Alyssa and John 7: Laura Ingalls, Something, Something...

[Mom to Nell]

I think she posted the pics and the web site on purpose. Next week we'll be reading, "Thank you to my good friend Tikki for my new rugs, even the one for the dinning room!".

 

@QuiverFullofBooks and @SassyPants I just went back a page to catch up and see great minds think alike!

Edited March 8, 2021 by Mom to Nell
Added thought

[HereticHick]

1 hour ago, Satan'sFortress said:

So far, the Tikki thing sounds like the first half hour of one of those bad Lifetime movies. Betrayed: The Fairy Godmonster or Secret Presents: One Dress Too Many. It is just weird.

I would watch this.

 

Also, Dinning-Kruger Effect

[Bluebirdbluebell]

3 hours ago, indianabones said:

Should we tell her?

I don't understand this caption. 

Beyond that, the school room rug is the same rug that is present in three of the Duggars' houses. 

Finally, I think Alyssa is a grifter taking advantage of Tiki. 

[raayx01]

What do we know about Tikky. I relive she lives in Florida, but how did they met her and how does she have so much money. I dont really buy the stalker fan, but what is she.

[indianabones]

33 minutes ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

I don't understand this caption. 

She keeps misspelling the word dining as "dinning". I honestly thought she would have gotten at least some comments on it by now, given how much people here and on Reddit are discussing it.

(This is not me advocating for FJers to message her- it was meant jokingly.)

Edited March 9, 2021 by indianabones

[SassyPants]

47 minutes ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

I don't understand this caption. 

Beyond that, the school room rug is the same rug that is present in three of the Duggars' houses. 

Finally, I think Alyssa is a grifter taking advantage of Tiki. 

Poor Alyssa has been shown time and time again to lack some pretty basic knowledge. It’s absolutely not her fault that her parents withheld basic education in lieu of having Alyssa and her elder siblings parent and provide household chores. “Biz” as Alyssa is known in her family, liked to cook, clean and organize. It’s pretty clear that helping run the house was more important than her education. I hate that her parents did this to Alyssa and that she is on the same path with her own  daughters. Alyssa does not possess the skills to educate anyone. 

[nausicaa]

On 3/3/2021 at 10:53 PM, Audrey2 said:

Here is a really scary thought. Based on what we see Alyssa writing and how uninvolved she seems with teaching her girls, can you imagine her daughters as adults and mothers homeschooling?

I think about this with Nurie Rodrigues. The mind reels. 

 

On 3/5/2021 at 12:07 PM, MomJeans said:

I have always thought that Alyssa's true dream life would be that of a sorority girl at a SEC University. 

I can totally see this. I bet she doesn't even know all of the traditions/events associated with sororities and would be filled with envy if she found out. 

As for the "dinning" stuff:  I've always gotten a strong air of Alyssa thinking being a bit dumb/uneducated is "cute" and attractive to men. And that being attractive to men is the most important thing in the entire world. 

4 hours ago, SassyPants said:

I know John is a hard worker and A and the girls work the family show, but they are all very fortunate to have secured a decent home, with room for all, a pool and yard...AND have the money and time to remodel the entire thing and purchase new furnishings. I’ll admit, I am jealous. Our first home many decades ago was a bank repo fixer upper that took us years to slowly remodel before we sold it and moved on. And we both had good jobs and no kids for a good long time. The $$$$ side of fundieland never adds up to me.

Also, I love how she said "we FINALLY" bought our own house. Girl, you are 26. Everyone on the East and West Coasts and the Chicago metro area would kindly request that you take a seat. 

[SorenaJ]

Alyssa is a spoiled brat. She has never worked a day in her life, and now she owns a giant house with a pool. 
 

My partner and I are Alyssa’s age. We work full time on near-minimum wage, we pay an insane amount in rent for a cold, damp 1-bedroom flat, and if we are very lucky and save everything we earn, we might be able to buy a 2-bedroom house in a really crap area in 10 years. 

STFU Alyssa. 

[Melissa1977]

5 hours ago, nausicaa said:

Also, I love how she said "we FINALLY" bought our own house. Girl, you are 26. Everyone on the East and West Coasts and the Chicago metro area would kindly request that you take a seat

Add the whole European area and enormous areas in other continents. Broadly speaking, it is difficult for a young worker and a SAHM to buy a house. But a 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, swimming pool house is not usual at all. 

She has 2 sisters older than 30 who don't own their houses. It's rude to use the word FINALLY. 

[Melissa1977]

6 hours ago, SassyPants said:

“Biz” as Alyssa is known in her family, liked to cook, clean and organize. It’s pretty clear that helping run the house was more important than her education.

