House To Do List . . .

Beginning to think we should just get a new house . . . this isn't even everything we want to do.

I mean, I am excited to do some of those things, but I wonder how old we will be when we get all of these crossed off.

House Update! & Missing Aunt Cheryl . . .

Well, as far as we know we will still be getting our own house by the end of this year! And, we are hoping to close on the 18th rather than the 30th! So we will be in before Christmas (well . . . . we will probably be keeping all our stuff in the garage for a while as we tidy up and start some demolition and renovation)! It's hard for me to really get excited right now . . . I am hoping once we can actually move in, I will be really excited! I know the house will be a big project for us (lots of stuff we want to change/add/etc)!


On the flip side . . . Today marks two years from when my Aunt Cheryl passed away from an unexpected brain aneurysm. I still think about her all the time and it's just so sad that something so sudden happened to her two years before she even saw her 50th birthday. God just could not wait to have her! I know her and my Grandpa are having a great time up there together though! One day we'll all be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas and Birthdays together again! They both just added so much to our family and it's just not the same during holidays. :-(


From Alan Jackson's "Sissy's Song":

Loved ones she left behind
Just trying to survive
And understand the why
Feeling so lost inside
Anger shot straight at God
Then asking for His love
Empty with disbelief
Just hoping that maybe

She flew up to Heaven on the wings of angels
By the clouds and stars and passed where no one sees
And she walks with Jesus and her loved ones waiting
And I know she's smiling saying
Don't worry 'bout me

It's hard to say goodbye
Her picture in my mind
Will always be of times I'll cherish
And I won't cry 'cause

She flew up to Heaven on the wings of angels
By the clouds and stars and passed where no one sees
And she walks with jesus and her loved ones waiting
And I know she's smiling saying
Don't worry 'bout me

Pop The Champagne!

Well, they accepted our offer!!! So as long as everything goes well, we will have our own home again!

I guess several people called to make appointments to see the house, but the realtor & sellers are going to cancel them all because they were happy with our offer! :-)

Sooooooooooo excited!! It just seems unreal to me.

I had to wait to tell everyone because Shane was in a dentist appointment too . . . it was killing me!

And I won't see Shane until late tonight, so we can't even celebrate!

Yikes!

House

Ummm . . . . so we just put an offer on a house.

I am scared. excited. nervous. anxious. freaking out. smiling. high fiving (lame, i know . . but we are really excited about it). praying.

We should know tomorrow what the verdict is . . . .

Home Free!

Well folks, this pretty piece of property is no longer ours!! It's definitely bitter sweet because we looooved the house and the people we met in Virginia, but it was on the market since November 2008 and just got officially "closed" on Friday, July 31, 2009. 9 months of absolute frustration and stress.

I could go into a 20 minute rant about what happened the last week when we were trying to close on our house, but that would get me frustrated again, and give the banks a bad rep. . . and they don't deserve that at all (but really they do). . . but I'm trying to close this chapter of our lives and move on.

It was not a good first home buying experience, but definitely one that taught us A LOT.

But it is so good to say that it is finally sold. We no longer owe the banks any more money, and this lifts a million pounds right of my shoulders.

Short Sale - Light @ End of the Well?

photo credit here

Well, we received an approval letter from our first lender yesterday on the short sale of our house! We started this process back in February, and the first lender JUST approved it, 4 months later. I just love this picture I found, because I feel like it explains our situation perfectly. We were at the bottom of the well 4 months ago, and now we are finally seeing some light! Now we must get our 2nd lender to approve , as well as make sure all the closing items go smoothly (before August 1st), and then hopefully we will be house free. Although, because of the situation we were in, our credit is crap now. We went from having the highest credit scores you can have at our age, to having credit scores that will block us from getting another house for quite some time. It is very unfortunate how this society works and how the economy and housing market took such a fall, but we are pushing through and trying to climb out of the well, leaving all of this frustration behind us. Keep praying that everything works out, because we need it!

Packing Up!

Last Wednesday we made our last trip to our house in Virginia. We had movers come and pack everything up!
While they did that, we all did yard work. The grass was rather tall and there were soooooooooo many leaves that needed raked up. My mommy and our pup Behren came to help us out!
He was such a good boy!
When I was weed-wacking I found a HUGE spider like this one, my mom found this HUGE bee (above), and then I found this: The skin of a cicada!
And here are lots of boxes all packed up ready to be loaded on the truck!
And more! I think I am going to miss our kitchen the most! It was so big! . . . And I'm going to miss our big fenced in back yard.
Oh my gosh! So I seriously wish I could've bottled the scent up of this Lily flower! It smelled like grape sweet tarts!! Best smelling flower EVER!! But I was so excited to see all of the flowers I planted so big and so beautiful! We put a lot of work into the landscaping, and it looks great! The rose bush quadrupled in size and had 3 big roses on it!
Getting ready to leave. One last sit on our selfmade deck. Kisses all around.
There she is. All packed and ready to go (minus our lawnmower that somebody stole :-( . . bummer!)
Our last visit to our house. I hugged Shane when we were getting ready to leave and just started to cry. It was like we were closing another chapter of our lives together.

It's Official!

Shane and I will see our 1st house that we had together for the last time next week.

We are still in the process of "selling" it, but we are moving all of our stuff out of it next week!

This is very bitter sweet for me . . . .

I mean. It was our first house together, and I loved the house. It was perfect for us. Just enough room, a huge fenced in back yard, a nice big kitchen, a roomy master bedroom with a master bathroom, a huge walk in closet, close to town and tons of stores . . . the only thing wrong with it was that the majority of our family & friends were too many miles away.

