Easter

This year the Easter celebration was hosted at my house. I have to say that I was weary of it and not exactly looking forward to it because of some drama that had happened before that and just because I was not in the mood.

The night before, Andrew' mother and stepfather stayed the night. It was nice to have them over. They hadn't seen the house yet so they were excited. The next morning we woke up and attempted to start cooking the ham. Ummm, yea....that's all I have to say. It was my first time and I didn't know which instructuions to follow out of the 2 I had found on the internet. I chose one and ran with it.

I headed out to do some last minute shopping for dinner and came back home to find an almost fully cooked ham! It was ony 9:30am! I had chosen the wrong instructions! Oh well. I took it out and just let it sit until it was time for the festivities to begin.

People started arriving around 2pm and brought food as well so I wouldn't have to bare the brunt of the food-making. My duties were potatos, ham, salad, meatball appetizers, and fruit w/fruit dip. Ok, so my fruit dip and meatballs are party hits! I have to thank Roxanne for the dip recipe.

Both mine and Andrew's family were there and it was a full house but everyone seemed to have a good time, myself included. We ate dinner, which was delicious and then had our egg hunt. It was so cute watching the little ones. After all that dessert was served and the party came to an end.

I am glad we were able to host Easter at our house and it turn out so well! The family's got along great and everyone had a good time. I couldn't ask for more!

Story Behind the New Car

Two Saturdays ago it was decided that it was time for my Jr. Jr. (car) to have some major surgery. There was a huge list of things wrong with her plus she needed the 100,000 mile tune up. We dropped her off and stupidly proceeded to look at the new cars. Bad idea! We were sucked in at that point but still refused to budge on buying a new car until we knew poor Jr. Jr.'s diagnosis.

Man, the salesman pushed hard. Seriously hard. It was annoying. They went as far as bringing the service tech supervisor in to tell us my car was pretty much a gonner. (Ok, so secretly at this point I wanted a new car but wasn't thrilled about having a new car payment.) Even after hearing this we decided we needed firm proof my car would be insanely expensive to fix.

We waited around another hour or so for the final verdict. The verdict was what they had told us. It would cost around $5000 to fix my car. I honestly believe this was a lie or padded quite a bit in order to get us to buy a new car. So of course with that we decided to get a new one just like the pushy salesman wanted. We fell into the perfect hole for them and they pounced!

After hours of negotiating we purchased a 2008 Dodge Charger. I was nto a happy camper at first even though I secretly wanted it but it has grown on me. It is a damn sexy car and it is roomy enough for us to have another child one day!

Things are great but.....

I don't understand why I can never be completely happy for more than a day or two. I am living the life I have always wanted to live. I married the perfect man for me, we have a house, an awesome new car, and yet I still feel a void. Maybe it's not so much a void. Maybe I need constant change. I just cut my hair. That's a huge change for me. With all these changes in the past year how can I NOT be totally happy?

I don't even know if it's that I'm not happy. I truly believe I am. I think life is not enough. I'm even in school with no real goal other than to get a BA. For some reason I feel the need to have constant change. I get so easily bored with everything. It's always exciting for a little while then bam, I get bored.

What is wrong with me? Why can't I be fully satisfied with my life? In a time when people are losing so we much we have gained so much. I should be thankful and rejoice in our luck.

11 Days left!

Last Thursday we found out that the sellers agreed to lower the price of the house to the appraised value! YAY! That's a $17,500 reduction in the sales price. Sucks for them but awesome for us! What's even more awesome is that it looks like our mortgage payment is going to be less than our rent payment. Buying a house is definitely a great route for us!

I am trying not to get too excited bceause there's still 11 days left before the scheduled closing date btu I can't help having a glimmer of hope. Yesterday we looked at paint samples and may have chosen the livingroom and master bedroom colors. More on that later. As for other improvements to the house, I wanted to do casing and moulding but after looking at the prices that may have to wait. Paint should suffice for now.

We have put in our 30 day notice with our apartment complex and plan to move in slowly for a few weeks while we paint. I don't plan to be fully moved in until March 15. Soooooo, it looks like we may have a house!

I regret...

NOT hiring a good photographer for my wedding. Why didn't I care about photography at the time? Now I seriously regret it. Andrew's aunt did the photography and I am not thrilled with it. *sigh* I should have just coughed up the $1,500 - $2,000 for some awesome pictures. That is my only regret with the whole wedding.

1 week and 1 day

That's how long it's been since my world was turned upside dwn with this whole house thing. 1 week and 1 day and STILL no answer as to what the sellers plan to do. It's a simple "Yes, we'll drop the price" or "No we won't". I've completely stopped all packing. we haven't put in a 30 day notice and we're supposed to close in 22 days.

Right now we're impatiently waiting. It seems like our life is on hold while we wait to hear back. It sucks because we thought we had it and now we have no clue.

The House Hunt

We were excited to start our search for the perfect house back in October. We saw quite a few that we loved but our offers weren't accepted. We had to back out of one offer because we found out that the property had special assessment taxes (city beautification type deal) that would have knocked our mortgage payment way out of our comfort zone.

Jump to January, we are completely and totally done with the ups and downs of the house buying process. We decide to take a sceond look at the first house we liked during our hunt and put an offer on it. It was aceepted and we went into escrow! How happy we were! We went furniture shopping to get an idea of how we wanted to furnish the place. I gathered tons of paint samples so we can choose colors to paint each room. Things were going great! We were going to be homeowners as of February 27! Uh....no...not THAT easy!

Last Wednesday I called our lender to see if there's anything at all that would hinder the process. We were about to put in our 30 day notice for the apartment and pay $1500 to get out of the lease. Good thing I called because the lender was just going over the apraisal report she had received on the house. I was excited because I thought the process was going quicker than expected. My excitement was only momentart because she informed me that the house was appraised $17,000 less than what we agreed to pay. Our only options were to come up with reasons the house is the price it is and hope the appraiser agrees OR pay the difference. Um, yea...I doubt eaither is gonna happen. Needless to say my dreams were shot. I went into a depression for a day or two because of that and the fact that the seller's agent wasn't returning my agent's calls. We canceled the inspection that was scheduled that Saturday and went looking at more houses instead.

Our house hunt this Saturday was nowhere near as exciting as they used to be. We saw nice houses that are bigger and prettier than ours but we don't want them. Yea, who would pass up a nicer house? Apparently us! The other houses have that stupid assessment tax that would kill us in payments unless we bid super low. That would mean we would very likely not get the house so what's the point of getting our hopes up? As for our house, it has the taxes as well but they have been in place for 20 years now and will mature in 4 years so once that happens those taxes will be out of our lives. Plus, since they were put in place 20 years ago they are much lower than the ones imposed now.

So, as you can see the house buying process is stressful. It's no fun and it just flat out sucks! We heard back from the other agent yesterday and they plan to fight the appraisal value. My hope is that they and the appraiser come to an agreement so we can get our house.