Another family member

This is Chili Pepper

    he is a  White Belly Caique. Your probably wondering how i got my hands on a VERY expensive bird. Well it started all when my brother was coming up from Florida and was staying in New York City for a couple of weeks. There were 2 black headed caiques which where breeding mates, Their names were Bonnie &Clyde , a mini Macaw named Sunday& this little guy which was a very mean little bird at first, we only knew one of his "triggers" was wearing gloves. So every time we would get near his cage with a pair of gardening gloves he would flutter all around the cage in fright. 
    I was always scared he was going to end up hurting himself but i as well did not want to get bite. During this whole baby sitting bird event took place, i never liked bird! at all. Always thought that would go straight for the eyes! like the old time movie Crows. Anyways, so im half hearted interested and i find myself wondering towards there cage to listen to them tweet and occasionally talk. My mom's laugh and only my moms like could get Bonnie and Clyde going and they would start cackling with her. Sunday was the LOUDEST and when i mean loud! like damn, this bird is going to get our neighbors to call the cops on us loud. She always wanted out but we didn't want her to fly away but once my brother told us they all had there wings clipped but bonnie and Clyde we would let them play. Sunday loved sitting on top of the tri-stacked cages which it went from top to bottom Bonnie and Clyde on top,Sunday in the middle and Chili pepper at the bottom.
     One day we had to clean there cages and sunday came out on her own, but chili pepper would not and so i did a trust test and stuck my bare hand into his cage in hopes it would still be there when i pulled it back out and there he was just sitting on my finger making the cutest noises i have heard from him the whole time. Thats when i told my brother and he said he was a sneaky bird one minute he will love you next he will hate you. So far i have seen his good and bad sides and i have had some bites but nothing bad enought to make me sell him or take him back. I know he likes me alot too for the fact he got stuck in the top mesh of a comcast digital bag and he didnt want me to leave as he held on to my finger and put his head in my the palm of my hand. 
Moral of this story is just because someone says something doesn't mean you can change there mind. haha

MoMo Ries Cruz

 I decided i need to tell the world. I have 3 pets. A cat,dog and bird. All names where from previous owners.

     Anyways don't tell my boyfriend but my dogs the best man i have in my life. He is 5yrs old and this coming up January he will be 6, time flies so fast!He is a miniature chihuahua,dark brown with a litter brown belly and eyebrows. He is a lazy, overly attached baby :] and i wouldn't change a thing...but the fact he doesn't play with toys, he plays like a cat. He loves playing tag tho which has to be one of the cutest things he does. 

      The background story about Momo is that i was never apposed to have any animals after my brother left and too all his lizards and un-furry animals out of the house i decided i wanted a dog instead of a car when i was 16, my parents did not like that idea but my mom caved. We went to my brothers cuz his dog had puppies thinking i would be able to pick one out most of them where sold but this skinny lil thing that didn't want to get away from under the table... so i chased him down, he didn't wanna be near me but after a good long trip back home from NYC to PA he loved me! and i loved him!

     When he was 2yr old he got lost in Codorus State Park for two weeks straight. I was so scared he was eaten by foxes or picked up by a bird that's how small he is. After the first couple of days we found a camp site and a nice camper man that just got there and was staying for a week. We asked him if we could put a no kill trap out for my dog in hopes we can catch him that way. He said sure and we set it putting one of my shirts inside with some food.Since we already notified all of the rangers we could we decided to tell everyone on the camp sites as well,after about five more days the man told us that something was trying to pull the shirt out and that the trap never went off but the camper mans wife shooed it away thinking it was a cat, they where an old couple so a lot of things probably look like cats. After thinking this is the end of ever seeing my dog and being annoyed at the fact my moms yelling Momo over and over again and shes doing it again i turn around to see this skeleton like little puppy running towards me! The worst he had was that he lost a pound and had a tick on him. What he got at the vet was kennel cough,should have just taken him home.
     About a week after we finally had him on a schedule to help him gain weight. I'm watching and he cant move his neck or go down the stairs. I cried every time he would yelp in pain so back to the hospital we went finding out he has a slipped disc in the back of his neck so he put him on pain killers which he didn't cry out as much be he still couldn't sleep or eat right, so depressing but i never left his side as i carried him up the stairs onto my bed and around the house. He fine now but he wont go down the stair without the lights on, which i find out but he wakes me up to turn on the light and i know I'm saposed to run this house but really he does. 

  

House hunting

So, my boyfriend and I are looking into homes.. why? you may ask. We did the Math,research and some caliding of differences and came up to buying a house is the best way to go right now.

The step we took into making our first decision is:

1 .  Look into renting, How much we would have to pay in rent,what we would have to pay in  and the total payout between the two.

•   What we found with this was that, renting in our range ran from 600-800 and we would only get a bed and a bath. we wouldn't have to pay water/sewage but would have to pay everything else separately. 
• What we could do: live there
• What we cant do: Paint rooms,long term stay

2. Look into condos/town home, These seems a little more stable but when we go to sell we will get less then what we put in.