We put so much into the house. Added a brand new roof (done by ourselves and family members), added a deck (done by Shane and me . . but mostly Shane), added a closet (also done mostly by Shane), painted the garage floor with epoxy paint, re-painted mostly all of the rooms in the house (including the tearing down of tons of wallpaper), painted the entire outside of the house, updated light fixtures, did tons of landscaping, painted our shed, re-roofed the shed, took a head level soap dish out of our shower and put in decorative tiles. We thought we were doing such a great job. Bought a house as an investment, put tons of sweat and work into the house to update it and make it better, . . . then the housing market/banks stuck a knife in our backs (a couple of them actually . . and maybe even twisted them around a couple times . . I think they are still in there).

We lost way too much money on our house in just one year (too much to even say . . . including not only the value of the house, but all the money we spent on the improvements)! It's totally depressing. And we are still trying to get help to sell it, because we cannot even afford to sell it. We owe so much more on our loans than what the house is worth now. And it's so unfair, because it's nothing we did. It seriously makes me cry.

We put our hearts into that house to make it the best, and it totally backfired in our face.

So . . . 1st house we ever had . . . I love you. I really do. So many memories, so much work.

Banks/economy . . whoever the craps fault it is for this mess . . . I despise you. You have ruined all the work we did, all the time we put in, all the money we spent. The next several years of our lives will be difficult for us (financially/homey) because of you, and there is nothing we can do about that. . . .

I mean don't get me wrong, we didn't HAVE to sell our house, but to us the most important thing is our family and friends, so we needed to move back to Erie. We knew we were going to have some issues with our house, we just never realized it would be to this magnitude! To us, our families and friends are more important than material objects, . . .obviously houses and money are still important . . b/c it sucks that we are losing so much, but we have gained so much more by moving back home.

Home Shopping Tonight!

Eeek!! We are starting our home buying search in Erie tonight!!

Our realtor is actually our track & field coach from college (he coached Shane in high school too)!

I am super excited because we both LOOOOVEEE this house we are going to see tonight. We always drive by it on our way home and say . . "man, if that house goes up for sale, that would be awesome!" And it did!! We NEVER expected it to, because it's so beautiful and in a great location!

I can't give away the details because I don't want anyone else going out to buy it! :-P

I am really nervous though because we are still trying to sell our house in Virginia, and not quite sure how that works with trying to get another loan. Especially when you go the short sale route with your other home. Ugh. Anyone know?!

I just really hope it all works out, because this house would be awesome. We could finally settle down.

Moving All Over!

Yay!! Internet is back!! :-)

Well, we moved into Shane's dad's house this past weekend. He lives with his fiancee in Millcreek, and was nice enough to let us stay in his house in Edinboro for a while!

It is definitely a treck to work every day . . . it takes me about 30 mins - 1 hour to get to work (depending on weather/road conditions/etc).

Of course, the first day to work from Edinboro, we had to have a MAJOR snow storm . . . I've always been nervous driving in snow, and was scared out of my mind . . . country roads don't really get the attention that main roads do . . .

I made the mistake of going on a road that doesn't get traveled very often . . . I would've been ok if I could've stayed in the middle of the road, but of course . . . . a gigantic plow truck comes barreling down the opposite side . . . and so I had to get over as much as I could . . . aka . . . I had to go into about 2 feet of snow (I don't have 4 wheel drive and I don't have snow tires . . and the tires I do have . . suck.) . . . so I am freaking out b/c I'm like . . . there is NO WAY I'm getting out of this . . . so the plow truck goes by (barely squeaking past me) and I try to go again . . . no luck. So then I start to panic, and back up a little . . . go forward a little . . . back up a little . . . forward a little . . . no luck . . . do it again . . start sliding around . . . then Shane calls and says "how's it going?!" . . to which I reply . . "baber!!! I'm stuckkkkkkkkkkkk!!! :-( " . . . so I was very scared. Very stuck. So I kept putting it in drive . . reverse. . . drive. . . reverse. . .drive . . . and finally God helped me out! I was soooooooooo thankful!! And thank goodness, no other cars came down that road, so I just drove on the left side the rest of the way.

But overall, it has been very nice here. I LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE the country!!! Shane's dad owns 10 acres, and it is one of the most beautiful things to see. I do love driving through the country on my way to work and back. Everything is just so beautiful . . . it sounds corny. .. but I just feel more in touch with nature and truly appreciate it more. The things that God makes just amaze me.

Shane has already gone snowmobiling in the backyard, and we have taken Behren out for several "run/play sessions" in the back yard. I cannot wait until it gets warm again (I know . . . I have a while) . . so we can just sit out on the back deck and take it all in. Just relax. You can see so many more stars at night, and it is just beautiful.

(yes that is a golf ball in the dishwasher. . . we found it in there when we opened it the first time . . gary's response . . "it needed cleaned")

We have made some minor improvements to the house so far (with Shane's dad's approval of course). We cleaned it up a bit (Shane's dad thought it was clean. . .which it was to an extent, but sometimes I can be a neat freak . . .). We also updated the sink in the bathroom with a new faucet (the old one was too close to the sink so you couldn't get your hands under it very well) . . soooo happy with the new one!! It looks great! Shane is also making us some coat rack thingies for our door to the back yard and the door from the garage. We moved the furniture around a bit, and I think I might make Shane paint the bedroom with me (Sorry Shane . . . Shane hates to paint) . . . right now it's white, but I want to paint it a khaki color like our old bedroom . . it's just so much more cozy!! I will probably buy some pictures/mirrors/plants/etc. . . just to make it more a "home". Warm it up a bit!

Nina likes the new sink too!

Well . . .other than that . . I have been working. By the time I get home and eat, it's time to sleep! . . . and then do it all over again . . . I'll try to keep you up to date!