FINALLY!!!!!

We got our house!!!! I am so excited!!! I got to get the keys today!!! They are recording this morning and then they will call me to meet me there and hand over the all important keys!!! I also have to get the power in our name today before they close so that they don't shut the power off for the weekend. That would suck but certainly wouldn't stop me from moving in. I'm going to be going up there today and tomorrow and painting two of the rooms. Just because we're not blue people and the rooms were painted blue.

I am just so excited!!! I need to run to get ready for the day. It's going to be a busy and full day!!!

Almost there....

A few things I've learned through this whole experience.

1. Never go through the bank we are using to buy a house!
2. It's better not to buy a modular home if you can help it. I love our house, but if I had known all the inspections it's had to go through- I might have passed on it all together. Or at the very least added more time into all our "deadlines".
3. Deadlines are just dates that are put on the paper to scare you into doing things when they want it, but no one else has to follow them or adhere to them. (Except maybe the sellers too??)
4. They made the buying of a house almost impossible since the economy crashed that it's not a good time to buy, even though everyone keeps saying that it is.
5. I may never sell my house, (unless it's like childbirth and you 'forget' all the bad because of the potential good) because this process has been a nightmare!
6. Trying to pack with a 3 year old going behind you trying to pull everything out is a pain in the butt!!


Our good news we got the other day turned out not to be so good after all. The insurance company after telling us that they would insure us and that they were all good to go and everything, the next day they told our processors that they wouldn't insure us for the full loan amount, after we had asked them that specifically. So we ended up calling the guy who is insuring it right now, cause we knew that he'd insure it for us now, and we ended up getting an even better rate for our house, but our car insurance did go up about 10 dollars. BUT we have better coverage on the car so I'm not all that upset.
And so now here we sit.... 3 days past our financing deadline and we still have no answers. Everyone (our families and Realtor) is telling us it's fine and that they are scheduling our closing (tomorrow morning) and our final walk through,(tonight)and everything like we're closing on Wednesday- which is tomorrow- even though the bank hasn't given us the final YES that we want to hear.
I really hope they all know what they are doing. I think at this point if for some strange reason we didn't get the house, my Realtor would go postal on the bank.
Honestly, the underwriters have had our completed file since Friday morning- Does anyone how long does it take for them to look it over one more time, since they've looked it over twice before, and decide. What really irritates me is that the bank and the underwriters knew all along the dates of our deadlines and they keep procrastinating until they've passed all our deadlines. So are the deadlines only for the buyers and sellers, but not the financial institutions??
Everyone keeps saying that if we weren't going to get the loan that we wouldn't have gotten this far, yet the people who tried to buy the house first couldn't buy it because their financing fell through at the last minute. Does that mean that they got this far to be told no? What is 'the last minute' really? I just don't have answers to these questions but because of those questions I can't relax very well.
I may add another post after this one today if and that's a big IF, we actually get an answer from the bank today!!

Finally some good news...

Ok, so today we ended up getting some good news, just not the news we really want. We got a really good deal on our home owners insurance. YAY!!! And it went really easy and the lady there was super nice and fast. AND SHE CALLED BACK WHEN SHE SAID SHE WOULD!!! My poor Realtor is sick of dealing with the bank and the underwriters. She'll call them with something, and not hear back for hours- sometimes not for days. She got so sick of this that she called both the girls who are working on our loan, then emailed them, and then faxed them. And guess what... She received a call back. The second inspection was done this morning and now we've heard that it's under review and so *HOPEFULLY* we will have an answer today!! I know, I know... but I can always hope... and pray... and beg... and borrow... and plead... And I guess if that doesn't work I can always sit down and have a good long cry.

(Just kidding on the whole crying thing...)

Then again, maybe not. lol

We are hoping to get most of the house packed this weekend. That is assuming we have an answer by Friday. I have also boycotted packing any thing else until we get an answer. I didn't pack anything yesterday and today we got the first bit of moving forward good news that we've had all week, and for the last week too. So it's gotta be that I was jinxing it.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So we have 10-- count them-- 10 days until we move, 8 until we close!!! I'm kinda starting to freak out a bit- I'm not gonna lie.

