Blogging Nonsense

I got this from someone's blog but we are blaming Felicia for the whole mess! Answer in a word, if possible:

1. Yourself? quiet
2. Your husband? loud
3. Your hair? wild
4. Your mother? crazy
5. Your father? distant
6. Your favorite thing? my kids
7. Your dream last night? none
8. Your favorite drink? tea
9. Your dream car? Lexus
10. The room you're in right now? dining
11. Your fear? spiders
12. What you want to be in 10 years? rich
13. Muffins? blueberry
14. Who you hung out with last night? Husband
15. What you're not? patient
16. Time? 7:07 p.m.
17. What you're wearing? cotton!
18. Your favorite weather? warm
19. Your favorite book? non fiction
20. Last thing you ate? fortune cookie
21. Your worst vice? computer
22. Your best friend is? stressed!
23. What you're thinking about right now? scrapping
24. Your car? truck!
25. Your life? insane

Yep, I'm slow at updating. Life just got a little crazy there for a while. Where, oh where to begin? The house inspection went very well. In fact, the inspector said he'd never seen a house that old in that nice of condition or that nicely redone. It is a pretty snazzy house and I can't wait to live in it. We did request that they fix four extremely minor things such as reattaching a section of flashing that had come loose. We only dinged the items it would be physically difficult for DH to do and I'm happy to report they agreed to everything and signed off on it. We officially close June 11th and get the keys by 5 p.m. on the 18th. The owners are going to let us put up the fencing as soon as we close, so that will be one thing out of the way before we actually move in, and that will definitely help. We'll be able to bring Bailey over and let her run around while we work on the house. She is in such desperate need of a yard. I keep telling her it's coming soon, but I can feel her desperation, especially since it's getting too hot for her to walk very far with me. Poor baby.
The girls are happy to be out of school. Shona's teacher hosted a reading night where each child read a book he or she had written. It was quite a good time, even though it dragged out a bit. I was impressed with Shona's ability to speak in public. She was a little nervous, but spoke in a loud, clear voice and showed everyone her photos to go along with the story. She did her required curtsey at the end and smiled at everyone. What a ham. I just know she's going to be in the drama club in high school. The good part is Shona is going to be in summer school (by choice!) and is going to have the same teacher she had this year. No big adjustment. Summer school starts in another week and runs through the month of June. Can't wait because that means scrapping time for me, when I can squeeze it in between packing, painting, wallpaper stripping, moving...ugh...did I say I was going to scrap? Well, maybe I'll at least get some good move in photos out of the deal.

The weight loss thing is going very well. I'm only 15 pounds from my goal weight and I never dreamed I would ever be able to say that. I had to go shopping for clothing this weekend because nothing fit and I had to shop for a bathing suit. Even when I was skinny that was an ordeal, so I can't say it was fun, but at least I didn't come out of the fitting room crying this time. And I even found a suit I can live with. I'm still chugging along, hope you do the same.

Happy Mother's Day

OK, to end the suspense...although there was a question about the size of the lot that went with the house, we did finally reach an agreement everyone was happy with and we are currently under contract on the house. The inspection should take place this week and hopefully they don't find a lot wrong with it. I'll update when I know.

My Mother's Day was wonderful and unexpected. We've never done much for the day, other than take our mothers out for lunch and drag them wherever they want to go. This year we live too far away for lunch out with our mothers (a fact we are enjoying quite a bit), so I said I did NOT want to brave the crowds out in town. I expected that to be the end of it since we don't really do gifts, either. Imagine my surprise when I walked in to see this on the table this morning:



Gifts! Each of my girls had picked out a plant for me to plant in our new home as soon as we get the keys. That really touched me. It is such a homey touch. Shona picked pink Victory roses, which I think are gorgeous. I'm already trying to figure out where I'll plant them in the new yard. Katy picked a house plant called a Money Tree. I can't wait to see it grow. I've always wanted a big, palmy plant for my living room. They did good! Shona had painted a cute teapot for me and each girl had a card. John had bought a necklace I know I hadn't mentioned in months, but he remembered. Do I have him trained or what? As a nice topping, my paper and a glass of tea were on the table, too. They fixed me a steak dinner and strawberry shortcake for dessert. It was a perfect Mother's Day!

In other news, though...here is why I don't let other people have control of the camera. I asked the girls to take a Mother's Day photo of me, hopefully closeup to get my necklace in the shot and although both tried, this turned out to be the best photo. Sad but true. Back behind the camera for me!

A Sudden Decision

We saw the house today with the office built into the garage. I liked it, it had a great yard and the office was very nice...it wasn't really roomy enough, but it would have worked for us. I was happy enough with it that I thought we should consider it and told the hubby that before he headed back to work. I knew he didn't feel the same way, it just didn't excite him. The more I thought about it all afternoon, the more the appeal wore off. It just didn’t feel right. Still, I also knew I didn't want to move back out into the country. I figured we were in for an argument this evening and the house hunting would continue forever.

