change

It's so weird how much can change in just one month. Our whole lives are completely different than last month. Yesterday marks one month on knowing Mike got promoted and we were going to move. I can not believe what we have accomplished in this month, I honestly didn't think we would be half a far as we actually are. January went by in what seemed to be a blink. First off, I couldn't be prouder of my husband; being the first one at his level to get promoted says a lot about how well he's doing.

Now we are homeowners. Something we didn't plan on doing for 6-8 months from now. This new time line scare us both to death in the beginning, but we have made it through. We found a house we love! We went to 'Home Depot' yesterday and planned day dreamed our house all out. Even though somethings won't happen for a while, we know we are both in the same mind set, which is great! It amazes me all the things we can do now that we are homeowners. I've trained myself to live in rentals for the past 6 years, that it's strange that we can do whatever we want. When my parents come to visit, they can bring their dog, Tanner. Our rental doesn't even allow visiting animals.  It's those silly little things that I can't wait to discover in home-ownership.

Today also marks a new part of the moving adventure of ours: Mike left today because he starts his new position bright and early tomorrow. It's going to be hard, but it was for the best decision for us. Good thing is is that he will be home on weekends, and we have my sister's week long Mexican wedding vacation; so February will go by as fast as January. Maybe even faster!

In house news: Nothing really big has happened. We've heard back from the bank and closing papers are basically done and ready. :) We have our inspection on the 9th. Mike will be there, not me. Mike's really excited for the inspection. Since Mike worked construction during college, he know quite a bit about buildings. So he wants to see what he knows versus what the inspector knows. Since inspecting things is this guys job, I'm assuming he will catch something that Mike doesn't....but you never know.  If everything goes well, our tentative closing date is March 1st! We will know if that date is locked in after the inspection.

homeowners!?!?!?!

This weekend has just been a crazy one, that's for sure. I went to Indianapolis for my sister's bachlorette party. I have a great time and it was nice to see her and my mom. Overall, it was just nice to spend a weekend with my sister. I don't know how long it's been since we were able just to hang out the two of us. I think everyone had a great time at the bachlorette party and the best part was I wasn't the first one to pass out! I never go out, I never drink a lot, and I always go to bed early; so I thought I was going to have a hard time keeping up with everyone and falling asleep at the bar. But I did great, had fun and everyone got home safe and sound. The only bad thing is I woke up with possibly the worst hangover of my life. I mixed alcohols and of course that didn't mix well with my head in the morning. I had a long 5 hour drive home and it was fabulous. (a little sarcasm)

I can't wait for my sister's wedding in a few weeks! It's going to be a fantastic week. :)

So, I'm sure everyone is eager for info on the house, right??? Well, the way I left it with you all is we put in an offer on Wednesday and gave the seller until Friday at 5pm to respond. We figured we would of heard something Thursday, but no! The seller's realtor waited until Friday at 4:45pm to call our realtor. (gee, thanks!) The seller put in a counter offer (he came down a bit), so we countered back (we moved up a bit) and gave the seller until Saturday at 5pm to respond. Saturday at 5pm came and went - no response! I got really nervous; our realtor called and said he could be just "playing hard ball" and our realtor would call us back on Sunday. Our realtor call and told us the seller was out of town and didn't want to do any business while away and would get back to us on Monday. Well, Monday came and Mike heard from the realtor, yet again, and he told us that the seller offered us a "verbal offer". He came down a bit more. Our realtor warned us that if we accept it, papers still need to be drawn up and the seller could change his mind because nothing was on paper. And since we basically "showed our cards" and told the seller what we would be willing to pay, he could raise his offer. But our realtor has worked with the sellers realtor before and confident it would work out, but just wanted to let us know what could happen. (Sorry if this is boring, but it may be helpful to first time home buyers)

So, I got the call from Mike (who is down in Rolla today) that the seller did put in the verbal offer to paper and he was on his way to sign for it!! WOOHOO!  So we still have the inspection coming up, but we are one step closer to buying this house. : ) 

offering

So I don't know if anyone reads this who isn't my friend on facebook, but I figured I should announce here as well.

I got the call tonight from Mike that we officially put in our first offer on a home! We were waiting for our financing to completely go through before doing so (we heard your offer is taken more seriously that way). I'm so excited and yet so nervous. We gave the owner until 5pm on Friday to respond, so it will definitely be a long 2 days. The realtor said it probably won't take that long, so maybe we'll know something tomorrow. I'm not really expecting him to take our first offer; I'm sure he will counter with something.....