As soon as it's my house, I'll post some moving pics and then I'll feel like it has been totally worth it.

Hopefully my next post will be to tell everyone that it's our house!!! :)

The continuing saga...

So we heard back from the bank and they did adjust the price, but not as high as it was. It's right in the middle. The sellers are happy, we are happy and the bank is happy. So everyone is happy right? Wrong! Cause then the bank was asking for more paper work, which we provided. Now it's the stupid underwriters that are jerking us around.
I have been run through the ringer with this house deal. I know that buying a house is a big deal, but honestly, can you make it any harder?? Now we are being told that the underwriters want an engineering report on the house and because there isn't one, we have to pay $400. for it! And our financing deadline is TODAY! But they said this isn't anything that has to do with our deadline, which I don't understand, but whatever. It doesn't have to be done by today which is good because if it did, they'd be hearing a lot from me. We've been trying to get in touch with them for 2 days making sure that we were meeting all their demands. But it does need to be done before we can get a for sure YES. Everyone keeps saying that everything looks good, and that they don't see any problems, but I want the for sure YES!!! I honestly can't take it anymore. I am stressed to the hilt. I am sick of this apartment, sick of all the boxes everywhere, some packed, some empty.
I have a confession.... I am not packing as much as I would normally be packing because I'm afraid of jinxing it. If I pack it and then we don't get the house I really don't want to unpack everything. :(
I am tired of my neighbor sitting outside yelling at her kids all day because she's too lazy to go and actually get them. Instead she sits on her porch and yells as her kids wander farther and farther away. Her kids are 2 and 3ish.
I really want to sit outside on my patio enjoying the evening air as it cools off, (saying that it will might help it really do it, right? I didn't think so either but it's worth a shot) and not hear her yelling all night long.
I want to start decorating my house. Repainting walls, taking off the horrible wall paper, picking out curtains.
This house has been sold twice since it was built. You would think that if it wasn't sound, someone would have noticed by now!!! All the money they are sucking out of us, it's any wonder people aren't buying houses now and the housing market is in such bad shape.

Our new house or not?!?!