I think that Alyssa is not very bright, so she needed more help than some of her siblings. Kelly wasn't able to give her extra attention, so she was just dumped to the kitchen. I suspect Michaela and Erin were naturally clever and hard workers, that's why they got degrees, not because Kelly was a good teacher. 

 

[FrumpyAtheist]

Being able to afford a house really depends a lot on the cost of living in your area. There are parts of the U.S. where a modest 3 bedroom home costs 70k like the outskirts of Knoxville where most of the Bateses live. My guess is Alyssa's home was around 200k. It's apples to oranges to compare homes in low cost of living areas to flats in expensive cities like London or San Francisco where a 3 bedroom literally costs $1-2 million+ dollars. The Bateses all live in areas with relatively cheap housing.

[JanasTattooParlor]

I hate the defend Alyssa but I can see why she’s saying “FINALLY” about buying a house. She got married at 19, and so she’s been married for 7 years and has 4 kids. It probably does feel like they’ve been wanting a new house for “forever” and now it’s finally come along. My husband and I are a year younger than Alyssa and live in a high COL area where a three bed, two bath home would run between $275K-$350K. We had to start being realistic and looked for houses about half an hour away since they were around $50K-100K cheaper. Once we did, we found a home that we could actually afford that we could grow into and hopefully never move again. And we were only able to purchase it due to some really fantastic scholarships in college that kept us from having loans to pay back now that we have jobs. The only problem is that now my commute will be an hour both ways instead of about 25 minutes, but Alyssa would never have to worry about that since she stays home. 

[freethemall]

My thing about the "finally" is there was like a month period between them saying "we're going to look for a  house to buy" and "we finally bought a house!" which as far as we can tell came through connections of people they know. Doesnt seem they spent that much time actually looking at houses and now the whole buying/renovating/moving process seems super rushed and wish a 2-3 week newborn. Versus my husband and i for our first house spent maybe a year looking at various properties (both open houses and lots of redfin searches and appointments with our realtor), attended a fair (albeit this was done to get local incentives for lower costs), daylong info session, interviewed 2-3 realtors, offer on one house fell through until we got the 2nd, month-long process until we closed,  then another month of stressful renovations until we fully moved in. That was indeed a finally!

[PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea]

Housing prices are never not fascinating to me. Southern Ontario is in a giant bubble and average detached homes just hit $900k CAD this month in my area. We bought a few months ago and paid way less than that but way more than $300k USD in a "high cost of living" area (ha!).

So my question is, what do y'all pay for mortgages? Ours are stupid low, 1.75 percent!

[wendy-sparkles]

5 hours ago, SorenaJ said:

Alyssa is a spoiled brat. She has never worked a day in her life, and now she owns a giant house with a pool. 
 

My partner and I are Alyssa’s age. We work full time on near-minimum wage, we pay an insane amount in rent for a cold, damp 1-bedroom flat, and if we are very lucky and save everything we earn, we might be able to buy a 2-bedroom house in a really crap area in 10 years. 

STFU Alyssa. 

I don't think it's fair to say that Alyssa's a spoiled brat who never worked. She did cleaning with John (John had/has two jobs!), and I do think being a SAHM counts also. Four kids is a lot of work even if we're unimpressed with some of the choices she makes. It would cost a small fortune to pay for care for those children. Filming reality tv, vlogging etc. is also work. Alyssa seems pretty hardworking to me tbh, and she was clearly one of the kids taking up the bigger burdens in regards to chores etc. in the Bates family home, which doesn't exactly scream "spoiled brat" to me.

[SorenaJ]

53 minutes ago, wendy-sparkles said:

I don't think it's fair to say that Alyssa's a spoiled brat who never worked. She did cleaning with John (John had/has two jobs!), and I do think being a SAHM counts also. Four kids is a lot of work even if we're unimpressed with some of the choices she makes. It would cost a small fortune to pay for care for those children. Filming reality tv, vlogging etc. is also work. Alyssa seems pretty hardworking to me tbh, and she was clearly one of the kids taking up the bigger burdens in regards to chores etc. in the Bates family home, which doesn't exactly scream "spoiled brat" to me.

Not having to go out to work a minimum wage job but being able to stay at home playing dress up in front of cameras, having a built in sister mom to get out of parenting, having below bare minimum teaching responsibilities to the kids she chooses to homeschool, and saying 'finally buying a house' at age 26(!) do scream spoiled brat to me. 

Also using Babywise sleep training so she doesn't have to get up at night to feed the baby. 

