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25 March 2010

It begins

You already know of my issues with having to plan so this shouldn't come as a surprise to you, but I've started again.

I am remarkably LESS stressed about the planning this time.  And it is amazing to be able to actually start implementing plans instead of just making them.  The self-imposed and non-self-imposed deadlines feel good too.  We are aiming to be moving around the 1st of May.

This weekend gramma (Robert's mom) is taking Adam and Carus for a couple of days and Robert and I will have a date night.

But instead of date night consisting of a dinner and movie - which is what we were planning to do - we will be here at our rental:
  • Packing and cleaning downstairs, which has become our catch all room
  • Cleaning and painting the master bathroom
  • Cleaning and painting the main bathroom
(Our landlord is elderly and so we would like to help him save a bit time, headache, and money by painting and cleaning for him. White is an easy paint to slap on so no big deal.)

And if there's time we'll throw in:
  • Packing the dining room
Not to mention that we want to make a 'scouting' trip to Home Depot

PAINT!!!! IN COLORS!!! NO MORE WHITE!!!!

And hopefully a clutter freeing stop at Goodwill.

22 March 2010

The part where I can't stop crying...

But its okay. They're happy tears. And scared shitless tears.

Mostly happy tears.

That's how I work - get mad, I cry. Get sad, I cry.  Get happy (like really happy), I cry. And on and on.

Sometimes it's annoying. 

Sometimes it works to my advantage.

Anyhoo...

At 4 hours from our deadline I was staring at my phone wanting it to ring. 

Willing it to ring.  RING DAMN YOU, RING! 

Robert's phone was the one that rang. (Which was probably because I think he had already called our realtor for an update 10 times this morning.) Then he called me and tried to play dumb.

Me: "Hey, what's up?"

Him:  "Oh, not much."

Me: "Well?"

Him:  "Well, what?"

Me: "Did Christina call?"

Him:  "Huh? Oh, yea she just called."

Me: "Well?"

Him:  "Well, what?"

Me: "Did they accept? Did they deny? What?"

Him: "Oh, that."  *silence*  "Yeah, they accepted."

BRING ON THE TEARS!!  I immediately began crying - and resisting the urge to start jumping up and down and screaming.

It almost wasn't accepted.  The sellers were told another offer was coming in this morning and when it didn't show up they got nervous that ours would expire before/IF the other one came in and they would be left with no offers.  And they already had their eyes set on another house and just had to get theirs sold first. Thankfully for us, they played it safe.

We are home owners!!!! (almost)



Now to get to closing. Fingers still need to be crossed (PLEASE!!!!).  Closing date is April 23rd.

20 March 2010

I expect your fingers to be crossed now!

After running from "Flower Power" last night, Robert asked if we could pop by "The 90s" house again, just for one more look and our realtor agreed to let us in.

We went over there, went through the house and the yard again and discussed what we want to do where and how we would 'fix' this and that.

After some more discussion and such Robert and I decided what we don't like we can fix - except for the steps all over that annoy Rober, but he thinks he can live with it - soooooo


We signed offer paperwork last night and our realtor emailed it in and.....




We'll know Monday (the deadline) if we were denied......


we were countered.....


or we were excepted....



I expect your fingers to be crossed now!

The Red House and Flower Power

Yesterday we saw 2 more houses.  We started with "The Red House".  I had wanted to see this house for the kitchen, which was newly remodeled and looked so pretty in the online pictures.  Then we got there and I told Robert I'm leaving him for the kitchen.  It was THAT pretty!  Granite counters, lots of cubboard space, lazy susan cubboards, amazing glass top stove, DEEP sink, on and on. They only thing I would have done with it was added the soft close sliders to the cubboard doors and drawers. 



