10 Days

It's been 10 days. Just ten days.

BUT...

We found a house! I saw it on ReColorado in the morning, and we were lucky enough to go see it that night. After walking through, I felt like we needed to find some way to live there. We could have kept looking and possibly found something a little less expensive, but it would not have been as nice. That night we had a lot to think about. I called the realtor in the morning and asked him to submit our offer. We found out at 8:30 that night that they'd accepted!

Now it's all the drawn out fun stuff. Home inspection - house is great! Got our taxes back for earnest money and got that in to the title company. HOA documents - they suck, but it could be worse, and it's not much more expensive than when we had to pay for trash service, which they cover. Now we're waiting on the appraisal, and it seems like that will be okay too.

They put a SOLD sign on the house today. It's making it seem more and more real. I'm excited and terrified all at the same time. It will be okay. I know it will be okay.

New Addiction

     I'm starting to develop an unhealthy addiction to searching the internet for homes. I think before this is all over my realtor will hate me. I understand that he's probably used to it, it's his job, but it just feels weird to be somewhat intrusive on someone's life that I don't know. I have been thinking about the letter that we're going to write to the seller when we get to that point. Houses pop up every day and I need to just remind myself of the fact that while it is a seller's market, there will be something that will be for us, or that we can make ours relatively cheaply. I just wish that the lady from the mortgage company would respond to my emails requesting the status of our paperwork. She made it seem like this ginormously large deal, but can't tell me if we've turned everything in? I did my part!
     We did manage to get our taxes done, so we'll have the closing money before we actually close, and if it works out good we'll have some money left over to possibly pay on the last credit card we have or buy a nice, new piece of furniture for our new home. I wish it had been a larger return just because of the home purchase, but I'm happier about the fact that we made more money last year.
     I'll have to start taking some pictures of my sad, pathetic, neglected pets and include them here because they are such a big part of our lives.

The Hunt

I've been meaning to start a blog for a very long time. I had always thought that it could be a good creative outlet for myself, as well as share what was going on in our day to day with our family that lives so far away. I don't know why I hadn't really pursued it before now. We've had so much going on in the last few months, one of the biggest is trying to find a home. The housing market here in Castle Rock is tight. We've thought about moving elsewhere, but I know that I would really like to stay here for the long term. There are just so many questions that I have for my realtor, the mortgage company, the people selling their houses, but everything just seems to move so quickly. Homes come on the market and then they're gone within days. I've been trying to think of a way to word a letter to the people selling their houses to try and convince them that they should sell to us, but every place you go tells you to keep it short and sweet. I can't explain who we are in 200 words or less. We viewed something like 9 houses on Saturday, and two of those have already gone under contract, and another will be reviewing bids on Thursday. There's also the case of the time between closing and our first mortgage payment. I kind of understand how that works, but we can't have it too far apart with being in an apartment. It's very frustrating. The only saving grace that we have in that department is a good friend has said we can crash at their place if something doesn't turn up the way we're hoping. I have another friend who will be putting his house on the market, but because we've already started our search with a realtor he seems a little turned off because it seems like he wanted us to work with his. In between all this there's our continuing search to start a family. That's all a post for a later date. There's just so much going on that it's hard to keep track. The only nice part is Anthony couldn't find a class that would fit with his schedule and with his minor.