So.... We have decided to buy a house. It's actually been pretty easy, with a few hick ups here and there. We did the whole pre-qualifying, in the middle of the week. Then I started to try and find some houses to go look at. I looked online, at several really good sites. Found several that we really liked. Now being new to the whole home buying experience we had no idea what "short sales" were, and go figure almost all the houses we liked in this area were short saled. So we looked closer to our parents and found several that I was willing to walk through. Oh the joys of that. I had no idea what to expect, but it wasn't what I found.
House #1 was in the area I grew up, just down the block in fact. It was a nice looking house -- from the front. It was down right scary from the back and inside. It was decorated in the 50's or 60's and hasn't been done since. Including the appliances that they were leaving with the house. It had been empty for quite a while and was in sad shape. The carpets through out were that green shag carpet, stained in several places, I wasn't even sure the oven or range top (which were separate, the oven was in the wall which I was excited about until I saw it) would actually work they were so old. The basement was a big scary mess!! AND it had a BROILER in the basement instead of a furnace. I've never dealt with a boiler before. I'd rather not start now. For the condition the house was in, they wanted WAY WAY too much money. Now I know that you can talk them down, but with all the things we'd have to replace before we could move it, it was a big fat NO!
House #2 was a nice 4 bed, 2 bath with a huge yard-fully fenced- with a 2 car garage. Now we had appt's to see all these houses with our Realtor Kelly who is FABULOUS!! I just love her!! Anyway, we show up at this house to find out that the people renting some of the rooms were in various degrees of dress and being ready. ***CONFESSION*** I really liked the outside and upstairs of this house, but I was terrified by this house.
The lady who owns it was renting out single rooms, so there were 3 mini fridges, downstairs was so terrifying that I wanted out as soon as possible. They had set up a couple hot plates down there in a make shift laundry room and kitchen. The basement had a mother in law apt without the kitchen part. They had a closet that used to be the coal room, complete with a coal shoot opening outside, which they had made a bed in there and was renting it out as a bedroom. All the doors had dead bolts on the them and everywhere they could stuff a body, there was a body stuffed there. We had to knock on bedroom doors, ask to look inside, which we peeked in and left, and them we were asked if we wanted renters. UMMM.... NO WAY IN HELL!! We are looking for a house that we can move our family into, not to share our house. The downstairs bathroom made me laugh so hard, but given the condition the house was in, I'm not at all surprised. Right when you walked down the tiny steep steps, you walked into the huge laundry room/their mini kitchen. If you turned to your right, there were 2 bedrooms, a bathroom that just had a toilet and sink, and right out in the middle of the open area was a communal shower!!! You could see over the top, and under the door, it was that open. I was so amused that I seriously laughed for at least 5 minutes and then again when we were outside looking at the yard. I was almost 3000sq ft but felt so cramped and tiny because of how full it was.
House #3 I LOVED!!! But it was also partially unfinished. And more work than we wanted to take on. It was 6 bedrooms- I know we don't need that many rooms, but it was in our price range because it needed some work. The house had such history- I could tell- just when you walked in and looked around, you could feel it in the air. It was weird, it didn't feel bad at all, but just walking through the rooms it felt like I was trying to walk through water. My lungs were laboring like I had just spent 30 minutes exercising. I loved the layout of the house, the huge yard, mostly fenced. But it had only 1 working bathroom and one under construction. The original part of the house was built in 1864 and it had been added on to several times. And not very well in some places. Like I said, I loved it, but way too much work to make it comfortable for us to live there. Plus, it didn't have any air conditioning except a small window one and that meant that the 3 rooms upstairs were going to be hot in the summer and cold in the winter. We'll pass this time around.
Now house #4 was perfect! (It's also the house we put an offer on, I'm just sayin')
It is a 5 bedroom, 2 bath house with a full basement, a nice sized lot-fully fenced- and lots of great little things, like ... A gas fireplace in the family room downstairs, a storage room (we even talked them into leaving their upright freezer-bonus!!) My only complaint about the whole house, is the size of the bedrooms. They are pretty small. Though, it's hard to say for sure because they had all the rooms FULL of furniture. I must say that I love LoVe LOVE the kitchen. It isn't big, but it's just right. All new appliances and a gas stove which I am super happy about. They are leaving a swing in the back yard, and there is a fire pit back there and a nice big patio. I think we'll be spending a lot of time on the patio so I'm very happy.
House #5 was nice, a 4bed, 2 bath house even closer to our parents than the one we are trying to get. It had a newly remodeled kitchen, which was nice, but you could tell that they did the work their selves and in some places, not very well. The yard was smaller and I didn't like it as much. It just wasn't our house even with a nicer, bigger, newer kitchen. OK, nicer isn't really comparable because I liked the other kitchen better. It was brighter somehow. This one wasn't even clean. They had swept cereal under the cabinets which you could still see.
The owners of the house we are trying to get really know how to stage their house so that it was welcoming and bright and cheery and lovely.

We like house #4 so much that right after we got done looking at houses we followed our Realtor to her office (on a Saturday and my birthday to boot) put an offer on the house, and less than 3 hours later she called me to tell me that they had accepted our offer, happy birthday to me!!
We found out that someone else had put an offer on the house before us but their financing feel through, so we were able to snatch it up.

Now comes the stress... We are doing everything they want us to do. We got the inspection, we gave them our earnest money, and we were just waiting for the appraisal. When it came in, we had a slight problem. The house didn't appraise for what we offered them. It appraised for $8,000 less. Now the stress really begins to have fun. The sellers agent wants a review of the appraisal because she doesn't think that the guy was very thorough. And all this is happening while banks and offices are closed for the 4th of July holiday. We are starting to get close to our deadlines which is making me nervous. The sellers have already put another house under contract and have paid for their inspection as well. They want out. They said that if they can't get a review or if it doesn't change than they are willing to drop the price. Which is good for us, but I need to know ASAP- If we need to back out we need to do it before the middle of the month. We are less than 3 weeks from the day we are supposed to close. I've taken in our 30 day notice to the apartments, I want to start packing non-essentials so that I'm not rushing to pack last minute. And now, I'm like- do I keep going, do I wait for word from them or the bank!?!?
UGH!!! It's enough to knot my shoulders and make my tummy in knots. I'm actually better now than I was before. When I found out on Friday I was pretty nasty- I know it's hard to believe, but yes it's true. I was down right bi%!hy.