I'll update you all when I know something! :)

non-house post

I figured the blog has been on house-hunting over load. So I will only say one thing with regards to the house; our realtor has figured out the style of the home. It's dutch colonial. I'm glad we've finally figured it out so IF we get the house we can keep with the period of it.

Mike's gone for the week for training. Luckily he's in Rolla, so we can easily put in an offer this week. It's going to be lonely, but I'm going to be able to get a lot done. I may even get a purse sewn! I figured with this whole moving thing I wouldn't be able to sew until we do move. And just in time too, I'm headed to Indianapolis this weekend for my sister's bachlorette party. It was very last minute, but I'm super excited. I'm in charge of the food while my sister's future sister-in-law is in charge of the games. I'm so excited to make the food! We are doing a Mexican theme since she's getting married in Mexico next month. I can't wait to go to Mexico! I need a vacation....

Completely off the wall, but I'm getting a sewing serger!! I never thought I would be able to get one because they are so expensive and I wasn't sure how often I would use one. But on the bright side, I'm getting it for FREE!! And it's NEW! I'm sure your asking yourself how can that be??? Well, my job gives us "bonus bucks" and we got a lot for working during the holidays. Bonus bucks are basically money to use in the catalogs I work for and we get our discount too. So with those 2 things the serger will be free. I can't wait! I'll be able to make clothes for my kids, and just more of a variety of projects in general. I always see these cute kids patterns and dream of making them, and now I'll be able to in a professional way.

are we ready????

So after going through houses yesterday, we decided our #1 is still our #1. It has the most character and the most work. The other homes just didn't compare to this ones potential. It truly surprises both of us. Mike hates formal/separate dining rooms (I happen to love them), and this one is separate and Mike said he thinks the dining room is his favorite. Then the whole 2-story thing I've already discussed. It's downtown and we normally don't like downtown, and the location is another one of our favorites; it's right across from 2 huge parks with lots of things to do and lots of kid apparatus'. So we don't have to buy all that stuff ourselves when kiddos come into the picture. A major plus (that stuff is expensive!)

It will be fun to make it our own and pick out floor tile, kitchen cabinets,sinks, paint, MORE furniture, art work...etc.

We haven't put in an offer; we are "sleeping on it". We are going to wait until the middle of this week. We don't really feel pressured to do it, we really doubt some else is looking at it right now. Not that we want to wait too long, but this is a HUGE decision and we just want to make sure it's the right one for us.

One concern I do have is just the layout of the kitchen. It obviously will have to be remodeled soon (like in the next year or so). The size is a bit small, and shape is horizontal p (if that makes sense). But it does have a pantry!!! So excited for that. I think we will take advantage of a "designer" at Lowe's or some place like that. I think that service is complimentary when you purchase there, so we'll see.

So now comes the hard part....money! Picking the house is easy. :)

a picture and a poll

Tomorrow is going to be a big day! We are going down to Rolla for an afternoon of house hunting. We are looking at 4 or 5 houses, so hopefully we will be able to make a decision after that. I wish we could take our time and look for months for the perfect house, it's just moving very quickly. Maybe that is the normal pace of buying a home? It's just hard for me to make this kind of purchase with only seeing it maybe twice. At least for me anyway, Mike will be down there before me, and we will be able to go a lot more often then me. I'm very appreciative of what Mike's job is reimbursing us or just out right paying for, but they only will pay for 2 visits of the spouse, but unlimited ones for the employee. Obviously, I will have to go down more then twice, but we will definitely limit my trips as much as possible.

Here is our #1. (The one I've been talking about in the past couple posts) It's so funny that we are actually considering a 2-story. I like the look of them more than 1-stores, architecturally anyway. But Mike and I hate 2-stories, just for the fact that if you forget something upstairs you have to go right back up. We actually told the realtor that we only want to look at 1-story homes; our exact words, "it's a deal breaker if it has a second story." It's just makes me laugh, because as soon as we both saw this one online out eyes light up and said we liked it, not 10 minutes after the 'deal breaker' speech.

Now here is a question for everyone....WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THIS KIND OF HOUSE????

I would really appreciate a lot of comments on this one, even if you've never commented before and if you want to comment anonymously. I don't care, just really need feed back. I can't find this style house anywhere online to tell what it's technically called. I have a name for it and Mike hates it; I call it the dairy queen house. Just because my parents actually lived in one right after they were married and that's what they called it. The reason I want to know the style is we are going to be doing remodeling IF we buy it, and we want to keep it is style of the home.

The only help I can give you is that house was built in 1935. That's really all I have.

Thank you in advance!

mike on his own

Mike was in Rolla for the day for a meeting and he had the afternoon free, so he was able to see our #1 choice. I was pretty jealous that he went without me, but we only have so many 'reimbursable" trips. So we need to make the best of them.