The laundry room/mud room was amazing too and the bedrooms and backyard were all good sized.  The 2 bathrooms, however, were small. And the backyard, while a good sized, allowed ALL of the road noise from the busy road next to the house to be heard.  There were points were we couldn't hear each other talking.  There was also no space for my office, the living room was on the cozy side.  We loved the house, but it was too small :(

As for Flower Power - we didn't like it.  It was beat up.  It was built in 2001 and the carpets were crap, the prego floor in the living room was bent and popped when walking on it, the paint was all crooked and messy, and the backyard was dirt and weeds - all things we can fix with a lot of time but when we went upstairs we had a funny feeling walking on the floor, especially in the bathroom.  It felt uneven.  Then Robert called me from the garage.


Yup, mold and sagging.  Water damage. The upstairs bathroom where we felt the uneven-ness the most is right above this spot. There must have been a leak of some sort.  The mold was not only on the ceiling of the garage, but down both walls and the garage smelled like mold so badly.

Even if we could get finance on a house with water and mold damage (and with USDA we can't) this just completely killed it for us.

Our realtor summed it up great, "We came, we saw, now we're leaving." Perfect sentiments. 

19 March 2010

Sneak peak

How about a sneak peak of what we're doing tonight - viewing 2 more houses.

Flower Power


The Red House

Robert named these so don't look at me!  Flower power because of the name of the street the house is on (Begonia, which he giggles at every time he sees it) and The Red House because of the kitchen. 

He is a dork.

I know this.


But I still love him.

17 March 2010

Looking at houses again - The 90s



This house was built in 1991 and it feels it! It's near the top of our price range (again...gggrrrr).  3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1808 sq ft on a rather good sized lot. It has a fireplace and AC and is on a cul-de-sac.  It's been on the market for a little bit and just had a 20K price drop which made it pop up on our search perimeters late Monday night and by Tuesday afternoon we got more info from our realtor and decided we wanted to see it.  Because of the major price drop and from what we could see in the listing pictures we thought it would be one that would go fast so we had an unplanned viewing at the last moment.  We didn't want to lose our chance...

There are skylights in almost every room, a sun porch, and a great view from the front window.  There is new carpet throughout including the dining room/living room which isn't our preference considering there is real wood floors in the entry.  There is even carpet on the front steps - weirdo's - althought it's outdoor carpet and it is also in the sun porch (think of that green stuff, just not green).  The rooms are a great size.  The kitchen isn't horrible, but it is kinda dated.  I can live with it though.  I think it makes up for the ugly with its size.  I was not concerned about storage! There isn't a separate, closed off room for an office, but we thought of using the living room or the family room area for one.  There are steps throughout and the bar in the kitchen that opens to the living room is about half the 'normal' height, which feels very odd.  I can see myself tripping over the steps for the first few months. Wait, who am I kidding. I'll be tripping the entire time...  The door from the sun porch to the backyard opens on the wrong side (in my opinion) and you have to go around it to get to the backyard.  We can put in another door though.  The backyard needs a bit of work to get it like we would like it but it's a good start. 

Last night I was already to make an offer and did get Robert to agree.  Today he is feeling apprehensive, and because he is, so am I.  Sometimes I can see more long-term and sometimes he can - we kinda balance each other out and pick up each others slack when needed.  He thinks it would be best if we wait until Saturday to see the other 2 houses we had planned on seeing before making a decision. And he is probably right.  My big wants - backyard and large kitchen - were there and I was excited about both.

We have the offer papers all drawn up just waiting our signature - now to decide if and when we sign...

Whatcha think?

Wordless Wednesday - Happy St. Patricks Day!

Pretend it's a 4-leaf clover. 10 minutes of looking for one was enough and we just picked a pretty 3-leaf one.

Don't forget to check out the other Wordless Wednesday participators by clicking here.

13 March 2010

We haven't given up yet. . .

Bad news, more bad news, good news.

