House update

Just a quick update and some info on the short sale house that we are buying. Here is a link to the listing for those of you that are interested. Our amazing realtor Leanna Bradshaw has been great throughout the whole process. She's been in this hunt with us now for almost 2 years and has stuck through 5 short sales, shown us countless houses, in the morning, noon and night. She has pestered sellers with all manner of questions for us and always has stood by us. She has learned to know exactly what we're looking for and doesn't show us houses we wouldn't want. She is now working out of Orange County, CA. If you're in need of a realtor, give her a call.

Bumps in the road

We posted before about the house on which we made an offer, waiting for the approval of the short sale by the bank. It appears now that we have crossed the final hurdle of approval and now are merely waiting for the bank to open escrow. When we last posted about the house, we were going to see it with Christi's dad and some of the older kids. The house we saw that day, was not the same as the one we had seen and placed our offer. Since that time, the owners had moved and left their mother in charge of the house. She apparently had 3 little shaky dogs that had been having some accidents on the carpet. Sadly, at least 2 of the rooms in the house now had distinct dog urine odors. We left that day after having our agent contact the seller's agent and extracting a commitment to double clean the carpets upon completion of their move. Fast forward to last week and the owners had gone, and the carpet had been double cleaned. Sadly, the urine smell remains. It appears as though it has completely soaked through the carpet and padding and into the wood of the upstairs floor. The downstairs floor is concrete, but the carpet and padding will have to go. It is my hope that only the two main rooms of concern will need the carpet ripped out, but that remains to be seen. Christi was extremely disappointed because she had wanted to have a home that she could be proud to invite folks into and now it appears as though we may have bare floors for awhile because we won't be able to immediately afford to replace that much carpet. And when we do, it will be the good stuff with extra thick padding. This is going to be our home for a long time (God willing) and we want it to be right. We feel certain that we lost that previous house because it wasn't the right one for us. This one has all we wanted and more. We won't be letting our hard work go for nothing over the removal of some carpet, that's for sure. Christi, in particular has worked her little tushy off calling, calculating, and negotiating to make this work. I did my part, working every scrap of overtime I could get, but it was really her that made it all possible. I thank God for my wonderful wife and kids and now for this opportunity to put my family in a home they deserve. I'll be praying for a quick opening of escrow so we can get started on this new path before us.

Waiting for our castle

Not too long ago, we made the announcement that our backup offer on a house had been moved up to the primary offer and we were in the waiting game for bank approval. Well, some paperwork has been shuffled and the previous owners are moving out and we are a bit closer to actually getting this thing done. We are going to see it with Christi's dad today so he can have a look at it (postponed from a couple weeks ago) plus the older kids. A few of you have asked, so I'll provide this link to the listing, for your viewing pleasure. As before, I'll ask any of you that pray to keep us in your prayers to get this house. I think it is the one we were meant for.

From the back of the line, to the front, and no cuts, no butts, no coconuts.

At a time like this, the reptilian part of my brain tells me to refrain from talking about things like this, in order to avoid the wrath of the Real Estate Gods. But I seldom listen to my own superstitious thoughts and so I'll tell you that Christi and I are now the primary offer on what is probably the best house we've seen yet. As noted here, we lost out on a short sale on which we had been waiting almost 6 months for a final answer. It was rather heartbreaking as we weren't even informed that our offer had been dropped and so we were on the hook for probably 2 months unnecessarily. As I said in that post, we had since put in offers, 2 of which we were in backup offer status. Well, it happened. The primary offer on a 5 bedroom 3 bath house, with 3000 plus square feet fell through and our offer was submitted to the bank. Unfortunately, the previous buyer lost his job, and our sympathies are with him for that, but I think that this is our time. As Christi kept saying after we became the backups "the backup offer on the previous house got it" so she and I kept some very high hopes. It looks like things just might work out this time. This house is the best we've seen yet as it keeps us in the schools we wanted, has nearly double the footage of where we are now, 5 bedrooms and a 3 car garage. The backyard is completely walled in with concrete block walls and the landscaping shields the backyard from nosy neighbors. Most importantly, it has that one feature that Christi has been dying for for so long, a fireplace. In fact it has 2, the most awesome one being in the master bedroom right in front of the garden tub (read: Luuuv tub). The kitchen is large with great cabinets and stainless stove and dishwasher (another important feature). We are taking her dad to see it on Thursday, to get his opinion, but I'm sure he'll be just as pleased with it as we are. My hopes are hanging on this one, but we feel really good about this house. If you pray at all, please pray that things work out for us with this house.

It will feel so good to finally have a place of our own.

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!!

Ok, Ok...we've been bad, bad bloggers, I know. You can't see it now, but Christi is slapping herself on the wrist. Actually she's sleeping, but you get my point. We've been remiss in our blogging duties and this is our mea culpa. It seems that our daily running around and our current battle with the stomach flu has crimped our blogging. That and we keep procrastinating on offloading the pics we've been taking for the blog and then tellling ourselves, "We'll do it later and then write that post we've been meaning to". Then later comes and goes and no post and...well that's how it goes.

But, here is an update, without the pictures and we'll get to those when we get one of these:

I had a friend in the service who carried one of these in his pocket and he'd bring it out whenever I'd make an excuse for something. Always good for a laugh.

As some of you may know, we've been doing the paperwork shuffle trying to get pre-approved for a home loan and after many, many phone calls and delivery of a thick stack of paper that spells out our entire value to the material world, we have finally gotten the go-ahead. We can now begin searching for a house in earnest. We actually had found one and looked at it informally the day it hit the market, and it was nearly perfect for us, but within 12 hours it had multiple offers stacking up. That is going to be one of the main problems we face in this search as the market pricing is so attractive and the supply of houses is short. That coupled with the ridiculous "special assessments" on homes in many of the areas we want to live (you'd be amazed) which drive the tax payments on these things sky-high. That is going to put a pinch on how much home we can buy or where we can buy. We'll keep you posted on how this goes.

Last Saturday the our band geeks marched in the Lake Elsinore "Unity in the Community" parade. We have pictures for that too, but the picture above applies to them also. It was fun to see them do their thing and they looked so good in their uniforms. Really cool.

This year we had planned to have Thanksgiving at our house, with a few friends and family, but those plans were interuppted by a wicked bout of the stomach flu. Christi and all of the little ones, from Austin down have been suffering the effects and as of this posting, we've still got little ones doing the "technicolor yawn" and Christi herself is still feeling quite ill. We're going to have to scale back dinner to whatever everyone is feeling up to eating.

So that's what we're up to. We plan to get to those pics this weekend, but that remains to be seen. We hope that everyone out there has a great Thanksgiving and enjoys the family and friends and the good times and whatever makes you thankful. Despite our bout with the flu, we're going to rejoice in the love of our kids and the time we spend together and we'll get through the yuckies as a family. We'll be keeping more up to date with the blog as we do have those pics and we'll have house hunting updates and if we're lucky...maybe we'll even have another special announcement.

God bless you and all that you hold dear.