Whether Alyssa is hard working, I don't know, I think going above and beyond was one of the only ways for the girls to get attention, affection and praise growing up. Godly girls are hard working girls. See Kelly's birthday post for one of the younger girls. 

Edited March 9, 2021 by SorenaJ

[tanba]

4 minutes ago, SorenaJ said:

Not having to go out to work a minimum wage job but being able to stay at home playing dress up in front of cameras, having a built in sister mom to get out of parenting, having below bare minimum teaching responsibilities to the kids she chooses to homeschool, and saying 'finally buying a house' at age 26(!) do scream spoiled brat to me. 

This seems extremely dismissive of whole swaths of people making their living off social media, being stay at home mothers. I honestly don’t believe an almost 6-year old like Allie can be an effective sister mom. maybe in the future, but do we really believe Allie is pottie Training kids/ cleaning up spills etc? 

[OHFL2009]

4 hours ago, FrumpyAtheist said:

Being able to afford a house really depends a lot on the cost of living in your area. There are parts of the U.S. where a modest 3 bedroom home costs 70k like the outskirts of Knoxville where most of the Bateses live. My guess is Alyssa's home was around 200k. It's apples to oranges to compare homes in low cost of living areas to flats in expensive cities like London or San Francisco where a 3 bedroom literally costs $1-2 million+ dollars. The Bateses all live in areas with relatively cheap housing.

Either the county records are really behind in posting, or they haven't officially bought the house yet, because the property is still listed in the previous owner's name. But based on the estimates from sites like Zillow and Redfin, I'd guess the house is worth somewhere between $300k-$350k, although the needed renovations throw a monkey wrench into estimates. If they are buying it from a relative and considering the shape it was in, it's definitely possible they got it for less than that. And since the owner appears to be their previous landlord, I wouldn't be surprised if they do a private loan with him vs. a conventional mortgage. Even a conventional loan they would be paying less than $2,000/month, which doesn't seem exorbitant to me considering John works/worked 2 jobs, they get paid for the show, and Alyssa monetizes her social media. John also works in a construction-related business, so they may be able to get discounts/favors/trades from other contractors to help with the remodel costs. 

[Melissa1977]

53 minutes ago, wendy-sparkles said:

I don't think it's fair to say that Alyssa's a spoiled brat who never worked. She did cleaning with John (John had/has two jobs!), and I do think being a SAHM counts also. Four kids is a lot of work even if we're unimpressed with some of the choices she makes. It would cost a small fortune to pay for care for those children. Filming reality tv, vlogging etc. is also work. Alyssa seems pretty hardworking to me tbh, and she was clearly one of the kids taking up the bigger burdens in regards to chores etc. in the Bates family home, which doesn't exactly scream "spoiled brat" to me.

I think she has become spoiled. She definitely was a hard working girl before her illness, raising kids during the day and cleaning offices at evenings (maybe not everyday, but it was often). At some point she turned lazy. Maybe because her illness, which made her unable to work and do home chores or maybe before that. I don't know when she changed, but I've been following Bates for a long time and I have seen an evident change in Alyssa's behaviour.

I have my theory, and this is that Alyssa became tired and bored of parenting very soon. She loves the girls very much, but it was clear that she enjoyed her cleaning job, her workout time (out of home), her dates and getaways with John etc. She was a very active person and parenting 24/7 seem to be too much for her, so she just does the minimum. But of course, this is pure speculation.

[wendy-sparkles]

1 hour ago, SorenaJ said:

Not having to go out to work a minimum wage job but being able to stay at home playing dress up in front of cameras, having a built in sister mom to get out of parenting, having below bare minimum teaching responsibilities to the kids she chooses to homeschool, and saying 'finally buying a house' at age 26(!) do scream spoiled brat to me. 

Just because you don't respect it doesn't mean it isn't work. Vlogging is work. Looking after four (!) small children is work. Allie is only five, I'm sure there's a lot of inappropriate childcare in her future but the bulk of the parenting is still Alyssa. Just because someone's life or job doesn't look like yours, or they've had some luck you haven't had, doesn't mean they're automatically spoiled and lazy.

Alyssa's upbringing to me seems incredibly deprived in attention,  education, and opportunity and even though we're going to make fun of her 'dinning room' or whatever, what it actually is is a symptom of the shit hand she was dealt. I don't think a single person on this website is impressed with Alyssa's parenting but she was raised as a fundie, where she was taught she has to have children whether she wants to or not and she's not allowed to send those children to school - of course she's not passionate about parenting and homeschooling. I think Alyssa would make very different choices in a different environment - these aren't independent choices made of her own free will, they've been inculcated in her, and throwing off your entire culture and family is actually something that's incredibly difficult to do, especially without some kind of impetus like Jill Dillard had (or outside support like Jill had).