But Mike saw it and finally called me about 3 hours after...I was so anxious! He was told to take pictures, but that didn't happen either. Apparently, since the house has been for sale for over a year, they now have a renter (enter sarcastic "great...") and it is not a good renter from what Mike said. And to top it off the renter wasn't told the showing was going to happen, so the renter was there when Mike walked through. Awkward!!

Mike really liked it though! He said it needs work and that's what want - a fixer upper. He said it was structurally sound, and just got a new roof a couple years ago. That was what I was worried about, major, expensive repairs. I guess the windows are original, but in good condition, so that is something we would probably replace soon. It's a big house with lots of windows, so that's going to be a big chunk o'money. But I just love the character of the house, from what I've seen. It was built in 1935 and has built ins. *sigh* I get to see the house this weekend and I can't wait....don't worry, I'll take pictures!

round one

Well the house we went to go see was a BUST!! We understood it was a foreclosure and would need to do a few things to it, but it being only 4 years old, we thought it would really just things to make it our own. WRONG....before I even get to the layout, it just had major problems. Starting with when we walked into the garage we smelled mold. The house has not been sealed properly for the winter because there was mold on all the walls, and an inch of ice on all the windows. Then Mike found some problems with the electrical, like 4 electrical outlet in a 5 foot span...Just bad news all around. Mike and I were actually both glad it didn't work out. It was kind of at the top of our price range but didn't want to pass up a chance to buy 15.5 acres with a house that cheap.

But the banker that took us to see the house was really nice and told us what rates we could get with his bank, so we did decide to go with them. It will be nice to deal with a bank in town, something we haven't had here because we still banking from Lafayette. :/ Anyway, we then asked him if he had a recommendation on a realtor in town. He said yes, made the call and the banker took us to the office so we wouldn't get lost in town. How nice!

The realtor is super nice as well, he reminds me of my dad in the way he's explaining everything. I learned a lot sitting there with him. It was too late on a Friday to set up any walk throughs for the weekend, but we took a look at his data base and found a few we liked. Saturday, Mike and I drove our town, found our barrings and found the houses we like. The town is pretty easy to drive around and we picked up on it really quick.

But we did find a house we really want to see. We probably like it too much right now. It's an older home built in 1935 with beautiful built-ins. :) The bathrooms are original but in great condition (as far as we could tell in the pictures). It definitely needs remodeling, but we LOVE that character of an old house. We like that fact that we can remodel it, but keep the integrity of the home.

Mike has a meeting in Rolla this week, so we are trying to get him a chance to see it to "pre-screen" it. Then, when I'm able to go down soon, we both are going to see it, if it passed Mike's inspection. :) I hope it does!

We got so much accomplished this weekend! So much we didn't plan for that happened. We came home feeling a lot less stress about this and not so much in the dark.

house hunting begins....

All Mike and I have been doing for a week straight is look at houses online, ask questions about houses, etc. I feel like we've been busy, but honestly, nothing really has come of it. Well, I guess I can't say nothing--we have found one thing.. a foreclosure. We've contacted the bank that owns it, and are going down to see it this weekend. I know it's probably not too responsible of us to go see a house without a realtor or being pre-approved for anything yet, but we just want to see it! Everything sounds great on paper and we saw an exterior picture of it but who knows what the inside looks like or the layout. This house and property is right up our alley....we shall see. We are both excited about this house and it could be the one, but I've been joking with Mike that I don't want it to be. I want to look at houses!! I want to do the SHOPPING and if we by the first house we see I won't get to do that. But seriously, even if we really like this house we will still look at other houses.

The reason why we are going this quick should be obvious...houses sell quick and right from under you if you wait too long.

As of now that's the only house we are seeing this weekend, we really just want to see the town. We both have never been there, so it will be nice to just drive around and see the neighborhoods..... maybe find a fabric store. :)

Mike is going to be down there some of next week, so that is when we are going to get a realtor and get that ball rolling. No fear everyone! We are still on the plan of me staying back in Hannibal until we find and buy a home. Mike's job is paying the movers and we really want to take advantage of this. So if I stay behind, then they can do all the work; if I go when Mike goes, they would move us into storage and then WE would have to do the actual moving into the house. And I really don't want to do that.

thank you 2009

you were truly great to us!

We've learned so much this year about growing up and what marriage is all about. I can't really say anything too bad about you 2009, except for those week long training sessions Mike had earlier this year. But then again, they were good to us too because Mike got a new job right at the end of the year. I guess they paid off...

So thank you 2009, for everything...and tell your friend 2010 to do the same! :)