Hooray! He is finally free!

Pat attended the final hearing (via conference call) yesterday to terminate the conservatorship that governs his finances.  Simple put: The guardianship was over his physical affairs, the conservatorship was over his financial affairs.  We have been working on this since before we moved to Idaho almost a year ago. 

We are VERY pleased to report that Patrick's request was granted and in a few weeks, we will be managing the money left from his trust fund from the accident in 1993.  This means that we can get serious about house hunting very soon (huge sigh of relief).

Pat's conservator and his former therapist both attended the conference call and gave very glowing testimonies of the growth and progress they have seen in him since he started to take an interest in managing his own life in 2006.  He has come so far in every aspect of his life.  But nothing compared to the light in his eyes today.  He truly is his own man now, and you can tell he knows it. 

We were keeping everything very quiet because there are some members of Pat's family who are opposed to the steps he is taking to get back on his feet.  We were afraid that if we talked about things too much, that they might try to fight things.  It wouldn't have stopped things from going through, but would have delayed the process even more and made Pat very upset.  Thankfully, if they did cause any commotion, we didn't hear anything from it. 

So last night we got to celebrate Pat's independence by going to Flying Pie pizza with some of our family and my aunt and cousins who are visiting from South Carolina.  The pizza was SO good and we all ate so much that we almost couldn't walk.  After that we went swimming and had a great time. 

Yeah Pat, we are SO proud of you.  Words can't even express how much you have grown.

Real Estate School

I am so pleased to say that I made it through a very intense two weeks of Real Estate School.  As part of my job as Training Specialist at the Idaho Real Estate Commission, I get to work with all of the instructors in Idaho who provide instruction for real estate licensees.  So my boss asked me to attend our two week salesperson pre-license courses (the education anyone must take to get a real estate license in Idaho).  The classes are each a week long and are 45 hours of classroom instruction/field trips, etc.

It was very fun, but very challenging as a lot of new information was crammed into my brain very quickly.  A few of the really fun things we got to do was to actually go and measure a house with tape measures, etc. to determine the square footage.  It was a challenge.  :)  We also got to visit a title company and see all of the tract books dating back to the beginning of Idaho and see some very, very old land deeds.  A little scary, but very entertaining was the lecture from a home inspector.  I have learned more about mold, dry rot, etc. than anyone every wants to (very terrifying actually) and then heard a couple of poems as he was also a cowboy poet.  The really funny thing was that the home inspector happened to be my old bishop who prepared me to go on a mission. 

I realized through all of the work that the real estate licensees have to do and how detailed and complicated the process can be that I am extremely grateful to have the job that I do instead of being on the other end.  I am learning from the inside out how the home buying process works so I will be really prepared to buy my first house (Pat's second) very soon.