Bad news:

We didn't get the house.  The bank received another offer that they liked better than ours and accepted that one. Too bad they left us hanging for 4-1/2 weeks!  We didn't stop looking and we didn't count it as we were for sure getting the house, however, we were still planning and hoping we would.  We did find out that the buyers that stole the house from us (not really, but yea) have 60-90 days ahead of them before closing. HA! Take that byatches! It sorta makes up for the annoyance and dissappointment we are feeling.

More bad news:

Our financing has a deadline.  We are going with a USDA loan because we liked the terms better than the regular loans, but *newsflash* the government is running outta moola so they are ending the USDA loan program thingy April 30th. To get it we have to be CLOSED by then.  Which means we have like 2 weeks to find a house, make an offer, and have that offer accepted - then the whole inspection, underwriting the loan, blah blah blah blah... DEADLINE! Aaaggghhhh!

Oh, and short sales and foreclosures are no longer an option because of the time crunch which is like 85% of the listings right now...

Good news:

We haven't given up yet. We are still hopeful and being positive - so very annoyed right now, but positive.  It sorta feels like we wasted a whole month.  We didn't really, it just feels that way.  We continued to look online for houses and we even went and looked at a couple (not sharing the pics, they were way far from even being considered by either of us), and we haven't found anything.

We went through the listings again this morning and even expanded our search to Cornelius which is right next to Forest Grove and we have a few more we'd like to look at.  One in particular I have my eye on, I hope it lives up to its online pictures.

So yeah, short sales SUCK!

05 March 2010

How to embarrass your 5th grader

Wanna know??

How to embarrass your 5th grader


Send him a note in his lunch that an adult will see.  He was completely okay with the possibility of his friends seeing, but the thought of an adult seeing it when he had his food (leftovers) warmed up made him blush!

03 March 2010

Ain't it adorable?

We have the kids set up with their own email addresses and with those MSN messenger. The theory was that grandparents who also have messenger could message them and talk to them online since most times its difficult to get my constantly speaking children to talk on the phone. Weird huh?

We also use them to send little notes to the kids randomly. Ya know, love ya, proud of ya, why did the chicken cross the road jokes, etc, etc.

The other day Robert sent Carus a little note from work saying "Hi big girl..!!" when he noticed she signed on.  She didn't get it until he had signed off at work, but did send the reply, "hi big daddy..!!"  And then a few hours later, he returned to his computer in the bedroom and finds...

If you need translating it says, "you make my hart (heart) grow    love... your prensess (princess) . . . . . . Carus"


Isn't that adorable?!?!

Wordless Wednesday - Not so wordless

I'm gonna participate in Wordless Wednesday a little differently today.  Full of words.

I would like to ask for prayers, warm wishes, happy thoughts, good vibes, happy juju, positive wishes, etc etc etc.

Carus's best friend's mom (gonna call her L) was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is opting to have a bilateral mastectomy surgery today in hopes that it will just nip the whole thing in the bud and she can be done with it.

She is a new friend to me, but she is one that I would like to have for awhile. 

Now that I've bummed you out and you've put you good juju out into the universe for L, be sure to check out the other Wordless Wednesday posters. I'm sure there is a few handfuls of some happy and funny pictures to look at.

02 March 2010

Letter to the cats

Dear Cats,

Timmy ~ It is not necessary for you to scarf down all 3 cats portion of food in under 5 minutes.  Just because you see the bottom of your bowl DOES NOT mean you are out of food and will starve.  I haven't let you starve yet, I'm not going to. Your binging causes you to then purge and I am really tired of getting up in the morning or walking into a room and unexpectedly stepping in a pile of half digested food. Its not pleasant.

Wilbur ~ Why must you leave your hairballs on the carpets, couches, or my bed? If you insist on continuely bathing yourself AND Timmy (you know you're encouraging his laziness) and giving yourself hairballs PLEASE just leave them on the linoleum. It makes clean up easier!

Simba ~ I get that you prefer wet food because it's soft, and I appreciate your help with Timmy's purging problem. But please could you not "clean up" in front of me?

Thanks,

Mom

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