Last night we returned from our wonderful California vacation, and as lovely as the trip was, we were so glad to be home with our dogs! Since our house needed to be empty while we were away (for the appraisal and inspection), Hope and Fresco stayed at Home Sweet Home doggy daycare and Celtic (who turned 12 while we were away) stayed at my mom's. Knowing that they weren't in the comfort of our own home made us much more anxious about leaving them, but thankfully they all survived the six days without us.
I'm excited to share the pictures of our trip and am loading them onto the computer as I type, but I'm sure it will be quite a while before I can get them organized and find the time to blog about everything. This week is going to be busy! Tonight I watched Chad play in two softball games and the next two nights we have houseguests--hooray for Jake and Amber's visit! We're so excited to see them as well as our friends James and Beth, who will be here on Thursday! Hopefully I'll get back to blogging on Friday when we have the day off! :)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Vacation!!!
Our lives have been so busy with house issues the last few months I haven't even had the chance to mention that we're leaving for vacation tomorrow morning--just another reason the house contract came at such a divinely perfect time! While it's not exactly ideal that we're gone this week while we should be meeting with inspectors and lenders, we planned this trip quite some time ago in conjunction with my friend Leigh Ann's wedding, which will be Friday night at her uncle's house in Sonoma county. We thought as long as we're going to the San Fran area, we should make a vacation out of it! I'm really excited!
In honor of our trip, I decided to actually post the final set of pictures from our San Francisco visit last year. In the back of my mind I knew I'd never finished blogging about our vacation, but I just couldn't seem to find the time to do it! Today I actually went through that last group of pics and put captions with them, so hopefully that's almost as good as actually blogging about our activities during those last days of our trip! Enjoy!!
In honor of our trip, I decided to actually post the final set of pictures from our San Francisco visit last year. In the back of my mind I knew I'd never finished blogging about our vacation, but I just couldn't seem to find the time to do it! Today I actually went through that last group of pics and put captions with them, so hopefully that's almost as good as actually blogging about our activities during those last days of our trip! Enjoy!!
Monday, June 22, 2009
Day 16
As of our open house on Saturday, our home had been on the market 16 days. Those 2+ weeks seriously felt like an eternity. I don't mean to be a whiner, but I had no idea how exhausting and stressful showing the house would be. Not only did we have to keep the house clean enough to be ready for a showing with an hour's notice, but for almost every appointment I had to leave work and come pick up the dogs, drive them around for about an hour, and then drop them off back at home before heading back to work. It was craziness, and Chad and I kept saying that we weren't sure how long we could keep it up.
Throughout this whole house buying/selling process, we've done a lot of praying. Obviously our desire was to move into a newer and nicer home, but we truly wanted to make sure this was God's desire for us as well. We always try to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with, so we wanted to make sure we were making a good financial investment and weren't just being selfish and materialistic. So while we were hopeful that a buyer for our house would come along, we weren't entirely sure if it would be part of His ultimate plan.
After the first week our house being on the market, it became very clear that what we really needed to be praying for was patience. We were having the hardest time concentrating on anything besides the house sale and showings and phone calls from our Realtor. Along with patience, during that second week we really began praying for peace as well. We really wanted to be content with the home that we have, just in case it wasn't part of God's plan for us to move. As the second week went on, as I drove randomly around town killing time with the dogs during showings, I drove through many different neighborhoods of Lawrence. I think it was during these drives that God really provided that peace that I'd been praying for. As I drove by other people's homes I was continually reminded that our current home and current neighborhood are more than adequate and much more desirable (to us) than at least half of the homes in our city. I began to feel very blessed and very thankful for what we have.
So on day 16 of being on the market, as Chad and I both began to feel more at peace with the idea of staying here should our house not sell, we got a very late call from our agent. We received an offer from a couple who had seen the house at the first open house. They hadn't made an offer the first week since their townhome was still on the market, but their house went under contract during the week and they were ready to buy by the weekend. We negotiated yesterday and signed the contract today. We're optimistically hopeful, but because there are three houses in the transaction chain, and therefore three inspections and three appraisals, there are certainly a lot of pieces of the puzzle that still need to fall into place. If one domino falls, the whole house deal could come crashing down, so we're trying not to count our chickens just yet. However, if everything goes our way, we will close on our house on July 16. We are so thankful and we think God's timing is pretty darn perfect.
Throughout this whole house buying/selling process, we've done a lot of praying. Obviously our desire was to move into a newer and nicer home, but we truly wanted to make sure this was God's desire for us as well. We always try to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with, so we wanted to make sure we were making a good financial investment and weren't just being selfish and materialistic. So while we were hopeful that a buyer for our house would come along, we weren't entirely sure if it would be part of His ultimate plan.
