House update

I have been busy moving boxes that were sitting in the garage of our rental house for 4 weeks over to the new house this week. I got a few put away, but most are sitting in the room they belong right now. My legs are covered with bruises from carrying boxes and bumping into things. But it's all worth it!

Today we tackled painting the kitchen. We normally choose simple earth tones when we paint. Not this time! We bought the house from Fannie Mae. For those of you who don't know, when Fannie Mae takes possession of a home, they paint it ALL white and put in brand new appliances. So our entire house is white. The kitchen has white walls, white cabinets, and white trim. Too much white! So we picked some nice bright colors to liven it up. Here are some before and after pictures:



Also this week Alex had her 1st grade concert called "Made in America." They sang some traditional American songs and also some old commercial jingles. I always wondered why she would come home singing the Almond Joy/Mounds jingle. It was really cute and she had fun. We drove by a house the other day and she said "Mom, that house is really lucky, you know why?" I said "Why?" She said "Because it has a United States of America flag and they can say the pledge of allegiance every day if they want." It's so fun to see her proud of her country at such a young age. Here's a mediocre picture of her class at the concert:

We are moving...again...

Here's the count, since Ty and I got married in 2001, we have lived in 9 houses/apartments in 6 states. So our next move will be place number 10. So far the process of buying this house has been less than easy and kept us wondering if the universe was giving us a hint, or testing us. We first looked at our new house back in December. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was going to be hard to resist. It is fully fenced on 2.5 acres with mature landscaping. There is a HUGE shop with an apartment in it. The house itself is a split level but more open than a traditional split level.

We did all the negotiating, etc. and set a closing date of January 31st. So we went along with the whole process of getting the paperwork, etc. It was all going fine until we went to do the inspection. Well when we opened the door to the apartment, we heard water running. Now the house had been previously winterized, but they had to turn the water on to do a water test. Well somehow the turnoff valve to the refrigerator line was on and they didn't come into the apartment after they turned the water back on. So water was flowing unrestricted out the refrigerator line and all over the floors, luckily the floors are tile, and we got the damage fixed. Then the lender was bugging us to prove one other minor repair was fixed, which was never even mentioned in the final paperwork signed by both parties, it was verbally agreed upon. Next the appraiser took 11 days to get the appraisal report to the lender and then the lender sat on the appraisal for 3 days. By that time, it was our closing date and we needed an extension. So we got an extension, things going good, then after the lender had everything they needed, they added more conditions to the loan which would make it impossible for us to close on the extension date. On to lender #2, and another extension. Luckily the seller agreed to the new extension and things went smoothly from then on. We got into our new house today and started moving stuff over. It is nice to be able to get excited and dream about what we are going to do with the house after all the ups and downs.

P.S. I will post pictures later.