We have friends who moved to Tennessee over a year ago, and put their home here on the market. They purchased their dream home in Tennessee, and expected that they would be there for years to come. Sadly, they just put that dream home up on the market, and they’ll be downsizing, because the home they own in Tampa still hasn’t sold. I believe they did a refinance on their Tampa home to buy the Tennessee home, and they’re out of options now.

If one good thing has come out of the real estate mess in Florida, it’s that mortgage loans are tougher to get than ever. Lenders don’t want to make the same mistake twice…especially after they’ve seen all of the foreclosures in the past year. It pains me to see people defaulting on their loans and other bills and being forced into debt consolidation because a lender sold them on buying too much house. We got approved for MUCH more house than we ended up with, and after we ran the numbers, we knew it wasn’t possible to buy a more expensive home. Unless we wanted to give up food!

I hope that other homeowners don’t have to make the tough choice our friends did.

We’ve got plans to go to Busch Gardens this weekend with friends. I can’t even remember the last time we went to the park, despite having season passes. I know it was before Sheikra went floorless. Speaking of Sheikra, my 11 year old can’t wait to ride it, and she’s trying to convince me to do the same. No way, man! I’m trying to convince my 10 year old to join me on Montu, but she wants to try Gwazi. That’s the wooden coaster that gives me a beating every time I ride it. It has to be the roughest coaster I’ve EVER been on. No thanks! I prefer Montu - smooth ride, nice loops, and dangling feet!

Before you make plans to go over to Ikea in November to shop, make sure your finances can handle it! 0% credit cards that offer a 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers are a great way to buy things you need now, but pay later. For disciplined consumers, it’s free money, in a way. You can shop to your heart’s content, and pay off your balance in a few months, without paying a nickel of interest. When the card is paid off, you can close it, and begin the process all over again! This strategy has worked well for us over the years.

Florida fans of Ikea will be able to get their fix on November 14th, when the Swedish retailer opens their first Florida location. The store will be near the Mall of Millenia off I-4, which means it’s easily accessible from Tampa. (Tampa residents won’t have their own store until 2009!)

Apparently, Ikea store openings are a big deal. It’s expected that Ikea fans will start camping out days in advance to get in on all of the grand opening freebies offered. I’ve only been to Ikea once, and I liked it, but not enough to camp out to go inside first. I’ll happily wait a few days until the grand opening traffic dies down, and then make a visit.

With University of South Florida football exploding, it’s only a matter of time before fans can come up with great sports trivia questions about the team and players. I’m great with trivia, but not so good with the sports category. In fact, when I play trivial pursuit, I leave that category until the very end, and collect all of my other colored pie wedges first. My husband on the other hand, knows all sorts of useless bits of sports trivia, like who won the Super Bowl in 1976, or who the first golfer to win the Masters Tournament was. He’d do great at TriviaFix, which is a sports trivia website full of questions from sports nuts like him. You can even organize trivia teams and complete in online competition…and you can win monthly prizes! I’ve seen a lot of trivia websites, but not any that are specifically just for sports junkies. You can even chose your sport, so if you’re a rabid football fan, but not up on baseball, you won’t be bored by seeing question after question about baseball.

Jim does so well with his fantasy football and the other sports things he’s involved in online…I should get him hooked on TriviaFix so that he can be rewarded for his useless knowledge!

The big news in Florida sports this week? I’ll give you a hint - it’s doesn’t involve any of our professional sports teams.

In fact, it involves a university, that up to a few years ago, didn’t even HAVE a football program. The University of South Florida Bulls are having a fabulous season, and when they play the West Virginia Mountaineers (#5) this weekend, it will be the first time we’ve had such a highly ranked opponent here in Tampa. USF is ranked #18 currently, and the game will be a sell out, with the last of the tickets becoming available tomorrow afternoon at 5pm. (Students can line up south of the Sun Dome starting at noon on Thursday.)

Not a week goes by that I don’t read about more foreclosures happening here in Florida. There’s a foreclosure sale in my neighborhood next month, in fact. All of the homes being sold at a loss sure do make for a cheap mortgage! It makes me want to pay my loans & bills on time and avoid being in debt even more than normal. I used to be absolutely horrible about remembering when bills were due. A few years back, a friend shared her method for keeping bills straight with me, and it’s worked ever since. I just put the due date of bills on my Outlook calendar, about a week to 10 days before the bill is actually due. When it pops up, I pay it. Because it’s on a calendar, I can easily see what’s coming due, and what I already paid for the month. I may have a lot of bills, and I may not have the cheapest and best car insurance (thanks to my husband and his speeding tickets) but at least my house is safe from being taken away. I wish I could say the same for some of my neighbors.

When we travel out of state, we usually make it a point to visit state parks. Smoky Mountain National Park, located between Cherokee, NC, and Gatlinburg, TN, is a favorite of ours. I’d also like to someday visit the Grand Canyon (possibly in November, when we go to Las Vegas!) and Yellowstone.

