In this live video, Tami Grgas shares a candid update on the major life changes she and her husband Paul have faced over the past few months. She recounts their experience as foster parents to two young boys, the successful reunification of the children with their mother, and the emotional transition to an empty‑nest household with their son James. Tami describes their attempt to purchase a smaller ranch‑style home to downsize and eventually build a home‑based salon, detailing the pre‑approval process, the offer, inspections, and the abrupt bank demand for $30,000 in liquid funds that forced them to abandon the purchase. She explains the subsequent need to stage and repair their current house, the extensive packing, labeling, and decluttering they are undertaking, and the challenges of maintaining the property (plumbing, HVAC, lawn, interior painting). Tami also talks about their growing cat family, highlighting the adoption of a kitten named Hissy and the current total of four cats, and reflects on how the household dynamics have shifted. Finally, she outlines their future relocation goal to move closer to Paul’s military base in Bellevue to reduce his commute, while noting her own tolerance for traffic. Throughout, she apologizes for reduced online presence due to the move, invites viewers to ask about her mascara, and ends with a warm farewell.
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Hello, how are you today? Tami Grgas here. Again, I'm gonna be doing my makeup because that's what I do on my Facebook Lives because I do, because this works great as a mirror for me to watch myself do this. Anyways, I wanted to talk to you all today about, you know, we all have crazy curves in our road of life, or some people call them curveballs because of the baseball metaphor, which I don't really understand, so I just call them curves in my road. And I've had a few lobbed at me these last couple months, not including the COVID okay? The COVID was a huge one, but these ones are— some of them are kind of my coping mechanisms, I guess. And I'm going to give you a bit of background first. So we are foster parents. And we had two young boys in the house, a 9-year-old and a 4-year-old. They started out 3 and 8 and had birthdays while they were with us. They were with us for almost a year and they ended up reunificating with their mom, which was, you know, mom did everything she needed to do. Mm-hmm. It— I kind of like being part of the reunification even though we initially got into fostering in order to adopt. Reunification is wonderful as well. So that happened, um, just as things were starting to open back up for COVID. Um, well, visitations were cut off for a while, so we had to deal with that and It wasn't the easiest transition because of COVID but we made it through, and Mom got her babies back, which is basically what it came down to. And she, like I say, she did everything to get those little guys back in her home with her. She, uh, her and I are still in contact. She adopted a kitten from us, which is another story, another part of my story. So in that transition, you know, it went from us and— well, Paul and I and 3 kids to Paul and I and James. So we went from 5 people in the home to 3. And I guess in a way I was feeling the empty nest type thing that I hear a lot of people deal with. And I didn't really realize it, and I don't think Paul did either, but we were both like, why are we in such a big house? And we started thinking of potentially moving, which, you know, we were kind of excited about it. We got pre-approved from the bank to take out a mortgage. We were, you know, looking at selling our home, but we weren't— the house was not ready to be sold because we had just gone through having all these children in the house. And, you know, coming from us who are fairly domestically challenged, We had a lot of cleanup to do and a lot of stuff to go through. So we were told by the bank that we were pre-approved for a mortgage for a new home for us and that we did not need to sell our house first. You know, we have equity in our home, so whatever. So we were like, "Oh, okay," you know. So we got all excited. We should not have listened to the bank, okay? Yeah. Should not have, but sometimes our humanity takes over and we get excited about things. So we found a home that we both fell in love with, more like a ranch style. And my ultimate goal with finding a new home is number one, to be smaller for the three of us, and number two, to have somewhere that I can build a salon when I'm ready for that and just work out of home. So we did find this cute home and we put in an offer on it and we won the offer and we ended up spending like over $1,000 on inspections and all that fun stuff. Had all that done. And then like our possession date was September 11th, okay? Mm-hmm. I got the house packed and I really— Paul and James, I made them take the boxes out to the garage. That's what I made them do. But I wanted to label these boxes with precisely what was in every box because I've moved so many stinking times and that's always— you get to a certain point of packing that you get lazy in labeling your boxes. It just happens. So I was very precise with labeling all my boxes. Mm-hmm. Which I'm glad I did. So the garage was full of boxes. We were staging