I year ago a friend of mine and I jointly purchased a 13 cane plant from DUNU who delivered it to us in Santa Barbara. I had to sell on of my grand kids to pay for it. I got the numbers of canes wrong in my initial blurb. We split it into 7 cane and 6 cane plants and I won the coin toss and ended up with the 7 cane piece. As I said the last 2 canes were tenuous, leafless and poorly attached to the plant. It took major soul searching but I eventually separated them, they immediately fell apart and I now had 2 sorry looking canes. They sat there for a year and now are sporting a new growth each. Both my main plant and my friend's have a strong new growth and seem to be well on their way. It will take a couple of years until the 2 new plants will be worth looking at but maybe then I can recover some of my cost or make some very strong trades. In the mean time there is another Australian FCC making waves. D spec Yondi Tina Goliath FCC/AOC etc apparently was cloned and the small plants are now on the market. I got one for relatively little and have both the FCCs sitting side by side. The Yondi has 3 juvenile canes and is making a new one. My friend also got one. Because of the cloning I think we will see a lot of them. The Daylight Moon is still much more difficult to get so hopefully my 2 newbies will still be worth something when they are old enough to sell or trade. We have a few D speciosum nuts in Southern California so I'm sure there will be a demand for the plants. I have my eyes on a guy who has a nice collection of Avril's Gold and there is someone in San Diego who also has outstanding D speciosums. I'm keeping ny fingers crossed that the 2 new growths will thrive as that is not always the case. They represent the reason why one should never discard a worth wile orchid piece until it is truly dead. I'm also not a believer in the sphagnum in bag trick. If the cane has neither roots nor leaves, I believe it should be left to its own devices and water will only rot it. I mounted mine without moss or any other media and they got sprayed daily but dried off immediately after. Nick

SylviaTexas, I am so trying but this is not easy. I think my daughter's pain has her searching for the problem and I think there are several things going on here that she is not recognizing. She wants to blame to take away her pain and when you put this all together I am the safe target for her. However, I think the real issue she is dealing with is her own happiness. She is not happy with hubby and has not been for a good 3 years now. She, in my personal opinion, is codependent and wants to help and control, knows what everyone needs to do to solve their issues but she is not looking at herself. I think she feels trapped because she does not want to leave her husband and out her kids thru a divorce. She blocked alot of family members out of her life when she was pg and really has not tried to regain those relationships. I think family feels a bit guarded around her right now and really she is not close to anyone. I am probably the one person she is closest to.

Not to sound like a broken record, but thanks again so much for all the advice. It's much appreciated and it's good to have neutral opinions out there on this type of a potential transaction. I'm certainly not sick of the advice! =) Nostalgia aside, this house certainly falls into the specifications of what we were looking at (before it was listed). In fact, when it first came on the market we were a little blown away by the listing price because most others had been shooting for the moon in this area and were stagnating on the market (with the few well-priced ones going very quickly). But at that time we said we could never live in the same neighborhood as my parents! It went off the market under contract and more houses came on at values we still didn't feel were appropriate. The houses we've visited in our price range up to this point have not pleased us. The ones that have pleased us have been either above our price range or else stretching it. Oddly enough, this is the first house we've looked at where we're actually happy with the value and how it's maintained. It just happens to be in the neighborhood I grew up in. Of course we're worried about borrowing more than we should. If we do buy this house and put 20% down after a little negotiating, we could have a mortgage that is around 2 to 2.5 times our gross annual income. The monthly payment would definitely be achievable and would allow us to funnel extra money into our retirement accounts and children. So financially, this seems a good decision for us. When the contract fell through and the house came back on the market, we sat down and re-evaluated whether or not living near my parents was really as bad as we made it out to be the first time. Oddly enough, it was actually my spouse who was the one who started seriously considering the house, not me! I do trust the sellers that the first contract fell through based on the guy's credit score. Based on the things their family has done for mine in the past, they wouldn't come out and lie to us. In fact, my mom learned the details before they even knew we were seriously interested. The guy who initially put in a contract brought his family over with him multiple times and even had his boys picking out rooms. We saw them over there once when we were at my parents' house and my parents saw them on separate occasions. The guy apparently loved the house and what items did come up in the original inspection were supposedly minor things. A couple of other neighbors in the cul-de-sac are potentially looking to sell and were quite pleased with all the traffic this house got when it was first on the market. The traffic still seems heavy from what we've heard from my parents and other neighbors which makes us think that we're not alone in thinking the house is attractively priced. I think Dave1MN2 hit the nail on the head regarding the comment about protecting the money we've saved and what to do if negotiations start to go south - i.e. say the family relationship is too important to stress with this deal. I guess we should take a calm, collected approach with this and think everything through, and check out buyer's agents. And on that note (if any of you have even read this far - sorry for the book!), would it be the end of the world if we used the same agent that is selling the house? I guess the reality is we should keep ourselves emotionally indifferent and not get attached to the possibility of getting the house. With the current market conditions, it seems if we don't pursue this, prices will only go down with time and maybe we'll find another house for a better value later this year!