•  What we found with going this way was that, renting was now between 800- and over 1,000 which was way to much for us to do.
• what we could do: paint rooms,stay longer
• What we cant do: change the outside of the condo(paint outside,change/put alot in the backyard) strict rules in certain condo/town home areas.

3. Look into owning a home, sounds like a lot of responsibility,money,time

• What we could do: Paint,change,redo,live long term
• What we cant do: break laws?

So, now that we broke down the cost and made a final decision now its .. What do we do now??

We picked a range from where we could live Vs. where we don't want to live, based on jobs.
i live an hour away from my job and he live an half and hour from him so we wanted to break that in half.

 Next, we had to figure out what kind of loans are out there that would work best for us.

• FHA (Federal Housing Administration) loan: Which is nice is nice because they can fund us up 96.9% and all we would have to pay is  3%  rather then 20+ % plus minium to no down payment,

                  The caught is that we would have to only have USDA (United States Department of Agriculture)which there will be only positive guildlines, like painting the house, keeping it look nice,mow the lawn,etc.
       The biggest caught all about this loan/USDA approved homes is that it cant be in cuties(York, Harrisburg,  etc) which we thought it might be a problem, be we loved the idea of not being in a city.

• Bank Loans: Going threw a fixed rate but still having to pay 20+% and the closing cost

We picked to go the USDA loan root, they help a lot with first home owners.

Now! the fun begins actually finding a home!

The realitor is now helping us look for homes!

... to be continued!

The Maine blog

  So, over this summer the boyfriend (Spencer) and I decided to go on a wild hair and go to Maine. When i say go to Maine we DROVE to Maine and when i say "we" drove to Maine I mean I drove to Maine and back. Well let me rephrase that i drove 7hrs there and he drove 4. Then back i drove 12hrs he drove from a restaurant home which was like 45min.

 It all started when he wanted to go to Maine again to see the sunrise before anyone else (we were to tired to do that). I Of coarse the lovely girlfriend i am said yea! not knowing we were going to be leaving that Friday night after a 11hr shift at work, in the pouring down rain to the point my car was hydroplaning on bridges and me almost pasted out from fright.We did make it in one piece,but by the time we reached the boarder of Maine we already switched and i was passed out. He woke me up at the visitors center, we were so thirsty! so we bought moxie thinking hey what the heck lets try Maine's national drink. EW. For warned if you don't like spiced coke, do not drink this.

its different alright.

Acadia National State Park

By the time we go to the area where the camp  site it it's 9... they open at 10 but people are already lined up since its first come first serve unless your a mother with a camper then just walking with a temper and come out with a ticket. On the upside we met a couple that hiked the Appalachian trail from the beginning to now end, we were worried we wouldn't be able to get in and our journey was going to be cut short. The line grow shorter and shorter as every person that walked out of the camp site building looked like a  Million dollar winner!

 It was our turn, as we joked about the crabby ladies and what will happen if there were no camp sites left i turned to them and said i will take you in if needed, the mans eyes lite up and he said really! as they look so tired from there hiking.

   Note: 

     When you go camping. Just bring a sleeping bag, not an air mattress  i blew a fuse for one and we had to use our own air to blow the damn thing up.

That is our lovely walk in campsite. The area to your right was a french couple that we only saw ever making breakfast and to your left was a middle aged couple that were camping experts with there over the picnic table canopies and there whole kitchen in one and they even brought there giant dog so quite and tame. After 2 night they left and it was a bunch i mean like 5 or 6 Asians in one tiny tent, haha.

Lets skip the boring stuff and go to the Precipice, As you can see from the warning sign on the top of this page, it is a VERY dangerous climb. As we are not from this state and no one told us what kinda cloths we should wear, we start to hike up this very very tall rocky mountain, in jeans, sneaks and a tee. We start with small rocks, larger rocks climbing pipes and at one point we had to swing my self up to a rock, i was dead and we weren't even half way this climb took us about 2 and a half hours.

We finally reach the point of which we are 5min away from the top after suffling inches away from death, This old man stops up and asks up if we knew what happened here yesterday, we kindly say no and start walking past him, he keeps talking and he said a young lady died right where you went by. Joyous! i thought, I'm a clumsy person so of coarse that freaked me out a little not enough to stop me from reaching the top though. We make it everyone around us is laying down or taking pictures of there victory! and we do too.

 Skipping ahead again, 

 
   STARFISH! i never thought i would find starfish just walking along a low tide, we did there is one point of the island that you can walk from main land to a smaller island, we never made it to the other island there was way to much to do in the water finding all kinds of crabs and starfish. Amazing what you can find under a rock.

Anyways, So the point of this blog is to be adventures,spontaneous! and have fun with life. I work 4 or 5 11hr days and depending i have 2 days max off a week a Sunday and a Monday and believe me Sunday you don't get anything done.I always try and find time to unwind and just be a little crazy!