Current Events, Health & Fitness, Northwest Indiana Mom Blog

Keeping your children’s teeth clean and their mouths healthy may be harder than you expect as a parent. After all, dental care is such a bland part of life that it’s easy to sort of think of it as something we without even realizing it. Some people may forget that they will actually have to work to teach their children proper habits and techniques for dental care. In fact, everything from finding the right dentist for your children, to teaching them proper technique, to instilling healthy habits, can take a bit more work than you expect. Yet all of these factors are extremely important for your children.

Fortunately, at least for finding your dentist, there are a few helpful tools available for you. For example, the website www.topdentists.com has an easy-to-use search feature specifically designed to help you find a new dentist. You simply search for your specific town or region, and registered dentists in your area should come up. Once you have their names and information, you can contact these dentists, or even simply do research on them to find out which one you would like to trust with your children. This is a far simpler process than just looking around town or relying on recommendations from people you know.

You will also want to focus heavily on how you teach your children to brush their teeth. After all, if you try to recall learning yourself, there is more to it than simply swishing a brush around in your mouth. You want to make sure that your children know to brush thoroughly and to hit all of the area and spots on their teeth. In fact – while you do still want to make sure your children brush for long enough periods every night and morning – technique is probably the most important thing to teach them.

Finally, you may also want to consider instilling additional habits in your children, going beyond simple tooth brushing. For example, it is a good idea to teach children at a young age that they should floss in order to clean the spaces between their teeth, and to keep their gums healthy. Flossing can be a difficult habit to pick up later in life, as it sometimes seems like an unnecessary hassle. However, if you teach children when they are young, it will simply be part of their routine. The same can be said of other tooth care techniques, such as the use of mouthwash.

My husband and I were married for almost 4 years when we bought our first house.

We actually – get this – bought it WITHOUT EVER SEEING IT.

We lived in California at the time in a gated community just south of Malibu (when I say gated community I mean the Navy base).  We loved California but missed our family and we managed to get orders back to Chicago.  We couldn’t afford to fly out to house hunt and we really did not want to have to put our stuff in storage to house hunt once we moved back, not to mention having to move AGAIN once we found a house.

So with a patient realtor and the help of the internet, we went house-hunting virtually!

Since we were moving back “home” to our family, when we found a house we thought we would like, we sent scouts – my mom, my mother-in-law and sometimes my sister-in-law to check the place out.

When you are a first-time home buyer, there are a lot of challenges and a lot of things you need to keep in mind and consider.  Imagine doing it from the other side of the country.  But we did it, and it turned out perfectly!

Here is the picture of our first house when we bought it:

We paid around $109,000 for it.  It wasn’t perfect, but it had potential.

When we finally found our first home, however, we had a number of things we wanted to verify before signing on the dotted line.  Back then (it’s different now, but if you have excellent credit, it may not be so different) – back then we were approved for a mortgage over $400,000.  The bank was willing to loan us that amount of money for a house but the question is could we afford it?  Did we want to?

Below are some of the questions we asked ourselves before buying our first home:

1.  Can we afford it?

This question is about more than simply what the banks say you can afford.  They don’t know you.  They don’t know if you like to eat out for dinner every night or have an expensive hobby.  If you take on a mortgage that is too large you potentially risk having to make sacrifices in other areas of your life. Is a bigger house worth the sacrifice.

New home buyers really need to examine their budget on a monthly basis and take every expense into account.  Not to mention that home ownership comes with repairs and other things and you need to save up an emergency fund to be able to pay for the unexpected.

2.  What about taxes and insurance?

To make a responsible decision, you have to get an accurate homeowners insurance quote from an insurance agent for the home you are interested in.  Make sure the quote includes all the coverage you need.

Taxes are often hard to gauge, you can find out what previous owners paid but you have to keep in mind they may have different exemptions than you do.  Don’t under estimate your tax bill.

3.  How much is the house really worth?

Make sure you get all the “comps” for the surrounding area so you can see how much similar homes have sold for in the recent past in your area.  You don’t want to over-pay for your house and you also want to make sure that you go in with a fair offer as well.

Keep in mind you can ask for certain concessions in order to keep the price at a more agreeable level such as the seller paying for your closing costs or leaving the appliances in the home.

