Crazy Times

Things have been super busy/crazy lately! Trying to get everything done with our new house so we could close on time was a huge hassle. BUT everything actually turned out okay and we closed on Wednesday so the house is officially ours! We got our pool filled and serviced last week, cleaning started on Wednesday, Josh and I installed ceiling fans and painted on Thursday, Friday our blinds were installed and we finished the painting, Saturday the carpets were cleaned, yesterday we had a garage door opener installed and Today the house and yard are getting sprayed for bugs. Phew! I still have the get our mailbox set up, garbage pickup and cans delivered, and the cable/internet set up this week so everything will be ready to go when we move in this weekend. I spent this past weekend packing our house up while Josh was at work, blah I hate packing!

Another task we had to do before closing on the house was to remove the big wood thing covering the pool so we could get the pool inspected. It ended up being a lot easier than we thought it would be. Josh was balancing on the 2x6 boards in the middle of the pool yanking up the wire that was stapled to it.

The living room of the house was painted this weird chalky red color. It was just not a very nice color in person so we decided to paint it before we moved in. Here are the before and after pictures. (My camera isn't letting me load pictures to the computer so I only have my camera phone pics.) The color looks really good and is very calming.


So I never got around to putting some pics up from Josh's Birthday, here are a few of him with his crazy pooch Bentley.


Oh and another small thing to mention, I chopped my hair off last week! I have had my hair long for forever and really was getting tired of it. I never did anything with it except put it up anyways because it was just to long. So I decided to be brave and ended up taking off almost 10 inches! Gulp! I have been having a hard time getting used to it, but I like it a little more as time passes. lol

I have to throw in a random picture of Bentley making a sad face while we waited in the car for Josh while he grabbed something from the store.

Josh's B-Day & Home Update

Last Saturday was Josh's birthday! He had to work so while he wasn't there I baked a cake and wrapped his presents and tried to make things special for him. About a month ago I got the idea of getting him a nintendo Wii for his birthday. I asked Josh how much he wanted me to spend on his birthday as we're in the middle of buying this new house and I didn't want to go spend several hundred dollars on the Wii and have him not be happy I spent that much. As soon as I asked him he started asking what I was gonna get him. I think his 2nd guess was the Wii and apparently I'm not a very good secret keeper because he could tell by the look on my face that he had guessed correct. Aggh, So that ruined the whole surprise of it! I ended up getting him one and he knew about it and we were so excited we just HAD to try it out and 'make sure it works'. lol. So needless to say the Wii was never put back away to give to him on his birthday. I got him some other small presents because I wanted him to have some presents to open on his bday because it just isn't a birthday without Presents! After he came home and opened presents and we ate cake we took our dogs to the dog park to play. Then that evening we went out to dinner with some of Josh's work friends and had a good time.


The second part of this post is an update about our house situation. There is some good news, Finally! We could be closing on the house NEXT WEEK!!!

That fact is really exciting since for the past several months we really haven't known whats been going on. For the first month and a half or so we sat and waited for some kind of response from the TWO offers we put down on two different short sale houses. We never did hear back from either one. While in the process of waiting I started getting antsy about the fact that we NEEDED to get a house asap, so I found some more houses for us to go and look at. We got lucky because the house we're about to close on was found that day. It is the exact same floorplan as one of the houses we already had an offer on and across the street from that house as well. But this house was a foreclosure, not a short sale. We put our offer in on it and the very Next Day the bank responded. Supposedly our closing date was supposed to be mid November sometime, but we just heard today that we might be able to close as early as next week. After we close we still have a few things to do to the house before moving in; order and install blinds, get the house cleaned and carpets cleaned, spray house for bugs and get the pool cleaned and then filled.

We went out to the house on Friday evening to meet the inspector and make sure everything was in good condition. He said everything looked great and we picked a good house. There are a couple of really small fixes that Josh can do himself that will only cost a few dollars to do. We also had our Blinds company come out at the same time to measure all the windows and give us a quote. (Stinking previous owners took ALL of the blinds! Lame!) While we were there we realised that only one of the couches that we have now will work with the house and the other is too big for the room we would want it in. So we are selling our big sectional couch and replacing it with new ones. I found these couches I REALLY liked a couple weeks ago at a furniture store, but I knew I would have to wait a while to get them. Well on monday Josh and I were driving and I saw this guy holding a sign for a clearance sale at the JC Penny home store. So we drove over there and found the exact same couches there for a great price! We have been very lucky in being able to get things for our house that are the things we actually 'wanted' and not just 'needed'.

Anyways this is a really long post now, but I'm just so excited that things are finally moving along. I'll post a few pictures of the house below....



This is the pool. someone put this huge wood thing over it and stapled wire to it to prevent people from falling into the empty pool.