The lives of all these 2nd gen fundies read very tragic imo, even if they generally seem happy or have been lucky or whatever, and the idea that you could look from the outside at someone who grew up this way, and think "spoiled" is just baffling to me. There are genuine, serious issues with Alyssa (obviously) but I don't see how that can reasonably be seen as one of them, and I don't think it's fair to use what issues there are as excuses to malign her when we just want someone to vent our spleen at.

[treehugger]

1 hour ago, PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea said:

Housing prices are never not fascinating to me. Southern Ontario is in a giant bubble and average detached homes just hit $900k CAD this month in my area.

Southern Ontario blows my mind.  All our family lives there, and they are always hinting that they would like for us to move back, but honestly, it’s cheaper for us to live in the downtown core of Montreal and have the lifestyle we enjoy.

Congratulations on being able to buy a house there though!  It’s a tough market to break into.  

   

[SorenaJ]

2 minutes ago, wendy-sparkles said:

Just because you don't respect it doesn't mean it isn't work. Vlogging is work. Looking after four (!) small children is work. Allie is only five, I'm sure there's a lot of inappropriate childcare in her future but the bulk of the parenting is still Alyssa. Just because someone's life or job doesn't look like yours, or they've had some luck you haven't had, doesn't mean they're automatically spoiled and lazy.

Alyssa's upbringing to me seems incredibly deprived in attention,  education, and opportunity and even though we're going to make fun of her 'dinning room' or whatever, what it actually is is a symptom of the shit hand she was dealt. I don't think a single person on this website is impressed with Alyssa's parenting but she was raised as a fundie, where she was taught she has to have children whether she wants to or not and she's not allowed to send those children to school - of course she's not passionate about parenting and homeschooling. I think Alyssa would make very different choices in a different environment - these aren't independent choices made of her own free will, they've been inculcated in her, and throwing off your entire culture and family is actually something that's incredibly difficult to do, especially without some kind of impetus like Jill Dillard had (or outside support like Jill had).

The lives of all these 2nd gen fundies read very tragic imo, even if they generally seem happy or have been lucky or whatever, and the idea that you could look from the outside at someone who grew up this way, and think "spoiled" is just baffling to me. There are genuine, serious issues with Alyssa (obviously) but I don't see how that can reasonably be seen as one of them, and I don't think it's fair to use what issues there are as excuses to malign her when we just want someone to vent our spleen at.

I suppose this depends on to what extent we can hold people accountable for their shitty decisions. How much free will does she have? Can we hold the men more accountable because they are the headship? 

Working mothers can be spoiled brats. Stay at home mothers can be spoiled brats. Neither are mutually inclusive. 

IMO Alyssa is spoiled. And her home schooling is lazy. 

[CreationMuseumCurator]

1 hour ago, PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea said:

Housing prices are never not fascinating to me. Southern Ontario is in a giant bubble and average detached homes just hit $900k CAD this month in my area. We bought a few months ago and paid way less than that but way more than $300k USD in a "high cost of living" area (ha!).

So my question is, what do y'all pay for mortgages? Ours are stupid low, 1.75 percent!

Living in the Midwest, I know our housing prices are cheap, but this still blows my mind. I grew up in a small town where homes are dirt cheap and moved to a city with a state university. Our housing prices here feel ridiculous to me...until I get reality checks like this one.

We bought last summer at 3.375%. 

[SassyPants]

As a reference, a house like the Websters just purchased would be 2 million plus in my town (on Monterey Bay south of San Francisco). It’s not so much the structure that costly here, but the land. We live on a postage stamp sized lot with a tall and skinny multi-level home, much smaller than the Ws and we could probably sell for 1.5 million. Move our house to rural Arkansas and it’s probably 250,000. Our house does have many beautiful features and updates, and having the ocean in your backyard raises the costs.

[CarrotCake]

1 hour ago, CreationMuseumCurator said:

Living in the Midwest, I know our housing prices are cheap, but this still blows my mind. I grew up in a small town where homes are dirt cheap and moved to a city with a state university. Our housing prices here feel ridiculous to me...until I get reality checks like this one.

We bought last summer at 3.375%. 

The average(!) housingprice in the Netherlands at the moment is 486k€ (which is 578k$).

And the avarage size house here is 65m2 (700 square feet) on a 130m2 lot (1400 square feet), for which you would pay around 350k€ (416k$)

 

The housing market is really shitty at the moment.

Edited March 9, 2021 by CarrotCake