cardboard house... option to skip the country

we have officially started packing.

right now, our entire dining room looks like a warehouse with a huge wall of cardboard. its completely hideous but a very nice reminder that we are soon 'outta here'!!

we close on the house this friday.. can't believe how fast this all happened! i guess when its right, its right.. we're getting really excited about finally taking this official "i'm a grown-up now" step.

although the money part kinda scares me.  you know... the whole commitment part.

this will mean that we no longer have the option of dropping everything at any given moment and skipping the country!  seriously, that's always an option for the un-mortgaged and its actually kinda sad for it to be off the table for us! whether or not we would have ever done it, options are good. and i always like to have as many as possible! 

paperwork and biological clocks... bah!

we just finished signing a bazillion pages for our mortgage loan. i know it was merely a fraction of what we'll be signing on the actual closing date. but it seemed like pages and pages forever.

this is probably great practice for all of the hoopla we will soon be going through with the adoption paperwork. and now we have everything nicely filed and organized. so the adoption stuff should be a breeze, right??

ha.

i popped over to the sweet, little, yellow house yesterday and it is even cuter than i remembered! yay!

its actually bigger than i remembered, too!!! thank God ;)  

i can really imagine little feet padding around the place someday soon.

i must really be ready for this mom-stuff because i saw a couple of my soon-to-be-neighbors out for an afternoon walk with their strollers and it looked....... nice. i thought to myself, "i want to do that!!!"

wow, i must be hormonal!! that stupid "tick-tock"! 

boo.

shut up, biological clock! ;)  when did that start, by the way??

crap, i'm getting old.

The stork has gone bonkers!!!!

Okay, can I just say how exciting it is to see soooo many families getting their referrals right now?

I think that 10 families that I follow have either brought their babies home or received their referral in the past 6 wks... And 4 or 5 referrals have been in the past 2 weeks!  Wow!

Stuart and I are really enjoying watching their journeys unfold. Its pretty cool.

But seriously what the heck is going on with all of these babies all of a sudden??? One family just received their referral after waiting for only 4 months! Another family had the same experience in February and I thought that was a fluke... but apparently its not.

I was reading in the new edition of "Adoptive Family" magazine that there is a speeding-up of the referral process due, in part, to the economy. I guess a lot of families are having to drop out of line due to poor economic circumstances. So other families are moving through the line much, much quicker to fill those spaces. Its kind of sad, really. But everything happens for a reason and every adoptive family is joined with their child at the right time. It has to be absolutely heartbreaking to be that close...

I just pray that the economy will get better very, very soon and that the people that are needing and wanting and persuing jobs will be rewarded for their perseverance and determination.

Annnnd back to happier stuff...

lalala

bunnies, daffodils, chocolate sundaes, yellow houses... 

Meanwhile, that wacky stork has gone bonkers all over the blog-world and babies are everywhere!!! I can't wait to see who the next little mama is!! Congrats to all of you guys!!!

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Yessss!

We are one step closer to owning our sweet, little, yellow house!!

The seller has agreed to fix everything we asked.. (does that ever happen??) All week, we've been praying that God would close this door entirely, without a single doubt in our minds, if it is the wrong move for us. And then this happens...

Soooo, we're just going with the flow, baby!

Apparently this door has opened wide for us! Welcome home, Stuart and Summer!!!

So needless to say, our excitement level has definitely accelerated with that news today!! I think we weren't quite allowing ourselves to feel the thrill yet. But we are getting closer... This really seems to be happening.

Tomorrow morning we will lock in our loan rate and make that part official. And then we just have to wait for all of the repairs to be finalized next week. We are hiring an electrician on our own to reinspect the repairs the seller's electrician is making... just in case. Its our first house, so we want to be as smart/paranoid as we can. 

This evening when we were taking the dogs for a walk, I was thinking just how nice it will be to have our own little piece of nature to enjoy very soon. To sit in our own backyard and hear the birds, frogs, and crickets... Ahhhh! I can't wait.

Living in apartments and townhomes for 10 years will definitely make you appreciate peace and quiet... and greeen!

