varying ability levels.
http://children.calvarychapel.com/SITE/curriculum.htm
  Awesome! check it out!
Im trying very hard to go softly softly with her reading and writing.  She struggles so much with it, and she improved so much in the last semester of 2009, that i want to give her a break for a little while.  After all, now she is delicately exploring small reading opportunities - like the tv guide at Nell and Grandpas house, and the new kids recipe book she got off Nanna Debbie.
http://www.littlekitchen.com.au/shop2/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=92

I read to her from a lovely book about the history of pianos.  Seeing as we had lo leave the piano in our home at Ulmarra, she cant have any real piano lessons for a while.  So ill do a bit of theory.
Of course when lunch came around they were hankering for a swim, so we all jumped into the pool.  Serenity is trying to perfect her new diving ability.

Welcome to my world!

Well, i am sitting on a large deck at the back of this large house, eye level with beautiful eucalypts and a bright fuchsia-coloured bougainvillea draped high up in the branches. Samuel, Serenity and Israel are enjoying the pool below me, splashing and laughing. Serenity just called me down to show me her new skill - diving properly! I was very impressed.
Theres a lovely cool breeze to compensate for the warm day.

Today I have been scrubbing the walls, skirting boards, doors and furniture of two of the bedrooms here. Its our investment home that we are hoping to rent out to Uni students this year.

We have surprisingly little food that is interesting to eat, and as its Australia Day (Invasion Day), no shops are open. So we had baked beans on corn thins for lunch :).

The kids have been watching a few hours of tv today - that dreaded box! We received it free from our church and we will leave it here for the uni students.

The picture on the left is how the camera took the photo of the bougainvillea, the one on the right is me playing with it, to try and show the true colour. Its such a vivid, bright rich pink!