98% of the way there...

so close and yet so far... closing tomorrow. painting friday. moving saturday...

baby!

my little nephew was born yesterday at between 10-11 am. Mom and baby are doing fine. 8 lbs 2 oz. Caleb Aaron!

I'm excited to see and meet my newest little one! :)

we ditched the table today, the chairs for our table have been purchased and are in transit. ah.. packing, how i long to finish you.

and so the packing commences... we close May 28th, my contract is up May 31, and we move in the weekend of June 6-8, with the wedding of one of my friends (and cousin!), Kara, on the 7.

Busy next few weeks preparing to have more 'major life changes.' I think they called it 'eustress' in 11th grade health class.

Congratulations to my friends who graduated this past weekend!

Congratulations to Lou, on the birth of her son, Gabriel.

Congratulations to Rachel, on the birth of her daughter, Micaela.

Congratulations to Danielle, on the birth of her daughter, Isabel.

Soon, I will be an aunt again... any day baby #3, Chuckers, will be born. Pray he has no food allergies and that the delivery will go well. Poor C. and S. will have some major adjustments coming - especially S.

Fjord is stalking around the apartment - I think he enjoys having boxes and piles of laundry out to hide/jump/play/sleep in.

mmm also made this delicious orange chicken recipe - I'll try to post it soon, but I'm off to do some pack/sorting before bed.

- M

Home Sweet Home

We bought a house!

That being said, it is contingent on a few things, but for the most part, we are homeowners. We close on June 30, and couldn't be more excited.

Our home is 2.5 miles from Spencer's work, so for most of the year, he will commute by biking. We were a little disappointed after our first house hunting excursion because we found a beautiful house - but it was the very first house we looked at. We said that we really liked it, but continued on and saw about 20 more houses in the same day. We went back to the realtor's office, and were seriously considering putting in an offer, but the house was bought literally 5 minutes before we called.

After that little bit, we were a bit nervous that we wouldn't be able to find a house in our price range with the things we wanted. We found one that we were going to make an offer on, but the website for doing comparable listings was down. (total God intervention). After sleeping on it for 24 hours, we were feeling very uncomfortable with moving forward, so we decided not to make an offer. As soon as we decided that, it was as if a huge weight was yanked off our shoulders. (that house is still on the market... and had been for 200+ days when we were considering buying it, nice but 'half-assed' updated).

We then came to 'the house' - cute little one story near the first home we had liked. We walked through it and decided we wanted to make an offer. We saw a few more houses before deciding to go back to the office and put together a deal. Our realtor called the seller's realtor to see if there was action on the house - there were 2 other couples thinking about putting in offers. We prayed that if it was God's will for us to be in the house that we would get it and at a price we could afford. After enlisting the parents as prayer partners, we sent off the offer. To complicate matters, our realtor was going to be at his son's play tonight, so everything (offer vs. counter offer etc.) would have to be done by text.

I was worried about the hassle of all of that considering there would most likely be a bidding war among the three potential buyers - a sellers dream. We made the offer at 4:30 and heard from our realtor around 5:15 - they had countered by moving the selling date back to May 31 - thus ensuring 2 months of rent in our apartment w/o living in it, and an extra $3,000 on the house. Our realtor thought that was a decent counter offer, but wasn't satisfied with the closer closing date - we could do it, but why waste 1 month rent? He countered by keeping the extra $3,000 added on to the price of the house, but keep the closing at June 30. The seller accepted and at 5:30 we got the call saying that it had been accepted. So much for a headache! Everything was solved long before our realtor would have been doing everything by text, and none of the other potential buyers hopped in!

Unless something major happens, we will be moving in during the month of July! We are so excited that God has led us to this home and are looking forward to meeting our neighbors. We hope that we will be a light for him on our block. God has been so good and blessed us with so much.

Pictures found HERE

I'll actually try to link the pictures in when I have more time, but it is bedtime for me (especially since I am recovering from an unknown illness... swine flu? PANIC! no... probably not)