Nashville is so beautiful and green. And I can't wait to have some of my own! Green nature and my sweet yellow house :) :) :) :)  

Happy happy joy joy

We are very very thankful.

what house?

we don't really know what's going on..

our inspection for the house wasn't very good... lots of electrical problems and some plumbing. stuart and i are freaked out about the level and number of issues. we just sent in our list of requests to be addressed/fixed by the seller. hopefully they will do it all.. you never know!! 

if not, we're definitely 100% comfortable with walking away. we want a house but not bad enough to want to put every single penny we own into it... and then some.

we'll see what happens.

we have another really great option.. i'll keep you posted because i'm tired of posting stuff that i have to take back later. 

i never thought this would all be so time-consuming and stressful! big decision, i know.. so its understandable.

$8000

Federalhousingtaxcredit.com

Just thought I'd slip that little link in for anyone that may have read my blog a few days ago in which I mistakenly said that the $8000 tax credit for first time home buyers was crap...

Turns out its not crap after all. I just happen to be really, really bad at math!! ;) Seriously, anyone that read my statement that 10% of 800,000 is 8,000.... uh, oops! The correct answer would be 80,000.  So yeah, I was wrong and actually almost everyone does get that $8,000 tax credit, including me!! Yay!

 

Other Stuff...

We are in the financing stages of our house-buying venture. We have 2 lenders trying to match each others rates right now... niiice. Hopefully that will all be settled tomorrow.

And our house inspection is tomorrow morning, too. I think Stuart is going to be there for the last part to at least have some idea what's what and where's where. We are praying that the plumbing is not original to the house... 100 years old. Yikes. 

We're trying to figure out how much of our junk we're going to get rid of in the next few weeks. A garage sale is most definitely in our near-future. Clutter is a drag, especially since we don't want to bother with moving it and won't really have room for it in the new place anyway.

I love our new house but looking at the pictures again tonight, I noticed the bathroom's lack of storage space.... uh-oh. What the crap am I going to do with my many, many, many necessary products and makeup??? Its so sad to actually have that as a real issue.. but I loooove my products!

And we'll have to figure out the non-pantry situation... Storage in the kitchen is at a minimum as well. Although it will be much easier to lose weight if we don't have room for food, right?? This keeps getting better and better!

Adoption News...

Clearly forking out the cash to get into a house this summer has altered our plans a tad. We will have to push our application time to later this year, probably Nov/Dec... so 6 months back. Not too bad. What's 6 months in the big picture?

It does hurt my heart to wait longer but it feels awesome to know that we'll have a sweet, little house to bring our baby home to! 

   

Its official...

We are one step closer to being homeowners... our offer was accepted today!
Yay!

Now we have to get though the inspection and all of that jazz. But if all goes well, we're set to close on June 5th.
This is soooo exciting!!! One month away!



Now we will officially have a room for the baby instead of squeezing him into the guest/computer/workout room.. that probably wouldn't have earned very high marks from the social worker! ;)

Another Starbuck's sign-off...

Apparently this "buyer's market" thing that we are supposedly going through right now does not apply to the neighborhood we like... and possibly the price range we're in too. 

Because we have another multiple offer situation on the yellow house.

So last night we met our agent at Starbuck's and put in an offer of our own. Yikes! The anticipation.....

According to our agent and our loan officer, this is really unheard of right now.  Sellers are lucky to get 1 offer after many weeks of being on the market. These 2 houses are receiving multiple offers after only days on the market. That was the norm 3 years ago, but definitely not now.

So I guess we're just really lucky, huh??  ;)'   ha!  (Sarcasm doesn't quite come across the same in print, does it?)

Now we're just waiting to see what happens. We'll hear from them by noon today.

But we're thinking that if this one doesn't work out, we may stop looking for awhile.

This potential-rejection stuff is emotionally exhausting!!! 

What a difference a week makes!!

Wow.
Its been a craaaaazy week!

It all started last Monday....
Everything was completely normal, same old-same old.
And then....
I checked my email and our lives kind of changed..