the house. It was about 1 week before we were supposed to sign papers and possession date and all that stuff. And then all of a sudden the bank's like, "No, we can't do it. You need to come to the table with $30 grand." And we were like, "Uh." Uh. We don't have $30 grand liquid right now. We need to sell our house. And their recommendation— now this really, oh, this really got to me, people. Like, really got to me. Their recommendation was that we liquidate our retirement assets and use that money. I was like, are you kidding me? You're a bank and you're giving us this kind of advice? Yeah. So thankfully, the people who, you know, we told the people who we were buying the house from, we told them what was going on and that the bank was backing out and being weird. And so we were able to pull the sale, if you will. And it was, I don't know, As I get older, things aren't that important to me, um, and I really can't tell you why. It's just, it's part of growing up, I think, and I'm finally at that phase of my life. It— I was mad at the bank for doing what they did to us, but I wasn't upset about losing the house. I was just like, oh well, there'll be another one, you know, whatever. So we had the house semi-staged. Our realtor came over and looked at the house, and he pointed out some issues with the house that we didn't even know were going on. Um, so there were, like, there were some plumbing issues we had to take care of. Uh, there was a potential HVAC issue, which actually isn't an issue because we had them come check it out. It's fine. Um, our— we're horrible gardeners, so you know, our lawn is kind of weeded, so we're taking care of that. You know, there's a bunch of things that we need to take care of to bring it up to, up to, up to its high end, you know. And we also need to paint the interior, which we're going to do this winter. And right now we're kind of living that Love It or List It life. I don't know how many of you have seen that show. I love that show, Love It or List It. And we need a designer like her to come into this place. But so right now we're in the process of moving back into our home because of course I packed almost everything, um, and really deciding on what we're going to keep and what we're going to throw out. I'm doing a lot of trips to give stuff away because we just don't need a lot of the stuff that we have. Yeah. It's crazy, crazy how much stuff you gather. And, you know, being former military, we moved every 2 to 3 years, and that was normal to me for quite a while. We've been in this house 7 years now, and— oh, the cat's scratching himself— herself. Oh, that's the other part of the story. Okay. So I kind of ended up being a foster parent to kittens instead of human children. So we, we have a house. Well, the house isn't full of cats right now. At one point we had like 9 cats in our house. Right now we have 4 because we have a lovely young lady cat that was abandoned. I call her Hissy because she likes to hiss a lot. You're gonna come see Hissy? She's absolutely beautiful, guys, absolutely beautiful. Hissy, where are you? Where are you, Hissy? There she is. Hissy! Kitty, kitty, kitty! Hey, hey, hey, look this way! Well, that's Hissy. She's a really sweet cat, but that will put us at 4 cats, and I'm kind of like, 3 is kind of our limit right now, I think. Oh, here she is. Here, Hissy. Um, so anyways, that's what hap— has happened with us. So right now we're in the transition. Our bo— our house is full of boxes again, and we're moving back into our house, and we will be fixing it up, and then we'll make a decision in the fall, I guess, whether we're going to stay or look for another house. Um, I don't know. I honestly don't know what's going to happen right now. We will be staying in the area. Um, the ultimate goal is to— Paul does not deal with traffic very well. He hates it, for lack of a better term. So I would like to get us closer to where he works. I, however, don't mind traffic as much. I just turn up my music and whatever, you know. It doesn't stress me out as much as it stresses him out. And so I don't mind having more of a commute. Right now my commute is like 5 minutes. His is 20, 25, somewhere in there. Depends on the traffic, you know, and the time of day and whatnot. So that's our ultimate goal to— we're in Papillion right now, which is just outside of Omaha. We'd like to move into Bellevue area that's closer to the base so it's less of a commute for him. So that's the story of our lives right now. I'm unpacking our house. That's why I have not been very present online. I've been just, you know, packing, packing, packing, and now unpacking, unpacking, unpacking. What you doing, Hissy? What you doing? What you doing? So, I don't know. That's our lives. I hope you all have a wonderful day. Hope I didn't bore you with this, and I will hopefully be online more again. I really do enjoy doing these live videos and talking about things that I learn and what's going on and that kind of stuff. Oh, there she goes. Did you hear her hiss? That's why we call her Hissy. Okay, everybody have a wonderful day. If, um, if you'd like to know about the makeup that I'm using, just send me a message below. Um, it's called Mascara and I love it, love it, love it, love it. I will talk to you all soon. Thanks. Bye. Bye.