Bentley update

Just a little update on Bentley our new puppy. She's doing really good and is a smart little (well I guess she's not very little) girl. She is basically potty trained and has only had about 3 accidents in the house in the 3 weeks we've had her. She is putting on weight and getting bigger every day. She has learned to sit when told also. It's still a bit of a struggle to keep her from mauling other little dogs, but she is getting a little better at that too. She thinks Miki (our little black pomeranian) is her personal play thing and won't leave her alone all day. We take the dogs to the dog park almost every day and that helps with her energy level. She loves playing with the other dogs and is learning to play in the water there too.

Halloween is gonna suck.....

My mom sent my that picture. lol. It's pretty funny because it really is true. Hopefully Josh and I will be helping with this problem by closing on our house before Halloween. (It's a foreclosed house too) And where we're buying, in Maricopa, lots of the streets currently look like that picture. It seems there are more houses up for sale then there are not.
I spent a lot of hours this week on the phone with multiple utility companies trying to get everything turned on at our hopefully new house. It is extremely annoying trying to do this as we don't own the house yet so the companies are hesitant to even let me turn them on. In order to get them turned on I have to open accounts with each one, pay deposits and pay 'turn on' fees. I got everything set up so that all of the utilities would be on by the end of day Yesterday so we could get our inspector out to the house on Friday. Well turns out someone took the key out of the lockbox for the house so when the gas company was out there to turn it on yesterday, they couldn't. We had to go through calling our realtor, the listing agent and the gas companies again and again trying to fix everything. We finally got everything fixed and the house rekeyed so the gas company can turn it on tomorrrow, hopefully before our inspector gets there. Josh and I will be going out to the house after work to meet with the inspector and see if he found any problems with the house and go over them.
If everything goes good and there are no major problems, then we will have ourselves a new house!!

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8 TV Shows I Like to watch:
Prison Break

Top Model

Privledged

90210 (new one)

Animal Cops

Lipstick Jungle

Fringe

Dog Whisperer
8 Restaurants I like to eat at:
Abuelos

Subway

pei wei

Rumbi's

PF Changs

Filibertos (I LOVE their horchata!)

Texas Roadhouse

Paradise Bakery
8 Things that happened today:
Said goodbye to Josh at 5am

Went back to sleep

Woke up for work

Let the puppy outside to go potty

Got to work late because of a stupid train

Did some work

Now I'm doing this....
8 Things I am looking forward to:
Seeing how the inspection on the house goes

Josh's Birthday this Saturday

Moving into the new house

Having a swimming pool

Having a significantly lower house payment!

Seeing my family for Thanksgiving

Christmas

Ummmmm I dunno....

8 Things on my wish list:
A Raise

Our New House

........I can't think of anymore, I'm pretty happy with what I've got :)

Bailout ... Hmmm is it?

Josh and I are trying to get a house right now and with everything going the way it is, it has had us a little worried. We were concerned that if we didn't happen to find a house soon enough that by the time we DID find one, banks wouldn't be lending money anymore. We've had an offer in on a house that we really like for about a month now. It's a short sale (meaning the owners are about to go into foreclosure and the bank is willing to sell for less than their loan amount and forgive them of their debt) so they usually take longer to get responses on since we're dealing directly with the mortgage companies instead of an actual owner. Well, we were getting a little antsy after over a month and still no word back. I was worried they would come back and say no to our offer and then we'd be back at square one, with no house or prospects. So we decided to go and look at a few more houses to see if we could find an actual foreclosed house that we liked since those go through fairly fast. Well we went out last saturday and found a house we really liked and put an offer in. Sooooooo as of right now we MOST LIKELY have a new house (as long as everything goes as it should) so YAY! A new house with a pool, just like we wanted. It's a big relief because we were so worried about everything going on right now, and the banks are starting to not lend money. I'll post more about the house when we are a little more definate that it will happen for sure, for sure.

Okay so this new "bailout" that's trying to get passed has been a big topic the last couple of days and it has interested me a lot. I feel like I'm in a situation where the outcome of it can and will affect me, so I've been watching what's going on and trying to get my own opinion. Obviously not everyone will agree with me on my view, but I hope you will take the time to look into it and get your own opinion about what's going on. I was reading some info about this new bill they've been working on and I seriously don't understand why they would pass something like this. They have thrown so much CRAP inside this bill just to try to sway people to vote Yes on it. They are giving 192 MILLION dollars to the Puerto Rican and Virgin Island rum producers, so they can make more rum...... ummm okay..... 6 million dollars to some toy company that makes wooden arrows, tax breaks for "wool researchers", race tracks and train tracks etc.
What do these things have to do with anything? They don't really, they are in there to convince people to vote for it this time around, when they said NO last time. Here's a link to the bill which is over 450 pages long and a whole bunch of legal mumbo jumbo
http://assets.sunlightfoundation.com/pdf/eesa_senate.pdf
if you get down to about page 279 you will see some of the things I'm talking about.
This bill was 2 pages long the first time around, they had to add 449 more pages to try to convince people to pass it. wow. Just my thoughts....