After the first week our house being on the market, it became very clear that what we really needed to be praying for was patience. We were having the hardest time concentrating on anything besides the house sale and showings and phone calls from our Realtor. Along with patience, during that second week we really began praying for peace as well. We really wanted to be content with the home that we have, just in case it wasn't part of God's plan for us to move. As the second week went on, as I drove randomly around town killing time with the dogs during showings, I drove through many different neighborhoods of Lawrence. I think it was during these drives that God really provided that peace that I'd been praying for. As I drove by other people's homes I was continually reminded that our current home and current neighborhood are more than adequate and much more desirable (to us) than at least half of the homes in our city. I began to feel very blessed and very thankful for what we have.
So on day 16 of being on the market, as Chad and I both began to feel more at peace with the idea of staying here should our house not sell, we got a very late call from our agent. We received an offer from a couple who had seen the house at the first open house. They hadn't made an offer the first week since their townhome was still on the market, but their house went under contract during the week and they were ready to buy by the weekend. We negotiated yesterday and signed the contract today. We're optimistically hopeful, but because there are three houses in the transaction chain, and therefore three inspections and three appraisals, there are certainly a lot of pieces of the puzzle that still need to fall into place. If one domino falls, the whole house deal could come crashing down, so we're trying not to count our chickens just yet. However, if everything goes our way, we will close on our house on July 16. We are so thankful and we think God's timing is pretty darn perfect.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Father's Day Gift
Can't think of anything to get your dad for Father's Day? Here's a great idea!!!
Probably the most random thing about this video is where I first saw it: at church this morning! It really had nothing to do with the sermon (although the message was most certainly about being a great father), but just for fun they showed a slightly edited version (minus the urinal cake and burrito fart flavors) of this "commercial" before the morning announcements. I was laughing so hard--maybe it was partially because it was such a random thing to show at church!
Happy Father's Day--to my dad and all the the other wonderful fathers out there!
Probably the most random thing about this video is where I first saw it: at church this morning! It really had nothing to do with the sermon (although the message was most certainly about being a great father), but just for fun they showed a slightly edited version (minus the urinal cake and burrito fart flavors) of this "commercial" before the morning announcements. I was laughing so hard--maybe it was partially because it was such a random thing to show at church!
Happy Father's Day--to my dad and all the the other wonderful fathers out there!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Open Again
Last night we spent our evening running errands and cleaning, preparing for today's open house--our second open house in 6 days. The open last Sunday went pretty well--we had 7 families/couples come through, which was more than we expected. Our Realtor said that all of the people who came had very positive comments and several seemed interested, but none were quite ready for buying. We had another showing on Tuesday with a family who was apparently TOO ready for buying. They ended up making an offer on another house because it was empty and they needed to move in almost immediately. We were a little bummed, especially because they chose a house that was $35,000 more expensive than ours, and in our opinion, not nearly as nice!
Even before this potential buyer fell off our short list, our agent had scheduled today's open house. Thankfully, there wasn't a lot to do to prepare, but we did have to go out last night and buy curtains for our bedroom. We actually had curtains last week, but last Saturday evening I decided to throw them in the laundry so that they'd be nice and fresh for the open on Sunday afternoon. I pulled them out of the washing machine on Sunday morning after I got out of the shower, and this was the result.
Uh, yeah. Apparently there was a tiny tear in one of the curtains, because just one of them came out this way--completely shredded! Since our open house was just a few hours away, I was a little sad, to say the least. After church I rushed out to Target, picked out a pair of curtains that were the right size, and then rushed home to throw them into the wash to get the wrinkles out. Unfortunately, when the new curtains came out of the dryer, they'd shrunk at least 3 inches and were way too short for the window!!
At this point, the open house was less than 30 minutes away, so there was really nothing we could do. We just took the curtains down and hoped that people wouldn't think it was too weird that we had no treatments in our bedroom!
Last night when we got the new curtains, even though they said they were washer/dryer safe (as did the first ones), I wasn't going to take any chances--I chose to iron out the wrinkles instead. Hopefully our bedroom looked a little more normal at today's open house!
Even before this potential buyer fell off our short list, our agent had scheduled today's open house. Thankfully, there wasn't a lot to do to prepare, but we did have to go out last night and buy curtains for our bedroom. We actually had curtains last week, but last Saturday evening I decided to throw them in the laundry so that they'd be nice and fresh for the open on Sunday afternoon. I pulled them out of the washing machine on Sunday morning after I got out of the shower, and this was the result.
Uh, yeah. Apparently there was a tiny tear in one of the curtains, because just one of them came out this way--completely shredded! Since our open house was just a few hours away, I was a little sad, to say the least. After church I rushed out to Target, picked out a pair of curtains that were the right size, and then rushed home to throw them into the wash to get the wrinkles out. Unfortunately, when the new curtains came out of the dryer, they'd shrunk at least 3 inches and were way too short for the window!!
At this point, the open house was less than 30 minutes away, so there was really nothing we could do. We just took the curtains down and hoped that people wouldn't think it was too weird that we had no treatments in our bedroom!
Last night when we got the new curtains, even though they said they were washer/dryer safe (as did the first ones), I wasn't going to take any chances--I chose to iron out the wrinkles instead. Hopefully our bedroom looked a little more normal at today's open house!
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