4.  What other expenses come with buying a new home?

Closing costs will probably be the biggest and most surprising expense when you buy a new home for the first time.  It can equal thousands of dollars and if you don’t have it, you might have to roll it into your loan which increases your monthly mortgage payment.

You also need to consider that you will potentially have to pay to establish the utilities in your name.

Before signing an offer, consider making it contingent on an inspection.  The inspection may cost you a few hundred dollars up front (and you risk losing it if you don’t end up buying the home) but it could save you thousands of dollars in the long run.  Plus it gives you detailed information on the life of your home’s important and costly features such as the furnace, roof and other things that tend to need replacing during the life of a home.  They will all check for mold and lead and other potentially hazardous conditions.

Finally, your real estate agent may ask you to consider supplying “earnest money” with your offer.  This money is a sign to the seller that you are serious about your offer.  You get a credit for the money at closing.

5. Do we need mortgage insurance?

Many people cannot afford to pay 20% down of the purchase price of their first home.  Most banks will require you to buy mortgage insurance to protect the loan.  It helps you by allowing you to buy a home even without the standard down payment.  You maintain the insurance until you have enough equity built up to equal 20%.

Some companies even provide their mortgage insurance with special programs that help pay for your mortgage in case of hardship or job loss.

We examined all of those questions in detail and made the decision to buy that house despite the fact that it wasn’t our “dream home.”  We didn’t envision living in it forever but it was a great start.

We lived in that house for almost 5 years before moving to a bigger home.

Here is what our first home looked like right before we sold it:

We sold it for $145,000.  Not a bad appreciation for 5 years.

I still miss that house sometimes.  The blood, sweat and tears we put in to making it our own.  Our first child was born in that house (well he was born in the hospital but while we lived in that house).  We had some of the best neighbors in that house.  We really, truly began our life together there.

If those walls could talk…

We drive past it every now and then because we still have some family that lives in the area.  Our son does vaguely remember it and we sometimes invite the ‘old’ neighbors over to our new home for major holidays.

Buying your first home is a very important decision for so many reasons.

The best reason of all is for the memories you make in it.

Have you ever bought a home?  If not, why not?

It is not our mistakes that define us.

It is the effort we put into correcting them that matters.

A few weeks ago I put up a blog post that was actually an entry into a contest from Nature Made, the vitamin company.  The campaign was through Mom Central who was coordinating with another firm to promote the campaign for Nature Made.

I was very, very excited about the content of the post, writing the post and, of course, about the prize.  I felt it was a very relevant topic for me and I approached it with passion and experience.

You can see the post here:

Supermom or Just Mom

The contest had 2 parts.  The first was based upon 3 criteria and 20 bloggers were selected from those who enter to move on to the finals.  The finals round was based upon 4 criteria including a public vote.

There were to be 4 winners and each criteria accounted for 25% of the score, so you didn’t have to win in the voting necessarily to win the contest.

I’m not going to get into specifics, but when all was said and done, the top 4 vote getters ended up being announced as the winners.

And I said “hmmmmm?”

And a few other people said “hmmmmm?”

I was faced with a decision.

I could rant and rave and complain in a public forum as bloggers are known to do, or I could be professional and start by putting my concerns privately in writing.  I opted for privately in writing.  I expressed my concern over the coincidence of the winners, and a few other things that I noticed that put into question whether or not there was a mistake.

And they listened.

And on Friday, Nature Made publicly made this announcement:

Thank you for the discussion about the contest, and all of the excellent blog posts. After a detailed review of the results, which were very close, we have confirmed that the results were correctly based on the official rules criteria… HOWEVER, we have discovered that there was a critical calculation error that caused 2 great bloggers who should have won to not be named as winners. This is a serious  mistake, and Nature Made wants to make it right.  With the correct calculations, Kim Grabinski and Tiffany Snedaker should have ranked in the top four. We have reached out to award and invite them to join Kari Ellen, Becca, Heather and Mellisa at this year’s O You! event in Atlanta.Last, we would like to thank everyone for their participation.  As a special thank you to the 16 other bloggers who made the top 20, we will be giving them a $100 Amazon gift card as an additional thank you for their contributions to this program.

I call this integrity.

I am so thrilled to be attending the O You! event in Atlanta plus the contest came with a some other fun prizes too.

Thank you to Nature Made, and to everyone who supported me before and after the contest.