Somehow, I tend to forget about all of the great state parks located right here in Florida. The Florida Online Park Guide is a great website that can provide you with information on every state park in Florida, from the Alafia River State Park (located in Lithia, Florida) to the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park (located in Crystal River, Florida.) You’ll find information on what there is to see and do at each park, as well as directions and any operating hours that apply.

We’ve actually been to the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park. We had passed by the location previously while driving to dinner in Homosassa, and decided to stop there last year on my birthday. The park is extremely small, no more than a few ruins, but it’s amazing to see. Here’s a picture of my kids standing in front of the mill ruins:

Here’s a question for you…would car prices be cheaper if car dealers stopped wasting money on dumb advertising? By “dumb” I mean the come ones I get in the mail, with a “key” inside, or fantastic offers to take any trade I have. Do all car dealers use advertising methods like this, or are we just especially lucky here in Florida? How about the fast talking radio ads advertising special loan rates and 0% APR? Is anyone falling for it? I’m not. If I want to get a car loan, the dealer is the last place I’m going to get it from. I’d rather do my own investigation online - seeing what rates I qualify for, what offers are out there, what my bank can do versus another lender. Do your homework, and don’t trust the car dealer when they offer you a “special” rate. All too often, you pay too much for their special deals, and you can get much better rates for your next car loan by doing a little homework online. An online car loan is quick and easy, and you’ll know what you can afford BEFORE you walk into the dealer.

Props to the Walt Disney World company for making a huge $10 million contribution to the Florida Children’s Hospital! Because of the large donation, an official name change is in store for hte hospital, and it will be adopting the Disney name in some form. (The name has not been announced yet.) Considering that it’s corporate identity has always revolved around children, this is the perfect recipient of Disney’s cash. It seems fitting that they give back to the community and state who has supported their company for so long, and that children end up being the real winners in this deal.

When I was younger and took road trips with my parents, I sometimes pitched in as the navigator. My father usually drove, my mother couldn’t read a map, so I was often handed a map and asked to determine how much farther until our next exit, or the best way to get from point A to point B on the interstate. Now, with my own family, I’m still the navigator. I prefer to leave the driving to my husband and deal with finding the best way around, regardless of whether we’re driving through Florida on our way to North Carolina, or walking around in Toronto, Canada.

Does it make me a complete geek if I admit I like maps? That I enjoy looking at them, just for the heck of it? You can learn a lot from reading a map, and this map of Florida is no exception. The map of Florida highways is huge with tons of detail, and easier to fold than a regular map - LOL! I traced the route we used to take each year from our home in Tarpon Springs up to the panhandle, to the home my grandparents owned in Pensacola. It might be time to plan a road trip and visit some of my old haunts…

Each year, when school starts, we’re given stacks of paperwork to fill out. One of the forms is about the languages we speak at home. We don’t speak any other than English, so it’s an easy form to fill out. My son had a homework assignment about culture and his ancestors last night that asked the same question, and I learned that 1 in 5 students in his classroom speaks a language other than English at home. That was common when I was a student as well, because I lived in a town with a huge Greek population. It wasn’t uncommon to run into little old Greek grandmothers who had lived here for 50 years and still didn’t speak English. The signs in our post office were in English and Greek.

I learned today that 35% of Broward County residents don’t speak English at home, either. I always knew Miami was full of other cultures - I guess I didn’t realize how full. 35% is a lot of bilingual residents!

My son has been playing hockey for the past 2 years, and my husband and I have been watching hockey, both on TV and in person for 4 now. I’ve only JUST gotten a handle on the rules and regulations for the game, and guess what happened? Yep, my son has decided to take a season off from hockey, and he’s taking up baseball in the meantime. Fabulous - another sport for me to learn! I know the basics, of course, having been forced to play baseball and softball during P.E. in my school years. I even know that because I’m a leftie, I face the opposite direction when it’s my turn at bat! I get a little fuzzy on the rules though, because it’s been a LONG time since I’ve played. I found a great sports instruction website that has online instructional videos for baseball, hockey, football, tennis, and other sports. All in all, there are 500 free videos on this site, all designed to help parents like me help our kids have fun and learn how to play the game. I’ve got no idea what the proper batting stance is, so this is exactly what I need. If you’re a clueless sports mom (or dad) like me, I’m betting it will help you out too!

My husband and I had a few hours to kill yesterday before the Bucs game, so we took a Sunday drive. We enjoy exploring the area of Florida that we moved to over a year ago, but it’s not often that we get to drive around aimlessly and see where the road takes us. After we did that for a bit, we ended up at a subdivision that was recently in the paper for selling homes at a huge loss, angering the home buyers who paid big bucks to live in the gated, golf course community. We drove by each house that sold at a loss and were amazed that the company saw fit to let the homes go for as little as $110K. I’m sure the homeowners there are upset, and rightfully so - the builder they paid big bucks to just made property values drop!