Well, my car failed Maryland’s inspection spectacularly. Apparently my Rodeo was not just rusty, loud, and cheap, but also represented a clear and present danger to the State of Maryland.

Their inspection is so strict that it’s difficult to find any cheap used cars like I’m used to driving. So with the prospects of having to get car payments, I changed my focus from buying as cheap as possible to getting a nice safe and reliable family vehicle. But this is me still so it’s a manual transmission SUV.

It’s a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe with only 24,000 miles!

We closed on our house in Indy last Friday and have one less (huge) thing to worry about.  Thursday and Friday we twisted family and friend’s arms into helping us move everything we own outside and then pack it into the biggest truck Uhaul had.  It was very tiring, but we got a mandatory rest period from God in the form of a storm that came through the area.

After we closed, Katie and I drove the van and Uhaul back to Maryland without incident.  Our sister in law was nice enough to have her baby that day so we detoured a bit through Mercer county Ohio so Hannah could meet her first boy cousin!  Sweet Baby James!  What are we going to do with a boy in the family?

Our Indy buyer accepted our 1000th counter-offer and we have come to terms on the inspection repairs!  Thanks for the prayers!

Next comes the appraisal…

Many of you can relate to a time in your lives similar to what we’re going through, buying and selling homes at the same time.  (You may or may not have been living in an RV and trying to pass a kidney stone at the same time though.)

The next day or two are very important for us.  Our Indy buyer has been very aggressive in asking for us to fix things and it has come down to the last item that they have until Monday at 1pm to agree to.  For those of you not following the MD buying saga, we’ve put in two offers on houses and lost them.  During my kidney stone medical stint on Friday I found a new house just listed that day that seemed perfect.  We went and saw it and made an offer that night.  (Yes, I entered into a very large contract under the influence of powerful pain killers.)  We’ve heard that the sellers already have 3 offers and 3 more showings Sunday and will be reviewing all offers Monday at 1:30pm. We’re considering sweetening our offer tonight.

This house is absolutely our favorite house from the tons that we’ve seen and it seems perfect for us.  Please join our family and friends in praying that God delivers us through these next few days and weeks to come.  We desire to focus more of our energy on our family and our new ministries.  Pray that if it’s His will, 1. Our Indy buyer takes our offer and the appraisal to follow is high enough and 2. Wisdom to make our best offer and that this Joppa homeowner picks our offer.  To Him be all the Glory!

Thanks for your prayers.
Pat and Katie Gerber

Times have changed, yet this blog stayed the same.  So I’m in the process of converting it over to a system I like better for the new decade.  Please excuse me if something doesn’t work quite right or you are a subscriber and you got ten things in your email.  That was just a side effect of recreating the site and keeping the same subscription service.  It thought everything was new and sent out the 10 most recent.

Update:  Everything should be working now.  Let me know if something isn’t working for you.

Sorry, apparently our account was hacked yesterday. Something about me being in a Paris jail. 24601

I’m not, I’m carrying pianos in Ohio.

After getting a comment about only having outdated photos of their granddaughter, we took Hannah out back into the Fall leaves to take a few. We got a couple of cute photos, but no great smiling portrait.

A few days later, I took Hannah into my office on a Saturday morning to take care of a few things including taking down my portrait studio that I had used on Friday. After I got the thing half put away, Hannah says, “Are you going to take MY picture?” I said, “Are you going to smile for Daddy?” She said yes, so I put it all back up and we had a very fun photoshoot.

I was sad to hear that Michael Crichton died Tuesday from cancer. Crichton was the writer of some great books, including Jurassic Park and Sphere. Some of you might be laughing at the thought of me mourning the death of a writer, but I was a big fan of his books.

My senior year of High School I had to take one more English class and looked for the easiest class I could take that was the farthest thing from literature and english grammar and other such nonsense. I found “Reading for the College Bound”. The irony is that I might have been the only one in that class that did actually go to college Anyway I had to read a lot of books, but they could be whatever I wanted. So I started with Jurassic Park, I think just because the movie was coming out. I was hooked! There was a ton of technical detail in all his books. If he referenced a device, he’d then describe it in great detail. His characters were always a team of experts from unrelated fields that were thrown together to solve a huge problem. I probably read 10 of his books. That’s huge for me!

We're having a great time on our annual camping trip in Parke County.