Ahhhh.... I feel better, having gotten that off my chest. When I find out for sure, I will post pics of my house!! :)

So Sweet!! but WAY too soon!

So tonight when I picked my little man up from his dad's house he showed me a note. I could tell that he had been wanting to show me since he got in the car. His note said: "Dear K, I <3(that's a heart) U. Call if you want." Then she gave him her phone number. "You are so smart so call when you get off the bus. I <3 <3 <3 You are so cool call if you dare. From ? ? ? ? ? ? ? " It is the sweetest thing ever. He walked in the house and announced to Pat that he had gotten a love letter! He's even been trying to work out the clues as to who it might be. We looked her number up through Dex and it's unlisted, so he sat there trying to work out, "Ok she knows that I ride the bus, but I didn't ride the bus today, so I'm pretty sure that it's one of two girls and if it's them I'll call, but if it's so&so I'm not going to call because I don't like her" I asked him why he didn't like her and he told me that she doesn't like him either and when I again asked why he told me that he didn't know. That they were friends in 3rd grade but then over the summer "She had a mood swing" and hasn't ever gotten over it. LMAO!! Oh that boy is so funny!! I asked him where it was and he said that the final bell had rung and he'd started to leave but then remembered that he forgot an assignment so he went back to his desk and the note was on top of his homework. He keeps taking it out and looking at it and carries it around with him every where he goes. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen. Although, it makes me sad too cause the boy is getting too big. Granted not old enough for dates but I remember the harmless first love of elementary school first love. "Check yes or no" with the boxes and everything. lol His not didn't have boxes but she did draw hearts. OH, my baby is growing up.

Happy Halloween!

Normally this is my favorite time of year, however this year I'm not as excited for it but I am trying. I love the cute costumes, the smells of fall, the colors of the leaves, and I even love the crispness of the air. (most of the time, lol) I think we're going to try and go see "Arsenic and Old Lace" tonight at the Heritage Theater. I absolutely adore this play. I know that we're going to my dad's and my mother in laws house, but Cameron is sick so we wont be going trick or treating.(Kelly is with his dad this year)
I was thinking of seeing if I could write a post roughly once every couple of weeks. Like on Thursday or something. I'm still not sure but I feel bad that I have been neglecting my blogging. My sister called last night and while she didn't really tell me anything new, because her days are pretty much the same, I was pretty shocked that I didn't really have anything new to tell her either. I like it when she calls because I know that it does her good to be able to talk with her family, but when I write her at least one letter a week it's hard to have as much news. She sounds good, and was in pretty good spirits so that's really good. She is still a non-smoker, (though I'm not 100% sure if that's cause she wants to be or because cigarettes cost 8.99 there) But she has also been drug free for over 2 years now. YAY for her!!
I've also decided that I am going to set a goal to read a certain amount of new books next year, as well as the few that I read every year. I love some books so much that I read them often. I thought about making it 50 books a year, but I am not sure I could read that many with all the stuff we always seem to have going on. So I was thinking maybe 30 books or maybe 34 books to go with my age. I am going to make sure that several of them are classics that I've never read before, as well as modern ones that I want to read. I will finish "The Count of Monte Cristo" by this time next year! It's really hard to get into. I am reading "Interview With the Vampire" and it's killing me to finish it. It really is. I liked the movie and all, but holy crap! This is one of those books that is so hard for me to read because I just don't care to examine every single emotion that Louis is feeling every time he feels it! I know that it's one of those depressing emotionally drawn books that lots of people just love, and it's a good story and I like it too, it's just not my cup of tea! I guess I prefer my books to be happier. I use books to get away for a few hours to live in a different world so I'd like that world to be a happy one. lol
So if you have a book you think should go on my list for next year, feel free to let me know and I might add it! :) I'll be sure and post my list when it's finished and then at the end of the year I'll see how well I did.