Back story-
Since we moved to Nashville 2 1/2 yrs ago, we've rented a house. No big deal.
Its a great house, just not ours..
We always had plans to buy a house someday but the time was never right.
Interest rates were too high or we weren't sure which area we wanted to live..
So over the past 2 years or so, we've kind of figured out the city and its surroundings. We know where we like and don't like and more importantly, where we can afford and cannot afford! ;)

Life is good here in Nashville. Its a beautiful, little city. Sooo incredibly green it
could possibly blind you. The people are great. The food is... eh, it could be better. We do miss our super-yummy Tex-Mex! Mmmm, Uncle Julio's...

Our plan has remained to continue saving for the adoption and to wait on buying a house until we have the baby... Why exactly we had that plan, I don't really know. It just always made sense to us.
Or so we thought.
Turns out, interest rates are freaking amazing right now!

Which leads me to last Monday's email...
We've been on a local real estate agent's mailing list for the past 2 yrs after meeting her at a random open house and telling her how much we looove a particular neighborhood east of Nashville. Its about 20 minutes east of downtown. All late-1920's Bungalows with Dutch and Colonial Revival influence, built by DuPont back in the day for managers and workers of the country's first gunpowder plant..
There's a lot of random history that I won't bore you with but it basically has a sort of quirky, Mayberry-ish feel and we love it!

Anywho, usually I check the emails and the houses are okay but last week I saw this little cutie!



Seriously, what an adorable little house right?

We fell in love on Monday, saw it on Wednesday, and put in an offer on Thursday.
It was so perfect!
It even has a gorgeous little Japanese garden in the back! I mean, who has a Japanese garden in Nashville, Tennessee?? Wow.

But, long story short, our offer went in the same time as another one.... And even though we offered the same amount.... to the penny, the other guy offered cash. Boo. And so the seller accepted their offer.

It was really disappointing. Our first experience with that sort of thing...
It totally sucked to lose!!
But in retrospect, the house was pretty small... most likely too small for a family, better for a couple or a single.
So it all worked out for the best.


And it did make us realize that our time to buy a home could be now.

Between interest rates being so low, this being a buyer's market, and Obama's first time home-buyer's thing... (which, by the way, is up to $8000 not a straight $8000.. Its basically a tax credit of 10% of the purchase price of your house. So you'd have to buy an $800,000 house to get the full credit.. But hey, every little bit helps, right?)

So we're still looking in that cute neighborhood. Its next to the lake. Tons and tons of trees and birds. You can hear the frogs and crickets. And see the stars at night....
Ah... so nice :)


Our agent took us to see 3 other houses today.

One was a total bust... no central AC. Yikes! And it was a major project, top to bottom. We're okay with a few projects, just not a house that is a project.
The second one was nice. It needs some TLC on the front porch and exterior paint, etc. Nothing major. But it will also need a bit of help in the kitchen. That's usually a pretty large and expensive undertaking..
Its also on a busier, main street. Trust me, though, in this neighborhood, there isn't really any traffic but the only "traffic" is on that street.

The last house was the best!
Super cute. They kept the old character and personality of the house but updated the kitchen and bathrooms. Its on a beautiful street that is insanely quiet. There are huge windows everywhere and trees out every one of them!
The only down side is out the back door.
Its just old, 1928 concrete stairs to the back yard.
I guess that's no too big of a project. And not really an emergency thing either. It has a tiny fenced area on one side of the house that would suffice temporarily for the dogs to play and potty. Eventually we would need to put up a real fence though.
And one other random thing is that the owners (for some reason) replaced all of the old, heavy, awesome doors with new, hollow, cheesy ones. Boo.
Our agent is checking to see if they (hopefully) kept them!

We'll see!!! :) No big rush or anything.

It does feel really great to be making a home for our family.
That somehow makes this all feel more "right" and real. We want to have a home to bring our child home to...
Plus if we can get a mortgage for less than we pay right now in rent, then why not??
Its crazy for us to keep throwing $$ toward someone else's mortgage!!

Although, I'm not going to get as attached yet to this property because the last one was completely heart-wrenching to lose. That sounds stupid, I know.
But I guess I could just imagine (really clearly) our life there... the 3 of us.
And it was nice.

We'll keep you posted!! :) :) :) :)