Hi Sunnygardenerme, Yes, I do have experience with this situation! Last summer my then 19 y/o SD stayed with my husband and me for her summer break. We allowed this, despite the fact that she rejected us the few years before (classic case of divorce poisoning by her mom)...anyway, we thought we could help her, teach her, etc, and that spending time away from her mother who lies, manipulates, etc. would be good for her. Well, I'm sure it would have been, except that she was a product of her environment...and so had no problem taking my things and then lying about taking them. It started when I couldn't find a sweater...and she heard me looking for it in the morning...and then it turned up in a ball in our office room at home. Well I knew I didn't do that, so I knew she had it and attempted to "return" it. Then a necklace went missing...it was a $20 necklace that was about principle, not value! My husband confronted her and she cried and was appalled that he would suspect his little angel of taking it....no way. He then talked to me and said "I saw the look in her eyes, she is not lying -- you must have misplaced it" (being the control freak I am, I rarely "misplace" things!! LOL!)...anyway, I then went in to talk to her. I though what can I do? she was living with me so I thought I would tell her that if she wants to borrow things, just ask me....etc. Well, thank God that my husband -- who thoroughly believed in her innocence, also had faith in me and that if I was still convinced, perhaps there was truth to it...so he went out to her car to look around and viola! So, he brought it to her room and said "Jess I found this in your car" and her response? "Oh THAT necklace!" She still tried to keep up the lie! We said "stop this....admit it and stop taking things." Well, it didn't stop, she took bras, toiletries, jewelery, shoes, tops, summer dresses, etc....we had talks about it, threatened to throw her out, and then as a final moment came, told her to get out -- she cried and cried, she was so very sorry -- said "please don't make me go back there" (to her mother's house), etc, etc. Well, since she had only a week or so left with us, we agreed to allow her to stay at our house -- but that she couldn't go out after work -- she needed to start to prepare to return to school, etc. Well, the night before she left our house for good (to go on vacation with her mother then back to school), I decided to look through her boxes to be sure she wasn't taking anything of mine. Well, guess what -- there were household items packed up (a stitched pillow that her grandmother made for us, a mug that was made out of her brother's artwork, some party things (hats, streamers) and a jewelery box thing that her deceased grandfather gave to me. So, concluded that she was a thief and a liar and unless she got serious therapy, she was not welcomed in our home alone. We don't make any bones about it -- she has "stolen" (she and her mother prefer to refer to it as her "borrowing" my things, even though she hid them in her car, under her bed and at her mother's house so that I didn't know she "borrowed" them). So, she did nothing about therapy, which we told her she must do back at school and so we are again estranged...... I fear my husband didn't fully understand the depth of my hurt and upset about this until I framed it for him "how would you feel if one of my nephews left from staying with us and you were missing things....?" He then realized how awful it must have felt....she isn't my blood and is going through my drawers and taking whatever she wanted (even my bras for God Sakes!!!) Oh, and I forgot, we had a 4th of July BBQ and my neice-in-law left sunglasses somewhere, and my SD decided she liked them and took them! That neice is the one person she truly cared about in my family (she had mother issues too and reached out to my SD). So, my SD decided to "return" them, but did it at a time when it was obvious that they showed up right after our brief visit to a place they were renting at the shore (so it couldn't have been that they just resurfaced). Ok, sorry to bore you with the details of my story, but the bottom line is that I know how you feel and your husband needs to respect that feeling of being violated. These are adult children who "visit" your home -- it is not their home anymore and they have no right to be there without you. I would put my foot down and insist on this....you have a right to be comfortable in your own home (besides, it used to make me CRAZY because I would be like "did she take it -- did I misplace it and forget where I put it??" etc. etc. It is a horrible feeling..... Good luck.....my husband's faith in my and my veracity helped me to show him what I needed. If your husband trusts in you and truly cares about you, he will listen to you and do what you need to feel safe and comfortable in your own home.