Then around 4:00, our agent emailed an old listing of a house we looked at probably 5 months ago, showing me it had dropped in price today by a considerable amount. We had LOVED the house because it was fully updated and gorgeous. The problem at the time was lack of a basement and it only had 1½ bathrooms, meaning we'd have to invest a lot of extra money into adding on a bathroom. It had three living areas, so we knew size wise it would work and we liked the location a lot. With the price dropping as much as it did, we knew we could borrow enough extra to turn one of the living areas into a master bedroom and bathroom, fixing the problem. I called John to tell him we had to talk houses. He just knew I was going to argue for that house we saw today, but instead I told him about the house price drop on this one and he went silent. Then he said “That’s just too good to pass up. I’ll call her to write up an offer.” It was that easy, we both agreed. I don’t know how early in the day they changed the price, but hopefully by the time it catches someone else’s attention, we will have it under contract. What’s sad is the only reason that house hasn’t sold is because their agent is too lazy to market it right. The inside is beautiful, but the only photo of it online is the outside. I KNOW if they only put up more pictures, that house would have sold at higher amount. Idiots. But it’s all good because it works in my favor!

I know I've blogged the house before, but here are the photos to refresh your memory:

Living room:

Beautiful kitchen:

Nice deck:



So that’s the big news. We are giving them 48 hours from in the morning to respond. I'll keep you posted.

This is getting old

More house hunting today. My agent called very excited this morning to tell me a house that had been listed at $199,000 had just dropped to $125,000. Well now, that sounded mighty suspicious, but the description sounded promising. We raced out there after John left school and it sure was...um...memorable. It was built in 1840 and I don't think it had been touched since. Ceilings were falling, cracks were everywhere and floors were so uneven I tripped over them walking down corridors. Ick. Our agent was shocked the house was even listed for $125,000, much less almost $200,000! Needless to say, we RAN from that one! The first house we ever looked at here we dubbed the "Monster HOuse" because it was so awful, but I think this one was even worse. ***shudder****

Wednesday night we go see one other house and maybe we'll decide on the country house vs the one we are seeing then. The owners built an office out of part of the garage, which is what John was going to do with any house we bought anyway, so that would save him some time and sweat equity. I somehow don't see it beating out the new place outside town, but you just never know. I'm prepared for just about anything anymore after some of the houses we've seen.

What red house?

I think John found his dream house and tonight marked the fourth time we visited it. Two times we were just there on the outside, twice with our agent. Tonight we went to show the girls the inside. Everyone loves it and it's brand new. New! I would love a new house and now that I am getting over the fact that it's outside of town farther than I wanted, I'm really warming up to it. I was immediately taken with the inside, but being 8 miles outside of town wasn't something I wanted to do again. Everytime we drive it it seems shorter, though, and the house is definitely worth driving to get to. I think we are going to wind up making an offer sometime next week. We need to find out how much our insurance would run on it, how much taxes are, and if we can get DSL out there, but all indications are that we are going for it. Tonight we went to Lowe's to price out all the appliances we would want to put into it. Pictures? You want pictures. Well, OK.

Amazing kitchen:




Beautiful entry:


Wonderful, homey front porch:


Much bigger than it looks from the outside!


We have another house to see next week, but somehow I don't think it's going to light up John's world like this one. I just hope no one snatches it up in the meantime!

Goodbye, House

After a whole lotta wrangling with very demented Remax people, we have dropped the deal. They admitted they knew about the square footage discrepancy but didn't see a problem with it. Hello?! No problem with artificially inflating the value of the house? That might just be illegal, folks. Not only did they not see an issue, they tried to blame their client for providing them with the wrong square footage. First of all, they were the listing agents when he bought it and the paperwork went back to them. Second...it's an agent's JOB to measure a house they are putting on the market in order to calculate the square footage. This was a major red flag to our realtor because this exact same situation arose last year with another client and that client had to pony up the difference in the appraisal value and the sale price at closing. That wouldn't happen with us because of the type of loan we have (the VA protects against just such schemes), but it really set off our realtor and we decided to push the issue to make a point. That and with the reduction in value and size, we no longer wanted the place.

They wouldn't sign off on an amendment to lower the price to whatever it appraised to (which would have had to happen anyway thanks to the VA loan process but we weren't going to tell THEM that), we refused their offer to have it appraised at their cost because the only appraisal that will matter is the VA guy anyway, so we are dropping the deal. Actually, they tried to not let us drop the deal, but our realtor called our mortgage guy, explained the issue and he said he wouldn't finance a house with that kind of discrepancy in the paperwork. Since the sale is contingent on financing, guess what? Matter closed. Go away. Find another sucker.

I'm relieved, but we flat out refuse to look at any more houses sold by Remax. It's not just this issue, this is the third home we've inquired about through them that they've given us a ridiculously hard time about for various reasons. And we aren't even their clients. So....I won't even give them the satisfaction of a split commission, and after we buy something here, we are filing a complaint against them with the board of realtors, the Better Business Bureau and the state attorney general's office. It helps that my sister works for the attorney general's office so I can streamline my complaint right through their office.

But in good news, after over six months of looking at houses in the area and thinking we had found the one, John finally went gaga over a house. I did over one a long time ago, but it was sold by Remax and that was one of the houses they gave us such grief about. I won't go into it, it's complicated, but we didn't even put in an offer because they annoyed us so much. This house John loves is outside of town on three acres, is brand spankin' new and is as big as we want with the open feel we want. We walked in and his eyes just lit up. I'm not thrilled with how far outside of town it is, I guess I'm not the country girl I thought I was, but the kids love the location, too. I might be outvoted on this one, but I admit I was smitten with the house, too. The kitchen just took our breath away, the master bedroom has a walk in closet the size of a small office, and there's a jet tub in the bath. I don't even like baths but I might make an exception with that one! More later, I was going to do a quick update and wound up writing a novel.